Today we will give insights on what drives the CheMondis team day by day. In order to grasp what CheMondis stands for, it is essential to first understand our vision statement, our mission statement, our company values, and what they mean to us.
Although both vision and mission statements have two different purposes, they often get mixed up. Generally speaking, a vision statement describes where and what a company wants to be in the future – it is the north star to give guidance and to determine the overall route.
Our vision statement is our North Star and orientation. In contrast, our mission statement is a lot more precise and shows what we want to do and achieve.
While the vision is the dreaming, the mission is the doing. Both are crucial. Read our vision statement below.
Our vision statement
The CheMondis vision seems very broad but defines the direction we are aiming at with every decision we make. It reflects our passion for technology and innovation and defines that we want to use our expertise to create change for the better. All stakeholders, be it, users, employees, or investors, should benefit from their collaboration with CheMondis.
Our mission statement
Our mission statement is clear and concise. It defines WHAT we want to do in order to contribute to our vision. Our mission statement puts our customers at the center of all our activities. We want our users to profit from using CheMondis by creating a solution that is more than a mere marketplace.
We want CheMondis to become THE platform and THE professional network for the chemical industry. Helping all participants to prosper through making information and new business opportunities easily accessible.
Our values
Our values define who we are, what we believe in, and how we work. They are at the core of our organization and sustainably shape our culture. They guide us in every single decision we make and we truly live by them. Each one reminds us to stay true to ourselves, cultivate our company culture, while driving the best solutions for our customers. These five values form a solid foundation for our mission and vision.
Read more about our five core values below.
Our core values are:
multi-perspectivity,
responsibility,
vision-driven orientation,
collaboration and
personal development.
At CheMondis, we live up to our values at all operational levels and in every action we take.
Multi-perspectivity
We are curious, open-minded, and never satisfied with the status quo. We appreciate new perspectives and ideas. Through empathy, different ideas, and technologies we put ourselves in the shoes of our customers, our team, the market, and the industry.
Responsibility
We think of responsibility as a privilege and an opportunity. At CheMondis every team member is responsible for our success. We encourage each other to bring forward our best ideas and to take ownership.
Vision-driven orientation
We hold our vision at the heart of every decision we make and everything that we do at CheMondis.
Collaboration
We learn from each other, align, share knowledge, and give and receive objective feedback. Collaboration helps us grow as a team and sets the base for working constructively and respectfully together towards achieving innovative solutions and our company’s goals.
Personal development
We believe personal development is a lifelong process that drives people to assess their skills and competencies, whilst considering their career and life goals. We enable everyone to unfold their full potential.
Visual connection of our Brand and our Values
Our color palette consists of neutral and dynamic colors that complement our mission statement, vision statement, and our core values. The combination of our colors (green, orange, and dark grey) allows us to create design material that is visually appealing while expressing our personality at the same time.
Psychology of grey
Grey confirms – it is conventional, dependable, and practical. It is the color of maturity and responsibility. Grey is solid and stable, creating a sense of calm and composure, relief from a chaotic world. Grey is controlled. It has a steadying effect on other colors with which it comes into contact, toning down the stronger and brighter colors, and illuminating the softer colors.
Psychology of orange
Orange radiates optimism, warmth, and happiness, combining the physical energy and stimulation of red with the cheerfulness of yellow. Orange relates to openness and two-way conversations. Orange is often used to draw attention, such as in traffic signs and advertising.
Psychology of green
Green evokes a feeling of abundance and is associated with refreshment and peace, rest and security. Green encourages a balance in your brain that leads to decisiveness. Darker greens are more closely associated with stability and growth: think of the more mature green leaves of summer.
In a nutshell
We are driven by our vision as our north star and by our mission as our day-to-day guidance. Our values build the base of how we approach any task, which comes our way. Our color palette consists of neutral and dynamic colors that complement our mission- and vision statement as well as our core values.
Thank you for taking the time to read the CheMondis Blog.
CheMondis was first launched in November 2018. Now, one year later we have grown. And we are excited to announce that as of December 2019 we will be adapting our branding accordingly to reflect this.
As part of our rebranding strategy, our company logo, brand colors, and static pages will be optimized. These changes are part of our communication strategy targeted to further position, establish and grow our brand in the chemical industry. This will affect our looks, but not who we are inside. This means, our rebranding strategy will not impact any of the services offered to you by us. We will continue to work with the same agility, speed, and efficiency you have come to experience.
Before we get into the re-branding itself, let’s have a look at the core of our CheMondis brand.
Our Brand – What We Stand For.
We connect experts from the worlds of chemistry and technology. It is that combination and approach that makes us unique. Extensive chemical know-how, deep customer insights, and trust as a proven core value on one hand and technology, new business ideas, and an agile mindset on the other. We combine more than a century of expertise in chemicals with state-of-the-art technology.
