Jollibee Group [OTCMKTS: JBFCF]

I have often been asked how we cope with the prevalent issue on talent attrition, particularly in the pandemic era. There is no magic pill; however, ensuring that your leaders and their teams understand their purpose and mission helps a lot. In JFC, the IT team is very clear on why we exist – to truly enable the business and improve lives. This may sound so old-fashioned but for everything we do – we ask ourselves, “Is this worth doing? Will doing this improve the business? Will it help remove friction in doing work?” We aim not to satisfy, but to delight. A tall order, one must say.

Despite having a clear purpose, I still struggle with single digit percentage attrition in the past 18 months and recruitment has been equally challenging. We therefore embarked on an important human experience platform which aims to digitize and improve employee-enabling work processes like recruitment, onboarding, learning and goals setting. We wanted our employees to know that they are the most important assets of our company, and that putting in the right platform and tools that enable their growth is of top priority. A recent study finds that 25% more employees stay when the employee digital experience is frictionless.

Aside from attrition, the one other thing that keeps me up at night is cyber security and its never-ending threat to all companies. Please do not think that “I do not own consumer data; therefore, I am safe.” No one is spared from cyber-attacks and my best advise on the matter is that one cannot fully prevent cyber-attacks, but one’s capability to immediately respond is of critical importance. It is then important for companies to assess having a security operations center in place, with a robust SIEM to go with it.

In IT, it is very important to build the right partner eco-system to help one scale up and down, as needed. Our strategy is to outsource the build and test, but retaining the design and architecture roles within the company.

Another hot topic in today’s world is Data & Analytics. Luckily for JFC, we have embarked on modernizing our analytics infrastructure back in 2019 and we now benefit from the fruits of our labor. However, it must be said that the journey was not pain-free. Given the experience from the past 3 years, I realize that these are the factors that made it work for us:

1. Having a business sponsor who understands what the business needs and the important KPIs that measure success

2. Willingness of the organization to clean data, no matter how long it takes or how painful it is

3. Creation of agile, cross-functional teams that can work seamlessly, without borders, on a common goal (ideally in sprints)

4. Having a robust and scalable data warehouse or lake house, and an extremely user-friendly data visualization tool that will enable citizen developers to exist

5. Ensure master data and data visualization governance is in place

As the saying goes, no man is an island. The same principle goes for IT, which is why it is very important to build the right partner eco-system to help one scale up and down, as needed. In JFC, our strategy is to outsource the build and test, but retaining the design and architecture roles within the company. We are blessed with true partners in our existing vendor eco-system and I look forward to working with them as we move towards the second phase of our digital transformation.