Alcoa Aluminum Corporation

Requirement: - A need to create customer loyalty between Alcoa Aluminum Corporate their thousands of distributors and millions of end users and eliminate any need for engineering skills to select and order siding and roofing products.

Solution: Simple and Easy To Use Marketing / Sales / Engineering Modules all linked to corporate database.

Alcoa Aluminum (NYSE: AA) is the world's leading producer and manager of primary aluminum, fabricated aluminum and alumina facilities, and is active in all major aspects of the industry.

Being the biggest guy on the block makes Alcoa the constant target of competitors trying to erode their direct customer base of distributors and their end users as well. They wanted to create marketing modules that could be used by both the distributor as well as the end user by simple button clicks and easy to understand functionality, all the while keeping the Alcoa name and brand in front of their customers. Creating loyalty and brand recognition coupled with engineering and estimating requirements.

Alcoa also struggled with making the selection process of products along with engineering requirements to specify the correct items, materials and quantities easy for anyone to understand and having the ability to tie the final selections down to product that was in inventory and could be shipped before the client changed their minds and went with a competitor.

The following screen shots are just one example of the many marketing / sales / engineering / inventory modules that we developed for Alcoa. The programs were capable of running either on the individual's personal laptop or on the web.

The opening screen on the following marketing / sales / engineering / proposal module, like all subsequent screens and all other modules we designed for them, is branded with the Alcoa logo and the Alcoa marketing home picture. The system was tied to the distributor's corporate database for both product availability, pricing as well as customer data. The distributor's database was tied to Alcoa Corporate database for information sharing as well as new product inventory, as well as pricing and engineering changes.

When the user selected either "New Customer" or "Existing Customer", the distributor's database which was tied to Alcoa Corporate database would allow the user to select the customer's personal information as is shown on the next screen shot.

Once all of the walls have been calculated the data automatically records to a totals screen and all of the data automatically exports into the other sales and marketing modules to allow the distributor to finalize the sale. The client sees nothing but Alcoa all along the way, and while theoretically the distributor could use the module to do engineering for other products, in reality because of Alcoa products high standards and tolerances, any attempt to use the module for product lines other than Alcoa would result in a high margin of errors on the resultant items ordered from a competitor's product line.

Products, siding type, color selection all could be selected from simple drop down selection boxes that were automatically updated every time that the corporate database was accessed. All data selected was linked to other marketing and sales modules for the selection of Good, Better, Best product selection as well as modules for handling objects, siding type, color selection all could be selected from simple drop down selection boxes that were automatically updated every time that the corporate database was accessed. All data selected was linked to other marketing and sales modules for the selection of Good, Better, Best product selection as well as modules for handling objections, making presentations, return on investment (ROI) calculators etc. Graphic images of products would change to reflect the actual product selected actions, making presentations, return on investment (ROI) calculators etc. Graphic images of products would change to reflect the actual product selected.

Engineering and estimating complex product data did not require any experience whatsoever. All the user had to do was select from the shape of the wall on which they were working and click on that shape to go to the correct engineering and estimating module.

To accomplish complex engineering and estimating of product data only required the user to fill in the actual dimensions of the wall for which they needed product and the engineering / estimating module did all the rest of the work. Small pop up calculators were provided to change feet / inches to decimal values or vice versa.

Once all of the walls have been calculated the data automatically records to a totals screen and all of the data automatically exports into the other sales and marketing modules to allow the distributor to finalize the sale. The client sees nothing but Alcoa all along the way, and while theoretically the distributor could use the module to do engineering for other products, in reality because of Alcoa products high standards and tolerances, any attempt to use the module for product lines other than Alcoa would result in a high margin of errors on the resultant items ordered from a competitor's product line.