Skip to Main Content
Close
Access your saved content
A speech delivered by John E. Lichtenstein, managing director – Accenture Metals, at the IT for Steel Conference sponsored by the China Iron and Steel Association on May 10, 2012, in Hangzhou, China.
Steel companies face a powerful array of challenges and should continuously innovate to find new ways to meet these challenges and, for leading companies, to differentiate. Accenture believes that steel companies’ IT organizations can help drive and enable management innovation in three key ways:
First, by providing the business with the right tools. These include not only enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, but also solutions for advanced planning and scheduling (APS), customer relationship management (CRM), commodity trading and risk management (CTRM), analytics, mobility and others.
Second, is by helping to promote the use of robust business process models within their companies.
Third, is by leading by example: that is, by striving to become a world-class functional organization based on the adoption of leading practices.
By embarking on a journey to achieve “world-class” IT capability maturity, leading steel company IT organizations can make a significant contribution to their companies’ widespread adoption of management innovation as the cornerstone of their business.
John E. Lichtenstein is the managing director of the Accenture Metals industry group and leads the Accenture Natural Resources group (metals, mining, forest products and building materials) for the Asia Pacific region. Based in Beijing, Mr. Lichtenstein has more than 25 years of experience as an industry executive and consultant to the global metals and mining industries. He works with leading companies in strategy and organization, technology, mergers and acquisitions and business transformation.
He is a recognized expert on global metals industry issues and has written numerous articles for industry publications and is frequently quoted in the financial press. He regularly appears as a featured speaker at events sponsored by the World Steel Association, the AISI, the Metals Service Center Institute, Metal Bulletin, World Steel Dynamics, the Brazilian Steel Institute, the China Iron and Steel Association and others.
September 28, 2012