The Amazing Tech in FrieslandCampina’s Peak Milk [Photos]

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December 20, 2017

As a boy growing up in Ovim (Abia State), I enjoyed one specific tradition: wake up in the morning, run to a local bakery for fresh bread, and experience enjoyment moment where tea goes with Peak Milk. I lived with Peak Milk and I grew with it. It is a peerless brand in its sector, and remains a category-king which continues to initiate a generation of young people into Peak Moments, through excellence packaged for families, as milk.

So, when the opportunity came few weeks ago to visit the makers of Peak Milk, FrieslandCampina WAMCO, it was a slam dunk. For me, it was an opportunity to visit an iconic institution I had admired from afar. I had expected to see a typical industrial age company with broken doors and unpainted properties. But what I saw blew me up: FrieslandCampina WAMCO is a technology company. They just happen to be making great milk for Nigerians. But the DNA, the ecosystem, the processes and people are typical of things I see in industry-leading tech firms.

For consumers in Nigeria, the Peak brand is synonymous with milk. Peak is the brand of our operating company FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria, in which we work with local partners. FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria sells evaporated milk and powder, and processes milk powder which is largely imported from the Netherlands.

Located in the capital city Lagos, FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria processes a considerable amount of milk powder. Its products ultimately find their way to consumers via an extensive distribution network and open markets.

People, it was an excursion because my imagination was totally out of phase. I do not know where students of my alma mater, Federal University of Technology Owerri, go these days for tech excursion. But then, no one ever imagined that companies making milk would be as techie as I experienced. Largely, people could have missed great job opportunities by not looking wide enough. The fixation on companies that produce Likes, Share and Tweet is clouding our capacities to see beyond the clicks.

The i-Meadow

I visited a space in the business which is excellently named i-Meadow. The “meadow” without the “i” is an “open, sunny area that attracts and supports flora and fauna”. And that is what i-Meadow does, except that the flora and fauna are processes and ideas. It is an innovation space where team members spend time to improve the business of dairy. They have essentially taken the playbook of the mainstream (typical) technology firms to fuse discovery and innovation within the firm. You will find in this piece photos from i-Meadow. While the energy in the space cannot be captured with pixels, you can see that the modern tech office design has gone into a building where great daily product is made.

FrieslandCampina i-Meadow: an open innovation space

The Peak Ecosystem for Techies

Around industrial sectors, we are seeing companies modernize their business processes and technology capabilities in order to position themselves to compete. If the business of the modern age can be won with technology, it simply means that technology is the business. Technology improves productivity, making it possible to serve customers more effectively even at lower cost. There is no doubt that FrieslandCampina has increasingly redesigned its business processes to bring the innovation capabilities that technology brings. Ecosystems like i-Meadow with top-grade and tech-inspired office design is a testament to their tradition of bringing open innovation to engineer great products. Speaking with the team, they explained a vision to position the company as a place where the brightest tech talent in Nigeria would like to seek employment. Go figure; that is coming from a dairy brand, explaining the ambition to become an innovation leader.

FrieslandCampina i-Meadow: open innovation space

So, if you are looking for jobs in technology companies like Jumia, Interswitch, IBM and Google, FrieslandCampina should not be far. This is a place for the techies to make careers because the business of making the best dairy product is indeed a technology business. Technology will not just have to run the production of the Peak brand but also to transform it. The following are major areas it is focusing to drive innovation.

Our innovation, in turn, is focused on the growth categories dairy-based beverages, nutrition for children and branded cheese. Within these growth categories, research and innovation are mainly concentrated in these areas:

growth & development (of children)

daily nutrition

health & wellness and

functionality (structure)

FrieslandCampina focuses its innovation on producing healthy, nutritious, well-balanced and tasty food, in which the dietary advantages of milk in particular are made optimum use of and the costs and emission of CO2 are minimised.

My point is that engineers and techies must expand their horizons. It does not have to be registered in Crunchbase before a company can provide real opportunities in the technology space. Your AI and data analytics skills can find home in companies like FrieslandCampina besides the typical tech firms.

Opportunities in Technology

On the company website, it mentioned “technological breakthrough”. In other words, the business has elemental components of using technology to drive innovation and competitiveness. But this technology goes beyond just producing milk; it extends to marketing, distribution and customer engagements. From Three Crowns brand to the sachet technology, they continue to use technology to make daily products more affordable through pricing engineering, packaging and other techniques.

