ActioGlobal drives the globalization of

HOMERIA

the start-up that has conquered the world of food delivery by OKR and PEAK.

Homeria is a start-up that has created and commercializes WinDelivery, a platform aimed at restaurants for the integrated management of the lifecycle of a takeout meal order.

It executes the entire lifecycle of an order in a consolidated way, from the moment someone orders through the web or their app, to the management of the delivery and the relationship with the end consumer. Among its clients are quick-service chains such as Burger King or Foster Hollywood.

ActioGlobal has guided the Homeria team in the incorporation of OKR (Objectives & Key Results) and PEAK as the operating system that has allowed them not only to define the objectives, but also to reach them and make them a reality thanks to a network of self-organized teams. With OKR, Homeria can measure the progress of its self-organized teams and make extremely agile decisions that allow them to impact their customers and grow as a company, week by week.

&

X

Carmen Cabeza, Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions and David Montero, Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions discuss with Jonathan Escobar, CEO of ActioGlobal, how OKR has been the driving force that, together with the talent of the team, has led to the success and future globalization of their company.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Homeria has experienced incredible business growth, especially since the surge in takeaway fast food consumption that the pandemic triggered. Today, more than 1,000 restaurants trust you to grow their business. What gave you the idea to start a transformation with ActioGlobal´s OKR System?

Carmen Cabeza
Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions

At Homeria, we had implemented an MBO (Management by Objectives) model. For years, we had tried to reinforce it, but we were not able to make the system work,

to get through to the teams, and communicate the message. We were very segmented by department and generated knowledge silos. Collaboration and review of progress were organized in a watertight manner, which made continuous interaction at all levels of the organization difficult and sometimes impaired teamwork. As a result, each department focused on its very area of responsibility, but we were having difficulty making an impact on the company's strategy, our real challenge.

These MBOs were normally drawn up on an annual basis, and we ran the risk that they could become outdated, misdirected, or de-prioritized for business reasons. Agile OKR allow us to quickly respond and take action, even in advance.

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

As Carmen says, we saw that MBO wasn't taking off. Moreover, due to the segmentation by department, there were always obstacles because one department was not delivering what another one needed. They built invisible but constant obstacles that were blocking us and preventing us from moving forward. We found ourselves in a situation that led us to make excuses and shift responsibility to others, linking obstacles together.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

So I understand it was at that point when you decided to start your agile transformation together with ActioGlobal and our OKR Model, creating Squads that today work in a self-organized way. How do you think this new organizational structure has helped your people?

Carmen Cabeza
Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions

The ecosystem of Squads has helped us unite the people in the team, but not only by making them have closer links with each other, but also solve challenges by a much wider vision.

Thanks to our cross-functional teams, we approach decision-making from multiple angles, with a wider perspective. It has also greatly strengthened communication and transparency. Since we have been working with OKR, the organization's objectives and documentation are openly shared. They are accessible to everyone to boost our team mentality, as we are all aware and conscious of our challenges and our strategy and how we can make an impact on it with our actions.

OKR has enabled us to align ourselves very well, to focus entirely on our business objectives, to set priorities and to streamline dependencies that used to become obstacles.

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

Working in Squads has also been motivating. We have empowered the teams to make decisions based on their expected contribution and this has helped them to give meaning to their work.

The teams know what impact they have to make, both Squads and Suppliers, whom we involve as part of the team. Everyone at Homeria is pursuing the North Star, our great victory.

Carmen Cabeza
Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions

To encourage innovation and creativity in the team, the Sherpas determine the "What" without interfering in the "How," which lies in the hands of the team responsible for the decisions they believe best to respond to the various challenges.

OKRs are challenges that make the teams move, energize them and get them out of their comfort zone because they unlock the true talent of the people in the organization.

This is how talented people can shine because they are self-managed, empowered and participate with freedom and high responsibility in something they understand and share, so being a very attractive challenge for high potential profiles.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Do you mean rather than just having the brains of the leadership team thinking, now all the members of the self-organizing teams are thinking and acting to achieve the objectives? Have you realized changes in how innovation is created and ideas are generated?

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

Right, the teams have significantly developed their

Innovation Capacity:

They are more creative. By presenting them with the North Star, the company's absolute objective, and asking them how to get there, they feel invited to propose, with ideas that are sometimes closely related, and sometimes farther apart, of course, but generating a very positive spiral of creativity that gives rise to ideas and initiatives that can drive our growth.

Anticipation Capacity:

No doubt the teams have learned that anticipation is important and is achieved by forward thinking. When I talk about anticipation, I don't mean thinking about what you have to do tomorrow, but where you have to be in the next quarter and assess, through your Glidepath, if you are doing well or if you have to consider immediate corrective measures.

Now, the teams are empowered to innovate, self-assess and make agile decisions independently.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Your organizational transformation together with our OKR consultants has been very intense within one quarter and has given the team and the company an outstanding boost. What would you highlight from these months? What was the major challenge, what the greatest success?

Carmen Cabeza
Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions

A very clear achievement has been the alignment, the fact that we are all moving towards the same place, and breaking down those departmental silos we mentioned before. By improving communication we are better coordinated and this allows us to take advantage of synergies between all areas and all roles, avoiding duplication of efforts due to lack of communication or lack of knowledge.

However, both the greatest success and the greatest challenge has been acquiring the ability to keep the rhythm, the "Drumbeat". Because to break the Drumbeat is to kill the system. The ActioGlobal team consistently swore us in on that and managed to get us mentally absolutely focused on keeping the rhythm of the organization, despite the effort it could mean for us. The difficulty was keeping the entire organization in sync during a period of intense growth, when we had new people coming on board every two weeks.

