INSIGHT 2|2019

5 FOCUS ON WHAT ARE THEMOST DIFFICULT CHALLENGES INTHEMERGER? The challenge was to manage a double integration. Prysmian Group was acquiring General Cable, a big change for legacy General Cable employees, but likewise, Prysmian was nearly tripling its size in North America, creating an equally challenging change for legacy Prysmian employees. At the same time, we were working with our Group in Milan in new ways, all having positive effects, but challenging in their own right to navigate. Listening and understanding how others do things — from financials and pricing to managing customer relationships, was essential to our success. It was also the most rewarding aspect. Now we can say that this combined company has the best approach, the best pricing, and the best product range, supply chain, manufacturing processes and the like. We are stronger, together. OF THOSE AREAS THATWEHAVE ADOPTED FROMGENERAL CABLE, DIDWE ADOPT THEMAT THEGROUP LEVELOR JUST IN NORTHAMERICA? I would say a bit of both. We have decided to adopt General Cable’s design system CableBuilder across the Group.For SAP, we will adopt General Cable’s planning tools and pricing tools in the new SAP S4 to also benefit the entire Group. HOWDIDTHEMARKET / CLIENTS REACT TOTHE INTEGRATION? There was plenty of concern at the beginning because we had two different customer bases. Prysmian had a stronger focus on end users, where asGeneral Cablewas heavily involved in the distribution channel. We reassured distributors we wanted to leverage relationshipswithGeneralCable’ssalesforcetohelpPrysmianexpand and grow our sales. Once we clarified this with our distributors, they appreciated the approach and in turn, started seeing additional benefits of having a wider product range fromPrysmian over time. WHATWAS YOUR EXPERIENCEWITHRESPECT TOSERVICE? Services are a key area where we intend to invest more time and more effort. The Prysmian way of managing service was to target a high level of service but not to invest in a high level of inventory, whereas for General Cable, it was easier (thanks to additional inventory) to maintain a high level of service. I think the truth is in the middle of both strategies. You can decide to be less restrictive on inventory policies because in some cases, the stock availability is key to improving and enhancing your revenue.