The case looks at the regional business management approach developed by Holcim, the world’s second largest cement producer, in Asia-Pacific. After turning Thailand’s Siam City Cement into a successful company focusing on customers and markets for growth, Holcim aims to replicate its success by seeking to build information capabilities in other Asia-Pacific companies in the same way it did in Siam City Cement. The case focuses on how Holcim uses a shared IT service concept to replicate Siam City Cement’s IT infrastructure, Enterprise Resource Planning system, webSALES online distribution channel and Customer Relationship Management tools with high speed and low cost, and to transfer knowledge on how to run the business with these systems. It also raises the challenge of how to ensure that new management teams can use these systems to effectively leverage information and knowledge to improve business performance.
