From Nomination to Winner: Gartner People Breakthrough of the Year

In 2026, DigiOps was named Gartner Power of the Profession™ – People Breakthrough of the Year. The award recognises the 2025 DigiOps transformation programme and its impact on capability building at scale.

For us at ParagonInc, this is a proud moment.

It is also important to be precise about roles.

• Unilever designed the content.

• The DigiOps leadership team built the vision and owned the transformation.

• Paragon designed and orchestrated the gamified capability-building system that brought it to life.

This award belongs to the entire ecosystem that made DigiOps possible.

What the Award Recognises

The Gartner Power of the Profession Awards celebrate supply chain innovations that create measurable business impact. The People Breakthrough category specifically recognises organisations that:

• Build future-fit capability

• Unlock measurable business value

• Strengthen diverse, transformation-ready teams

DigiOps delivered on all three.

More than 500 Customer Operations colleagues invested over 100 hours each building digital and operational skills from prompt engineering and Python to Databricks and Azure. Engagement exceeded 93%. Skill advancement scaled into the thousands.

As Graham Sommer, Global Head of Customer Operations wrote:

“At a time when AI is reshaping our industry, the real differentiator is capability.”

That statement captures the essence of the programme.

AI tools are accelerating.
Technology platforms are evolving.
But sustainable advantage comes from people who know how to use them.

What Paragon Designed

DigiOps was more than a traditional learning programme.

It was a gamified capability-building system engineered to change behaviour at scale.

Our role was to:

• Architect the game structure and mechanics

• Design the mission mechanics

• Integrate learning into the flow of work

• Build reinforcement loops (points, badges, leaderboards, campaigns)

• Orchestrate measurement beyond completion

• Drive sustained engagement across a large population

The content (the domain knowledge, the digital skill modules, the business frameworks) was created by Unilever subject matter experts.

But content alone does not create transformation.

Content + Execution design does.

DigiOps succeeded because the capability ambition was matched with a behavioural system that made participation compelling, visible and scalable.

Recognition from the Community

The Chief Supply Chain Officer, Willem Uijen congratulated the team on their transformation program and highlighted that DigiOps is now being scaled further across operations.

Maria Provelegiou, Global Customer Operations described it as:

“A powerful example of how bold, forward-looking capability building can ignite true organisational transformation.”

Centrical, our gamification technology partner, recognised DigiOps as proof of what measurable workforce transformation looks like at enterprise scale.

It became a movement.

Why This Matters

Many organisations are investing heavily in AI platforms, planning systems and digital tools.

Fewer are investing in designed capability systems that ensure those tools are adopted, mastered and applied.

The difference between technology investment and business impact is structured capability building.

DigiOps demonstrates that when:

• Leadership commitment

• Strong domain content

• A measurable gamified operating model

• And disciplined orchestration

are combined, transformation accelerates.

And it becomes visible.

Could This Work in Your Organisation?

If you are leading supply chain, operations, digital transformation or enterprise capability, the question is not whether capability matters.

It is whether your current learning model can:

• Sustain engagement over 6–12 months

• Demonstrate measurable skill uplift

• Embed behaviour change in the flow of work

• Scale across hundreds or thousands of people

• Withstand scrutiny at the level of global award recognition

DigiOps shows what is possible when capability building is treated as a strategic operating system and not a training initiative.

If you would like to explore how a similar award-winning approach could be designed for your organisation, contact Paragon.

We design and orchestrate gamified capability systems that turn learning ambition into measurable transformation.

The technology may evolve.
The tools may change.

Capability remains the differentiator.