CITY FOCUS
Mumbai, India's export giant
June 2018 • ASIA EDITION
Inside the
FINANCIAL ENGINE ROOM Heiko Nitsche, President and CEO, on the progressive work culture delivering success and growth at Mercedez-Benz Group Services Philippines
VE GLOBAL
Transforming the customer experience in Asia
TOP 10
Financial services companies in Asia
FOREWORD WELCOME TO THE latest Asia edition of Business Chief. For our leadership feature this month, Jaime Pierre, COO for Asia Pacific at SaaS giant Ve Global, talks us through the company’s growth and how customer experience is evolving across Asian markets as technology developments continue to transform the region. Shedding a more global light on the subject, we asked Lloyd Snowden of Oliver Wight to talk us through the importance of value chains in sustainable business planning, and how we can make the most out of them to add to a business. Meanwhile, we caught up with Everbridge, a company which manages critical events from terror attacks and natural disasters to IT outages by using state-of-the-art software to keep businesses running and employees safe. Finally, looking into people management, Sony Electronics’ Head of Corporate Communications Cheryl Goodman is discussing the rise of
women in STEM and how females can be encouraged to make it to the top. Zooming back in on Asia, this month we are bringing the city of Mumbai into focus. As the most populous city in India, it is not only a hub for MNCs but also some fast-growing tech firms and a port providing a significant gateway to the East. We’ve also brought you an easy-to-digest list of the 10 financial services companies to watch in the region, based on their level of growth. Be sure to take a look at our company profiles where we share the most exciting new developments for big businesses in the region. This month features Linfox, MercedesBenz Group and QNET. We hope you enjoy this month’s magazine, and as always welcome your feedback on Twitter. @Business_Chief
Enjoy the issue!
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F E AT U R E S
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Inside the financial engine room of
Mercedes-Benz
38 L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y
Transforming the customer experience in Asia
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CRITICAL EVENT MANAGEMENT
across a changing landscape TECHNOLOGY
S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y
HOW MORE CAN BE DONE TO MAKE THE MOST OF VALUE CHAINS
50 62 PEOPLE
SONY ELECTRONICS
and the rise of women in STEM
CITY FOCUS
TOP 10
INDIA’S EXPORT GIANT
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high-growth financial services companies in Asia
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94 QNET
TECHNOLOGY
112 LINFOX
SUPPLY CHAIN
WESTPAC
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CHARTER HALL TECHNOLOGY
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Inside room of
e the financial engine
Mercedes-Benz Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Kristofer Palmer
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MERCEDES-BENZ GROUP SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC
A progressive and dynamic work culture is key for corporate success, and it seems Mercedes-Benz Group Services Philippines understands that better than anyone
B
OASTING ITS ICONIC silverstarred emblem, the Mercedes-Benz Tower has become a landmark in the Philippines, supporting the brand’s position in the Asia-Pacific market. With offices in both Cebu and Clark, Mercedes-Benz Group Services Philippines (MBGSP) provides finance and accounting services for the Daimler Group, one of the world’s most successful automotive companies. Supporting esteemed vehicle brands like Mercedes-Benz, Heiko Nitsche, President and CEO, says that the firm’s services are critical for the automotive giant’s success. “MBGSP is responsible for paying Daimler’s supplier, so we are ensuring that our factories across the world get the parts, materials and services they need. “MBGSP also supports many of the 12
June 2018
Daimler Group subsidiary companies with the production of their financial statements,” he adds. “So even though we are just 500 of Daimler’s 289,000 employees worldwide, I think we play an important role.” Since its creation, MBGSP has steadily matured, surpassing its initial growth target. Serving at the helm of the company for almost seven years, Nitsche has helped to build the Daimler subsidiary from the ground up, working with peer groups and sector leaders to gain the latest industry knowhow. “It was really exciting to be the first person in the Philippines from the Daimler Group and to start something completely from scratch,” he notes. Building a company from its very foundations is a challenge for any executive. For Nitsche, perhaps the biggest priority was finding the right
Cebu office
TECHNOLOGY
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TECHNOLOGY
MBGSP Clark Building Inauguration
team with the right skills and attitude for the job. “In the beginning, most of the time was focused on recruiting the right people, our pioneer team,” he explains. “It was of the greatest importance that we found the right team with the right skills but, even more importantly, that they had the right attitude and spirit. “I think we are unique because of our people and our corporate culture. At MBGSP we believe in the best of both worlds. This mean you can’t copy and paste the corporate culture of our parent company into any country.
“We merged the best elements of the German Daimler culture with the Filipino culture. In the Philippines, you have world class customer service, excellent English skills, and the people are very adaptive to new cultures. Now, we have a very young, dynamic and customer-service oriented organisation with lots of energy.” MBGSP has a millennial-centric environment and is committed to providing equal opportunities. Creating a progressive, open and welcoming work culture is something which Nitsche is clearly passionate asia.businesschief.com
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MERCEDES-BENZ GROUP SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC
Heiko Nitsche, Chief Executive Officer of Mercedes-Benz Group Services Philippines A keen eye for numbers, a quest for adventure and the world’s maker of the best automobiles brought Heiko Nitsche, Chief Executive Officer of Mercedes-Benz Group Services Philippines to Asia. Heiko who is originally from Stuttgart, Germany started his career with Ernst & Young AG as a young Executive in 1997. He joined Daimler AG as Manager for Corporate Controlling & Accounting in 2003, and as Chief Accounting Officer for Mitsubishi Fuso Truck & Bus Corporation, one of the subsidiaries of Daimler AG’s in Tokyo, Japan. He eventually established the Philippine office in 2011, after careful deliberation of this strategic location for the company. The Cebu office opened in December in 2011 with only three persons and last November 2017 MBGSP inaugurated its new office in Clark as the latest addition to the Daimler Group’s shared-service network. Currently, it has a team of 500 employees for both Cebu and Clark and is considered among the best in the field who provide finance and accounting services to subsidiaries of Daimler in Germany, the rest of Europe, Africa, Asia Pacific and the US.
