News bulletin – digitisation

NEWS BULLETIN

DIGITISATION

FRENCH EXCHANGE

Eurazeo has acquired Elemica, the cloudbased digital supply network for global process industries. The core aim of Elemica is to accelerate digital transformation through connecting, automating, anticipating and transforming inter-business supply chain processes for products bought, sold, moved, and complied. Having been in operation for nearly 20 years, customer processes on the network reach more than $500bn in commerce annually. Eurazeo is an international investment company headquartered in France with a global range of offices.

“This new partnership with Eurazeo will help accelerate our move into new adjacent market segments and support our continued development of innovative digital transformation solutions such as blockchain, AI, and the Industrial Internet of Things,” says Rich Katz (opposite), Elemica president. “The commitment to our solutions enables our clients to achieve the interoperability and the visibility they need inside and outside of the four walls of their enterprise, helping them automate and integrate business processes, reduce risk, and thereby improve their profitability.”

“We are delighted to announce the partnership with Elemica,” comments Eric Schaefer, managing director of Eurazeo Capital. “Elemica is a key supply chain technology provider with substantial growth potential. With our support, expertise and international network, Elemica will accelerate its development in new industries, geographies and product offerings.” www.elemica.com

CHILLED DELIVERIES

Railbox Consulting, a technology firm focused on the intermodal shipping container industry, has announced a multi-year digital marketing partnership with ITS ConGlobal, selling and renting reefer containers in the US through Reefer Container Pros. Railbox Consulting already offers customers the opportunity to buy or rent shipping containers through westerncontainersales. com. ConGlobal is the largest intermodal services company in North America, storing more reefer containers than anyone else.

“We’re proud to have the confidence of the leading refrigerated container depot and service provider in the country,” says Railbox Consulting president Mike Norton. “Having Reefer Container Pros powered by the experts at ConGlobal is a win for our customers.”

Beyond providing a web-marketing platform, Railbox Consulting CIO Derek Murashige is seeking to fully integrate the project with ConGlobal’s existing system. The goal of this integration is to ensure that customers will be redirected to the appropriate party at ConGlobal, avoiding any additional hurdles to the customer experience.

“We’ve run into a lot of old thinking in the container industry, but we were pleased to see that ConGlobal understands the opportunity for digital partnerships,” adds Murashige. “We’re excited to see what we can build with their resources and our technology.”

Additionally, an AI chat bot will be released as a part of the service in the near future, further heightening the customer experience and ease of use. reefercontainerpros.com

THOUGHTS ON DIGITAL

Being successful and differentiating from competitors can be sometimes challenging, no matter the industry, and that applies just as much to those companies offering digitisation systems as to their own customers. For instance, unlike those companies offering a metasearch marketplace, Pinpools offers a solution where the full transaction is done on the platform.

“Our ambition is not to cover all the products within the chemical industry. We are focusing on these products where you can have a transaction between the buyer and supplier on the platform,” states Alexander Lakemeyer, CEO of Pinpools (left). “Onboarding suppliers

might take from half an hour to one and half years. For the buyers, this is a faster process to register and start directly with a request for quotations.” Apart from onboarding new users, retaining the existing ones is an important part of the business.

Digitisation is changing the chemical industry and, as Lakemeyer states, even though the share of marketplaces in Europe is still quite small, the chemical industry is one of the fastest-growing industries within Europe. “Th e European market is €500bn big, so we are convinced that some single industries within the big market will have a chance to build their marketplace.”

Lakemeyer notes that digital marketing and sales in the chemical industry are highly correlated and also gives the example of the ‘Shop in Shop’ and marketing functions on the Pinpools Marketplace. “Shop in Shop means that every supplier has the ability with a few clicks to build its own shop and to buy a certain marketing budget to promote the brand on Pinpools Marketplace,” he says. Th e important factor for business leaders is to fi nd people within their company who are especially interested in digitisation and those people will deliver the strategies. en.pinpools.com