How Beer Culture, Category, and Loyalty Evolved a Decade After SABMiller (#746)

DeWet Bisschoff: I always say to people, if you manage a profit and loss, you can pretend that you’ve done it or you’ve done it.

DeWet Bisschoff: And once you do it, it’s quite a shock to the system.

DeWet Bisschoff: You have a top line, you have a bottom line and you have costs, and you stand on that wallet and there’s no way to hide.

DeWet Bisschoff: So in your career, I think you must at least do that once or twice.

DeWet Bisschoff: If you’re not understanding the industry in which you work or which in which you advise, you are not talking the right language that the clients live with every day.

DeWet Bisschoff: And they know their business is backwards because that’s what they do.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s okay to standardize your processes and everybody wants to do that because that’s economies of scale and a predictable way of dealing with stuff.

DeWet Bisschoff: But every region in the world is different.

DeWet Bisschoff: So you’ve got to also be flexible enough to allow the local management to react to the local market.

DeWet Bisschoff: Your systems of record has to be standardised globally, has to drive the same processes so that you have cost efficiency there.

DeWet Bisschoff: You have simplicity about how the business is managed.

Paula: Hello and welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, a show for loyalty marketing professionals.

Paula: I’m Paula Thomas, the founder and CEO of Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV, where we feature insightful conversations with loyalty professionals from the world’s leading brands.

Paula: Today’s episode is hosted by Nyeleti Su Angel Nkuna, a customer loyalty strategist with a proven record of helping blue chip global brands forge deeper connections with their customers.

Paula: Enjoy.

Nyeleti: Hi, as Paula just mentioned, I’m Nyeleti, your host.

Nyeleti: Today’s episode reflects an important milestone.

Nyeleti: 2026 marks 10 years since AB InBev’s acquisition of SABMiller, the largest acquisition in corporate history at the time.

Nyeleti: It was a deal that brought together two major economies of the global South, Brazil and South Africa.

Nyeleti: And one of the most complex and culturally embedded consumer categories of the world, beer.

Nyeleti: Most of us would agree that beer is deeply social.

Nyeleti: People drink beer in moments of connection that could be sporting occasions, a drink among friends or just everyday rituals.

Nyeleti: So when scale and consolidation meets a category like this, it raises important questions when it comes to customer loyalty.

Nyeleti: How do we operate globally while maintaining that local nuance that makes the category so culturally relevant?

Nyeleti: This is what makes today’s conversation so compelling.

Nyeleti: I’m joined by DeWet Bisschoff, who has spent more than 20 years harnessing the power of business strategy, together with disruptive technology in order to meet customer needs.

Nyeleti: DeWet argues the idea of a digital global core, combined with a federated customer experience, to bridge that global to local dynamic within the operating model and to build loyalty at scale.

Nyeleti: This is a conversation with so many brilliant takeaways.

Nyeleti: So, I encourage you to buckle up and enjoy.

Nyeleti: DeWet, you are so welcome to Let’s Talk Loyalty and Loyalty TV.

Nyeleti: I have been looking forward to this conversation.

Nyeleti: Welcome.

DeWet Bisschoff: Thank you very much.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s an honor to be here.

Nyeleti: So we’re going to kick start this conversation as we always do.

Nyeleti: And that is to find out a little bit about yourself and what has shaped your leadership style.

Nyeleti: And to all our guests, we’ll ask, what is one of the most impactful non-fiction books you have read?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, so I train to divide my time between fiction and non-fiction.

DeWet Bisschoff: Non-fiction, I try and read summaries of the most pertinent management books.

DeWet Bisschoff: I just find it time consuming to read a whole book for three, four weeks, to grasp three or four concepts that you can get in a summarized form.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I tend to do that.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then I predominantly read fiction for relaxation and also for myself to learn more about how other writers write.

DeWet Bisschoff: And the book I’m busy with is Onsikbar by PJ O.

DeWet Bisschoff: Jonker.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s an Afrikaans book.

DeWet Bisschoff: Onsikbar means to not to be able to be seen or not seen.

DeWet Bisschoff: And it’s a fascinating book about how a small town in South Africa, how the people that operate, the farmers, the workers, the people in town and all the complexities that comes with being a South African and interesting country that we have.

Nyeleti: Awesome.

Nyeleti: There’s a change on the show.

Nyeleti: Many more executives are reading fiction more than non-fiction to kind of, I guess, decompress and get a different perspective.

Nyeleti: So we’ll definitely link the book.

Nyeleti: And I’m glad that you actually shared an Afrikaans book.

Nyeleti: I also know that you are a fiction writer yourself.

Nyeleti: So we’ll touch on that a bit later.

DeWet Bisschoff: Thank you.

Nyeleti: And then now going into your role at Essential, you have been with the company for more than 20 years, covering a number of C-suite and high positions.

Nyeleti: Could you take us through that journey and what you’re currently doing today?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, so I grew up in Essential and I did mostly technology project management work until I got my first P&L job looking after the telco sector.

