Castrols industrial lubricant business has scrapped a market-based structure adopted last year in favor of focusing its organization again on geographic markets.
Officials say the business has not simply reverted to its old structure – that it continues developing service- and product-focused platforms. But packaging of offerings to different types of customers will generally be carried out within specific regions.
We want to be more customer-focused, said Christine Loyer, spokeswoman for Castrols Specialized Industrial Business Unit in the Americas. Weve found that even with global customers, when push comes to shove, people are making decisions at a regional level.
When BP bought Castrol in 2000, Castrol Industrial had a geographic organization, with one division each in North America, Europe and Asia and a fourth covering the Middle East and Africa.
But Castrol Industrial was already planning to restructure and last year unveiled a global organization based on markets. Performance Fluids was created to cater to customers who wanted products but had little interest in services. Manufacturing Solutions would offer services, as well as products, to customers who valued those services – and therefore were willing to pay for them.
At the time, officials said the structure would aid delivery of more valuable services. It was also supposed to strengthen the appeal of the industrial lubes business to multi-national manufacturers; Manufacturing Solutions had a team – TNA, for transnational accounts – dedicated specifically to multinationals.
Recently, however, Castrol Industrial changed its structure again. The Specialized Industrial Business Unit now has three performance units: one each for the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. Loyer said there are still teams that focus on products or services but that they are within the regional units and that they may not be as apparent to customers.
We want to have one face to the customer, she said. They come to us and we sort out who the best person is to help them. The implications of the change, she added, are mostly internal. Rather than having a whole bunch of people reporting across regional boundaries, we now have just one person doing so from each unit.