Education First – Brochure 2020

STAYING SMALL WHILE GROWING BIG

P R O J E C T PA R T N E R S

STAYING SMALL WHILE GROWING BIG Patrick Kammermann, CIO at EF Education First, dives into the company's values and why they have driven every single decision in its digital journey towards ever greater personalisation for customers

WRI T T EN BY PRODUCED BY

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N el l Wal ker Al ex P ag e

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P

icture yourself traveling to a

First, a business which lives and breathes

beautiful place that you’ve

creating life-changing opportunities for its

always wanted to visit, prepar-

customers. EF is an organisation with its

ing to meet new people, make new

foundations in uniqueness and a desire

friends who are undertaking the same

to provide people, across the world, with

journey, and learn a language that will

the best possible learning opportunities

unlock whole new worlds for you. It

to broaden their horizons in immeasur-

sounds like a dream come true, yet so

able ways. Its business of international

many of us put all of these things off, no

language schools is one of its primary

matter how much we long to do them;

services, and what EF is commonly known

why? Because it sounds like too many

for; its mission is to ‘open the world

moving parts, too much to organise, too

through education’, create a cultural expe-

difficult to plan out?

rience for customers and facilitate the

This is not the case with EF Education 4

building of relationships in an increasingly

and all ages use EF’s services, from

connected world.

two-week courses to, potentially an entire

Through this, lives are changed. One

year. At the end of this time, they have

Spanish customer was a very nervous

earned new skills, new friendships, and

traveler, but described her experience

a far greater level of confidence in their

with EF in Rome as ‘unforgettable’, and

ability to travel to other countries and

that EF gave her ‘the opportunity to be

communicate with international peers.

happy’. Powerful words for a powerful

EF offers a comprehensive service for

service. EF’s international language school

anyone and everyone. It owns and oper-

business has language campuses in 54

ates all of its own schools, even offering

destinations across the world, covering 12

accommodation, and everything can be

languages, and over 150 study programs

personalised – all transport, the afore-

suited to any language proficiency level.

mentioned accommodation, and the

Students from over 100 nationalities

educational courses themselves. This is 5

Harnessing the power of cloud to accelerate digital transformation Our end-to-end services combine business and innovation strategy, experience design, technology consulting and best-in-class software engineering to deliver results on a global scale

WWW.EPAM.COM

EPAM, a leading global provider of digital platform engineering and software development services with 36,000+ employees in over 30 countries, is on a mission to engineer the future. With nearly 30 years of software engineering heritage supported by continually expanding strategic capabilities, the company converts breakthrough ideas into real outcomes for its global customers.

EPAM understands that technology alone

Attitudes towards changing an existing software

cannot enable a company to digitally transform, which is why they are committed to helping its

solution are shifting, as Pascal Roth, EPAM’s Director of Business Development, explains “Companies want

customers think holistically about people, processes,

to differentiate; core systems are not particularly

platforms and data – key components to successful transformation programs. With hundreds of Fortune

good at interacting with new ecosystems; and software engineering has matured, meaning you can deliver

Global 2000 customers and a team of practical

value at a much faster pace. As a technology-agnostic

visionaries with experience in human-centric design thinking, innovation strategy consulting,

partner with expert engineering, design and consulting skills, these three elements play to EPAM’s strengths.”

and education and learning platforms, EPAM’s end-to-end service offerings are ideal for businesses needing to evolve as adaptive, digital organizations

The passion with which EPAM tackles the challenges

to disrupt the market.

it faces is clear, and its relationship with EF is made even more unique by the fact that their work together coincided with a global pandemic. EPAM’s Remote by

It is this proven and varied wealth of experience that caught the eye of EF Education First, an organization in need of an experienced team to

Design ™ approach has enabled the project to quickly adapt to remote working models and continue seamlessly, strengthening its position as a

help shape its technology vision. “EF wanted an expert opinion; a fresh pair of eyes,” says Laszlo Szacsuri, Solution Architect at EPAM. “The company

networked, distributed organization that doesn’t stop for a customer in need.

was looking to harness the power of cloud to provide more flexibility, release more valuable features and reduce time to market. EF had already embarked on a three-year plan, which included moving the majority of their code to the cloud, but they had a complex tech stack with over 10 years of custom development. From the beginning, we realized this could be a really amazing partnership.”

“We’re deeply proud of our work with EF,” says Laszlo. “As markets try to figure out the new normal, we didn’t let the current environment stop us from effectively helping our client grow. EF trusted us to be there for them during this unprecedented time, which is really rewarding and key to establishing a successful partnership.”

