October 13, 2021
20 min Listen
Chris Gaffney, a former Vice President of Global Strategic Supply Chain
at Coca-Cola, shares his digital transformation lessons.
Some leaders innately understand how to inspire transformation, both in organizations and in people. In this episode of Masters of Digital Transformation, Tony hosts Chris Gaffney, former VP Global Strategic Supply Chain at Coca-Cola Company and current Principal at ECG. Chris built a strong career focused on distribution, logistics, and supply chain, as well as mentorship, and shares his knowledge of digital transformation, with an emphasis on planning.
Key Takeaways
Seek outside perspectives to inspire your digital transformation
It can be a challenge for established companies to embrace change--especially digital advancements. To help facilitate and accelerate digital transformation within Coca-Cola, Chris looked to his industry peers and leaders to see how their organizations’ were implementing digital strategies. Another challenge companies may face in implementing digital transformation is gaining buy-in from executives and key stakeholders. Coca-Cola’s executives were encouraged to meet with their peers at companies that were leaders in change to help digital transformation concepts transition from “hype” to actionable initiatives.
Align transformation with business initiatives
Another key way to gain buy-in at the top levels within an organization is to ensure that digital transformation initiatives are aligned with the organization’s enterprise strategy. A successful transformation can also take off throughout an organization by selecting “lighthouse” geographies to provide resources and test out concepts that could be applied to the larger organization.
Set a foundation to build a legacy
Throughout each phase in his career--from logistics to supply chain--operations and planning played a pivotal role. As his career grew, planning processes and strategies (operations planning, infrastructure planning, and supply chain planning strategy) continued to advance. Along the way, he developed tremendous technical, operational, and leadership experience that he continues to pay forward to colleagues and up-and-coming professionals. In doing so, the knowledge that built his career can set the foundation for many careers to come.
About the authors
o9
The Digital Brain Platform
o9 Solutions is a leading Enterprise Knowledge and AI-powered platform helping companies build Agile, Adaptive & Autonomous Planning & Execution Models for transforming enterprise decision-making in environments of rising volatility and uncertainty. Whether it is improving forecast accuracy, matching demand and supply and driving collaboration across the multi-tier supply chain to improve resilience at optimal costs and inventory, or optimizing new product and commercial initiatives to drive revenue growth and margins, decision-making processes from long-range to tactical to execution horizon can be made faster and smarter and connected on o9’s Digital Brain Platform.
o9 brings together game-changing technology innovations — such as innovative enterprise knowledge graph modeling, big data analytics, advanced algorithms for forecasting, demand/supply balancing, scenario planning, real time learning, collaboration, generative and agentic AI, easy-to-use interfaces and cloud-based delivery, and innovative management methods — as well as organization, process and change management best practices to transform decision-making speed and intelligence.
