accenture mondelez case study

Mondelez and Accenture executives explain how companies can become ‘A.I. achievers’

Good morning. If day one of Fortune Brainstorm A.I. made clear that A.I. technology is advancing at a prodigious pace, day two brought recognition that business adoption is not. Sanjeev Vohra of Accenture— Fortune ’s lead partner on the A.I. event—discussed his company’s study of 1,600 large companies, which found that more than half of them were still at the “experimental” stage when it comes to A.I. Only 12% were what he described as “A.I. achievers” who have “not only foundational capabilities…but are also looking from the business lens at how to exploit and leverage A.I. for generating business value.”

Joining Vohra onstage was Javier Polit, chief information and digital officer at Mondelez, the global snack company, which Polit said has “a strong commitment and investment into being an ‘A.I. achiever.’” I asked both Vohra and Polit to give their best advice for other companies trying to unlock the transformational power of this new technology. Their responses:

“The first thing is alignment on a data strategy, which is linked to the business goals. Many companies don’t have that…And the second is to invest in cultural change and talent change on the business side.” —Vohra

“It’s really about training the edges of the business, and formal training to make sure they understand how to use the insights. It’s a massive training challenge.” —Polit

“The third thing is to invest in infrastructure…the code, the knowledge of artificial intelligence, the understanding of the innovation, the quality of the talent.” —Vohra

“Making sure that you have the right data and technical capability…and understanding if I don’t have the capability, I have to bring in someone from the outside.” —Polit

“And fourth, responsible A.I., which I should not miss, because the business leaders have to trust A.I. for what it does and trust the outcomes…So having a transparent and fair system is extremely critical.” —Vohra

Closing out the conference was Greylock partner and Silicon Valley legend Reid Hoffman, who had this to say about where A.I. was headed:

“As much as this year’s been interesting, it’s just literally that the door is beginning to open. And what we’re going to see over the next couple of years is going to be one of those transformational moments in technology. Think iPhone, think Mosaic browser. It’s going to be a super big moment.”

Hoffman also said that the discourse around A.I. as a replacement for humans was missing the bigger point:

“Let’s have people realize that everything that you do as a profession is going to have an [A.I.] copilot. So there’s this Microsoft product for engineers, or whether or not you’re a journalist, whether you’re an investor, an academic, a lawyer, a doctor, there’s going to be a copilot within maximum five years, maybe two.”

More news below.

Alan Murray @alansmurray [email protected]

Adpocalypse soon

Meta’s share price plunged nearly 7% after the Journal reported a bombshell decision about online advertising; ad rivals Alphabet and Amazon also dipped. EU privacy regulators yesterday said they’d made a decision in a major case regarding people’s ability to use Facebook and Instagram without their data being used for ad-targeting. That decision will reportedly force Meta to let users opt out of personalized advertising, which may hit the company’s revenues hard. The Irish privacy regulator will announce a resolution of the case, based on the decision, next month. Wall Street Journal

Privacy to surveillance

Eric Léandri, who cofounded the privacy-first, publicly funded French search engine Qwant, is now in the cyber-surveillance business. According to a Politico exposé, Léandri’s company Altrnativ has been selling its investigative services to big French brands and at least offering them to authoritarian governments. Some of Altrnativ’s methods reportedly may breach EU privacy laws. Léandri: “I continue to defend privacy very strongly. That does not stop me from being willing to compete with Palantir.” Politico

ESG ‘hypocrisy’

The British activist investor Bluebell Capital Partners wants BlackRock founder Larry Fink to quit as CEO because of BlackRock’s flip-flopping on thermal coal investment, and its alleged failure to meet Fink’s sustainability commitments. From Bluebell’s open letter to Fink: “The contradictions and apparent hypocrisy of BlackRock’s actions have…politicized the ESG debate…The reputational damage of being dragged into this politically charged debate, in our view, is very significant because it calls into question the independency of BlackRock as an asset manager.” Financial Times

AROUND THE WATERCOOLER

China’s relaxed COVID restrictions suggest it will reopen sooner than expected—but ‘millions of daily new cases’ will likely disrupt its economic recovery , by Nicholas Gordon

GameStop just became the latest tech company to lay off workers—and it’s cut down on its crypto team , by Alena Botros

The tech slowdown has started to bite in Europe: Less cash, dwarfed fundraising, and fewer unicorns , by Sophie Mellor

Meta bans staff from discussing ‘very disruptive’ topics including abortion, gun rights, and vaccines in new ‘community engagement expectations,’  by Kylie Robison

Jury convicts Donald Trump’s company of tax fraud , by Associated Press

This edition of CEO Daily was edited by David Meyer. 

