Campbell Uses Technology to Reach Out to the Younger Generation
Soup. Canned soup. It's been around for ages. What could be said about it that hasn't been said? What could be done to improve soup that hasn't already been done-probably when your grandparents were in school?
Soup companies still find room for improvement. Your grandparents may not have cared about using less salt, but you do. Other opportunities for improvement, however, may not involve the product itself but the business processes used to produce and distribute it. Information systems can do a great deal to improve business processes. The challenge a company faces today is to find those opportunities for improvement. These opportunities are not in the same places that senior managers looked for them a decade or two ago.
Joseph Spagnoletti, senior vice president and CIO of Campbell's Soup, is the person who must figure out how to improve business processes at Campbell's. His challenge is to find opportunities for improvement and take advantage of them. Spagnoletti needs to select the most effective software applications for managing basic business processes, such as maintaining the quality of products, fulfilling orders, and shipping.
"The goal is to get the best outcome, for the lowest cost at the fastest speed, with the least amount of risk," says Spagnoletti. To achieve this goal, Campbell's CIO turned to cloud services that allow companies to spend less on buying and maintaining hardware. In 2013, he cut the amount of money he was spending to maintain the company's back-office hardware and software by 80 percent. Back-office software consists of the applications, such as accounting and inventory management, that do not interface with the customers. He invested these funds in consumers and innovation.
One major initiative is to make use of crowdsourcing. Crowdsourcing tools make use of contributions from a large group of people who are accessed through social media and Web and mobile technologies. For example, Spagnoletti contracted with Field Agent LLC, a company that posts assignments for approximately 240,000 consumers. These assignments include conducting price checks, snapping a photo of product display on a smart phone, answering polling questions, or whatever service a company would usually need field agents to perform. Spagnoletti hopes to cut costs and improve Campbell's understanding of their customer's needs.
Spagnoletti is also investing in fun, crowdsourcing marketing initiatives. He has teamed with the marketing department to launch Hack the Kitchen, a contest that invites computer programmers to write code for a Web or mobile tool that helps consumers find good recipes online. The winner receives $25,000 and a $25,000 contract to program for Campbell. By appealing to the online public at large, Campbell hopes to provide innovative online services and so boost its image.
Since assuming the role of Campbell's CEO in 2011, Denise Morrison has reversed declining sales and achieved a 9 percent sales growth in the fourth quarter of 2012. Morrison has introduced a new line of soup called Campbell's Go and new varieties of Campbell's Chunky soup. However, she has also charged Spagnoletti not only with maintaining the information systems necessary for basic business processes, but to develop the type of digital technologies that will appeal to the younger generation of consumers. Clearly, Campbell's sees information systems as vital to its future.
Discussion Questions
1. Spagnoletti received his undergraduate degree in computer science and spent his entire career in bell's CIO in August 2008. Given his present responsibilities, do you think that career path is still appropriate for someone who wants to be a CIO today?
2. How is Campbell's making use of crowdsourcing? Do you think these initiatives will help the company appeal to younger consumers? Why, or why not?