Alcoa (AA)

CUSTOMERS

To grow Alcoa, we must focus on capturing profitable, organic growth by expanding business with our existing customers and adding new customers, particularly in fast-growing global markets.

Our goal is to grow the enterprise and our non-primary aluminum businesses at a rate that significantly exceeds the natural growth rates of the markets in which we choose to grow. To achieve this, we must work with our customers to better understand and then meet their needs so they can differentiate themselves in the marketplace and experience above-market growth as well. We also must support the commercial function of our businesses, which ultimately set their own strategic direction and maintain profit and loss accountability in Alcoa’s decentralized structure.

While this decentralized structure gives our businesses broad flexibility in serving their markets and customers, it can create barriers to leveraging data, products, and cross-business solutions. In response, we have implemented initiatives like market sector teams, the Customer & Marketing Services group, digital marketing, and the Alcoa Growth Process to provide a structured marketing approach across our global operations.

In 2005, Alcoa’s revenues reached US$26.2 billion—a 13% increase over 2004. Excluding the price effects of the London Metal Exchange (LME), revenues grew nearly US$2 billion.

CUSTOMERS

In 2004, Alcoa generated revenues of US$23.5 billion in 43 countries. This represents a compounded annual sales growth of 9.3% over the last 10 years and 8.1% over the most recent five years.

While acquisition was our primary means for growth in previous years, we created a Customer and Marketing Services resource unit and related tools to help our businesses capture profitable organic growth. This effort involves expanding business with our existing customers and adding new ones—particularly in fast-growing global markets.

One new tool is the Alcoa Growth Process, which is a multi-phased, disciplined approach to market strategy development that helps link us with our customers. Using this approach, we continued to bring together Alcoa businesses serving the same customer to identify and offer integrated solutions that transcend the value of any one business.