P&G Shapes the Store
In this day and age, the lines between what’s real and what’s not are often times hard to see. For example, you will not find a movie on the market today that doesn’t seamlessly merge elements of reality with simulated imagery to create entirely new scenes. Just like in the movies, the use of virtual reality to conduct market research is fast becoming a common practice among consumer goods manufacturers and retailers. When done right, virtual shelf and store simulations can deliver actionable insights at a fraction of the cost and time spent on traditional market research methods.
When The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) first began using virtual reality tools in 1997, the company saw the potential of what these tools could bring to the business. Famous for being an early adopter of new technologies, the ability to create virtual shopping environments was a logical next step in the way the P&G Global Business Services (GBS) organization helped the business conduct market research. In 2004, the company opened its first virtual reality center in Cincinnati, Ohio with the assistance of several best-in-class technology providers.
“Together, we delivered a set of virtual solutions tools that better deliver on the needs of our businesses, customers and consumers,” says Bernard Eloy, associate director, Virtual and Modeling Simulations Services for GBS. “This enables P&G to go to market smarter, faster and more efficiently, and empowers internal collaboration and external connections to consumers and customers.”
Over the years, 19 more virtual solutions centers have popped up in P&G facilities around the world. These centers have life-sized screens backed by computer modeling, simulation and 3D technologies that present new P&G products as they might appear on store shelves. Consumers are then invited to view and assess these virtual product representations, which helps P&G to better understand their wants and needs. Meanwhile, sophisticated software helps P&G record consumer reactions to product placement, shapes, colors and designs.
According to Eloy, virtual solutions tools are now used in almost 80 percent of all P&G initiatives and have yielded critical capabilities in three key areas.
A New Model
To significantly increase the demonstrated value that virtual solutions bring to P&G’s product development and marketing efforts, the GBS organization felt they needed to scale the program by leveraging a strategic partner.
“We recognized that there was an opportunity to outsource some of our non-core work to strategic partners, thus moving P&G’s back office to someone else’s front office,” says Eloy.
In moving to a new model, P&G wanted to move quickly, develop a transparent process and identify the best partners for the job. In 2009, P&G awarded Accenture a five-year contract to manage the day-to-day operations for all 20 visualization centers around the world. According to Eloy, P&G selected Accenture because it offers the global scale required; it is a leader in managed services; and it has a proven record of business process outsourcing at P&G. In addition, through the Accenture Technology Labs, it positioned itself as an early pioneer in virtual reality and large-scale virtualization solutions.
Approximately 60 resources from Accenture Business Process Outsourcing worked closely with GBS to transition — and now manage — P&G’s virtual solutions content delivery and facilities services (see box above).
Under a hybrid onshore/offshore delivery model, most team members are located on site in Cincinnati and in the Accenture Delivery Center in Mumbai, India. Other Accenture professionals are providing support from key locations around the world, including Geneva, Buenos Aires, London, and Frankfurt.
The transition to the outsourced model kicked off in June 2009 with a small pilot project that documented process flows and role descriptions, tested major integration points, confirmed assumptions and service level agreements, assessed the feasibility of moving virtual reality work offshore, and identified productivity and technology improvement opportunities.
The transition of services from legacy providers began in August 2009 and was carried out in phases by geography over a period of six months. Accenture began offering full service delivery in February 2010. At that time, the team also began initiating continuous improvement activities and learning processes for all virtual reality roles.
Today, an Innovation Council made up of three members from P&G and three members from Accenture meets regularly to understand the business needs and explore how new virtual reality technologies can help. Both Accenture and P&G harvest and share innovative ideas from within the team and across their respective organizations. P&G ultimately governs the program, and projects are prioritized on the technology readiness and business impact.
“Leveraging rapid prototyping and a 30-60-90 day approach, we are able to develop proof of concepts quickly that we test with our business in order to decide whether this innovation is delivering on the promise,” reports Eloy.
Overall, the collaborative GBS and Accenture relationship has produced a number of benefits and has enabled P&G to:
Moving forward, P&G hopes to expand the reach of its virtualization capabilities by enabling more business processes to leverage the technologies in areas like decision-making. It also plans to gather more feedback from more consumers in earlier stages of the product development cycle.
“To achieve those goals, we are enhancing our technology with some of the most advanced virtual reality capabilities seen in gaming and movies,” closes Eloy. “We also want to be involved in the development of industry standards, which will lead to enhanced collaboration between retailers and consumer goods manufacturers.”
REAL BENEFITS
Virtualization delivers substantial value to P&G, including:
A New Virtual Solutions Model
Accenture provides the following to P&G’s program:
When The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) first began using virtual reality tools in 1997, the company saw the potential of what these tools could bring to the business. Famous for being an early adopter of new technologies, the ability to create virtual shopping environments was a logical next step in the way the P&G Global Business Services (GBS) organization helped the business conduct market research. In 2004, the company opened its first virtual reality center in Cincinnati, Ohio with the assistance of several best-in-class technology providers.
“Together, we delivered a set of virtual solutions tools that better deliver on the needs of our businesses, customers and consumers,” says Bernard Eloy, associate director, Virtual and Modeling Simulations Services for GBS. “This enables P&G to go to market smarter, faster and more efficiently, and empowers internal collaboration and external connections to consumers and customers.”
