Colgate-Palmolive turned to intelligent automation to improve work flows, part of the company’s larger push to upgrade digitization efforts, according to Wayne Lawrence, worldwide director of the company’s global IT team.
The program is designed to advance the use of technologies, like machine learning, to enhance processes and user experience, Lawrence said during a webinar Thursday.
Colgate-Palmolive started its intelligent automation program in 2019. Teams deployed a first wave of robotic process automation developments the following year. The company began exploring process mining to determine value in 2021.
Through the intelligent automation program, the company's IT teams deployed more than 70 bots throughout business functions, including HR, marketing, finance and sales, to optimize workflows.
One of the projects involved bots automatically confirming delivery appointments to some of the company’s largest customers, which lowered costs and improved KPIs for on-time delivery. Bots reduced the number of orders that needed to be touched by 95%, improved the accuracy of entry data and decreased product refusals.
Colgate-Palmolive wants to use automation to streamline end-to-end process, eliminate manual errors, improve data accuracy and strengthen internal controls.
The technology is also diverts resources to more meaningful tasks and ensures projects are aligned with global policies.
“Being in IT, our job is not just about helping the company focus on solving challenging business problems and optimizing business performance,” Lawrence said.
“It's also about how do we help increase productivity and gain capacity through the use of digital technologies that will work beside our employees to help enhance efficiencies and drive better business processes,” Lawrence said.
For the intelligent automation program, the IT department defined a governance model and a federated center of excellence model.
The team encouraged employees enterprisewide to suggest automation projects, establishing a pipeline of more than 100 automation ideas and identifying more than 10 process improvement opportunities for high-growth areas to make work faster and more efficient.
“At the end, it's about delivering overall operational costs at a lower rate and increasing capacity to do more,” Lawrence said.
Like many companies, price hikes in the supply chain have pushed Colgate-Palmolive to try and lower costs. The company faced “greater-than-expected” increases in raw material costs, CEO Noel Wallace said during the company’s Q1 2022 earnings call last May.
Colgate-Palmolive has also recently revamped its tech leadership after long-time executives retired. The company promoted David Foster, former VP of global application development, to CIO in January. Stephen Habif was named CTO in September.
