WITH MORE THAN 5 billion end consumers in more than 160 countries, Procter & Gamble has long had an enviable global reach. The Cincinnati-based packaged goods manufacturer literally makes products with brand names from A to Z, and sells them all around the world in stores that range from giants like Wal-Mart to Mom-and-Pop outfits operating off the back of a truck.

But such reach, while a blessing for brand recognition, has often presented a challenge when it comes to interacting with retailers. Until recently, P&G kept track of its diverse customer base through an equally diverse array of local (often homegrown) systems. That lack of integration meant a retailer such as Wal-Mart might receive conflicting product and promotion information about Crest toothpaste from a legacy trade funds system in Cincinnati and a homegrown shipment reporting system in Guangzhou, China. If the two systems had different SKUs for the same product, it would lead to confusion and extra work for Wal-Mart if the retailer attempted to roll up its data on worldwide Crest sales. And for P&G, the more variety in its systems, the harder it was for the company to dispense consistent information to its retailers about its nearly 300 brands, not to mention plan promotions and execute a sales strategy.

"As customers become more global, our ability to understand, interact and manage our business is limited by a nonintegrated platform," says Robert Scott, vice president of IT for P&G's Global Market Development Organization (MDO). "Fundamentally, we knew we wanted to change that." Faced with aging IT systems in the late 1990s, P&G decided to take the plunge and launch a worldwide customer relationship management initiative.

CRM is not a term to be tossed around lightly in a company as vast as P&G - especially since its global offices operate with varying degrees of technological sophistication. In a developing market like China, for example, retailers are much more likely to sell small packets of Tide than the 100-ounce containers that dominate the shelves in North America. The cost of business therefore has to be lower, leaving less money for swanky technology initiatives. So P&G had to figure out how to manage CRMCRM technology on a global level, making it broad enough to traverse the world but flexible enough to help get products on the shelves in far-flung places. By choosing a single platform that could be scaled down for the smaller markets, P&G was for the first time trying to treat its retail customers consistently, whether those customers were selling Folgers in Fort Worth or Downy in Dublin. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de

The Beginning

Scott says three factors drove P&G's CRM efforts (which began in 2000 and will take until at least 2005 to implement). First, P&G needed integrated systems to eliminate inconsistencies in product data and simplify the process of synchronizing internal data with customers' systems. Second, P&G spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually on customer incentives to encourage retailers to stock and sell P&G products. Without a reliable way of managing those promotion dollars in all countries, it was tough to track which incentives were successful and which were bombs. Third, the company had streamlined its field sales force in the 1990s yet still wanted to make sure that retail plans formulated at the company's headquarters reached stores quickly.