Then, just as I was running out of product, the new brand proactively delivered an irresistible offer: four cosmetics for the same price that I used to pay for one! The new company delivered the right offer to me at the right time. I felt understood and appreciated.

They earned my loyalty and I’m now in a new retail relationship.

Ghosting a Brand

A recent shows that 73% of consumers will “ghost” a brand for delivering poor customer service. Yet, less than half of us ever complain directly to the company, which means that “companies may be losing revenue they weren’t aware of.”

Great business leaders know that delivering fantastic customer service is more important now than ever. Our time and attention are in high demand. The world feels busier due to increased media proliferation. It is easy to feel bombarded.

Proactive Problem Solving

These things were on my mind when I recently , senior vice president and global CIO for Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), about customer experience and brand loyalty. I shared a common shopper’s dilemma about the frustration of driving from store to store in search of a particular product.

Tinto’s calm and quick answer made me feel special: “Trish, we’ve fixed your problem already.”

“You buy online, and you pick up at the store. Plus, your order is ready in as little as 30 minutes,” he explained.

Now, that’s great customer service that Tinto says puts WBA ahead of its retail competition. He says technology makes it possible.

Delivering on Brand Promise

Known in the U.S. as Walgreens and as Boots in other global locations, recently invested in 51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA Cloud and other cloud solutions for its nearly 9,000 Walgreens . Their inventory includes hundreds of thousands of products. Yet, Walgreens proactively promises that the products we need will be in stock if we simply check online and order ahead of time.

“51ˇçÁ÷S/4HANA in the cloud gives us visibility into each and every store. We know exactly what is in any store at any moment,” said Tinto. “The assortment of products is incredible, which means that accuracy and granularity of inventory are paramount. 51ˇçÁ÷gives us the capability to have real-time information and the right insight. Every change is immediately updated in our inventory management system.”

Feeling Special

When a brand proactively solves my problems and values my time, I feel special. The proactive service Tinto described lets customers know that Walgreens understands their needs and values their time.

If you boil down all of the research and surveys and models about customer experience and service, many of us seem to want the same thing. We want to feel special in our relationships. Not only in our personal relationships, but also work interactions and — yes — even our relationships with our favorite brands.

If technology helps a brand like Walgreens Boots Alliance deliver on their promise, great! Simply put, if we do not feel valued or understood, there are many other brands eager to romance us.

That’s Jorge Torres Perez’s job. He’s the strategic procurement director at the Coca-Cola FEMSA, based in Mexico City. Coca-Cola FEMSA sells Coca-Cola products across Latin America, with over 2,000,000 points of sale.

“I’m truly happy and I really smile when I see somebody drinking one of our products. To be very honest, it’s a huge responsibility,” says Torres Perez. “Literally thousands of people engage in dozens of processes to deliver your favorite beverage.”

Opportunity Creates Challenges

After 16 years with Coca-Cola FEMSA, Torres Perez moved into a strategic procurement role about seven years ago. He noticed Coca-Cola FEMSA invested most of its money in direct materials like bottles, labels, caps, and ingredients. He realized an opportunity. “Indirect spend on things like trucks and transportation, industrial tools, and parts was done locally by many, many people.” Torres Perez explains that the process was fragmented and segmented between many suppliers, which did not result in the best prices. “So, I studied how to centralize all those indirect negotiations in a more intelligent way, to really take advantage of the scale that we have as a business,” he says.

Torres Perez embarked on a challenging journey to integrate Coca-Cola FEMSA processes; it was a course of action that required leadership, patience, learning, and difficult course correction.

“We needed to change the role of our teams and restructure the procurement employees. But this cannot be done without a technological tool. It was very difficult to convince our management to get the indirect spend all together and change the way we worked in the past. It took us more than a year to start. At first, we chose a competitor of SAP.” Torres Perez recalls that the technology was fraught with problems. “The integration of that competitor’s solution was not there.”

A Lot at Stake

Torres Perez found himself facing both personal and professional dilemmas.