Our Touchpoints – The Experience We Want to Create.
At CheMondis, we are aware that each touch-point is an opportunity to create a great customer experience and to, thus, build customer loyalty. Our customers want any touch-point to be simple, easy to use, navigable, and understandable. They do not want complexity, information overload, and frustration.
Our customer also wants trustworthy, relevant information about brands, products, and guidance on how to compare and choose them. Therefore, our efforts to improve the customer experience strive to achieve simplicity and trustworthiness in the long term.
Our Offer – The Benefits We Are Bringing.
CheMondis is designed in a way to tackle the offline pain points by both Buyers and Suppliers in the chemical industry. Buyers often have to invest a huge amount of time into screening new products and suppliers. They struggle with delivery commitment, a good price overview, and documentation.
As CheMondis, we offer real-time access to product data, datasheets, and Supplier certificates that make the life of chemical buyers easier. A comprehensive product catalog, along with different purchasing options, helps buyers improve their business efficiency tremendously. Registered buyers can either buy instantly with guaranteed availability and fixed prices, negotiate a one-time deal or long-term contractual agreements.
Suppliers of raw materials for the chemical industry can broaden their market reach with CheMondis and boost their business with a little extra effort. They can offer an unlimited number of products across borders and find new validated buyers.
They can sell via spot-deals or long-term agreements to either new or existing customers and use add-on services like creditworthiness checks and document management to improve efficiency and reduce their order-to-cash costs.
Our Logo – Our Solid Promise.
The new, as well as the old, CheMondis logo uses a solid “night rider black”. The honeycomb, linked to the structure of Graphene, forms the foundation of our visual identity. We incorporate the characteristics and properties of the material into our company DNA: its unbreakable and reliable nature is a metaphor for trust. Small changes but big impacts. Can you spot the difference?
What’s new? The most significant change, we made is that we removed the color grade from the logo. Now, the CheMondis logo is even more solid, without any brand mark. Making it appear more solid, modern, and sophisticated. Just the way CheMondis perceives itself. The new logo is supposed to make the logo easier to read and to print.
New Website – What We Show to the World
Ever since we launched CheMondis we have continuously upgraded our websites, mostly with updated content, such as newly implemented features. Today we are proud to present our brand-new website.
We are convinced that the new website will help our existing users and interested parties to better understand the nature of our business and the services we offer to customers.
Our fresh new design compliments our company colors, whilst combining a modern, visual-tech-look with our traditional honeycomb-graphene structure. We invite you to check our new pages and to leave us some feedback here.
In a nutshell
The CheMondis brand connects experts from the worlds of chemistry and technology. Our efforts to improve the customer experience strive to achieve simplicity and trustworthiness. As part of our re-branding strategy, our company logo, brand colors, and static page have been optimized. This will not affect any of the services offered to you by us.
Thank you for taking the time to read the CheMondis Blog.
This week we released our first study about the current state of digitalization in the chemical industry, with an outlook on where the industry expects it to go over the next years. The survey was prepared in close cooperation with the German statistics institute of Statista, which also helped in collecting responses.
In the survey the respondents, who work for chemical companies, were asked ten questions referring to the following topics:
The overall impact of digitalization on day-to-day working routines
Critical challenges for the chemical industry in the future
How prepared is the chemical industry for digitalization
The ratio of digitally made business transactions in the chemical industry
Digital sales or procurement channels and reasons for using them
The Impact of Digitalization on Day-To-Day Sales and Procurement Routines
The survey asked respondents if they believe that digitalization will influence their personal work in the future. The large majority, accounting for 84%, believe that their personal work will be influenced by digitalization in the future.
When asked, how strongly digitalization is impacting the respondents’ personal day-to-day working routines in sales or procurement already today, also more than half see their working routines, strongly or very strongly, influenced by digitalization.
Looking at the results, our respondents are prepared for this share to grow over the next years.
How Prepared is the Chemical Industry for Digitalization?
When we asked respondents from the industry about how prepared the industry is today for the age of digitalization, less than half of those surveyed believe that the chemical industry is well prepared today. Surprisingly, when being asked about the company which they personally work for, 57% consider their own company well prepared.
This is an interesting gap which will need to be watched in the future. It shows how companies are starting to get ready and advance in all different fields of digitalization and seem to feel a small step ahead of the competition with that.
CheMondis and Other Marketplaces and Platforms in the Chemical Industry
As the biggest and fastest growing chemical marketplace in Europe, we asked respondents about their awareness of digital sales channels in general and brands in particular.
We asked which sales and procurement channels the respondents’ companies are using today or are planning to use in the future. And we are excited about their answers. More than half (56%) are either using or planning to use B2B platforms or marketplaces, just like CheMondis. In the survey, this even beats the usage of both general and industry-specific search engines and shows how the business-oriented approach of platforms will become even more important in the future.
