Hershey CISO breaks down the secret formula for a successful digital transformation

At the Hershey Company, innovation spans beyond exotic SkinnyPop flavor variations and alterations of its eponymous chocolate bar.

For the past several years, Hershey has been transforming its digital and IT strategy across its business. In 2023, the company hired its first-ever CTO—a move that Steve Hendrie, VP and CISO at the snacking company, told IT Brew represents the company’s understanding that its technology is a key component of its competitive advantage. He added that the 131-year-old company is also actively working to modernize its supply chain and increase automation and agility in its manufacturing process.

“There’s a huge focus right now for us on automation, AI, [and] basically anything that’s going to help speed decisioning within the organization,” Hendrie, who has held the CISO title at the company since 2017, said.

However, a digital metamorphosis is never easy. According to Boston Consulting Group research, 70% of digital transformation projects “fail to deliver on their objectives.” IT Brew caught up with the CISO of the chocolate manufacturer to decode the elements that make for a successful digital transformation.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Digital transformation is one of those huge buzz-phrases in the industry at the moment. How do you know as a business when you need a digital transformation?

Digital transformation, often, is driven by some new emerging technology. In this particular case, I’d say that that holds. We’ve seen the move into data and analytics over the last several years. I think now, with the advent of AI and GenAI and the machine learning capabilities that are coming along with that, it’s really led to this momentum that we’re seeing.

The number of businesses with successful digital transformation projects is low. What are some factors that can lead a business to have an unsuccessful digital transformation?

I think, way too often, technology is looked at just through the lens of technology. Organizations that tend to focus on a capability or a very specific tech tend to miss the people and process side of the house. You cannot transform just by changing the technology that people use to do their job. You have to think about the people and process implications of that change as well, and bring the organization along. If you put in all that new technology, but your business processes are still trying to work the way that they always have, that’s going to fail. I think that that is probably the biggest catalyst.

Are there any other mistakes you see companies make when they have these large digital and IT transformation plans?

Another area that I think I’ve seen some challenges is fragmentation. I think a big area where a lot of organizations struggle is taking an individual part of their organization and looking at the problems that they have in a vacuum. What you really need to do is look at that business process lens. That end-to-end business process that probably traverses multiple parts of your organization. That design and that solution has to be comprehensive and end-to-end. A lot of organizations, what I’ve seen do is they’re looking at the HR process and the finance process and the sales process, but it’s in the parts where those processes interact with each other that if you haven’t taken a comprehensive approach, you’re still going to have impediments.