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Procter & Gamble’s 300+ brands are literally
household names across the globe. To help weather a turbulent economic
climate, the company recently shifted its focus to its core brands and
investigated cost-reducing measures. With 14 million square feet of
office and research center space, it seemed obvious that Procter &
Gamble could realize significant savings by increasing the occupancy
levels of its buildings on a global basis. This task was undertaken
by the Workplace Services (WPS) organization, a part of Procter &
Gamble’s Global Business Services organization (GBS). A small group
within WPS used ARCHIBUS/FM to help respond to Procter & Gamble’s
overall mission, then implemented it globally.
Since the 17 largest Research Centers and General
Office sites represent 75% of the company’s total real estate,
these were the priority targets for the ARCHIBUS project.
According to Richard Angel, Project Manager, WPS at Procter & Gamble,
he and his Global Project team approached this challenge according to
the following simple equation: ‘Standardize x Simplify x Synchronize
= Savings.’ “Our goals were to eliminate duplication, reduce
complexity, implement an easy-to-use system, and integrate all our processes,”
says Angel. “Once information was centralized in ARCHIBUS/FM, we
could easily provide management reports as needed.” With this in
mind, the team built a facilities strategy that would leverage the information
they had in ARCHIBUS/FM with data from SAP, Maximo (where implemented),
and other enterprise systems. Then, they rolled out the standards and
processes to Procter & Gamble’s worldwide operations, ensuring
that all sites—whether in Cincinnati or Caracas—managed their
space according to the same corporate guidelines.
The WPS organization quickly recognized the need to balance
space efficiency with aesthetics. “Although our goal was to increase
occupancy levels, we also wanted to make sure we provided a pleasant
working environment,” says Angel. So rather than simply cramp employees
into existing workstations, the local WPS teams refurbished the sites,
introducing new workspace standards, flexible hot desks for workers
who occasionally work at home, and more meeting and huddle rooms. In
some cases, departments were invited to participate in the look and
feel of their workspaces by choosing colors and layout. The global team
also introduced the corporate benchmarking metrics, including rentable
area, population, and capacity. These figures, which reside in ARCHIBUS/FM,
help the team measure the efficiency of their buildings and decide who
will occupy them. The Workplace Services organization has so far delivered
over $20 million in annual savings to the company from this project
alone.
“ We also needed to apply the same standards
to all sites,” says Angel. It is important that developed data
standards can be applied globally, where the information is needed for
global reporting or for differentiating data within the global database.
“We need to ‘think globally, but act locally’,”
says Angel. Since Procter & Gamble has one of the largest integrated
SAP systems, the information in this system is used to drive the data
standards that the Global Project team develops. Standards are maintained
on building codes, which are derived from SAP and centrally defined,
while floor and room codes can be locally defined based on sites’
needs. At the organizational level, Employee, Department, Division and
Business Unit are defined in SAP and maintained in Corporate Master
Databases. Sites can define their own location, telephone and mailbox
information. To integrate both global and local reporting needs on one
platform, the team updates ARCHIBUS/FM with summary building details
for all smaller sites via an automatic monthly transfer from the company’s
real estate system.
With a set of centrally defined standards, the team
then turned its efforts to establishing common processes that would
be pushed throughout the organization. “We try to use good examples
to illustrate our processes, which is especially helpful for people
who may speak English as a second language,” says Angel. “As
new sites come on board, we can easily teach them how we operate.”
Procter & Gamble is truly a global organization,
with 520 office/lab buildings dispersed across 160 countries. Therefore,
it was crucial that the technologies used to manage space could support
work from any place, at any time, by any person—subject to a security
profile. Initially, the database was located on the centralized infrastructure
that Procter & Gamble maintained in its Cincinnati, Ohio headquarters,
with the application operating on the local workstation. This worked
well for users in the Cincinnati area but remote sites experienced sluggish
response time—as much as 27 times slower. A second design remedied
this problem by using Citrix terminal emulation on the remote workstation,
accessing the central database and application servers. The technology
consultant Fine Arts Software also introduced the Oracle Virtual Private
Database function, which allows data restrictions by site. Therefore,
users in Geneva only see Geneva information. The system also supports
a mix of Imperial and Metric units of measure.
“ The Global Project team combined FM, RE, and IT
resources with common goals and a single management structure,”
says Angel. “This was a big plus.” Today, the team supports
new and existing sites, and the corporate infrastructure supports virtual
working methods, letting local and global resources collaborate as if
they were sitting together.
In addition, The FAST
Web reporting system from technology consultant Computerized Facility
Integration, Inc. lets Procter & Gamble create Web-based reports,
which managers can access as needed. “This reduces the work required
to produce and distribute space and chargeback reports,” says Angel.
Following its successful global deployment, Procter
& Gamble plans to offer even more information to its international
community. “Our vision is to create a Web-based, self-service environment
leveraging ARCHIBUS/FM and legacy data,” says David Tufts, Workplace
Services Information Systems Section Manager. The company will follow
a three-pronged strategy, including a corporate Web portal for workflow
and communications, space management using ARCHIBUS/FM, and work order
processes using Maximo.
“This global project is a good example of how
a grassroots initiative can be nurtured to become a major strategy for
the facilities organization,” says Angel. “The project is
still managed by a small group of FM, RE and IT resources, and has accomplished
as much—if not more—than other companies with much larger
budgets for such projects.”
Vital Statistics
Procter & Gamble
Cincinnati, Ohio
520 buildings measuring 14 million square feet
Space Management
Furniture & Equipment Management
FAST
Web reporting (from Computerized Facility Integration, Inc.)
Needed to increase the occupancy of its offices and
research centers on a global basis; needed to refurbish its existing
sites to accommodate smarter working practices.
Increased productivity; virtual working opportunities;
reduced workload due to Web-based space and chargeback reports; increased
benchmarking capabilities
Provide a fully integrated Web-based Facilities Management
environment
ARCHIBUS/FM Integration:
SAP; Maximo, proprietary real estate management system
Computerized Facility Integration (CFI)
www.pg.com
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