The Quest for a New Market
Davin Wilfrid
In the US, American Standard is widely recognized as a foremost brand of toilets, sinks, faucets, fixtures, and other kitchen and bathroom products. However, the company’s efforts to become a household name in Mexico were impacted by an unreliable website and inefficient business processes for updating product data.
Although Mexico is an important manufacturing base for American Standard, that nation represents only a fraction of the company’s retail market. Increasing brand awareness and improving sales in Mexico required replacing the company’s faulty Spanish-language website that was developed by a third-party services company and moving the management of that site in-house — all while leveraging the SAP technology the company already had in place.
According to Victor Colon, CIO of American Standard, securing executive buy-in for the website project was not a difficult endeavor because it squared perfectly with the company’s ongoing master data initiatives and aggressive e-commerce strategy.
“Our CEO Don Devine is very interested in strategically promoting our brand using the Internet and social networking. To capitalize on the opportunity that the web presents, he manages the web as a distinct business unit,” says Colon. “This initiative, aligned with our business strategy, creates opportunity to grow our market share in Mexico.”
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July 01, 2010