DeWet Bisschoff: I always say to people, if you manage a profit and loss, you can pretend that you’ve done it or you’ve done it.

DeWet Bisschoff: And once you do it, it’s quite a shock to the system.

DeWet Bisschoff: You have a top line, you have a bottom line, and you have costs and you stand on that wallet and there’s no way to hide.

DeWet Bisschoff: So in your career, I think you must at least do that once or twice because it’s really hard.

DeWet Bisschoff: Post that, I’ve been lucky that I’ve become the global account lead for AB InBev, the largest beer company in the world.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that’s been very enjoyable for me.

DeWet Bisschoff: The role as a global account lead, it’s a very interesting one.

DeWet Bisschoff: The way I explain it to people is I say, you’re the CEO of the client relationship, and you’re really that person that needs to do that.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that means you’ve got to be the strategic partner for the client.

DeWet Bisschoff: You’ve got to build trust because without trust, you’re really going nowhere.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that inevitably means you’re going to help the client to grow their agenda while also looking after Accenture’s business within the client and helping Accenture to grow its footprint within the client, but always with the benefit of the client in mind and making medium to long term good decisions with the client.

Nyeleti: And I find AB InBev to be a really interesting global customer loyalty case.

Nyeleti: I mean, at one point, it just appraised at such an extraordinary pace, but its brands participate in real cultural and social moments where customer loyalty has already been formed.

Nyeleti: For example, stadiums, shade mills, everyday connections.

Nyeleti: From your lens, what does a client like AB InBev need to get right in order to maintain that customer loyalty in those relevant moments?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I think, genetically, any client and specifically AB InBev needs to make an emotional and a cultural connection for their consumer goods products.

DeWet Bisschoff: You know, you take it for granted that any global company would have great service or products in quality.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think you don’t even have to mention that, but that is the ground rule without you going nowhere.

DeWet Bisschoff: Then on top of that, you know, building an emotional connection, I think is very important.

DeWet Bisschoff: AB InBev talk a lot about the next cheers moment.

DeWet Bisschoff: So they emotionally connect to what does it mean when you have a next cheers moment.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s an emotional moment.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s a fun moment.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s where you connect with friends and family.

DeWet Bisschoff: So they do that very well at an emotional level.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think their products often speak towards emotions like that, the next cheers moment coming up, etc.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then secondly, I think there’s also a big cultural connection that you’ve got to make in loyalty.

DeWet Bisschoff: While a global company like AB InBev and any other global company does have global power, unless you’re culturally connecting locally, you’re going to have a hard time selling your product, especially if it’s a consumer good product.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I can give you examples.

DeWet Bisschoff: You can think about Black Label in South Africa or in Africa, how it’s been positioned as the working man’s drink.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think the campaign that really cemented it for SABMiller many years ago is when they connected Black Label to mine workers and said, this is a hard man working hard for his family.

DeWet Bisschoff: At the end of the day wants to have a strong beer.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that’s how Black Label really grew.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that is such a cultural connection to South Africa at the time or to Africa at the time.

DeWet Bisschoff: And you can go on with that story around Bud Light with Sports in America, Corona with what it stands for.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I think that cultural connection with the emotional connectivity that goes with that, those two things together make a very powerful statement for any product.

Nyeleti: Absolutely.

Nyeleti: I love that.

Nyeleti: You know, what makes that next year’s moment?

Nyeleti: And we’ll like down into Black Label specifically in a moment.

Nyeleti: But yeah, you’re really leading on to the next question.

Nyeleti: And that is the acquisition, the very famous acquisition that happened a decade ago when InBev acquired SABMiller.

Nyeleti: So we had, you know, number one brewery and number two coming together.

Nyeleti: So two global portfolios, very rich with local loyalty, as you have mentioned.

Nyeleti: And I mean, in your view, you know, as that complexity scales with the acquisition, you know, fundamentally, you’ve just spoken about different campaigns, like, but what needs to be strengthened when you look at the global to loyal perspective from a local side so that the brands still remain relevant.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yes.

DeWet Bisschoff: And maybe I’ll take a step back there.

DeWet Bisschoff: You asked me a question about a book.

DeWet Bisschoff: I read two books specifically when I took on this role to prepare me for it.

DeWet Bisschoff: And they are, I think, if the AB InBev story was coming out of the first world, it would be a story as well known as Apple or Microsoft or Netflix, or one of these wonderful case studies.

DeWet Bisschoff: But it’s a story coming out of Brazil and Africa in some way, mostly Brazil, but with Africa playing a strong role.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think it’s a really unknown story, but it’s a fascinating story.

DeWet Bisschoff: And the one book is called The Beer Monopoly, which really the theory is that as you play monopoly, if you have the right properties on the right street, you’re going to win the game.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that’s basically how AB InBev, the three founders from Brazil looked at it from buying the right breweries and brewing companies in each corner of the world, always buying the number one or the number two and forming a huge conglomerate of brewery and beer companies around the world, always having the number one or two in the country made them the force that they are today.