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Mondelez International’s Intelligent Automation Journey: From Cost Savings to Value Creation

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MIT SMR Connections is an independent content creation unit within MIT Sloan Management Review . We develop high-quality content commissioned and funded by sponsors. We welcome sponsor input during the development process but retain control over the final product. MIT SMR Connections operates independently of the MIT Sloan Management Review editorial group.

Improved productivity and cost savings were important priorities for Mondelez International, Inc. when it looked for ways that technology could fine-tune operations. But as the global snack foods company has found, automation can lead to more than better margins. When coupled with intelligence, automation can also support transformation and unleash growth.

Mondelez International began its intelligent automation journey with robotic process automation (RPA), which uses software programs called bots to automate rote tasks previously done by humans. This can speed processes to improve customer experience, and enable deployment of employees to higher-value work. RPA can also lay the foundation upon which more sophisticated AI is built, which is why corporations are embracing it as part of their digital transformation strategies.

At first, the RPA project was pretty tactical, Reto Sahli, Mondelez International’s global intelligent automation program lead told MIT SMR Connections. But as the company built out its Center of Excellence and developed the methodologies, concepts, tools, and governance for the project, “we started realizing this could be way, way bigger,” Sahli said. “Very quickly, we saw growth opportunities where we could leverage robots and cognitive capabilities to increase revenues.”

EY is a global leader in assurance, tax, transaction, and advisory services. EY helps businesses navigate the Transformative Age through its industry leading Supply Chain Reinvention services and AI services .

The case study report details an important success factor: how project leaders, including Sahli and Caroline Basyn, senior vice president of Mondelez International Information Business Services, kicked off with brainstorming meetings with managers from around the world. These meetings surfaced opportunities to leverage automation in a range of different functions.

In one of those brainstorming sessions, the company’s Customer Engagement group in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, emerged as a candidate that was eager for process automation. In the report, that group’s key players in the subsequent RPA implementation share the lessons they learned and the results achieved.

Read the full case study report to learn how Mondelez International has gained efficiency and driven new revenue by implementing RPA, and how that technology feeds into its larger strategy to leverage AI for growth.

Mondelez and Accenture executives explain how companies can become 'A.I. achievers'

Good morning. If Day One of Fortune Brainstorm A.I. made clear that A.I. technology is advancing at a prodigious pace, Day Two brought a recognition that business adoption is not. Sanjeev Vohra of Accenture— Fortune ’s lead partner on the A.I. event—discussed his company’s study of 1,600 large companies, which found that more than half of them were still at the “experimental” stage when it comes to A.I. Only 12% were what he described as “A.I. achievers” who have “not only foundational capabilities…but are also looking from the business lens at how to exploit and leverage A.I. for generating business value.”

Joining Vohra on stage was Javier Polit, chief information and digital officer at Mondelez, the global snack company, which Polit said has “a strong commitment and investment into being an 'A.I. achiever.'” I asked both Vohra and Polit to give their best advice for other companies trying to unlock the transformational power of this new technology. Their responses:

“ The first thing is alignment on a data strategy, which is linked to the business goals. Many companies don't have that…And the second is to invest in cultural change and talent change on the business side.” —Vohra

“ It's really about training the edges of the business, and formal training to make sure they understand how to use the insights. It’s a massive training challenge.” —Polit

“The third thing is to invest in infrastructure…the code, the knowledge of artificial intelligence, the understanding of the innovation, the quality of the talent. ” —Vohra

“M aking sure that you have the right data and technical capability …and understanding if I don’t have the capability, I have to bring in someone from the outside. ” —Polit

“And fourth, responsible A.I., which I should not miss, because the business leaders have to trust A.I. for what it does and trust the outcomes…So having a transparent and fair system is extremely critical. ” —Vohra

Closing out the conference was Greylock partner and Silicon Valley legend Reid Hoffman, who had this to say about where A.I. was headed:

“ As much as this year’s been interesting, it’s just literally that the door is beginning to open. And what we’re going to see over the next couple of years is going to be one of those transformational moments in technology. Think iPhone, think Mosaic browser. It’s going to be a super big moment.”

