Digital Transformation at Croda International
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Improving both customer and employee experience through digital transformation WRIT TEN BY
M ARCUS L AWRENCE PRODUCED BY
LE WIS VAUGHAN
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Croda International’s Chief Digital Officer Dave Cook discusses how digital transformation is driving the chemical manufacturer’s position as an industry leader
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stablished in 1925, Croda is the name behind high performance ingredients and technologies in some of
the world’s biggest and most successful brands: creating, making and selling speciality chemicals that are relied on by industries and consumers everywhere. Croda has a network of over 4,500 passionate and committed employees, working together as one global team across manufacturing sites and offices in 38 countries. A FTSE100 company with a flexible structure, the business has focused on developing and delivering innovative, sustainable ingredients that their customers can build on in: Personal Care, Health Care, Crop Care, Polymer Additives, Lubricants, Coatings & Polymers, Geo Tech, Home Care and Industrial Specialties. Named among Management Today’s top three most admired companies in the UK,
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“ We’ve put more emphasis on digital and there’s a certain positivity about the fact we’re on the journey” — Dave Cook, Chief Digital Officer, Croda International 06
Chief Digital Officer Dave Cook says this success in the public eye has been facilitated by a deeply ingrained ethos of customer centricity. “Croda prides itself on its customer focus: customer intimacy, innovating with customers, having the right products, and providing the right services,” he explains. This drive to improve the customer experience in all its forms is the basis for the firm’s commitment to digital transformation. Cook joined Croda in January 2018 and has since led the company’s digital strategy through this
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘INTRODUCTION TO CRODA’ 07 exciting time. “One of our goals is to become a digital leader within the industry,” he says. While remaining customer centric, Croda also places considerable importance on the employee experience, and its positive culture surrounding digital transformation exemplifies this focus. “Over the last 12 months, we’ve put more emphasis on digital and there’s a certain positivity about the fact we’re on the journey. Having the buy-in of the employees comes from that commitment to improving their experience alongside the customer experience,” he explains. w w w.c rod a . com
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STRATEGIC PARTNERS
website, driven by the manufacturer’s
Croda’s approach to IT vendor man-
strategic partnership with Sitecore.
agement positions vendors as strategic
“There’s been a general revamp of our
business partners, fostering relation-
web presence through the Sitecore
ships that maximise value. SAP has
Experience Platform,” Cook notes,
been fundamental to this approach
adding that Qlik’s analytical capabili-
ever since SAP ERP became its core
ties are augmented by Sitecore.
platform nearly 20 years ago. One of
“Sitecore comes with its own analytics
its first extensions was Qlik’s data
which, along with Google Analytics,
visualisation solution sitting on top of
enables us to understand what our
SAP Business Warehouse, which has
customers are doing in the digital realm
provided insights into daily operations
and how that influences their behaviour
and raised data literacy across the org-
further in the buying cycle.”
anisation significantly. However, more
The benefits of this tactile and well-
recently, the company’s focus has
presented web presence are bound-
shifted to marketing and sales. Perhaps the most outwardly
less and began presenting themselves straight away. “We had an immediate
striking result of Croda’s digital
uplift in traffic,” Cook says. “The classic
transformation is its elegant,
KPIs you look for in web engagement
informative and easily navigable
all increased as the sites went live.”
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Dave Cook Dave Cook is Chief Digital Officer at Croda International Plc. He has over 10 years’ experience in leading a variety of digital transformation initiatives across several industries and organisations including the likes of Time Out and Auto Trader. Dave has an MBA and a first-class degree in Astrophysics from the University of Leicester.
