Five years in five months: the leap from traditional to digital operations

What you will read here:

• From a traditional giant to a start-up in a few days
• Digital culture and the discovery of opportunities
• IT as the protagonist of change

With 45 years in Brazil, the Carrefour chain has built a solid operation that today has 72 thousand employees and 498 stores distributed in 26 states. These figures that make it the largest food retailer in the country have a strong organizational structure behind it that has been undergoing a major digital transformation in recent years. As partners in this journey, we at CI&T have guided and followed major initiatives and significant and successful changes by the company towards speed and agility in meeting consumer desires in the digital environment.

We are also witnesses of the speed and efficiency with which this giant moved when the market - which was already uncertain, fast and volatile - lived through the shock caused by the arrival of the pandemic of COVID-19. In just a few days, the company managed to establish everything from structural changes - how to make 27,000 people work 100% in the home office and take actions to ensure the safety and comfort of customers and employees - to new management practices. All of this was possible thanks to the digital transformation process that was already underway, with a growing focus on the consumer and a culture increasingly focused on collaboration and experimentation in search of delivering more and more value to customers. 

These steps, challenges and learnings of the transformation journey in the new scenario were told in our podcast (in Portuguese) by Carrefour's CIO, Paulo Farroco, in a light chat with our CTO, Bruno Simioni, under the mediation of our CSO, Bob Wollheim. In this text, we bring some highlights of this conversation. 

Five years in five months

When the need for social isolation and the consequent obligation to close a large part of commerce, services and offices was established, the great challenge, both for Carrefour and for most companies, was - and is being - dealing with urgency to have operational structures prepared for the VUCA world (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous). It was the acceleration of digital knocking on company doors unexpectedly. 
 
There was no time to plan new practices capable of responding with speed and agility to the new needs that suddenly appeared. It was necessary to act on the facts. Thus, Carrefour executives quickly acted in expanding the number of squads - or autonomous multi-disciplinary teams that work with a focus on solving customers' pains - to address the many new demands that have emerged. These teams immediately took on tasks ranging from improving digital communication and sales channels so that they were able to cope with the growth of orders, to create solutions for stores to continue to function properly.

This was possible because the model of working in squads and the culture of rapid experimentation were already part of the company's operating design. Following a safe and sustainable journey of digital transformation guided by CI&T in recent years, teams multiplied according to the needs that arose. Thus, when there was a need to speed up decision-making and carry out tests, everyone knew the ways. This readiness allowed Carrefour to innovate with speed and bring pioneering and effective solutions.

Digital culture and the discovery of opportunities

All of these actions, as well as the various social initiatives developed by the company - such as making 40,000 masks and preparing basic food baskets for distribution to needy communities - were also the result of the new digital culture of the company. The ideas were born from Design practices and rites, in which the discovery of the most pressing needs of consumers and society was the focus. 

Apart from physical measures, studies carried out by the teams pointed out opportunities for developing digital solutions. For example, the information that, in São Paulo alone, 250 thousand elderly people live alone. Aware that this group needed extra support for their vulnerability in a pandemic scenario, the squads responsible for e-commerce, developed a feature to prioritize people aged 60 or over, in addition to creating a new type of service in the Contact Center prepared to guide and assist these people in their online shopping. 

Technology professionals as protagonists of change

Behind all this, enabling actions and operational changes and supporting cultural transformations, is the good use of new technologies. To achieve this good performance with the necessary speed, however, IT professionals had to gain prominence at the table where the company's strategic decisions are made. 

Before, acting more to "solve technological problems" in the business, IT professionals took the lead not only with regard to the implementation of tools and solutions, but also in the study of opportunities and action planning. At Carrefour, this movement has been clear since the establishment of the new market scenario, but it is also being evident in all companies. 

And following the forecast of Mark Andreessen, founder of Netscape, who said that in the future, the whole company will be a technology company, at CI&T we understand this moment of great transformations and uncertainties that we are going through as a great opportunity to embark on this future as soon as possible. Thus, we offer the market our learnings, knowledge that can help to cut paths and set the course in their digital transformation processes, and we support our customers in accelerating their journeys safely. As a great example of this new vision, Carrefour has already taken the lead and put into practice one of the great teachings of management philosophy that guides us "learning by doing". 

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