The Clorox Company

Created and implemented a complete overhaul of the Company's business and technical processes.

The Client

With 7,800 employees in 110 countries and annual sales of $4.8 billion, The Clorox Company manufactures and markets many of the best-known household brands in the world. They include : Clorox, 409, Pine-Sol, Armor All, STP, Glad, Brita, Kingsford BBQ Briquettes, Fresh Step Cat Litter, Hidden Valley Ranch, KC Masterpiece BBQ Sauce and Combat pest control, among others.

The Challenge

Design and manage to successful completion a program that redefines major Clorox business processes and completely overhaul Clorox's technical infrastructure to support the implementation of an SAP/Siebel-driven Enterprise Resource Planning System. The three-year program would consist of multiple phases, hundreds of custom interfaces and conversions between new and existing systems. In addition, there needs to be seamless integration with more than 50 project plans across 10 business process groups, as well as 4 supporting groups including system testing, training and ongoing support, as well as change management.

Other key challenges included:

• Tight control of the program's scope and costs while managing contracts with multiple consulting firms and software vendors
• Implementation of a framework for identifying, escalating, and quickly resolving program issues
• Capturing project status data at various levels of detail and consolidating it into custom summary reports for project leadership

The Pcubed Solution

Pcubed initiated the solution by creating governance processes for Issues and Risk Management, Resource Evaluation and Scope Change Control. Next we implemented a program stage gate process and aligned it with SAP's implementation methodology. This allows for periodic scope review and program health checks. To keep track of performance metrics, earned value and milestones for improved project control and communication, Pcubed instituted custom graphical reports. And to support individual Project Managers, focusing on project plan integration and cross-project communications they implemented a structure of Project Coordinators. Other innovations included:

• Development of a Quality Assurance Process to support critical path analysis and forecasting
• Implementation of a time tracking solution to control contractor scope and cost
• Customization of SAP's implementation to track dependencies through the life of the project
• Created dynamic schedule reports to track progress against the SAP Business Process Master List
• Implemented a program stage gate process and aligned it with SAP's implementation methodology (AcceleratedSAP) to allow for periodic scope review and program health checks
• Instituted custom graphical reports to track performance metrics, earned value, and milestone completion trends for improve project control and communication.

Key elements of the solution included:

• Accelerating and improving the decision-making process with minimum risk
• Heightening the visibility of and streamlining the escalation procedures
• Coordinating project planning and tracking for improved accountability
• Enhancing and accelerating vertical and horizontal program communications
• Creating easy access to project financial data and improving financial reporting capabilities