Interview with: Victor C. Barnes, Global CFO, The McDonald’s Division, The Coca-Cola Company

1. working off snapshots of data. Other-
wise three months down the road as
changes occur, data integrity erodes.
Again, the connections must be auto-
mated. It has to be a two-way highway
to pull and push information as neces-
sary.
Why do you believe digital transfor-
mation is as much human nature as
it is technology-driven?
There is often a lack of understanding of
why we need to change. Making it
understood by the company, but also
the individuals. People tend to ask
themselves, how does this help me? I
spend time making sure our teams
understand the scale and speed of
change, and how we have to grow
marketable skills. It is not about
automating processes to eliminate
people, but rather to leverage their
skills and ignite engagement in individu-
als who would rather spend more time
thinking about the business and cus-
tomers than gathering and inputting,
and reconciling data.
Over the past few years our company
has implemented a new culture defined
by curiosity, being empowered, itera-
tive, and leveraging diversity. We have
to inspire people to want more, to see
this is not just a “flavor-of-the-day”
exercise. One must continually navigate
through three forces that can impede
progress on your Transformation
Journey: (1) Underutilized Resources,
(2) “Not-Invented-Here mentality”, and
(3) Inertia: cultural norms skeptical of
change.
There is
often a lack of
understanding
of why we need
to change
What CFOs Can Learn from The Coca-Cola
Company’s Digital Transformation Journey
Interview with: Victor C. Barnes,
Global CFO, The McDonald’s Divi-
sion, The Coca-Cola Company
“To make digital transformation a
success, CFOs need to understand
addressing human nature may impact
the journey as much as the chosen
technology,” recommends Victor C.
Barnes, Global CFO, The McDonald’s
Division, The Coca-Cola Company.
“CFOs who really believe digital trans-
formation is the key to prospering in the
future should encourage their teams to
seek and nurture networks with others
across departments, functions, and
companies,” he adds.
Barnes is a speaker at the marcus
evans CFO Summit XXXVI 2019,
taking place in Palm Beach, May 9-11.
Can you outline the digital transfor-
mation journey The Coca-Cola
Company (“TCCC”) is undergoing?
The most visible changes I noticed were
just a few years ago when TCCC began
moving physical servers to the cloud. At
the same time, I was brokering the
digitization of a cloud-based global
statutory financial statement system. In
2017 one of our North America product
commercialization teams moved the
process of exchanging Excel forecasts
back and forth via email between 60+
distributors, to one cloud-based proc-
ess; soon after, a similar (manual
spreadsheet-to-cloud) evolution oc-
curred with our 3yr planning across four
business units including the Canada BU
finance team I led. I took note of these
two ground-breaking developments led
by colleagues in our Atlanta HDQ who
would share their knowledge with me to
propel my efforts.
Our digital transformation continues to
be a journey. In many instances there
are pockets of individuals pushing the
agenda forward. TCCC has not com-
pletely digitized the enterprise yet but
we are on our way.
What lessons have you learned so
far? What do other CFOs need to
know?
Learn from others! A very progressive
leader at TCCC helped me prepare for
my first Digital Transformation Keynote,
which propels me still today. He shared
three steps: “(1) get your data in the
cloud; (2) push for data transparency;
and (3) apply aspects of artificial
intelligence (AI) and visualization
software to help you make better
decisions. Implementing AI is tricky
because then you need a cohesive
approach to make sure various parts of
the company are not all chasing differ-
ent shiny objects. You’ll have choices
among many companies offering
platforms for “Finance Transformation”,
marketing insights, supply chain
forecasting with AI, and so on. It is
those networks you foster inside and
outside of your company that will help
avoid creating un-aligned processes
which could make things worse!
As we began our journey in my current
role, I made sure my team connected
with others that had already digitized
and with others thinking about it. They
told us about their successes and
failures. We created a technology
steering committee to facilitate collabo-
ration within our Division and with other
parts of TCCC. This is an ongoing
process that requires persistence. It just
has to be part of the DNA of the team
so that the transformation occurs in an
intelligent way.
What issues have you faced? How
are you dealing with them?
The primary one is data integrity. There
are multiple owners of data, as it is a
large company, so we have to get
individuals to understand digital projects
will go nowhere unless the data is clean.
Many resources at TCCC are focused on
all-important data governance – I keep
them informed of what my team and I
are working on. For example, as we
build a volume forecasting tool, we
make sure that our data standards (e.g.
brand/pack/category) are automatically
governed by data standards directly
from its source, as opposed to us

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