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about, so much so he describes his team as “more like a family”. It’s an ethos which is well placed amidst the Philippines’ family-focused culture. “I would say what also makes the company unique is our working atmosphere and high retention rate. We have a low employee turnover, which is a critical success factor in this industry. Because of this, we have a higher performance and service quality because every time you lose an employee you have to find a new employee and retrain them to the same level of quality. “I’m very supportive of open communication and believe everybody should speak their mind. We speak to each other on a first-name basis and
we break down the hierarchy walls. We treat everyone as equal without tarnishing our roles and responsibilities and without sacrificing our respect for one another.” By tapping into the local language, embracing the Filipino culture, and creating meaningful relationships with his employees, Nitsche has strived to create a positive work environment. As such, he says that whilst other companies may list impressive values, they are taken to a new level at MBGSP. “Here at MBGSP we really embrace and live by our corporate values. Our values of passion, respect, integrity and discipline are a part of our DNA. “In order to showcase this, we created an annual corporate value award system,
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MERCEDES-BENZ GROUP SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC
LENOVO Lenovo is a $45 billion global Fortune 500 company and a leader in providing innovative consumer, commercial, and enterprise technology. Our portfolio of high-quality, secure products and services covers PCs (including the legendary Think and multimode YOGA brands), workstations, servers, storage, smart TVs and a family of mobile products like smartphones (including the Moto brand), tablets and apps. Join us on LinkedIn, follow us on Facebook or Twitter (@LenovoPhils) or visit us at www.lenovo.com/lenovo/ph/en whereby our employees can nominate someone to receive an award for really displaying these values on a dayto-day basis.� As well as selecting the right team, location was a top priority for the company. Positioned in the fastemerging Asia-Pacific market, the Philippines may have been a unique choice of location however, Nitsche believes it has been an ideal choice and one which has given the company a competitive edge. Selecting a strategic site in Cebu, the MBGSP headquarters has become a distinctive landmark for the region. 18
June 2018
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MERCEDES-BENZ GROUP SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC
“We chose this location because it’s very important to have the right infrastructure, transportation, and facilities,” Nitsche says. “Today we now have a seven-tonne star on the rooftop. It’s really a landmark in Cebu.
“ It was of the greatest importance that we found the right team with the right skills but, even more importantly, that they had the right attitude and spirit” Heiko Nitsche, President and CEO Everybody in the city knows the building, which is good for us as it strengthens the company brand and also helps us recruit our best talent. “The key to our success has been how we attract and then retain the best talent,” he adds. “With our company culture and brand, which is symbolised by that star, we really can attract the best talent in Cebu. I think the proof that we are an employer of choice is the fact that the vast majority of our 20
June 2018
employees are recruited by through an employee referral programme. It shows people actually enjoy working here, and they encourage their friends to join also.” Keen to keep up momentum, the Daimler subsidiary has also opened a second state-of-the-art Philippines office, in Clark. This not only ensures there’s capacity for growth, it also means MBGSP’s services are not disrupted and always available.
TECHNOLOGY
The Mercedes-Benz Future Truck 2025 provides a glimpse of driverless trucks “If something were to happen to our operations like a natural disaster, for instance, that could be a significant issue for us,” Nitsche explains, “therefore, we have developed a very sophisticated business continuity management programme. As part of this, we created our second office in Clark which gives us additional operational stability, security, and a world-class business solution for our global customers.”