FrieslandCampina WAMCO Nigeria sells evaporated milk and powder under the brand name Peak, which has been a symbol of quality for fifty years. Peak enjoys extensive brand awareness, and brand loyalty is also high. The Peak products contain important vitamins and nutrients and are therefore beneficial to health. The range has recently been expanded to include evaporated (liquid) milk in sachets – a technological breakthrough.

FrieslandCampina i-Meadow: an open innovation space.

In the technology domain, there will be emerging opportunities as technology redesigns how every aspect of business is done. The distribution system, customer engagement, and the capacity to reach users of Peak brand are areas where technology will play new roles. Whether it is artificial intelligence to aggregate data across platforms, or deepening direct engagement through social and mobile, techies will find opportunities in entities like FrieslandCampina.

I see technology to play key roles in the following areas in what FrieslandCampina does:

Extending beyond milk to On-the-go Solutions. Nigerian startup community can technically build on top of Peak to make this possible. There are many layers on top of milk and there are opportunities in those spaces.
Efficient distribution of portion sizes: No one wants to visit a store only to be told that the store does not have the right size of a specific brand. So, there is a role for data analytics there by collecting data and predicting patterns to ensure customers always get the products in sizes they want. The real-time distribution insight will be critical for Peak to improve its scalable advantage and margins. The company has already invested in smaller portions but the optimality in distribution is where tech will help.
Flexible packaging needs to evolve in Nigeria. Nigeria needs the squeezability and the sippability but those can come by taking Peak to another layer. Think of smoothies and yogurts. Opportunities could exist for Nigerian food entrepreneurs to work with brands like FrieslandCampina to pioneer new areas through more flexibility packaging.
Data Analytics: Every business is a data business now. Firms like FrieslandCampina will provide new opportunities for data companies in Nigeria if the startups can think beyond the typical Click and Like metrics to deliver solutions that will improve key market indicators across the nation.

All Together

Companies like FrieslandCampina must find ways to engage the technology ecosystem as the world looks for better ways to improve nutrition especially in children. Unlike in the past where it was impossible to track (and correlate) how nutrition was affecting children, technology like wearables and mobile could have real applications.

Also, I expect more differentiation in ecommerce where hyper-focus sectors will begin to create separation in the industry. A man built an empire in U.S. by running a diaper-focused ecommerce, dairy in future should receive laser-focused distribution disruptions to reduce cost and get the products to families faster. Our limitations, as entrepreneurs, will be the scope of our visions. As I toured the firm, I saw opportunities for tech workers and startups: from logistics to direct customer engagement. Indeed, for FrieslandCampina, the industrial age is behind, the knowledge age is here.

You Must Develop A Blockchain Strategy

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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December 19, 2017

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Technology capability rarely wins markets alone. If tech can win without other components, Apple will not be the most valued company on earth. What wins is strategy with a solid business model. You need a strategy to succeed in any market, even when you think you have the best product. Interesting, without the right market strategy, you will never have the best product! As I noted, many years ago in the Harvard Business Review, Intel Corp won over AMD not necessarily because of technology, but because it “personalized” its microprocessor.

Yes, the “Intel Inside” campaign was an iconic show that orphaned AMD even before it was born. When people asked for computers and laptops with Intel inside, AMD lost trajectory. The brilliance of Microsoft is not really the Windows, but a recursive pricing strategy which demands annual licensing fees from corporate customers. In short, if not for the pricing, Microsoft would have advanced the world of PC industry.

We are witnessing uncommon things in a new infant sector: blockchain. It is hot and it is trendy. One company moved from $5 to $143 within days just for adding a blockchain product in its portfolio.

The financial market mania over digital currencies isn’t limited to digital currency prices, it appears. A tiny startup focused on financial tech called Longfin has seen its stock price skyrocket since it started trading last week.

Longfin, based in New York, started trading on the Nasdaq last week at $5. On Friday, the company announced it acquired another startup called Ziddu.com that uses the blockchain ledger accounting technology from digital currencies to make small loans.

That prompted an explosion of interest in Longfin, which saw its stock price more than quadruple on Friday to almost $24 a share. Then on Monday, the mania spread with the stock hitting a high of almost $143

I know that your institution wants to get into this game. That makes sense. But I have some words: it is not the technology that will drive the wins, just as it was not web technology that made Mark Zuckerberg a billionaire. The key thing that will matter is strategy – your company blockchain strategy. How are you going to approach your business using blockchain? Blockchain must work as a tool, enabling and anchoring the business strategic objectives. The business objective must be superior to anything that blockchain promises. It is only when you get the strategy right that you can structure how blockchain can anchor the technology element.

