A behind-the-scenes look at Unilever’s operational excellence initiatives
Unilever’s Michel Ramos Mellis explains why change management is crucial to make the best of technology implementations
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PEX Network caught up with Michel Ramos Mellis, global business transformation director at Unilever, ahead of his participation at the panel on translating technology transformations into real business value at PEX Live: OPEX 2021. He discusses the operational excellence (OPEX) initiatives currently underway at the global consumer goods company and offers his advice for companies currently undergoing their own OPEX journey.
Mellis joined Unilever in Brazil 25 years ago as an engineer and has worked in marketing and sales in the US and in the UK, before becoming a general manager in Greece, South Africa and Mexico. He now works with the global team in charge of business transformation through digital acceleration.
PEX Network: What is your greatest OPEX achievement?
Michel Ramos Mellis: As a general manager of Unilever in Greece in 2011, I focused on what was called turnaround of the business, which was the premise of what is called transformation now. We were looking at changing ways of working, restructuring the team and adding new technology that included a new CRM system. I focused on three elements: marketing, sales and finance.
We had some criteria to evaluate the performance of our portfolios such as routes-to-market and promotional activities. We wanted to base our knowledge on hard data, which was quite a new concept at the time, to know which portfolio to clean in order to optimize our net revenue management.
The whole team made an agreement that if we would achieve growth that year in what was a challenging economic environment, we would all partake in the marathon, which we all did and that was a great experience.
When I joined Unilever’s South African branch in 2013, one of the first things I did was to partner with the IT team to change the way we conducted marketing activities, especially the digital campaigns. While in the past we would use agencies to manage them, this time we brought in a marketing automation platform. We became a lot more agile and proactive in converting marketing campaigns into sales and this is something I am really proud of.
PEX Network: Can you give us an overview of any OPEX initiatives currently underway at Unilever?
MRM: Change happens much faster than before and especially now because of the Covid-19 pandemic. If before we had to pay attention to people, now we have to do everything from a people-first approach in adopting new systems and technology.
Sometimes you can have a brilliant piece of technology but if people do not change their way of working around it, it will be no use. This is why in the past 18 months we have set up a program for leadership and transformation in people.
PEX Network: Do you have any advice for organizations currently looking to achieve operational excellence?
MRM: At Unilever we have always included change management in our initiatives. Its scale and intensity is much higher now than before, including in choosing what not to do.
At the beginning of our marketing automation and transformation initiative, we tried to map the whole customer journey which became very complicated since it is not a linear one. We learned that we needed to select the main touchpoints and points of behavior and focus on those.
We had to do a lot of work on integrating data to get a single customer view, as data came from different systems. This allowed us to read digital behavior and buying patterns and connect them.
PEX Network: What do you hope viewers will take away from your contribution on the panel discussing translating technology projects into business value at PEX Live: OPEX 2021?
MRM: Attendees will hear practical advice of a non-tech person on what to avoid and how to be pragmatic on the usage of technology to get desired business outputs.
We do not implement technology for the sake of it at Unilever, we do it to get our business outcomes. My challenge every day is to remind people of that.
Join us at PEX Live: OPEX 2021 taking place online on 7-8 December 2021 and attend Mellis's panel on translating technology transformations into real business value, during which he will be joined by experts from PepsiCo, United Airlines and ABPMP.
