Cemex has signed separate multi-year contracts that range from five to seven years totalling US$500m with six leading service providers under its Working Smarter digital transformation initiative. The partners are active in the fields of finance and accounting, information technology, and human resources, replacing current expenditures with the new suppliers’ services at an optimised cost, effectively continuing to reduce the company’s operating expenses.
The initiative brings all worldwide locations together into a unified Cemex experience, supported by data analytics, artificial intelligence and cognitive technologies to enrich the employee experience.
"Our digital strategy has already brought us very close relationships with our customers, as evidenced by our record-high Net Promoter Score index of 68 for 2021," said Fernando A González, CEO of Cemex. "Working Smarter takes us one step further as the digital leader of the construction materials industry, not only in customer experience, but now also in our business management processes."
As part of this initiative, Cemex redesigned its shared services operating model, implementing virtual delivery centres that leverage a remote workforce, tapping into high-quality talent pools independent of their location. Remote work is made possible by Cemex’s advanced collaboration and service management platforms protected by strong cybersecurity. These partners and their contributions are: IBM, HCL Technologies together with NEORIS, Axians, Tata Consultancy Services, ServiceNow and Avasant.
Cemex expects to announce additional strategic relationships in upcoming months to expand the current scope and complete the deployment of its digital strategy. The company estimates that the combination of these next-generation service contracts and its internal delivery transformation should materially contribute towards the US$100m annual savings goal the cement producer has set once implementation is complete.
"Beyond the deeply transformational impact to how we manage our business and the competitive advantage it creates for the Company, the Working Smarter initiative will be very accretive, with an expected four-fold return on investment," said Maher Al-Haffar, CFO of Cemex.