Keen to ramp up its operations further, MBGSP has focused its investments on two pivotal areas: the upskilling of its staff and digitalisation. As part of this, the whole Daimler Shared Service network is investing in robotics, automation and artificial intelligence, for example, to improve its productivity and efficiency. “For our business, technology is very important. It’s crucial for the finance and accounting function, but asia.businesschief.com
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MERCEDES-BENZ GROUP SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC
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TECHNOLOGY
it’s also vital across all of Daimler’s subsidiaries,” Nitsche says. “With technology comes the opportunity to automate certain activities to free up your team. This means they can do fewer manual tasks and focus on the more interesting, valueadding jobs. “On the infrastructure side, when we established our second site in Clark, it became a hub site for IT,” he continues. “For example, in this site, we installed a state-of-the-art server room, which houses Smart Row cabinet. “Our Cebu and Clark site are fully integrated and capable of absorbing the load of each other in case one site fails to perform,” he adds. On the other hand, whilst technology has been a core focus, MBGSP hasn’t forgotten its most important asset: its people. As a result, the Philippines firm is investing heavily in development and training programmes to help attract and retain the best talent in the region. “We have soft-skills programmes from communication to change management and stress management to leadership, which are all equally
important,” explains Nitsche. “These programmes are not given arbitrarily; each employee’s career plan is carefully designed by their respective managers together with HR.” It’s been seven years since MBGSP was first founded. Years before, Daimler has already started its Shared Service journey with Daimler Group Services
“ In 2011, we started with just three employees in total. Now, we have almost 500 in both Cebu and Clark. I’m very excited for the further growth of that family” Heiko Nitsche, President and CEO Madrid (DGSM) and Daimler Group Services Berlin (DGSB). Since then, the Daimler subsidiary has gone from strength to strength, offering state-ofthe-art finance and accounting services and more. In doing so, MBGSP has bolstered Daimler’s position in Asia-Pacific but, not one to rest on its laurels, Nitsche asia.businesschief.com
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MERCEDES-BENZ GROUP SERVICES PHILIPPINES, INC
Vision MercedesMaybach 6 Cabriolet ALL PHOTOS COPYRIGHT BY DAIMLER AG
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believes it’s only the beginning for the firm. “In 2011, we started with three employees in total. Now, we have almost 500 in both Cebu and Clark. I’m very excited for the further growth of that family. The company still has the potential to grow, whether that’s in terms of headcount, processes, or value-added services. “Our most important target is to have a very good relationship with our global business partners, our customers so that they earn the trust and the confidence in us,” he continues. “For our employees, we want to ensure that there is always an opportunity for successful career growth. We also want to have mature and standardised processes. We want to integrate robotics and automation into our processes. It’s a journey which we’re currently on but it won’t happen overnight. “As a responsible employer we create job opportunities within MBGSP and beyond in our supplier network to encourage business growth in the region.”
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Transforming the customer experience in Asia
Writ ten by MARK SPENCE
Business Chief speaks to customer-centric software business Ve Global’s Jamie Pierre about the company’s operations and expansion plans in Asia
JAMIE PIERRE IS the COO of
Ve Global APAC. In his seven-year tenure, he has worked across multiple departments including commercial and operations. With a particular focus on cost efficiencies and revenue growth projects, Pierre has used his extensive knowledge of the business to drive Ve’s transformation across Asia Pacific. As the company looks to consolidate and strengthen its position in the region, we caught up with him to uncover more about his role and Ve’s plans for expansion.
Transitional period
Jamie Pierre, COO of Ve Global APAC 28
June 2018
As a technology company supplying businesses in the ecommerce industry with programmatic advertising and email remarketing, amongst many other services, Ve’s focus in Asia is a key part of its future plans. As we head deeper into 2018, what can we expect to
L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y
Ve Global is looking to strengthen its position in the Asia Pacific market
see from the revamped Ve brand and how will that impact Pierre’s role? “As of last year we had a rebrand and we’ve been working on our software and tools, including looking further ahead in the customer journey. For example, one area we offer is in advertising solutions, which is increasingly upcoming in Asia, and that involves educating clients on
where they can improve,” says Pierre. “My role specifically is quite diverse but incorporates examining how we can link the Asian region into our headquarters. It’s also about how we can simplify the things we do to make it easier for clients to onboard and have their campaigns maintained, while making sure we’re efficient,” he continues. 29
L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y 2017 was a tough year for Ve. Despite having been valued at over $1bn in 2016, Ve Interactive, as it was previously known, almost went bust. By September last year, however, the ship was steadied – thanks, in part, to gathering around $15mn in investment. “Making sure we’re efficient in Asia is a key focus for us. Last year we went through some ‘speed bumps’ shall we say, which had an impact on what we did in Asia. One of my key roles there was to investigate how we can be more cost efficient, looking at the headcount of the team and consolidating some of our activities,” Pierre explains. Rather than viewing these challenges as problematic, Pierre says it actually presented him with a platform to strengthen the business. “We needed to bring some departments and responsibilities together, which was really helpful because now we’re able to build on that and get close to a fully connected organisation. For us to be successful we need to link our regions,” he continues. “We’re now at a point where our tech support services, our
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creative teams, marketing, all the engine rooms that drive the business, are well connected. It’s an exciting time to be involved with Ve.”
Expansion in Asia With last year’s difficulties now behind it, where specifically will Ve be concentrating its efforts in Asia? “Our regional hub is based in Hong Kong, so that will remain our core area but Southeast Asia is key, including Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia,” Pierre reveals. Following a period of analysis into the market, especially the increasing customer engagement that a mobile-first strategy can provide, Indonesia is of particular interest. And with good reason. “It’s the largest growing ecommerce market outside of China, with a high population of customers that use mobile devices as standard,” Pierre explains. “There’s
“There’s a generation of shoppers in Asia who have bypassed the era of desktops and laptops. The experience they expect is one where they use mobile apps on a day-to-day basis”
Jamie Pierre, COO APAC, Ve Global
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a generation of shoppers in Asia who have bypassed the era of desktops and laptops. The experience they expect is one where they use mobile apps on a day-to-day basis.” This approach to emerging Asian markets is also grounded in solid insight. Pierre tells us that ecommerce in Indonesia, for example, currently enjoys double digit growth year-onyear, and this is expected to increase. 32
June 2018
“Markets such as Indonesia are quite open,” says Pierre. “One of the brands we work with is Tokopedia (one of Indonesia’s biggest online marketplaces) and they get around 120mn visits to their website each month. That’s huge. They’re also keen on new ideas and running new campaigns and that’s exciting.” Ve’s future strategy doesn’t rest with Indonesia alone, however. “Another
area is India,” Pierre says. “We’ve got a small base there but part of the expansion plans are to grow that team. There’s a lot of strong feeling that we can do something there with our digital assistant or email engagement that we use with clients such as Dominos India, Pizza Hut, American Express and some other great brands that are plugging our tech in and seeing really good results.”
