"Keeping the point of contact as close to the customer as possible has been essential to our success. We don’t have to fly somebody in from corporate to talk with a customer — we can be 20 miles down the road, or even across the street. Our strong local presence, combined with our entrepreneurial spirit, gives us a tremendous competitive advantage.”     As Airgas has grown, we have nurtured and kept alive the entrepreneurial spirit in our regional companies. Local execution remains key, so we keep functions that directly touch the customer at the regional level. At the same time, we are leveraging our national infrastructure by standardizing processes and centralizing some highly transactional administrative and financial processes. This frees the regional companies from time-consuming tasks, allowing them to focus their efforts on customer sales and service.