Power User

At the end of 2003, the North American business unit of Global Gillette (formerly The Gillette Company), representing $4 billion of the company's $10.5 billion in annual sales, found that it was a strategic necessity to improve its account planning and management processes. Account plans were being maintained in Excel spreadsheets, there was inconsistent adoption and compliance across business units and information was scattered across many systems with different passwords and redundant data entry.

Even more critically, there were differing methods and metrics being used by the different business units, and the account plans were not integrated with the other key functional areas such as finance and demand planning.

Enabling Success
As a result, Gillette embarked on an enterprise-wide effort dubbed Project Enable to facilitate go-to-market success that tapped the expertise of Deloitte Consulting and Siebel Systems. "It's really focused to create a fully integrated trade promotions approach to manage and optimize our account planning," says
Mark Dawson, IT director, Gillette North America. "Project Enable really brought these business units together."

By utilizing Siebel to its fullest capacity, Gillette was awarded top honors in the Power User award category. Dawson says Gillette was not only one of the first CG companies to deploy on Siebel 7.7, but also one of the only companies to take full advantage of other areas of functionality. "In what I have seen from other peer companies using Siebel, we are utilizing all of the possible capabilities that Siebel's CG product offers," says Dawson. Most companies exploit the TPM functionality of the tool whereas Gillette also takes advantage of sales volume planning and sales forecasting engines.

"We are also making heavy use of the Siebel Analytics tool to be able to use as a business intelligence layer to glean insight around promotion effectiveness, ROI and also provide dashboards for our execs to understand where the trade dollars are going."

Realizing A Return
As a result of Project Enable, Gillette's key account managers use Siebel Trade and Promotion Management and Siebel Business Analytics on a daily basis to plan and manage promotions, record special pack and shipper demand and evaluate the effectiveness of these business drivers on achieving its volume and profitability goals. Today, Gillette is reaping the rewards of its work and is on the path towards realizing improvements in promotional effectiveness, organizational effectiveness and improved business discipline.

The company anticipates promotion effectiveness benefits will include: increased ROI on trade events, reduced write-offs, and a reduction of costs associated with special packs and displays.

Organizationally, Gillette has already measured improved end-to-end business processes, reduced administrative burden and improved forecast accuracy and visibility. The company has also improved its business discipline, achieving Sarbanes-Oxley compliance. Collectively, these improvements also enable Gillette to be more effective with its retail channel partners by ensuring the trade promotions and programs are planned and executed in a coordinated, cost-effective fashion.