Coca Cola Amatil revives group CIO role, appoints first chief digital officer

Coca Cola Amatil has revealed the appointment of a new group CIO and new chief digital officer, who each commenced their roles last month.

Debbie Nova will direct IT strategy across CCA, the Asia Pacific bottling partner of Coca-Cola and one of the region’s largest manufacturers and distributors of beverages and ready-to-eat food snacks, as group CIO. Sam Mitchell reports to Nova in the newly created role of CDO.

The group CIO role has been revived some three years after the departure of former group tech chief Barry Simpson, now global CIO at The Coca-Cola Company. The position didn’t exist in the interim, but its reestablishment is evidence of the company’s growing focus on technology, CCA said.

Nova has spent more than two decades at the company, joining CCA in 1996 during the deployment of sales and distribution systems in Indonesia.

Since 2009 she has been IT director for Indonesia, later taking on responsibility for HR and major company transformation initiatives. Nova has led the introduction and implementation of IT solutions covering master data, ERP, business intelligence and mobile computing.

"Debbie is highly regarded by the Coca-Cola Company and has a reputation for delivering results and building sustainable capability. Her deep knowledge of our business combined with her strategic ability will make her a distinctive contributor and member of the Group Leadership Team,” said group managing director Alison Watkins in a statement.

Mitchell has been more than 14 years with the company, the last three as general manager of the National Sales Centre, Route to Market Strategy, eCommerce and Digital Transformation.

The company said that in recent months Mitchell has been focusing wholly on Digital RTM, technology and customer experience at a strategic level.

“In this role Sam lead the exploitation of digitisation and has been instrumental in building a digital transformation strategy for the future including; eCommerce (B2B), Selling Through Customers (STC), Digital Content Management, Data & Insights (AI/ML), as well as automation of the Customer Experience via the Salesforce.com platform which is about to commence in Australia,” Watkins added.

In its full year results today, CCA said it was advancing with plans to invest an additional $40 million into prices, marketing and technology this year.

A reported net profit of $445.2 million is up 81 per cent on the previous year, helped by a one-off gain from the sale of a plant in Queensland.

Underlying profit and underlying earnings before tax fell 0.4 per cent and 0.7 per cent respectively.