Solving the Global Water Crisis through Business Transformation

Xylem, considered the world’s leading water technology provider, uncannily personifies the origin of its name. In nature, xylem is a substance that encourages both growth and life. Xylem, the company, embodies this very mission.

Each of Xylem’s 12,500 employees, working in more than 350 locations, within 150 countries, dedicate their time and talents to solving all of their global customer’s most taxing water problems with locally-based solutions. 

Xylem helps customers acquire, treat, test, deliver and use fresh water efficiently, reducing costs and losses; manage wastewater collection, movement, treatment, testing and return effectively, in a cost-efficient and environmentally sustainable way. They also monitor, prepare for, respond to and recover from water-related risks caused by natural disasters like floods, droughts, and contamination.

As Xylem’s business continued to grow—in 2014 alone they generated $3.9 billion in revenue—it needed to create a single digital touchstone to encompass its 32 separate brands that provide its customers with sustainable water tools, technologies and services.

Xylem needed to absorb its B2B customers’ demands for access to detailed and accurate product and application information at any time, from anywhere in any language. It also needed to accomplish its goal of consolidating its digital landscape and communicating its dedication to the advancement of thoughtful water use to a diverse customer base. In order to do both, Xylem needed to:

• Synthesize its disparate business units
• Fuse its B2B go-to market strategies
• Cultivate its digital capabilities to help facilitate and grow its audience, sales channel and lead generation opportunities

Xylem’s existing website and legacy CMS marketing platform employed the SharePoint platform that was designed in 2013. Although the CMS successfully integrated with Xylem’s PIM system that was uniquely tailored to their needs, it still presented problems for the company as neither the CMS capabilities and functions, nor the frontend platform fostered Xylem’s global unifying needs, such as regional language display, up-to-date product information, and local customer services.

Giving life to both Xylem’s need to successfully manage its web content and also to the website users’ needs were Valtech’s key goals going into the project. Therefore, Valtech entwined itself with both Xylem’s Experience Design Partner and their own Global Marketing Team, and together they sought to optimize designs for digital, experiential consistency and also to define a template-driven approach to function alongside the developmental process without compromising the customer experience. 

Ultimately, Valtech’s development team implemented a compatible and responsive cross browser that displayed both a maximized and superior customer experience for Xylem’s customer base in MEA, France and Australia, regardless of their language, location, OS and device.

Ultimately, these solutions were enabled by Optimizely’s CMS and Commerce platform. Xylem’s 24-region-specific website rollout in 2016 wouldn't have been as impressive without this tech stack. As digital partners, Valtech is well positioned to help oversee Xylem's digital presence moving forward. 

As Xylem continues to contribute to the sustainability of our future ecological footprint and overall well being, Valtech will continue to help Xylem’s vision blossom and osmotically pervade the minds and livelihoods of their worldwide customer base through Optimizely’s ever-evolving, global B2B commerce engine.