Case Study Procter and Gamble

1. What is Procter & Gamble's business strategy? What is the relationship of collaboration and innovation to that business strategy?
In order to reach out to its worldwide customer base, its employees, and its suppliers, Procter and Gamble have to use a distributed development strategy. The relationship of collaboration and innovation is ensuring that everyone, from the people that work for the company, to include the management, to the suppliers, is involved somehow in their ultimate goal which is provide quality goods for their consumer base. This will also enable them to stay competitive in the market.
2. How is P&G using collaboration systems to execute its business model and business strategy? List and describe the collaboration systems and technologies it is using and the benefits of each.
P & G took a close look at what they needed. They were interested in something that would support their systems that were based primarily on Microsoft systems. They wanted collaboration systems that would be easily adapted to by their employees. They wanted a system that would bring “real-time collaboration services, including calendars, schedules, workflow, virtual meeting sites, instant messaging, and virtual conferencing” (Procter and Gamble Releases, 2008). Their main system that they adopted, Teamcenter, gave them just that. It was easy to adopt, it was cost effective, and it supported the Microsoft-based IT infrastructure that they operated off of. It also provided them with the form of visual collaboration that they desired, CAD-neutral format. The Teamcenter system gives the user a “customized view” of product information. It lets the user, such as the suppliers and employees, see their work in whatever format suits them, even the CAD-format content such as graphs. It also lets them share this information across the world, bridging geographical and time zone gaps.
3. Why were some collaborative technologies slow to catch on at P&G?
Some of the...