POSCO has made significant effort to build its infrastructure spanning around the world. As part of such effort, the company has established processing subsidiaries in highly promising markets since the 1990s. By creating more values for customers, POSCO aims to foster mutual growth on a global scale.
In the past, the goal of marketing was simple: to produce quality products and sell them to customers. Now, it has changed: to prepare a service system responsive to customer needs and deliver in advance the values that customers may want. To keep up with such change, global steel makers began to set up their global infrastructures to deliver services that satisfy the needs of customers – in a most efficient and convenient manner at a moment of need.
POSCO has taken a strategy to differentiate itself from its competitors, both in terms of its past investments and future development plans for moving ahead.
Processing Centers
POSCO has maintained investment to control its processing centers around the world. By doing so, it was able to directly manage the whole supply processes and quickly respond to every need of customers, enabling customers to access its products in an earliest manner. This resulted in higher customer satisfaction and trust in POSCO’s products, which strengthened the company’s customer relations and helped create new business opportunities.
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POSCO-CSPC: POSCO delivers a one-stop service from raw materials to components through collaboration with auto parts suppliers
Located in Jiangsu, China, POSCO-CSPC is the first of its kind specialized in processing automotive steel sheets. In its early days, this processing company made the utmost effort to ensure the stability of its operation and product quality in order to establish itself as a highly competitive company as quickly as possible. The company also focused on developing customers, in particular the joint ventures of global automakers operating in China, such as Shanghai GM and Shanghai Volkswagen. While these global automakers were highly demanding about product quality, it took a long time to develop relationship with them. Once a deal was forged, however, the relationship could be sustained in a long-term basis. Furthermore, POSCO-CSPC delivered unique service that further improved customer satisfaction, which became a strong foundation for the company to extend its customer base. Having built a trustworthy image by keeping its promises to the customers also contributed to this. Meanwhile, as another way to create more values for customers, POSCO-CSPC is moving forward with its plan for mutual investment with auto parts suppliers in a global multi-processing facility. The mutual investment will enable POSCO-CSPC to pave the way for its mutual growth with customers and develop itself as a highly competitive global processing company, which delivers a one-stop service covering from automotive steel sheets to functional auto parts.
POSCO-IPPC: Localization Strategies including Community Talks Bring Customer Satisfaction and Trust
POSCO-IPPC, located in Pune, India, was established in 2005 to enhance customer satisfaction in India’s growing market by providing quality service that customers need.
In its early days, POSCO-IPPC has focused on the stability of its operation and product quality and the stronger relationship with local customers. In India, to supply steel products to electronic makers or automakers, a company spends six months to a year and a half on multi-layered processes including vendor registration, quality certification and final agreement. POSCO-IPPC was able to stabilize its operation even in the early stage thanks to its customized service and proactive approach to customers in field marketing.
Currently, POSCO-IPPC is strengthening its presence in India in various terms, including logistics, public relations and corporate social responsibility, in addition to its own business of steel sheet processing. And, it continues to develop the competence of its employees as they are standing at the front line of marketing activities delivering satisfaction and trust to customers. Also, it regularly offers community voluntary service, including support for HIV-infected children care facilities, which has started since 2008, leading to positive feedback from local community.
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Regional Operations
POSCO runs regional operations in Japan, China, Southeast and Southwest Asia, and the US. The role of these operations goes beyond a typical sales organization. They rather serve as a regional headquarters, conducting an extensive set of activities, such as developing new opportunities for the world premium products through the Solution Marketing, responding to regional issues in trade, and identifying new investment opportunities in the region. Also, they are conducting various corporate social responsibility activities including communication with local community to support a smooth operation of processing subsidiaries within the region.
Logistics Subsidiaries
POSCO has logistics subsidiaries in India, Mexico and Slovenia to deliver services for shipment, storage and transport of products. These logistics operations contribute to stabilizing the supply of raw material used at processing subsidiaries and the delivery of final products to customers as well as improving the quality of delivery service.
Technical Service Center
Recently, POSCO puts an emphasis on its Solution Marketing, in which marketing activities are combined with technical support. As part of its effort to enhance the technical service support for global customers and the capacity as a local provider of a complete solution, the company is expanding its global technical service centers. In China, a technical service center was open in 2011, providing support for quality and technology to customers including major automakers in China. It has also opened another technical service center in the US on July 16, this year, which will focus on delivering high quality technical support to customers in the automotive and energy sector. POSCO will continue to establish technical service centers in major markets around the world to level up its infrastructure for global technical support service.
How it will develop further ahead
POSCO plans to focus on the tune-up of its extensive global infrastructure network and the upgrade for evolution in order to enhance its strengths that differentiate the company from competitors. The company will continue to invest in processing subsidiaries in China, Southwest and Southeast Asia, and Latin America, where the automobile market grows faster, in a proactive manner as part of its customer lock-in strategies and its belief in higher values for customers. In addition, it will continue to expand its global infrastructure, which would serve as downstream operations of POSCO’s manufacturing facilities. Also, it will scale up the capacity of its processing subsidiaries as well as their service categories in order to meet the various needs of customers. And, the company tries to diversify the products of processing subsidiaries to include wire rods and thick plates rather than concentrating on those products for the automotive market to reduce the current dependence on a certain group of customers. It will also seek out the cooperation with auto parts makers in technology and investment in order to drive the continuous development of new business opportunities.