Personalisation and GDPR Taking this one step further is the correlation between what Ve offers and what businesses in Asia want to achieve. Personalisation is going to be fundamental to any growth in mobile and that, in turn, also brings up the question of GDPR legislation, the European Union’s new regulation on data protection. “In Asia it has to be mobile first,” 33
“Customers have to be confident that when they’re shopping on their device there’s no potential for their information to go elsewhere” says Pierre. “However, making the experience simple to navigate and secure is vital. Customers have to be confident that when they’re shopping on their device there’s no potential for their information to go elsewhere. It’s important for us because we are a data processor for some of our organisations and we have to make sure we are responsible.” So what does Pierre believe this means for brands who want to deliver a truly personalised experience? “Provided the information they capture is not overly sensitive, stored for longer than necessary or used unnecessarily, I believe it can be positive. This ties into what we’re doing at Ve because our solutions are all about personalisation. As a business we always analyse data and we recently looked back at Q1 2018 to see how the industry was doing in 34
June 2018
Jamie Pierre, COO APAC, Ve Global travel. We examined around 60mn sessions in the APAC region and found that Japan had the highest rate of bookings drop off: around 95-96%. Nine in 10 bookings were being lost so this is an area we are trying to educate brands on. Businesses must provide a more personalised experience and engage those customers. That’s why we do what we do, and the results speak for themselves.” With over 10,000 clients worldwide and a wealth of data learning supporting their expansion plans, the future looks bright for Ve. As Pierre himself says: “There’s still lots more to come from us in Asia.”
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HAVE YOU SEEN OUR OTHER TITLES?
CRITICAL EVENT MANAGEMENT across a changing landscape In a fast-changing world, businesses and governments alike must become more proactive in dealing with a variety of threats. Javier Colado, SVP of International Sales at Everbridge, tells us more
TECHNOLOGY
Writ ten by OLIVIA MINNOCK
TECHNOLOGY IN AN AGE where theft isn’t just of physical goods but of data, and criminals don’t just break into buildings but into digital ecosystems, security threats are becoming much harder and more complex to manage. Throw natural disasters and terror attacks into the mix, and 21st century security is about managing the unpredictable at an ever-increasing pace. Critical event management company Everbridge helps governments and business not only react to, but also prepare for and anticipate such threats. We caught up with Javier
Colado, SVP of International Sales at Everbridge, to find out how the business takes care of companies and incidents of every shape and size, and where it plans to go next. Colado has worked with several global businesses like McAfee and SAP and as such is well-placed to head up Everbridge’s journey in an increasingly connected world. “I chose to come to Everbridge for two reasons: firstly, it’s unique in the market as our solutions help keep people safe and can even save lives; secondly, there is huge potential for us to grow out of the USA,” he explains.
“ WE ENABLE CORPORATIONS AND COMMUNITIES TO QUICKLY AND CONTEXTUALLY REACH ANYONE ON ANY DEVICE, ANYWHERE AT ANY TIME” JAVIER COLADO SVP International Sales, Everbridge
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In a nutshell, critical event management involves helping organisations deal with events as they happen, from active shooter incidents to internet outages. “Businesses today typically manage critical events in silos that use disparate data sources and unintegrated tools, making it difficult to achieve a common operational view of threats and of the status of response,” Colado explains. “A Critical Event Management (CEM) platform like ours helps unify this process by offering a combination of real-time monitoring, situational awareness and integrated
response and collaboration solutions from a single, enterprise-wide view.” This platform helps businesses to not only keep employees safe, but also monitor potential threats so they can grow proactively across less familiar locations such as emerging markets. Everbridge was founded in the wake of 9/11. It became clear that a tech-based solution was needed to enable communication during critical incidents. “We saw government agencies struggle to communicate with citizens and businesses,” says Colado. “The technology wasn’t what it was today, but the event demonstrated that emergency responders needed a technology platform to help them protect the public during a major emergency.” Everbridge wanted to move away from the existing method of emergency response which largely consisted of a one-way ‘blast’ message. Instead, the Everbridge platform allows tailored communication specific to a situation for the specific recipient, through any means, to any location. “We also incorporate business rules, workflows and logic to enable contextual and effective communications and allow users to verify and confirm delivery 41
TECHNOLOGY and receipt,” Colado adds. Since 2002 when Everbridge was founded, it has been necessary to adapt this offering to not only help government organisations get crucial messages out there, but also “global businesses, large healthcare organisations, leading universities, transportation hubs, IT operations teams and much more”. This has led to the service expanding to both operational and emergency-oriented applications. In short, there are many less dramatic incidents that can also pose threats to a business’
operations and profits, and it became a priority to deal with these as well. Coldao adds: “Beyond our core mass notification services, we have developed an industry-leading set of applications to improve organisational responses for all these diverse types of events to help keep people safe and businesses running faster.” Such issues range from IT outages, power outages, facility issues and scheduling challenges to supply-chain interruptions. In 2017, Everbridge’s platform dealt with over 2bn messages across 200 countries and territories.
