1. How did CEMEX fundamentally change the way it conducted its business?

CEMEX leads the paradigm shift of companies profitably providing housing for the poor, the Tier 4 population, instead of governments or not-for-profit organizations.

2. How does information systems contribute to CEMEX' competitive advantage?

Here are the reasons why: Continued innovation. High level of commitment to customer service and satisfaction. Proven post-merger integration expertise. Ability to identify high-growth market opportunities in developing countries, And Digital evloution.

3. What is social capital? How does CEMEX build social capital?

This refers to connections between social networks as well as connections among individuals. CEMEX help build this by employing people and regulating their payments and this even eliminates poverty. 4. How are is the low-income savings characteristics of Mexican society characterized

Low income gamilies receive regular paychecks and dont receive subsidies from the government or grants, so they dont have an access to banks and credits. Usually, if thesepeople have money left or if they received their paychecks, they would form a tada and would bid in a lottery.

5. How are the enterpreneurial characteristics of the women in Mexican society tied to the CEMEX BOP strategy?

Women in Mexico are the key drivers of the family. They actively participate in the tada system.

6. What did the CEMEX initial market research in Guadalajara discover

In

my own understanding of that, Guadalajara is a very poor community where people or at leastmost of them live in a huge pitted houses and these families are low incomed families.'

7. What is the role of socios in the Patrimonio Hoy system? How important are they in the making the system successful?

Patrimonio Hoy primarily enables poor people to pay for services and building materials and upgrade their homes. This is important because: Generate business that represents competitive advntages.Represent an accessible option for poor families looking for a better quality of life/Build social capital.Access to credit not available to the poor otherwise. Position CEMEX as a responsible corporate citizen that is committed to the society.

8. Why do you think it was important fo CEMEX to position itself as a complete solutions provider vs. just another product provider?

So as to boost productivity and manage its operations more efficiently.

9. How is the social capital of Patrimonio Hoy promoters related to economic capital?

These promoters work on a commission basis that is dependent on the number of socios they help enroll and on the duration of the stay of the socio within the program.

10. What, in brief, is the value of Patrimonio Hoy to a) it's promoter b) its socios & partners c) its suppliers and d) its distributors?

Promoter - 90 % are women and they play a key role as ambassadors for Patrimonio Hoy Socios - Socios are the actual customer who enroll in Patrimonio Hoy. The socios get together and form a froup, restricted to 3 people.

Distributors - in my own understanding, they are the ones who the socios coordinates to when they want to receive the raw materials. Suppliers - they are the ones who audits the works of the distributors whether they are delivering good-quality on time and whether they are delivering good service to the socios.

11. What is patrimonio? Why is this important for the marketing efforts for the Patrimonio Hoy system?

Savings and credit are the key drivers for the business model of patrimonio. The enrollment of a socio ensures a consistent and steady source of revenue in the pipeline for a patrimonio hoy and the distributors.

12. How can Patrimonio Hoy offer a slightly higher price than its competitors and maintain a competitive edge?

Because this provides or ensures that they are delivering good-quality materials and services to the socios.

13. How does the concept of freezing prices encourage socios to do more business for Patrimonio Hoy?

Because a problem with these socios is that they can't pay for the materials and mason fees on time so what PH did is that they let this people pay it at a later time and they offered trainings so as to make them much competent and enable them to do the masonry jobs or building the houses by themselves to lessen the costs they incurred.

14. Intuitively, doing with business with a low income group would be riskier than traditional lending models but it is profitable for Patrimonio Hoy. Why?

Because the socios were able to feel that the program or Ptrimonio Hoy has been helping and supporting them especially to save up costs like they have been trained to do masonry jobs and obtain technical training to build homes on their own. So these socios are competent enough to build good-quality homes and maybe that's the reason why a lot of customers prefer PH and that contributed to the profitability of PH.

15. What is the role of peer/community pressure in the Patrimonio Hoy lending model?

This has enabled them to grow at a sustainable rate due to requests by the socios themselves to improve the infrastructures of their neighborhood.

16. How has Patrimonio Hoy changed the consumer behavior in Mexico?

Because Patrimonio Hoy offered a complete and comprehensive solution for housing, this has made it difficult for consumers to let go of this opportunity and has fundamentally changed consumer behavior even if on a small scale.

17. What are the challengs of the Patrimonio Hoy program?

Through customer enrollment is increasing at a rapid pace, customer retention is a huge problem for Patrimonio Hoy not because of poor quality of products and services but by virtue of the nature of the business. Also, the socios cannot afford weekly payments for raw materials and mason fee construction.

18. What does Construmex take advantage of the existing remittance market between U.S.A and Mexico?

What Construmerex do is that when a customer comes into this sales office, he has the option to remit money through Doles or to send building materials through Construmerex. Construmerex also set up a single kiosk explaining the value proposition in a Dolex sales office. The customer now has the option to send building materials through Construmerex instead of remitting cash. 19. CEMEX Philippines is exploring the possibility of replicating the Patrimonio Hoy system in the Philippines. What are the parallels between the Mexican and the Philippine market?

Both countries have nearly the same conditions of their target markets or the people who would best benefit from this program. And this great for the Philippines considering that Philippines send back remittances much higher that what Mexico does.

20. As an IT practitioner looking at the Construmex business model, what IT-driven systems can you propose to make CEMEX more competitive? (name 10-15)

* Transaction processing systems *Enterprise resource planning systems *Customer relationship management systems * Management information systems * Inventory Management systems * Decision support systems * Expert systems * Business intelligence * Human resource management systems * Supply chain management systems