Winning Formula For Successful
Digital Transformation In Shared Services

In this first session of the Masterclass for O2C GPOs, Gunther Smets sheds light on how he has seen the role of a Global Process Owner (GPO) in Global Business Services (GBS) evolve over the last several years. Also, find the answers to important questions like scaling, process improvements in people, KPIs and change management.

Nathan booth [0:11]
Welcome to everyone already joining in. We’re excited to get started and we will begin the session in just a couple more minutes.
Nathan booth [1:37]
I see more and more people have joined us again, welcome to everyone already joining in. We are excited to get started. And we will begin in just one minute here very, very shortly.
Welcome. All right, and here we go. Hello, Everyone. And thank you for joining this session. My name is Nathan Booth and I will be your facilitator. Just a few notes before we get started. All participants will be on mute. So if you have a question, please enter into the Q&A section right below your attendee screen. The recording of today’s session will be available by the end of the day. And if you want a copy of the presentation right away, please visit the Shared Services Tech LinkedIn page, linked in the details section of this session. Also, we’d appreciate it if you took some time to leave a review and share your feedback on this session. To do so, please click the rate the session in the details or send some love our way with the hearts above the video player.
That being said, welcome to the Masterclass for the Order to Cash GPOs. This is the first of a two-part Masterclass that Gunther Smets, Global Operations Lead for Credit to Cash at Cargill is hosting. Gunther has been at Cargill for almost 15 years in various roles within the financial risk area as the EMEA counterparty risk lead, the Global Credit Manager for animal nutrition enterprise, Forex, and commodity risk, and since the last year as the Global Credit to Cash Process Manager. Gunther, It is a pleasure to have you presenting today. And before we get started, we have a poll question to get the audience warmed up. So the audience should be able to see that poll question now. And we’d like to know what stage in the digital transformation process is your Order to Cash functions? Are you zeroing in on what matters most now and moving fast? Do you prioritizing transformation to preserve the cash flow? We’re evaluating available options and technology partners? Are you way ahead of the game? Gunther, what’s your feedback on this poll? Where do you think most of the audience will be?
Gunther Smets [4:01]
Well, I think it’s becoming pretty obvious of how you see the bars moving as well that a lot of people including ourselves as well, we’re consistently, continuously evaluating what those options are, what the technology partners are, but then equally seeing what can we do already right now. So looking at short term, medium-term and long term, as well. But it’s great to see that some people see that they’re already way ahead of the game as well. Would appreciate some of those insights as well.
Nathan booth [4:35]
Absolutely, um, we’re going to give it just a couple more seconds. But looks like we have a very large percentage of people who, as you said are in that third stage there. Go ahead and close the poll. And absolutely, a lot of our audience is sitting in that third stage. And I’m going to go ahead and jump back to the presentation Gunther. And I’m going to turn it over to you because I think that’s why people came. They’re ready to hear you talk.
Gunther Smets [5:09]
Yeah, thank you, Nathan. Thanks for the introduction there. So welcome everybody. And as Nathan already mentioned, so it splits within over two days. So today, in this session, I’ll be capturing or be covering two main topics. The first one is a bit of the journey and the evolution of the Global Process Owner of the global operation side of it on how we evolved, it’s my personal journey over the last five, six years of going into a global process management role for Credit, Cash and leading into a global operation lead role within there, on what the different stages and steps were within there. And then the equally second part of today’s session will be more about delivering revenue working capital impact on it, as well. And then we have two further sessions tomorrow, also within a Masterclass set up within there as well. So without further ado, let me immediately dive in. Which was the poll questions on that we already covered. And then, so these are the lessons. So today, it will be what the role of the Global Process Owners, including revenue, working capital, so those two in there, and then benchmarking for process excellence. So how you continuously benchmark and how data and metrics help you drive towards the top quartile, and then harmonization or process standardization, global control, and visibility. So those two sessions we have tomorrow.
