Nestlé : I do not agree, but I understand

Allow me to first state that I left my role at Nestlé almost 3 years ago. I have nothing but the utmost respect for many of my colleagues, peers and friends that I made in 12 years at the company, around the globe. 

I am actually quite saddened to hear the latest news from Nestlé & I am very much aware of the impact (Nestlé Restructuring: A Flag is a Rag on a Pole linkedin.com) it will have.  As someone who lived at the coal face in the Switzerland for 6 years of my life, I am very much aware of how this will impact the expat community & I feel deeply for all of my friends.

But let us be clear, while the decision by Nestlé is not going to be popular, it is the largest signpost that the IT World has substantially shifted & thus we as IT professionals need to be aware of this impact to us.

We all need to remember, that companies like Nestlé are not IT companies. Yes they leverage IT. Yes it is embedded into their day-to-day function, but so is electricity and water. Technology & its commoditisation over the last 10 years means that Nestlé and firms like it will be less and less likely to rely on industry leading specialists to build solutions. Rather they can just simply buy the service and have a skeleton team managing the governance and execution of the service.

This all comes down to a cost benefit comparison and once you are able to pull emotion out of the situation, it becomes clear: unless you are working for an IT company, all other firms will head the way that Nestlé has started. It just makes economic sense to them, regardless of the personnel impact that it will have.

Since I left Nestlé I have seen the commodity IT uptake in every company that I talk too. It manifests itself in areas where, if you are watching, should be the focus of our industry for the next 20 years. Here are 3 of the most obvious examples:

1. AWS, Azure, GCP and the other cloud environments are stripping away the need for massive on site Data Centres, computer power, DB′s, routing, etc. 
2. PAAS services like SFDC and O365 are making running hardware, OS and software obsolete. 
3. Most companies spend more time figuring out how to safely connect users to Internet (and the above services), than to internal applications.

It should be clear that the moment your company is focussed more these 3 points, the writing is on the wall for the “old world” IT solutions. Therefore whilst I see the direction: I don’t always agree with how it is executed, however I do understand why. 

In short firms need to minimise the IT spend & increase the benefit they get from IT. Thus companies want to head a path of, to quote every cloud vendor, “pay for only what they use”. Thus IT becomes a commodity

So we, as IT professionals, need to be ready to lead these companies on that new path.

Ultimately I have concluded 2 major points from the Nestlé announcement:

1. Most companies are not IT companies & they really don’t want to have to handle the costs that come with having a major IT team and tech ecosystems. Executive boards of these firms see the cost burden of IT & not the cost benefit & have been searching for cost effective ways forward, for some time now.

As I mentioned earlier, there have been signs ′of this′ across the industry for some time. This is a real and transforming force that we should be highly aware of & ready for. Which brings me to my next point

2. IT professionals need to make the binary decision:

• Will you be fighting for the status quo, which we all can see from the Nestlé announcements is going to dwindle in the near future, or
• Will you become someone leading companies away from the old world of IT? 

The decision, for me was very simple & the picture was painted very starkly for me by a mentor of mine: You should be in a place where your skill will be appreciated and where you can grow. For me, after my time, was not at Nestlé . Where is it going to be for you?

Good Luck GLOBE Team.