Plastic Omnium Centralizes Its Event Data Globally with KAYO

A solution tailored to the needs of a global leader

Plastic Omnium is a major French group founded in 1946; it is an automotive supplier and a global leader in the manufacture of bumpers and tailgates.

Today, Plastic Omnium has 40,500 employees across 28 countries, generating 9.5 billion in revenue.

The company also aims to become the global leader in hydrogen mobility. Its marketing and communications team relies on trade shows to develop this rapidly expanding segment.

Vincent Lavigne, External Communications Manager, joined Plastic Omnium in 2016 and now oversees marketing and communications for the Sustainable Mobility division:

“We participate in various trade shows and B2B events around the world, most notably The Battery Show in Stuttgart, FC Expo in Tokyo, and Hyvolution in France. We primarily target automakers, particularly their engineering and procurement departments.”

Vincent Lavigne continues:
“We participate in technical conferences and larger-scale trade shows such as the Mondial Paris. We showcase our products physically at our booths and share our technical expertise during conferences.”

“We have a central marketing and communications department that supports our local teams across Europe, the U.S., and Asia.”

The strategic need to centralize event data

Plastic Omnium is rapidly expanding in the sustainable mobility sector, with cutting-edge activities centered on hydrogen solutions. The Group, which has been making a series of corporate acquisitions, necessarily needs to structure its marketing, event, and sales processes.

“ We capture the value for the company from our presence at trade shows and ensure that this value is shared, consolidated, and made accessible to sales and technical teams around the world.”

“KAYO is a unique tool that aligns very well with our mission to centralize and unify event data across our various trade shows and the different countries that use it.”

Uniting and Challenging the Sales Teams

The rollout of KAYO at Plastic Omnium was gradual. At first, the sales teams were somewhat skeptical, as Vincent Lavigne explains:

“In fact, because we’re in the automotive sector, sales processes are very long since they involve competitive bidding. Once the contract is signed, it takes two or even three years to develop our solution. There was a disconnect between the tool for the sales teams and the ultimate goal of the sale.

Furthermore, part of our sales team worked independently, using “old-school” methods that had been tried and tested for years. Getting this group—which was somewhat resistant to digital transformation— on board was quite challenging .

But after a long process involving numerous coaching sessions to prepare the tool and train the teams, buy-in is now complete.”

KAYO’s Customer Service Team Listens to Customer Needs

Working with KAYO’s Customer Success team, Vincent Lavigne and his teams first created a content architecture and standardized qualification forms for use across all countries.

The challenge was to standardize, unify, and centralize event data on a global scale.

The goal was to capture the same data and information that could be shared and integrated worldwide simultaneously.

“When it comes time to prepare for events, we identify an ambassador—a key user—who we’ll grant access to the platform and the tool: the idea is to demonstrate its value to engage their colleagues. We also want a certain distinction between users: the person using the solution and the recipient of it.”

Recently, Plastic Omnium was able to test a new feature: push notifications:

“Globally, we do in fact have different user profiles, with different ways of working—some of which are deeply ingrained and difficult to change. That’s why we challenge them with ‘hacks’ like this.”

During this transition to digital contact capture, this feature allows us to boost adoption of the tool and foster healthy competition among teams.

“The result: we’re seeing spikes in activity right after these notifications, which remind users to properly record and categorize contacts using business cards that haven’t been scanned yet.”

Trade Shows on Autopilot

There’s still room for improvement in contact processing:

“Our role in marketing doesn’t yet play a significant part in the sales process. We don’t take any actions to ensure follow-up; that’s just how the current organization is set up.

Nevertheless, the key is to implement this division by division (2 or 3 divisions) within the hydrogen sector.

Recently, a European Manager took the initiative right after a trade show by implementing a sales action plan: reviewing the lead database and distributing the leads among sales representatives based on criteria specific to our organization, which were noted directly in the app.

It is this mindset and discipline that we are implementing on a large scale. The focus is on a result that benefits the team as a whole, rather than solely on individual performance.”