Souther Glazers CIO, iControl Board Member Ann Dozier Featured in Forbes

We are proud to have Ann Dozier as one of our board members. In her day-to-day role as the Chief Information Officer at Southern Glazer’s Wine and Spirits, North America’s largest wine and spirit distributor with over 21,500 employees, Ann is leading a remarkable transformation.

Recently, Forbes Magazine, wrote an article titled "$18 Billion Southern Glazer's Wine And Spirits' CIO Drives Excellent Digital Customer Experience" as well as recorded a podcast interview with Ann. If you're part of our industry and don't understand how big of a deal she is, you should really listen to this podcast, she's an exemplary model of a forward thinking executive and industry leader. See a snippet of the article below:

"When Ann Dozier joined Southern Wine & Spirits as an information technology executive in 2013, the company was already one of the largest private companies in the United States, with revenue in excess of $11 billion. Thanks to the growth of the company, and the merger with another major wine and spirits distributor, Glazer's, Forbes estimates that the company is approaching $18 billion in revenue. As such, it is the largest wine and spirit distributor in North America. To say that Dozier has had to manage through complex times is an understatement."

-Forbes

Ann Dozier is leading the way on innovation within the Alcohol and Direct Service Delivery business for billions of dollars yearly. By overseeing the merger and other systems, she has brought that knowledge in helping iControl stay innovative and ahead of the curve for our own business.

The digitization of our world is what allows for the flow of business–it's at the core of our business mission to improve transparency and increase collaboration within alcohol payments. By brining the world of delivery, suppliers, and distributors on a global scale together–knowing your information is correct is the most valuable "exchange rate" when dealing with any customer.

Ann has 24-years of within the CPG industry, she served as Vice President of Information Technology for Dean Foods where she was responsible for the strategy, design, development and implementation of all IT capabilities. Prior to that, she worked for The Coca-Cola Company and Coca-Cola Enterprises, Inc. where she was responsible for the development of commercial and go-to-market strategies that promoted improved collaboration with retail and foodservice customers.

The interview with Forbes contributor @PeterAHigh is a great conversation that covers a vast array of different topics:

• People- How living within the digital age changes everything, especially the hiring process.
• Infrastructure- Upgrading the backend systems during a merger of two major companies.
• External Partnerships- How the company works with vendor partners to meet customer needs.
• Merger with Glazer- What it means when two teams of that size combine.
• And Much more...!

As iControl is a company working in the midst of the alcohol payments industry and managing vendors we're honored to have Ann as part of the iControl Board of Advisors.

Ann speaks about the importance of digital in the importance of her work at Glazer's Southern. We stress this because it's our business as a SaaS company and partner of yours. Her insights on the importance of digital are spot on to our core beliefs at iControl and hearing her repeat our shared mantras it is a testament to the importance of who you work with.

On the supplier side, we deal with many large suppliers such as Diageo, Pernod Ricard, and Beam [Suntory]. We want to make sure that we are providing the latest information to our customers in regards to the brand so that they can share that information with their consumers. Ultimately, we are getting these products to market to ensure that we are maximizing the sales for our supplier-partners and digital costs around those areas. -Ann Dozier

For a quick snapshot of how Ann as a leader within our team aligns our strategic advisement of iControl. With a focus on the understanding what it means to work within the diversity and inconsistency leading for the needs for SaaS products for the alcohol industry for what allows different vendors and partners work smoothly in such a 'decentralized' industry.

"Digital spans the overall company and our goal for digital is to ensure that our customers and supplier-partners can interact with us on their terms. We want to be easy to do business with, and we want to ensure that we are providing premier insights around the sales and service industry. Moreover, we want to make sure that we are connecting with our customers in the way they need to connect with us. We have a broad range of customers who have a variety of desires. With all these different types of interactions with our customers, digital spans the gamut. For our customers in bars and restaurants, our goal is to be able to get their orders in quickly and get our product turned around to them as fast as possible so they can serve their consumers. We have large retailers that want to work with us from a sales and operational planning perspective. Additionally, we have up and down the street stores that focus on special brands and connections with consumers, and we want to ensure that those products are available as well.

...

Another important aspect for us is hiring and retaining the best talent, given that we have a large and dynamic sales force. Digital plays a huge role in this and it is a big part of our world. We view digital technology as a key aspect of making employees’ days easier by allowing them to interact with our system in a way that they feel comfortable with and in a way that connects with their everyday lives. We are a consolidation point for many of the digital aspects because we carry many brands across the gamut of wine and spirits. Because of this, we want to make sure that we are making those assets readily available to be shared across the industry with our retail partners and ultimately with our consumers." -Ann Dozier

As you can see the importance of digital consistency is what ties all of these supply chains within the alcohol beverage delivery and direct store delivery business. iControl is built for this type of world and as you can see from what the leaders in our industry are saying in terms of building out the importance of digital infrastructure first to lead the way.

Read below how Ann reaffirms exactly the importance of iControl's software systems–below is a direct quote but for every tool and piece of alcohol delivery services which iControl's EmpowerDSD does I'm going to link back to on our site! Just look at how the CEO of the largest alcohol distribution company in the world is preaching the importance of digital innovation!

"Our CEO Wayne Chaplin gave me a primary initiative to focus on for the future. Wayne always wants to be the driver in this industry, and he wants to make sure that we are focused on disintermediating ourselves to ensure that we are at the forefront of technology. There are two major trends that we are focused on at the Southern Glazer’s IT team. One of these trends is business intelligence, as we have a large amount of information about the brands that we serve which results from the large number of transactions that we process daily. Furthermore, we want to make sure that we are leveraging predictive analytics and AI. This allows our suppliers to determine how to continue to innovate brands for the consumers in a way that our customers can continue to make the best decisions about the products that they want to sell. We are also focused on how to leverage technology to do the repeatable, simple aspects that take away from the future and innovation that our people have to do today. We are looking at technologies such as bots, IoT, and even blockchain technologies to ensure that we continue to focus on leveraging technology versus people for repeatable processes."

-Ann Dozier

I couldn't have said it better myself! We are honored to work with Ann at iControl and are continually pushed to innovate our products and services to meet the best standards in the industry. The goal of our services is to ensure the best opportunities to leverage technology to your benefits and increase your profits.

Ann, thanks for being part of our board–you are a leader in our industry and the entire iControl team is better for knowing you! Thanks for leading the way.

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