You are in our Global Site Contact menu Contact us Home Investors Annual Report Connecting through digitalization Connecting through digitalization Digitalization is a crucial driver of Nestlé's continued evolution. It covers all aspects of our business and helps create new platforms for growth, enhances agility and generates efficiencies. We are advancing as a digitally enabled and data-intelligent business. At a glance 4 online Nespresso orders per second at its peak in 2020 185 million visits to our Recetas Nestlé platform in Latin America 47 % of total media spend was on digital media 11.9 million conversations on Workplace, Nestlé's internal social networking platform Thriving in a connected world Consumers are more pressed for time, digitally-engaged and health-conscious than ever before. They expect our brands to offer or recommend 'fit-for-me' solutions that can be accessed on demand and seamlessly integrated into their lives. To succeed in this connected world, we focus our digitalization efforts on: Scaling growth in e-commerce READ MORE Leveraging analytics to better understand, engage and create value with consumers and customers READ MORE Digitalizing our operations and administration to make us more efficient READ MORE Raising the digital competencies of our people to make us more agile READ MORE Scaling growth in e-commerce In 2020, our e-commerce sales accounted for 12.8% of sales and grew by 48.4%. This strong growth reflects our ability to adapt quickly to rapidly-evolving consumer demands and is based on: A deep understanding of which categories, geographies, brands and consumer value propositions fit with e-commerce. Experience building responsive, scalable and profitable direct-to-consumer businesses. A close relationship with all retailers selling online. Ensuring our markets have the freedom to tailor a centrally developed toolkit of digital technologies and practices to their local needs. E-commerce is part of our omnichannel strategy, combining online and offline, to delight consumers with the best shopping experience however, wherever and whenever they decide to shop. We seek growth across all channels, from partnerships with e-retailers to direct-to-consumer businesses such as Nespresso, Persona and Tails.com. Enabling digital innovation Leveraging analytics We are partnering with the world's leading digital innovators to reshape our marketing and commerce practices for the digital world. We are leveraging our scale to generate value and build new capabilities backed by powerful data models and algorithms. Our goal is to empower teams to make smarter, quicker decisions by transforming data into an accessible, reusable asset. A key focus of these efforts is understanding the return on each marketing and commercial investment. To deliver on this, we are upgrading our end-to-end analytics capabilities to measure the value of each consumer and customer touchpoint and the impact of every campaign. These efforts are helping us to: Understand the effectiveness of each brand interaction. Generate efficiencies by improving resource allocation. Capture insights that can be used to optimize channel strategies in real time. Identify opportunities for innovation and the scaling up of new launches. Maximize the value of our strategic direct-to-consumer investments, for example with Freshly. Personalizing engagement and experience Enhancing portfolio management and channel mix strategies Accelerating our test, learn, share and scale approach Our internal social networking platforms help us to accelerate our speed of learning by creating global communities. These groups increase market awareness and adoption of new technologies and digital know-how. Using tools such as our start-up flow tracker, they help to raise awareness of best practices by creating visibility on take up and outcomes of new technologies. Previous Next Digitalizing our operations Across our operational network, we are deploying flexible and scalable digital solutions to enhance our responsiveness. These multi-year initiatives are enabling us to better leverage technologies such as artificial intelligence, predictive analytics and collaborative robotics to support factory automation and end-of-line customization. In 2020, we expanded the scope of these programs to increase the flow, accessibility and utility of real-time data in areas such as procurement and supply chain management. These efforts support our drive to enhance: Consumer and customer-centricity. Manufacturing flexibility and agility. Transparency and traceability along our supply chains. We are also stepping up our capacity to capture and share data across our value chains. We work with supply chain partners to pilot solutions that will better balance efficiency and resiliency. For example, in 2020 we increased the scope of our Transport Hub technologies to cover 50% of our global logistics network. In parallel, we extended the scope of our AI-powered network optimization tools to evaluate different product sourcing and delivery scenarios. This has enhanced our ability to respond quickly to changes in demand and to optimize transport and production schedules. These tools enable us to better service our customers and reduce our operational carbon footprint. Indeed, beyond efficiency and growth, we see digitalization as an enabler of our sustainability agenda. To that end we are stepping up our efforts to build systems and tools that will enable us to more accurately calculate and track progress in areas such as: Sustainable packaging. Carbon emissions reduction. Water management. For example, we are working with partners such as OpenSC, a pioneer in supply chain transparency backed by the WWF, to build a fit-for-purpose platform of 'feeding' technologies to increase raw material traceability. In 2020, this work broke new ground by combining proximity sensors (Internet of Things), remote (satellite) and analytic (image recognition) technologies to track palm oil supply chains in Mexico. Raising the digital expertise of our people We believe that our people should be empowered by technology. To enable our employees to extract the greatest value from Nestlé's digitalization journey, we have accelerated our efforts to build up their competencies and make them more digital savvy. Our goal is to equip teams to: Be agile with digital technologies and techniques. Decide autonomously when, where and how to deploy new capabilities. We have scaled up our learning platforms and established digital academies. These provide access to relevant, easy-to-consume learning materials that enable employees to acquire applicable digital skills. For example, in 2020, our e-business academy, which focuses on building expertise in search, programmatic media, e-commerce and data analytics, has trained more than 16 000 employees and fully certified 2 700 of our sales and marketing associates. "The eBusiness Academy has enabled me to learn at my own pace and in a hands-on way, using real-world and concrete examples that I can implement across all areas of my role" – Miriam Bakkali, Associate Marketing Manager. Built on a gaming format, the e-business academy allows employees to have fun while learning. Users progress with their lessons by collecting points and unlocking badges. Employees, trainees, and apprentices can all gain digital know-how relevant to their role. "Clearly, digitalization is the way to go to engage with consumers. Yet, in order to succeed, one of our most important assets is our people – current and future employees. We need them to have the right competences and mindset to lead the digital transformation. The eBusiness Academy will play a critical role in this journey" – Yannis Dramis, Global eBusiness Operations & Capability Building Lead. These academies support continuous digital upskilling and keep our employees in the markets up-to-date with the latest best practices from Nestlé and our technology partners. Explore more of our Annual Report Speaking through our brands Creating Shared Value Facts and figures Letter to our shareholders 1 2 Downloads The Annual Report contains our Annual Review including Creating Shared Value highlights, the Corporate Governance & Compensation Reports and our Financial Statements Annual Review (pdf, 16 Mb) Corporate Governance & Compensation Reports, Financial Statements (pdf, 5 Mb) Creating Shared Value and Sustainability Report (pdf, 15 Mb) Sign up for our investor alerts and stay up to date with what's happening Subscribe Share this page TO THE TOP Nestlé News Sign up for Global Nestlé News Sign up Compliance Concerns Speak Up about your concerns Speak Up Contact us Across the globe, Nestlé are here to help answer your queries Contact us Nestlé We unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come USEFUL LINKS Ask Nestlé (FAQs) Contact us Search for jobs Sign up for news Speak Up COMPANY DOWNLOADS OTHER NESTLÉ BUSINESSES MEDIA INVESTORS SHARE PRICE CHF 121.52 (-0.52%) Follow us on SUB FOOTER MENU © 2021 Nestlé Site map Help Privacy Cookies Terms of use Accessibility RSS Sign me up Unsubscribe Contact us Cookie Consent