INTRODUCTION

PROCTER & GAMBLE (P & G) • Procter & Gamble (P & G) is the largest manufacturer of consumer products • One
of the top 10 largest companies by market capitalization • Founded in 1837, headquartered in Cincinnati , Ohio by
William Procter and James Gamble • Mainstay in American business for over 150 yrs. • Known for Successful
brands, introducing new products and maintaining popularity • Pampers, Tide, Bounty, Folgers, Pringles Charmin,
Swiffer, Crest , food, beverages and many more • $83.62 billion in sales and $14.48 billion profit by 2012.

BUSINESS OPERATIONS:Three main units - • Beauty care • House hold care • Health and well being Others - • Baby
care • Pet care • Grooming segment

BUSINESS GOALS:

Three main focuses – • Maintaining popularity of existing product • Developing new related products • Innovating
and introducing new products from scratch

PREVIOUS SYSTEMS AND PROBLEMS • Existing methods for collaboration and innovating and developing new ideas
wasn’t good enough. • No better collaborative system. Email was used for collaboration . - Senders controls the
flow of information. - May fail to send mail to colleagues when they need it most • processes for sharing
knowledge were notoriously inefficient • For companies like P & G one vendor simply isn’t enough to satisfy their
diverse needs. e.g. Google search was inadequate. - Doesn’t always link information from within the company

- reliance on keywords isn’t ideal for all of the topics for employees might search. • when P&G executives
traveled to meet with regional managers, there was no way to integrate all the reports and discussions
into a single document

INFORMATION SYSTEMS USED FOR IMPROVING PRODUCTIVITY • Web 2.0 for online activities and websites. •
Blogs for sharing information with others. - Open for all interested parties - Attract comments from interested
users. • Custom search engine start-up connectbeam. - Allows employees to share bookmarks and tag content
with descriptive words that appear in future searches - Facilitates social networks of coworkers to find and share
information more effectively

- InnovationNet, a browser-based portal, contains over 5 million research related documents in digital
format. • Tele Presence Conference Room by CISCO. An excellent way to foster collaboration between
employees across not just countries, but continents

CHALLENGES OF USING INFORMATION SYSTEMS • Employers accustomed to email, showed significant inertia to
move to a new technology. • If enough employees didn’t use Collaborative Systems, the tools would be much less
useful for those that did use them

RESULTS OF USING INFORMATION SYSTEMS • 80000 people using IM, 20000 MS Outlook for mailing, calendaring,
contact management, task management, note taking. • Researchers use the tools to share the data they’ve
collected on various brands • Marketers can more effectively access the data they need to create highly targeted
ad campaigns. • Managers are more easily able to find the people and data they need to make critical business
decisions. • Removed the problem of glue all documents to a notebook

- Using Telepresence managers and officers cad hold high-definition meetings over long distances. • 35
percent of its employees are using Telepresence regularly. • Company has saved $4 for every $1 invested
in the 70 high-end telepresence systems it has installed over the past few years. • Reduced amount of
travel and cost for travel • Significant reduction of time and cost in Research and development. • Faster
and more efficient management system

CASE STUDY

1. WHAT IS PROCTER & GAMBLE’S BUSINESS STRATEGY? WHAT IS THE RELATIONSHIP OF COLLABORATION
AND INNOVATION TO THAT BUSINESS STRATEGY?
Procter and Gamble’s follows three prime business strategy. They are – 1. Maintaining popularity of
existing product 2. Developing new related products 3. Innovating and introducing new products from
scratch Most of P&G’s business is built around brand creation and management. It’s critical that the
company facilitate collaboration between researchers, marketers, and managers and also inspire and
 invest on innovation to keep the market place. P&G is such a big company and makes such a wide array of
products, achieving their business goals is a daunting task.

What is Procter & Gamble's business strategy? What is the relationship of collaboration and innovation
that business strategy
The P&G’s business strategy is maintaining the popularity of their products through advertising and
marketing. It extends its brands to related products by developing new products under those brands.

