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2024 winner
BY Liz Dominguez
PRESENTED BY
Ann Dozier
Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits
Final IT oversight might stem from an individual decision-maker at the top of an organization’s leadership structure, but according to Ann Dozier, SVP and chief information and technology officer at Southern Glazer's Wine & Spirits, digital transformations should really be recognized as a group effort. For her individual contributions and influential leadership, CGT is proud to recognize Dozier as its CIO of the Year — a testament to the power of collaborative strategizing and the ability to revolutionize and upend the IT status quo with the right leader at the helm.
The CIO of the Year Award, now in its 12th year, is bestowed upon a company’s senior-most tech leader who has made the greatest demonstrable business impact within their organization through the implementation and successful use of technology. Colleagues, peers, and business partners are permitted to nominate, and we were tipped to Dozier’s impressive accomplishments by a member of her team.
Past
Winners
CIO of the Year Through the Years
2023: Susannah Greenberg, L'Oréal Americas
2022: Aaron Gwinner, Reynolds American
2021: Parag Agrawal, Chobani
Mike Crowe, Colgate-Palmolive
Rekha Ramesh, Tupperware
2020: Mark Vaupel, Hormel Foods
2019: Sandeep Dadlani, Mars Incorporated
2018: Jane Moran, Unilever
2017: Manjit Singh, The Clorox Company
2016: Sai Koorapati, Callaway Golf
2015: Mark Dajani, Mondelez International
2014: David Stahl, Hillshire Brands
2013: Ralph Loura, The Clorox Company
Dozier has spent the last decade with the North American distributor of wines, spirits, beer, and non-alcoholic products. She joined in 2013 as the company’s VP of IT before rising to her current position in 2015. Her background spans 30 years of experience in the beverage distribution business across categories such as carbonated beverages, dairy and ice cream, and ultimately wine and spirits. It was a love for technology (and the industry’s expedited innovation cycle) that drove her to Southern Glazer’s, where integrated tech is a core component.
“I absolutely love being part of a fast-moving business that's constantly changing and evolving — and beverage distribution is all about moving fast to build and deliver brands for moments that matter,” she tells CGT. “As someone that spent half of their career in various business and strategy functions, I realized that technology was such a big enabler of everything that companies are doing, and Southern Glazer’s offered me that opportunity to deliver value through technology at a very different level.”
Following the
North Star
Over the last 12 months, Dozier led a review of their core technology ecosystem and the processes it enabled allowing Southern Glazer’s to step back and determine what modernizations were needed to accelerate digitization and best serve the needs of its customers, suppliers, and employees in the future.
As a result, the company landed on an initiative coined “NorthStar” — a business transformation led by a newly appointed chief transformation officer Mike McLaughlin, who is working very closely with Dozier and her team. The “inside-out” approach to technology and transformation can lead to a tremendous amount of value, she says, as it includes not only technology transformation but business reinvention supported by technology enablement.
This means a more federated model for IT and upgrading to more agile ways of working, while also taking an AI-first mindset focused on automation and simplification. As the company grows, so does the IT burden, and so Dozier says scalability and speed to market is of monumental importance. It includes connecting with business partners to create true integrated relationships based on common goals and measures. In response, Dozier has embedded IT talent in strategic initiatives throughout its business. This helps to create a stronger bond with business partners and allows Southern Glazer’s to reinvent as technology evolves.
“We are at an inflection point, like many companies are, where technology is evolving so fast that we have to quickly evolve our legacy technology to a true digital core by upgrading our ERP while building a more composable and service-oriented architecture,” says Dozier. “That will allow us to move at the speed of digital innovation to serve our customers and suppliers, while also moving at that same speed as we modernize our internal processes and systems.”
“About every two to three years, we're reinventing our team and ways of working by upskilling our existing team, embedding new external talent, and focusing on our next-gen pipeline to ensure we are staying one step ahead of our business partners through innovation. At the same time, we must stay very connected with our partnering business functions to leverage those ideas to collaboratively create value.”
Southern Glazer’s ‘Reinvention’ Mentality
Enterprise Value Assurance
Southern Glazer’s is leveraging an Enterprise Value Assurance team approach to ensure they are focused on the highest value capabilities by connecting the dots between initiatives and setting priorities based on value. Dozier says the group is very focused on balancing quick wins with strategic efforts ensuring they are maximizing investments, continuing to meet supplier partner and customer needs, and managing change across the organization.
“Having an Enterprise Value Assurance group, a cross-functional group of decision-making leaders that have the ability to drive the company forward in the right way, has really made a huge difference in our ability to deliver as a company.”
Dozier’s Data Considerations
Dozier’s Data Considerations
How to put pertinent data in the hands of every employee and make it accessible and easy to use by constantly modernizing to get the most out of existing technologies
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Building out a Tech Strategy
Leadership and stakeholder buy-in is often a recurring roadblock for IT leaders looking to overhaul systems. Sometimes the value of foundational initiatives can be hard to communicate. “Nobody wants to invest in their network until it’s not working.”
