CIO interview: Cut Burton, chief recordsdata and digital officer, Avon International

Taking on the drawback

Across the identical time because the UK went into lockdown in March, Burton moved to a brand contemporary space at Avon, chief recordsdata and digital officer (CIDO). The transfer adopted Avon’s merger with Brazilian cosmetics neighborhood Natura at the starting up of 2020.

Natura decided to structure the neighborhood in two halves – a Latin-American operation with extra than one brands, and Avon International, which entails operations outside Latin The United States, plus the impress and the product portfolio.

Burton’s transfer to the CIDO space at Avon International reflects that transition. As effectively as to digital architecture offer, Burton now manages all of the native market IT groups. Colin Shenoy, formerly vice president for IT at Avon, is now vice-president of IT at Natura, where he manages neighborhood-huge skills infrastructure considerations.

Earlier to joining Avon, Burton spent 18 years at automobile glass restore specialist Belron, along side leading IT. Even even though he loved the just, it change into once time for a recent starting up up.

“We weren’t constructing contemporary stuff to respond the crisis; we had been adapting the things that we had”

Cut Burton, Avon International

“I’d reached the stop of the avenue in terms of bustle for meals to attain extra digital stuff at the firm,” he says. “After I came across out about Avon – which is a effectively-identified and preferred impress, but incessantly forgotten by quite a range of individuals outside rising markets – it change into once a brand contemporary drawback. They hadn’t completely embraced a digital draw of interacting with customers and sales representatives.

“It’s positively a important faster creep here at Avon. Of us incessantly request from me how I’ve long gone from windscreens to cosmetics – and, truly, quite a range of the predominant tips are universal. It’s around placing the customer at the heart of what you attain and constructing products which will almost definitely be going to fulfill their wants, so that hasn’t if truth be told been a drawback.”

In his first 18 months at Avon, Burton instigated quite a range of change. Surely one of his priorities change into once to accommodate the firm’s important legacy IT relate – as an instance, it runs 60 diverse venture useful resource planning (ERP) systems. He is also centered on the agency’s digitisation job – work that paid dividends when the enviornment went into lockdown.

“No one knew what change into once going to happen, so that you just had pull every thing simply motivate, seize stock, and kind out the stuff that wished to be dealt with straight,” says Burton. “We largely did that from our like resources, both in terms of individuals, and the systems and the applications we already had. We weren’t constructing contemporary stuff to respond the crisis; we had been adapting the things that we had.”

Coping with lockdown

While the IT crew’s wide focal level throughout lockdown has been on helping to change the agency’s distance-promoting model, this transformative effort change into once proceeded by per week or so guaranteeing that place of job-based completely workforce could possibly be ready to attain commerce from dwelling.

As a world commerce, Avon change into once already a heavy particular person of collaboration tools, along side Microsoft Teams, Build of living of business 365, and Jira workflow-administration tools. The factual recordsdata, says Burton, change into once that the agency’s corporate network stood agency and change into once ready to enhance bigger than 12,000 participants on-line at the identical time as.

“We already made heavy use of collaborative tools attributable to it’s a world commerce,” he says. “Working nearly change into once contented for the overwhelming majority of individuals, so it change into once if truth be told handiest a inquire of of whether the infrastructure would tackle the sheer volume, which it has admirably. So we had been thru that preliminary but predominant share within about per week.”

With the a ways away-working technique in position, the skills department started fascinated about how digitisation could possibly motivate the commerce and its sales reps to tackle the contemporary danger. The basic change eager allowing reps to ship deliveries straight to customers, in want to having to rely on door-to-door deliveries.

“In essence, we gave the flexibility to add an alternate offer tackle – nothing dramatically sophisticated, but that unfolded a collection of other things that we wished to accommodate around how invoicing labored and some linked areas,” says Burton, who adds that this variation eager making adjustments to 30 of the agency’s legacy systems.

Even even though the technical drawback change into once appreciable, the impact for the commerce change into once transformative. “For a gain, it change into once the identical skills of placing an disclose – they faithful had a brand contemporary risk to declare, ‘tick here when you’d like to carry it to your buyer’s tackle’,” he says.

Making the most of digital

Burton’s crew bolstered its work around offer adjustments by specializing in e-commerce. The pandemic has set apart a brand contemporary emphasis on the importance of being ready to enable reps and customers to make use of digital channels. For the length of the principle three weeks of lockdown, UK e-commerce at Avon grew sixfold.

“It change into once faithful a dramatic shift,” he says. “With that came the must enhance, from a present-chain level of look, loads extra smaller boxes being shipped. So the drawback of how you organize that drift grew to develop to be a drawback – how you organize the warehouse-administration system and the physical structure of the warehouse, along with social distancing? How one can tackle that high change into once a accurate focal level in the third and fourth week of Covid-19.”

The firm’s e-commerce presence entails a URL with the gain’s non-public store identify, so that they receive charge for driving sales. It’s a an identical approach with digital brochures – as with e-commerce, Avon had already started creating an on-line more than just a few to its paper brochures in 2019. That effort change into once upscaled thru lockdown, with digital brochures created on a weekly foundation.

Once extra, reps can ship a personalised hyperlink to shoppers or piece the brochure thru their social channels and receive charge on any sales. Across digital channels, Burton and his crew possess veteran skills to enable a instant commerce transformation – and that adjust is at risk of possess long-term ramifications.

“We’ve pretty important sorted out our front stop, in terms of the customer-facing considerations,” he says. “The following factor that we must tackle is the layer where we organize all of our commerce logic, so all of our pricing and promotions, and the draw we organize compensation and orders.

“That’s very complex – we’re clear on how we’re going to attain it. We had been going to gain started this yr. We’re clear on what we’re going to attain in that space – it’s faithful a topic of getting motivate to it.”

Constructing for the long bustle

Burton continues to search for contemporary methods to push skills-enabled change. While his crew is battling to interrupt Avon’s reliance on legacy systems, he says the aim is to seize perfect thing about on-inquire of IT services and products in as many methods as doable.

“I’m a gigantic proponent of doing stuff on the cloud,” he says. “We had been planning to transfer all of our front place of job, all of our buyer-facing systems, onto AWS about now. But that got set apart on finish thanks to Covid-19. We’re now starting up to resuscitate just a few of that work.”

In many methods, Burton and his crew’s efforts throughout the pandemic were all of the extra excellent given the technical debt they face. “All the things we’ve accomplished to cope, we’ve accomplished on-premise – so, extra credit to the crew for that,” he says. “We can’t faithful creep to a support watch over panel and dial it up, even though I want we could possibly possess.”

In due course, Burton objectives to make use of the cloud to introduce extra of the rising commerce use circumstances his department has helped enhance throughout lockdown. Of course, the crew is already fascinated about how it could possibly probably maybe possibly use pioneering skills in modern methods.

“We’re the usage of machine finding out to foretell the likelihood of a gain now not placing orders and turning loyal into a lapsed representative,” he says. “We’ve rolled that out as a platform for folk internally who possess to alter groups of reps.”

Two years from now, Burton hopes to be ready where extra buyer-facing services and products – equivalent to e-commerce and digital brochures – were rolled out across all of Avon’s global markets.

“I want the capabilities that motivate the reps and our shoppers to be all over,” he says. “And I would in point of fact like us to possess made factual growth, so that we now possess a collection of implementations and are going in a instant cookie-cutter-form production line of roll-outs, so we know what’s going to simplify that accurate complexity in our legacy architecture.”