Enter CRM. P&G decided to use Siebel because, according to Scott, Siebel made it possible for P&G to build a global integrated platform that was also configurable for specific markets. Typically, P&G IT systems developed in North America or Western Europe didn't work in Asia or Latin America, says Tim Butler, North American MDO CIO. The systems proved too expensive and unwieldy for P&G offices in those parts of the globe, so local offices created their own homegrown systems. P&G wanted a bare-bones version of Siebel's system with the functionality not necessary for smaller markets stripped out. At first Siebel balked, but eventually the companies agreed on a scaled-down version that would enable P&G to implement one platform globally.

Although Scott made Siebel P&G's standard global CRM platform in order to pave the way for worldwide data rollup, he did not attempt to mandate any global CRM projects; all initiatives would come from the ground up, driven (and justified) locally. "We started the effort not as a global system we needed to sell in but as global help for key countries to meet their local business needs," says Scott. P&G provided those key countries - France, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States - with resources to help implement Siebel. "The result was that we actually built local suction for the platform, rather than having to push it," he says.

CRM in Action

So far, P&G's CRM efforts fall into three categories: retail execution, trade funds management and product management.

Retail execution. Historically, P&G has relied on a traditional sales force whose broad in-store presence let the company keep abreast of retail conditions such as pricing and out-of-stock updates, work with retailers to ensure proper placement of P&G products on the shelves and introduce new products. In the past decade, P&G has begun to use multifunctional customer teams at headquarters - which rely on data gathered by a lean team of sales reps - to care for key accounts. Reps who visit stores relay information such as product placement and out-of-stock situations to the customer teams.

Reps - or third-party temps - used to collect data ad hoc: writing it down, faxing, rewriting it. "Accuracy became kind of a problem," says Butler. "It wasn't consistently collected, and it wasn't uniform," says Scott. "You were getting indicators as opposed to regularly collected information on these fundamental points of data."