DeWet Bisschoff: And the interesting thing for me as a South African is that the only other beer company in the world that saw this game and started to play the same game was SAB and acquired Miller’s and then many other brands across the world until AB InBev in its form then and SAB Miller were the number one and two in the world.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then the number one bought the number two and became controlling roughly 40% of the global beer consumption globally.

DeWet Bisschoff: So it’s a fascinating story coming out of Brazil and being then supplemented from Africa and owning the iconic brands all over the world coming from these two dare I say third world countries, probably not anymore, but third world countries at the time.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think it’s a fascinating story of the history of AB InBev and it shows what can be done.

Nyeleti: But DeWet, why do you think that such a story isn’t, doesn’t get the global recognition that it should get?

Nyeleti: Because this is one of the largest acquisitions in corporate history.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yes, I actually don’t know.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think in the right circles, it’s obviously very well known, but to the man in the street, it’s not well known.

DeWet Bisschoff: And maybe, and yeah, I speak personally of my personal opinion, and maybe it’s to do with that AB InBev have not brought the name of the company to the front of people’s minds, because what they really sell is they don’t sell AB InBev.

DeWet Bisschoff: Your loyalty is not against AB InBev or against the old SAB Miller or anything like that.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s about the brands that they sell.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s Black Label, it’s Corona, it’s Bud.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s those are the things that resonate with people.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think they’ve been very careful to preserve the brands that people buy.

DeWet Bisschoff: If I compare that, for example, to some other services companies, I’m a big admirer of Outsurance.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think they really create insurance company, like many others in South Africa.

DeWet Bisschoff: And what do you buy?

DeWet Bisschoff: You don’t buy the life product.

DeWet Bisschoff: You buy Outsurance, you buy the brand of the company, because your loyalty is there because of the service you get, et cetera.

DeWet Bisschoff: With AB InBev and these kind of companies, I think it’s slightly different, is that the product is the loyalty comes to the product and you’re a beer drinker and you’re a black label drinker, you’re a causal drinker, you’re a Corona drinker, you’re not an AB InBev drinker or SABMiller or whatever that was, drinker.

DeWet Bisschoff: That’s slightly different if you compare them to the competitors.

DeWet Bisschoff: Heineken is a big competitor.

DeWet Bisschoff: The brand and the company is almost the same thing.

DeWet Bisschoff: You buy, you drink Heineken.

Nyeleti: The brand and the company is the same thing.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s very fascinating to look at that.

Nyeleti: No, it is very fascinating.

Nyeleti: If we just linger on SABMiller for a moment, and to your point, from the consumer perspective, when they hold in that cold one, they’re not thinking about the ownership structure.

Nyeleti: People are loyal to the brands that they grew up in.

Nyeleti: In South Africa, it is Castle Lager, it is Colin Black Label, and internationally, it is Bud, Stella, Corona, all of these different brands.

Nyeleti: In your perspective, when it comes to operating models, systems and scale, in the background that brings those brands in the moments, in the custom moments, and relevant, what needs to, what’s the architecture behind that?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I think the industry trends are ones that are quite revealing, if you look at the number of big companies, AB InBev is one of them.

DeWet Bisschoff: One is its digital first engagement.

DeWet Bisschoff: So your digital engagement has to be at the top notch, because people have gotten used to deal with companies in a digital way.

DeWet Bisschoff: So now the bar that you set from a loyalty perspective is not being the best bank like the other banks, or being the best beer company like the other.

DeWet Bisschoff: You actually have to be as good as Microsoft or as Apple or Netflix, because that’s the bar that’s been set digitally.

DeWet Bisschoff: Now the consumer expects that behavior, doesn’t matter whether they’re buying beer or they’re buying toothpaste or they’re buying a service.

DeWet Bisschoff: They want that same level of service that they’re getting from these premier global companies in a digital way.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I think firstly is digital first.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think AB InBev have done a very good thing about creating Bees.

DeWet Bisschoff: Bees is the front end customer servicing platform and company.

DeWet Bisschoff: And they’ve created a platform there that’s probably second to none in the customer and consumer goods market.

DeWet Bisschoff: Really, really great piece of thinking and investment many years ago.

DeWet Bisschoff: That’s now come to the fore now.

DeWet Bisschoff: Second one, I think is that what I’ve seen, especially in the beer market, is that health consciousness is now a massive trend.

DeWet Bisschoff: And the idea of that people no longer want to take beer for just because there’s alcohol in it.

DeWet Bisschoff: They actually want beer because there’s zero alcohol in it.

DeWet Bisschoff: And they want healthy alternatives to that, low kilojoule products.

DeWet Bisschoff: This is a big trend globally for, I think, major food companies and also alcohol beer companies.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then also how you premium ties your best products and your global brands.

