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Unilever: Business
built 215 days ago
Unilever developed strengths in the acquisition of other firms, and their subsequent "Unileverization." After the failed merger attempts of the late 1960s, Unilever professionalized its capabilities in this respect. It was conservative, missing opportunities as a result, but ... avoiding disasters. The ice cream and other foods businesses were built patiently by the acquisition of one local firm after another, and their melding into the Unilever model. Following the National Starch acquisition, larger targets were pursued. The acquisition of Brooke Bond demonstrated that Unilever could make a hostile acquisition, while the acquisition of Chesebrough-Pond's two years later showed that Unilever could move quickly and decisively if it wished.
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Having designed the infrastructure to support the UIP, Unilever understood that it was looking for a solution to bring every source of data together, populate the data warehouse without restriction, and then allow end-user access to meaningful data. To do this, Unilever evaluated several extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) tools through a rigorous proof-of-concept, and selected BusinessObjectsData Integrator. "We evaluated the ETL marketplace and chose Data Integrator for its ability to extract data, transform it into usable business information, and load it into the data warehouse," said Chris.
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As one of the oldest and largest foreign multinationals doing business in the U.S., the history of Unilever's investment in the United States offers a unique opportunity to understand the significant problems encountered by foreign firms. Harvard Business School professor Geoffrey Jones has done extensive research on Unilever, based on full access to restricted corporate records. This recent article from Business History Review is the first publication resulting from that research.
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As it entered the 1990s, Unilever had virtually completed reorganizing its European business to better compete within the evolving single market in that region. In 1991 the company further refined its operations by selling the last of its packaging businesses and by making provisions for the eventual sales of the majority of its agribusinesses.
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``It's a positive surprise Unilever wants to sell its U.S. laundry business,'' said Robert Jan Vos, an analyst at Fortis in Amsterdam. ``They would be better off using the proceeds for their other businesses.''
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As a part of its overall marketing strategy Unilever needed to determine the willingness and readiness of the smaller retailers to transact business with Unilever over the Internet. ELRO developed a pilot campaign website to measure the sales potential of this specific channel sales outlet.
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