I’m not a McDonald’s fan there I only go when my son finds a way to coerce me, but I have to admit that it continues to be a great story of innovation.
I am not referring to the past, to the way in which a system was conceived and designed to have hamburgers and fries in a few minutes and always almost identical (and at low cost, of course). I am referring to the future: for a couple of years at McDonald’s they have been seriously investing in new technologies. The most obvious sign was an open innovation strategy for buy some of the most interesting startups In circulation. First it was the turn of Dynamic Yeld, which allows you to make automatic decisions based on data: in practice Dynamic Yeld changes menus based on the time, weather, traffic and orders of other customers. Then he took a share of Plexure, which is a smartphone app that personalizes the customer experience based on data. Finally he bought Apprente, which made it possible to experiment with an artificial intelligence system in a dozen restaurants in Chicago which recognizes the voice orders of customers (it works in 85% of cases, in the others an operator intervenes). It will take time for automation of this type to reach all 14,000 McDonald’s around the world (albeit in Moscow there is already an almost completely robotic Kentucky Fried Chicken), but what is striking is the digital transformation strategy of a multinational that has always based its business on hamburgers and fries.
The first result has already been obtained: the artificial intelligence system for receiving and managing orders has been sold to IBM, which will end its development. The IBM that buys digital technology from McDonald’s instead of a Big Mac is no longer the world upside down: it is a signal for our businesses. No matter what you produce, digital is all about. Even the fries.
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