Challenge
Dow has traditionally maintained strong relationships with customers through its professional sales organization. However, personal sales calls are difficult to arrange, time-consuming and expensive — in 2001, the average cost was $329 per call. Dow already had an information-laden Internet site, but it didn’t provide access to the privileged data that customers needed to do business. Our challenge was to create a web site that provided personalized service, privacy, and customer efficiencies, while lowering the overall cost of selling — without throwing away Dow’s investment in the already-existing Web content.

Light Bulb
To a customer, "internal" and "external" information are artificial distinctions. The user wants to interact with Dow through one interface, not through a public site and a private one.

Solution
Working closely with the client, we created a password-protected Extranet site, My Account @ Dow, that seamlessly integrates internal information typically found on an Intranet site with Dow’s wealth of public product information. The Extranet environment also offers customers powerful tracking tools and 24/7 accessibility. Result: customers now get the best of both worlds: targeted, personalized account information and vast amounts of product and technological data.

Results
As of January 2001, over 5,000 registered users have taken advantage of this powerful marketing tool and many now use it almost exclusively for conducting e-business with Dow. What’s more, the site was ranked #1 in the chemical industry by InformationWeek 500 in their ranking of the 500 largest and most innovative users of information technology.