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Case Study

Building information capabilities and websales at Siam City Cement

By Donald A. Marchand and Rebecca Chung

17 pages

July 2002

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Reference: IMD-3-1025

In 1998, Holcim, the world’s second largest cement producer, acquired Siam City Cement, Thailand’s second largest cement producer. The new management team focused on improving the company’s performance to sell more cement into the mature Thai market. The case focuses on how Siam City Cement quickly developed its IT infrastructure and introduced within 24 months an Enterprise Resource Planning system, webSALES online distribution channel and Customer Relationship Management tools. The case raises the question of what else Siam City Cement needs to do beyond IT to achieve the full value of the significant IT investment. It also highlights the challenge of how to motivate management and employees to use information more effectively to improve customer services and to increase market share and profitability.

Keywords

Information Orientation, Information Technology, Information Usage, eBusiness, WebSales, Cement

Settings

Asia
1998-2002

Type

Field Research

Available Languages

English

Related material

Teaching note, Video

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