SPEAKER: To be able to be competitive in this industry and to build sustainable value, CPG or consumer products companies have to be able to meet the changing pace of consumers' needs. And that pace of what they're demanding is changing even faster every day. And so having sort of an advanced digital native-based operating model allows the company to move from idea to live and test different experiences and meet consumers' needs at that fast pace in a way that wasn't required before.
So a decentralized digital operating model is the least mature of our four models that we have. It truly is what I call the model of sort of the incumbents. So all the companies that have been market leaders in the space traditionally in their sectors, most of them had started or are at some version of that decentralized model as they work to become more mature.
So a decentralized digital operating model is where digital capabilities and initiatives and decision-making is, you got it, decentralized, right? It sits within business units, embedded within certain markets, regional markets, for example, or certain brands. So you could have, for example, a very different level of maturity around, let's call it data-driven marketing, right? Happening in country X versus country Y, and they'd be using very different data sets and data capabilities, and it won't be synced up.
I have partnered in the past with a large global food company, food CPG player, and they were operating at that time in this decentralized digital operating model. And the key challenge they faced was because everything was decentralized, they were unable to get alignment and prioritize the funding needed and the capabilities needed to be able to deliver in this example, a personalized marketing or engagement engine. It's a very uncompetitive operating model to be in in today's world.