Next, we asked respondents about which platforms or marketplaces they have used in the past already. Almost half of the respondents have either regularly used or tried out CheMondis. This is a result, which makes us proud! Molbase.com was tried by 16% of the respondents. About a fourth has already made experiences with chembid.com, an industry-specific search engine from Germany.
The Reasons Behind Using Digital Channels in Sales and Procurement
Chemical companies do not use digital channels just for the sake of being digital, but have concrete, often financial, incentives to do so. When being asked about the reasons to move towards digital channels three answers stood out. Companies are looking to increase sales, at lower operational cost and want to use digital channels to deepen their knowledge and understanding of their existing and potential new customers.
A personal note
We as CheMondis are excited. The results show how the industry is on the move towards finding and using digital sales and procurement channels. Their major objective is generating new sales (on the supply side), while improving operational efficiency. Also, the usage of digital channels can help to better understand the individual customers’ and well as the market’s needs.
We share the believe that digital platforms for the industry such as CheMondis can help tremendously in creating deeper understanding of the market and even opening up new markets. As CheMondis we cover the entire value chain, from matchmaking to transactional services.
Buyers can find new suppliers, suppliers can broaden their market reach and both have absolute transparency over all quotes, orders and contracts (including the current status of call-offs). This helps companies to increase efficiency even when in their own company not all processes are digital yet.
If you are curious about B2B platforms and CheMondis now, we invite you to take a look atwww.chemondis.com. If you come check us out, come again next week as we are launching our new website!
Now it is up to you
Are you interested in the full study results? Get them for free here. Do you have the same view as our respondents? What do you think about the status of digitalization in your industry? Leave us a comment below.
Thank you for taking the time to read the CheMondis Blog.
On the 5th of November, our CheMondis marketplace turned one year old – this is why we are celebrating all month long. Get ready for a series of exciting content, including blog posts, animations, and further company announcements. Whether you are a CheMondis user from day one, a newcomer, or just interested in our marketplace, we are glad you are here with us. Join us on our blog and on all our social media channels to find out all about our birthday month.
What happened so far?
The Europe-based marketplace was founded about 1.5 years ago by the chemical specialty producer LANXESS. Set up as an own legal entity, CheMondis is tackling the challenge of digitalization in the chemical industry. Back in November 2018, the marketplace successfully launched its open beta version.
Since then, over one thousand verified chemical companies have registered with a total of 2350 active users, trading more than 13,000 active products on the platform. Within the last 12 months, trading volumes have been steadily increasing with an increasing customer base.
Last November, we kicked off the beta version with a custom interface and a broad range of elementary marketplace features. These included among others an advanced search function, the possibility to chat between buyer and supplier, Instant Deal purchasing or selling, or individual negotiations.
Over the course of the last year we have expanded our features and functionalities a lot further: an automated product upload, an integrated credit rating service, and most recently the possibility to depict and apply long-term contractual agreements on the marketplace.
Especially, our purchasing options have evolved. Traditionally, there are two different ways of selling products on CheMondis. Suppliers can either choose to sell products directly as Instant Deals at fixed list prices or they can individually issue quotes based on Quote Requests from prospective customers.
A couple of months ago CheMondis introduced the “special offer” feature, allowing suppliers to make custom deals for selected buyers, as both an Instant Deal or a Quote Request. Only a couple of weeks ago, CheMondis has introduced a new option to help buy and sell chemicals on the marketplace – the Agreement.
It allows the buying and selling parties to agree on specific terms for recurring orders for a certain time period and to the buyer to gradually call-off the pre-defined volumes.
Our customers
At this point, we want to thank all CheMondis users. Our success is linked to our users and their continuous feedback. Since last year, we have single-handily verified and personally onboarded around one thousand chemical companies to the platform.
We are especially grateful for all the early movers of the industry and the trust and support the chemical industry in total has given us. We are excited to continue this way.
SynHet – Synthetic Heterocycles
Livchem Logistics GmbH
INNOVOX GMBH
LANXESS Deutschland GmbH
ViVoChem B.V.
Mosselman SA
BÜFA Chemikalien GmbH & Co. KG
Life Chemicals Europe GmbH
Since our launch, CheMondis held over 1700 support chats via our inbuilt business messenger. We support registerd users with difficulties, missunderstandings and other erros, while we inform interested individuals about the CheMondis marketplace.
Team growth
The CheMondis team is an agile and entrepreneurial group of experts from the chemical industry and the world of technology. Our diverse team consists of a variety of personalities, from twelve different nationalities and cultural backgrounds – grouped into three departments. Team Commercial, Team Product, and Team Engineering.