DeWet Bisschoff: You’ve got to get them up in the market, charge more for them without going out of the affordability of what people are willing to pay for it.

DeWet Bisschoff: Also very tricky balance that I think many clients are walking.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think the last one is always local, being authentic locally with the brand on the product that you have.

DeWet Bisschoff: But also giving that global assurance of quality on top of that.

DeWet Bisschoff: And so it’s a lot of trade-offs and balances.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think that that’s quite complex for people to manage nowadays in brands and selling and loyalty specifically.

Nyeleti: Right.

Nyeleti: So you’ve mentioned a few things.

Nyeleti: First being a robust and scalable front-end system.

Nyeleti: And then you looked into the change in consumer needs, right?

Nyeleti: So people, they demand more healthy alternatives, which could mean non-alcohol or low-calorie.

Nyeleti: Then you looked at the price point to remain competitive.

Nyeleti: So at least three points that I’ve picked up in that conversation.

Nyeleti: Now, in your role as a global client lead, so how are you, what’s the relationship in terms of advising these multiple points?

Nyeleti: And how do you assemble teams that have depth in these three different areas, as an example, three of many other areas?

Nyeleti: How do you orchestrate a lot of that, DeWet?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, a company like Accenture basically lives by its intellectual property and its ability to bring the latest trends and thinking and implementation to clients.

DeWet Bisschoff: And you have to combine quite a few different pieces of skills to make yourself continually relevant in the market.

DeWet Bisschoff: The first one is the industry skill.

DeWet Bisschoff: If you’re not understanding the industry in which you work or which in which you advise, you are not talking the right language that the clients live with every day, and they know their business is backwards because that’s what they do.

DeWet Bisschoff: So industry expertise is the first anchor, I would say, around which a team like mine has to operate.

DeWet Bisschoff: But then, you need to supplement that now with consulting and strategy experts.

DeWet Bisschoff: You need to add to that technology implementation people who know how to actually implement and do things at scale.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then you have to add all kinds of new things nowadays.

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s about data, data experts, AI experts, JNI, agentic experts.

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s of course, it’s now a big trend globally for everybody.

DeWet Bisschoff: So it’s about a combination of skills, all with extreme high emotional quality and be able to work under pressure.

DeWet Bisschoff: And it’s when you get that combination right and you can get the team to actually work as a team, then I think you’re starting to put something together.

DeWet Bisschoff: One of the reasons I, well, I’m a South African, so it’s probably super predictable that I love rugby.

DeWet Bisschoff: But do we use the rugby analogy?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yes.

DeWet Bisschoff: What’s interesting and fascinating about rugby is that there’s a place for all kinds of different people.

DeWet Bisschoff: You know, the tall, skinny person that’s really fast, the short, stocky person that is not fast at all will never be fast.

DeWet Bisschoff: And the combination of those different skills and strength and anything in between is what makes a really great rugby team.

DeWet Bisschoff: But also the ability to then use those skills in our team.

DeWet Bisschoff: And almost the global team like mine is almost the same thing.

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s different people with different skills.

DeWet Bisschoff: And it’s really fascinating and very rewarding to see when we bring it together and the client actually compliments us on having done something well.

DeWet Bisschoff: That’s really the epiphany of what my role is about.

Nyeleti: Absolutely.

Nyeleti: I love the rugby analogy.

Nyeleti: And yes, as a fellow South African, I can totally relate.

Nyeleti: And then, I mean, you’ve just really spoken about the diversity within the within the team, the different types of subject matter expertise that come in.

Nyeleti: If I bring you closer to my world and still on beer as a case study, you know, alcohol e-commerce has grown at double digit rates year on year, driven by online groceries.

Nyeleti: So we’ve seen like since COVID that to earlier point, people have the same expectations as they would buy other brands.

Nyeleti: So people want to be able to order it, have it delivered.

Nyeleti: So the direct to consumer pilots have really been big within the industry.

Nyeleti: In your perspective, right, when we look at e-commerce and across a portfolio like InBev, where there’s more than 500 brands, how do we surface the right content to the right customer segment and make sure that we are also in the right touch points at scale?

Nyeleti: Very loaded question.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, it is a very complex question.

DeWet Bisschoff: Let me see if I can make some sense in my answer.

DeWet Bisschoff: The first thing I would say is if we go back quite a few years, we as Accenture talked a lot about having a two-speed enterprise or technical architecture.

DeWet Bisschoff: What do we mean by that?

DeWet Bisschoff: Is that you’re always going to have in the back end, you’re going to have your big systems, and you can call them your systems of record.

DeWet Bisschoff: This is basically where all your big financial data, your product data and everything is being stored, being validated.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s where you do your invoicing, it’s where you host your customers.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s all those big systems.

Nyeleti: So around that ERP part of it, yes.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yes, exactly.

DeWet Bisschoff: And what that provides you with is, is standardization, your data in one place and all those good things.

DeWet Bisschoff: What’s often not so easy then to do is to move or make a change on those systems very fast.

