Microsoft’s Çağlayan Arkan On Digital Innovation & Industry Transformation Through P&G Collaboration

Today, we are facing some of the greatest challenges that our communities, businesses and industries have ever faced. While these disruptions are reshaping the world, we are also at a historical tipping point, as we are experiencing accelerated digitalization across industries, coupled with another historic transformation in the global workforce.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the manufacturing industry. P&G knows that by keeping their processes as productive, efficient and optimized as possible, they can stay agile, drive innovation and continue to manufacture superior products. Meeting these goals has required the adoption of digital technology – a process that has been underway at P&G for years. But now, in light of the disruption facing our world today, P&G is fast-tracking their transformation to ensure they have the resiliency in place to face any potential future crisis.

To that end, P&G and Microsoft are proud to collaborate on a new multi-year co-innovation that will enable P&G to leverage Microsoft Azure services to enrich their digital manufacturing platform and accelerate their Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) strategies.

Using Microsoft AI capabilities and digital twins technology, our collaboration will help P&G make their manufacturing smarter through the power of data. By being able to make better use of their data, P&G will have the rich insights they need to enable new levels of predictive quality, optimize environmental sustainability efforts and increase workforce efficiency and productivity. For the first time ever, P&G can now digitize and integrate data from more than 100 manufacturing sites around the world for real-time visibility. And what makes this so exciting is that they can do all of this at unprecedented levels of scalability, which means they can bring products to consumers faster, increase customer satisfaction and reduce costs.

It is a significant milestone for the company.

Building a Culture of Innovation

This kind of journey to digitalization starts from within. It starts with people. Microsoft understands the importance of culture and how that drives success on every level. We have transformed our own organization, focusing on a learn-it-all, growth mindset approach that strives to put people at the center of everything we do. And no company values this approach more than P&G. That is why our partnership is so powerful. Both of our companies have a shared vision for and commitment to building a culture of empowerment, inclusion and innovation.

P&G is making tremendous progress transforming their workforce. They are bringing everyone along the journey, advancing modern roles for the modern workplace and equipping workers with the skills and technology to thrive in the digital economy.

Building this kind of cultural evolution is not an easy process that happens overnight. For many companies, it means bringing thousands of workers and many different business units together under a similar mentality and approach. One that is focused on purposeful outcomes, enabled by data and insights.

We are proud that Microsoft’s Cloud platform is at the foundation of this transformation for P&G, connecting people, assets, workflow and business processes to help build a data-driven and collaborative workforce. For example, P&G is already innovating and using Azure IoT Hub and IoT Edge to help technicians analyze insights with greater speed and efficiency, creating improvements in the production of their baby care and paper products with pilot projects happening in Egypt, India, Japan and the United States.

A North Star for Manufacturing Excellence

Companies that are thriving in today’s digital era have a holistic approach to driving transformation at scale. This is about leaders having the right vision to think differently and bigger to solve today’s big challenges. It is about having the ability to execute in a way that accelerates business outcomes, unlocks time-to-value and empowers people.

This is what I call the Art of Possible.

As a global leader in the consumer-packaged goods industry and a highly respected brand, P&G is a flagship example of the Art of Possible. They are breaking new ground with a sustainable, data-driven approach that will serve as a North Star for other companies across industries. Their passion for delivering exceptional customer outcomes across a variety of brands makes them a perfect company to partner with, to build the future of manufacturing. And just as they strive to deliver a superior consumer experience, P&G is also delivering a superior employee value equation.

Our job as P&G’s partner is to help them realize their mission of improving more consumers’ lives in small but meaningful ways each day by helping the company innovate and differentiate.

We, at Microsoft, are honored to support P&G along their journey, and we look forward to unlocking new and exciting possibilities together in the years to come.