P&GSuppliers

---

January 2012

To Our Valued External Business Partners,

For those of you I haven’t yet had the opportunity to personally interact with during the New Year, I hope you and your businesses are well. I am excited about what 2012 has in store for all of us as we continue on our mission of touching and improving lives, while helping you grow your business.

I see 2012 – and the New Year in particular – as a time of opportunity where we can take a fresh look at how we are working together and renew our commitment to continuous improvement. I have asked for your help in the past to look at options to control costs, just as I’m sure many of you have asked your own external business partners and suppliers for help controlling costs and identifying ways to operate more efficiently. I’d like us to take those same concepts to the next level on several fronts in the coming months. 

Now is the time for us to closely examine how we do business, in all areas, and ask the tough questions.  Challenge the status quo. Are we being as efficient as we could be? Where can we improve? What can we modify? What suggestions or ideas do you have for your P&G relationship owner or buyer that could help make our operations run more efficiently and result in time and cost savings for everyone involved? Perhaps you’ve even made suggestions before, maybe years ago, that were rejected. I encourage you to re-examine those ideas.  Let’s look and re-look at every opportunity. I’m asking you to dive deep into your business (and ours) and push your P&G counterpart in areas where we need to improve.

I’d like to share one example that illustrates the kind of action I am looking for. In one case, P&G had put a requirement in place regarding shipping materials that made complete sense to us but added tremendous cost and time to our business partner. When the partner brought this to our attention, we worked together to resolve the situation in a way that saved time and cost and made the process more efficient. What requirements has P&G put in place that you think are opportunities for improvement? Where do you think we can innovate and collaborate to increase our efficiency and productivity to perform at a higher level? Please have these discussions with your P&G contact today. Take advantage of our opportunity to bring to light these topics and have the discussions that you’ve wanted to have for some time. We all share the same Purpose, to touch and improve consumers’ lives, and we must continue to collaborate to do so with the best business models possible.

Let’s also use this New Year to be creative in our use of technology. I encourage everyone to participate in the Digital Value Chain, embrace the supplier portal and use collaborative technology to its fullest.  Technology will save us time, cost and allow us to operate more efficiently. If you have suggestions or recommendations where P&G can use technology to operate more efficiently, please have that discussion.

I believe we have the best external business partners, agencies and suppliers in the world and we are grateful to call each of you our partners. There is nothing we cannot accomplish with our collective resources and effort. We must continue to innovate and, more than ever, we must collaborate and push each other to improve in all we do.

As always, let me close by thanking you for all you do for P&G. I recognize that we are all serving the same Purpose, and have shared hopes and aspirations for our business. Let’s take advantage of the opportunity presented us and strive for breakthrough opportunities to take our combined business to the next level.

 

Rick Hughes
Chief Purchasing Officer

To view pdf versions of this and previous messages, please click below:
   January 2012             November 2011           July 2011

---