DeWet Bisschoff: And why do you need fast changes is because the consumers and the consumer market changes fast.

DeWet Bisschoff: So you’ve got to adapt very fast to your competition and to the movements in the market.

DeWet Bisschoff: So what we always talked about is the two-speed and still talk about the two-speed architecture.

DeWet Bisschoff: So putting a consumer or customer layer on top of your systems of record that can change fast, that’s adaptable, and this is where capabilities like e-commerce is hosted.

DeWet Bisschoff: So you can move at really fast pace what the customer season interacts with, your online channels, your social channels, your e-commerce, all these kind of things.

DeWet Bisschoff: And while your systems of record provide you with the stability and the base at the back.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that’s generally how technically you tie the things together.

DeWet Bisschoff: Now, from a loyalty perspective, I mean, you’ve got to tie retail execution and experience back to what the consumer wants at all times.

DeWet Bisschoff: And like I said previously, they’re used to the best kind of service.

DeWet Bisschoff: They see it from other companies.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that’s the entry level at which you’ve got to compete.

DeWet Bisschoff: Doesn’t matter which product you sell.

DeWet Bisschoff: I recently spoke to a family member of mine.

DeWet Bisschoff: They have a very small business, but they have an online store.

DeWet Bisschoff: People expect exactly the same experience in product, in loyalty, all those things from this little company, because that’s what they used to.

DeWet Bisschoff: Otherwise, they just go buy somewhere else.

Nyeleti: What is the success rate?

Nyeleti: And this is just in the industries that you’ve worked with and the different companies that you’ve worked with.

Nyeleti: You spoke about the small company, right?

Nyeleti: But with all these different data points in different areas, and we speak a lot about these silent data and having a single source of truth.

Nyeleti: In a company as complex as InBev and other global companies with an expansive portfolio of brands, how realistic is that dream in terms of having that consolidated customer data platform serving the different brands and then the different segments within the brands and then the different moments within the brands?

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Paula: Emotional loyalty does, but it’s rarely measured or put into practice.

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Paula: That’s humanizingloyalty.com.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I think that’s very tough, especially for global companies that operate in different parts of the world.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s okay to standardize your processes, and everybody wants to do that, because that’s economies of scale, and a predictable way of dealing with stuff.

DeWet Bisschoff: But every region in the world is different.

DeWet Bisschoff: So you’ve got to also be flexible enough to allow the local management to react to the local market.

DeWet Bisschoff: By the way, I think that’s one of the big strengths of AB InBev in its history, is that it still operates in a very federated way, and it’s own runs the zone, it’s own as a president, and this is in the public domain.

DeWet Bisschoff: So there’s nothing weird about me mentioning it.

DeWet Bisschoff: And that management team knows that market, and really tries to do the best in that market.

DeWet Bisschoff: So you always have to now balance local autonomy with global directive and global simplicity and global processes and all of that.

DeWet Bisschoff: The interesting thing I think we’ve all learned sometimes to our horror but maybe rightly so, is that if you start a discussion around AI and a lot of discussions on AI based, then it’s okay.

DeWet Bisschoff: So we want to do something with AI.

DeWet Bisschoff: We know we’ve got to do something with AI.

DeWet Bisschoff: Your next question is then, okay, if that’s what you want to do, where’s your data?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah.

DeWet Bisschoff: Is it in the right place?

DeWet Bisschoff: Okay.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then, did you have a cloud strategy over the last 10 years?

DeWet Bisschoff: Did you put your data into the cloud?

DeWet Bisschoff: Did you build a digital core, as we call it?

DeWet Bisschoff: The cloud strategy with the data on top of it, with the security around it, that’s basically your digital core.

DeWet Bisschoff: And not all companies globally have done that.

DeWet Bisschoff: So now when you talk about AI, you actually go back quite a few steps and say, okay, well, maybe the first thing we should do in the end is, let’s get your systems of record sorted out, let’s get your data strategy sorted out, let’s get your data into the right place.

DeWet Bisschoff: Then we can be effective with AI.

DeWet Bisschoff: Otherwise, AI on top of a lack of data or incorrect data is not going to work.

Nyeleti: It’s a great point.

Nyeleti: And going back to the fact that the consumer just expects to have the same experience as they do with Spotify and Netflix.

Nyeleti: Is that why it would make sense to have the federated system so that you can just have more robustness by dividing the portfolios and then just decentralizing?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I’m not sure there’s one unique answer for everybody in the world.

DeWet Bisschoff: If there were everybody, we’d just be doing it.

DeWet Bisschoff: But generally speaking, my feeling is that your systems of record has to be standardized globally, has to drive the same processes so that you have a cost efficiency there.

DeWet Bisschoff: You have simplicity about how the business is managed.

DeWet Bisschoff: But that doesn’t give you a great customer experience, and that’s where your two-speed architecture, I’m still a big proponent of that personally.

