宝洁会成为下一个数码巨头吗？

    在企业界里，宝洁公司（Procter & Gamble）可能算是一匹老马，但这并不意味着它学不会新东西。

    这正是宝洁CEO麦睿博坚称的观点。他正在带领宝洁这个消费品巨头朝着数码时代的商业模式转变。

    为了实现这个目标，麦睿博与宝洁的技术总监菲利浦•帕萨利尼进行了紧密的合作。本周二麦睿博和帕萨利尼联袂出席了在阿斯彭召开的《财富》科技头脑风暴大会（Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference），他二人的发言也为这次盛会拉开了序幕。

    经过麦睿博和帕萨利尼两人的共同“会诊”，这家市值790亿美元的大公司在运营中共存在88个独立的基础业务流程。对于每一个流程，他们都仔细分析了从数据进入那一刻，到该流程能够应用到业务中时所需要的时间。

    通过利用科技手段建立预测模型，他们发现，他们可以加快公司的决策进程，压缩采取行动所需的时间。宝洁的最终目标是：使企业实现实时运营，同时使所有宝洁员工可以在同一时间获得相同的数据，从而推翻原有的组织结构。

    帕萨利尼表示，经过这番努力，“我们得以在过去的8年里成功削减了9亿美元的成本。”

    其中的一个例子是，直到最近之前，宝洁还拥有一支多达5，000人的专业团队负责需求规划。其中每个人都有一套用来制作预测表格的输入设备和方法。本周五，麦睿博将为位于美国辛辛那提的一座新办公楼揭幕，宝洁将在这里通过电脑模型来进行统一的需求规划。这也意味着这五千人中，有相当一部分人需要转岗。

    麦睿博解释道：“我们会实时对利润预测和产量预测进行评估，并且可以及时做出决策，进行必要的调整。如果我们不具备这种能力的话，在上半年经济越来越不景气的背景下，我们的季报也许就不会如此抢眼了。”

    麦睿博还讲述了科技给宝洁从42亿顾客获取反馈的方式带来的改变。还记得当年印在宝洁产品背面的1到800的数字吧？现在宝洁的品牌经理们都有了一个虚拟的汽车仪表盘式的反馈系统，它可以实时显示汇总自Twitter、博客和电子邮件的顾客反馈，让品牌经理们随时了解最新的消费者认知情况。

    另外，在科技的帮助下，宝洁的Old Spice牌沐浴露和体香剂也成了这两个产品类别中的霸主。这要归功于宝洁在网络上发起的“男人就该有男人味”广告活动（以及这支广告的男主角以塞亚•穆斯塔法），这个活动取得了巨大的成功，它吸引了高达180万人次的自主访问量。

    麦睿博认为，总有一天，宝洁的品牌将会和它的几十亿顾客形成一种一对一的关系。他还表示：“如今的广告已经和从前很不一样了。不能再对顾客进行宣讲，而要营造一种讨论的氛围，然后给予他们参与讨论的自由，他们就会为你做广告。”

    麦睿博深知，要做出如此重大的转变，就意味着不能只把科技的使用局限在IT部门里。对于人力资源部门来说，企业不仅要让他们招聘人员，还要让他们对人员进行培训，使员工通晓科技。事实上，科技应用能力现在已经被纳入了宝洁的绩效考核体系中，成为关系到每个员工绩效考核成绩的一个指标。

    帕萨利尼表示，公司在员工中推行数字化变革的时候并没有受到什么阻碍。“我们的做法是使我们的解决方案令人信服，引人入胜，因此实在推行的过程中没有出现任何反弹。”

    这是否也包括CEO麦睿博本人？麦睿博自己解释道：“我的理想状态是随时开机，随时联线。”不过他本人却并不是黑莓（Blackberry）的用户，因为他觉得黑莓机打字不够快。他现在使用的是一款小型的全键盘电脑，不论身处哪个国家，只要附近有手机信号塔，这部电脑都可以让他与外界进行联络。“我不相信云服务，因为在肯尼亚或埃塞俄比亚这种地方，我有时候无法连接到云服务。”

    看来，不管宝洁在科技上表现得多进取，终究还有一些理念仍然是宝洁一时半会儿难以接受的。

    译者：朴成奎

    As companies go, Procter & Gamble may be an old dog, but that doesn't mean it can't learn new tricks.

    That's what CEO Bob McDonald is claiming, as he attempts to turn the consumer product giant into a model of business in the digital age.

    To accomplish this, McDonald has formed a close alliance with P&G CIO Filippo Passerini, who shared the stage with McDonald on Tuesday, kicking off Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference in Aspen.

    Together, McDonald and Passerini have identified 88 distinct business processes underlying the $79 billion company's operations. For each one they have analyzed the time it takes from the moment data comes to when it can be applied to the business.

    By using technology to develop predictive models, they've found they can accelerate decision-making and compress the time it takes to act. The ultimate goal: to run the business in real-time and collapse the organization by allowing all P&G (PG) employees to get the same data at the same time.

    As a result of these efforts, said Passerini, "We've been able to reduce $900 million in cost over the past eight years."

    One example: Until recently, P&G had a team of 5000 dedicated to demand planning. Each one had a set of inputs and techniques they used in their individual spreadsheet to make predictions. This Friday, McDonald will inaugurate a new facility in Cincinnati to aggregate demand planning using computer models, which means a good portion of those thousands of workers will be redeployed.

    "We review the profit forecast, the volume forecast in real time, and we make decisions to change at that point in time," explained McDonald. "If we had not had that capability, we probably would not have hit the quarters the way we hit them in the first half of the year, as the economy was heading south."

    McDonald also described how technology had transformed the way the company gathers feedback from its 4.2 billion customers. Remember those 1-800 numbers that used to appear on the back of all P&G products? Today P&G brand managers have a virtual "cockpit" dashboard that aggregates tweets, blogs, and emails to give them an up to the minute understanding of consumer perceptions.

    And of course McDonald couldn't fail to mention how technology (and a certain charming actor named Isaiah Mustafa) has helped Old Spice body wash and deodorant claim the number one spot in their categories. Thanks to the viral nature of the "Smell like a man, man" campaign online, P&G racked up 1.8 million free impressions.

    Said McDonald, who foresees a day when P&G's brands will have one-on-one relationships with its billions of customers, "Advertising is very different today. You don't talk to somebody. You engage them in a discussion and you give them the freedom to participate in that discussion, and actually to advertise for you."

    McDonald knows that making such dramatic changes means you can't just relegate technology to the IT department. For the HR department that translates to a mandate to hire and train people so that they are technologically literate. In fact, technology competency now factors in to every employee's performance review.

    But Passerini said that getting P&G employees to buy in to the digital revolution hasn't been a problem. "What we try to do is to make our solutions so compelling, and so attractive that there is really not push back."

    Does that include McDonald? "My ideal is always on, always connected," he said, but he's not a Blackberry user because the device doesn't allow him to type fast enough. Instead, McDonald carries a small computer with a full keyboard that allows him to connect to whatever nearby cell phone towers exist in whatever country. "I don't believe in a cloud because sometimes I can't connect to a cloud in Kenya or Ethiopia."

    No matter how progressive P&G may be with technology, it appears some concepts are still outside the company's comfort zone.