Hoffman also said that the discourse around A.I. as a replacement for humans was missing the bigger point:

“Let’s have people realize that everything that you do as a profession is going to have an [A.I.] co-pilot. So there’s this Microsoft product for engineers, or whether or not you’re a journalist, whether you’re an investor, an academic, a lawyer, a doctor, there’s going to be a co-pilot within maximum five years, maybe two.”

More news below.

Alan Murray @alansmurray [email protected]

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Mondelēz: The 3 Step Global Marketing Transformation Program

What’s the best way for a company today to maximise digital ROI? That’s the question Mondelēz, the leading food and beverage multinational, set for itself in 2017, when it announced a new goal of achieving +20% ROI on digital media. With more than 100,000 employees operating in over 160 countries, Mondelēz launched an investigation into how the company measured up against the competition and what changes would have the biggest impact. As the results came in, a clear direction emerged.

“The 20% ROI goal rests squarely on the shoulders of Marketing and Media,” says Alison Dermont, Marketing Capabilities Director at Mondelēz. “We're the growth engine of the business and we have to drive that change by being more efficient. Mondelēz has to become more of a digital company.”

That’s why Mondelēz has set its sights on becoming one of the top three CPG companies in digital marketing. With more than 1,000 marketeers across four world regions, that meant building a global training program to transform their digital capabilities from the ground up. Here’s how they did it.

“I’ve learned that keeping marketers up-to-date isn’t just about the technical skills we choose to emphasize – the way we run our training is really important, too.”

- Alison Dermont, Marketing Capabilities Director at Mondelēz

Diagnosis and decision

The 2017 benchmarking exercise revealed that the need for digital marketing training was both broad and deep. “Across all of our markets, all of our marketeers reported that we need to get better at digital,” says Alison. “In a world where everything is changing so quickly, we really need to get ahead – and stay ahead – of the game.”

As the company’s Marketing Capabilities Director, it’s Alison’s job to ensure Mondelēz marketers have the skills they need for that changing environment. “Having lived and worked in the UK, South Africa and Russia, I’ve touched just about every business unit we operate in,” says Alison. “I’ve learned that keeping marketers up-to-date isn’t just about the technical skills we choose to emphasize – the way we run our training is really important, too.”

In partnership with the Google Digital Academy, Mondelēz diagnosed their skills gaps and devised a bespoke plan to raise digital capability, a global training program with three elements:

• Train select marketers to lead the digital transformation through an intense 6-month digital marketing leadership programme
• Live-stream webinars to spread training worldwide
• Run 2-day Masterclasses on key topics to seal in progress with face-to-face training

“The three-tier approach was designed to provide training at scale,” says Raúl Marin, Global Account Lead at Google. “It reaches all marketers within the company regardless of their location, while keeping flexibility in order to deliver face-to-face training on key topics for key teams located in hubs. The top of the pyramid provides intensive and in-depth training for high potential, senior marketers, identified by company leadership. It’s a highly adaptable model.”

1. Training two types of champions Developing champions is a powerful way to accelerate transformation, which is why Mondelēz upper management nominated more than 70 marketers to participate in intensive digital learning. “The marketers were selected either as a reward for high achievement, or due to a specific job role,” says Michelle Reardon, Global Marketing Capabilities at Mondelēz. “We ensured that we had good coverage across all regions and leading markets. Members of this group leverage the learning by applying it in their day-to-day roles and leading by example, sharing best practice through ‘doing’ with their close team colleagues.”

These champions were enrolled on Squared Online, a deep-dive digital marketing leadership course developed with Google and powered by e-learning experts AVADO. Now, by modifying that online learning model for a wider workforce, Mondelēz is training a second set of champions to spread knowledge and entrench change. “We’ve made the course we used for our first 70 champions shorter and less intensive, so that we can scale it up,” says Alison. “With our streamlined version, we’re set to train nearly half of our marketers in 2018.”

2. Live-streamed webinars for wide participation Where the Squared Online element focuses on a sub-set of marketers, the programme’s webinars are available to everyone at Mondelēz, regardless of location or position. Each of the eight webinars in 2017 focused on a key topic identified as a growth area and every one- to two-hour live-streamed seminar was run twice, making the content available in all timezones.

Though attendance is optional, between one-third and half of all Mondelēz marketers worldwide enrolled on each webinar in 2017. According to the marketing capabilities team, the live-streaming format is part of the appeal. “When an event is live with a fixed time, even more people join than would watch a recording with no defined time slot,” says Alison. Now Mondelēz has doubled the frequency of webinars to once every two weeks, in fixed time slots, so attendees can plan around them.

