Many companies set out to get close to customers to find out how they tick. But Metsä Wood UK aims to get so close it can monitor how they use its individual products, and keep informed on their sales.
Recent years have seen the Finnish-based timber, plywood and engineered wood specialist launch a suite of tools and services to help them get inside their customers’ heads and under their skin (in a good way) to integrate more effectively with their business.
The multiple goal, it says, is to ensure products perform to potential, and that customers get what they need when they need it. The strategy is also about gathering the data to help it and customers across DIY, merchant, retail and industrial sectors stay ahead of market developments. And the outcome, it maintains, is good for it, good for the customer and potentially good for timber.
"The process is about elevating service and solutions to the importance of the individual product and it involves greater transparency and visibility on both sides, so is an education process," said vice-president, UK sales and operations, Mike Lomas. "But it results in us supplying not just customers’ current needs, and supplying them better, but future requirements too. We ask where they want their business to go and build that into our plans.
A sale today, he added, often won’t just involve Metsä Wood’s sales team.
"Depending on market area, it could include discussions with technical and production, and marketing. The aim is not just to get them the product, but ensure they get the most from it."
This holistic approach has been well received.
"Merchants say the fact that we’re not just about beating people up on price is refreshing!" said Mr Lomas. "They appreciate it’s about us working smarter together, and looking further forward than next week."
Key to making tighter customer partnering work is "excellence in logistics".
"At the heart of everything is a robust supply chain and the assurance to the customer that we’ll manage it in a way that guarantees the timber will be there on time," said Mr Lomas. "It’s under continual appraisal and scrutiny and we recently updated our Enterprise Resource Planning system, focusing on improving overall electronic interchange with customers. We can issue automatic shipping notification, and monitor systems right down to individual picker performance. Each pack has the picker’s name on it, which means both complete traceability and drives performance by giving them a sense of pride."
"The effectiveness of the operation and ability it gives us to forward plan was illustrated in the I-joist market last year," said UK sales director, building and industry Kevin Riley. "Upturn in demand pushed some suppliers’ deliveries to eight weeks. We maintained our 10-day window, so were able to remain effectively our distributors’ and end users’ stockist of last resort."
Metsä Wood is also rolling out customer relationship management and electronic data interchange systems to more of the market.
"This entails access to customers’ sales information, so does require that culture shift," said Mr Lomas. "But it improves supply chain efficiency and helps simplify processes and identify areas where they’re off track. We can offer a constant range review for key merchants, monitoring performance to ensure they have the right product on the shelf in the right volume."
The deal also entails arming customers with the right information to back the product. The big issue for structural plywood recently has, of course, been statutory CE marking under the EU Construction Products Regulation. Metsä Wood kept customers advised on the issue and their obligations in depth.
"And we’ve made our Declaration of Performance (DoP) certificates available online [www.metsawood.com/uk/tools/dop]," said Mr Lomas. "Besides making their lives easier, hopefully it will contribute to industry efforts to drive substandard plywood off the market."
The Metsä Wood website was also relaunched in June, to include a range of new facilities, including cladding, decking and flooring calculator tools, plus installation videos for decking, ThermoWood cladding and door linings.
Joint appraisal with customers of service and product performance is another focus. Last year, for instance, Metsä Wood quizzed merchants on their customers’ response to the shrink-wrapping service it introduced for mouldings, flooring and cladding. Feedback was that it triggered repeat business.
To illustrate how customer liaison can evolve into a more comprehensive marketing partnership, Mr Lomas pointed to the example of three-branch south-east England merchant Beaumont Forest.
"We worked with them on their strategy to develop sales of added value plywood," he said. "Product managers visited their sites to provide training, we produced a dual branded plywood specification guide, drew up a joint marketing plan and supported them at Ecobuild with additional marketing."
The last 12 months has also seen significant moves in Metsä Wood’s efforts to develop closer partnering with its wider customer base, notably, construction clients through a range of new technical developments and service initiatives.
Key among these last year was the development of Building Information Modelling (BIM) data using REVIT software for key timber and prefabricated engineered product families. These range from FJI applications to Leno CLT systems, SoundBar flooring and Low-E wall systems to Kerto RIPA panels and ThermoWood cladding.
"We were early adopters in timber and having started with 12 families in BIM, we’ve now grown to 20," said Mr Riley. "We’ve been through a promotional and educational exercise with the architectural and design community as well as major housebuilders and take up is increasing. We’ve had 5,000 downloads and this is set to increase with the government demanding BIM on all its building projects from 2016. The major housebuilders are also increasingly getting behind it, seeing its benefits from product clash detection, to life cycle analysis. Large projects contractors are appointing BIM managers and co-ordinators and one has now said it wants its entire supply chain to be BIM enabled."
Further underlining Metsä Wood’s ambitions as solutions provider is its Finnframe flooring system installer’s app, launched in May. This provides design drawings for specific details, and animations for installation.
"It’s a tool to enable housebuilders and their installers to get it right first time, and not use the wrong connector, or drill holes in the wrong part of the I-joist or Kerto," said Mr Riley. "It will drive efficiency and cut down on the need for remedial details, which can be very costly and time-consuming across a construction site. In fact, we’ve also just introduced a scheme where we charge for remedial details, an initiative that has been embraced by housebuilders who want to encourage best practice on site."
Adoption of the app is already encouraging and Metsä Wood may look at developing others.
"Another useful aspect is a geo-locator built into the software," said Mr Riley. "This means that, if installation problems arise on a particular site, we can actually check that all the installers there downloaded the app to their smartphones. We’re also looking at enabling users to send photos back to us to resolve technical problems."
Metsä Wood is also seeing increasing take-up of its technical design support service for housebuilders and key end users. Its Boston-based engineering team works with distributors and clients, using its bespoke software to design and detail Metsä Wood products and systems used on a particular site (including Low-E wall panels on new Tesco stores). It also helps develop standard designs and layouts for developers’ core house types in the case of housebuilders.
"This is also about minimising error and ensuring consistency. It enables customers to draw on the experience of engineers who work with these products constantly, and it’s very scaleable in terms of the aspects of a project we can work on, and size of development," said Mr Riley. "Again the focus is working smarter, driving efficiency and quality through partnering. And distributors and housebuilders appreciate the value. Some builders are now giving us their slab release information so we and distributors can manage capacities and ensure that we’re better prepared to meet their requirements."
After some testing years, Metsä Wood now sees strong prospects for the UK timber market, with recovery in construction in particular, including timber frame, set on increasingly firm foundations, said Mr Lomas. The company is clearly also confident that it has the products, tools and strategies to ensure both it and its customers can capitalise.