So immediately diving into the first lesson, and as I said, it’s, it’s going to be a bit of a story. So it’s not going to be dealt by PowerPoint, even though we have quite a few slides. But there’s always going to be not a huge amount of content onto the slides. It’s more about me talking around it sharing some of my personal experiences within Cargill, as we went through this journey as well, what the different logical steps or at least what we thought logical steps were, but also sharing some of the tribulations, some of the challenges along that journey, as well. And not saying that the journey has completely come to an end. But at least I can give you a bit of the story until now. And so where it started from, from Global Process Ownership from a shared service approaches making sure that we’ve got our core competencies, executing on the activities, do them consistently on time and accurate so that rest of your business doesn’t need to worry about the operational perspective that that’s table stakes and that’s there. Where that we are moving forward towards in the future and saying, how can you be more of a contributor towards innovating, but also a growth catalyst for your business stakeholders and the rest of the organization as well and to be more customer-focused within a lot of the elements that we do. So there is a switch as well from what is the expectation from some of those operational finance processes that we have within our scope.
Gunther Smets [8:26]
Now, I’ll try to walk through a few stages and how we started out and very briefly. So Cargill started out from a very fragmented landscape, from a business set up from a business organization, from how we were looking at processes, it was very commercially and business-driven as a lot of advantages and agility to local markets. But you can’t really leverage your scale. And when we talked and started with the process organization, the majority of the organization in Cargill, this was another unknown element and what that means a process organization. So the very first thing, what we focused on was defining a common language. And a common language is really around a business process framework, a taxonomy within there and saying this is all of the critical components, what we’ve got this corporate processes, what we have as facilitated processes and enterprise-specific processes. What are the activities performed within all of those process elements? And then go through and seeing and where do we start delivering on some of those processes? Well, so what is the right placement for some of those activities? How can we have functional versus enterprise versus customer? What is the target technology landscape that we want to focus on? How do we define processes that drive outcomes towards the future that are consistent and sustainable, that are less focused on the transactional and on the ad hoc. So the very first step we really focused on was making sure that we had a process taxonomy. That we had the language of vocabulary that we continue to start using forwards as well. Now, within that, we started to drive a process-driven organization. And a process-driven organization means, first of all, that based on that taxonomy on that grouping of activities that we had within a total business process framework, so the total ecosystem of all of those processes that we look at people process data and technology. So, people side us, we leverage a shared service organization, which is across six global centers that are run by Cargill, across the different finance processes within there. So with a migration strategy, that we have those processes and that placement within the right kind of structure that’s in there with the right roles and responsibilities that are there, which is not an easy thing to do. But equally, then look at how are you going to enable the capabilities that you have to find within your process if you want to have a certain level of automation within there, if you want to have capabilities, visibility to your customers, or your business stakeholders within theirs. With that also comes data. And I think that’s probably front and center of a lot of people’s, of all of your mind as well, how you come to a certified data set to customer Master data within there as well. Since that slide jumped, just move it forward again.
Gunther Smets [11:43]
Here we are. So so how do we go towards that target technology and making sure that all of those elements are clearly identified within the strategy as we take it forward, as well, and with data as a very critical enabler or the glue that holds a lot of those elements together as well. Now, once we identified all of those, or as we go through identifying people, process data, and technology, we wanted to make sure that we define what does good look like so to know, what are we aiming for if you have if you want to continually, continuously improve and have a process-driven organization, you start out with identifying and saying, Well, I would be happy if we could achieve those elements within those different components within there. So we started out with a maturity assessment to have a baseline and saying, Where are we right now? Where are we versus where we want to be? Where are we versus what the market, top-quartile would be identifying within there, so that we could start having a good picture on what our current maturity was, and, and a lot of those stages and, and a lot of those elements as well, or initial maturity assessment showed that we were bottom quartile, or maybe at the low end of the