Special: An interview with the head of Global Business Services at P&G
Người viết: Webmaster
01/08/2008
“It’s all about innovation—at the operating level in the way GBS is structured and in the design of our work processes, as well as upstream, in the IT-driven solutions that we can offer to support P&G’s brands.” So says Filippo Passerini, president of GBS and P&G’s CIO. P&G’s support services have made a ten-year journey that many global corporations are studying with interest and, perhaps, envy. P&G has saved around $600 million to date by consolidating all back-office functions, such as finance and accounting, HR, facilities management, and IT, into one unit—Global Business Services (GBS).
"..Virtually every day our key clients -- CMOs at major corporations -- are being asked to cut their budgets by the millions..." For some, it is the third round with no end in sight. And, in most cases, the CMO is simply receiving a mandate to cut costs with little to no input. Given common cost-cutting approaches, there is little for the CMO to add, and, as a result, they become recipients of edicts to cut expenses after the decision has already largely been made. Today, cost cutting mostly lives in the domain of the finance people, often with the assistance of large management consultancies.
The Toyota brand could not stretch its image enough to be perceived as a luxury brand, so the company introduced a new brand for the upscale market: Lexus. Lexus starts its luxury positioning with the auto itself, featuring pleasing designs and high-quality materials. It then carries that through in both the advertising and the dealership experience, making the whole brand strategy very well integrated—and very differentiated from the Toyota brand that consumers perceive as focused on durability and reliability. Luxury-minded car shoppers stuck between a financial rock and a hard place
In one of my earliest books, "Leveraging the Corporate Brand," I predicted the creation of "a new kind of senior officer, a CCO or chief communications officer," which inevitably gave way to the title chief marketing officer. I am now predicting a trend that will see the CMO inheriting the CEO post. One major influence has been the flawed accounting practice that ignored brands' asset capabilities and held marketing communications in its grip of second-tier rank within the corporate hierarchy. In one of my earliest books, "Leveraging the Corporate Brand,"
“It’s all about innovation—at the operating level in the way GBS is structured and in the design of our work processes, as well as upstream, in the IT-driven solutions that we can offer to support P&G’s brands.” So says Filippo Passerini, president of GBS and P&G’s CIO. P&G’s support services have made a ten-year journey that many global corporations are studying with interest and, perhaps, envy. P&G has saved around $600 million to date by consolidating all back-office functions, such as finance and accounting, HR, facilities management, and IT, into one unit—Global Business Services (GBS). 
"..Virtually every day our key clients -- CMOs at major corporations -- are being asked to cut their budgets by the millions..." For some, it is the third round with no end in sight. And, in most cases, the CMO is simply receiving a mandate to cut costs with little to no input. Given common cost-cutting approaches, there is little for the CMO to add, and, as a result, they become recipients of edicts to cut expenses after the decision has already largely been made. Today, cost cutting mostly lives in the domain of the finance people, often with the assistance of large management consultancies. 
The Toyota brand could not stretch its image enough to be perceived as a luxury brand, so the company introduced a new brand for the upscale market: Lexus. Lexus starts its luxury positioning with the auto itself, featuring pleasing designs and high-quality materials. It then carries that through in both the advertising and the dealership experience, making the whole brand strategy very well integrated—and very differentiated from the Toyota brand that consumers perceive as focused on durability and reliability. Luxury-minded car shoppers stuck between a financial rock and a hard place 
In one of my earliest books, "Leveraging the Corporate Brand," I predicted the creation of "a new kind of senior officer, a CCO or chief communications officer," which inevitably gave way to the title chief marketing officer. I am now predicting a trend that will see the CMO inheriting the CEO post. One major influence has been the flawed accounting practice that ignored brands' asset capabilities and held marketing communications in its grip of second-tier rank within the corporate hierarchy. In one of my earliest books, "Leveraging the Corporate Brand," 