3. Masterclasses make the most of face-to-face learning “I've been in the learning area for a while and for the best engagement and sense of community, face-to-face training is ideal,” says Alison. To make the most of in-person teaching, the third tier of the Mondelēz global training program is a set of one- to two-day masterclasses in must-win markets. Because they take place in specific locales with distinct audiences, the masterclasses are adapted to the needs of regions, personalizing training and refining implementation.

"We lean heavily on Google and other agency partners to come into the markets and do face-to-face training,” says Alison. “Digital is evolving so quickly that we're all learning at the moment. It's very hard for us as marketeers to keep on top of it, so it’s a winning formula when external experts at the top of their game provide that content."

Though attendance is optional, between one-third and half of all Mondelēz marketers worldwide enrolled on each webinar in 2017.

- Alison Dermont, Marketing Capabilities Director at Mondelēz

Building on a base for improved ROI The impact of Mondelez’s marketing transformation scheme has already spread beyond its original audience. Thanks to exceptional feedback from marketers on the webinar series, Alison and her team have received requests from sales, strategy, insight and analytics divisions asking to join in. Proof that, as Alison anticipated, the ways learning is deployed can have their own appeal.

“Last year we dipped our toe in the water,” says Alison. “It was about getting started, raising awareness and getting marketer knowledge up on key topics. This year it's about integrating that into strategy and campaigns. It’s about getting results.”

“A one size fits all approach rarely works in the world of capabilities,” adds Michelle. “We plan to continue with a more tailored and tiered approach like this in the future, not just in driving digital capabilities but marketing capabilities overall.”

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Mondelēz: Personalizing CPG sales and marketing on a global scale

About Mondelēz

Mondelēz is the largest snacking company in the world, with a large portfolio of brands spread across 60 markets and roughly 83,000 employees.

Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.

About MightyHive

Founded in 2012, MightyHive provides programmatic advertising and marketing services to help businesses optimize every customer engagement.

Google Cloud and MightyHive are helping Mondelēz International solve for personalized digital customer experiences on a global scale.

Google cloud results.

• Supported ROI increase on marketing by 10+ percent globally, 20 percent in the U.S.
• Creates 20 million assets for personalized marketing in 150 countries
• Consolidates technologies for more effective and collaborative data analytics
• Creates framework for long-term strategic marketing initiatives

Unifies marketing efforts and metrics across 37 brands in 150 countries

Ecommerce and other digital channels have transformed the consumer-packaged goods (CPG) market. Manufacturers once reliant on retailers to get the word out about their products can now tap into internet sales and digital marketing to achieve more direct, powerful communications with customers.

Mondelēz International , a snack manufacturing giant with brands including Oreo, Cadbury, and Belvita, recognized the opportunity to stand out from competitors by capitalizing on more direct-to-consumer interactions.

“As a CPG, we had a lot of opportunities and challenges when it came to our data,” says Jon Halvorson, VP Global Media, Digital and Data at Mondelēz International. “We had a tremendous volume of data, but it was extremely fractured. We wanted to find a way to personalize experiences for our customers and knew that more advanced technologies and strategies would be required.” Not only was the taxonomy fragmented across various campaigns and vendors, but getting the data from all the media platforms and web analytics together in one place where the whole system could be analyzed was also a challenge. Prior to working with MightyHive, analysis was done in siloes, which made it difficult to make strategic decisions involving multiple data sources. Implementing a consistent taxonomy made it possible to aggregate the data. As an example, aggregating ad spend for a single brand like Oreo across Facebook, DV360, Google Ads, and Bing globally was previously done manually and was prone to calculation and data entry errors.

Mondelēz International decided to work with Google Cloud and partner MightyHive to bring these siloes together in order to unlock valuable insights contained within their data.

“The Google Cloud technology stack worked brilliantly for our needs, as we’re now on a centralized global platform to communicate and execute consistently.”

Unifying data for better insights

Mondelēz recognized the need to consolidate its technologies, notably those associated with data warehousing and storage, into a more advanced and agile framework.

“We wanted a cloud environment to provide the portability, security, and integration to achieve our personalization goals,” says Jon. “The Google Cloud technology stack worked brilliantly for our needs, as we’re now on a centralized global platform to communicate and execute consistently.”

In moving to Google Cloud, Mondelēz effectively bridged the gap between its own marketing programs and those of the retailers selling its products. This made other goals achievable for the company, such as scaling up its personalization efforts. “We needed to go from 40,000 assets to millions of assets to make personalization work on a global scale. That would take more than just a powerful technology stack,” explains Jon.

The company turned to Google Cloud partner MightyHive to help navigate the often expensive and challenging process of personalizing at scale.

"Google Cloud has proven to be an invaluable accelerator to the kind of digital transformation project we undertook with Mondelēz to help them achieve personalization at scale. We’re excited with our initial success and look forward to what else we can do together.”

Achieving alignment with the right partner

“Our journey with MightyHive started while I was in a Google office explaining my vision of personalization. They said there was only one partner I needed to call to make it happen,” says Jon.

From the outset, MightyHive helped to create a rigorous taxonomy of the data and assets Mondelēz International possessed across all its properties and brands. Then, MightyHive began interviewing Mondelēz marketers from around the globe to understand how the data was used, nuances in regional advertising strategies, and more.

"Google Cloud has proven to be an invaluable accelerator to the kind of digital transformation project we undertook with Mondelēz to help them achieve personalization at scale,” says Tyler Pietz, VP of Enterprise Data Solutions at MightyHive.

“Effective leveraging of our data through Google Cloud, improvements in programmatic buying, and greater discipline are largely responsible for a 10 percent overall increase in marketing ROI worldwide, with U.S. returns jumping over 15% in both 2018 and 2019.”

Six months later, MightyHive had helped Mondelēz take the information and expertise it already possessed as an organization and use it for a broad, long-lasting approach to personalization, while mitigating what could have been enormous costs.

“Effective leveraging of our data through Google Cloud, improvements in programmatic buying, and greater discipline are largely responsible for a 10 percent overall increase in marketing ROI worldwide, with U.S. returns jumping over 15% in both 2018 and 2019,” says Jon.

Remaining agile and innovative for the future

Mondelēz believes that the CPG marketplace will continue to move toward personalization through technologies and intelligent uses of data. The company is positioning itself for long-term success and market leadership by focusing on innovation and being the first CPG to launch increasingly effective digital sales and marketing initiatives.

“We are at a point in the industry where technologies like machine learning have enabled a huge leap forward,” says Jon. “This will drive a big boost in creativity as companies bring together technology and creativity. Our collaboration with Google Cloud and MightyHive is opening new opportunities for us.”

• Reach out to our team to see how Google Cloud can help your business.

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The Mondelēz International recipe for fast-track transformation

How co-innovation, digital technologies, and streamlined processes enable growth

Mondelēz International (MDLZ), a global snacking company and world leader in biscuits, chocolate, gum and candy, wanted to transform its business model to meet rising customer expectations and competition.

Yet the company faced pressure on many sides. New acquisitions and a vast regional network were increasing overheads, causing operating redundancies, and creating inconsistent processes.

That was then. Today, digital technologies powered by Genpact Cora, an AI-based platform, support the organization’s global finance operations in 75 countries on 6 continents and over 150 back-office processes. The result: improved governance, agility, resilience, faster time-to-market, and money to re-invest in innovation and growth.

processes to standardize

Boost growth and maintain a lead position while bringing operations up to speed

Having realigned its product portfolio to become more agile and meet evolving customer demands, MDLZ also sought to improve margins and cost structures to invest in growth. Its ambitious targets demanded holistic transformation across its factories and functions.

The leadership team was committed to act on strategic priorities with speed and agility in the face of a region-based structure, fragmented controls, and inconsistent processes across finance, procurement, and the supply chain.

To cultivate more business, meet customer expectations, and make the right targeted investments, it needed to transform its back-office functions, including finance, and roll out global processes. MDLZ set about building a global shared service that simplified and standardized 150 back-office processes. And it was determined to accomplish that in three years.

Want to chat?

Reimagine operations in the fast lane.

MDLZ identified that its existing regional model had to give way to one driven by product category – and that meant completely reimagining operations.

The company knew that it had to fast-track this transformation while keeping disorder to a minimum.

To support this goal within the three-year time frame, Genpact began with a detailed analysis that helped MDLZ identify what to centralize and decentralize. Process taxonomies determined which processes to standardize, and Genpact assigned service-level agreements (SLAs) and metrics to them.

The evolution towards consolidated global operations

Managing the overhaul while setting clear priorities

The MDLZ finance blueprint covers 22 key markets, and required 300 dedicated resources to assess the health of finance policies, processes, operating models, technologies, controls, and metrics. Working with Genpact, MDLZ defined, prioritized, and sequenced the necessary steps to transform from country-facing teams to process-centric centers of excellence and assembly-line models.