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Despite this success, the drive to take full advantage of Sitecore’s benefits to the business is no less potent. “The real opportunity is how you take it to the next level. We are still working with Sitecore on the next phase of leveraging their experience platform,” he says. Croda’s interest in this area is particularly focused on the burgeoning concept of B2B personalisation. The concept, which has long been a core aspect of the B2C space, is now beginning to drive B2B actions to improve customer experience through tailored relationships. While Sitecore has reimagined Croda’s online identity, Croda’s strategic part-
“ Having the buy-in of the employees comes from that commitment to improving their experience alongside the customer experience” — Dave Cook, Chief Digital Officer, Croda International
nership with Hootsuite facilitates its advanced social media presence in a landscape where this is increasingly necessary. “Customers are starting to move away from traditional marketing routes. The live event space, with traditional stands, still happens, but customers are increasingly either visiting the website or interacting with our content on social media. With social media we wanted to work with a company like Hootsuite who could bring that strategic partnership element to the table,” Cook explains. w w w.c rod a . com
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C O M PA N Y FACT S
• Croda has a network of over 4,500 passionate and committed employees in 38 countries • A FTSE100 company, Croda is named among Management Today’s top three most admired companies in the UK
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• Placing considerable importance on the employee experience, Croda’s positive culture exemplifies this • Croda is focused on the concept of B2B personalisation, which will improve the customer experience through tailored relationships
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“We were keen to think not only in
felt that Hootsuite were the best
terms of their product range but also
partner for that.”
the services they offer that could help
SAP’s C4C CRM platform is also
to define the strategy we’re going to
part of the mix. “We were looking for
employ, to more effectively measure
a solution that would easily integrate
the impact of our social media pre-
with the rest of the estate and C4C
sence, and to enable employee
was an obvious choice. The links
advocacy. There were a series of
between Sitecore, SAP C4C and SAP
components that we wanted to
ERP are fundamental to a broader
integrate into our approach, and we
agenda,” he adds.
£1.4bn Approximate revenue (2017)
1925
Year founded
4,500
Approximate number of employees
Cook is also mindful of the compa-
consider the people in the business,
ny’s supporting functions and Croda’s
particularly in terms of learning and
implementation of the Cornerstone
development. We asked ‘how do we
talent management platform is indicative
provide the right environment to help
of an attention to detail that extends
people on this digital journey and help
behind the scenes, ensuring that the
them to acquire new digital skills in the
supporting functions of the business
process?’” Cook is quick to reaffirm
benefit from the application of digital
the importance of this approach to the
transformation technologies. “Bringing
firm’s wider success with digital trans-
Cornerstone in is about how we
formation. “It’s one of those examples w w w.c rod a . com
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where it’s not necessarily front of mind but, without that enabler, it’s very hard to achieve your bigger objectives. You need to have the skilled people in place to make the journey successful.”
GROWTH THROUGH ACQUISITION Cook is confident in Croda’s ability to source the best partners to help solve business challenges and drive innovative processes, adding: “Where we
don’t have a skill set, we’re very confident that we can find the right partners and bring those skills into the organisation.” This ethos extends to Croda’s acquisition strategy, with an example being the addition of an inhouse team of machine learning specialists through the company’s 2015 purchase of Incotec. At Incotec, the team developed a machine learning solution that can autonomously assess the quality of seeds and their likelihood of germination, boosting yield through this intelligent seed selection. This expertise in development of sophisticated technologies is now being applied to Croda’s other manufacturing processes with a view to drive efficiency and boost production rates. It is clear Croda’s digital strategy is positively influenced by the company’s open-mindedness to the digital operations of the firms it acquires. The companies that Croda acquires are frequently leaders in their own fields, which offers an intriguing prospect for locating complementary technologies for its digitisation strategy. “Because they tend to be forward thinking, they may have some interesting examples of where they’ve used technology that w w w.c rod a . com
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“ Where we don’t have a skillset, we’re confident that we can find the right partners and bring those skills into the organisation” — Dave Cook, Chief Digital Officer, Croda International
maybe Croda hasn’t adopted yet,” Cook says. Croda is certainly in an extremely strong position as it continues its digital transformation journey, with a culture of excitement coupled with positive change management and measured flexibility that ensures the selected digital solutions are the right ones to drive the company forward. All of this is compounded by an unerring commitment to customers and ensuring that the firm’s focus is on being the best in the industry. “I think we are incredibly positive about how we can use digital to improve our organisation in order to deliver a better service to our customers,” Cook adds. “We’re very pleased with how far we’ve come, but there’s still a lot to do, and we’re very focused on achieving the outcomes that we’re after.”
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Croda International Plc Cowick Hall, Snaith, Goole East Yorkshire DN14 9AA T +44 (0) 1405 860551 www.croda.com