How Ahold Delhaize’s USA CIO Is Embracing Tech-Enabled Growth
Ann Dozier, CIO of Ahold Delhaize USA, recently tackled the subject of navigating change while continuing to deliver value through tech.
During the opening keynote presentation at GroceryTech, a conference hosted by CGT sister brand Progressive Grocer, Dozier said one of the most important issues facing grocery retailers is what she termed “omnichannel complexity.”
"How do we make sure that we’re creating that right experience ... and connecting online in the stores to make sure that we are the most efficient and effective, as well as serving the customer the best way?" she posed. "The customers have a lot of things that they want that we actually haven’t thought about in the past, and we now have to think about differently.”
The company has turned to AI to drive value through productivity and elevated customer experiences, unlocking data "to be able to truly accelerate what we need to do in the store and what we need to do for the customer."
“We’re going to be very focused on ensuring that our AI is embedded across the organization for value,” said Dozier.
Ann Dozier was named CGT's CIO of the Year in 2024 for her contributions to Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits as its previous SVP and chief information and technology officer. Read her profile here.
As part of this, Ahold Delhaize USA has hired a new chief data AI officer in the United States.
The company has also partnered globally with Apple Delta to make sure it’s leveraging that same value in its European markets. At the same time, to ensure that the company has the right data foundation, it has launched an initiative called Program Catalyst, which will enable it “to unlock differentiated value through newer technologies like AI while at the same time creating the standards and the simplification [of] leveraging an AI-first mindset to be able to implement a common system across all our brands,” Dozier explained.
To further this initiative, the company has recently selected RISE with SAP to re-engineer its back-end systems “to be able to get onto one common core retail system that we can then enable across all brands, based on the freedom and the framework they need as brands, so that we can ultimately deliver on the promise of differentiation,” Dozier said.
She said that the interesting thing about this is that it's not just about IT; it’s a business-led, IT-enabled AI-first initiative.”
In tandem with that undertaking, Ahold Delhaize USA has embedded two core platforms recently built "by grocery, for grocery."
One is the company’s Edge platform for social media, for which the American organization has teamed up with the Dutch Ahold Delhaize brand Albert Heijn “to deliver that platform and leverage the value of each market."
The company also has a proprietary platform called PRISM that allows it to deliver commerce to all five U.S. brands, as well as offer in-store capabilities “to ensure that we’re getting those products in the hands of our customers as quickly as possible."
To deliver these capabilities to its marketplace, Ahold Delhaize USA has created the #OneTech initiative, which is focused on bringing the best of technology together across all of the company into a single organization.
"[This] allows us to take the value of the innovation and the ways of working of our digital organization — the rigor and scaling capabilities of our IT organization and our data organization — and bring them together into one team, because at the end of the day, everybody in this room understands that data, tech and digital all have to work together in order to deliver the best outcome for the business partner, for the customer and for the associate,” Dozier explained.
In the world of AI, she summed up, things are changing faster than ever before, and retailers can't afford to stand still.
A version of this article first appeared on the site of sister publication Progressive Grocer.
