Video transcript
The strength of our strategy is its clarity and simplicity. We are a high service distribution company focused on the faster growing, more profitable segments of EDE, the web and developing international markets, all while continuing to serve profitable MRO segments. This strategy has delivered growth over the last two years, such that Premier Farnell has consistently outperformed our core markets.
When we developed our strategy we made certain market assumptions that have become even more relevant as the global economy has slowed. EDE has outperformed MRO, the web continues to attract new customers and our developing international markets are our fastest growing. With over two million active customers in 156 industries, we service a diverse range of end markets, some of which are continuing to grow strongly, while others are more affected by the global economic slowdown.
Despite the variety of geographies and end markets we serve, our customers around the world have broadly similar needs. They want a distribution partner who will provide a service they value; they want a partner in the truest sense of the word. They are looking for a company that understands and anticipates their needs, a company that provides services and solutions that assist them from the initial stages of design through to the final product, whilst offering a variety of channels from which they can buy. This includes websites that provide detailed information and a variety of self-service tools. Distributors who provide all of this, will delight their customers and encourage loyalty from them.
We are a service business and our talented employees are one of our primary assets. Ensuring that we have the right people supporting growth through the right roles in the right regions is critical. We continuously evaluate our structure to ensure that it is appropriate to support growth. Our employees are highly engaged and in a recent all-employee survey, more than 90% of respondents said that they understand the strategy and believe that it is appropriate to strengthen our organisation for the future. We have undertaken some reshaping activities that enable our transition to a web business, aligning our support systems with our rich web environment, and ensuring that our sales and call centre activities are appropriate as we transition to the higher growth EDE customer segment.
In support of our transformation, we have invested in our proposition, strengthening our offering to better meet the needs of our customers. Over the last two years we have more than doubled the number of EDE products in our portfolio and have added nearly 125 in-house technical specialists to support the unique needs of EDE customers. We now have 27 local language websites and receive more than 30 million monthly page views of our global websites.
We have also invested in a comprehensive suite of web diagnostic tools that enable us to understand whether our websites are meeting the requirements of our customers and to modify our proposition accordingly. Diagnostic tools also give us a sense of our place in the market. Our team of technical specialists analyse the data to identify if there is a technology or specific product that is missing from our portfolio, if our pricing is appropriate, or if there is a technical issue on any of our websites. This increased knowledge is used to improve the flexibility of our proposition, ensuring that we are able to stay ahead of our customers and our competition. It also means that our portfolio of over 400,000 products is the right mix to meet the diverse needs of our customers.
Our strategy was developed in order to find higher growth opportunities with our markets, and although we primarily discuss it in relation to our Marketing and Distribution Division which accounts for 90% of our revenue, we have seen our Industrial Products Division (IPD) adopt some of its elements. The businesses in our IPD Division remain highly profitable and are leaders in their respective markets. They have struggled as a result of the downturn in the North American economy, however they continue to diversify not only their product offering but also their end markets. These businesses have historically been focused on their domestic North American markets; they are now expanding internationally and have also introduced new products to attract new customers.
The clarity of our strategy, combined with our daily execution of each element, ensures that all employees understand their role in delivering our continued transformation.