A recipe for success

By Megan Hamilton

Found on dinner tables everywhere, McCain has become one of the world’s best-loved food companies. But operations across the globe present a sizeable portion of challenges for the 50 year-old food production company. Business Management speaks to CIO Roman Coba to find out how technology can smooth over the bumps in a global organization

A few years back, a television commercial in the UK was receiving considerable attention. Two young girls are at the table eating dinner - an innocuous and typically British children's meal - and the older girl turn to her younger sister and asks which she prefers, Daddy or chips? After much deliberation, the girl chooses the French fries over her father. 

While the advertising message from McCain may have been a little strong, the sentiment about the popularity of the brand is undeniable. McCain's products can be found in freezers in 130 countries worldwide; the company produces over a million pounds of potato products every hour and a third of all the frozen French fries produced in the world, and is the second largest privately owned company in Canada.

Such a far-reaching global presence is undoubtedly impressive, but operating out of 55 production facilities, in 12 countries, over six continents, with 20,000 employees, into 130 markets presents is fair share of challenges, not least from an IT standpoint. And indeed, when Roman Coba, McCain's unassuming and likeable CIO, took charge of the firm's IT operations two and half years ago, he found the technology affairs in disarray. "They were a very inward focusing IT organization," Coba explains. "They had no credibility with the business. Their approach to IT was ram and jam; there were no partnerships. Their approach to technology was find the cheapest, and just put it in because it looks like we're driving the value. There was no long term IT strategy."

Coba had a daunting task on his hands: to restructure McCain's entire global IT operations, right from their very foundation. His first project was to develop a solid, five-year IT strategy that could applied to the entire organization around the world. "We had seven IT organizations around the world, and none of them would talk to each other," laughs Coba. "So we had to put a program together that would drive one global IT organization with one global mandate, one global strategy. We brought all the teams together first, dropped the barriers and we built the strategy."

He reveals that prior to his arrival at McCain, the firm's IT operations had been segregated from the rest of the organization, and many other sectors of the firm had little understanding of the role IT played. "The key was to sit with the business and sell the business on our strategy because the business was never exposed to it," Coba explains. "We sat in front of them, and I told them, 'Here is where we are.  Here are all our issues.  Here are our financials.'  I just took them through the whole thing.  Then we said, 'Here is how we plan to fix it.' We shared with them the whole plan. 

"It was eye opening for some of them because they have never even seen where the spend goes.  They just knew that they were throwing out $40, $50, $60, $70 million a year, and never really understood where it was spent.  So we set a baseline, and then we sold them on the plan." Of course, there was some scepticism, and Coba spent the first year of his tenure travelling around the globe, meeting each of McCain's numerous regional business teams, both to listen to their main concerns and needs from a technology point of view and to explain his new global technology strategy.

"I also spent that year working with our internal IT organizations," he adds, "but it was hard to change habits. It was a matter of breaking down barriers, identifying the global projects. We'd build global work teams, and global work streams. We put everybody on them, and we started creating that whole global or team atmosphere.  Once we went through the business and gained credibility, we then started showing the value of some of our plans.  For example, what did year one give us?  What's year two going to look like?  We started showing them the value, then we started getting the credibility."

The next step of Coba's task was to add value to the company's IT operations. Now that a comprehensive framework had been established, Coba had to implement systems and programs that were both cost and time effective across the organization. "We exposed [the business] to some of the enabling technologies that other global companies were starting to implement that were innovative in nature.  They all had a dollar return on them, and they all had business value around processes, workforce optimization and things like that.  We first sold the idea and the concept of the technology; then we brought the vendor in and did a show and tell, and allowed them to play.  A lot of CEOs don't care, don't want to care, but they actually loved it."

Now two years into his five-year plan, Coba explains that his department is working on implementing a utility-based computing model across the organization, and the global integration of enabling technologies is about six months from completion. Then comes the process of re-visiting each area of the business, look at how they're utilizing the technology and identify any further opportunities to increase the value of the IT operations. "At the same time we're actually at the beginning of a business transformation project," he adds. "Working on enterprise resource planning (ERP), new processes, global processes, things like that. We've got our hands full."

Spice of life

Coba's restructuring of the IT operations has by no means been an easy task, but McCain being a food product company, operating globally, presents another set of challenges. "You get seven flavors of everything," he explains. "Our people want seven flavors of everything, so we have to deal with that challenge.  That's all around asking the why.  Why is it different?  Why do you need it different?  Can't you just approach it this way?

"The next challenge is that being a food manufacturer, margins are low and brand identity is high. It's all around driving cost effectiveness and enablers back into the business. So our challenge as IT professionals is that we should be looking at how we change the business, and how do we drive more value back into the business based on what we want to do?"

Indeed, Coba's industry has a history of frugality, closely monitoring outgoings, and he highlights that a return on investment and proven efficiency increase in business processes are essential when introducing new technologies. "One thing you have to watch out for is I think you have to educate the business on what the baseline is," he says. "I need X amount of money every year for five years just to keep the lights on.  That won't change. Then everything else I do is incremental value."

Still, despite the difficulties posed by being a global organization, Coba explains that he maintains a level of standardization in order to successfully manage his diverse workforce. "They could be different standards depending on the part of the world," he explains, "because technology could be different in another part.  An example is we're standardizing on a mobile platform today. So, we decide today we're going to go Blackberry, and now all of our workforce has a Blackberry. But when you get to China and Japan, that's not the prevalent device.  The prevalent device might be an Android type of device.  So, we're flexible enough to look at it region by region, but we want it standard for the region.  We want operating principles, procedures and policies in place, and we want to be able to know where it is, who's got it, how they're using it and keep it locked within the framework of what we as a business want to allow and not allow."

Once the devices and tools have been implemented into the workforce, the challenge then becomes looking at how the devices can be used to really empower the mobile workforce, rather than just facilitating their ability to move outside the office. "We're looking at tablet type devices," reveals Coba. "I'll say tablet devices, which could be tablet computers, iPads, the new Black Pad, whatever Google's going to come out with and so on. But it's more looking at how we can use the tool to drive customer adoption. So do we need presentations, a dashboard? Do I need the volumes at my fingertips? We want to use it as a device to sell, not just as a device to communicate and collaborate."

Indeed, the highlighting the enabling capabilities of technology to his organization is the key for Coba, who feels that ultimately his job is about explaining IT is plain terms. "I think the most important part of my role is showing the value of technology and investment in technology to the business leaders so that they can actually prove some of the money that we're asking for to move things forward."

A brief history of McCain USA 

• McCain Foods Ltd begins production in Florenceville, Canada, in 1956
• In the mid-1960s McCain enters the US market, following success in UK
• McCain acquires two French fry production plants in Maine in the 1970s
• During the 1980s, McCain acquires a plain in Othello, WA, and announces a $35 million expansion.
• In 1997 McCain takes over the Ore Ida Food Service frozen foods firm at a cost of $500 million.
• The firm then plans to invest $70.8 million into wide scale expansion of US operations.
• In 2001, McCain acquires Anchor Food Products Inc., a leading frozen food producer.
• Today, headquartered in Lisle, Il, McCain USA employs 4300 people nationwide, and serves customers that rank among the most recognized brands in the world

Facts:

McCain operates in 130 countries worldwide

McCain produces a million pounds of potato products every hour

McCain produces one third of the world's frozen French fries.