I want you to have a strategy, as you begin to think through this technology. We have looked at this technology, worked on it, and we like what we have seen especially as it concerns contracting and remittance. We would be happy to serve as Subject Matter Experts to provide guidance on strategy, technology and product evolution anchored on blockchain in your firm. We would come to any city in Africa and actually show you live how this works. Our expectation is to author the first draft of your blockchain roadmap, synthesizing your business with the possibilities of blockchain.

Jumia Shoes, Konga Collections to Save Aba Shoe Industry

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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December 19, 2017

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I am thinking that Jumia and Konga, two Nigerian ecommerce pioneers, can fix a major problem in Nigeria: the Aba shoe and leather business problems. (Besides Aba, we have similar issues in Kano and Oshogbo in other sectors.) For all the promises in Aba, Nigerian entrepreneurs are yet to unlock the latent opportunities therein. We do know that Aba has brilliant designers who are limited by their business visions, just as our farmers who remain keepers of ancestral traditions, over becoming businesspeople.

Both Jumia and Konga have invested so much on branding, and they are known in Nigeria. Each can pioneer a solid private label. So, I am hoping we will have things like Jumia Shoes and Konga Collections. They will have these businesses with pure elements of exclusivity in their respective portals.

Now that we are transitioning our economy, through diversification out of minerals and hydrocarbon, to a knowledge-based one, these ecommerce companies can play a critical role through commerce. Drawing my previous writings, these are ways they can create Jumia exclusive shoes on Jumia and Konga exclusive collections on Konga, and fix Aba shoe industry paralysis, using a pure aggregation construct:

Support some shoe designers and get them to produce under a unique label – Jumia Shoes and Konga Collections
Either will provide a shared infrastructure at scale to make it easier for makers and designers to have access to tools and equipment they need to design and make shoes
If either controls some of the brand rights, it will support the shoe makers to expand capacity in production. The firm will invest to boost capacity for the designers so that they can produce more shoes and leather materials
Either will help the shoe makers improve qualityso that the shoes can be sold internationally
Either will lead a pan-African structured advertising; the brand equity is there. Besides, Jumia, specifically, has deep experience in fashion through other entities in its parent Rocket Internet.

I am very confident that branding will unlock the opportunities in Aba, and the route to that will be having a differentiated label that brings some of the makers and players together. The fact is this: Jumia and Konga can give foreign shoe brands real heat in Nigeria if they build solid private brands by themselves through pure aggregation construct. They are not going to become makers, but they will set the standards, just as Uber does for drivers and Airbnb for homeowners, and the shoe makers will align.

In Praise of SMALL Data

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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December 19, 2017

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In this video, I explain why you need to invest in SMALL data even as you expand your capacities on big data. The fusion of both will bring the great innovative moments in your company. While big data gives you the averages, the small data provides insights on the outliers which are usually ignored. Within those outliers are elements for disruption.

When data does not make sense, it does not mean that it has to be cleansed to fit into a big data analytic construct [we are guilt of cleaning data]; it simply means that the typical business model is not for it. Data does not lie, but cleansed data could hide truths. It averages lives and events, normalizing all moments that pass through it.

Yes, they swore, using data, that Africans could not afford mobile phone services, until an African son proved everyone wrong. The big data looked at growth and per capita income; the small data looked at the elemental culture that Africans like to talk, over writing. No wonder, except the Ethiopians, no other major culture invented any way of writing before colonialism.
That said: have a data New Year ahead.

Google Opens Wallet for CS Educators in Africa – Apply

By

Ndubuisi Ekekwe

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December 18, 2017

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Google has opened applications for the Computer Science educators funding program for 2018. It is open to school districts, schools, and other education nonprofits around Africa. This covers primary schools all the way to university levels. I know some schools you know may benefit.

Over the past 10 years, Google’s programme for the professional development (PD) of Computer Science (CS) educators (formerly known as CS4HS) has funded close to $13 million in grants supporting teacher PD in CS education globally. In Africa, 61 universities and nonprofits dedicated to growing the confidence and skillset of new and future CS educators have received grants that have impacted 5,000 educators from more than 15 countries.

We’re excited to announce our funding cycle is open to school districts, universities, and other education nonprofits around the world for the 2018-2019 school year. Historically, Google’s CS educator PD grants have aimed to help secondary school teachers gain confidence to integrate CS and computational thinking (CT) into their classrooms. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of CS PD funding, we’re excited to announce that the programme will expand to include applications from PD providers for primary school and pre-service teacher education in Africa for the 2018 grant year.

Apply Here.