Of course, change management was a concern, so our industry experts worked with the organization to design a migration toolkit for speedy, right-first-time transitions that were repeatable across markets. Within 12 months, MDLZ consolidated over 40 migration operations from more than 75 countries into 6 centers with a goal to transition nearly 70 processes.

We used ProcIndex—a diagnostic tool that measures process health—and the Smart Enterprise Processes framework for a fast, granular and data-driven redesign and better operating metrics. The framework focused on high-throughput processes, such as those integral to financial close, streamlining transactional tasks, raising intervention thresholds, and improving governance.

Avoiding the digital junkyard with a Lean Digital approach

MDLZ wanted to have consistent alignment between digital transformation and its strategic objectives. For example, it was focused on integrating new digital tools with legacy systems, processes, and organizational silos to prevent lengthy, complex, low-yield projects. To integrate the consumer-facing front end of its operations with the back office, MDLZ combined design thinking with Lean principles. In this way, it focused on the most material sources of value while also minimizing waste.

For effective transformation, MDLZ adopted digital products, powered by Genpact Cora, our AI-based platform. Systems of engagement and nimble technologies, such as robotic process automation and mobility, worked with existing technology to simplify transformation and speed up its benefits. MDLZ worked closely with Genpact and used co-innovation to build a number of solutions. The team delivered:

• Real-time visibility into finance operations: By adopting our standardized and unified view of operations and financial performance, MDLZ integrated data from all ERP and related systems for finance and accounting process metrics on a single portal. That gives MDLZ instant access to information, in-depth analytics, and agile decision-making.
• Automating manual tasks: A touchless journal processing solution with proactive rule-based validation is helping to enhance analytics and exceptions management, deliver accurate data and more timely reporting, and improve close.
• Creating a culture of compliance: By setting up a global controls hub – an internal controls center of excellence – we helped standardize and automate internal controls across all operational and support processes. And a redesigned Sarbanes-Oxley program gave MDLZ advanced control monitoring solutions with self-assessments and continuous monitoring. The controllership teams can now focus on helping the business be more compliant rather than police each function.

Robust governance and next steps

For enterprise-wide transformation projects that span multiple geographies and complex processes, good governance is critical. A governance model of strategic, steering, and operational layers helps align partners, business functions, and shared services organizations with strategic goals.

To take advantage of the next technology breakthroughs, MDLZ formed an innovation council to drive leadership support, earmark funds, and build partnerships, with several interventions planned for roll-out (figure 2).

A simplified, streamlined, and hyper-efficient organization

Throughout this accelerated transformation across global operations, Genpact helped deliver consistent, digital-enabled processes that can improve the customer experience, grow the business, and reduce costs across the world. MDLZ can now manage future change at speed.

In its present simplified and efficient state, it can achieve global standards at scale. The business is also more resilient to external threats. Continuous monitoring and reporting mean MDLZ can act on data-driven decisions faster. What’s more, MDLZ can invest savings in innovation and special projects to drive revenue.

MDLZ now has a roadmap for automating financial planning and analysis, record to report, and enabling an integrated supply chain. And down the road, it can experiment with the internet of things and remote monitoring to minimize the loss of point-of-sale vending devices.

Meet Genpact Cora

Technology initiatives due for roll out.

The impact so far

• Quality of service: Positive movements in timeliness and accuracy of SLAs over 18 months
• Compliance : Centralization of controls into a global center of excellence, automation of controls, and continuous monitoring have greatly improved compliance
• Cost: Significant cost reduction of 41% in finance operations through a combination of increased process standardization, better ERP use, and a more integrated supply chain. Digital interventions are set to deliver further value

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• December 2017
• HBS Case Collection

Mondelēz International

• Format: Print
• | Language: English
• | Pages: 24

About The Author

David E. Bell

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Mondelez International Case Study

Design web page of the Accenture Mondelez International case study using existing Mondelez International Oreo creative assets. Art direct and motion design user experience and Oreo animation as user moves down the page.

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Mondelez hires Accenture to help it slash costs

• Taking inspiration from 3G Capital's slashing of costs at Heinz, Mondelez (NASDAQ: MDLZ ) has hired Accenture (NYSE: ACN ) to do similar work at the owner of Cadbury's chocolate.
• Mondelez is looking to make $3B in gross productivity savings over three years.
• "We've watched the work that 3G has done with AB InBev and Heinz," says Mondelez CEO Irene Rosenfeld, "and we believe they can be of great help to us."
• 3G uses "zero-based budgeting" whereby managers have to build budgets from scratch each year rather than basing them on the previous one. It means that executives have to re-justify expenses every year.
• Following the acquisition of Heinz by 3G and Berkshire Hathaway, the food group has cut 2,000 jobs and closed three plants.

