An outstanding year in a difficult context through strong cost management, commercial excellence and a decisive response to the crisis.
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Exteriors
Our four divisions are our connection to the market. Each of them aims at leadership within carefully selected business segments.
The Exteriors division was created in January 2019 to consolidate our fibre cement solutions for roofing, façades and terraces. Division Head Michael Fenlon has worked with his teams to define an innovative strategy to keep Etex top of mind for home-owners, installers, architects and more. Discover the division’s achievements in 2020, in Michael’s words.
“We used the COVID context as an accelerator to drive change.”
On a high level, how would you summarise the performance of the Exteriors division in 2020?
If 2019 was a year of change, in 2020, we shifted gears and moved into strategy execution mode. We launched ambitious initiatives to implement the priorities we identified in the previous year – all of which serve to build our vision of the future of fibre cement.
Our priorities centred around three ‘big moves’: engaged and passionate employees, superior customer focus and a commitment to innovation driven by sustainability. Underpinning all of these pillars is, of course, our relentless focus on safety. We kicked off 2020 with concrete projects in these areas.
Is there one big initiative that stands out as a 2020 highlight?
Absolutely. We successfully brought our corporate brand to life and clearly positioned our commercial brands with enthusiasm and energy – and this in the middle of a pandemic! This new brand architecture helped us focus, and our teams thoroughly revamped our business models for each brand to place our customers in the centre of what we do. Our teams have already put in huge amounts of work when it comes to mapping out the customer journeys for our three core brands. Now, the Exteriors team is working across boundaries to pilot and scale up disruptive ideas, redefining ourselves to ensure that we adapt in an agile way to our customers’ needs.
How did the advent of COVID impact the division?
After a short pause in our activities due to the lockdowns in several countries, we accelerated every single initiative by empowering our local leaders to take action in our facilities and sales organisations. We significantly increased the scope and rhythm of our communication efforts, moving to virtual platforms to facilitate our roadshows and to roll out our leadership principles. The result was enormous engagement, solidarity and, thankfully, a rapid recovery of our business as from Q3. COVID slowed us down, yes, but it was mostly an opportunity to accelerate the change our business needs to shape the future. I’m truly proud of this achievement, and the response of all our people. After a year that challenged us all, the level of trust in our division has never been higher.
OUR OTHER DIVISIONS
Neil Ash
Head of Building Performance
Steven Heytens
Head of Industry
Patrick Balemans
Head of New Ways
Despite extremely tough conditions for our markets, we never lost sight of our strategic execution.
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A challenging starting point – but a promising finish.
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