Hershey’s First CTO Details IT Transformation Roadmap and Priorities
- Consumer Goods & Services
Fallon Wolken
- 0
- 5 minutes read
Deepak Bhatia, CTO, The Hershey Company
The decision to establish a chief technology officer role marks a pivotal moment in the Hershey Company’s digital evolution.
Last September, the company hired Deepak Bhatia to oversee the company’s global tech strategy, focusing on digital capabilities and IT architecture. A year in, Bhatia shares details about how the role shapes new optimizations and efficiencies across talent, data, and operations, creating a culture of digital innovation.
“This transformation is about more than just adopting new tools; it’s about enabling our people and processes to work smarter, faster, and more effectively across the entire organization,” he says.
The Road to Hershey’s First CTO
Bhatia joined Hershey from Amazon, where he was previously VP of supply chain optimization. He brought an extensive background in automation, optimization, AI, predictive analytics, and supply chain planning, creating a strong foundation for Hershey’s analytics and IT growth goals.
Also read: Learn more about Hershey’s new analytics infrastructure
Hershey established the role to strengthen key areas of business, including forecasting, supply chain planning and optimization, trade and media spend optimization, automation, and cybersecurity, Bhatia tells CGT.
Through new data science and tech capabilities, and broad accessibility to insights, the company hopes to better embed data-driven decision-making and create a data framework that can support the coordinated yet decentralized use of modern technologies such as AI and machine learning.
While the core vision and strategy of the CTO role remain intact, the execution is continuously adapting to changes in the business environment.
“Data science and AI have always been key priorities, but we’ve intensified our focus on these areas to drive greater agility and responsiveness,” he says. “This heightened emphasis allows us to navigate and adapt to the fast-paced changes that now define every facet of the business landscape.”
To support this digital growth, the company also recently hired Gene Kholodenko as CIO to continue building tech modernization and digital transformations. He reports to Bhatia and serves on the information services leadership team.
