CEMEX has taken a bold step in digital innovation and technology to create competitive advantage
CEMEX announced material development in their Working Smarter digital transformation initiative, where the company uses a combination of digital technologies, operative models, and innovation from leading service suppliers to reshape its business management services.
Working Smarter – a pillar in CEMEX’s digital strategy along with CEMEX Go, the industry’s first digital global platform – aims to capture current and future opportunities to enhance business management services around the world, from finance and accounting back office, information technology, and human resources up to commercial. back and central office services.
The initiative will bring together all locations around the world into a unified CEMEX experience, supported by data analytics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive technologies to improve the employee experience.
‘Our digital approach has already brought us a very close relationship with our customers, as evidenced by our record high Net Promoter Score index of 68 for 2021’, said Fernando A. González, chief executive officer of CEMEX.
‘Working Smarter takes us one step further as the digital leader of the construction materials industry, not only in the customer experience, but now also in our business management processes.’
As part of this initiative, CEMEX redesigned their shared services operating model, implementing virtual delivery centers that use a remote workforce, utilizing high-quality talent pools that are not dependent on their location. Remote work has been made possible through CEMEX’s advanced collaboration and service management platforms, protected by strong cybersecurity.
To accelerate the change, CEMEX has now signed separate multi-year contracts, ranging from five to seven years and totaling US $ 500 million, with six leading service providers in the fields of finance and accounting, information technology, and human resources.
By replacing the current expenditures of new suppliers ’services at an optimized value, CEMEX says they are effectively continuing to reduce the company’s operating costs.
IBM will bring greater agility and flexibility to CEMEX’s financial and accounting operations as well as to their commercial back office services. They will combine the use of multiple global delivery centers with increased automation, advanced analytics, and applied cognitive technologies, and will also provide advanced IT security services and technologies to help secure digital CEMEX infrastructure and strengthen the company’s cyber resilience.
HCL Technologies together with NEORIS, a digital accelerator subsidiary of CEMEX, will enable end-to-end transformation in business and IT, using the hybrid cloud platform and strengthening CEMEX’s application landscape with innovative automation for improved level of service.
Axians will provide CEMEX with end-to-end network management and innovation services, including the global deployment of SD-WAN technology to add routing intelligence, resilience, and flexibility to support network-intensive environments. coherent real-time operations.
Tata Consultancy Services, along with their advanced HR platforms, analytics, and automation services, will provide digital workplace solutions and collaboration frameworks to enhance the employee and workforce experience.
ServiceNow’s market-leading digital innovation platform will enable CEMEX to seamlessly streamline service delivery between both internal and external service delivery organizations, reducing processing times and providing services. employees of superior digital experience.
Avasant, a digital and sourcing strategy firm, will be responsible for the ongoing management of partner relationships with their January 2022 acquisition of CEMEX’s worldwide vendor management operations in Monterrey, Mexico.
In planning and implementing the Working Smarter initiative, CEMEX also partnered with Avasant to select and establish relationships with strategic service providers.
CEMEX says they expect to announce additional strategic relationships in the coming months to expand current coverage and complete the deployment of their digital strategy.
It is estimated that the combination of this next-generation service contract and the company’s internal delivery modification should materially contribute towards the US $ 100 million annual savings goal set by CEMEX when implementation is completed.
CEMEX chief financial officer, Maher Al-Haffar, said: ‘Beyond the profound change impact on how we manage our business and the competitive advantage it creates for the company, the Working Smarter initiative is it will be very fast, with an expected four -fold return. in investment. ‘