You don’t have to be a coffee lover to appreciate how far Costa Coffee has come in its digital transformation. With over 4,000 coffee shops spanning more than 30 countries, the 51 year-old company also boasts over 14,000 self-serve Costa Express coffee machines. During the COVID-19 pandemic when millions were forced to go without their daily visit to the coffee shop, Costa Express machines – located in places like grocery stores, subway stations and on college campuses – became the place for crafted coffee on-the-go.
At the helm of Costa Coffee’s ongoing digital technology transformation is MACH Alliance ambassador, Gordon Lucas, the company’s Global Digital Technology Director. Before joining Costa Coffee about four years ago, Lucas worked for Whitbread, a leading hospitality business and the owner of Premier Inn, the UK's biggest hotel brand. There, he led the API team, and that’s where the A in MACH became a mainstay in his career.
Whitbread at the time owned Costa Coffee. In 2019, they sold the business to The Coca-Cola Company, which brought Lucas to his current position. As Global Digital Technology Director, he works closely with the Coca Cola team on behalf of Costa to scale digital and loyalty for the brand across the globe.
And he and his team are doing quite well at it. Costa Club, the company’s loyalty program, is one of the largest non-grocery loyalty programs in the UK with millions of members. From coupons to freebies to cake on your birthday, Costa Club has created quite the buzz (pun intended) with its popularity. It all boils down to the huge success of the company’s mobile app, which provides a highly personalized, engaging experience for customers, in turn building brand loyalty – and higher sales – for Costa.
“Working on the mobile app at Costa has been one of the most rewarding elements of my work,” said Lucas. “Coffee is something you look forward to everyday. It’s habitual. It’s personal. People open that app and expect a smooth experience. We’re relevant and on people’s minds when they think about their daily pick-me-up, and that means a lot to us. Delivering a good experience for them every time is critical.”
Being digitally ahead of the curve isn’t exactly a light lift for a company of this size and especially not for one that’s been around for half a century. As the business sought to move away from some of its legacy foundation, keeping up with the speed – and cost – of change was a real challenge. But those challenges have been viewed as short-term pain points that yield long term benefit.
“Some of our big legacy systems are outsourced to partners, and they’re enterprise platforms that we’ve purchased, so we don’t have control over the roadmap,” said Lucas. “We have influence but not control. You’re always waiting for the next thing.”
The pains of integrations and siloed data are also challenges Lucas and his team have faced in dealing with monolithic suites.
“For example, in Costa, we have a data warehouse with a ton of information including retail transactions from across our stores and Costa Express machines (which are our self-serve machines using the same coffee beans as Costa’s retail stores and fresh milk) plus data from our app and loyalty suite. With it, we can make models and infer things about a consumer that might make their experience or communications more relevant, but it’s difficult to access some of that data in the legacy marketing systems we used previously. That was a consideration in our decision to begin to transition more to MACH solutions that have allowed us to access and share data more freely and act on it to drive more relevant engagement.”
Lucas also spoke to the benefits of APIs and headless front-ends, emphasizing how, with all of the digital touch-points Costa customers have access to (think: screens in stores, mobile app, emails, websites, drive-through screens), having headless front-ends and APIs behind them enables common services and common data layers to compile all of those things. For example, for the allergen information specific to their menu items, Costa has a graph API they can access from any of those screens so the right information is shared on the right channel at the right time. For crafted coffee, which often has many components, having that data available via APIs means knowing consumers are getting the right information no matter how they’re interacting.
While the upsides of a MACH architecture are plentiful, there are challenges along the way that Lucas recommends being prepared for.
"If you currently run on enterprise monoliths, embracing the power of a componentized architecture could lead to systems that seem duplicative," said Lucas. "This could, in turn, lead to complexity and reluctance to move to new tools or capabilities. It takes time and patience."
Linking the change to business value is the best workaround for these challenges so the team and the executive suite can see why the temporary hurdles are worth it in the long term. It’s important to show how these architectural changes will drive value, Lucas emphasized.
“Nobody wants to think they’re dealing with change just for the sake of change. It has to be about driving frequency of sale or something that matters deeply to the customer.”
“In a perfect world, companies want to be using as much cloud-native as possible and buying as much out of the box as possible,” said Lucas. “Focusing on building for competitive edge, so things that are closest to your customers are at the center of your IT strategy, has helped us prioritize our investments.”
Lucas also emphasized the need to have a good handle on your data, including sales, transactions, metadata and the like. Getting all of that into a consistent cloud and properly tagged is important for ensuring it can be used for multiple purposes.
“Some legacy monoliths can be like an anchor,” said Lucas. “MACH is a set of freeing principles that allow you to move faster and create more value. Driving change and achieving results are the most rewarding parts of this job, and you don’t get there by being complacent.”
The MACH Alliance is very excited to welcome Gordon as an Ambassador. Our Ambassadors are a carefully selected group of business and technology experts with a wide range of experience across industries and backgrounds. Passionate about the benefits a modern architecture can bring to an enterprise, our Ambassadors have graciously committed their time to support the mission of the MACH Alliance by writing, speaking, and serving as subject matter experts to help empower companies to go MACH.
If you’re interested in learning more about a MACH approach and understanding if it’s right for your business, we welcome you to get in touch at info@machalliance.org to be matched with the MACH Alliance Ambassador most relevant to you.