Luckily, Dozier hasn’t encountered too many obstacles, due to the tremendous support of her executive leadership, allowing her team to move at pace with the core capabilities that create the foundation for success.
“So things like our infrastructure, our network, making sure we're constantly refreshing our devices, making sure that we have a single version of the truth for quality data — those things have actually been pretty easy for us to get buy-in on because we've been able to effectively educate and partner with our leaders to understand why these things matter.”
Due to the ongoing modernization and reinvention, she focuses quite heavily on change management, creating a self-service model that communicates: "We're going to tell you when things are coming. We're going to make sure you're prepared … but at the same time, we want to provide you with tools where you can get assistance and learn on your own so you can continue to maximize the use of that technology."
It’s at the forefront of everything, and Dozier engages employees and partners as much as possible in the solutions so they feel like they’re a part of it and it’s something they can own and embrace.
How to better connect externally with partners to combine data and insights to drive growth
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How fast tech in the data space is transforming and how it can be harnessed for value
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Building the Foundation
Building the Foundation
In breaking down the goals for technology implementation at Southern Glazer’s, Dozier shared some of the foundational shifts she hopes to achieve:
• Create efficiency and effectiveness
• Simplify business operations so employees can focus on more strategic activities
• Automate things that are easily automated
• Create tighter connectivity with supplier partners
• Make it easy for customers to do business with Southern Glazer’s
“Our goal is how do we make sure that we are simplifying the things that can easily be simplified through technology so that our company, whether it be sales or supply chain or even corporate functions, has the ability to focus on future strategies and services that differentiate us as a company.”
Looking at
the Future
Technology is advancing at unprecedented speeds, and that’s what Dozier is focused on — determining how to best maximize the use, how to innovate faster, and how to take advantage of the learnings that these tools bring to the table.
Among the advancing areas is AI, which you can’t escape in a conversation, Dozier jokes. But the company is getting more serious about embedding some generative AI capabilities, starting small in more internal areas and learning. It’s expected to be a game-changer for the organization, and although AI and ML have been around for a long time, the new opportunities within Southern Glazer’s will help the team become more effective, recreate roles for the future, and take insights to a whole new level.
Cyber security is another area of importance, set to transform organizations at the same pace as AI or even faster, and Dozier is continuing to balance risk with value as cyber security becomes a bigger challenge for all companies.
Keeping up with that tech growth is a huge lift, but Dozier says she’s prepared with key strategies focused on inside-out process redesign, outside-in growth, and supply chain evolution. “For our team, it's going to be all about keep delivering, keep learning, keep adjusting, keep transforming, and continuing to get closer and closer to our business partners to make sure that all of the things that we have on the agenda get done with measurable business value.”
Tips for Success
1. People are our most important asset and caring about them as people first and employees second is vital to the success of any interdependent team. Take care of them and they will take care of your company.
2. Create an environment of trust, collaboration, and empowerment where the team values diversity and can bring their whole self to work each day.
3. Have a clear strategy and vision to stay one step ahead. “Skate where the puck is going,” as Wayne Gretsky would say.
4. Create a culture of support and encouragement where success is preferred, and failure is something to learn from.
5. Be accountable to yourself so your team feels that accountability coming from the top…roll up your sleeves and get involved.
6. Always make decisions with an eye toward what is best for your company overall.
PRESENTED BY
Technology
Is in the Culture
Dozier is most proud of the organization’s ability to continue to evolve and be one step ahead of where it needs to be — and that’s thanks to her ability to put together the right team with the right skills and capabilities, armed with advanced tech so no one is ever waiting on IT to deliver on a business strategy or need.
She often tells her team, “You don't have to be in the front of the room to drive transformation. You need to find leaders in the organization that have the relationships and ability to drive that transformation, and share your ideas as well as show them the value that you can bring to support their business objectives."
She makes sure her team members become champions and agents for change. This is necessary because if the IT arm — which is often at the center of transformation — isn’t constantly reinventing, and isn’t comfortable with consistently changing and moving, “then how can we expect others in the company to be comfortable with change,” she says.
Data Is the Lifeblood
Data runs through the veins of the organization, driving insights that inform strategies of the future, delivering quality day-to-day business insights and operations, and measuring business results. It is core to Southern Glazer’s transformation journey. Given its tremendous dataset, Dozier is always thinking about how it can provide value in the ecosystem of suppliers and customers by arming the organization with the information that is needed for success. The company’s data center of excellence, created in partnership with chief digital officer Alan Wizemann, unifies quality insights into a data lake with a single version of truth and makes it accessible in new ways so the team can use it to drive business growth.
With any data-powered implementation, Dozier focuses on the following: