A speciality chemicals company
Find out how Intelligence2day® helped reduce costs by saving time as well as provide a broader scope of relevant news to key stakeholders.
COMPANY: Nouryon
TYPE: Chemicals, B2B
WEBSITE: https://www.nouryon.com/
A speciality chemicals company
Find out how Intelligence2day® helped reduce costs by saving time as well as provide a broader scope of relevant news to key stakeholders.
Intelligence2day® has helped Nouryon future-proof their business, all while reducing operating costs.
The Challenge
In 2012, a newly appointed manager at Industrial Chemicals, now known as a business in Nouryon, recognized that the scope of work remained limited for three full-time employees who were sourcing and collecting news manually for only one business unit. This was done with the help of lists in Excel, visiting many bookmarked websites and then copying and pasting material into a newsletter that would go out every Friday, which was extremely time-consuming. When one of the employees became ill and the work needed to be allocated, it became clear that there was a strong need for a better way to utilize time and modernize the process.
The parent company at that time, AkzoNobel, was already using an earlier model of Intelligence2day®. However, that system was on-premises which prohibited most of the steps that were needed to modernize the process. After exploring the software the parent company was using, the team recognized even more potential to reduce costs with automation and save time, as well as have a wider scope of relevant sources than they currently had.
“The biggest challenge is also that the organization changes, the people in the organization chaThe biggest challenge is also that the organization changes, the people in the organization change, the market focus sometimes changes, language changes and certainly the outside world changes.” - John van der Hoeven, Market Intelligence Manager at Nouryon
With so many constant changes, the need for business intelligence was and still is non-negotiable, but automation was questioned. Therefore, the second challenge was to introduce the concept, benefits and pricing to higher management, as well as introduce the Intelligence2day® system to a department who had been doing it their own way for over a decade.
The parent company at that time, AkzoNobel, was already using an earlier model of Intelligence2day®. However, that system was on-premises which prohibited most of the steps that were needed to modernize the process. After exploring the software the parent company was using, the team recognized even more potential to reduce costs with automation and save time, as well as have a wider scope of relevant sources than they currently had.
“The biggest challenge is also that the organization changes, the people in the organization chaThe biggest challenge is also that the organization changes, the people in the organization change, the market focus sometimes changes, language changes and certainly the outside world changes.” - John van der Hoeven, Market Intelligence Manager at Nouryon
With so many constant changes, the need for business intelligence was and still is non-negotiable, but automation was questioned. Therefore, the second challenge was to introduce the concept, benefits and pricing to higher management, as well as introduce the Intelligence2day® system to a department who had been doing it their own way for over a decade.
The Solution
Today, Intelligence2day® helps Nouryon in many ways. To begin, moving the system away from on-premises removed many barriers and made it possible to expand into what it is today. Now, Intelligence2day® has completely changed the way business news is collected in Nouryon, with streamlined workflows and processes in different ways that serve the different businesses.
News that was previously shared in a stream of dense information once a week to the entire business unit, changed to news alerts every single day. Because of the density of the weekly newsletter, the information was not always entirely relevant or tailored to each department or role. On average, only a quarter of the news was being relevant to each department.
What employees now receive is 90% relevant information combined with an increased frequency. And when it comes to the output, the quantity is replaced by quality.
An additional benefit is that with the signal to noise ratio being much better, less time is lost in reading non-relevant material.
After 9 months of implementation, the leadership of Industrial Chemicals was convinced by the better and more frequent news alerts, the array of different types of news that supported different business lines as well as the news monitoring no longer being completely dependent on employees doing manual work. As the results began to speak for themselves, other Business Units started implementing the system within a year. With senior managers indicating they have never seen the news gathering and distribution in business intelligence work this well, it did not take long before the entire company was on board. Nowadays, leadership is looking for the same automated attributes in every aspect of the business.
Whilst previously, three full-time employees gathered the news by hand for only one Business Unit, now the news for the entire company is gathered by only a few people.
