Nestlé’s Business Transformation to Include Digital Investments, Job Cuts

Nestlé’s newly appointed CEO, Philipp Navratil, has outlined details about the company’s turnaround strategy, which will focus on scaling innovation and accelerating a digitally enabled business transformation.

As part of this plan, the company will invest in new automations to become more digitalized, enabling faster decision-making and driving speed in go-to-market strategies, according to Navratil.

“We want to really scale shared services and drive world-class services throughout our markets,” he said during a recent earnings call. “So when we talk business transformation, we think about how we want to become a faster, more nimble company that is driving growth.”

This is designed to support multi-year innovation pipelines for the big consumer platforms, said Navratil. The company also hopes to transform insights into meaningful innovations through more targeted marketing and digital capabilities that analyze consumer trends.

It has already found success with this approach for Nescafé espresso concentrates, and will look to replicate the effort for its other leading coffee brands.

Also: Nestlé names CEO of Nespresso

“Our scale and breadth bring advantages, but they also can bring complexity, and this creates inefficiencies,” said Navratil. “We can get more agile in how we work with simpler structures and roles,” 

The company has also mapped out its processes and broken down silos, Navratil added.