“I’d sold Coca-Cola FEMSA leaders on the idea of managing negotiations centrally, and they bought the idea. But when [the competitor’s product] didn’t work, it was really… I mean, my own reputation was at stake because I told them, ‘We can do this.’ But I was not able to deliver,” says Torres Perez. “I mean, it was a very difficult situation, because I had to go back to our management and ask them to switch gears again. This time to implement 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba instead of the other solution.”

Coca-Cola FEMSA’s leadership ultimately trusted Torres Perez and suggested that he implement 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba in a limited capacity, in Colombia only. And this time? Success.

“We implemented 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba on time and on cost, but the most important part: It worked and it worked fantastically. It was a very smooth transition and, once it was working, everybody was amazed.” Torres Perez soon got permission for a full rollout of 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba to all countries where Coca-Cola FEMSA operates. “This is a huge step forward.”

Advice?

Torres shares his technology story with the hope of inspiring his peers. “Let me tell you one thing: No matter how challenging an enterprise can be, if you have the correct partner, you’re always flying with a tailwind. That’s the most important lesson that I got from this process. And, once we worked with 51ˇçÁ÷Ariba, things got better and we were able to implement the solution easily.”

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“When a celebrity wears our product, it certainly creates a buzz around the company,” said Carhartt CIO John Hill. “It raises brand awareness and exposes products that some consumers may not be aware of.”

Behind the scenes, technology transformation became crucial for Carhartt to keep up with fast-paced growth. So, after more than 130 years in business and continued growth in popularity, it became imperative for U.S.-based company to transform both its apparel offerings and its business foundation.

“It’s important to realize that Carhartt was as far away from a virtual company as you could be,” Hill said. “We quickly realized that not only did we need to transform our technology, but also the processes that the technology was enabling. We identified hundreds of pain points that existed across that value chain. And if we can get rid of those pain points with 51ˇçÁ÷technology, ultimately we were going to provide a better experience for our associates and our customers.”

After thoroughly researching different options, Carhartt realized tapping the power of SAP’s intelligent enterprise was the best solution. Yet this hugely innovative upgrade coincided with one of the biggest challenges of our time; believe it or not, Carhartt went live during the worst of the pandemic.

Closing Shop Was Never an Option

It was a top priority for Carhartt to remain open and provide a frictionless shopping experience for customers, ensuring there was no downtime and no negative impacts on business. “At the end of the day, the brand needs to be able to react to the demands of those customers. Ultimately the customer doesn’t care what it takes to deliver,” said Hill.

With his office closed, Hill’s technology team prepared to go live while they worked from their homes.

“You can’t underestimate the challenge of doing a large scale of digital transformation, while you’re growing the business at the pace we are, and still serving customers,” said Hill.

Yet, he shares that bringing 51ˇçÁ÷technology online proved easy.

“Frankly, the harder thing in dealing with a pandemic has been there’s no blueprint of how to plan,” Hill shared. “We were taking down our revenue on a weekly basis, and then increasing it the next week. So it was a very difficult year from that perspective. The actual technology transformation felt like a more normal course of business during the year.”

Strained Supply Chains

Businesses across the planet share Carhartt’s forecasting challenges.

“People know what they want and they want it when they want it,” said President of 51ˇçÁ÷North America DJ Paoni. “And they know how they want it. Every customer in every industry has acknowledged that COVID-19 has put the maturing of the global economy on fast-forward. So those companies that have a more sophisticated digital technology are certainly able to pivot faster and connect with their customers on a whole new level.”

Carhartt believes further investment in digital technologies is a winning strategy that will also provide a fantastic experience for customers.

“So far, we implemented 51ˇçÁ÷solutions to support our retail businesses,” said Hill. “This year, we will be implementing solutions to support our wholesale and our direct-to-consumer e-commerce business. I believe that the marketplace has continued to reward those customers that deliver not only a great product, but also a digitally native experience.”

Meet Carhartt CIO John Hill and hear the advice
he shares with his peers on .

