Elearning! Magazine: Building Smarter Companies via Learning & Workplace Technologies.
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Digitized Inside P&G;'s
CEO ROBERT MCDONALD WANTS TO MAKE THE CONSUMER GOODS GIANT THE WORLD'S MOST
TECHNOLOGICALLY ENABLED COM- PANY. HERE'S HOW.
BY MICHAEL CHUI AND THOMAS FLEMING
Robert McDonald is a CEO on a mission: to make Procter & Gamble (P&G;) the most technologically enabled business in the world. To get there, the 31-year company veteran and former U.S. Army captain is overseeing the large-scale application of digi- tal technology and advanced analytics across every aspect of P&G;'s operations and activi- ties—from the way the consumer goods giant creates molecules in its R&D; labs to how it maintains relationships with retailers, manufactures products, builds brands, and interacts with customers. The prize: better innovation, higher productivity, lower costs, and the promise of faster growth. McKinsey's Michael Chui and Thomas
Fleming recently sat down with McDonald at P&G;'s Cincinnati headquarters to talk about the nature and progress of the compa- ny's digitization initiative, as well as its implications for P&G;'s people and culture. An edited summary of the interview follows.
16 March / April 2012 Elearning!
REAL-TIME INSIGHTS McDonald: Our purpose at P&G; is to touch and improve lives; everything we do is in that context. With digital technology, it's now possible to have a one-on-one rela- tionship with every consumer in the world. The more intimate the relationship, the more indispensable it becomes. We want to be the company that creates those indis- pensable relationships with our brands, and digital technology enables this. One way is through consumer feedback.
In 1984, when I was the Tide brand man- ager, I would get a cassette tape of con- sumer comments from the 1-800 line and listen to them in the car on the way home. Then, back at the office, I'd read and react to the letters we'd received. Today that's obviously not sufficient — you've got blogs, tweets, all kinds of things. And so we've developed something
called "consumer pulse," which uses Bayesian analysis to scan the universe of comments, categorize them by individual brand, and then put them on the screen of the relevant individual. I personally see the comments about the P&G; brand. This allows for real-time reaction to what's going on in the marketplace, because we know that if something happens in a blog and you don't react immediately — or, worse, you don't know about it — it could
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