The Univar team celebrates with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. PHOTO: Univar
Univar Inc., a global chemical and ingredient distributor and provider of value-added services, recently held an official ribbon-cutting ceremony for its Global Digital Hub at its Warrenville Campus facility in Downers Grove, Ill. Featuring an innovative workspace with more than 100 digital experts, the facility focuses on developing a variety of industry digital solutions.
The announcement of this new facility coincided with the inaugural Digital Day event for Univar’s supplier partners that took place Aug. 2. With the theme of “Collaborate, Innovate, Grow,” the event was attended by more than 80 supplier partners and showcased how Univar’s new, state-of-the-art Global Digital Hub is enabling solutions to enhance and differentiate the customer experience, to improve market reach and accelerate growth, and to create a superior partnership experience for suppliers.
Recent market research shows that the majority of a customer’s buying journey is now in a digital environment, and the Hub will help Univar to support customers as they seek information, select products, make purchases and manage their business online.
“Our supplier partners understand how digital is reshaping the customer experience,” says Ian Gresham, chief marketing officer for Univar. “Increasingly, B2B customers prefer self-serve purchasing options, and the simplicity of many B2C customer experiences is influencing B2B customer expectations. Digital marketplace leadership is core to Univar’s long-term strategy, and we are excited to partner with our suppliers to collaborate, innovate, and grow together through a variety of digital solutions.”
Through an Omni-channel approach, Univar looks to capture demand faster and more efficiently through its suite of digital capabilities including:
- MyUnivar.com is an e-commerce solution offering Univar’s full catalog of products, complete with invoicing, order status and tracking, as well as documentation of prior purchases. Customers of MyUnivar.com are provided with easy, two-click re-ordering and document access 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from any device.
- Univar Digital Marketing reaches thousands of customers in a diverse set of industries with targeted, relevant digital content that accelerates the customers’ product development process and reduces the total cost of operations. This process provides supplier partners with valuable market reach and accelerates sales growth.
- PestWeb connects customers with pest control experts through an online community focused on offering unique solutions through a suite of products. With a broader view of pest management, PestWeb connects certified entomologists and agronomists to salespeople with a range of industry experience and offers customers access to industry veterans who are always ready with real-world answers.
- ChemPoint offers a business model focused on demand creation, which includes finding, engaging, retaining and nurturing customers on a large scale. ChemPoint’s MarketConnect offers marketing as a service, creating multi-channel digital marketing campaigns for a wide-range of chemical and ingredient products.
“Our digital capabilities allow the customer to search, source and self-serve anytime and from anywhere, which streamlines the buying journey and creates a digitized end-to-end supply chain,” says David Jukes, president and CEO of Univar. “Whether customers are learning about new technologies, finding the right product configuration or buying through convenient purchase channels, Univar’s digital solutions make us easy to do business with.”
Digital investments continue to drive growth as Univar expands into artificial intelligence (AI) and smart asset technology.
“We are fully leveraging our digital capabilities to not only enhance the customer experience, generate demand and make it easier to do business, but we are also creating a more agile supply chain and flexible business model; empowering teams to deliver smarter solutions,” Jukes says.
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