For the near future, the expectation is that only one person will be needed to control the process of news gathering and distribution. The automated process has made it much simpler. Once a part of the system is built, it only needs monitoring which doesn’t require a large team. What’s even better is that if someone is unable to do the job, the automated system continues to share reliable and relevant information. With Intelligence2day® doing all the work, team members are now allocated to other activities.
Another benefit which Nouryon saw was that there is a better awareness of the environment in each business line. The benefit of Intelligence2day® is that whole teams are informed simultaneously on what is relevant for them. This allows teams to respond faster to the changes and opportunities when they occur. Confirmation of new developments is very important for departments who are customer-facing. Their consensus is that Intelligence2day® is a very good instrument.
Employees and senior management can go into the system to search for relevant information that might help with their everyday tasks or business decisions. Teams and management can share information and have conversations based on news that is directly related to their business or department.
Today, the company’s version of Intelligence2day® called “OneIntelligence'' sends out more than 1000 email alerts daily, each with relevant news to its 1500 users. And about 10 % of those users login daily.
Through Intelligence2day®, Nouryon is aware of and connected to the pulse of the business environment. And as a result of this connection the future looks very bright with Intelligence2day® by its side.
News that was previously shared in a stream of dense information once a week to the entire business unit, changed to news alerts every single day. Because of the density of the weekly newsletter, the information was not always entirely relevant or tailored to each department or role. On average, only a quarter of the news was being relevant to each department.
What employees now receive is 90% relevant information combined with an increased frequency. And when it comes to the output, the quantity is replaced by quality.
An additional benefit is that with the signal to noise ratio being much better, less time is lost in reading non-relevant material.
After 9 months of implementation, the leadership of Industrial Chemicals was convinced by the better and more frequent news alerts, the array of different types of news that supported different business lines as well as the news monitoring no longer being completely dependent on employees doing manual work. As the results began to speak for themselves, other Business Units started implementing the system within a year. With senior managers indicating they have never seen the news gathering and distribution in business intelligence work this well, it did not take long before the entire company was on board. Nowadays, leadership is looking for the same automated attributes in every aspect of the business.
Whilst previously, three full-time employees gathered the news by hand for only one Business Unit, now the news for the entire company is gathered by only a few people.
For the near future, the expectation is that only one person will be needed to control the process of news gathering and distribution. The automated process has made it much simpler. Once a part of the system is built, it only needs monitoring which doesn’t require a large team. What’s even better is that if someone is unable to do the job, the automated system continues to share reliable and relevant information. With Intelligence2day® doing all the work, team members are now allocated to other activities.
Another benefit which Nouryon saw was that there is a better awareness of the environment in each business line. The benefit of Intelligence2day® is that whole teams are informed simultaneously on what is relevant for them. This allows teams to respond faster to the changes and opportunities when they occur. Confirmation of new developments is very important for departments who are customer-facing. Their consensus is that Intelligence2day® is a very good instrument.
Employees and senior management can go into the system to search for relevant information that might help with their everyday tasks or business decisions. Teams and management can share information and have conversations based on news that is directly related to their business or department.
Today, the company’s version of Intelligence2day® called “OneIntelligence'' sends out more than 1000 email alerts daily, each with relevant news to its 1500 users. And about 10 % of those users login daily.
Through Intelligence2day®, Nouryon is aware of and connected to the pulse of the business environment. And as a result of this connection the future looks very bright with Intelligence2day® by its side.
“The best thing I can say with a system like Intelligence2day® is that you can keep the pulse of your business environment close and that should be the trigger for why companies should use the platform.”
- UbaldKragten, Manager Business & Market Intelligence at DSM
About Nouryon
Nouryon is a specialty chemicals company that produces essential chemicals for products such as building materials, plastics, personal care, food and pharmaceuticals.
The global company has operations in 80 countries with more than 10 000 employees, a 400-year history and many long term relationships with their customers.
For more information, visit Nouryon
