August 1997, Volume 3, No. 8 ABB Enhances Its Global Collaboration

ABB Group (http://www.abb.com), a Switzerland-based global engineering group specializing in industrial and building systems, relies on corporation-wide communication and collaboration to bring its entire operation of 217,000 employees in more than 140 countries together. ABB sees strategic use of information technology as a key element in its ongoing success. The company launched a major customer focus program several years ago, resulting in an extensive restructuring of the company. ABB realized that it needed new technological tools to support new work processes and bring a higher level of communication to the new organization. In other words, ABB needed to reach beyond e-mail and faxing, which it had relied on heavily as office communication standards since the mid-1980s. ABB selected Lotus Notes from Lotus Development Corp. (Cambridge, Mass.; http://www.lotus.com) as its corporate groupware standard, for e-mail communication, and for Internet/intranet solutions. Notes is a key part of ABB's worldwide corporate infrastructure, and with more than 60,000 users, ABB is one of the world's largest users of Notes. ABB has been able to realize significant cost savings through standardization, which gives the company new communication and collaboration capabilities. Notes applications support core business processes, such as opportunity tracking, continuous research, program management, quality conformance tracking, global key account management, customer complaint tracking, and others. For instance, a non-conformance reporting (NCR) application allows ABB to carefully monitor quality and to respond quickly to any issues. It is used primarily by the Power Generation division of ABB (45,000 employees), plus all of ABB's local headquarters worldwide. If any item or component does not behave as it should, details of its non-conformance are fed into a database, supported by scanned sketches or documents. Before the report is escalated, a copy of this information is replicated within the local organization. This approach allows ABB to tap its internal expertise and see if anyone has solved similar problems. By replicating the non-conformance information to all involved parties, key groups within the company have quick, simultaneous access to the current status of the situation. The NCR application includes seven interactive databases handling administrative tasks, such as controlling report numbering and standardizing codes for project and location. The user database functions as a directory of the 1,700 NCR users and supplies their mail addresses, as well as their geographical locations. The project database contains all details of the projects, including the contact person. Control and transparency of information is also key to ABB's Notes-based project idea, planning & execution (PIPE) application. ABB has 15 major research programs and several hundred projects running at any one time, and ABB Corporate Research relies on PIPE to support the Continuous Program Management process throughout the global organization. Scientists and researchers around the world contribute to an idea management database that initiates feasibility discussions. Ideas approved by program managers are then transferred to a planning database, from which planning controllers and project leaders have to apply for funding. They have to decide how much of the money will come from the Corporate Research budget and how much from the businesses. Every project must receive some business support or it is dropped. Successful projects move into the third PIPE database for project reporting, which manages the project throughout its life cycle. At any stage it is possible to see how far work has progressed, how much money has been released, and the source of funding. ABB's mainstream Internet and intranet solutions provide a foundation for electronic commerce.

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