It innovates and creates new brands entirely from scratch and so much of P&G’s business is built around
brand creation and management, also the company facilitates collaboration between researchers,
marketers and managers who help to advertise the P&G’s product to the market.

P&G’s business operations are divided into three main units: Beauty Care, Household Care, andHealth and Well-
Being, each of which are further subdivided into more specific units. In each of these divisions, P&G has three main
focuses as a business:
maintain the popularity of its existing brands, via advertising and marketing;
extend its brands to related products by developing new products under those brands;
innovate and create new brands entirely from scratch. Having R&D teams spread throughout 30 sites globally,
P&G is in strong need of collaboration tools that allow researchers, marketers, and managers to easily gather,
store, and share knowledge and information. At 3.4 percent of revenue, P&G spends more than twice the industry
average on innovation to support its business strategies

2. HOW IS P&G USING COLLABORATION SYSTEMS TO EXECUTE ITS BUSINESS MODEL AND BUSINESS
STRATEGY? LIST AND DESCRIBE THE COLLABORATION SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGIES IT IS USING AND
THE BENEFITS OF EACH.

Collaboration systems using by P & G:

1. SharePoint to store all presentations in a single location, that are accessible to the employers,
colleagues and researchers from the other parts of company.
- allows for store presentations, research, data and any other documents to be shared between all the
employees. Making sure that unlike old systems everyone who could possibly benefit from the
information has access to it.

2.InnovationNet to store all related research documents in a digital format accessible from a browser
based portal.
- likes sharepoint allows storage of documents but in a digital format and can be search with a browser
like portal.

3. CISCO’s Telepresence Conference room to hold meeting s over long distance

- a web based conference room so that the ees across the globe can attend meetings together without
the hassle and cost that comes with having to travel to meetings.

4. Teamcenter which is based on sharepoint so that ees can easily use them together provides sharing of
visual product data.
5. Connectbeam works like a search engine with the added benefit of allowing ees within the company to
tag certain words or phrases so that searching in the future or by other ees is easier. Also has features
that act like a social network within the company so that information can be shared on a much swifter
basis
Other technologies from above:
a. Blogs
b. Custom search engine
c. Complete Collaborative System

Old Process
Some researchers used to write up their experiments using Microsoft Office Applications, then print them out and
glue them page by page into notebooks.
New Process
P&G’s IT Department are now using Microsoft InnovationNet that contains over 5 million research related
documents in digital format accessibly via a browser- base portal.

List and describe the collaboration systems and technologies it is using and its benefits of each.
Collaborative tools grow in usefulness as more and more workers contribute their information and insights. They
also allow employees quicker access to the experts within the company that have needed information and
knowledge.

Microsoft Office Applications – It is used to write up their experiments.

Microsoft Live Communication Server, Web Conferencing with Live Meeting and Content Management with
Sharepoint. – The services provided include unified communication which integrates service for voice transmission,
data transmission, instant messaging, email, and electronic conferencing.
Microsoft Outlook – provides tool for email, calendaring, task management, contact management, note taking and
web browsing.
Connectbeam – allows employees to share bookmarks and tag contents with descriptive words that appear in
future searches.
InnovationNet – container of research related document in digital format.

> To support the business strategy of innovating and creating new brands entirely from scratch,P&G must find the
right tools to support collaboration and innovation. Some of the collaboration system the company's employees
and partners use are:

Social networking and collaborative tools popularized by Web 2.0: Allows researchers and scientists from inside
and outside the company to work together more easily andefficiently while reducing research and development
costs.

Microsoft services that include instant messaging, unified communications, Microsoft Live Communications
Server functionality, Web conferencing with Live Meeting, and content management with SharePoint: Reduces
the time and effort necessary to share data and information between employees and others involved in the
company's R&D effort.For instance, marketers can access data from researchers and create highly targeted ad
campaigns

What problems do collaboration systems solve for P&G?

