So much more than a ketchup company, H. J. Heinz has thousands of products across multiple continents and is one of the world’s largest, publicly held, food companies. Heinz makes ketchup and other condiments, soups, sauces, frozen foods, beans, pasta meals, infant food, and other processed food products under 70+ brand names globally.

I had the pleasure of working with their current Chief Information Officer, Julia Anderson, during her directorship at PepsiCo. Her skill set is a rarity within most technology circles given that she is highly attuned to enterprise technologies as well as facilitating a global marketing strategy. Just prior to the public announcement of the Brookshire Hathaway and 3G capital acquisition of H.J. Heinz Company, we were tasked to catalog and give future state recommendations to Heinz’s is digital capabilities. This was put in the context of current marketing and marketing needs with preparation for unifying and on boarding all brands starting first domestically then internationally.

To have a better understanding of their current marketing position and future state needs, we spent the first part of our engagement interviewing both stakeholders and digitally / socially listening to customers. Regarding Heinz stakeholders we interviewed over 50 stakeholders from various groups within the organization to include digital marketing, marketing shared services, IT application, mobile technology, HR, PR, consumer products marketing, food service marketing and their associated agencies. The second step in the process was to have our technology teams review the current state capabilities and architecture, which powers Heinz brand marketing services. We then facilitated several feedback sessions to align our findings and recommendations to the business objectives. This allowed us to produce a detailed roadmap of their priorities from their current state to their future state.

What we discovered was that there were common reusable elements of each marketing campaign activity that can be reused in other activities across the organization. The process of having to re-create the same technology on a per brand basis versus utilizing a streamlined/unified platform for brand enhancement was wasting an estimated 25 to 35%. Thus, the consolidated brand spent for the repeated and or/duplicate spend across similar initiatives by leveraging a build once, use often, use everywhere approach that marketing capabilities will eliminate a huge spending budget that can be reallocated to more meaningful marketing activities. Moreover, all brands across the enterprise be able to have access high impact capabilities around loyalty, e-commerce, data-driven marketing (CRM & Data warehousing) that would be cost prohibitive on a individual brand basis.

The end result of this initial engagement provided Heinz the ability and understanding to dramatically reduce their overall digital infrastructure costs through consolidation and reuse. Moreover, it allowed minor brands to have access to enterprise based marketing solutions that would be otherwise cost prohibitive. Thus, giving all of Heinz’s brands and unfair competitor advantage and not only having access to these toolsets but to be able to collaborate between each of the brands to their mutual benefit.