DeWet Bisschoff: The customer layer on top, you can adjust and make locally relevant on top of the same global systems of record.

DeWet Bisschoff: This is why a proper Cloud strategy, your data in the Cloud, your big systems of ERP, CRM, etc.

DeWet Bisschoff: probably leads you to that panacea where you’ve got your systems of record sorted out, and then you have this thin layer on top, which is really what the customer interacts with and builds loyalty.

DeWet Bisschoff: It can be adaptable locally, but you’re not touching your system of record so much at the back because that takes longer.

DeWet Bisschoff: Having said that, though, I think a lot of these system of record providers, the big SAPs and ERP providers would have done a lot of work to actually add the customer layer on top of the old systems, and have modernized a lot to make that even applicable within the same technology stack.

DeWet Bisschoff: But the architectural principle for me remains definitely like that.

DeWet Bisschoff: You got to be able to move fast with the market, but you got to have some stability and simplicity and your data structured in the background.

Nyeleti: Exactly.

Nyeleti: The digital core, the system of record remains global to your advice, and then the customer layer, that can be adapted to place of origin, customer needs, the brand portfolios specifically.

Nyeleti: I follow.

Nyeleti: Is that well-pickin?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yes.

DeWet Bisschoff: More or less.

Nyeleti: Of course.

DeWet Bisschoff: Like I say, there’s no silver bullet.

DeWet Bisschoff: So, genetically speaking, I like that as a strategy, but every company is different.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I met someone the other day who said to me in my career, I think one business case out of the 30 I wrote actually stood up to the test of time.

DeWet Bisschoff: So, there’s a lot of CAPEX expenditure that goes into systems.

DeWet Bisschoff: So, we’ve got to really think carefully about what is the business benefit of that.

DeWet Bisschoff: I grew up as an enterprise architect, and if you become a true enterprise architect, you absolutely believe there should only be one system of that and another system of that.

DeWet Bisschoff: And there’s a very neat picture in front of you of the whole company.

DeWet Bisschoff: Over time, as I became more talking to C-level people in my role, and I became more on the business side of consulting, I maybe became a turncoat against enterprise architecture because I had too many of my younger selves telling me that cannot be done because you’re now messing up the architecture.

DeWet Bisschoff: My answer was kind of, I don’t really care.

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s a business result we’re trying to achieve here.

DeWet Bisschoff: So, I guess there’s a balance between the perfect world and meeting the objectives of the business, which is ultimately why the business exists.

Nyeleti: Now, the brilliant question that I often deal with on a day-to-day basis, what involves a decision?

Nyeleti: Is it the business need?

Nyeleti: Is it the technical capabilities and therefore the business needs to adjust to that?

Nyeleti: Is it adapted to consumer needs?

Nyeleti: Another not so simple question, but what are your thoughts?

DeWet Bisschoff: Well, I think the consumer dictates or your customer, doesn’t matter who your customer is, whether they’re consumer or a business-type customer, they dictate what you should be doing as a business.

DeWet Bisschoff: Then the custodians of that is the business, the business people themselves, they are the ones who interact with the customer, they know what they want.

DeWet Bisschoff: Then it’s technology’s role to say, how do we best fulfill that?

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s unfortunately many times still a bit of a divide between technology and business in many companies globally, and it’s not that easy to bridge that gap.

DeWet Bisschoff: The theory holds true very well.

DeWet Bisschoff: Customer business interprets that, tells technology what they want, technology provides that to the business within service, the customer and everybody’s happy.

DeWet Bisschoff: Now, if that was easy, I think probably none of us would have a job, and it would just all function by itself wonderfully in an utopian world.

DeWet Bisschoff: But the reality is often very, very complex.

DeWet Bisschoff: You have legacy in your historic decision-making in technology and in your business.

DeWet Bisschoff: Your process is not always standardized for good reason, because it was too costly to do at the time or whatever the case may be.

DeWet Bisschoff: So, yeah, it’s a very complex thing to run a business very efficiently like that, and make the right CapEx and OpEx decisions.

Nyeleti: No, absolutely.

Nyeleti: And I mean, in an ideal world, like you were saying, right, the business has the inner ground in terms of what are the customer needs, how things from that customer first perspectives, and based on that, delivers a strategy to the tech that would ideally represent what customers expect of us.

Nyeleti: But as you said, there’s a lot in between that to be done, and a lot of conversations that need to be handled in terms of legacy and growth scale which complicates the scenario.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I think the other day I heard a quote again, and it was from one of the owners of one of the Formula One cars.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think it was Aston Martin, Mrs.

DeWet Bisschoff: Stroll, and he said, all businesses are people businesses, which I thought was very interesting for an owner of a Formula One team and car, where you could easily be misled to think it’s about the technology inside the car, which it is.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s about the car, which it is.

DeWet Bisschoff: But he actually said, this is about the people, it’s about the drivers, it’s about the management, it’s about the engineers, and if you can get all of them to work together, then you have something.