With P&G being such a large company it was always difficult and very time consuming sharing research and data.
Also previously data sharing was in the hands of the sender through email not ensuring that everyone that would
want access to the information would receive it. Now all info is shared on systems like Sharepoint and
InnovationNet allowing for all area of the business to be more productive. Such as marketing they can look at data
information and know what areas they should focus new advertising on. They have also been able to cut down on
costs byt using services like Cisco they are now able to have conference like meetings in a web based portal on a
global basis. Decision making abilities have also been increased with data and research being instantly available at
fingertips senior mgt can now review and make choices within a matter of minutes.

3. WHY WERE SOME COLLABORATIVE TECHNOLOGIES SLOW TO CATCH ON AT P&G? Employees have
resisted the changes, insisting that newer collaborative tools represent more work. People are
accustomed to a certain technology and there was significant organizational inertia against switching to a
new way of doing things.

Some of the collaborative tools were slow to catch on at P&G’s business. One of the collaborative tools that P&G
tried to use is e-mail but it is not a sufficiently collaborative way to share information, senders control the flow of
information but fails to send mails to colleagues who most needs to see it and those who don’t need to see it will
receive mailings long after they’ve lost interest. Also it is open to anyone interested in their content.

P&G is no different than most companies when it comes to introducing new systems to employees who are used
to the comfort of familiar methods and tools. In short, most people resist change whenever they can. Email was
the primary method of disseminating information among researchers and scientists. It was proving to be too slow
and a very cumbersome way to reach those who needed the information most. Employees have resisted the
new collaborative technologies claiming the tools have added more work rather than reducing it.The networked
collaborative tools and technologies P&G introduced rely on an ever-increasing number of people using them. The
more people that engage in the network the better the network becomes. To make the new technologies
successful, P&G employees had to grow the database of information and continually improve the knowledge base
making it even more attractive to a wider audience of users.

COMPARE OLD AND NEW PROCESS

Researchers used "old-fashioned" glue to compile information into traditional notebooks which were passed to
only a few colleagues. An executive entered data into PowerPoint slides and emailed them to those he thought
were interested in the information. The slides were emailed numerous times by others, with some receiving
multiple copies of the same file.P&G's IT department creates Microsoft SharePoint pages where
researchers, executives,employees, and business partners can post documents, spreadsheets, slide presentations,
and other forms of information for anyone to access and use. It's a much more efficient and effective method of
collecting, storing, and disseminating information throughout the organization.The company uses InnovationNet, a
collaborative tool that allows users to access over five million research-related documents via a browser-based
portal.Rather than use cumbersome emailEXCHANGES , employees use blogs and other collaborative tools to
communicate with each other.

4. WHY IS TELEPRESENCE SUCH A USEFUL COLLABORATIVE TOOL FOR A COMPANY LIKE P&G?
Telepresence is an excellent way to foster collaboration between employees across not just countries, but
continents. It makes possible to hold high-definition meetings over long distances. Benefits of
telepresence include significant travel savings, more efficient flow of ideas, and quicker decision making.
Decisions that once took days now take minutes.

Because P&G has employees located in more than 80 countries, it just doesn't make sense not to use telepresence
technologies as a way to easily bring research and development teams together.P&G required Cisco to build
individual studios to particular specifications that portrayed the distinct characteristics of each location. That helps
make users more comfortable and more accurately reflects the diversity of employees at each location.
Telepresence technologies have greatly improved over the years while the costs of implementing and operating
the conference rooms have been significantly reduced. The usage of telepresence technologies throughout
P&Granges from 35 percent to 70 percent. The time it takes to make decisions has shrunk from days to minutes
thanks to telepresence technologies

5. CAN YOU THINK OF OTHER WAYS P&G COULD USE COLLABORATION TO FOSTER INNOVATION? Yes I do
think of two ways that P & G can use to foster innovation & collaboration. And they are – 1. Cloud , to
save all their documents and files in a place which will certainly reduce their maintenance overhead and
introduce flexibility and speed. 2. Big data manipulation, to gain and analysis huge amount of customer
feedback to make the products and services better.

P& G could use intranets and extranets to collect information in one place and in one basic format. The nets would
be accessible to anyone at any time. YouTube type videos and large audience Webinars can be used for training.
Wikis can be used as a repository for knowledge management allowing information to be collaboratively reviewed
and editedz