balance scorecard
3M Moves to a Customer Focus Using a Global Data Warehouse
Dale Goodhue, University of Georgia
Barbara Wixom, University of Virginia
Introduction
In 1995, 3M Chairman and CEO L. D. DeSimone along with his top management team recognized that the focus of 3M had to change. For nearly 100 years, 3M manufactured products to make life easier, safer, healthier, and more productive for people in nearly
200 countries. In the excitement of creating innovative products, however, 3M was ignoring its customer relationships.
Until that point, 3M was organized into 50 autonomous, product-centric divisions, each with its own IT group, its own strategy, products, and markets. Innovation was the driving force of 3M's decentralized organization, and each division focused on selling its own unique suite of products, which resulted in 15.7 billion in sales in U.S. and abroad in
1999.
Unfortunately this approach confused customers who often had to interact with a host of
3M divisions to meet a wide range of needs. Under DeSimone's leadership, 3M was restructured into seven market segments: Industrial, Transportation, Health Care,
Graphics and Safety, Consumer and Office, Electro and Communications, and Specialty
Material. Each segment was charged with serving customers better and efficiently meeting their needs.
Changing a large Fortune 100 1 company like 3M is not easy. It requires shifts in mindsets, work processes, and the information that is needed to run the business. To address the latter need, 3M began a significant initiative to create a data warehouse called
Global Enterprise Date Warehouse (GEDW). Before the GEDW, aggregate information was available only on division or country specific monthly reports at a fairly high level of aggregation. With GEDW, thousands of 3M employees now have real-time access to accurate, global, detailed information about sales, orders, customers, and products down to the SKU level of detail. The GEDW also underlies new
Dale Goodhue, University of Georgia
Barbara Wixom, University of Virginia
Introduction
In 1995, 3M Chairman and CEO L. D. DeSimone along with his top management team recognized that the focus of 3M had to change. For nearly 100 years, 3M manufactured products to make life easier, safer, healthier, and more productive for people in nearly
200 countries. In the excitement of creating innovative products, however, 3M was ignoring its customer relationships.
Until that point, 3M was organized into 50 autonomous, product-centric divisions, each with its own IT group, its own strategy, products, and markets. Innovation was the driving force of 3M's decentralized organization, and each division focused on selling its own unique suite of products, which resulted in 15.7 billion in sales in U.S. and abroad in
1999.
Unfortunately this approach confused customers who often had to interact with a host of
3M divisions to meet a wide range of needs. Under DeSimone's leadership, 3M was restructured into seven market segments: Industrial, Transportation, Health Care,
Graphics and Safety, Consumer and Office, Electro and Communications, and Specialty
Material. Each segment was charged with serving customers better and efficiently meeting their needs.
Changing a large Fortune 100 1 company like 3M is not easy. It requires shifts in mindsets, work processes, and the information that is needed to run the business. To address the latter need, 3M began a significant initiative to create a data warehouse called
Global Enterprise Date Warehouse (GEDW). Before the GEDW, aggregate information was available only on division or country specific monthly reports at a fairly high level of aggregation. With GEDW, thousands of 3M employees now have real-time access to accurate, global, detailed information about sales, orders, customers, and products down to the SKU level of detail. The GEDW also underlies new