“ WHERE TRADITIONAL EMERGENCY NOTIFICATION AND PHYSICAL SECURITY SOLUTIONS FOCUS ON AN INDIVIDUAL’S STATIC HOME OR WORK ADDRESS, SAFETY CONNECTION UTILISES MULTIPLE METHODS TO DYNAMICALLY LOCATE, NOTIFY AND INSTRUCT INDIVIDUALS” JAVIER COLADO SVP International Sales, Everbridge
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As well as helping organisations send secure messages to their staff at work or home, there is a lot more to the service. “We also enable multimodal delivery to dynamic – actual and predicted – locations,” says Coldao. “This is particularly critical when reaching mobile, travelling and remote workers. Overall, we enable corporations and communities to quickly and contextually reach anyone on any device, anywhere at any time. “Our CEM platform also helps organisations develop a common operating picture of their risk events,
with the ability to assess threats impacting assets or systems, locate responders, resolvers and stakeholders, automate incident response workflows and analyse all results to improve future response efforts.” Applications such as Safety Connection, IT Alerting and Visual Command Centre all serve to keep employees safe during incidents as well as improving efficiency and maintaining, where possible, ‘business as usual’. For example, last year Everbridge worked with London-based financial
The Everbridge Critical Event Management (CEM) suite demo
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TECHNOLOGY services giant, Willis Towers Watson, which manages over 140,000 staff in 140 countries. “They used the Everbridge platform while monitoring the approach of Hurricane Irma toward America in 2017.” This software helped the company decide to close 12 offices in Florida and inform 700 workers of the emergency decision. Coldao adds: “The company was then able to verify the safety of all colleagues as the storm hit, and advised when they could return to the office. Various messages were also sent to colleagues due to be travelling in the region.” The security and safety market has of course developed due to technology transformation. “The historic market for corporate security and safety solutions has been focused on establishing perimeters (e.g. locks, alarms and guards) to keep threats to employees outside of the physical premises,” says Colado. “However, it’s been necessary to shift away from this given the nature of today’s increasingly mobile workforce.” Everbridge recently conducted a survey of the key safety and security issues facing businesses today. It found that organisations were largely concerned by the risk of workplace 44
June 2018
violence. Only 79% felt they were even somewhat prepared for an active shooter event, and businesses stated that the biggest challenge faced was communicating with people in an impacted building. 37% of businesses said they maintained an accurate record of where employees are expected to be during working hours, and only 25% dynamically locate employees when a threat occurs in order to tailor their alerts. Therefore, in emergencies like shooting situations, terror attacks and natural disasters, it’s clear that a CEM platform like Everbridge’s could provide a much-needed solution in an oft-overlooked area. Indeed, with the labour force becoming increasingly made up of mobile – and indeed temporary or freelance – workers, corporations are finding it even harder to deal with threats, from keeping up-to-date with exact locations to checking in on people’s personal safety. Everbridge’s software not only helps companies during these events but can also help them find out where it is safe for their staff to operate when contemplating expansion. Everbridge Safety Connection focusses on
79%
keeping mobile staff informed. “Where traditional emergency notification and physical security solutions focus on an individual’s static home or work address, Safety Connection utilises multiple methods to dynamically locate, notify and instruct individuals,” Colado explains. “When
THE NUMBER OF BUSINESSES THAT FELT THEY WERE EVEN SOMEWHAT PREPARED FOR A CRITICAL EVENT
deployed, security professionals can aggregate near real-time location data from multiple sources, including building access control systems and travel management systems to send notifications to individuals and employees who might be in dangerous situations.” 45
TECHNOLOGY
“ OUR IPO WAS A SIGNIFICANT MOMENT WITHIN THE COMPANY’S HISTORY AS IT NOT ONLY DEMONSTRATED THE EMERGENCE OF EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS AS A MAJOR MARKET BUT ALSO OUR LEADERSHIP POSITION WITHIN IT” JAVIER COLADO SVP International Sales,
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So far, Everbridge’s offering has garnered interest from well-known clients such as airports, investment banks and the UK’s NHS (in fact, around one third of FTSE 100 companies use Everbridge) as well as faith from investors. In 2016, the company made its debut on the stock exchange and since then its stock price has increased by over 200%. Everbridge’s $100mn revenue in 2017 marked 36% year-on-year growth. “Our IPO was a significant moment within the company’s history,” says Colado, “as it not only demonstrated the emergence of emergency communications as a major market but also our leadership position within it.” Everbridge is set to continue on this path of rapid growth with its recent acquisition of United Messaging Systems, a leading European provider of critical communications. Will this be a step toward dominating the European market? “Given the importance of mobile delivery internationally, UMS’ unique ability to message the mobile phones of anyone connected to a carrier’s cell towers significantly enhances Everbridge’s ability to protect people worldwide,” says Colado, adding that UMS has
over 1,000 customers in Northern Europe and reaches over 500mn people with public notifications, using its Population Alerting System (PAS) to provide two-way SMS broadcasting. “Together we will provide the broadest delivery capability for critical communications worldwide… UMS accelerates our international growth and creates the most comprehensive CEM platform for business, state and local government, and now entire countries. UMS provides Everbridge with a passionate and customerfocused team of experts, differentiated technology, and a shared mission to keep people safe and businesses running during a critical event.” Overall, this European expansion will only add to Everbridge’s capability to deal with any event the world throws at it, and to help its clients do the same. While expanding out of the US and into Europe and the wider world will come with its challenges, such as GDPR compliance and generally making sure customers’ data is looked after and only used when truly necessary, it is also an opportunity to utilise the latest technology to keep people safe and keep the business world running like clockwork. 47
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SONY ELECTRONICS and the rise of women in STEM
Business Chief speaks to the tech giant’s Head of Corporate Communications Cheryl Goodman on her career in technology and how other ambitious females can rise in the industry Wr i t t e n by TO M WA D LOW 51
PEOPLE
T