Laszlo and his team performed an initial tech stack review, which resulted in a proposed target architecture to overcome the legacy technology challenges.

The team implemented a technical plan and a set of MVP applications iteratively over the course of eight months, proving their trust and reliability along the way whilst helping EF raise their own engineering standards. The automation involved has unlocked time for the business to focus on value-adding activities, as well as reducing overall time to market for new features. “The work we’ve done together has cemented EPAM as a partner that goes beyond the normal vendor-customer relationship to add real value,” says Laszlo.

Want to talk to us about your business needs?

Get in touch with us. We’d love to hear from you.

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w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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something which sets EF firmly apart from

with offices in 50 countries, but we’ve

its competitors.

broken it down into smaller units where

In fact, the customisation is such that

anybody can make a difference and be an

progress is guaranteed, thanks to EF

entrepreneur,” continues Kammermann.

having its own academic language learn-

“Each individual leaves footprints; every-

ing system which ensures an approach to

body makes a difference. It even says

teaching and development that’s suited

in our handbook, ‘we want to stay small

specifically to its students. Its core values

while growing big’.”

are centred around success – they are focused on passion, innovation, atten-

The technology story

tion-to-detail, an entrepreneurial spirit and

This focus on the importance of every

the view that nothing is impossible.

individual, of passion, of entrepreneur-

“Our values are incredibly important,”

ship, it bleeds from every pore of EF as

explains Patrick Kammermann, CIO at

an organisation and out to the customer.

EF. “When I joined EF in February 2019, I

Its recent drive towards improved tech-

was amazed at the way you could actu-

nology has been much based around

ally feel the values around you, just walking through the hallways. We recruit and manage according to our values; we go as far as saying, ‘okay, this is a real EF person’. This is our secret weapon, and why we’re the best organisation in our space. Technology is important, but the reason we’re successful is the strong culture of values.”

It’s true that this outlook isn’t necessarily common for a business of EF’s size; it’s such a large organisation, but in terms of mindset and passion, it’s almost a collection of start-ups all working towards the same goal. “We are a global organisation

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Patrick Kammermann CIO at EF Education First Patrick Kammermann is CIO at EF Education First, the world’s largest privately-held international education company. His ambition is to make technology truly matter for EF’s business of international language schools, driving digital personalization along the value chain. He believes – as does EF’s founder Bertil Hult – that there are no problems that could not be solved with the right team. Prior to this role, Patrick built and led technology organizations of various sizes, mainly in the financial services industry. Patrick is passionate about anything digital and strongly believes in results through people.

increased personalisation and creating an ever-morebespoke service to our customers, while streamlining the back-office environment. From marketing, to sales, to creation of its academic courses and in-school activities, technology is always working away in the background.

“We are not a technology company – we are a travel and education company,” Kammermann explains. “We don’t necessarily want to be absolutely leading edge in terms of technology for the sake of it, but we do have the ambition to lead the industry in terms of our digital offering. This is a continuous evolution for us, and technology plays an important role. A couple of years ago, there was a fear at EF that we might fall behind in technology use, which is when we increased our investments in building on that side of the business and bringing in additional partners who are experts in their area.”

A major element of this shift has been building a global but cohesive technology team, with a three-year roadmap – one that aligns much more closely with the company’s core values than any previous technological ventures did. “Before Patrick Kammermann joined, EF was more

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of a technical organisation,” explains

organisation, with agile processes. What

Livio Francescucci, Head of Engineering.

we look for in our tech team members

“There were lots of separate groups work-

is passion; of course, the technical skills

ing on separate projects, which mostly

need to be there, but passion is always

worked well, but it meant there was never

critical too, and integral to what we call

a sense of collaboration, of a common

‘the EF culture’.”

strategy. The company grew, and the

This team, focused on technology,

complexity of the system grew, and the

is only going to grow as EF’s needs

previous model started failing because

continue to evolve – especially since the

we needed interaction and integration

business has a pretty ambitious vision of

between systems.”

what it wants the customer experience to

Francescucci joined the company as

look like in future. “Eventually our custom-

a software architect, and saw fairly early

ers should be able to pick up their phone

on what needed to change. “We started

and start composing the trip of a lifetime,

streamlining our strategy and putting

and finalise it all with one tap of a button.

the right methodologies in place for

This requires a lot of additional tools to

those teams, creating a more organic

be built around the classic experience,

“We recruit and manage according to our values” Patrick Kammermann, CIO

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and this mission can be reinforced using technology.