Over the years, 19 more virtual solutions centers have popped up in P&G facilities around the world. These centers have life-sized screens backed by computer modeling, simulation and 3D technologies that present new P&G products as they might appear on store shelves. Consumers are then invited to view and assess these virtual product representations, which helps P&G to better understand their wants and needs. Meanwhile, sophisticated software helps P&G record consumer reactions to product placement, shapes, colors and designs.
According to Eloy, virtual solutions tools are now used in almost 80 percent of all P&G initiatives and have yielded critical capabilities in three key areas.
- Virtual Shopping Simulations: This capability enables P&G to ask more questions and probe for deeper insights in a shorter time frame. For example, as P&G introduces a new product SKU and changes its category assortment, it can understand whether a horizontal or vertical shelving strategy is most efficient for shoppers. The results include improved accuracy in delivering what the consumer needs as well as speed-to-market.
- Collaboration with Retailers: P&G shares the results from its virtual reality research with retail partners so together they can make smarter, faster decisions about what products and quantities are needed in store to meet consumer needs. P&G also uses the centers to build virtual 3D store environments. “In one case, we were able to help identify an obstacle for purchasing certain products and designed a new store layout to make these products more accessible,” reports Eloy. “Being able to visualize and experience the new design and then reviewing the shopper comments enabled the retailer to better respond to this consumer need.”
- Product Design Process: Through better consumer understanding and early input from its customers, P&G is able to identify potential issues and opportunities earlier in the design process and steer product design choices accordingly. It also enables P&G to cost-effectively investigate a greater number of design alternatives by minimizing the number of physical prototypes that need to be built. In one example, P&G’s fabric refresher brand team wanted to bring a new type of Febreze to market for people who participate in sports activities. It was important to identify the correct way to reach this new type of Febreze consumer. “We leveraged our virtual research methods to better understand what artwork elements would work best with these consumers and used the insights to design the artwork for the launch, cutting the time-to-market by roughly 50 percent,” says Eloy.
A New Model
To significantly increase the demonstrated value that virtual solutions bring to P&G’s product development and marketing efforts, the GBS organization felt they needed to scale the program by leveraging a strategic partner.
“We recognized that there was an opportunity to outsource some of our non-core work to strategic partners, thus moving P&G’s back office to someone else’s front office,” says Eloy.
In moving to a new model, P&G wanted to move quickly, develop a transparent process and identify the best partners for the job. In 2009, P&G awarded Accenture a five-year contract to manage the day-to-day operations for all 20 visualization centers around the world. According to Eloy, P&G selected Accenture because it offers the global scale required; it is a leader in managed services; and it has a proven record of business process outsourcing at P&G. In addition, through the Accenture Technology Labs, it positioned itself as an early pioneer in virtual reality and large-scale virtualization solutions.
Approximately 60 resources from Accenture Business Process Outsourcing worked closely with GBS to transition — and now manage — P&G’s virtual solutions content delivery and facilities services (see box above).
Under a hybrid onshore/offshore delivery model, most team members are located on site in Cincinnati and in the Accenture Delivery Center in Mumbai, India. Other Accenture professionals are providing support from key locations around the world, including Geneva, Buenos Aires, London, and Frankfurt.
The transition to the outsourced model kicked off in June 2009 with a small pilot project that documented process flows and role descriptions, tested major integration points, confirmed assumptions and service level agreements, assessed the feasibility of moving virtual reality work offshore, and identified productivity and technology improvement opportunities.
The transition of services from legacy providers began in August 2009 and was carried out in phases by geography over a period of six months. Accenture began offering full service delivery in February 2010. At that time, the team also began initiating continuous improvement activities and learning processes for all virtual reality roles.
Today, an Innovation Council made up of three members from P&G and three members from Accenture meets regularly to understand the business needs and explore how new virtual reality technologies can help. Both Accenture and P&G harvest and share innovative ideas from within the team and across their respective organizations. P&G ultimately governs the program, and projects are prioritized on the technology readiness and business impact.
“Leveraging rapid prototyping and a 30-60-90 day approach, we are able to develop proof of concepts quickly that we test with our business in order to decide whether this innovation is delivering on the promise,” reports Eloy.
Overall, the collaborative GBS and Accenture relationship has produced a number of benefits and has enabled P&G to:
- Manage 20 virtual solution centers, more than any other consumer products company
- Create and maintain a library of top retailers’ 3D-stores across the globe
- Introduce globally consistent virtual tools that meet GBS’s internal customer needs
- Free up valuable employee work time, which allows P&G to focus on innovations that improve consumer lives.
Moving forward, P&G hopes to expand the reach of its virtualization capabilities by enabling more business processes to leverage the technologies in areas like decision-making. It also plans to gather more feedback from more consumers in earlier stages of the product development cycle.
“To achieve those goals, we are enhancing our technology with some of the most advanced virtual reality capabilities seen in gaming and movies,” closes Eloy. “We also want to be involved in the development of industry standards, which will lead to enhanced collaboration between retailers and consumer goods manufacturers.”
REAL BENEFITS
Virtualization delivers substantial value to P&G, including:
- Significant reduction in time-to-market
- Reduced product development costs
- Enhanced relationships with retailers
- Major sustainability benefits
A New Virtual Solutions Model
Accenture provides the following to P&G’s program:
- Providing high-end project management
- Transitioning the operations of existing virtual reality facilities to Accenture’s global team
- Overseeing the design, development and operations of new virtual reality facilities and 3D store environments
- Creating, integrating, delivering, storing virtual reality content
- Providing virtual reality software and platform development, break/fix and maintenance services
- Managing third-party facility and technology vendors involved in service delivery.