he world of technology is still largely dominated by men. Almost all statistics (and there are many) point towards low female participation in STEM industries, from educational uptake all the way through to representation at boardroom level. Take UNESCO Institute for Statistic’s 2017 Women in Science factsheet – globally, it says just 28.8% of the scientific research and development workforce are female, although figures are higher in Central Asia (47.2%), Latin America (44.7%) and Central and Eastern Europe (39.6%). Further, United Nations research reveals that women who start out
in business roles in tech-intensive industries leave for other industries at high rates – 53% of women compared to 31% of men. This in turn leads to an extremely low presence in the boardroom, with IT industries struggling to hit 15% in terms of female representation at the highest leadership levels. A bleak picture perhaps, but many of the world’s top technology companies are actively seeking to address the divide and drive women in STEM numbers significantly north. One such industry heavyweight is Sony. In 2016, the percentage of management positions held by
Sony played an active role in San Diego Women’s Week, held in March
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Sony headquarters becomes the hub for best practices and methods for women to live their fullest mission, wherever they are, whether that’s in Sony Electronics or down the street in a competitor’s company” CHERYL GOODMAN Head of Corporate Communications for Sony Electronics
women across the tech firm’s global operations stood at 24%, almost double the proportion seen in the 2011 financial year (12.7%). In the US, this figure rises to nearer 36%. Cheryl Goodman, Head of Corporate Communications for Sony Electronics, is among this 36%. Stationed at the company’s base in San Diego, she is tasked with the formidable challenge of driving a greater understanding of key developments in an everchanging world of innovation. “Is it a headache? Yes,” she tells Business Chief. “I think there are a lot 53
of nuances. When you walk into that television aisle I’m sure you look at the TVs and you see new HD, 4K, and all these acronyms and you probably think to yourself, ‘why do I care?’ “So, we have to drive that ‘why you care’, and we have to drive understanding. I figure if I can explain to my mom what all these acronyms mean, and why she should care, then we’re at a good spot. So, we try to drive understanding down to the very base level. It all equals quality.”
28.8%
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Goodman is certainly wellqualified and prepared to negotiate the communications conundrum of such rapid advances in technology. Having majored in political science and television media at San Diego State University, she has worked through the rise of web and increase in the number of ways we consume media. Starting out at San Diego’s KGTV News, she moved to MP3.com and Lindows before a long stint in PR and marketing at Qualcomm. It was
36%
of the management positions held by women at Sony (USA)
PEOPLE here that Goodman ramped up her involvement in championing the wider ‘women in STEM’ agenda, chiefly through membership and local leadership of Athena, a professional development organisation helping women develop careers in STEM industries. Goodman served as Executive Director for the San Diego branch between January 2016 and August 2017, during which time she doubled the number of technology and life science partnerships and helped break numerous fundraising records. “Then I moved to Sony,” she says, “and nine months later, two grey hairs
later, I can tell you it is a phenomenal place. It had to be if I was to consider leaving my mission at Athena.” A big part her decision was the approach to diversity of Sony Electronics President and COO Mike Fasulo. “My boss believes it is tried, true, and proven that diversity is a positive impact for the bottom line,” Goodman adds. “I had just not seen that before. For him it is a business imperative, and that’s why I’m here today to illustrate and support that.” These beliefs are backed up by action. For three consecutive years Sony Electronics has been named among the best places to work in the
Sony is committed to the nationwide Women Unlimited Mentoring Programme
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PEOPLE Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index, scoring a maximum 100 each time. “It’s a big acknowledgement,” Goodman says. “This is a very wellrespected organisation, and in the past 11 years we have had at least a very high 90s ranking. So, while it is the trend for many technology companies to pull together some type of gender agenda to check the box, Sony Electronics has been walking the walk and talking the talk for over a decade. “Our president even wears the pin on his lapel every single day, and he brings it up at every meeting. It’s part of his DNA and it trickles down to the leadership and business as a whole.” This is no better demonstrated than by Sony’s commitment to the nationwide Women Unlimited Mentoring Program. Designed to build talent management strategies through mentorship, Sony is supporting the participation of more than 70 women from its San Diego base. Goodman is joined by Julie Wenzel, Senior Manager of Community Relations, who is taking part in a lead programme aimed at middle management and above. She describes her experience 56
June 2018
While it is the trend for many technology companies to pull together some type of gender agenda to check the box, Sony Electronics has been walking the walk and talking the talk for over a decade” CHERYL GOODMAN Head of Corporate Communications for Sony Electronics
to date: “It really provides a great opportunity to not only experience a couple of different mentors from outside organisations at an executive level, but an opportunity to look at your career path, identify areas where you’d like to grow and put together a strategy for getting there. “It’s been a very positive experience and is a great chance to meet women from various industries and understand challenges and opportunities
regardless of where you work.” Further still, Sony has become something of a hub in San Diego and Southern California, be it through participation with Athena, sponsoring the YWCA TWIN Awards or holding events for the North County Chamber of Commerce Women’s Week. For the latter, Naomi Tutu, daughter of cleric and human rights activist Desmond Tutu, recently addressed an audience at Sony Electronics. “Sony headquarters becomes the hub for best practices and
methods for women to live their fullest mission, wherever they are, whether that’s in Sony Electronics or down the street in a competitor’s company,” Goodman explains. “We like to hold the conversation, we like to curate the conversation.” Goodman is also keen to stress how Sony’s own products can be moulded by and contribute to that conversation. She cites Koov, an allin-one coding, robotics and design kit that combines digital coding with physical building to teach the next 57
PEOPLE generation of problem solvers and innovators. Launched in February, it is targeted at children as young as eight years old. “We don’t target necessarily girls or boys,” Goodman adds. “We are targeting coding as a skill, something the nation needs.” Indeed, 4.4mn computer and IT jobs will exist in the USA alone by 2024, according to the country’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics. An added complication, revealed by a World Economic Forum report, is that 65% of children entering primary school today will work in jobs that do not yet exist. However, while uncertainty