medium of the market, within some of the best practices that were around. So basses on that we overlaid our process and technology architecture and saying, well, basses on the capabilities that if we deploy those processes, as we are setting them up as we deploy our technology architecture, as we have our placement strategy, as we have our location strategies, as we have our data strategies and the aggregation of data that’s in there. Does that bring us to good? Is this going to meet all of those elements within there? Is that landscape sufficient as a CBDT, or people process data technology strategy, to close that gap versus where we are right now. So once we went through that stage, as a next step within there, and this was a step that is, we underestimated, to be honest, at the beginning of it is that as a Global Process Owner, you then turn into a traveling salesman, because it’s not by defining that taxonomy or it’s not by making sure that you’ve got a business process framework that you have people process data technology, architecture, you have your baseline, you’ve got all of that visibility, that all of a sudden, your whole organization is brought into the concept of where you want to go to, or not everybody has the same kind of definition of what good is, or there are quite a few concerns around, how is it gonna disrupt my business. And the most common theme that we always had was, I am unique, it’s not going to work for me, or my business has a different kind of model where it’s gonna disrupt, be disruptive for my customers, and I’m gonna lose business at the back of that as well. So it’s that kind of roadshow, as we have it, is to get everybody on the same page, but also was very much a learning opportunity as well and saying What are some of the elements basis on all of the visibility that we can give right now all we want to do, and because this was at the beginning of the journey, is, have we missed anything. But what are going to be the main change management roadblocks, what are going to be the main roadblocks that are in there, we took too little time for this. At the beginning, if there was one thing, just maybe to be proactive on one of the questions that might pop up at the back of it, if there was one thing that I would do differently, then it would be this, it would be making sure that we spent sufficient time to get a level playing field to have a common understanding. And I’m deliberately saying understanding and not agreement because that’s something that we equally learned and seeing a common agreement in an organization with the size and complexity of Cargill, is is will never happen. And it’s also not necessarily required, but you need to get everybody on the same page, you need to get to discuss the site champion, as you move through your journey in there as well, and to get everybody within that champion mode, even if they’re not in full agreement on that as well.
Gunther Smets [16:22]
Now, that means once that’s done, and then it’s the roadmap and saying, okay, that means that I gonna have to go through there is not a silver bullet solution and saying, implement an ERP system, and everything is golden. I think plenty of us have tried that before, to say, well, technology is the driver, if you implement your technology, it’s going to fix everything else as well. If you do that, and you’re not taking care of your people aspect from a placement role, responsibilities, and from a process design and being a process into your company, or organization, then your technology is not going to drive the value and it’s actually going to be very painful, as you start implementing that technology is you’re not going to have the level of adoption, you’re going to have a performance dip at the back of it. And it’s going to cost quite a bit of pain within there. So having a roadmap to look at what is it that we need to do. Migration roadmap, from activity placement to our locations within the different countries and businesses into our shared service centers, have an organizational model over-retained organization as well, going through the different stages for that, making sure that we’ve got a standardized process design, a gap analysis within theirs. Leverage business process mining to make sure that you’ve got the visibility on how you can get towards that future state as well. Having the right initiatives that drive your efficiency value gains on an annual basis, making sure that you’ve got a data strategy for a customer Master data, but also the painful effort of D duplicating a lot of the data that you have in there, aligning the visualization of your data, spending more time on analyzing the data, instead of pulling it together. All of those elements are are not easy, they thrive, they take time. And for us, we’re now around six years on that journey within there with migrations, process, data technology, we’ve come a long way. But you see change fatigue as well within the organization with people and saying will this ever end. And it’s it’s very important that at that point in time that you also have the right leadership support within there. And it was very important that we had our CEO also call out during this journey in saying change is never going to be as slow as it is today. Change is your new normal. So it’s it’s more of a mindset on how you go through those elements as well. And it just not something that you’re going to hold your breath for two weeks, and then everything will be done and you can go back to your new normal. It’s a continuous change and a continuous improvement.
