Bayer is utilizing drones to gather farming knowledge throughout 80 million acres and satellite tv for pc knowledge to foretell soil moisture all the way down to the sq. meter. These are simply two examples in a metamorphosis that’s impacting each a part of the enterprise and all 100,000 staff, as undertaken beneath the helm of Bijoy Sagar, the multinational’s chief data expertise and digital transformation officer.

I not too long ago had an opportunity to debate Bayer’s tiered method to digital transformation with Sagar, in addition to the IT chief’s ideas on ramping up digital literacy within the C-suite and the figuring out the appropriate time to disrupt your legacy enterprise. On the heels of one of many largest cloud transformations in Europe, Sagar has Bayer on observe for a extremely digital future. Following are excerpts from that dialog.

Martha Heller: How would you describe Bayer’s digital transformation?

Bijoy Sagar: We’ve three tiers of digital transformation. The primary is constructing new enterprise fashions. For instance, we’ve a brand new digital farming enterprise with drones that cowl 80 million acres and accumulate an incredible quantity of information. We’ve our personal entry to satellite tv for pc knowledge, so we are able to predict inside one sq. meter the moisture and content material of soil, and we use these algorithms to plant crops.

We’re additionally collaborating with Microsoft to construct an open platform market within the crop world. It will permit us to develop new options for farming operations, manufacturing, provide chain, and sustainable sourcing,

The second tier is digitizing our inner processes, and reworking HR, finance, and R&D to assist our new digital platform companies. We’ve lots of of information scientists embedded within the firm, who’re engaged on algorithms to automate inner processes. This work is immediately tied to our International Enterprise Companies technique in order that we get most leverage out of our scale.

The third tier, which may be the least glamorous, is to create the infrastructure to assist these new digital companies and processes. This quarter, we’re kicking off an all-cloud SAP 4/HANA implementation that can carry greater than 100 ERP cases down to 2.

Along with the all-cloud ERP, what architectural choices are you making?

We’re driving an structure technique to maneuver every thing to at least one single middleware platform, and we’re creating an API-first ecosystem, as a result of new digital companies can’t run on previous plumbing.

With cybersecurity, we’re implementing zero belief throughout the board. International locations are altering their guidelines on private knowledge, and I consider the web is heading to ‘splinternet.’ How do you construct a community structure that works within the splinternet? These architectural parts are part of our digital transformation journey.

How is the digital enterprise completely different from the legacy enterprise?

We’ve disrupted our conventional provide chain mannequin by shifting it on-line and altering it to a subscription mannequin. The brand new mannequin is extra predictable and has more healthy margins. However to make a platform enterprise mannequin work, you have to be a market chief. In case you are constructing a platform enterprise in undifferentiated product areas, the buyer is not going to have an interest sufficient. You must set up market primacy earlier than you disrupt your conventional enterprise.

What was your playbook for growing these digital companies?

The primary was getting our management to talk the identical digital language. We partnered with a enterprise college to take our leaders by way of a three-week course, in order that we might have productive, collaborative discussions about digital threat and alternative. That was playbook rule primary, and it took a while.

The second was defining the enterprise mannequin. Ought to it’s a brand-new direct-to-consumer enterprise, or ought to we offer digital assist to our present enterprise mannequin? We spent a good quantity of experimentation time to determine this out.

The third rule within the playbook is to have endurance. Whereas we wished everybody on board proper means, we discovered that it may well take a while earlier than digital threat and alternative change into actual and related for individuals. That is the place skepticism can creep in. Individuals will assume, ‘All of us agreed to this technique, however the place is the return on that funding?’

Bayer simply accomplished one of many largest cloud transformations in Europe. What recommendation do you could have for CIOs shifting from an on-prem to a cloud infrastructure?

The primary is to do your homework earlier than you begin this system. In case you are at an organization with dozens of years of technical debt, you could rework these processes and middleware earlier than you progress to the cloud. When you don’t change your processes forward of time, your journey to the cloud can be continuously interrupted as a result of you may be cleansing up the mess as you go.

Second, have a transparent roadmap for the older techniques that won’t transfer to the cloud. Some will be containerized and remoted, however others can’t. When you don’t have a transparent plan — and this occurred to us — you begin to transfer to the cloud after which understand there have been extra interfaces that you just wanted to wash.

Third, have a really robust relationship together with your hyperscaler companions, as a result of you have to them to resolve issues alongside the best way.

Fourth, have an excellent knowledge lifecycle administration technique. Older corporations are inclined to have quite a lot of knowledge, in order that they want a long-term technique for various knowledge sorts. How a lot time, for instance, do it’s good to maintain knowledge for regulatory compliance and algorithm coaching?

After which in fact, we might not have been profitable in any of this and not using a devoted, hard-working, {and professional} staff.

What attributes do you search for in your senior staff?

Transparency, honesty, integrity, and credibility. After they say one thing, will individuals consider them? Are they placing the agenda of the corporate forward of their private agenda? I additionally search for the flexibility to create followership, as a result of a pacesetter with out followers is only a individual going for a stroll.

My senior leaders additionally want a strategic mindset. Are they trying on the subsequent quarter or a three-year horizon? As you progress up in within the group, your horizon must broaden. Lastly, I rent people who find themselves very completely different from me; I rent in opposition to my weak spot.

What recommendation do you could have for CIOs driving transformation?

Transformation shouldn’t be about expertise; it’s about change. Paint the image. Why would anybody make this troublesome journey? What’s on the opposite finish? When you don’t paint the image, individuals will see solely the ache in entrance of them, as a result of no transformation is painless.

Additionally, be mindful the moral use of all these applied sciences. Simply because you are able to do one thing doesn’t imply you need to.

Lastly, do not forget that your largest stakeholder is your worker base. Be sure all of these staff are excited to go on the journey with you. Convincing the board and the exterior world will be simpler than convincing the worker base. We engineers don’t at all times give attention to the individuals a part of change, so we have to consciously modify our focus.