Example how a commodity seller can become a solution provider growing market share.
CEMEX is one of the rare firms executing lean business strategy beyond the merger & acquisition stage.
Article here: https://www.strategy-business.com/article/00325
unedited notes, I HIGHLY recommend reading the article. Twice.
Also leveraged mergers & acquisitions including entering new businesses in ready-mix concrete and aggregates
Strategy
long track record in lean operations (“ruthless operating efficiency”) evolved to become one of the most successful companies from an emerging market, and developed a high level of customer responsiveness. It delivers cement within 20 minutes of receiving an order in many locales. Its international business strategy enabled CEMEX to grow rapidly during the 1990s and early 2000s, when it became one of the biggest cement companies in the world.
while maintaining consistently high profitability levels. (In 2014, the company reported US$2.7 billion EBITDA on revenues of $15.7 billion.)
get good at postmerger integration, and extract more value out of those assets than the former owners.
“Enforcing is really the right word. A good example is the emphasis we put on closing the books on the 1st or 2nd day of every month. A lot of managers initially wondered why it was so important to do this. They thought nothing would be lost if they did their closings on the seventh or eighth day. But we believed that having that information readily available would increase the likelihood that managers would make the right decisions. And the practice had a very high-level overseer: Mr. Zambrano himself, into whose email inbox all of these reports flowed. This was not subject to negotiation.”
I have several key point & more notes, read the articles a few times and make your own