Gunther Smets [19:10]
Alongside with that, it’s a journey of patience, and very much so, a journey of patience. And that’s not an easy thing to do for any company, out of my experience to be patient with a strategy that you set. It’s very easy to move from one strategy to another, because the patience just ran out and saying I was expecting something faster. I was expecting something simpler, or I was expecting a bigger result or a bigger outcome at the back of it as well. But therefore it’s also important that every of those stages as we go through it as well, that we make sure that we can track on what that success story is or how we are continuing to move through that journey as well. That we look at, what is that baseline? Where was that starting point versus the target objectives that we have fiscal year by fiscal year by fiscal year are we delivering on those elements, looking back what’s working, what isn’t working, making sure that we’ve got growth metrics, risk metrics, that we have business process mining to showcase the voice of the process within there. Because without that visibility, it’s going to be and saying this is not working. We’re already doing this for two years, and we’re still not finished. This is a multi-year effort. It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and, and even to translate that sometimes towards a leadership team is not always the easiest thing to do, to say, well, we’re on the right track, we are getting there, look at the things we achieved, we’re still on the right things to be there. Don’t throw us off course, or throw us a curveball on some of the elements that we have. And it does happen. And so I think on a weekly basis, I do get a curveball, or there is something that’s popping up. But then being able to go back and saying that’s the strategic direction of what we need to go. And we need to hold true on what our objectives are, and just fine-tuning and not continuously changing strategy. And that, to me is and continues to be critically important within there. So this already highlights a few of those elements on how can you make sure that you stay on track as well. And that is starting from that baseline data, making sure that we have target objectives. And we matured a lot since where we started. We, if we started, for example, within migrations or within a technology process or an automation process or a process improvement process. We didn’t spend enough time on validating and making sure that we had that baseline data. And if you then start moving towards what those target objectives are, then people tend to forget very quickly what the baseline was where you start from. They only measure what the distances versus targets. So having that baseline also validate that we can celebrate success, but that we can also keep ourselves honest, that you can use that to move towards a data-driven discussion with different stakeholders instead of an anecdotal discussion. It’s critically important. Value case data on efficiency and effectiveness. So it’s not only regarding efficiency, this is not only about an SGNA reduction for the organization, it’s a part of it on how do you drive on your efficiency, and we still hover around a 9% to 10% efficiency on an annual basis within there. But it’s equally about effectiveness. And we’ll come to that in the second part of this class as well. What does that mean effectiveness? So what does that mean on what’s your impact in credit cash finance operations towards a growth catalyst on how you’re looking at making an impact on working capital for the organization as well, because the more value adds that we can do and more that we can move as efficiency and process adherence as a table stakes, the better business partners that we can become towards the future, as well. Equally on the growth and the risk metrics. So what are some of the risks that we see within everything that we do, and a part of it is prioritization. What we’ve seen throughout the years as well, is that we had too many priorities, that we had too many initiatives running in parallel, and that we were always tapping the same people on the shoulder to say, we need to in this project and it’s a great development opportunity for you to step into this. But you can’t give 20 development opportunities to the same parts of the organization as well. You’re going to tire them out, you’re going to sub perform, and you’re going to distract people of whatever your real priorities are. So to really focus on and saying, am I aware of what the noisy 90 are and the real 10 to growth and risk metrics to create a visibility is is critically important within theirs. Business process mining for us is a newer capability. So we use a tool that’s called Celonis. We’re really starting and it’s extremely powerful, where we can have a digital fit rate at the back of it. So how can we see in saying, well we’ve got our standardized process, we’ve got our target technology, but reality sometimes tells us something different. Or the anecdotes or the escalations or process metrics are telling us something different. So having the ability to go mine your processes and saying, well, what is my level adoption to the golden process or within that target technology, or that’s their. That is something that we did a pilot for last year that we very quickly decided that we wanted to implement this going forward as well. I see the question popped up on what that tool was the tool is Celonis, so C E L O N I S. That’s the tool that we used, and are currently using still for it, and so on. So we’re scaling that up, and really building that in as a capability as well. So we come down at the point as well, is good, good enough, and out good as we defined it six years ago, is no longer good enough. Because our expectations grew, we’ve got a proven track record that we can deliver on a lot of those elements as well. we migrated more than 80%, in certain cases 90% already, in all of the activities within a finance operations in one central Credit to Cash team, regardless that sits in a center or or into a region element as well, we really want to go to a very simplified model of a binary model instead of a fragmented Credit Cash model, as well between a risk management organization and a risk operations organization with over 95%, within that risk operations organization, leveraging our shared service footprint, we want to have an increased element of automation and a digital interaction model. Also, with our customers, it’s a self-serve component, more analytical skill sets. So good is no longer good enough. it’s it’s really now focusing on what are the future kind of capabilities of what we need as well, which I’ll touch more on in the second part of of of this class, as well as we go through it as well. So it’s really as we see it right now, is we’re thinking beyond cost, you cannot drive efficiencies until the end of days. It will stop. We’re not 100% there yet, we still have quite a good opportunity for efficiencies to get after over the next two to three fiscal years max. But then in the meantime, we also already start to say, what is the real business value and the impact? What are some of those revenue drivers revenue generators towards the future as well? And what’s the value add of what we have as an organization to the rest of Cargill, as well. So what are some of those key takeaways or to leave you with for this first part as well, common language, make sure to have a process taxonomy, a business process framework, as well. Having that alignment, where it’s being a more process-driven organization with people process data and technology. Make sure that you have your baseline from an “as-is”, that you have the pipeline of initiatives that you want to bring you towards the to be and that you track and measure with the right metrics across all of those areas and saying, to celebrate your successes, but to measure on how you’re performing as you go through this journey, as well. But then, most importantly, for me at least, is the patient with a strategy as well. This is a marathon, it’s not a sprint, and to keep people engaged and motivating.
