INTERACTIVE SESSION: MANAGEMENTCOLGATE-PALMOLIVE KEEPS MANAGERS SMILING WITHEXECUTIVE DASHBOARDSColgate-Palmolive Company is the second largestconsumer products company in the world whoseproducts are marketed in over 200 countries andterritories. The company had 38,600 employeesworldwide and $16.734billion in annual revenuein 2011.Colgate has been keeping people smilingand clean around the world, with more than three-quarters of its sales in recent years coming from out-side the United States. Colgate's brands in oral prod-ucts, soap, and pet food, are global names, includingColgate, Palmolive, Mennen, Softsoap, Irish Spring,Protex, Sorriso, Kolynos, Elrnex, Torn's of Maine,Ajax, Axion, Fabuloso, Soupline, and Suavitel, as wellas Hill's Science Diet and Hill's Prescription Diet.

The secret to continued growth and stability forthe past two decades has been Colgate's ability tomove its brands off shore to Latin América, Europeand Asia. In the past, Colgate divided the world intogeographic regions: Latin American, Europe, Asia,and North America. Each region had its own infor-mation systems. As long as the regions did not needto share resources or information this patchworksystem worked, more or less. This all changed asglobal operations became more integrated and seniormanagement needed to oversee and coordinate theseoperations more closely.

Colgate had been a global SAPuser since the early1990s,but it was running five separate ERP sys-tems to serve its different geographic regions. Overa period of time, disparities in the data developedbetween different geographic regions and betweenthe data used at the corporate level and the data usedby an individual region or business unit. The datawere constantly changing. For example, every time asales report was run, it showed different numbers fororders and shipments. Colgate wanted more usabledata to drive business decisions and all of its manag-ers and business units worldwide to use the sameversion of the data.

Colgate chose to solve this problem by creating asingle global data repository using SAPNetWeaverBusiness Warehouse, SAP'sanalytical, reporting anddata warehousing solution. Colgate's regional ERPsystems feed their data to the warehouse, wherethe data are standardized and formatted for ente r-prise-wide reporting and analysis. This eliminatesdifferences in data across the enterprise.

One of the outputs of the warehouse for seniormanagers is a daily HTML table showing a series offinancial and operational metrics for the day com-pared to the previous month and quarter. The datathe executives see is exactly the same as what theirpeers in all Colgate regions and business units see.

However, the data were not being used by enoughemployees in their decision making to have animpact on business benefits. Colgate's power usershad no trouble using the reporting and analyticaltools provided by the warehouse, and they weresatisfied with the matrix reports from the system.Colgate's senior managers and other casual users, onthe other hand, did not feel comfortable running adhoc reports or drilling down into the layers of datato answer questions the data brought to light. Theydid not have much time to spend developing reports,and the standard reports produced for them by thewarehouse lacked navigation and drill down capabili-ties. Tables had no color coding so users could onlyinterpret the data by scrutinizing the numbers on thetable.

Eventually Colgate's senior managers and othercasual users began requesting deeper access to thewarehouse data in a more timely and user-friendlyformatoThey wanted reports that were easier torun and where the data could be interpreted faster.Senior management requested customizable, real-time dashboards that could be more easily used todrive performance improvement.

Colgate's information systems specialists thenimplemented SAPNetWeaver BWAccelerator tospeed up data loads and improve user perception andadoption and SAPBusinessObjects Web IntelIigenceto build customized reports. SAPBusinessObjectsWeb Intelligence provides a powerful, intuitiveinterface that enables business analysts and nori-technical business professionals to ask spontaneousquestions about their data. Casual business users canuse simple drag-and-drop techniques to access datasources and create interactive reports that drill, sliceand format information based on their needs. Toolsfor cutting edge visualizatíon allow end users to viewtwo- and three-dimensional charts and hone in onspecific areas of focus.~ Colgate started using SAP'sBusinessObjectstools to build user-friendly dashboards, and quickly

created dashboard prototypes for management to,review. Once l1:anagement approved the dashboarddesígn, the dashboards were populated with produc-tion data. Now Colgate's senior managers are run-ning the dashboards to monítdr the business from ahigh level.

Employee training was essential to thedashboards' success. Members of Colgate's globalinformation systems development team created cus-tomized courses for Colgate's 65 business intelligenceexperts and ran the classroom training. The trainingidentified people that could be used as resources fordeveloping the reporting tools. When word spreadabout the dashboards' capabilities, Colgate's powerusers signed up for the classes as well.

For Colgate, better reporting tools that can sup-port different kinds of users have greatly expandedthe use ofbusiness intelligence throughout thecompany. Currently about 4000 users interactwith Colgate's SAPsystems daily but this numberis expected to expand to 15,000 to 20,000 users in

CASE STUDY QUESTIONS1, Describe the different types ofbusiness

intelligence users at Colgate-Palmolive.2. Describe the "people" issues that were affecting

Colgate's ability to use business intelligence.3. What managernent, organization, and technology

factors had to be addressed in providing businessintelligence capabilities for each type of user?

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the future. People who are accustomed to seeingreports stuffed with numbers are finding that theycan use the information presented in dashboards tomake faster decisions. For example, managers candetermine positive or negative financial conditionsby simply looking for where dashboard reports usethe color green, which reflects improvements inColgate's financial position. Executives who formerlyrelied on other people to obtain their custom reportsand data are able to access the information on theirown. They can see real data from the system muchmore easily and quick1y.

Sources: Paul Ziobro, "Colgate Shows Improved Growth,"Wall Street [ournal, April 26, 2012; Colgate PalmoliveCorporation, "SEC Form 10K for the Fiscal Year EndingDecember 31, 2011," Colgate Palmolive Corporation, February26, 2012; David Hannon, "Colgate-Palrnolíve Empowers SeniorLeaders with Executive Dashboards," SAP InsiderPROFILES,April-June 2011; www.colgatepalmohve.corn, accessed July 22,2012;and SAP,"Placing Relevant Business Content within BusinessUser Reach," 2011.

4. What kind of decisions does Colgate's newbusiness intelligence capability support? Givethree examples. What is their potential businessimpact?