remains as to the future makeup of the workforce, Goodman is full of advice for women seeking to develop careers in STEM today. “Number one is that your contribution level is more important than the colour of your skin or your gender,” she insists. “Bottom line is the value that you add to the organisation. When we hire we are looking for people to solve the problem with the skills that they have, regardless of what they look like or what gender they are. So, it is about quality, it is about skill, and it is about contribution. “If you experience any pushback in
KOOV: The coding and robotics kit for the next generation of young innovators
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We’ve got a long way to go, but I’ll say, again, the key theme is that this is an industry issue. This is a business issue. Gender equality impacts the bottom line. It impacts our return on investment, and we will continue to support this moving forward as long as I can imagine” CHERYL GOODMAN Head of Corporate Communications for Sony Electronics
your career, I would challenge you to find mentors. Find successful women in your realm to partner with and help navigate your path. I would also recommend joining an organisation, whether it’s an organisation for your industry at large, or a women’s organisation in your local chapter.” Goodman’s final piece of advice is to find a mentor in a top leadership position, which in many cases, she says, will be male. “Find someone in leadership that you trust to ask what the key issues for the organisation at large are, and make sure that your contributions are in line with these needs.” And what of Sony Electronics? How can it improve on three years of perfect scoring from the Human Rights Campaign Foundation’s Corporate Equality Index? “We’ve got a long way to go,” Goodman says, “but I’ll say, again, the key theme is that this is an industry issue. This is a business issue. Gender equality impacts the bottom line. It impacts our return on investment, and we will continue to support this moving forward as long as I can imagine. “Is it complete? Is our work done? No.” 59
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HOW MORE CAN BE DONE TO MAKE THE MOST OF VALUE CHAINS Business Chief looks at how some of the traditional theories about value chains align with modern business realities Written by STUART HODGE
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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y
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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y THE CONCEPT OF a value chain was first introduced to the public consciousness by American business strategist and economic theorist Michael Porter more than 30 years ago in his best-selling book Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. Porter was talking about these ideas as early as the late 1970s, so the concept has existed for a long time, but the way that companies create and exploit maximum value has changed immeasurably in the intervening
three or four decades. This is largely given the huge societal changes and the exponential acceleration and increased prevalence of technology in our daily lives. Veteran Harvard academic Porter showed he hasn’t missed a beat either when he appeared at the World Business Forum in New York City last year. Porter spoke about how smarter, connected products are changing the market landscape by increasing ability to monitor, control and optimise systems. This still ties in with his original
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“ You must understand your customers or consumers and what they see as value. It’s then about making sure that each of the different supply points, or nodes of our supply chain, understand which part of that value they need to deliver” LOYD SNOWDEN L Business Transformation Specialist, Oliver Wight EAME
value chain concept, which is comprised of both primary and supporting business activities and how they can affect the margin. Generally speaking, the ideas and ideals of the generic value chain model still hold true, but as well as the world around us, what has also changed is the way that companies do business and the way that different suppliers engage with one another. There is less of an emphasis now on interpersonal relationships and it’s more about leveraging technology to extract maximum value at the various points in the supply chain. Lloyd Snowden is a business transformation specialist for UK-based consultancy Oliver Wight EAME, and he feels that value chains are becoming even more important to businesses as they become more savvy and aware. “You must understand your customers or consumers and what they see as value. It’s then about making sure that each of the different supply points, or nodes of our supply chain, understand which part of that value they need to deliver,” explains Snowden. “You then take, with this understanding of the value to be delivered, and push it right the way back through your supply chain, so that each node of the supply chain then delivers that same value back to the customer. “The value chain is something that is starting to grow a lot more, because I think more and more companies today are also embracing strategic planning. Those kind of integrated, strategic plans didn’t exist in the same way 10 years ago. Because 65
S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y people are starting to understand those strategic directions and when possible the strategies of their customers, the ability to understand the anticipated value, I believe, has grown. Therefore, there’s a greater interest in people and companies talking about the value chain today than there has been in the past.” So, businesses are more aware of where value can be extracted and how supply chains can be turned into value chains, but how is it done? Obviously, the plethora of technological aids available to companies makes it easier to pinpoint where value can be created or extracted, but given that businesses in the same supply chain are sometimes competing for the same customer base, how can you engender the necessary level of trust for a value chain to function as it should? According to Snowden, it comes back to the ideals of being transparent and exhibiting best business practice wherever possible and, once again, knowing your customers. “Excellent delivery in a mature business is enabled through transparency,” Snowden says. “Ensuring visibility of performance and improvement 66
June 2018
activity, along with a good, accurate, clear and relevant communication. One set of numbers, accurate data, sharing information and slinging strategy between supply points, or nodes, that would possibly, traditionally, be at arms-length from each other. What you need to try and to do is get this to be a much more open relationship, to enable that value to be understood and delivered. “I guess it all depends where you sit in the supply chain, to some extent. But say we’re a company in the middle of the supply chain, with the customers and the consumers at one end and our suppliers at the other – we’re the manufacturing warehouse, or logistics element. I would need a clear understanding of who my key customers are, their key requirements, and what they value from those requirements. “You need to have some real, open, collaborative dialogue with them. Not just vendor, managed inventory level of collaboration, but where we might be sharing strategies, where we have real trust between our organisations. Could I align my strategies of business to that customer direction? That would be delivering better value.
