The Industrial Gas industry has seen tre- mendous growth over the past century fueled by the development of industry in emerging countries.
Many of the companies in the industry like Linde, Praxair, and Air Products have grown through acquisitions and mergers to develop global presences with worldwide operations. Often these businesses continue to have each division act autonomously because the industrial gas business is dependent on local conditions. Many, however, want to stay decentralized yet add additional resources and capabilities to help these local operations become agile, flexible organizations.
According to a recent article in Selling Power magazine (sellingpower.com/content/article/?a=4981/we-want-to-the-biggest-small-company-around), Airgas is just such a global company. Airgas surveyed a representative sampling of its customer base on its various practices in order fulfillment, production, customer service, and distribution to find out what customers want from their industrial gas provider. Per the article, Airgas found out three things from their customers, “They want to be billed properly, they want to be serviced on time, and they want us to ship complete orders.”
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