DeWet Bisschoff: So, yeah, maybe all people of all businesses, maybe are really all people businesses, and you put many people together and you have complexity, that’s for sure.

Nyeleti: Yeah, but I love the analogy.

Nyeleti: It is about the people, and I love the idea of bringing different perspectives into the room, I think that’s what, to your point about the rugby analogy and every different size, there is, I think if we have more rooms that are open to different perspectives and different thoughts of knowledge, then we probably serve clients and customers in the best way.

Nyeleti: But then I’m the eternal idealistic.

Nyeleti: Back to Bia, when Bia becomes more inclusive and with the growth of non-alcoholic options, as we’ve mentioned earlier, have become more dominant and shaping different customer needs.

Nyeleti: These different elements that have happened in the last few years, would you say that it’s acted as, in what ways rather has it acted as a disruptor?

Nyeleti: In what ways has it acted as an amplifier for a global brewer like AB InBev?

DeWet Bisschoff: Well, I think for any producer of an end product that’s food and or drink, it’s acted as a disruptor, but also as an opportunity.

DeWet Bisschoff: Last year, there’s a stat being quoted.

DeWet Bisschoff: Maybe it’s not 100 percent true, but apparently last year we drank less beer in the world than any other than the year before.

DeWet Bisschoff: This is the first time since men or women created beer.

DeWet Bisschoff: We don’t know who created beer, but when that person started the next year, we drank more of it until last year.

DeWet Bisschoff: Actually, the beer consumption has now gone down from the previous year, which is a phenomenal stat if you think about it, first time in human history.

DeWet Bisschoff: Amazing.

DeWet Bisschoff: What you do see arising is non-alcoholic drinks and ready to drink beverages, stuff like that.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think it’s all about the health, consciousness of the population and the choices that they make.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think ethical buying and all kinds of disruptive forces have come into the consumer market, and they’re becoming stronger and stronger.

DeWet Bisschoff: This is, of course, a huge opportunity for many brands and they’re all reacting to it.

DeWet Bisschoff: You can’t go into a restaurant now, and there’s always non-alcoholic beer on the table.

DeWet Bisschoff: Now, if you conflict that to, what, five, 10 years ago, you would be hard-pressed to find that on a menu, and it might have won.

DeWet Bisschoff: Now, it’s actually a must-have for a restaurant or for a bar to have.

DeWet Bisschoff: It just shows you how strong the movement has become.

DeWet Bisschoff: But this is a great opportunity, I think, for any company to react to.

DeWet Bisschoff: ABInBev is very flexible in its brands and how it does its business.

DeWet Bisschoff: They are the best company in the world.

DeWet Bisschoff: Well, at least in my humble opinion, of course, I’m totally biased.

DeWet Bisschoff: But I think they and others will react very favorably to this.

Nyeleti: Yes, so there’s always the opportunity.

Nyeleti: Great.

Nyeleti: DeWet, as we go to the final moments of this episode, tying it all back, you are a C-suite advisor, you’re leading some very important conversations in essential Africa.

Nyeleti: And from that vantage point, what would you say is one of the most important guiding principles when it comes to CUSA loyalty that holds true, regardless of industry and size of company?

DeWet Bisschoff: I think trust, maybe it ties together well with your podcast about loyalty, customer loyalty.

DeWet Bisschoff: But I think trust in business is for me fundamental.

DeWet Bisschoff: And if I go back in my career, the few times I feel I’ve made a fatal mistake is where I didn’t keep that trust 100 percent the way it should have been through inexperience or through making a stupid mistake.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think trust is just one of the underlying principles that ties business together and ties people together.

DeWet Bisschoff: And in a small market like South Africa, I think your reputation is based on it to a large extent.

DeWet Bisschoff: And as I always say, in South Africa, you won’t hop away from knowing someone who knows the person that you’re talking to.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s such a small industry.

DeWet Bisschoff: So at all costs, you got to protect your reputation.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I think for me, trust and loyalty has been a center point of my career.

DeWet Bisschoff: And when I’ve done it really well, it really has had great dividends on the investment.

Nyeleti: I couldn’t agree more.

Nyeleti: Both being South African, that analogy, but also living in Denmark, where trust is definitely a strong guiding principles across everything.

Nyeleti: So I could not agree more.

Nyeleti: And then finally, before we close, we started this podcast with uncovering one of your favorite books.

Nyeleti: And I also know that you are yourself a fiction author.

Nyeleti: And that just shows a completely different dimension of you, DeWet.

Nyeleti: Could you walk us through your fiction writing?

Nyeleti: You know, what have you written and what inspired this?

DeWet Bisschoff: Well, I guess I always wanted to write.

DeWet Bisschoff: But my career has been quite demanding many hours.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I’ve paid a lot of attention to my family, which has been really important to me.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then when COVID happened, I realized that not every year will be like the previous year.

DeWet Bisschoff: You know, we kind of live your life and you think every year is going to be like, it’s just another year.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then COVID was kind of for me awakening up that says, maybe next year won’t be the same again.

