A featured contribution from Leadership Perspectives: a curated forum reserved for leaders nominated by our subscribers and vetted by the Construction Tech Review Advisory Board.
Bakers Delight
The Thoughtful Innovation behind Every Loaf
Keng Ng
Keng Ng is the Chief Technology Officer at Bakers Delight, bringing extensive experience in retail technology and business transformation. With a background in software engineering, he excels at bridging strategic vision with practical implementation across complex retail environments. His expertise spans the full retail value chain—from product development and logistics to omnichannel engagement—enabling organizations to stay agile and competitive. Passionate about solving real-world challenges through innovation, he has led successful initiatives across fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), healthcare, manufacturing and more, underpinned by strong capabilities in systems integration, service design and organizational optimization.
Through this article, Keng Ng believes innovation should help keep the heart of artisanal baking alive, not take it away. He’s all about listening first and understanding real problems before jumping to solutions. For him, the best tech feels local and personal, just like the bread. And when it comes to change, he knows it works best when people feel part of it.
I strive to enable Bakers Delight to exceed our strategic goals through the effective use of technology. My key responsibility is to understand each department's goals, problems and capabilities so that I can apply the right technology solution.
Overcoming Challenges: Balancing Centralized Technological Governance
Apart from legislative requirements such as payroll and taxation, the guiding principle I have stood by is that the closer the technology is to the customer, the more inclined I am to deploy a localized solution, because we need maximum personalization to keep our customers engaged and customers are unique to the local region.
Adoption of changes is another big challenge. Franchisees are not employees. They are business owners and entrepreneurs who have invested large sums of money. The usual command-and-control approach is not only ineffective, but it also builds stronger resistance to future changes
We need innovation to preserve the artisanal aspects of our products and maintain their consistency every day, across every bakery
Innovation into business cycle: Baking by the Numbers
On the contrary, innovation plays a crucial role. We need innovation to preserve the artisanal aspects of our products and maintain their consistency every day, across every bakery. The innovation within the production and supply chain is about finding creative and un-intrusive ways of measuring the activities so that we can predict the quality.
For example, recording oven temperature, humidity and run times is one way of predicting whether the bread will be just right.
Key Advice: Think Before You Build
I would like to say, understand the problems deeply before trying to solve them. Don’t create solutions and then try to look for problems.
