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506 Part Three Key System Applications for the Digital Age

INTERACTIVE SESSION: MANAGEMENT

COLGATE-PALMOLIVE KEEPS MANAGERS SMILING WITH
EXECUTIVE DASHBOARDS

Colgate-Palmolive Company is the second largest One of the outputs of the warehouse for senior
consumer products company in the world whose managers is a daily HTML table showing a series of
products are marketed in over 200 countries and financial and operational metrics for the day com-
territories. The company had 38,600 employees pared to the previous month and quarter. The data
worldwide and $16.734 billion in annual revenue the executives see is exactly the same as what their
in 2011. Colgate has been keeping people smiling peers in all Colgate regions and business units see.
and clean around the world, with more than three- However, the data were not being used by enough
quarters of its sales in recent years coming from out- employees in their decision making to have an
side the United States. Colgate’s brands in oral prod- impact on business benefits. Colgate’s power users
ucts, soap, and pet food, are global names, including had no trouble using the reporting and analytical
Colgate, Palmolive, Mennen, Softsoap, Irish Spring, tools provided by the warehouse, and they were
Protex, Sorriso, Kolynos, Elmex, Tom's of Maine, satisfied with the matrix reports from the system.
Ajax, Axion, Fabuloso, Soupline, and Suavitel, as well Colgate’s senior managers and other casual users, on
as Hill's Science Diet and Hill's Prescription Diet. the other hand, did not feel comfortable running ad
The secret to continued growth and stability for hoc reports or drilling down into the layers of data
the past two decades has been Colgate’s ability to to answer questions the data brought to light. They
move its brands off shore to Latin America, Europe did not have much time to spend developing reports,
and Asia. In the past, Colgate divided the world into and the standard reports produced for them by the
geographic regions: Latin American, Europe, Asia, warehouse lacked navigation and drill down capabili-
and North America. Each region had its own infor- ties. Tables had no color coding so users could only
mation systems. As long as the regions did not need interpret the data by scrutinizing the numbers on the
to share resources or information this patchwork table.
system worked, more or less. This all changed as Eventually Colgate’s senior managers and other
global operations became more integrated and senior casual users began requesting deeper access to the
management needed to oversee and coordinate these warehouse data in a more timely and user-friendly
operations more closely. format. They wanted reports that were easier to
Colgate had been a global SAP user since the early run and where the data could be interpreted faster.
1990s, but it was running five separate ERP sys- Senior management requested customizable, real-
tems to serve its different geographic regions. Over time dashboards that could be more easily used to
a period of time, disparities in the data developed drive performance improvement.
between different geographic regions and between Colgate’s information systems specialists then
the data used at the corporate level and the data used implemented SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator to
by an individual region or business unit. The data speed up data loads and improve user perception and
were constantly changing. For example, every time a adoption and SAP BusinessObjects Web Intelligence
sales report was run, it showed different numbers for to build customized reports. SAP BusinessObjects
orders and shipments. Colgate wanted more usable Web Intelligence provides a powerful, intuitive
data to drive business decisions and all of its manag- interface that enables business analysts and non-
ers and business units worldwide to use the same technical business professionals to ask spontaneous
version of the data. questions about their data. Casual business users can
Colgate chose to solve this problem by creating a use simple drag-and-drop techniques to access data
single global data repository using SAP NetWeaver sources and create interactive reports that drill, slice
Business Warehouse, SAP’s analytical, reporting and and format information based on their needs. Tools
data warehousing solution. Colgate’s regional ERP for cutting edge visualization allow end users to view
systems feed their data to the warehouse, where two- and three-dimensional charts and hone in on
the data are standardized and formatted for enter- specific areas of focus.
prise-wide reporting and analysis. This eliminates Colgate started using SAP’s BusinessObjects
differences in data across the enterprise. tools to build user-friendly dashboards, and quickly

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