A personalisation transformation While EF has undertaken a shift in the way it uses technology, they prefer to think of it as a personalisation transformation which is fueled and led by technology. Technology allows continued evolution of a service, and the organisation is always striving to improve the customer experience. Ultimately, EF’s latest IT venture is all for the purpose of improving everything about the service, from the very first customer touch point to the very last – and beyond. This required EF to be highly flexible – which, fortunately, is something ingrained in its culture; it has to be that way, because the needs of the users are ever-shifting, and the very nature of technology is chameleonic.

Never before has that flexibility been challenged in such an extreme way as this year. With COVID-19 sweeping the globe and shutting down educational facilities as early as February, EF had to shift quickly.

Fortunately, it’s always been a flexible business. “That’s one of our strengths,” says Kammermann. “When COVID hit us, we had to shut down face-to-face teaching and, literally over one weekend, we moved all our students online and created 12

THE BUSINESS GOAL MARKETING Targeting potential customers on a highly individualized basis by working closely with Google and Facebook, amongst others.

SALES Allowing customers to get in touch with EF through their channel of choice whenever and however they like, building an immersive experience SCHOOLS Students getting personalised adviceon what to focus on to maximise the learning experience.

THE TECHNOLOGY GOAL Being cloud-exclusive, using standard platforms, i.e. software-as-a-service, and making integration the masterpiece.

Working with carefully-selected expert partners.

Building a superb team and highly skilled engineering organisation.

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an online offering – called e-campuses –

to be the most important element of it, no

that very much mirrored the way we oper-

matter the journey, while what happens

ate in a physical setting. All schedules

behind-the-scenes needed to be much

were changed accordingly, the teachers

more streamlined; the heavy lifting would

worked remotely – the show must go on.”

be handed over to the cloud, mostly

Longer-term, COVID has meant that

Amazon Web Services, with no EF-owned

EF now has the basis of a strong model

infrastructure involved, and full connec-

in place for those who want to start their

tivity was needed to ensure staff and

studies online, creating even more flex-

customers could work from anywhere,

ibility for customers and catering to the

on any device, any time. EF calls this a

needs of each person as an individual

cloud-exclusive strategy.

– as per EF’s ultimate goal. EF’s technology journey reflects this desire to be as

Putting it into practice

quick-to-react and bespoke as possible,

EF knew what it wanted – the next step

and its vision from the very start had to be

was to get its ducks in a row. Its approach

not process-orientated, but impact-orien-

is to buy standard solutions and custom-

tated. This means that the outcome had

ise them as required, while developing

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its own software as little as possible.

Fortunately, the software market is full of state-of-the-art tools, which for example allowed EF to replace its core sales system with an exciting new CRM solution, which was developed quickly and rolled out across the world in 2019. “We had our own home-grown system which was built in-house and had been used for over 10 years,” explains Anuj Kapoor, Senior Project Director.

“We had a complete team sitting in Bangalore, with some of them in Zurich, and we did everything on our own. The problem came when we felt our technology was becoming stagnant, and we realised what we had couldn’t be sustained for another 10 years. So, we did a lot of research and decided a standard CRM solution would be the best fit for us; we chose one of the bigger players in this space, and there are so many different partners which work alongside them, making it super easy for us to buy whatever add-on apps suit us in a plugand-play way. Everyone really embraced it, and it became particularly useful once COVID-19 hit and we had to find new ways to connect with the customer.”

One add-on app EF implemented was created by Ortoo, and it was a great example of finding the right solution on 17

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“ Our relationship with Ortoo refines the speed of what we do. The best thing about Ortoo is that the app is multidimensional – you can always add more complexity when you need to.”

— Anuj Kapoor, Senior Project Director, Education First

the marketplace and getting it custom-

of distributing equal types of customers

ised to its own needs. The Q-assign app

amongst the team. Ortoo’s system is very

was implemented to fairly distribute leads

fair, making sure everyone gets equal

among salespeople, which was previously

opportunities, and that every customer

challenging thanks to EF operating in 50

gets equal attention as quickly as possi-

countries.

ble. Our relationship with Ortoo refines

“Each country can have multiple sales

the speed of what we do, and since we

offices,” Kapoor explains, “and every sales

implemented Q-assign, we’ve had no

office sells multiple products. Plus, every

complaints from salespeople; before, they

product has its own team, so there’s a

would complain about the lack of equality.

lot of complexity in identifying, based

The best thing about Ortoo is that the app

on where the customer is coming from,

is multidimensional – you can always add

who should be the person to take the

more complexity when you need to.”

call. Then, there’s the issue of not every customer being of the same quality as

Partnerships

the one before it, so we had to find a way

The world is shifting, and having all of w w w.t h e i n t e r f a c e . n e t

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your expertise in-house is no longer an indicator of that expertise. Now, it’s

and passion for ‘their’ system.

