|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Clorox has embarked on a sweeping digital transformation, representing the largest technology and operational overhaul in its 111-year history. This five-year, $580 million initiative is centered on the implementation of SAP S/4HANA Cloud, but its scope extends far beyond a simple ERP upgrade. The global transformation is designed to modernize Clorox’s entire operational backbone, unify its data infrastructure, and enable real-time insights across finance, supply chain, and manufacturing. In short, Clorox is going BIG.
Jose Urquijo, vice president and chief technology officer of enterprise architecture, had just finished updating the rest of his leadership organization on the national rollout of SAP S/4HANA, when he spoke with Hispanic Executive. The rollout was a pivotal success in a much broader digital transformation.
“Within five days of that go-live, we’re making great strides toward being completely operational,” the VP says. “We’re shipping orders, we’re making products, and the core functions of the company are in full swing. We’re accelerating back to normal.”
Not just normal, though. Urquijo has been on a mission since coming to Clorox in 2022, to drive an ERP transformation the likes of which has only occurred two other times in company history, once last decade and once the previous. This marks the largest digital transformation the company has ever undergone and the first time an integrated commercial business transformation has been part of the evolution.
“We’re transforming our entire supply chain,” Urquijo says. “It’s bringing in product automations, process mining, and state-of-the-art manufacturing logistics. This is a massive transformation effort.”
The SAP S/4HANA rollout was a greenfield implementation, allowing Urquijo and his team to redesign and optimize its core back-office processes without being constrained by legacy systems. The VP says that strict governance, strong leadership sponsorship, and robust organizational change management were critical to the success thus far and will continue to be critical looking ahead.
Urquijo says that despite the amount of technology involved in the transformation, his leadership is still centered around people and the belief that successful change hinges on building trust, transparent communication, and clear expectations.
“It’s people, process, and technology,” Urquijo says. “The most valuable equity a company has is its people. That’s why our organizational team management team had so many discussions early on, to help our employees understand how they were going to benefit from this transformation. If you can’t help people understand that their lives and jobs are going to be made easier and more rewarding by this, you’re not going to get the buy-in you need to make this successful.”
Ushering in a new technological era at Clorox, a company with over $7 billion in revenue last year, may seem like the biggest challenge of Urquijo’s career. In some ways, it is, but in other ways, nothing will be as challenging as his early years in the States.
Urquijo came to the US from Cuba at fourteen, speaking more Russian than English. His multicultural upbringing may have made him feel a stranger in his new country, but he never viewed it that way. Any challenge was an opportunity in a country that seemed flush with possibilities.
“When I got to the US, I was fleeing a dictatorial government,” Urquijo explains. “I had to learn to leverage every relationship I had and build new ones. You are in survivor mode, and you need to adapt. I think I bring that mindset to any role I’ve had. You learn to build strong relationships with people that are based in trust and understanding.”
Urquijo lives by the words of immortal coaching legend Vince Lombardi: “Gentlemen, we will chase perfection, and we will chase it relentlessly, knowing all the while we can never attain it. But along the way, we shall catch excellence.”
As Clorox continues working through its transformation, Urquijo says the foundation has been laid. Very soon, his attention will turn toward accelerating innovation and leveraging Clorox’s digital core to drive further competitive advantages.
The next phase will see Clorox integrating AI, robotic process automation, and agent technology to further streamline operations and unlock new insights. The company will expand its use of descriptive and predictive analytics to enable smarter decision-making and a more agile response to market changes.
Urquijo was the right person for the job. The executive and tech leader has over three decades of experience across the agricultural, pharmaceutical, automotive, consumer, aerospace, and medical device industries. Urquijo has built and led IT organizations and delivered large-scale business transformations for organizations like Revlon, Teleflex, and GSK.
Clorox’s digital transformation is a multiyear effort that the company’s CTO says will continue to occupy his time for years to come. But the foundation his organization has created is strong. The rollout and implementation may not be perfect (no massive transformation is), but it will be excellent.
Accenture is a leading global professional services company that helps the world’s leading organizations build their digital core, optimize their operations, accelerate revenue growth and enhance services—creating tangible value at speed and scale. We are a talent- and innovation-led company with 774,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries. Technology is at the core of change today, and we are one of the world’s leaders in helping drive that change, with strong ecosystem relationships. We combine our strength in technology and leadership in cloud, data and AI with unmatched industry experience, functional expertise and global delivery capability. Our broad range of services, solutions and assets across Strategy & Consulting, Technology, Operations, Industry X and Song, together with our culture of shared success and commitment to creating 360° value, enable us to help our clients reinvent and build trusted, lasting relationships. We measure our success by the 360° value we create for our clients, each other, our shareholders, partners and communities. Visit us at accenture.com.
