Beyond The Familiar: Global Integration For Metals, Mining And Forest And Paper Companies

Globalization is placing new demands on today's metals, mining and forest and paper companies - especially in running effective operations on a global scale and sustaining a strong, profitable business. The real goal for these companies is to become globally integrated enterprises, where the company is focused on connecting and leveraging various sources of production and value creation, regardless of the physical location or organizational ownership of these resources. IBM believes that there are three strong business strategies for today's environment: Market Share Grabbing, Value Chain Stretching and, sometimes, Niche Playing, and that the long-term business winners in each of these categories will be the companies that continue to become more globally integrated.