In the course of the last year, the entire CheMondis team has grown to a total size of 30 employees. We are ready, to continue tackling the challenge of digitalizing the chemical industry. We are very happy to have every single team member on board and hope to further recruit talented colleagues. Interested in joining us at CheMondis? See all our current job offers here.
What is next?
The new year is almost there, 2020. Time flies and technology evolves. Technological advancements can lead to the change of a complete industry – as we have seen in the telecommunication industry, during the late 2000s. The internet changed the game.
And now comes CheMondis to help digitalize marketing, sales, and procurement within the chemical industry. In order to make the marketplace even better for users, our developers and designers are constantly working on new features and functionalities. What’s planned next, you might ask yourself.
There are a few components that can already be revealed. We are looking forward to launching an optimized search function, an inbuilt sample demand, and further a brand-new static page. And this is not even a fraction of what will be implemented in the course of 2020. Stay tuned.
In a nutshell
CheMondis has successfully launched the open beta version of the marketplace exactly one year ago. Since then, over one thousand verified chemical companies have registered, trading more then 13,000 active products on the platform.
Within the last 12 months, trading volumes have been steadily increasing with an increasing customer base. New functionalities and features have been and are to be implemented. We are going for more!
Thanks for taking the time to read the CheMondis Blog.
Have you noticed our new “Agreements” tab on the marketplace yet?
Traditionally, there were two different ways of selling products on CheMondis. Suppliers can either choose to sell products directly as instant deals at fixed list prices or they can individually issue quotes based on quote requests from prospective customers. A couple of months ago CheMondis introduced the “special offer” feature, which allows suppliers to make custom deals for selected buyers, as both an instant deal or a quote request.
For a couple of weeks, CheMondis now offers another option to help buy and sell chemicals on the marketplace – the Agreement. This new tool allows Buyers and Suppliers to agree on terms for recurring orders, such as longer-term contracts and agreements.
What is a Recurring Order?
A recurring order refers to a repetitive purchase of the same product from the same supplier. For example: Buyer A requests a specific product offer on CheMondis from seller B. They negotiate on the marketplace and ultimately the deal is made.
Here’s the catch: Buyer A needs the specific product every week. Instead of repeating this process over and over, the new Agreement Management simplifies the process and lets both parties agree on a specific price for a particular quantity over a specified period of time. Meaning: Agreement management allows suppliers to make longer term arrangements with buyers.
Now Buyer A and seller B can make an agreement on CheMondis, allowing them to repeat a purchase every week, until either the agreement or the volume has expired.
How does it Work for Buyers?
Step 1: Make a quote request on the product you are interested in
Step 2: Head to “Agreements” inside of the Quote Request tab
Step 3: Fill in the mandatory fields (including start and end date of the agreement; price; min. order value and max order value, total value, quote/unit; incoterms; delivery address etc.) and select “request”.
Step 4: See all information in the Agreement detail screen. Within this tab you are can chat with the seller directly via our inbuilt chat feature.
Step 5: Wait and receive an offer from the seller. See all offer information in the current offer field. Select accept. (Of course, you may also reject the offer and renegotiate the agreement).
Step 6: Head to the Agreement list and check the current status. On-Going: Agreements that are taking place in the present. Confirmed: Agreements that will take place in the future. Expired: Agreements that have already taken place in the past.
Step 7: Select “Add to cart” in the Agreement list and the “orders” screen will appear.
Step 8: Determine the quantities and delivery dates for each order of the agreement.
Step 9: Select “Add to Cart” within the order screen.
Step 10: Head to the “Shopping Cart” and select “Proceed to Checkout”.
Step 11: Select “Confirm Order” in the “Summary” field.
How does it Work for Suppliers?
Step 1: Receive a Quote / Agreement Request from a buyer.
Step 2: Head to the Quote /Agreement detail screen and create an offer.
Step 3: Select Agreement (As a seller you can also decide to give a quote instead of an agreement.) The information in the Agreement field is pre-filled, but can be changed by the seller.
Step 4: (When your Buyer is requesting the first call-off from your agreement) Head to the main dashboard and select ”orders”.
Step 5: View the details of each order of the Agreement.
Step 6: “Accept”, “reject” or “renegotiate” each order of the Agreement individually. *Keep in mind that you can renegotiate at any time.
In a nutshell
Buyers and Suppliers on CheMondis need a convenient way of addressing recurring orders. To facilitate this CheMondis has developed the Agreements Management Tool, which allows both Buyers and Suppliers to save time on repetitive orders and longer term contracts.
You can also use the Agreements Tool to manage your contracts with your existing Buyers or Suppliers. Just enter the Agreement as described above and profit from full transparency about all details and call-offs.
Thanks for taking the time to read the CheMondis Blog.
