Adam Sharp, General Manager of Sika Australia, shares his thoughts on the integration of Davco.
Sika Australia entered the Building Finishing market in 2015 through the acquisition of CTA with its well-known brand. The acquisition of Parex, more prominently known as Davco in Australia, provided a far broader range of products, positioned from top-range down to the mid-range. The professionalism, reputation, and extensive industry experience of the staff proved critical in complimenting the product range and cementing Sika at the top of tiling industry in terms of market share.
Through the integration, we were able to achieve significant synergies on various dimensions such as cross-selling (offering a broader product range to either Davco or Sika customers), profiting from the expertise in the field of product performance formulation, market knowledge to better serve our customers and last but not least, leveraging on each other’s factory footprint and thus improving overall operational efficiency.
As with all acquisitions there were many challenges, some of the most notable were the merging of IT systems, negotiating Single Enterprise Bargaining Agreement, and time for trialing products in different plants. However, the most significant was working on the mindset of all staff as a fear of loss of employment during acquisitions is not unusual. Therefore, we had to map out how we were planning on reassuring employees that Sika purchased Davco to enable further growth which requires resources including people.
Initially, there were some growing pains with a few customers, for example, people become accustomed to dealing with particular people in particular ways. We found the best way to deal with these challenges was to create social environments for the customers and customer service teams to meet face to face and get to know each other, such as a lunch or morning tea.
"Integrations of this magnitude would be impossible without the dedication and passion of all people involved." Adam Sharp, General Manager of Sika Australia
The success of any integration revolves around defining a clear plan and implementing that plan as quickly as possible and to not delay the integration of teams! I personally thank everyone for their effort and understanding. The Davco acquisition has been a major success for Sika Australia and we look forward to even greater success in the coming years.