As we go through those different stages, it’s not the easiest thing to achieve within there. So with that, It’s a thank you already for your attention for that first session, I’ll immediately dive into the second part of this element, as well. And I’ll see if I can pick up the pace a little bit so that we can leave some room at the end as well to address some questions that you might have on the phone as well. So I’m not going to reintroduce myself. But we’re now part of so we managed on the journey of the Global Process Owner, or what my personal experience was fitting Cargill and some of the challenges and opportunities and the learnings of what I had during those stages. And now diving into and saying, well that future, if good isn’t good enough anymore, where we left it in the last session in there. What does that mean? How do you go to the worst quarter? And is that just a hollow sentence? Or is there some real tangible actual value that you can bring from a Credit to Cash Organization towards your business organization that’s in there as well. Then lesson three, lesson four tomorrow is really around using data and insights to your advantage to drive Process Excellence and benchmarking and also standardization harmonization for global control and visibility so that I’ll leave that for tomorrow. And so the first one on here is a free drive. Really Focusing on two aspects, revenue and working capital towards as well. And that is, again from, if we look at the service delivery mindset and being a service provider, it didn’t move away. It’s not we still, but it became table stakes to deliver an accurate, consistent, timely service to the organization. That is what we, that’s table stakes. However, now we need to start becoming a strategic partner for our businesses as well, to understand what are their concerns? what are the strategic goals towards the future? What is the visibility that we have from our side? And how can we help to become a chrome catalyst and actually even immediately contribute to the future results of the organization as well. So the main question and the million-dollar question that we have in here is, how do we get there? What does that mean? What kind of capabilities do we need to build into quickly but then just with the visual to tie back to that people aspect to process the data and technology, that strategic framework remains to be critically important even as we go forward as well. To continue to deliver towards top quartile on the foundational box of where we have future-ready people’s skill sets within their with placement roles and responsibilities, having that business process framework to design the implementation, and how we continuously improve that landscape. Work on data and data visibility, data automation, automatics, analytics, as well, but also automation, data mining capabilities, self serve components, all within our technology framework remains to be critically important. Now, the key aspects where everything starts from to be a business partner within there is the stakeholder model and strategic target setting. And this is really around who talks to whom. And we’ve got the simple concept on a stakeholder model that it sounds at the ground level, that from an operational component, what we call speed dial concept. So we want to have anybody within the organization know and saying, Okay, I’ve got a practical, tangible operational issue, I know who’s on my speed dial that I can contact within there. Next to that, as well is as a next level up from a stakeholder model, it would be how do we have a monthly operational review or credit review meeting with not only saying, This is how we are proving and this is what our statistics are on how we are operationally performing all of the activities that we do for your business, but equally, sharing down What are the insights? What do we see what are some of the root causes of what we see within your data as well. So we’re actually transforming the information as we have it from an operational perspective also into business opportunities. So looking at what is trends and forecasting analysis, so what do we see happening on within the trades, accounts receivable of our business as well, which was critically important as well, during the pandemic that we’re still in as well and seeing if this trend starts to continue, this is what the impact on the accounts receivable will be. Being able to showcase that trend on the different aspects and segmentations of our portfolio of our customer basis as well. We can start having different kinds of forecasting scenarios, share that with our commercial partners, and then have an in-depth discussion about it. Equally looking at some of the diagnostic analyses, what were the root causes? Where did it go wrong? within a pricing? Where did it go wrong within a sales or contract negotiation, or a quality or a production? Wherever it is? What’s the money on the table? And how can you continue to improve all of those elements as well. And the third component that’s in here is predictive analysis. That means as well, within our processes, we’re looking at a collection strategy that’s based not only on the overdue results, and the bigger customer with the highest overdue on whatever segmentation that you might use, but even also looking at what’s the ability to predictive ability and willingness to pay over customer part of it this regression basis on past behavior of that customer. Part of it is also with a market assessment and seeing what’s happening, is it the retail business, or what type of business or whatever it is on what your market segmentation is and what we see as a market dynamic and how is it historically has impacted and predictive, gonna impact the ability and the willingness to pay off a customer, same thing from a Credit Management perspective or for a dispute perspective as well. So it’s really about looking at trends, forecasting, providing those insights.Giving a root cause analysis on what we see on what’s going wrong acts as an escalation level as well and holding people