CASE STUDY "THE KEY ADVANTAGE OF USING THE DIGIMIND PLATFORM IS BEING ABLE TO CONSOLIDATE ALL OUR SOURCES IN A SINGLE PLACE, OFFERING A UNIQUE INTERNAL COMPETITIVE INTELLIGENCE SERVICE" Carla Monfray, Head of Construction Efficiency Monitoring Unit CREATING A COLLABORATIVE LAFARGE is a leading global provider INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM of building materials and a major player in the cement, concrete and aggregates industries worldwide. THE CHALLENGE THE SOLUTION The project included three intelligence- LAFARGE contributes to the construc- gathering objectives. Lafarge needed to tion of cities across the globe by desi- Lafarge’s Competitive Intelligence de- monitor three main targets: the global gning and delivering innovative solu- partment in Lyon, managed by Nathalie technology market, to spot key innova- Gautier-Hamel, is staffed by 8-10 people tions in building and green initiatives; the tions to take city construction into the tasked with seeking out and exploiting Indian construction market; and construc- future. Anticipating the housing requi- external information relevant to Lafarge’s tion chain actors - including cement pro- rements of today’s urban complexes, products, technologies and innovations. viders, industrial customers, developers, the company provides cities with more contractors and architects. Lafarge used Digimind to support its compact, more durable, more beautiful Construction Development Lab in Mum- Most importantly, Lafarge needed a way and better connected homes. bai, India. Set to become the third largest to summarise and rank the information global construction market by 2018, India gathered automatically, to be sent to key With 1570 production sites across 64 has considerable needs in terms of hou- managers once a month. sing and infrastructure. Key to Lafarge’s countries, and annual sales just shy of success is understanding business me- The Digimind Intelligence platform €16 billion, LAFARGE is listed on the chanics in the construction industry at a addressed these requirements. Besides Paris stock exchange and employs over local and global level. being able to monitor specific topics in 65,000 people. It also runs a dedicated depth, Lafarge was able to target specific In Lafarge’s case, these requirements hi- geographical areas and languages. Once research centre for construction mate- ghlighted a need for a collaborative intel- the information was collected, the depart- rials, complemented by a network of ligence platform to extract information on ment was able to specify the deliverables Construction Development Labs (CDLs) everything from technological building needed, designing shared dashboards manned by 1,000 industry experts. innovation to the Indian construction and automated newsletters to dissemi- market and competitive environment. nate information efficiently. www.digimind.com BOSTON - PARIS - GRENOBLE - RABAT - LONDON - SINGAPORE A QUICK LOOK AT The DIGIMIND INTELLIGENCE plat- Carla Monfray form is perfectly adapted to collabora- PROJECT Technology and Competi- tive intelligence gathering, combining strength and power with task automa- RESULTS tive Intelligence Department tion, autonomy and, above all, flexibility. Why did Lafarge choose Digimind? This means that our users save time on DEFINING THE SCOPE The Competitive and Technological Intelli- data processing and deliverables, while Supported by Digimind’s dedicated gence Department at Lafarge chose Digi- also being able to add and modify topics team of experts, Lafarge was able mind as an intelligence platform provider in independently and scale their projects 1. to set up custom intelligence topics 2012 with the aim of initiating a monitoring programme, automating information collec- from a single department to a global covering building materials, innova- tion procedures and optimising the use of organisation. tion, green building, construction, human resources dedicated to data analysis. corporate news, public sector news and more - from about 2170 unique The collaborative intelligence project imple- What are the advantages of using an in- sources, every single day. mented for one of our Indian divisions was telligence platform for your projects? a pilot program intended to test the idea of using a turnkey service for an internal client. Each project identifies and develops new Digimind’s processes allowed us to monitor sources of intelligence useful in pursuing local information sources, share information Lafarge’s wider strategic goals. The key CUSTOM DASHBOARD internally with project collaborators, design advantage of using the Digimind platform and produce deliverables and ultimately pro- BUILDING is being able to consolidate all our sources vide project managers in India with improved 2. Each topic could be combined or (competitors, sectors etc.) in one place, operational autonomy. isolated to analyse what was going offering a unique internal information dis- on behind all the data. Digimind’s semination service to project collaborators. multifaceted graphical interfaces "Each project identifies new allowed Lafarge’s team to delve into sources of intelligence useful How did the Digimind team help you the areas most worthy of their atten- implement the project? tion at any given moment. Digimind in pursuing strategic goals" Intelligence can transform data into Digimind’s consulting team was brought on board to share their expertise, train the Which Digimind features did you find most 12 different graphical analyses - eve- Lafarge personnel leading and managing useful? rything from histograms to treemaps, the project and provide advice and sup- and semantic webs to tag clouds. port to facilitate the project’s successful In general, the collaborative work under- deployment. taken with Digimind has produced highly positive results, enabling us to share infor- GETTING IT RIGHT: mation and ideas with collaborators across "Digimind enables us to share FINE TUNING QUERIES other divisions of Lafarge. information internally and im- 3. Once the topics were set up, Digi- Several key features of Digimind Intelli- prove operational autonomy" mind Intelligence allowed the team gence were extremely useful. to design newsletters with specifically • Structured organisation of information selected content. Through Digimind’s sources, saving us considerable time native reporting feature, senior exe- and resources • Ability to share information with pro- cutives on the CDL project were sent ject collaborators across different divi- monthly summaries of key develop- sions and countries ments in each area of interest, some • Autonomy given by the system to col- fine-tuned for the Indian market, laborators, allowing them to find and some for a broader landscape. validate relevant information • Ability to visualise data graphically in a variety of formats About Digimind Digimind is a global competitive intelligence and social media monitoring company that provides businesses with unrivaled insights into their true standing in the market. Digimind’s proven intelligence technology has provided Fortune 500 brands around the world with critical information for their business for more than 15 years. Profitable since its founding, Digimind has a 92 percent customer retention rate and more than 100 employees across offices in North America, Europe, Asia and Africa.© Digimind SA, all rights reserved. RCS 419 346 135 www.digimind.com [email protected].