DELIVERING THE GOODS. In the hands of a creative leader, even the most prosaic Industrial Age enterprises can reap quantum efficiencies by applying the new management principles of the 21st century corporation. No company proves that better than Cemex (CX), which operates in one of the most mundane, commodity-driven businesses in the world: cement. Based in Monterrey, Mexico, Cemex was a modestly profitable business in 1985 when Lorenzo H. Zambrano, a Stanford University MBA whose grandfather founded the company, became chief executive. Cemex' biggest problem in an asset-intensive, low-efficiency business was unpredictable demand. Roughly half of its orders were changed by customers, often just hours before delivery. Dispatchers took orders for 8,000 grades of mixed concrete and forwarded them to six plants. The phones were often jammed with calls from customers, truckers, and dispatchers, resulting in lost orders and frustrated customers.

Then Cemex went digital, vastly reducing delivery and production problems. More important, the makeover helped management refocus efforts from managing assets to managing information. ''Technology allows you to do business in a much different fashion than before,'' says Zambrano. ''We used it not only to deliver a product but to sell a service.''

For starters, Zambrano linked the company's delivery trucks to a global positioning satellite system so dispatchers could monitor the location, direction, and speed of every vehicle. That means Cemex can quickly send the right truck to pick up and deliver a specific grade of cement, or reroute trucks around congested traffic, or redirect deliveries as last-minute changes occur. It reduced average delivery times from three hours to 20 minutes. Zambrano reaped huge savings in fuel, maintenance, and payroll, since Cemex now uses 35% fewer trucks to deliver the same amount of cement. And because it can guarantee delivery of a perishable commodity product within minutes of an order, it can charge a premium for it.

By digitizing, Zambrano also eliminated a lot of the friction that slowed down the company and added costs at every step. The company's customers, distributors, and suppliers can use the Internet to place orders, find out when shipments will arrive, and check payment records--without having to speak to a customer-service rep. That allows employees to shift from low-value repetitive work to improving services that build stronger customer relationships. Zambrano and his executives, moreover, now have access to every conceivable detail about the company's operations within 24 hours, compared with the more typical month-old data generated by competitors; they can now better respond to customers and rivals. ''They were able to substitute the management of information for the deployment of costly assets such as trucks, ships, and employees,'' says Slywotzky, who puts Cemex in a league with Dell and Cisco as one of the world's leading digital re-inventors.