Mondelēz Drives Digital Transformation With Focus on eCommerce, AI and Strategic Partnerships

For consumer-packaged goods giant Mondelēz International, its digital transformation is a work in progress.

Company officials have set a goal to generate 20% of its sales by 2030 through digital commerce. While they didn’t specify the percentage of digital sales Tuesday (Feb. 4) during their fourth-quarter and full-year earnings call, CEO Dirk Van de Put noted eCommerce sales grew “double digits” in 2024.

Digital Snacking

“We’re continuing to make progress against our strategic growth agenda,” he said. “We continue to expand distribution around the world, which includes a special focus on accelerating digital channels. Our eCommerce channels grew double digits in 2024 and we continue investing in new capabilities to accelerate our leadership in digital snacking.”

Direct-to-consumer represents about 15% of the company’s digital sales while Mondelēz is investing more than $1 billion to become a digital commerce leader in snacks.

Mondelēz’s digital strategy focuses on three key areas: consumer engagement to personalize brand interactions; a multiyear transformation aimed at improving revenue management and sales execution; and an end-to-end drive for efficiency across company operations.

For the fourth quarter, Mondelēz saw its revenue rise 3.1%, to 9.6 billion; full-year revenue rose 1.2%, to $36.4 billion. Chief Financial Officer Luca Zaramella noted the volatility of global cocoa prices, but remains confident they will stabilize.

Partners With AWS

As Mondelēz continues to focus on growth, it has expanded its scope from eCommerce to digital commerce, with 80% of eCommerce sales in business-to-consumer models. As part of its larger digital strategy, the company recently partnered with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to advance its digital innovation. AWS is now Mondelēz’s strategic cloud provider, supporting the migration of hundreds of workloads. The partnership’s goal is to improve security, agility and reliability, including moving Mondelēz’s ERP systems to SAP RISE powered by AWS.

Kostas Georgeakopoulos, Mondelēz’s CTO and CISO, said: “A key focus of our growth strategy is our digital transformation. AWS is a strategic partner complementing our own internal Cloud Platform Engineering capabilities to lead digital transformation across the enterprise.”

As of July 2024, the company began investing in omnichannel shopping, employee education on digital best practices, and enhancing online content and retail media to drive eCommerce.

Mondelēz is integrating AI to enhance its eCommerce capabilities, including managing out-of-stock situations and improving product discoverability. The company is taking a measured approach to AI investments, balancing risks and benefits.

Is Hershey in Mondelēz’s Future?

Mondelēz is exploring an acquisition of Hershey, a move that could strengthen its position in the chocolate market. If this occurs, it would create a food company with total sales of nearly $50 billion.

This isn’t Mondelēz’s first attempt to acquire Hershey, having made a $23 billion bid ultimately rejected by the chocolate company in 2016. Hershey is worth $45 billion.

Mondelēz’s brands include Ritz, Oreo, and Cadbury.

“Fiscal 2024 was another strong year of performance for our company,” Van de Put added. “As we transition into 2025, we remain focused on executing against our long-term growth strategy and delivering on our chocolate business playbook to navigate unprecedented cocoa cost inflation.”