Scaling Agile for a $30M+ Transformation: PepsiCo’s Go-To-Market Revolution Across Latin America
PepsiCo’s Go-To-Market Digital Transformation was a multi-year, multi-million-dollar initiative aimed at modernizing and automating product commercialization processes across Latin America—spanning PepsiCo Mexico Foods (PMF), Central America and South America (CASA), and PepsiCo Brazil Foods (PBF). Covering both salty (Sabritas) and biscuits (Gamesa) categories, the program leveraged cloud-based platforms, integrated SAP/Salesforce systems, and cashless payment solutions to revolutionize Direct Sales Delivery (DSD), Organized Trade (OT), and Wholesale (WHSL) operations.
With more than 110 cross-functional team members, distributed globally and representing diverse cultures, the program applied Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to deliver complex enterprise solutions at scale. The initiative had a budget exceeding $50M over three years, positioning PepsiCo for greater operational efficiency, financial inclusion, and market agility.
The Challenge.
PepsiCo’s Latin America operations serve millions of customers and retailers across more than seven countries. Their commercialization processes were heavily reliant on legacy systems and manual workflows, which created inefficiencies, limited scalability, and slowed time-to-market.
The ambition was bold:
Implement a cashless ecosystem that could integrate with the payment systems of major banks, enabling secure QR-based transactions for thousands of small retailers.
Modernize and unify mobile and web sales processes, tightly integrated with SAP and Salesforce, across multiple markets.
Execute large-scale system migrations from legacy platforms to SAP under a Scaled Agile framework—a methodology rarely applied to such complex SAP implementations.
The program needed to manage the sheer scale of operations, navigating cultural, technical, and regulatory differences, all while delivering measurable business value in an agile, iterative way.
Orchestrating Scaled Agile Delivery at Enterprise Scale
In a multi-year, multi-country digital transformation program involving over 200 professionals across Latin America, I led the coordination and alignment of multiple Agile teams operating under a scaled framework. My role as Chief Scrum Master was to ensure seamless collaboration between streams handling SAP development, mobile and web solutions, financial integrations, and market-specific deployments.
This required not only managing timelines, dependencies, and resource allocation across teams of 50+ members each, but also fostering cross-cultural communication between global delivery centers, local market teams, and PepsiCo’s leadership. By instituting clear governance, continuous alignment rituals, and rapid issue resolution mechanisms, I ensured the program advanced in sync toward critical milestones across all regions.
Aligning Transformation Goals with Execution
The design centered on modular, cloud-enabled architectures capable of integrating with:
Banking systems from Citibanamex, Banorte, Scotiabank, BBVA, BAZ, and HSBC.
Salesforce and SAP ecosystems for streamlined sales processes.
Future-ready APIs to enable regional customization without sacrificing core platform stability.
The solution design process had to account for the complexity of PepsiCo’s multi-country operations, integrating SAP, Salesforce, financial platforms, and mobile/web sales tools into a cohesive ecosystem. Beyond technical architecture, we placed a strong emphasis on delivering a consistent, intuitive experience for thousands of end users—including sales representatives, financial teams, and retail partners—across diverse markets.
We worked closely with regional business units to map critical user journeys, identify friction points, and ensure that workflows were optimized for speed, accuracy, and ease of adoption. This meant designing interfaces and processes that felt seamless regardless of device or market, while still complying with local regulations, operational constraints, and security requirements. The result was a solution framework that could scale without sacrificing usability, ensuring both adoption and long-term sustainability.
UX and operational design ensured solutions met the needs of 17,000 vendors serving 1.4M customers while remaining adaptable to diverse LATAM markets.
Delivering Across Borders
Key achievements under my leadership included:
Cashless Payment Solution (CoDi): Rolled out to 17,000 PepsiCo vendors in Mexico, integrated with five major banks, improving payment security and efficiency.
SAP Legacy Migration (LSM): Successfully executed Go-Lives in Chile and the Dominican Republic, with Guatemala in testing, despite the complexity of applying SAFe to SAP.
Consolidated all LATAM transformation initiatives—spanning over 150 professionals—under one coordinated program, streamlining governance and delivery.
Impact & Results
Enabled PepsiCo to expand digital financial inclusion for underbanked retailers, directly impacting thousands of small business owners in Mexico.
Delivered large-scale SAP migrations under an agile framework, accelerating modernization while mitigating risk.
Strengthened IBM’s reputation within PepsiCo through exemplary delivery quality—earning direct commendation from PepsiCo leadership for program performance.
As Global delivery leader, I was accountable for the performance, coordination, and delivery of three large agile teams—each with ~50 members—across multiple geographies. My responsibilities included:
End-to-end leadership from planning and training to delivery of milestones on time and within budget.
Direct coordination of all IBM Scrum Masters, whose performance earned recognition from PepsiCo leadership and became a reference benchmark within the client organization.
Oversight of all IBM resources under my management in the program.
Ensuring alignment across business, IT, and operations through consistent communication with PepsiCo executives, directors, and global program leadership.
I worked closely with release leadership and cross-functional teams to prioritize initiatives, optimize sequencing, and mitigate delivery risks, while safeguarding scope and timelines across multiple countries and business units. By driving consistent communication and alignment between distributed teams, I ensured both executional discipline and flexibility to adapt to evolving requirements.
This role demanded navigating the challenges of scale, complexity, and diversity—all while ensuring measurable progress toward PepsiCo’s ambitious digital transformation goals.