Nothing quite says summer like Oscar Mayer hot dogs, Kool-Aid and french fries slathered with Heinz ketchup. For decades, Kraft Heinz has dominated our dinner tables and, as a result, has grown into a $26.12 billion dollar global enterprise. 

However, consumer tastes and priorities are changing. People increasingly want organic and natural products free of dyes and other chemicals. Some are even turning away from pre-packaged food altogether in light of recent research that links processed foods to poor health outcomes. 

The increased competition has not gone unnoticed by Kraft Heinz. As CEO Miguel Patricio recently told reporters, “Kraft Heinz has played defense for far too long. We are now moving to offense. We are leading instead of following, and we are making decisions to win big, not just to make small safe plays. We are changing the game."

But that’s not all. Supply chain challenges, surging demand for blockbuster products, evolving food safety regulations, and inflation are just some of the problems CPG companies like Kraft Heinz are facing. To confront these challenges and future-proof the enterprise, Kraft Heinz is undergoing a massive, multi-year digital transformation. 

Kraft Heinz’s Transformation Roadmap

In September of 2020, Kraft Heinz revealed its digital transformation to the world. Centered around elevating the consumer experience, this new strategy aims to:

• Increase agility & scalability via a revamped operating model
• Deliver $2B in gross savings between 2020 and 2024 from efficiencies in procurement, manufacturing and logistics
• Prioritize high return investments in growth, with a 30% planned increase in marketing and advertising spend
• Leverage its scale to positively impact the world, i.e. 100% Heinz ketchup tomatoes sustainably sourced from “Seed to Bottle” by 2025

*Image sourced from https://mms.businesswire.com/media/20200915005730/en/821344/1/Kraft+Heinz+Investor+Day_Fact+Sheet_FINAL+FOR+BUSINESS+WIRE.pdf

A component of this strategy is the redesign of Kraft Heinz’s consumer platforms. First and foremost, it would be consolidating its portfolio of 55 individual products into six consumer-driven platforms, listed below. 

• Taste Elevation
• Easy Meals Made Better
• Real Food Snacking
• Fast Fresh Meals
• Easy Indulgent Desserts
• Flavorful Hydration

As Kraft Heinz Chief Growth Officer, Nina Barton, explained to FoodDive, “"We were fighting too many small battles, diluting our efforts and slowing us down. This narrow focus caused us to miss the larger, more holistic consumer needs that would truly shift the business. And our size was working against us, instead of our scale working for us. By 2019, our innovation was taking longer, and yielding much smaller results than that of our competition — 50% smaller, in fact."

The company would also be expanding the footprint of its Ops Center - a supply chain CoE that “brings together the value chain on an end-to-end basis, creating a fast, adaptable, integrated supply chain with greater visibility. It is designed to be the key source of fuel for growth by driving better alignment across the Company, streamlining day-to-day processes, and deploying technology and data analytics towards continuous improvement.” It is this team that will likely generate the $2 billion of gross productivity efficiencies mentioned before. 

Enter Enterprise Data

In order to support these efforts, Kraft Heinz has also transformed its data and analytics operations. First they moved a largely on-premises data infrastructure based on Hadoop to the cloud. Secondly, they implemented Snowflake’s Data Clous solution, in part, to make it easier for users to access and consume third-party data sources, a critical component of its data strategy.  

In addition, Kraft Heinz also implemented Microsoft Azure to create “a single, unified data hub that drives its day-to-day operations globally and is also scalable and flexible enough to support new digital transformation projects.”

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