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Vr onboarding: how accenture is redefining hr with metaverse technology.

by HRD Connect | Case Studies

• Date published: Feb 13, 2023

It’s no secret the HR function is changing. 91% of HR leaders believe the scope of their role has changed in the last five years, and 73% feel the term ‘Human Resources’ is outdated, reflecting its administrative past rather than its agile future. And yet, the adoption of emerging technologies that are accelerating the innovation of practices such as immersive learning is sluggish. HR leaders feel they lack the right technology and the skills to implement it at scale.

At Accenture, however, emerging technologies such as VR and the metaverse are revolutionizing the HR function. The ‘Nth Floor,’ is Accenture’s pioneering application of the metaverse where the firm has rolled out a new immersive experience as part of its onboarding process. It has created virtual counterparts of physical offices that have helped improve hybrid collaboration and networking. It provides a platform for immersive learning. The scale of Accenture’s metaverse is seriously impressive:

• Accenture has onboarded over 150,000 employees in the metaverse
• Post-onboarding surveys have scored 94% favorability
• Accenture has delivered hundreds of community gatherings, including an annual strategy meeting for 150 managing directors in 25 countries

Olly Jeffers, Accenture’s Global Onboarding Metaverse Lead, takes us up to the Nth floor to look at how metaverse technology is redefining Accenture’s HR practices.

Accenture’s enterprise metaverse: The Nth Floor

Accenture has always prioritized experimenting with the latest technologies and using them at the enterprise level. Indeed, it has explored the use of virtual worlds for over 15 years. With the world forced into remote and hybrid working over the past three years, and the maturity of VR and metaverse technology, it began exploring ways to bring its global workforce together beyond traditional email, phone calls, and video meetings. Through a series of pilots and experiments, it evaluated the use-case of metaverse technology for parts of the onboarding journey. Jeffers describes the early adoption of this technology among the HR team at Accenture.

“We started to see that the metaverse was providing our people with a social and collaborative touchpoint. It was a spontaneous connection at a time when it wasn’t possible to meet in person. It was very memorable for our employees, and fun, so we began to create One Accenture Park for our employee onboarding.”

“Having brought aspects of our onboarding experience inside the metaverse for our new joiners, our leadership was immediately bought in. We rolled out metaverse technology beyond the onboarding experience. The Nth floor was born.”

How Accenture is applying metaverse technology

Accenture believes the Nth floor to be the world’s largest enterprise metaverse. It spans onboarding, immersive learning, collaboration, socializing, and wellness. Not only has it completely re-imagined the onboarding experience for new starters, but it has helped Accenture to tackle issues including hybrid working and engaging L&D programs that improve the quality of leadership skills across the globe. Let’s explore the depths of the Nth Floor and how it is accelerating the digitization of myriad HR functions.

One Accenture Park is a home for new joiners. In the metaverse onboarding hub, employees going through onboarding can network, meet their peers, and learn about Accenture’s culture and business practices. The immersive experience begins on their second day. Jeffers explains the two-part experience that follows.

“Firstly, we welcome new joiners into a conference room designed to replicate Accenture’s physical office spaces. This is a chance for them to move around, talk with other new joiners, and acclimatize themselves to the technology. Subsequently, their ‘park ranger’ will lead them down a corridor and see One Accenture Park open in front of them in Jurassic Park style.”

“They then move into smaller groups and take part in a small bonding exercise. When they return, they begin to learn about what Accenture does and how we work. A mock client provides them with business challenges that they solve as a team. The new joiners get a taste of what it’s like to work for Accenture in an immersive world, free from distractions, and far more engaging than any other remote onboarding.”

To date, Accenture has onboarded over 150,000 employees in One Accenture Park. This remarkable achievement shows how emerging technologies like the metaverse, and VR, can not only help HR teams scale their work, but also improve employee experience across the full course of the employee lifecycle. The feedback Accenture has received through post-onboarding surveys and even organic employee feedback is a testament to the journey it has created. The virtual onboarding received an average rating of 4.7 on a 5-point scale (94% favorability). A new starter recently shared the following feedback:

“ The inclusion of One Accenture Park brought another dimension of engagement during the onboarding process. It allowed a different approach to our learning, exploring, and interaction within my new start group whilst being able to get hands-on with technology. This added to the excitement and enthusiasm, so much so that myself and a couple of colleagues decided to further explore the capabilities of the metaverse and socialize in VR. We discovered things like being able to explore different Accenture offices, project a presentation on a giant skyscraper and play games.” – Delvin Monzon, Technology Architect, Accenture

It has also been a constant evolution and learning exercise for Accenture.

