The role of BASF's market intelligence is to support strategic realization, whether it is investment projects, mergers and acquisitions, economic and competitor intelligence or daily research. "
Background of chemical manufacturer BASF
BASF, headquartered in Ludwigshafen, Germany, is the world's largest diversified chemical manufacturer. It is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange and Zurich stock exchange. BASF has about 111000 employees, six Verbund factories and nearly 370 production bases around the world, serving customers and partners in almost all countries.
BASF Group has subsidiaries and joint ventures in more than 80 countries, and operates six integrated production bases and 390 other production bases in Europe, Asia, Australia, America and Africa. In 2011, BASF reported sales of $73.5 billion and revenue of $8.4 billion excluding special items.
The role of chemical manufacturer BASF's market intelligence is to support the realization of strategy, whether it is investment project, M A, economic and competitor intelligence or daily research.
Globally, BASF's market intelligence unit in Germany has more than 100 employees, while much smaller units are located in different regions. In the Asia Pacific region, there are only two people in the market intelligence team. With such a large number of employees, it is very necessary to make use of the efficiency of resources, budget and local knowledge management to obtain market intelligence in the region more effectively.
A survey of regional business units in Asia shows that business managers feel that they often waste time looking for information on their own that could be better used for other tasks. The costs involved are not only management time, but also higher costs when negotiating at the local level.
"By concentrating our resources in the Asia Pacific region, we are in a better position to negotiate with suppliers on reports used by countries. The cost savings range from 15% to 30%. In fact, some of our reports are generated at a global level, which we find more cost-effective and ensure consistent quality standards are maintained in our organization. This makes it much easier to compare different countries and regions. "
method
"Because we offer a lot of product lines, there is a degree of complexity in our organization and business. In the past, we had separate databases, including external consultants, information portals, databases and researchers, targeting only the Asia Pacific region. Therefore, due to the opaque information we have as a team, internal coordination and opinion exchange are difficult to achieve. Therefore, we are very clear that our immediate goal is to simplify our work and eliminate duplication. To ensure early support from colleagues, we attach great importance to providing an easy-to-use and as simple as possible system. It's going to deal with the frustration that people get from wasting their time. "
The situation faced by BASF Asia Pacific team is not uncommon, so it is an interesting case study to explore how to introduce a new market intelligence system and turn the initial skeptics into advocates and participants.
We invite Xu Honghong to share her views on several issues.
What are the challenges of the transition from a decentralized structure to a centralized structure?
"In a distributed system, you usually encounter complex internal structures and various processes in different units. Each business unit and country also has its own cultural differences, and if you don't take the time to listen and examine how best to meet local needs, you may resist a unified approach.
We have noticed that although local units spend resources and time searching for information, they are worried that the data they get is unreliable, and at other times, it is just information overload. Everyone recognizes that resources can be used more effectively.
From a regional perspective, the problem we face is how, as partners of local business units, we can improve things without adding extra layers to an already complex organization.
