Businesses work together amid COVID-19 pandemic

A driver selects goods according to the customer's request at the market.

Mutual support

Amid the pandemic’s developments, Ho Chi Minh City applied social distancing measures, the model of "shopping for households" with cooperation between supermarkets, retailers and delivery applications became more active.

As noted, the supermarket systems of Saigon Co.op, BigC, Vinmart, Lotte Mart have all cooperated with a series of delivery applications such as Grab, Now, Beamin, Foody to go to the market. Staying at home and use the phone to access the "Shopping" feature on these applications, users can shop for essential food items and have them delivered to their homes quickly. This has helped supermarkets significantly increase online sales in the context of having to implement social distancing to fight the pandemic. Shoppers also benefit as the time to buy goods is faster than waiting for the supermarket to deliver them as previously.

There are no specific statistics, but for supermarkets, the number of orders placed through the "Go to market" feature of delivery applications has grown rapidly in recent days. There are even times when supermarkets have to "disconnect the network" because they cannot meet the needs of customers. Mr. Vo Van Buu, a shipper, said that while waiting for payment at a Co.opfood store in Go Vap district (HCMC), there are almost always orders. He usually receives up to ten orders to go to the market these days.

During the pandemic, the cost of premises became a big burden for many business units when sales decreased. Facing that situation, the optimization of business premises is a problem that is posed to be able to maintain business operations. The cooperation model between Masan Group and Phuc Long tea-coffee shop chain is an innovative solution to the problem. Accordingly, Masan spent about US$15 million to buy back 20% of shares in Phuc Long Heritage Company – the company that owns Phuc Long brand.

Within the cooperation framework, Masan will develop the Phuc Long brand under the kiosk model based on the strategic cooperation agreement between VinCommerce and Phuc Long, which takes advantage of a network of more than 2,200 Vinmart+ stores nationwide. This cooperation will help Phuc Long both save rental costs and shorten the time to expand the number of new points of sale, thereby quickly gaining market share.

Meanwhile, Vinmart will optimize the business premises. Both Vinmart and Phuc Long will also exploit more customer groups from both sides, helping to increase revenue. According to the agreement, Phuc Long kiosk will share 20% of revenue with Vinmart+ stores. Accordingly, based on the business results of the pilot model, this cooperation will contribute to increasing the profit margin of the Vinmart+ system by more than 4% compared to the current level.

In addition, Masan also hopes to bring the Phuc Long brand to the world. This plan has also begun to show progress when Phuc Long announced the preparation to open the first store in the US.

Work together to create new energy

In addition to mutual support solutions that have brought positive effects in the context of the pandemic, many businesses have also implemented cooperation plans to create a foundation for fast and sustainable growth in the future.

In early July, Sunhouse Group announced a cooperation with ITG Technology to deploy the "make in Vietnam" smart factory solution – 3S Factory. This is an activity in the digital transformation strategy of Sunhouse's production activities.

Accordingly, this solution will be applied first with ALUBA plastic factory – one of eight factories in Sunhouse's household ecosystem. This factory has an area of ​​4,000 m2, with 60 clusters of plastic injection machines and conveyor robots, 25 clusters of stamping machines to help improve automation. The factory also focuses on improving the quality from the source by using plastic from famous brands in the world.

After applying 3S Factory solution, ALUBA Sunhouse plastic factory will officially join the ranks of smart factories in Vietnam built according to ISA-95 standards of the International Automation Association. The application of the smart factory model will help form the information flow throughout the factory to the highest management level of Sunhouse. This data helps the system identify and localize errors at each stage. From there, towards standardizing core processes, minimizing wasteful intermediary operations in the production process, promoting lean management. With this model, Sunhouse hopes to expand the market and aim to become a billion-dollar brand by 2025.

Another enterprise, Vietnam TNG Holdings, has just signed a deal with International Management System Integration Company Limited (Gimasys) to build a 360-degree customer database system. The project will help centralize and clean data, merge customer data from multiple systems, websites, and social networks of both Vietnam TNG Holding and its affiliates into one platform. Thereby creating a single source of data about customers.

With this project, professional users, technicians and managers of Vietnam TNG Holdings can build reports on exploitation, analysis and in-depth assessment of key trends of customers. From there, make the right decisions, quickly based on data and numbers, creating customer segments for input and improve the effectiveness of marketing, sales or customer care activities.

In the cooperation program between Nova Group and Viettel, Nova Group and its member units will give priority to using solutions developed by Viettel such as telecommunications infrastructure services, information security, monitoring systems, and information security, solutions to support business management, multi-channel customer care, brand management, online payment.

In contrast, Viettel will give priority to introducing to officers and employees, members as well as customers and partners about programs, preferential policies as well as policies on business cooperation in real estate products and other services provided by Nova Group. At the same time, giving priority to using Nova Group products for the welfare policies and funds of Viettel employees and jointly promoting the brand promotion of both sides.

Similarly, in the field of construction, installation, infrastructure, Coteccons and IDICO also have strategic cooperation to cross-sell products, services and other business development activities in their customer network as well as help refer customers to each other.