CBI International is a large distributor of popular Latin American food products in and throughout the United States. With locations in Miami, Texas and California, CBI International serves as a gateway into the Latin American food market for 59 million Hispanic Americans. From snacks such as chips, peanuts and candies to legumes, heavy cream and sodas, there is always something to choose from for everyone in the family. CBI International is also the exclusive distributor for Latin American food giant Diana in the United States. They deliver widely popular products such as Jalapeños, Bacorns, Corn Curls, Platanitos and so much more to your local grocery stores throughout the entire country. In short, CBI International brings the unique flavors and snack favorites of Central America to your local supermarket, truck stops and gas stations and, ultimately, into your home.

As you can imagine, for a distributor, running out of warehouse space is always a bad thing. However, it can be a bad thing that brings with it a lot of good. It’s no secret that challenges make us better. Challenges bring about the invention and innovation that lead to much needed change. For CBI International, challenges first brought about a new warehouse and an ERP system which made inventory management, space utilization and stock rotation possible. Logistics, placement and picking of goods were greatly improved for years. Once inventory management was no longer enough, it was time to move to a new location. A new location, however, meant a lot of expenses, planning, follow-up and the difficult task of actually moving everything to the new location. Understandably, CBI had a lot of work ahead of them and they asked us if GoComputek could handle the IT side of things. We, of course, said yes, but we only had five months to coordinate everything. The building was a new construction, which meant we would be facing many additional challenges as a result.

For us this meant new network cabling and infrastructure, ordering and coordinating the installation of internet service and, most importantly, moving over all the equipment. Normally, these are all easy tasks, but this building was new construction. So, each of these components meant coordinating several other matters to make sure everything would be ready for the day of the move. The first challenge was getting access to the building. For insurance purposes, no one would be allowed to enter the building until April. That was a month before the scheduled move. How would we get internet access into the building? Both ATT and Comcast would take months to get a cable into our demarcation point, and the installation of the network cabling depended on the contractors responsible for the construction of the offices. With only a month to get everything done it meant we would be cutting it close. In the end, the network cabling was finished on time and we set up temporary internet and phone lines to move our systems without interruption. The day of the move everything went off without a hitch.