At the end of 2016, MOL Group had announced its innovative Enter Tomorrow 2030 strategy which provided the strategic context for our digital transformation.
As a result of this strategy, the Consumer Services business unit was created as one of the growth engines of the group. Consumer Services set out to transform itself from a traditional fuel retailer to a leading convenience retailer and a mobility service provider competing with not only players in the oil and gas industry but also modern trade retailers, coffee chains and mobility companies. While we were detailing out the strategy of the business unit, it had quickly become clear that if we are to succeed, the business transformation will need to be underpinned by a large scale digital transformation.
We had two goals for this digital transformation: digitalize internal operations with the help of data analytics and digitalize customer interactions via introducing an omnichannel digital loyalty program. Our starting point was challenging in that we did not have any real digital capabilities, and we were lagging behind the competition since we did not even have a consumer mobile app, while from a data perspective it proved to be a challenge that legacy systems were different country by country. However, we had several advantages too, since digital transformation was core to the business vision and so the digital agenda was owned super strongly by the EVP of Consumer Services, Péter Ratatics, and we were lucky that we managed to assemble a small, but talented core team that was working extremely hard towards a shared mission, like a startup within a large corporation.
By 2024, we have completed the first large phase of digital transformation as we have implemented our data analytics platform and our omnichannel digital loyalty platform in 8 countries.
The analytics platform is now used by more than 1000 business users in Retail and Mobility and our 100s of dashboards are viewed by more than 300,000 times annually. On this analytics platform, we built analytics tools (some of which are leveraging artificial intelligence) in cooperation with retail executives and experts which are embedded in daily business operations and decision making improving the effectiveness and efficiency of business processes (for more on our analytics journey and learnings along the way, check out our dedicated article)
The omnichannel digital loyalty platform, MOL MOVE now boasts more than 5 million app users completing more than 100 million shopping transactions annually which are more convenient, fun and more personalized than ever before. The program has received multiple awards and recognitions globally at loyalty industry events but also Salesforce’s Dreamforce Conference (Salesforce is the technology on which we built MOL MOVE).
The usage of these digital tools in the business had contributed significantly to the growth of the business which saw its EBITDA increase from approx. USD 300 million in 2016 to approx. USD 700 million in 2024. Reflecting the important role of digital, the updated vision of Consumer Services states: “become a digitally-driven consumer goods retailer and integrated, complex mobility service provider by 2030”.
In the past 7 years, we have also made a significant progress with building the Digital Factory organization which is now a team of 80 with a strong set of analytics, loyalty, product management and engineering skills and a technology expertise in Microsoft, Databricks, Salesforce and Mulesoft. We are not a startup anymore, rather like a scaleup which enjoys the advantages of a startup-like internal culture and agility as well as the backing and the scale of one of the largest companies of Central Europe.
The most important factor is that we have a compelling, customer-oriented vision and a clear strategy and roadmap to which we have been sticking to throughout the past 7 years. There were of course iterations and pivots, but the end goal remained the same, and no matter how difficult times we lived through, the EVP of Consumer Services stayed the course and backed the program.
Secondly, we work very closely with Retail and Mobility businesses to ensure that digital tools are embedded in business operations as that’s where the value is created. We invest a significant amount of time and effort to change management and business enablement.
Thirdly, we have a solid governance structure. Both the costs and benefits of digital transformation are measured constantly and transparently which form the basis of financial approvals which are done on an annual basis at the top management level according to the company’s strict decision making processes. This provides predictability to management but also to the team which is able to manage the annual budget with a level of agility intra-year. Digital transformation KPIs have been stable from the start and are shared across departments, strategically.
Fourthly, the combination of loyalty, product management, engineering and analytics capabilities within Digital Factory means we are responsible for a majority of solution delivery and operations which gives us a high agency.
Lastly, we do not make compromises on talent and technology, and we constantly strive to improve our solutions, our team and our way of working which we also treat as a product in itself. We work with extreme perseverance, and have never wavered under the largest of pressures and challenges of which there are ample when such a large organization goes through a program like the one we are running.
We plan to further develop digital competences in Consumer Services but also to support other MOL Group business units. We are also looking for opportunities to expand the MOVE program, so that in addition to the loyalty function, it also supports our other mobility services (e.g. fleet cards, fleet management, electric vehicle charging, etc.), as well as external mobility services – essentially creating an ecosystem app. In this way, the program will provide a complete experience for our 5 million user base which we aim to grow to 10 million by 2030 (for more on this, please check out our dedicated article)
In addition, we’ve just launched the “Digital Factory – Member of MOL Group” as a dedicated brand and business unit in Consumer Services, and as such we also work with external partners on a commercial basis and help them on their data analytics and loyalty transformation journeys. We especially look to establish strategic partnerships in which there are wider synergies with MOL Group.