With EPAM, the tasks varied, support-

normal – and expected – for organi-

ing existing systems and building new

sations to partner up with technology

components, such as a functionality allow-

vendors to bring skills and wisdom to

ing automatic scheduling of students into

other businesses, and this became the

classes in a very sophisticated way based

sensible choice for EF after years of

on a genetic algorithm. The company

having all of its engineers in-house to

has proven extremely reliable, efficient,

maintain strong internal domain knowl-

and experienced in dealing with complex

edge and ensure everything was aligned

problems. “EPAM has a very broad set of

with the company’s cultural values.

skills and were able to provide an expert

EF had to look for partners that would

or a resource for every problem, and they

mesh with their own teams, understand

easily became part of the EF ecosystem,”

their needs and offer services which would integrate well with the infrastructure and processes EF already had. This led to the start of two new key relationships, with Britenet and EPAM. Britenet was instrumental in building and customising EF’s new CRM-based sales solution, with a collaborative spirit and high levels of expertise to support it. “They are a fantastic partner,” Kammermann explains. “They provide us the experts to customise and implement the CRM platform, where we struggled, internally, to have the right skills and capabilities. They provided us with a small, but qualified, team that was extremely dedicated – and still is.” More importantly, the business fits in with and supports EF’s core values, and it shows commitment 20

Kammermann continues. “They took over

technology partners have proven vital to

responsibility from us in a very structured

EF’s journey, its true success starts from

and quite sophisticated way, helping and

within. The in-house team is its greatest

pushing us where we had weaknesses.

asset, and its engineering background

EPAM was instrumental in bringing in

ensures that the organisation leads its

structures and understanding our issues.”

market in terms of both building and employing the correct technology solu-

The team ”I have almost never seen a problem

tions. The relationships with partners are very much based in EF already having a

that couldn’t be solved with the right

deep knowledge of what it has and what

person” - these are the words of EF’s

it wants, meaning it maintains self-reliance

founder, Bertil Hult, and they continue to

no matter what.

resonate throughout the business. While

As previously mentioned, a major

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element of this is choosing the right

the tech space, making mistakes is okay.

people for the team, with the ‘EF atti-

It’s part of an entrepreneurial culture.

tude’ – namely, passion and a sense of

“Ultimately, we want to foster a fun

professional autonomy and responsi-

environment for our team. Connect with

bility. “There’s no such thing as ‘it’s not

peers and customers, have music going

my job’, here,” says Kammermann. “I feel

in the tech office, eat chocolate with your

quite strongly about this; we all have our

colleagues – we need to find a bit of

primary responsibilities, of course, but if

balance. Fun is an important component.”

there’s something that needs to be done, I don’t want to hear the excuse of ‘it’s not

What’s next?

my job’. We all do what needs to be done,

In spite of all the challenges 2020 has

and that lies in our mindset. We expect

brought, EF has no plans to slow down –

people to take responsibility for what

in fact, it has some very ambitious plans

they do, and in return, we make sure they

in place. As Kammermann says, nothing is

know that it’s okay to make mistakes. I

impossible, and the way EF has success-

can’t repeat that often enough – even in

fully dealt with the current pandemic is

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“Each individual leaves footprints; everybody makes a difference” Patrick Kammermann, CIO

proof of that. “The personalisation continues, and we will be strengthening the team and our partnerships to make sure that happens,” he explains. “We’ll continue to invest very much in digital marketing and digital advertising platforms, both SEO and PPC, in our analytics platforms, and building out our virtual sales offices, making sure customers can interact with us through any channel at their convenience. We want to be there for our customers no matter what; if you want to use your phone, you can do that; if you want a video conversation, that’s fine too; you can use WhatsApp, or WeChat, or talk to our chatbot – building those channels is an important element of what we have planned.

“Plus, from the academic perspective, we will be investing heavily in offering the best possible learning experience in our schools – both physical and online classes – and we’re working on an app that provides students with highly personalised advice, based on their progress and past behaviours. Perfecting personalisation is our ultimate goal from marketing to sales, through to every element of our customers’ education journeys.”

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