When he took over as president of Grupo Pão de Açúcar (GPA) in April 2018, executive Peter Estermann began discussing with Antônio Salvador, then vice president of human resources, the hiring of a professional to oversee the digitalization of the retail chain's business.
GPA already had several digital projects underway and was a pioneer in various areas (a brief aside: does anyone remember Amélia, the first e-commerce food website in Brazil, which was a GPA initiative in the 2000s?). But the duo's assessment was that the current initiatives were too dispersed and scattered throughout the company.
Salvador was tasked with finding an executive who would be responsible for managing all these projects internally. After several interviews with candidates of various profiles, ranging from professionals with experience in technology to those with backgrounds in startups, Salvador returned with the solution for Estermann. "I have a candidate for you: it's me," he said, to the surprise of the GPA president.
Although surprised, Estermann agreed. Salvador had experience with technology. He had previously worked at IBM and the consulting firm Pricewaterhouse, where he worked on projects involving the implementation of enterprise software such as SAP and Oracle. Soon after, he moved into human resources and had been at GPA for six years managing the HR area. “If we brought someone from outside, they would have difficulty adapting,” Salvador told NeoFeed . “This is a very significant cultural change process, and the person who would be in charge of this new area needed to exercise very strong leadership.”
Since September of last year, Salvador has been the Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of GPA. In practice, the executive oversees the entire digital transformation and e-commerce process of the Brazilian retail group, controlled by the French company Casino. It's a new role, which is beginning to gain traction in the Brazilian corporate world, but is already well-established in large companies worldwide.
The first professionals to hold the title of Chief Digital Officer date back to 2008. At the time, it was estimated that there were fewer than 10 people with this title in the world. In 2010, the number quintupled, reaching 50 executives globally. In 2015, the number rose to over 2,000. In 2017, a study by Strategy@ (PwC) found that 19% of large global companies already had an executive to oversee digital transformation on their staff. Furthermore, 60% of them were hired after 2015.
There is no data on the adoption of the position in Brazil. But a quick search on LinkedIn shows that the acronym CDO is beginning to timidly appear on the resumes of professionals who access the professional social network. “The Chief Digital Officer is a very new role, and headhunting firms only started recruiting more frequently in the Brazilian market two years ago,” says Mario Custódio, director of Executive Search at Robert Half. “This professional needs to have a very broad business vision combined with leadership. They can't just be technically brilliant.”
According to experts interviewed by NeoFeed , the Chief Digital Officer has six main responsibilities. The most important is implementing the company's digital strategy. They also act as a kind of agent for this transformation, integrating it with all other areas. Furthermore, this professional is responsible for researching new marketing channels and new business models. They should also help expand the digital ecosystem within the company, establishing connections with startups and associations. Another competency is developing digital talent internally. And finally, they must do all this using metrics that guarantee a return on investment.
In addition to Salvador, at GPA, NeoFeed also spoke with Andrea Iorio, who took on the role in the professional products division at cosmetics manufacturer L'Oréal last October, and Venâncio Velloso, recently hired as Chief Digital Officer by the brokerage firm Genial Investimentos.
Unlike the GPA executive, both come from startup backgrounds. Iorio was CEO of the dating app Tinder. Velloso worked at Amazon Brazil in the marketplace area – before that, he founded Webpesados, a portal for selling heavy machinery. In common, both have extensive experience in e-commerce and the internet.
However, they are taking their first steps in this new role. Iorio, for example, is working on omnichannel projects at L'Oréal, integrating online and offline sales channels. In addition, he is developing a strategy for capturing and mining data on the behavior of the brand's female consumers. "With the growth of artificial intelligence, we will be able to personalize the digital experience for anyone," says Iorio.
Genial Investimentos, in turn, is starting a long-term project. "The idea is to transform the company into a fintech," says Velloso, who is designing the structure and plan he will work on. "The focus is on transforming processes, making them more agile and digital," states the executive.
Strategic data
While L'Oréal and Genial Investimentos are just beginning to structure their digital areas, Salvador, from GPA, already has a significant legacy of initiatives in this field. Despite only being Chief Digital Officer for nine months, he is accelerating a series of projects.
When he took on the role, his first task was to organize the new department. This work lasted four months. Salvador was responsible for the CRM area, which collects digital customer data to generate insights and digital products. This includes Pão de Açúcar Mais and Clube Extra, GPA's loyalty programs. Another area managed by GPA's CDO was e-commerce, which includes the website and the app. And finally, he also oversees the technology area.
With the structure defined, Salvador moved on to strategy. One of these strategies is to approach startups that solve what the executive calls the "pain points" of Pão de Açúcar's customers and that serve "pieces of the retail value chain." To this end, GPA partnered with Liga Retail, a company that helps select and discover these startups.
It was through this strategy that GPA acquired a minority stake in Cheftime, a startup that offers a subscription service and sells individual meal kits. Salvador states that if the company meets certain goals, the objective is to acquire 100% control. "We're not like a venture capital fund that just wants to make money," says Salvador.
An example of what Salvador is saying is James Delivery, an app for ordering and delivering products, which competes with the Colombian Rappi and the Brazilian Loggi, acquired last year by GPA. At the beginning of April, the app arrived in the city of São Paulo, and the plan is to take it to ten more cities in 2019. "If I outsource the delivery operation, I start losing data and my customer journey," says Salvador. "This data is strategic."
Data is not just strategic; it's also a goldmine. And GPA is aware of this. Consider the example of Meu Desconto (My Discount), a feature of the Pão de Açúcar Mais app. Through it, the retailer's suppliers can offer personalized discounts to customers. "The industry can be more assertive in its offers," says Salvador. In the future, GPA plans to sell this information to the industry. "We are improving the platform," says the executive, emphasizing that the data is never individualized and preserves customer privacy.
Pão de Açúcar stores are also undergoing a digital transformation process. New formats are being tested to make life easier for the consumer. One of them is the pre-scanning of products, where an operator equipped with a mobile reader registers all items, removing and placing the purchases back in the cart. Then, they provide a QR Code to the consumer who pays the bill at the self-service checkout.
Another innovation being tested is "Shop and Go." In this model, the consumer makes a purchase in the physical store and requests that it be delivered to their home within four hours. Payment is made when the consumer receives the order at the address provided. "The customer journey has to be simple and needs to be the way the customer wants it."
The strategy is to be channel-agnostic, offering consumers all alternatives. GPA has customers who only shop in physical stores. There are others who only access the e-commerce website. The major discovery made by Salvador, when analyzing the data, is that those who shop both online and in physical stores have a monthly shopping basket that is double that of others. "This only shows the importance of 'omnichannel'," says the executive, referring to offering various channels of contact with the customer. It also shows the relevance of investments in digitally transforming their businesses.
