David Walmsley, chief digital and know-how officer at jewelry retailer Pandora, is reflecting on 4 years of glowing progress. His crew has constructed a platform for digital transformation. Now he’s keen to assist push the enterprise into new data-enabled areas.
When Laptop Weekly final spoke with Walmsley in early 2021, he’d lately transitioned from being chief digital and omnichannel officer at Pandora to his present position. He’d been tasked with utilizing his broad data to assist the corporate embrace technological innovation for high-quality buyer experiences.
“I used to be introduced into Pandora to kind out e-commerce and digital, which is what I’d been doing in John Lewis and Marks & Spencer,” he says.
“I inherited a conventional IT operate that relied on outsourcing and that didn’t have an excellent monitor document in delivering huge programmes and alter. That’s what I’ve been addressing throughout the previous 4 years, and we’ve been having loads of enjoyable ever since.”
Walmsley describes a protracted listing of tasks which were accomplished. Nevertheless, the largest shift is cultural. He’s insourced engineering and structure capabilities and constructed a powerful product administration operate. The overarching technique is to make sure that individuals in know-how deal with enterprise outcomes.
“Sure, we’ve constructed some huge stuff, however the larger change is that we now focus on how we use know-how to drive conversion, buyer satisfaction, shelf-edge availability, manufacturing, and extra,” he says.
“The method is all about asking, ‘How do you drive the result and line the know-how up behind that?’”
Whereas the answer to the enterprise problem might contain implementing an enormous IT platform, the reply at different instances would possibly contain intelligent combos of current information and know-how.
“So, we don’t exist to construct huge stuff, we exist to drive outcomes,” he says.
“And that’s the massive achievement. Whereas we now have a powerful inner know-how crew, we even have nice companions. Our successes will not be nearly doing intelligent stuff ourselves and hoping we all know greatest. Our partnerships with Salesforce, SAP and Microsoft have been a part of the gasoline that’s powered us ahead.”
Growing a digital stack
When Walmsley final spoke with Laptop Weekly, he mentioned the significance of utilizing agile-focused improvement strategies to create new experiences. That method remains to be necessary to his crew’s work at Pandora 4 years later, however with a twist.
Every enterprise area turns into a product line the place stakeholders are built-in with digital and know-how professionals in a crew. This crew runs quarterly planning conferences and establishes sprints and granular supply factors. Nevertheless, Walmsley was eager to keep away from stricter approaches, such because the scaled agile framework, that place tighter constraints on workflows.
“We don’t exist to construct huge stuff, we exist to drive outcomes. And that’s the massive achievement. Whereas we now have a powerful inner know-how crew, we even have nice companions”
David Walmsley, Pandora
“We created this phrase, ‘Pandora, the agile approach’. We wished to create our flavour of agile. We do steady enchancment and improvement from the engineers’ desktops, and automation at scale. Our methods are, in the primary, autonomous and loosely coupled. However then there are variations in between,” he says.
“Take the ERP programme with SAP. That’s a large transformation. Sure, you will be iterative in sure areas throughout the work. However constructing an ERP system is on the different finish of the spectrum. But throughout this spectrum, our digital stack is probably the most modern I’ve had in my profession. It could maintain up towards any main enterprise e-commerce stack.”
Pandora’s Digital Hub in Copenhagen performs a key half on this improvement course of. Walmsley defined in 2021 how the hub was established throughout the coronavirus pandemic as a path to e-commerce innovation. The hub, which employed 120 individuals 4 years in the past, is now dwelling to over 300 IT, digital and information analytics professionals. Walmsley units these developments inside the context of the agency’s IT hiring choices.
“We took an additional flooring of the constructing, in order that hub has been increasing during the last couple of years,” he says.
“We’ve additionally been constructing IT expertise and data. We use the phrase sustainable know-how, which is about retaining a examine on whole headcounts and prices. That method is necessary for the way we body know-how’s contribution to the enterprise.”
Constructing information foundations
Walmsley says his know-how crew’s work entails a combination of legacy streamlining on the again finish and pushing change on the entrance finish.
“My alternative as a digital chief is to drive the highest line,” he says. “All of the complexity is on the again finish. I bias my days in direction of doing intelligent stuff on the entrance finish. Nevertheless, the back-end digital transformation, throughout areas like ERP and manufacturing know-how, is important.”
Walmsley is happy with the work his crew has accomplished on the agency’s information foundations. These foundations will assist Pandora embrace rising applied sciences, notably synthetic intelligence (AI). As a member of the corporate’s govt crew, Walmsley works with the senior management crew to develop a platform for change.
