Digital Transformation for a Smarter Tomorrow - Part 3

Part 3 - Embracing Digital

This is continuation of my Part 1 & Part 2 of Digital transformation; in the first part, I focused on ‘Evolution’ by defining the digital transformation and in second part, I focused on visualizing the future of our smarter tomorrow with the evolution. In this part 3 and last part, I will focus on how organizations can embrace the digital transformation, what are the common levers?, How IT organizations can mature to handle the future? and a consolidated view on how we at PepsiCo are embracing the digital journey

Organizations embracing digital

Many organizations are evolving their business processes with digital first mindset, leveraging technologies, and becoming smarter as well. At the core of all these transformations, I find there are four important levers for the organization’s digital transformation journey.

• I. Approach digital transformation as a journey with data centric approach vs. a destination; falling in love with the problem of transforming business through technology vs falling in love with current solutions will help to continuously transform adapting the latest of the evolutions.
• II. Re-imagine business as connected digital platforms - both internal & external; evolve and progress as connected ecosystems vs. independent entity.
• III. Visualize the 'Smarter' tomorrow as Cognitive world in all the domains of value creation, chart a path of experimentation for the organization leveraging these technologies.
• IV. Transform the culture as well! digital transformation is not a responsibility of technology teams alone, it's collective responsibility; everyone must become digital accelerators for the company.

How IT Organizations & Functions can mature to handle the cognitive world?

Information Technology function in organizations will have to do the heavy lifting and mature to enable organizations of the future as ?'an ecosystem of platforms', enabled by 'intelligent workflows', fueled by 'data' generated by 'exponential tech', powered by 'next generation applications', transacted through a 'hybrid multi-cloud' infrastructure and powered by a digital savvy team that's continuously transforming to deliver platforms & products faster. It is imperative that IT organization focuses to:

• Re-imagine infrastructure systems that will help capture and harness massive data loads that will help transform to not just intelligent enterprise, but to cognitive enterprise
• Adapt a journey to Hybrid multi-cloud for seamless integration & data movement across On Prem, Public & Private cloud
• Modernize On-Prem IT infrastructure with latest evolution of technology to capture & store data with high efficiency and use the data through superior analytical capability.
• Leverage cloud native application development technologies embracing microservices & containers and push more towards cloud applications
• Embrace exponential technologies through a platform-based approach internal to the organization
• Reimagine business processes beyond transactions; reimagine it to be an intelligent enterprise with connected ecosystem that's orchestrating the processes & transactions in an autonomous way and requiring human intelligence only for orchestration.
• Explore & Expand AI for business outcomes; from early experiments to shared data services on production instances.
• Build an engineering-focused talent model with talented engineers and leaders that can push the boundaries with new edge technologies and scale the digitization agenda.
• Identify intrapreneurs within the organization and nurture them to think beyond their roles; help them execute their ideas mainstream and scale up novel ideas.
• Connect more aggressively with tech start-ups and other industry bodies to experiment, fail fast.

At PepsiCo, we are embracing technology to go precision and lead the next wave of transformation with digital first mindset. We are evolving to modernize IT infrastructure, tap on Hybrid cloud, modernize our business process with best applications, bring in a balance to our cloud native application development journey, adapt AI for business outcomes, evolve IT to a digital platform & digital product enterprise. We have got quite a few articles and will be good to listen to what our Senior Executive leaders are saying about it:

• Listen to our Global CIO Seth Cohen talking about creating 'Digital Products' through a 'Digital Platform' approach and how we embrace the need of evolution through technology -?https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eCPpLHOFyzk
• Take a deeper dive into understanding how PepsiCo uses AI to create products by incorporating human empathy and connecting with commercial decision-making process with a data centric approach; PepsiCo is always ahead of the curve: https://venturebeat.com/2021/06/28/how-pepsico-uses-ai-to-create-products-consumers-dont-know-they-want/
• Our digital first mindset approach to continuously implement new technologies to improve the work environment for all our employees, especially our frontline teams. https://stories.pepsicojobs.com/the-innovative-tech-tools-energizing-our-global-frontline/
• Harnessing the power of AI to positively impact our planet; read to understand how our PEP Labs manufacturing project in Belgium is saving water around the globe: https://edition.cnn.com/2021/03/15/tech/ai-water-meter-wint-spc-intl/index.html
• Our data centric approach to understand consumers at a more granular level:?https://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/intl/en-apac/marketing-strategies/data-and-measurement/pepsi-digital-transformation/
• Our PEP Labs initiative to connecting with the start-up expertise around the world: https://www.marketingdive.com/news/how-pepsico-leverages-startup-expertise-to-keep-pace-with-digital-tech-tren/598507/; Tech start-ups can engage with our PEPLABS to deliver technology that will change the world - https://labs.pepsico.com/ - we have already had great success with leveraging tech across multiple areas https://labs.pepsico.com/success-stories
• Our initiatives for Smart Agriculture in Europe - https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2019/06/05/PepsiCo-boosts-precision-agri-tech-for-Walkers-Lay-s-and-Doritos-brands

And there are many such initiatives that we are taking to continuously transform our capabilities leveraging technology and navigating the future.

What makes PepsiCo unique is our people; we have incredible strength of great leaders, associates who make a great ecosystem and lead the transformation. This is an environment where the learning curve never stops and here you will find the company strives for a Purpose of existence in the world. We continuously raise the bar on talent & diversity and we have exciting jobs posted at www.pepsicojobs.com; while we have great openings for Technology across all countries, at IT Tech Hub Hyderabad, India, we have some incredible openings to work with some great minds and talents to explore the art of possibilities and transform our capabilities leveraging technology.

The End

This ends the 3-part blog through which we have gone through the definitions of digital transformation, evolution of exponential technologies, evolution of data centric organizations, rise of platforms, how we are maturing towards smarter tomorrow with early stage applications, how organizations can embrace digital and how IT functions in organizations can help shape and power the transformation.

The future is exciting with these technologies and as summarized by WE Forum in their latest report, the importance of building digital culture will play a key critical role to accelerate digital transformation. Leaders of organizations will take a central role to help lead the culture and drive towards a smarter tomorrow.