Digital Transformation: McDonald's Super Bowl

Digital Transformation in Business

• Successfully using digital technologies involves adapting business operations. Many employees feel their companies are not effectively keeping up with digital advancements.

McDonald's Super Bowl Initiative

• McDonald's implemented a marketing plan for the 2015 Super Bowl, giving away items related to commercials aired during the game. McDonald's managers did not know what products would be advertised.
• The company created a digital newsroom; employees from marketing, legal, and advertising teams, along with Sprinklr representatives, engaged with the situation as it unfolded.
• The marketing objective needed real-time monitoring, social media trend analysis, and quick decision-making to maximize the cost-effectiveness of advertising spending.
• The initiative involved different departments and business partners and resulted in 1.2 million retweets, with contributions from celebrities and becoming a trending topic globally.
• Lainey Garcia, from McDonald's, emphasized the power of integration and aligning resources, quoting founder Ray Kroc, "'None of us is as good as all of us together.’"
• McDonald's implemented digital technologies, reconfigured internal processes, communication, and relationships with business partners to achieve integration.
• McDonald's CEO said that they had implemented digital technologies into restaurants. They have been working for the past two years to become more agile, experimental, and collaborative through digital technologies.

Key Findings on Digital Technologies from MIT Sloan Management Review and Deloitte Survey

• Simply using digital technologies is insufficient for successful digital transformation.
• Strategy, culture, and talent development are more important than technology.
• Many respondents doubt their company leadership's ability to lead in a digital environment.
• The survey was conducted with over 4,800 respondents and 19 business leaders from an array of sources
• The survey rated companies on a scale of 1-10 on digital maturity. Companies were split into 3 groups, early (1 - 3), developing (4 - 6), and maturing (7 - 10)
• Digital maturity focuses on improving processes, engaging talent, and creating new business models.

Importance of Digital Strategy

• Effective digital strategies require knowing what to listen for, how to analyze data, and how to act quickly on the derived information.
• Effective digital strategies require actions rather than simply implementing technology.

Digital Strategy and Maturity

• Effective strategy is more strongly associated with digital maturity.
• Nearly 40% of respondents from early-stage companies reported moderate or great usage of digital techs, while 15% had implemented a strategy
• 88% of reponsdents from digitally maturing organizations used digital technologies moderately to a great extent, whereas 81% had implemented a strategy

Varying Objectives in Company Digital Strategies

• The majority want to improve customer interactions through Digital technologies
• Mature Digital Companies want to use digital technologies to transform their business.
• Digitally maturing companies were likelier than early-stage organizations to want ti implement digital technologies to transform business, with 35% reported
• Benn Konsynski advises companies assess how their organization's next approach is going to be through implementing digital technologies

McCormick & Co. FlavorPrint Algorithm Explanation

• McCormick & Co. Inc. developed a FlavorPrint algorithm which represents company flavors as a vector with 50 data points
• Recommendation of flavors accounts for regional, cultural and personal preference distinctions in the McCormick & Co. FlavorPrint algorithm
• Vivanda Inc. was recently spun off with Jerry Wolf as founder and CEO

Cultural and Transformation

• Key factor in leveraging digital technologies is a willingness to take risks and experiment
• Implementing tech requires shifting your existing mindset before you can leverage them
• Changing an organization's cultures is the biggest challenge when implementing a company's social collaboration platform
• Even starting a digital initiative in one part of the division can start to effect other parts of the organization

Developing Digitally Savvy Talent

• Digitally mature companies are recognized from the rest through their training and development of talent
• Companies need to offer their employees resources to obtain new skills, rather than a certain level of skill level to use new equipment
• The most important ability needed is "knowing the business and being able to conceptualize how new digital technologies can impact current business processes/models”

Types of Skills That Leaders Look for

• Leaders are seeking agility in their potential new hires
• Data skills are more important than knowing capital markets. "data-informed and mission driven" are the key
• Many are now hiring from technology backgrounds to lead digital companies

Employee Dissatisfaction

• 91% of workers agree that digital technologies have the ability to fundamentally transform their work
• 85% of workers state that using digital technologies is important
• Many workers can move to digitally mature companies because they're more optimized

What's Needed From Employees

• Employees must be willing to be digitally enabled
• Need a strategy in order to better lead the change
• The company must have a strategy and culture that is needed
• Need an environment to encourage talent
• The talent has to succeed via a mindset for companies