“Our funding in information foundations is a basic multiplier to the place we’re going subsequent,” he says. “We’ve acquired three huge bets in AI.”
Our funding in information foundations is a basic multiplier to the place we’re going subsequent. We’ve acquired three huge bets in AI David Walmsley, Pandora
These bets embody working with Salesforce and its Agentforce product to develop agentic AI options for promoting and repair. Pandora is eight months into that relationship, and the know-how already manages a major chunk of on-line customer support requests.
The second huge guess is product improvement. Right here, the crew explores how AI may help deliver new merchandise to market. Lastly, the third guess is back-end automation throughout the organisation, utilizing productivity-boosting applied sciences from suppliers similar to Microsoft and SAP.
Walmsley says Pandora’s explorations depart him to conclude that profitable exploitation of AI requires a focused method. CIOs can undergo from a concern of lacking out on the subject of AI, particularly when chief executives and different C-suite members pile on the stress for innovation. Walmsley advises his friends to carry agency and deal with enterprise outcomes.
“If you wish to use AI, superb,” he says. “However when it comes to the strategic bets, focus in your factors of aggressive benefit. Don’t get distracted. Preserve your friends and your online business leaders targeted on methods to apply AI to your factors of strategic benefit.”
Honing the platform
As a key help for its digital transformation programme, Pandora is utilizing Rise with SAP, with SAP S/4Hana Cloud because the core of Pandora’s new ERP system. Walmsley says the push behind the transfer to SAP was a need for consolidation.
“We had 5 legacy ERPs we needed to substitute – in case you want a brand new roof on the home, you pay some huge cash and also you get a brand new roof,” he says.
“However we took the chance from the beginning of our digital transformation to assume, ‘Okay, what makes a distinction?’ And for me, the again finish of the enterprise drives the shopper proposition.”
Walmsley says strong back-end infrastructure ensures Pandora will get the best product to the best place on the proper time. This functionality is an important differentiator within the digital market, offering clients a transparent sense of inventory choices and availability. The corporate additionally makes use of the SAP Digital Manufacturing Cloud to plan orders and analyse eventualities.
“We have now over 15,000 individuals who make our jewelry in Thailand, all on the payroll, all wonderful individuals, they usually have been engaged on pen and paper,” he says.
“The digitisation of the again finish will get mild on the store flooring. ERP offers us a digital spine. Then we’ve acquired discrete platforms, such because the merchandising and warehouse administration methods.”
The SAP know-how deployment started at first of this yr, and the tempo continues to speed up. Pandora ran a collection of pilots with SAP and is creating three core ERP methods: one for promoting and finance, one for distribution, and one other for manufacturing.
Walmsley says the back-end infrastructure modifications are reworking the working lives of 1000’s of individuals on the entrance finish of the enterprise. The manufacturing crew can monitor and hint potential points in actual time, and the finance crew is automating components of the reporting course of. The following stage might be to make use of this platform to use SAP’s AI options.
“Then you’ll be able to layer AI, and notably predictive AI, in an effort to play totally different tunes,” he says. “You’ll be able to ask questions like, ‘Will we wish to make extra margin right here? Will we wish to promote extra quantity there?’ You’ll be able to drive the gross sales planning course of in a really totally different approach. This subsequent stage is the thrilling half for us.”
Refining the expertise
Walmsley displays on the progress made in automation and boosting the digital buyer expertise. Now he’s desperate to embrace extra rising know-how, together with agentic AI.
“Over the subsequent 24 months, I feel the agentic piece on promoting and repair will come to the entrance and centre,” he says. “It’s early days, however my ambition is about greater than having a chat field within the nook of the display. Agentic would be the complete digital expertise.”
The AI-enabled modifications Walmsley envisages received’t be confined to clients. He says brokers and different data-powered providers can have a big impact on worker experiences. What’s already clear, he suggests, is that the connection between IT professionals and enterprise customers will remodel as staff develop into extra tech-savvy.
“The people who find themselves going to thrive on this house sooner or later are individuals who can deliver totally different instruments to bear and construct stuff in low code,” he says. “These energy customers will exploit the know-how and information that we synthesise collectively and construct their very own issues.”
Walmsley says the agile improvement journey undertaken by many organisations, together with his personal, is the groundwork for serving to enterprise customers make IT choices and construct know-how options. The rise of agentic AI will place extra energy into the fingers of customers, and he’s eager for Pandora to guide this cost.
“We’re there to provide customers the instruments to make this alteration occur,” he says. “The elemental contract between stakeholders and know-how features goes to shift very quickly, and that’s the form of colleague expertise I wish to help.”
