Finding the Balance Between Digital and Personal Interaction

It is said the pace of digital advancement is happening faster than ever. While this may be true for other industries, from my perspective we are trailing, digitally speaking, in the materials construction industry. I began my career almost 20 years ago when the construction industry still largely relied on paper for planning, tracking, and when project management and communications systems were dispersed and clunky. Today, the industry lags behind, but change is coming. Fast.

In a McKinsey Global Institute study done a couple of years ago, the construction industry was the second-least digitized of the 22 sectors that power our economy. It’s no surprise that construction was surpassed by natural digital leaders, such as information technology, media and finance. But, consider this: construction beat only agriculture in McKinsey’s digital ranking.

The big question is whether digital innovations are really the answer to optimizing our business. I think the answer is, yes, but the real question is what does the customer need? I find that the key isn’t trying to find ways to insert digital into our world. It starts with understanding the daily life, decision making process, pain points of any audience that is important to your company’s success – from employees to customers.

One of my priorities in my first year as CEO of LafargeHolcim’s cement operations is to revolutionize how we work with customers, and I strongly believe, even in the construction industry, digital can help us get there.

I’m passionate about finding ways that enhance our working relationship with our customers – from improving our ease of doing business to our service and support. Helping our customers meet these challenges requires new ways of thinking and working, and that’s where I believe digital innovations can fill gaps and propel us forward. For LafargeHolcim, the largest manufacturer of building materials in the world, it means we have the opportunity to partner with – and even lead – our customers in imagining what’s possible, then making it real.

One of my priorities in my first year as CEO of LafargeHolcim’s cement operations is to revolutionize how we work with customers, and I strongly believe, even in the construction industry, digital can help us get there.

Troubleshoot the technical challenges

We started by looking at the technical challenges specific to the sector, including its wide variety of needs, geographic distribution of projects and varying sophistication and size of our customers. We analyzed our customers’ journey as they interact with us and studied ways to jump the divide between us. How can we help improve our customers’ key project performance indicators, such as scheduling, budgeting, safetye web-based portals and apps are a fact of everyday business life, the reality is that sometimes the best solutions are the simplest. Concrete paving is rife with daily challenges for our contractor clients. They need trucks at specific times so they can keep their project on time and have their teams ready to work, able to order right from the job site, seeing where their truck is along the route and being able to see the invoice online.

 A 2018 end-of-year review done by Dodge Data and Analytics suggests that adoption of technology is growing, particularly among general contractors and large firms. Some of the technologies that drive the adoption curve include wearables, building information modeling, and drones. And, whereas only slightly more than half of contractors say they use advanced technologies on their work sites today, more than three-quarters expect to in the next three years.

More than a year ago, we launched a pilot app with the idea to help our contractors, drivers and dispatchers work more effectively. Today, ConcreteDirect has been rolled out nation-wide to our Ready Mix team with plans of expansion beyond.

There’s no question this is a simple approach. At the end of the day though, we’ve seen it help our customers save time, increase transparency with orders and deliveries, and increase crew utilization. It quite literally puts control of concrete ordering and logistics at our customers’ fingertips. That’s what counts. We will soon do the same with cement

Sometimes, it’s also about rethinking and relaunching updated tools. Even several years post-merger, we’re still finding areas we need to improve, update or completely rebuild. Again, these days, web presence is considered table stakes. But if what you have doesn’t fully meet customer needs or makes for frustrating days for our employees, then going back to the basics is needed.

Merging our legacy billing, invoicing systems has long been evaluated. Where we netted out was to revamp completely, borrowing a digital approach that has worked successfully in our Mexico market.

While we’ve made small steps into the digital age, we are excited about what’s to come but also cognizant of enhancing our customer relationships, not replacing a screen with face-to-face interaction. The true challenge is balancing digital with the proper level of personal interaction...

Our new customer portal, DirectAccess, is another way to make our customers’ lives easier. DirectAccess embeds digital into our customer interface systems, allowing customers direct access to their accounts so they can manage all aspects of the billing process 24/7. No, this isn’t rocket science, but going back to my focus on customer excellence, if you don’t have the basics in place, getting to the next step is practically impossible.

Looking ahead

We have focused – to begin with – on process digitization, looking at ways to create digital, real-time sharing of information to ensure transparency and collaboration. We’re looking at ways to help manage risk, while enhancing safety; to track project status and materials delivery; and to monitor quality of both service and product. In the end our goal is better outcomes for our customers - real time, at-your-fingertips information, which in their world usually means finishing a project on-time and on-budget.

While we’ve made small steps into the digital age, we are excited about what’s to come but also cognizant of enhancing our customer relationships, not replacing a screen with face-to-face interaction. The true challenge is balancing digital with the proper level of personal interaction in an industry where relationships run long and deep, and nothing changes but the business cards. While there is satisfaction in instant gratification, last I checked, most people still like working with people they know and trust.