View From The Bridge - Bulletin 106 (Oct 09)


There's a wide range of news across the lubricants industry this month; not least the decision by Chevron to withdraw from India which is, in my view, yet another example of streamlining within the industry.

It would seem that each of the majors is concentrating on their core markets and withdrawing from lesser positions; a classic business school approach which encourages organisations to focus on their positions of strength.

This, in turn, leads to greater responsibility being passed to distributors to uphold the brand values of the oil companies.  For Distributor Managers and B2B marketers, this means that the performance of corporate websites and closed user services are under more scrutiny as organisations try to balance improved services with the pressure to reduce costs.

The challenge is to provide the most accurate and timely information with the best tools for improving customer sales and support.  It is perhaps not surprising, then, that here at OATS we are fine tuning our new EARLMAX B2B solutions to address these streamlined requirements more efficiently than ever!

Sebastian Crawshaw, CEO OATS