Brand new branding
SPX—a large global industrial manufacturer—
transforms its branding and web presence to better
connect with customers worldwide
Client’s challenge
Consulting
Application Strategy &
Integration
Industrial Manufacturing
January 2014
SPX, a global industrial manufacturer that produces a diverse range of industrial
products, from power plant cooling towers to bus fare boxes, marketed more than 100
brands under three separate operating units. While many SPX brands were
complementary, customers often didn’t connect the company’s individual products to the
overarching SPX name. The lack of a unified brand and the resulting business challenges
led to SPX’s decision to modify the company’s branding worldwide.
Additionally, SPX realized that customers were increasingly researching and identifying
products of interest through the Internet. SPX wanted its brand to be front and center
online. This challenge was more complicated given its numerous recent acquisitions,
which resulted in disparate SPX web sites around the world.
SPX launched a sweeping “One Web Presence” initiative to migrate and consolidate the
company’s brands globally. Ultimately, SPX wanted to enhance the customer experience
with a new web platform to drive corporate brand recognition and increase widespread
understanding of its product portfolio.
PwC’s Advisory solution
SPX chose PwC to help the company with its global branding initiative. PwC began its
two-year engagement by working with SPX’s marketing and IT organizations, with the
SPX Vice President of Marketing and Communications serving as the overall lead.
First, we created a cross-functional team of PwC professionals to help develop and
implement a cohesive strategy, spanning enterprise architecture, user experience, social
networking, mobility, customer relationship management (CRM), search engine
optimization (SEO), and content management. We leveraged our unique AnyShore model
and our Global Delivery Center in China, where the global team helped develop, test and
deploy the One Web Presence.
The team helped define and implement a strategy for brand consolidation and migration.
We assisted the client in overhauling the integration of SPX’s content management
system (CMS) so that SPX could own, manage, and update its own content and build web
sites with a streamlined, modular and template-based approach. The CMS was structured
to support a globalized website with localized content in SPX’s key markets around the
world. The team also helped build a program and brand management governance
structure to be managed by a business process management application in a future phase.
.
“We needed leadership buy-in across 40 brands,” says Jennifer Epstein, SPX’s Vice
President of Marketing and Communications. “PwC helped us articulate our web strategy
and helped us embrace our content management deployment. PwC was instrumental on
many fronts, and the team did an excellent job in areas including communication and
education that were central to success.”
In addition to the overall brand website consolidation, SPX also focused on localization in
key markets like Asia-Pacific. SPX recognized the importance of providing their global
customers relevant web site content in their native languages. PwC helped define and
deliver the technical capabilities, strategic vision, and program management needed to
fully globalize SPX’s web presence. Not only can localized versions of the corporate site
now be quickly created and published, sites for seven key Asia-Pacific markets were
created in just three months.
The content management deployment also turned out to be crucial for lead generation.
Prior to the project, SPX had no unified way to capture leads. Today, the customer-facing
web site directly connects to a leading CRM system, and streamlines lead generation and
routing across the organization.
We also enabled SPX to measure campaigns and overall site traffic and effectiveness by
developing a web marketing intelligence data repository. Further, we developed a mobile
app that connects directly to the CMS, allowing sales teams to share and reuse
information and achieve consistency across marketing channels. The direct tie to the
CRM system enables sales teams to add customer information from the field.
“It’s a great sales tool,” says Epstein. “Our salespeople can use it to pull up product
information, explain the brands, input customer leads and share technical product
information - all in an interactive tool that our sales teams can use even when they are
unable to access the internet.”
Throughout the engagement, SPX was impressed with our team. “PwC brought the
knowledge base, the professional team and the hands-on know-how we needed,” Epstein
says. “Their preparation was phenomenal as well as their ability to communicate their
ideas to all of the important stakeholders.”
Impact on client’s business
Today SPX.com reflects the full suite of the company’s products and services in a unified,
consistent manner—improving global brand awareness and customer perception. We also
helped SPX consolidate its marketing approach to highlight 40 brands in a consistent
manner—enhancing the customer experience and reinforcing the SPX brand.
© 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership. All rights reserved.
PwC refers to the US member firm, and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a
separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.
This content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for consultation
with professional advisors.
By building a content solution on only a few template-driven modules, SPX had what they
needed to use “lift and shift” techniques to create and deploy 40 new sub-brand sites in
only six months. We also facilitated localized sites within Asia-Pacific in only three
months. “The key to this solution was that once we started training people on the system,
business lines outside the scope of the project were able to independently build additional
sites within the consistent format,” says Epstein. Next, the company will continue
expansion of the online globalization effort using tools and techniques our team
established to build new sites faster and easier than ever.
SPX is also leveraging a web-based contact system and analytics capabilities to enhance
visibility into incoming leads and to identify cross-selling opportunities. SPX can now
view, by brand, which devices customers are using, their locations, user web site behavior,
and how quickly users become an SPX ‘lead’. In addition, knowledge of the number of
leads, the average page view time, pages visited, and the geographic locations of visitors
are among those factors that allow SPX to tailor the customer experience.
With our help, SPX’s branding is now consistent online and the company has a process in
place to centralize and govern its sub-sites. This project was about much more than
developing a website; it was a complete re-imagination of how SPX presents itself to the
world, and a reinvention of how the world in turn can respond.
“PwC's ability to solve problems and work with all of our business stakeholders was the
key to the success of the project,” Epstein says.
For more information, please visit
www.pwc.com/us/applicationsstrategy
Or Contact
Hemant Ramachandra
Principal, Products and Services
hemant.g.ramachandra@us.pwc.com
(732) 682-8670
Brian Shanberg
Director
brian.shanberg@us.pwc.com
(813) 222-6252
© 2014 PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, a Delaware limited liability partnership. All rights reserved.
PwC refers to the US member firm, and may sometimes refer to the PwC network. Each member firm is a
separate legal entity. Please see www.pwc.com/structure for further details.
This content is for general information purposes only, and should not be used as a substitute for consultation
with professional advisors.