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But about 15 years later, Tec de Monterrey unexpectedly offered him an unbeatable opportunity: help improve education in his native country of Mexico. Now, five years into this complete career turnabout, Ruiz has so fully embraced his new mission that he is even recruiting other candidates to join him as university faculty: “I know I made the right decision, and I’ve been inviting other people to come.”

Ruiz’s decision to return to Tec de Monterrey validated the university’s strategy of attracting top talent and industry experts to teach students while keeping current employees happy.

What Is Tec de Monterrey’s Secret?

Underpinning this strategy was a decision to actively listen to employees and foster their trust. For the past several years, university leaders have been nurturing a culture of trust in order to encourage talented people like Ruiz to work and stay there.

Instead of words and slogans, Tec de Monterrey took action to show employees that they are trusted to focus on their goals and manage their own time. The university provides a lactation center, employee meditation area, and even nap rooms.

“We’re telling our employees ‘We trust you, your supervisor is not the owner of your time,’” says Hernán García González, vice president of Employee Experience at Tec de Monterrey. “We’ve been able to create an inspiring, respectful, and safe work environment where people feel they can grow personally and professionally.”

González’s theory is that happier employees are better rested, more energized in the classrooms, and provide a great educational experience for the university’s customers — 149,000 students. “We want professors to feel positive and enthusiastic about working at Tec de Monterrey so that they can pass on their love for learning to students.”

How Did Tec de Monterrey Get There?

Like many corporations, privately owned Tec de Monterrey monitors employee health with annual surveys, asking many of the expected questions about leadership effectiveness and job satisfaction. But the university’s survey also devotes entire sections to “Humanistic Outlook” and “Values Index.” Among the questions asked:

• Do employees feel joyful at work?
• Do they feel their work helps solves the country’s problems and benefits less privileged communities?
• Does compensation adequately reward outstanding job performance?

When employees responded that they deserved better compensation, the university says it responded by providing more than 2.7 billion pesos, or more than US$140 million, in additional employee compensation.

This type of action has had a positive impact. Overall, the latest anonymous survey, administered by experience management leader , showed that 91 percent of Tec de Monterrey employees are proud to work there. According to administrators, survey results in recent years have shown significant improvements in attitudes toward change management, diversity, and work/life balance.

How Hard Was It?

But researching, redefining, and creating a positive work culture was no easy feat, according to González. Empowering and trusting some employees proved threatening to others. “Some managers didn’t like that they were losing control,” he explains, noting that he felt “a lot of pressure.”

González recalls the problems faced when he arrived on campus six years ago — each of the university’s 55 different campuses had implemented its own unique hierarchy, systems, and processes. The many disparate systems prevented the 32,000 university employees from easily communicating with each other and learning about career-growth opportunities.

“With such a wide range of systems in place, it was very tricky to get even very basic information about the organization, such as employee headcount and demographics,” he explains. “Not only did this hinder strategic decision making, it also meant that each campus existed in its own bubble. We wanted to introduce a standard system across all campuses, helping to establish a single, unified workplace culture.”

One of González’s first decisions was to implement . “It covers everything from core HR functions to workforce analytics – everything you could possibly need. This was a really important deciding factor – we didn’t want to install lots of different systems that we’d have to integrate and then manage and upgrade separately. We wanted a one-stop shop for everything HR.”

Does the Impact Last?

Now, about six years into this journey, campuses no longer operate in isolation and faculty can more easily find each other and collaborate on projects. With better compensation, career opportunities, and cultural perks in place, González proudly shares metrics showing employee engagement and performance at all-time high levels: “Feedback from senior management and leadership has been great.”

Meanwhile, Ruiz says he definitely feels that those survey results create a lasting impact. “I’ve seen a lot of positive cultural changes in the last five years.” And that helps motivate him to model González’s successes to nurture a culture of trust on his own Employee Services team.

“We want the employee to feel that we trust them. I’m going to remove myself from the equation because I trust you. Since I trust you, I’m going to empower you.”