taken from F. Azzariti-S. Bianchi "Doing business in the third millennium", Arco editions, 1999
Permasteelisa is a young company, founded in 1974, producing prefabricated building facades: we say that is the habit of the skyscrapers.
Permasteelisa's business is quite simple and can be described as follows: receive a structure by the manufacturer of iron and concrete and on the basis of the information architect and designer, we create the elements of the coating external, create them and then install them.
The process of core activities is therefore broken down into three phases:
- The first stage is characterized by the design of structural elements and calculations, it passes from an architectural drawing to an Executive
- the second phase is characterized by processing dall'assiemaggio and modules;
- The third phase saw the installation of modules on site.
The market in which Permasteelisa is essentially characterized by three technologies:
to-the-wall windows system
b-system system
c-stick technology that pre-assembly modules and then install it.
As noted above, Permasteelisa operates mainly in the third segment.
The annual global market is between ten and fifteen thousand billion pounds, with a fluctuating and cyclical trends in different countries. Our company has chosen primarily a niche in this market: it does not produce uniformly for all but specifically to produce the segment of so-called monumental building, or those buildings that have a significant architectural value and for which the design is prevailing over other factors, and that - in fact - itself becomes a barrier to entry for our competitors. In our
niche there are about 20 competitors, but only 2 are global in nature: one of these two is Permasteelisa
The organizational characteristics of Permasteelisa to successfully deal with this global market are:
a) the spread in the various markets
b) 's elastic organization
c) the reasons for the group
d) group cohesion
The spread in the markets has come about through a process of synthesis between culture and industry: in fact we have held numerous conferences and meetings with top architects worldwide to explain the product Permasteelisa. Among the main cultural events include the various editions of the Quaternary Prix, held in:
1988 in Venice
1990 to 1993 in Singapore Sidney
In this way we were able to create true partnership with the architects, who have gradually become the drivers of our success. The organization
elastic choice was immediate, because right now we did not create a central unit that sells to the peripherals in individual countries, but we chose to have a network structure with small local units became autonomous, focused on individual markets and on individual projects.
The reason the group was obtained through a process of enhanced partnership: at first we have involved managers who worked in small companies to become members of each company, at a later time we turned this shareholding shareholding in group companies. The remuneration system is also based on a strong use of bonuses and incentives.
Group cohesiveness has been achieved through a large share of the strategic choices of activities, and discussion of choices and strong mechanisms of reward / punishment.
dictated the choice of internationalization, as mentioned above, the need to balance economic cycles created, on the other hand, new opportunities for partnership: hence the absolute need to weave an open network, and not closed. It 'important to add, in my view, that the internationalization process has been simplified:
(a) the size of the goodwill contained in hardware
(b) the culture of the team, with a strong propensity to geographical mobility
(c) the creation of teams of pioneers who are used to organize new markets.
All this has happened with:
- endogenous processes through the creation of new companies, both imported resources, both by local resources
- exogenous processes, through the purchase of existing companies.
The basic organizational choices were:
a-creation of small autonomous units: to be focused on projects and markets
b-c-emphasis on design
product differentiation to better serve the customer
of careful and prudent policy-service e-architect
enrichment of the product with more features: for example, attention to energy savings or the indoor comfort (lighting, humidity, noise, etc.)..
f-creating a culture of project management at the heart of the organization with the concept of traveling headquarters.
The difficulties encountered in the ongoing process of balancing of crisis and opportunities are numerous:
(1) the management of cultural difference, with differences not only language but also organizational and business by many operators
(2) attention to management control, leaving the proper autonomy to peripheral
(3) the 'lack of organizational methodologies and consolidated proceduralize in mergers with local firms
(4) the jump in size: in twenty-five years we have gone from a culture of artisan company with a culture of a large company with many problems of coordination.
Overcoming these difficulties has led to a series of composite results:
- 1982 to present we moved to a presence of eight to twenty-three countries, and to present the country does not mean the creation of a sales office, but the creation of a Design Office, a small factory, the creation of a management of the Project Management;
- 33 members of twenty different nationalities, resulting in internationalization is the shareholding of the Company;
- 1200 employees, 400 of whom work exclusively on designing
- the trend of turnover: 90 billion spent by £ 1990 to £ 550 billion 1998, improving its profitability significantly.
an extremely positive.
