How Diageo Reset a Global ERP Transformation While Keeping the Business Moving

For Diageo, growing scope, data complexity, and fragmented accountability had weakened confidence in the delivery path for Voyager, the company’s global ERP transformation to establish a single digital core. Rather than simply asking the organisation to move faster, the leadership team chose to make the programme more manageable: simplifying scope, clarifying ownership and resetting the delivery model.

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BCG Platinion initially supported Diageo with an independent assessment and program reset. The partnership then evolved into hands-on orchestration through testing, business data validation, cutover preparation and go-live.
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The Challenge

Diageo's ambition was matched by the complexity of the task. The company was harmonizing processes across dozens of markets, managing a selective migration with intricate dependencies, and working against rigid regulatory and business timelines — all while coordinating a technology landscape shaped by years of local customization.

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Any one of those factors could place significant pressure on a transformation program. Diageo and BCG Platinion faced all of them at once. And as with any program of this scale, speed alone was not enough. The challenge was to maintain momentum while creating enough clarity to make the right decisions at the right time.

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We join Diageo's Amar Pradeep Swain and BCG Platinion's Jatin Srivastava, as they walk us through how a program of this scale stayed on track, and what other CIOs weighing a similar reset can take from it.

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The Approach

A critical turning point came when the team chose to slow down to speed up. Rather than continuing to push forward on the existing plan, the program created space for an independent, clear-eyed view of where things truly stood. That clarity enabled a series of decisive leadership calls, re-established governance, and gave the program the confidence to move forward at pace.

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What followed was a genuine partnership rather than a conventional client-vendor relationship. Diageo and BCG Platinion operated under shared governance and a single program of record, with clear ownership across every workstream and a consistent rhythm of decision-making.

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That operating model proved especially important as the program moved toward go-live, where dependencies tightened and decisions had to be made quickly across business and technology teams.

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"We could provide the board with a governance process they could trust, a plan the team could stand by, and make decisions based on data points rather than perceptions."

— Amar Pradeep Swain, SVP Global Transformation, Diageo

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The Outcome

Go-live put the model to the test. Over a 72-hour cutover, more than 2,000 people coordinated over 10,000 activities, resolving issues quickly and transparently as they emerged.

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The result was a coordinated transition onto a common digital core, creating greater consistency across processes and data, and a stronger foundation for simplification and future value creation.

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Voyager also creates better conditions for automation, advanced analytics, and AI by establishing a more consistent enterprise platform and data foundation. These benefits are not delivered by the ERP alone. Turning those conditions into sustained business value depends on the broader transformation model around it, including process ownership, data, people capabilities, leadership, and disciplined transformation management.

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Just as importantly, the program strengthened delivery capabilities that Diageo can reuse in subsequent transformation phases, including governance, cross-functional orchestration, decision-making, and change execution.

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Voyager therefore represents more than a technology go-live. It provides the digital core and transformation capabilities on which Diageo can continue to simplify, scale, and create value over time.

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‍"What comes through most clearly is that transformations of this scale are ultimately about people, partnership and disciplined execution.”

— Amar Pradeep Swain, SVP Global Transformation, Diageo

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