accountable to to have those improvement elements in there, and predictive and our analysis as well. What this also allows us to do is is really say, Where is the revenue leakage within the organization right now, or where do you have customer disruption, the back of some of those components as well. So it’s stepping up from purely saying a percentage went up and went down to understanding and bringing the part of our business acumen then as well to our business partners to provide those insights for improvements. Now, the other is really moving from a transaction, making sure that we manage all of the transactions on an accurate timely basis, as many as we can in the most efficient base to more on an outcome-based approach. We’re looking at a few components with an outcome-based approach as well as customer experience or customer segmentation. And a customer segmentation is not necessarily the same from Credit to Cash as your credit commercial segmentation, it’s risk-based, or experience-based or complexity based on how you can then organize your organization and how you treat that customer, and how you customize within a standardized process design as well towards what your customer experience or customer segmentation is at the back of it, you improve that customer experience, but you also improve what your underlying trade receivables result is at the back of it.
Risk Management, what it really comes down to where risk management is that we’re looking at resizing our risk pricing. So risk sizing is having more open proactive conversations with our business partners and saying, What is your nervousness threshold? What are you willing to lose? What’s your cost of doing business within a Credit to Cash base? Do you want to be aggressive? Do you want to be conservative? How do you want to measure it as a percentage of your revenue as an absolute dollar amount and overdue or credit losses or whatever it might be? And then also, how do we price for that risk? Do you have a risk-adjusted return on capital kind of logic that sits at the back of, of what you do to bring those capabilities together with our Credit Management Organization, towards our business stakeholders, who really starts to drive a different kind of holistic risk management and Credit to Cash management towards the rest of our organization as well. The rest of it, there’s also insane, create process agility, which again, over the last more than a year now with a pandemic as we go through it, but we have always different market events that go on as well. It’s making sure that we have an organization and assistant that set up that can immediately respond and that is agile, towards catering towards those elements as well as process adherence and process organizations have always a bit of the reputation to say you’re rigid and slow to change. The opportunity within a process standardization is if you’ve got your ducks in a row that actually allows you to be agile, and immediately responds to some of those elements. So it’s the advantage of having a processor of an organization that you have the size and the flexibility as well to start moving towards a much more agile way to immediately respond to some of those market events as we also see them today. So accelerating digital adoption for that capability enhancement means rolling out that Global Credit risk framework, which already talked a little bit around as well and saying resizing, risk pricing, but also making sure that we have a risk mitigation universe within there, providing those tools towards the customer, within their customer credit risk profiles, we’ve got a 360-degree view of that customer, which is a Cargill internal build scoring model, that we use credit scoring model where we can then have segmentation also predictive views of risk towards the future. But the very practical things on how can we because of risk sizing, that also means that we’re not necessarily gonna do the same kind of onboarding effort for every single customer. For a majority of our customers, onboarding is not part of a credit process or something that’s a risk that we are willing to take, that we can actually onboard our customers a lot more can faster work, start working with our customers. So therefore you also drive more revenue to it and you’re a better business partner within a risk appetite that you pre predefined as well, making sure that we’ve got highly accurate forecasting within there. I would say we’re not that highly accurate right now. We are forecasting and in a majority of cases, it’s accurate, and we want to move towards highly accurate within there. Now, and the next thing from an efficiency element, what’s in there as well as our pyramid structure was originally in that you had a lot of people that were at the bottom of the pyramid, we’re doing transactional element roles. So our efficiencies are happening at the bottom of the pyramid, as we invest in future-ready skill sets into the next layer of the pyramid within there as well. So less transactional work more value at work different kinds of profiles with future-ready skill sets within there. And then making sure that we continuously gain better control and visibility to the overall framework as we see it within the organization itself. So key takeaways that we have, again, is operational effectiveness, that growth efficiencies versus those elements that you have weigh those against each other as well. And making sure that there’s sometimes a lot more to gain by having the working capital or being Degroat capitalist as well, towards the future. Operational insights for strategic decisions, translating information into business opportunities, and then be transactions based to outcome-based approach within there, and using those digital tools as we have them on our landscape. So I’ll ramble through a bit of the end, just at least to leave some time for the Q&A at the end here. And my apologies, there are only six minutes left, but I’m sure that you all can send in your questions, and I’ll do my best to respond to all of them afterward.