But even in that hard time, we were able to quickly incorporate people, to provide them with a real onboarding, to get them into the system, to understand it, to embrace it, to internalize it. Getting everyone to respect the rhythm has been the most complex and the most beautiful part of the process. Everyone has integrated it into their daily routine and synchronized it with the OKR so that the OKR are the guiding principle and drive our day.

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

Yes, indeed. In the beginning, people asked: So is it my job or is it OKR? That was partly normal because we were growing so fast, but the biggest challenge was to keep the rhythm, and we were able to make them understand the importance of that rhythm. I remember in December we felt we couldn't cope with all the changes, and that the inertia of the past was tempting us to stop. But we knew that if we stopped, we wouldn't get going again.

I am very happy with our own efforts. We spent December keeping the Drumbeat going, iterating and coming into this year with a lot of power.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Homeria is a team of highly talented, young and extremely professional talent. How have you managed to enhance cohesion and team spirit by the OKR Model?

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

It's not just the OKRs that have moved the organization. Internal communications is the heart that has made it beat and allowed us to be more engaged in the system and the alignment with the North Star in the Squads. Fortunately, we have professionals with a great sense of responsibility who contribute greatly to the strategy and day-to-day operations. OKR are a perfect vehicle to nurture these talents.

Carmen Cabeza
Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions

Internal communication is very, very important. We are working to generate a lot of hooks. I think that, as we have said before, we came with a lot of pushback from the MBOs. We needed to create a big pull for the team to find something very innovative, different. We wanted to disrupt something, to mark a before and an after that was not at all similar to the before, so as not to create any reservations. Around OKR, we even created a teaser and a whole engagement campaign to get our people excited and feel like they owned it.

By having high aspirations and challenging beyond complexity or difficulty, the mindset that is created around the system allows us to motivate the team with high-level challenges and identify influential leaders and peers who generate traction.

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

We generate hype! So we have made the framework very much our own, the Squads have made the OKRs very much their own (no secret that we have nicknamed them after movies, for example, the one that corresponds to billing is called Billing The Kid). This makes us feel very much at home culturally while at the same time being strict about maintaining the discipline that at times has been difficult to keep. This possibility of personalization, so typical of the organization, would not have a place with other large and traditional consulting firms.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Finally, I would like to highlight your unstoppable growth. What opportunities has it opened for you and where do you see Homeria in the coming years?

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

We dream big. Just three years ago, at an internal team-building event, we talked about the future dream of the first delivery to the moon. Well, that's not possible yet, but, however, we will soon reach 25 countries.

Homeria will operate worldwide, crossing the borders of the Iberian Peninsula on an operational and service level.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Just considering that you began as a start-up and already today you are no longer an SME! Is there any advice you have for entrepreneurs who struggle with their start-ups every day?

David Montero
Chief Business Officer, Homeria Open Solutions

There are two points I think we have learned along the way that I would like to share:

Resilience.

In a start-up, you are confronted with exhausting workdays, disappointments and more or less difficult economic times. You need to be aware that entrepreneurship is not an easy or smooth journey.

Adaptation.

I actually think it's important not to focus on an idea, but on the purpose you're following, because you can have a wonderful, very innovative idea and yet it doesn't meet a purpose. You have to adapt your idea to the very moment, to the customer, so that it becomes a solution and makes an impact.

Carmen Cabeza
Financial Manager & Head of People, Homeria Open Solutions

I would tell them not to lose their identity. The growth and globalization of a company is exciting and brings about many changes; claiming otherwise would be a lie, especially in the cultural aspect. But a company can have 50, 200, 500 or 3000 employees without losing the humanistic vision in people management. At Homeria, this relationship marks the difference and is part of the genes that define us. People have to know how to create a network that can be extended to all the homes, concerns and needs of each one of us because we are the ones who give identity to the company. So I think it's crucial to know that we must foster our raison d'être in the organization.

It is all well and good to reach all countries, all brands, but you must also take care to reach the people in your team, maintaining the values and principles that have made us advance and got us here today.

Jonathan Escobar
CEO · ActioGlobal®

Carmen, David, in the name of the entire ActioGlobal team, thank you for this time spent together, which has inspired me and will inspire many others. We wish you and the Homeria team every success in shaping your future.

Luis Preciado
Chief operating Officer en Homeria Open Solutions

“OKR have brought about a shift in business philosophy by clarifying and more closely linking business objectives, as well as involving the majority of employees in achieving the most important outcomes to meet the global objectives. It is now easier to be aligned with overall objectives and quickly identify deviations in their achievement. As a Sherpa, I firmly believe that it is a methodology that generates engagement and helps ensure that the company's goals are achieved with everyone's buy-in.”

Pablo Macías
Product Manager – WinDelivery en Homeria Open Solutions.

“OKR have helped us to focus on what is really important and add value to the company. Thanks to the methodology proposed by ActioGlobal, we have been able to ensure that the company maintains a constant pace of development that allows us to grow and achieve the objectives set. This change not only leads to a change in the way of working but also to a change in the mindset and motivation of all employees, as they feel themselves to be part of the company's successes and victories.”

We shape the future of work.
In the real world, not in PowerPoint.

New business challenges, unprecedented business perspectives.

Let's talk!

If you desire to shape the future, through Agility, Digitalization and High Performance then let´s make it come true – together.