International Retailer FMCG - Digital / IT Operating Model

The international retailer has a strong position in multiple countries and regularly innovates with new shop concepts, marketing initiatives, and offerings via digital channels.

Still, while a dedicated team pushes digital frontends successfully, corporate IT as a whole has a challenge. The fundamental technology of many of their core systems is end-of-life, software development is done in a classic way, and IT processes are defined and lived in a very traditional manner. More and more the company is becoming problems to attract young IT talent, respectively to avoid the departure of such people after 2-3 years.

Such leaves are worrisome from different angles. At this stage, people would have built up a good understanding of the complexities in the firm (in particular data, processes, interfaces, and systems), as well as built relationships with their business partners and peers to tackle more complex problems.

The goal of the project was to develop a new digital / IT operating model with a team of IT executives, considering the following key points in particular:

• Consider aspects of multi-speed-IT and frameworks for agile scaling
• Allow driving an IT transformation at scale to build future-oriented IT platforms while maintaining the existing application landscape
• Develop a well-suited collaboration model between business, developers, operations, and cross-departmental functions
• Provide a better fit to young talents, as well as experienced staff to drive their careers and increase job satisfaction while working on essential projects and products for the corporation

The following approach has been taken to develop a new target digital / IT operating model with the IT executives:

• Session on the specific situation, challenges, and opportunities
• Session on industry trends in the area of digital / IT operating model and examples of typical organizational designs
• Iterative drafting of two scenarios for the target IT operating model
• Final workshop and sign off

The project length for developing the new (high-level) target digital / IT operating model was approximately 10 weeks.