Nathan booth [41:22]
Yes, thank you so much, Gunther. And we have had a couple of questions come in. And we’ll have time to get through a couple of them here before the end. Our first one is, what are some of the best change management strategies when implementing digital transformation? Ross.
Gunther Smets [41:40]
It really is the change management strategies that I’ve seen working the best is to make sure that you identify what you want to change towards. So what’s the end state that you have the visibility of for the as-is status, have a clear roadmap of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. And then take the time to bring your stakeholders alongside so that they understand and saying, Okay, I understand what you’re aiming for, I understand what you’re going for what what’s in it for me, and why you are doing it, and what’s the other value for Cargill, more broadly, within there, and then bring people alongside on that journey as well. Being very crisp and transparent in the communication that we send out. Not too willy, not too high level, but make it really tangible for people and take them along on the journey. That’s are some of the best practices and change management that I’ve seen.
Nathan booth [42:40]
That’s terrific. And I think that it’s a great addition to the presentation and I got one more question here. How different is digital adoption in the current environment as to compare let’s say 2019?
Gunther Smets [42:54]
Well, I think it’s learned us a lot over the last year, all working. Just showcasing as well, we’re having this session, digital instead into a very large hall with a lot of audiences, it’s got some pros, I can do this out of the comfort of my own home. But on the other hand, you miss about of some of that direct human interaction or having a beer with the audience afterwards as well. So you miss out on some of those components. And it’s the same thing a bit on our day-to-day operational elements. It’s, it was, let’s say, the silver lining of a very negative story otherwise, is that it forced people to start working digital and virtual within a lot of those elements. So I think what is changed mainly over the last year and a half, is that we’ve seen an acceleration and adoption in digital tools, creation of digital tools, and the awareness of what the importance is of a digital tool, the self-serve component to what to have the visibility across those different areas within there. We’ve seen a surge within demands and saying, why can’t we do this digital? Why can’t we do this in a self-serve component, where before it was still very much the case and saying, Hi, you, you need to have the proximity to your business stakeholders, you see the need to need to sit next to them, you need to have a face to face on a constant basis and that those requirements are there. We have now a proven track record that digital is actually can, it’s not fixing for everything, which is there the other side of it as well. I think it equally showcases as well, where it’s where it is important to not only have a digital solution, but you also have different kind of interaction models within there. So I think it’s helping us to define what the right line is for versus where digital can help and where digital is not necessarily the golden solution.
Nathan booth [45:03]
Absolutely. And I think, you know, your presentation today does a great job of kind of, you know, encompassing that, that shift and that change, and what does that roadmap look like? And so thank you so much for your presentation today. And thank you, everyone, for joining today’s session. I think that’s all the time that we have right now for Q&A. And so we were unable to answer your questions, we promise that we will follow up with you. And if you have additional questions regarding today’s topic, or you would like to connect with any of the presenters for further discussions, please feel free to reach out to me and also don’t forget to check out the Shared Services Tech LinkedIn page to obtain a copy of today’s presentation. And then you can also join in and discuss with some of your other attendees and, you know, reach out to some of the other presenters as well. The link is available in the details section of this session. So we look forward to seeing you and remember everyone we have to part two of this Masterclass tomorrow. And please stick around for our next session of the day. Emerging Global Trends, Intelligent Talent Management, and the Future Work for GBS at 11:15 am Central time. So take a break, grab your coffee if you need it, get a glass of water, but before you leave, we would really appreciate it if you took a few seconds to go ahead and leave some feedback on the session. Once again, thank you everybody for joining today. And have a great day.
Gunther Smets [46:30]
Thanks, everybody.