DeWet Bisschoff: So if you really want to do this writing thing, maybe now is time to stop.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I’ve done a lot of short stories and they’ve done reasonably well, they’ve been published.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then I wrote my first book who came out last year.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I write in my native language, which is Afrikaans.

DeWet Bisschoff: I think you should write in your native language.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s very conceited to think you can actually write a book in a second language.

DeWet Bisschoff: I certainly don’t have that talent.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I write kind of international thriller type books.

DeWet Bisschoff: And this one is about hacking and close to my comfort zone of IT.

DeWet Bisschoff: Although I just try and tell a really great story because it’s really about the story.

DeWet Bisschoff: Some of the underlying theme in my books has to do with South Africa of today, where not everything is perfect.

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s a lot of corruption issues, there’s poverty.

DeWet Bisschoff: There’s a lot of stuff.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I try and bring in those themes into the book, but not lecturing people about it.

DeWet Bisschoff: I’ve been a reader my whole life.

DeWet Bisschoff: And the moment you get a sense when you read fiction that the author is trying to teach you a lesson, that’s not great because then you’re out of the story.

DeWet Bisschoff: You’re no longer just reading the story.

DeWet Bisschoff: The lesson should just come as part of the story when you think about it afterwards.

DeWet Bisschoff: Maybe there was a lesson there somewhere.

DeWet Bisschoff: So yeah, that’s what I try and do.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s just a passion.

DeWet Bisschoff: I’m not a great sleeper always, so I write early in the morning, late at night.

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I’ve just submitted my second book.

DeWet Bisschoff: It will be published, I think, in the roundabout March next year, which is just a continuation of this hacking, international thriller type stories.

Nyeleti: Absolutely.

Nyeleti: Could you give us the name, the title of the book again?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, again, it’s Afrikaans, so it’s called the Kibermurder, so that translates to the hacker murders.

DeWet Bisschoff: I still need to translate it.

DeWet Bisschoff: Translation services, by the way, is exceedingly expensive because a translator is not just putting it through a Google Translate.

Nyeleti: They have to capture the meaning, the essence, the culture.

Nyeleti: Yeah.

DeWet Bisschoff: In English, which of course is the big market you want to go for.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I’ll still get there, but it’s a bit too expensive for me at the moment.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I’m just trying to get my name out in the local environment.

DeWet Bisschoff: And then as that grows, I’ll do some translations.

Nyeleti: Awesome.

Nyeleti: We’ll wait for the English version.

Nyeleti: But if anybody wants to pick up the Afrikaans skills, we’ll also link where people can find the book right now.

Nyeleti: And in closing, DeWet, from one South African to another, there’s a lot happening and a lot of exciting stuff, a lot of opportunities, but also, as you’ve mentioned, big concerns.

Nyeleti: You’re an optimist.

Nyeleti: What’s your predictions of South Africa in the next decade?

Nyeleti: What can we expect from a business perspective, and especially when it comes to digital opportunities and customer loyalty?

DeWet Bisschoff: Yeah, I think a very tough question.

DeWet Bisschoff: Thanks for putting me on the spot.

DeWet Bisschoff: Now, I’m every day amazed by the resilience of South Africans, and I think you see some of it in our sports teams.

DeWet Bisschoff: It’s in the public domain there.

DeWet Bisschoff: You may not realize what you see, but if you look at the resilience of the cricket team, the soccer team, the rugby team, you see something of the culture that’s inherent, I believe, in South Africa.

DeWet Bisschoff: And we are, as people, we’ve taken so much, but we still, everybody gets up in the morning, everybody still has a smile, everybody still goes for it.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I believe that that is a good foundation for our country.

DeWet Bisschoff: Politically, I think a lot is turning, and there seems to be a realization in all corners that we need to improve the country.

DeWet Bisschoff: And things have gone south, I think, for a little too long.

DeWet Bisschoff: But I personally think we may be a little beyond the turning point and we’re starting to come up again.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I actually think we might be on to a good thing, and I certainly hope so, because South Africans will all love the country dearly.

DeWet Bisschoff: We all know what it can become, and the potential is huge.

DeWet Bisschoff: So I think from a digital perspective, there will be a lot of opportunities for people for work and for growth and for skills.

DeWet Bisschoff: And South Africa is actually already Cape Town, where I said there’s a lot of digital nomads working from here, and people seeing that as an avenue.

DeWet Bisschoff: And I think that trend will continue for youngsters for a long time.

DeWet Bisschoff: And yeah, finally, I just think the country is resilient, the people are resilient, and we’re going to turn the corner and again, reach hopefully most of our potential.

Nyeleti: Absolutely.

Nyeleti: I’m here for it.

Nyeleti: DeWet, thank you so much.

Nyeleti: This has been lovely.

DeWet Bisschoff: Thank you for the opportunity.

Paula: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Let’s Talk Loyalty.

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