How digitalization enables Knauf Insulation to be customer first.

Abstract

With more than 40 years of experience in the industry sector, Knauf Insulation is one of the world's leading manufacturers of insulation materials. Knauf Insulation’s strategic objective is sustainable profitable growth. One of their key pillars is customer centricity, as customer centricity and customer understanding are key to create value to get a premium for the brand (de-commoditization) and to achieve a profitable business and sustainable growth beyond 2019. Every product becomes a commodity in time as competitor’s catch up. Furthermore, digitalization is a key enabler of KI’s strategy. Digitalization allows increased efficiency in manufacturing and operations (supply chain), improved collaboration within the company but most importantly allows creating opportunities about how and to whom they sell. Digitalization is also a key enabler for customer centricity. Technology and digitalization in and of itself doe not create growth, what will create growth is delivering value to the customer. KI’s strategy shows all the projects and objectives the company has with its four targets: distributors, homeowners, architects, and installers. The benchmark made in five different countries (Belgium, France, United Kingdom, Germany, and Spain) showed the gap with the company’s two main competitors, Isover and Rockwool, in terms of tools and services offered. The benchmark of the industry gave some possible ideas for the company to further investigate. The website dive in and analysis of key metrics about KI and the competition emphasized on the importance of improving its SEO which is key because it is how their customers can find their website. Finally, the recommendations are in two parts: the first is about tools and services specific to each target to solve those target’s pain points in their customer journeys. The second part is dedicated to the SEO of the company. The final step of the project is a chapter about the vision of the future of the company, about the technologies and trends KI could follow.