CIO Profile: P&G's Dave Ubachs on supplier management and mergers

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P&G's Dave Ubachs on providing global solutions
P&G's Dave Ubachs on the future of the CIO

Dave Ubachs is CIO and shared services manager for UK, Ireland & Scandinavia, which is part of the Global Business Services (GBS) division of Proctor & Gamble.

P&G is the world's largest consumer goods manufacturer, selling products in 180 countries to 4.4 billion consumers with sales reported to be worth £51bn.

Chances are, you have at least one P&G product in your bathroom or kitchen.

Among other things, GBS is responsible for managing and delivering the strategic outsourcing relationships P&G has with key suppliers, including HP for infrastructure, Infosys for development, BT for networking and mobility provision, Jones Lang LaSalle Associates for property management and IBM for its payroll and expenses systems.

“The principals of outsourcing are how do you do the original deal and how do you structure your partners,” Ubachs explains.

“So P&G goes for a longer term deal. We don’t squeeze the partners. You need to operate very differently when a deal is for the long term. Contracts must be beneficial to both.

“We have a governance structure so that there are many connections with the partner and we both have common measures: some of those measures are measures back on P&G.”

Cutting edge integration
The agility of Ubachs and his CIO peers was tested with the 2005 acquisition of Gillette, the razors and shaving goods maker.

Within one year of the deal, which had to be approved by both the European Union and the Federal Trade Commission in the US, the integration was 95 per cent complete.

“The Gillette integration was really quiet,” he admits.

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