“It’s taken the work of many teams, and many people to create One Accenture Park. That work hasn’t stopped either. We continue to develop and grow the spaces and build new experiences. Building a world like this means forging strong relationships with a vast range of teams. This included learning experience teams, our instructional designers, and onboarding experts. Most importantly, we worked very closely with our XR team. These designers, developers, and artists bring these ideas to life. They are the architects of these virtual spaces.”

Immersive Learning

Organizations are only just beginning to recognize the scope VR technology can have for L&D programs. Previously limited to more technical or dangerous use cases , immersive learning can be applied to countless hard and soft skills to facilitate development. Demand for job roles such as instructional designers is increasing as HR leaders look to understand what applications immersive learning may have. Accenture’s Nth floor has revolutionized its approach to learning and development at all levels of the organization.

It has held hundreds of community gatherings in immersive spaces. For example, at an annual strategy meeting with client account leaders, Accenture created a virtual lounge using a combination of avatars and realistic meeting spaces to provide a deeper sense of connection. The result was more than 150 managing directors in 25 countries, enjoying face-to-face time from their locations. Jeffers talks through another example: ‘The Leadership Essentials Mountain.’

“On the lower level of One Accenture Park, there’s something called the ‘NJ Expo’. It’s an interactive museum where people can discover key Accenture topics, such as having a successful career at Accenture. One of these is the Leadership Essentials Mountain. We’re using pneumonic devices, analogies, and metaphors to get the key essence of the topic across in a very memorable way.”

“With the Leadership Essentials Mountain, we encourage people to explore seven mountain checkpoints on a journey to discover what the leadership essentials are. Employees learn the characteristics and behaviors that exemplify how we lead at Accenture when they reach each checkpoint. Eventually, they reach the top of the mountain, and through this virtual gamification, they’ve learned the essentials.”

These revolutionary immersive learning journeys replicate many of the benefits of more traditional, in-person learning events, that cannot video meetings cannot capture.

“When you put the VR headset on, you remove all distractions. On a normal call, message alerts are firing off, emails coming in, or other phone calls coming through. It can be challenging to just focus. We remove a lot of the noise.”

“Secondly, the spatial audio used in the Nth Floor replicates the real world. In the real world, if I wanted to talk to someone in person, I could do so without disturbing the meeting. With video meetings, it tends to be that only one person can talk at a time. For events like watching a speaker on a stage, it allows you to reflect and have a conversation about what you’re hearing at the moment.”

“Lastly, in a networking setting, you can dynamically move from conversation to conversation and focus on the information that matters to you. We’re seeing this help our learners reflect on what they’re learning, which supports our durable learning principles.”

Socializing

An immersive learning model like this relies on leveraging early adopters. These are individuals within the organization who are eager to embrace innovative technology. Such change agents can help socialize it among teams. Accenture worked closely with a core network of employees who recognized the possibilities with metaverse and empowered them to create events within the Nth Floor to learn, connect, and socialize.

“It doesn’t intend to ever replace face-to-face connections. But for an organization with the global scale of Accenture, it’s not always possible to have people come together.”

“Especially for teams that are spread across large distances, or just can’t travel to the office, the Nth Floor gives them the power to come together, feel present, and be with their colleagues. Take a daily stand-up. Now we can meet on the beach at One Accenture Park and hear the waves on the sand.”

As the hybrid conversation continues in full swing, organizations that seek ways to augment the benefits of in-person work in remote environments stand to improve employee engagement by offering their workforce more personal ways of connecting.

The future of Accenture’s metaverse

Unlike its physical counterparts, the Nth floor has the benefit of continued expansion and consistent reimagination. With metaverse champions creating new events and opportunities for virtual collaboration, and support from the C-Suite, Accenture has secured buy-in at all levels to continue evolving.

“We’re very excited for the future of the metaverse and how Accenture can use these tools. Beyond the HR function, it’s helping us serve our customers. We’re already showing our clients how the metaverse will transform business and using our story as the proof-of-concept.”

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