Clorox Learns the Challenges of IT Outsourcing

You often hear about the benefits of IT outsourcing and how it can not only save on money and efficiency but allows the company to focus on their core activities. But in some instances, outsourcing is not always a good thing if it’s not managed properly.

For example, in October 2006, Clorox signed a seven-year, $260 million dollar information technology outsourcing contract with HP. As a result of this contract many of Clorox’s 350 IT employees based at its Pleasanton and Oakland, California locations were laid off, with a handful being moved to HP to work on the Clorox account.

In April 2010, they realized that changes needed to be made. Through this IT outsourcing contract they expected productivity and efficiency to be improved upon and their expectations were not being met.

According to current CIO, Ralph Loura, “We relied on HP for things we shouldn’t have relied on them for. You can take HP out and put in IBM or any other large scale outsource provider; it’s not the specific provider problem, it’s the model. We expected too much out of a single outsource provider. So we elected to restructure the function and bring three key roles in house.”

These roles include:

• The Business Systems Manager’s (BSM): restructured to be more about the client and less about the system. The clients needs have to met and supported.

• The Solution Designer: this group is taking over what the architects were previously doing which was bridging the gap between various applications and their usage in the company

• The Architect: with the new Solution Designer role in place, the architects have more time to research new technologies and organize a long-term vision for the IT infrastructure

With Clorox bringing more functionality in-house and the architect team focusing on new technologies and creating a vision within the IT group, now would be a great time to contact Clorox with your IT solutions. Find out who the key decision makers are with our Clorox CRUSH Report, which includes additional sales strategies, org charts and contact information. For more information visit: http://www.salesquest.com/services/CRUSH-reports/

Trisha Ellis
SalesQuest
Email: trisha.ellis @ SalesQuest dot com
978.749.9999 ext. 105