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Pernod Ricard
A CDO's Playbook for Harnessing AI, Driving Change and Redefining Business Success
Pierre-Yves Calloc'h
Pierre-Yves is Chief Digital Officer of Pernod Ricard, the group that owns brands like Jameson, Chivas, Absolut or Havana Club. With an engineer background, Pierre-Yves has served as CIO and then as Managing Director of several subsidiaries in Latin America. Today, as the group CDO, he leads both business innovation programs and large-scale deployment of data and AI solutions.
Pierre-Yves Calloc'h, CDO of Pernod Ricard [RI.PA], has been an integral part of the company for over 20 years. His extensive experience includes serving as CIO for France, the Pacific and Europe. Calloc'h has also demonstrated his leadership skills as the managing director for two Pernod Ricard entities in Latin America. In his current position, Calloc'h drives the company’s digital transformation for the past six years, initially focusing on digital marketing and e-commerce. More recently, he has led the development and implementation of an AI strategy, scaling programs across the group with a primary focus on sales and marketing and expanding into supply chain and other key functions.
Recognising Calloc’h’s leadership in driving healthcare excellence, this exclusive interview explores his insights on Pernod Ricard's innovative strategies, technology adoption and vision for the future.
AT A GLANCE:
• Change management is crucial when implementing new solutions at scale, involving education, upskilling and engaging people from the beginning in solution design to overcome resistance and improve acceptance.
• Encourage teams to embrace the right to fail, move quickly and be transparent about constraints and opportunities, emphasising the impact of their work on colleagues, company results and market position.
• Stay ahead of the curve by focusing on a limited number of high-value topics, creating multidisciplinary teams that combine technology, data, AI and business expertise and ensuring end-to-end delivery and proper handover of solutions to users for long-term adoption and impact.
Tackling Challenges in Implementing Solutions: Change Management through Upskilling and Involvement
The primary challenge in implementing new solutions, processes and ways of working at scale is change management—helping people overcome their fears, concerns and the disruption to their daily routines.
The best approach to tackle this natural resistance is twofold. First, upskill people through extensive education. Explain how things work, particularly how AI functions like GPT. Second, involve people from the beginning in solution design. For instance, when designing a solution for Salesforce to identify the best opportunities in their area each week, we involved top management, middle management and end users.
"It is crucial to foster a culture that embraces the right to fail. We must empower our teams to move swiftly, take calculated risks and understand that failure is an integral part of the learning process"
This approach not only improves the solution but also increases acceptance, as people want their experiences included in the conception and development of new solutions.
Management Philosophy and Fostering Innovation: Giving the Right to Fail, Being Transparent about Constraints and Opportunities.
When implementing new initiatives, it is crucial to foster a culture that embraces the right to fail. We must empower our teams to move swiftly, take calculated risks and understand that failure is an integral part of the learning process. The ideal approach is to fail fast, allowing us to build upon the lessons learned and iterate rapidly.
Transparency is paramount in this process. We must be open about the constraints we face, whether they be budgetary limitations, planning challenges or competing projects that demand our attention. Simultaneously, it is equally important to provide a clear vision of the opportunities that lie ahead and the impact that the team's work has on the daily lives of our colleagues, the company's results and its position in the market.
By communicating these elements effectively, we ensure that all teams feel they are part of something greater than themselves. We emphasise that collaboration is the key to success and that by working together, we can overcome obstacles and deliver exceptional results. By building this sense of unity and purpose, we create an environment where innovation thrives and organisations can reach new heights.
Most Interesting Developments in Digital Transformation: Using Generative AI and Balancing Investment and Impact.
While there are many fascinating technologies, AI, particularly generative AI, is extremely powerful. The technology is simple, but complexity lies in applying it to concrete business cases while balancing investment levels and business impact. Matrix is an excellent example of this. We developed a tool now used by marketers in around 220 countries worldwide to optimise marketing spend allocation. For instance, on the Absolut brand in Germany, they can precisely determine the best investment mix across TV, social media, out-of-home displays and in-store promotions and activations. To deploy this tool effectively, we identified countries with a good return on investment, assessed the business impact by comparing the optimised advertising budget to the costs of sourcing data, implementing the solution and maintaining it for long-term.
Staying Ahead of Trends: Focusing on High-Value Topics, Multidisciplinary Teams and End-to-End Solution Delivery.
To stay ahead of the curve, it's essential to focus on a limited number of topics, as spreading investments too thin across numerous opportunities can dilute their impact. Concentrate on the items that will deliver the best value. Creating multidisciplinary teams is also crucial, as success is not solely about technology, data or AI. It requires experts from the business side and change management to ensure an end-to-end delivery of a solution that users will adopt for the long term. This approach is how you achieve real impact and secure funding for new projects while also ensuring a proper handover of each solution to its users.
Advice for Aspiring CDOs: Staying Curious
To anyone looking to enter this field, my foremost advice is to cultivate and maintain a keen sense of curiosity. Continuously seek opportunities to learn, remain open to new ideas and actively benchmark the strategies and practices of other successful companies. Forge strong connections with the various departments, functions and business units within your organisation, as these are the very places where true value is created. The key to delivering tangible, lasting value lies in effectively bridging the gap between the business and emerging technologies.
