The Siebel system now lets P&G's sales force gather that data in North America and parts of Western Europe with laptops, handhelds or tablet PCs and send it electronically back to P&G's databases. "In near real-time we can assess whether or not we're having problems with key sales fundamentals that ultimately will impact sales," says Scott. Now, adds Butler, P&G can collect data such as what items are out of stock in a particular retailer and get that data into the hands of those responsible for filling the shelves.

The new system helps reps collect information faster so that they can visit more stores, and more store visits translates into higher sales. In fact, Scott attributes a 3 percent to 5 percent sales volume increase to the Siebel efforts. And because cost controls mean that P&G is learning to do more with fewer people - the company says it reduced its sales force "substantially" when it introduced the customer teams - the more efficiently those people can work, the better. The CRM efforts have saved the company 10 percent to 15 percent on retail selling costs and allowed P&G to increase sales coverage by 15 percent to 20 percent.

Trade funds. P&G won't say exactly how much it spends annually on promotions and incentives that encourage retailers to stock and sell P&G products, but Scott estimates it to be hundreds of millions of dollars globally. That's a significant chunk of change, but in P&G's pre-CRM days there was no electronic tool to ensure adherence to global standards for managing that expense. Each country often had its own tools, ranging from simple Excel spreadsheets to complex legacy systems. "Some were very good; some were a disaster - but it was very local," says Scott.

Now P&G has begun using Siebel tools to plan and execute promotions, set budgets, trigger payment requests and get payment status. The Siebel system also allows P&G to record a history of promotions. "When we start planning promotions, we do it with a smarter knowledge around what we've learned in the past," says Erik J. Verrijssen, associate director of IT for the global MDO. "We found there was opportunity to get more bang for the buck and really make sure that we have more efficiency in spending that money by understanding what worked and what didn't work." Scott says P&G is already saving 10 percent to 20 percent in areas where the company has implemented trade funds applications. In addition, electronic trade funds management furthers P&G's ultimate goal of consistency by making sure promotions are administered the same way to retailers around the world.

Product management. With a product list as extensive as P&G's, getting consistent product data - sizes, descriptions, prices and images of new products - from headquarters to retailers around the world remains a perennial challenge. The more efficiently that happens, of course, the faster the products can get onto the shelves and into shopping baskets. But in P&G's pre-CRM days, exchanges between P&G and its retailers were anything but seamless. "We would take all the product data we have in our systems, type it into a customer form and send it to the customer. They would then pull it out of their systems and retype it. You can imagine the slowness of the process and the number of errors," says Butler. P&G is now calling on Siebel to help clean up and organize the product data to prepare it for automatic synchronization with customers' systems.