“ W hen companies are much better at performing, they change their focus from the management of the short term and firefighting to ‘eyes up and look out’, so they’re able to better understand the marketplace” LOYD SNOWDEN L Business Transformation Specialist, Oliver Wight EAME
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“If I then look back through the supply chain to the key suppliers that I have, can I get the relationship between me and my key suppliers to the point where they want their strategy to align with mine? If we’ve got all of that kind of strategic alignment and those different thought processes going on, then the ability for people to deliver value is going to be much higher than if it was independent businesses with their own strategies trying to supply things for you.” Teamwork makes the dream work – or as legendary luxury hotelier and entrepreneur Horst H. Schulze once stated: “In life and business, relationships are important – but they are empty unless they are established and based upon trust.” When it comes to the creation of value chains, that has never been truer. It requires all parties to be honest and transparent and operate fairly and ethically, with the benefits of the customer at the forefront of their thinking. Obviously creating value impacts positively on margins and that can only be a good thing, but it requires the buy-in of all stakeholders. Snowden reckons it’s right for companies to be wary of trust potentially backfiring but he also says it’s an area where businesses often lack maturity. “If companies don’t actually understand the market place and they’re firefighting, then there’s no time for them to lift their head up and say, ‘what are we doing wrong? And what can we do to put it right? And how do we align that to what we’ve got in the marketplace?’ That is very often part of the problem. When companies are much better at performing, 68
June 2018
“ In life and business, relationships are important – but they are empty unless they are established and based upon trust” ORST H. SCHULZE H Luxury hotelier and entrepreneur
S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y they change their focus from the management of the short term and firefighting to ‘eyes up and look out’, so they’re able to better understand the marketplace. Why? Because they’re in control, have stopped firefighting and therefore can spend more time understanding their markets, customers, consumers and competition.” Snowden goes on to explain that this is phase one of business maturity on the Oliver Wight Maturity Model. Essentially what that means is having a managed environment. Phase two is a led
environment, where a company is moving more towards percentile perfection. Snowden estimates that around nine out of 10 businesses find themselves mired somewhere
between phase one and phase two, and estimates that more than half of those are still in phase one. If that’s the case, there is more to be done with regards to maximising the opportunities to create value and build a value chain. Whether increasing numbers can successfully achieve this remains to be seen. For a final thought, we’ll
go back to the original critical thinker, Porter. Speaking at an event at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, in the Netherlands a couple of years ago, he said: “Creating shared value means addressing societal needs and challenges through business itself, with a business model – and making a profit. In fact, some of the greatest opportunities for business are meeting the unmet needs of society.” Therein lies the challenge in the months and years to come. 69
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AS THE MOST POPULOUS CITY IN INDIA, MUMBAI IS WELL KNOWN AS A HUB FOR MULTINATIONAL BUSINESSES IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S LARGEST CONSUMER MARKETS Edited by OLIVIA MINNOCK
CITY FOCUS MUMBAI – THE FACTS Mumbai has an estimated population of about 12.5mn people, making it India's most populous city. Situated on the country's west coast, Mumbai has a deep natural harbour. Originally a collection of seven islands, Mumbai was named an alpha world city in 2008. It is also India's wealthiest city and home to the greatest number of billionaires and millionaires in India. A commercial and financial hub, Mumbai has an annual gross
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domestic product (GDP) of more than $400bn. This places Mumbai as number 17 of the top 20 cities in the world ranked by GDP. Mumbai is also responsible for more than 6% of the country's total GDP. As of 2017, Mumbai was home to 24 companies found on the Forbes 2000 list. A survey by Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) found that the city was the recipient of $1.7bn worth of real estate investments.
THE FOLLOWING CONGLOMERATES ARE BASED IN MUMBAI STATE BANK OF INDIA In addition to corporate and personal banking services, the State Bank of India also offers international banking, agricultural and rural banking and other services. https://sbi.co.in
TATA GROUP One of the largest conglomerates in India, the Tata Group works across industries including real estate, chemicals, automotive, steel, engineering services, healthcare and more. http://www.tata.com
LIFE INSURANCE CORPORATION OF INDIA Employing nearly 115,000 people and with total assets of $330bn, the Life Insurance Corporation of India is a conglomerate not only offering life insurance but also health insurance and mutual funds, as well as investment management. https://www.licindia.in
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CITY FOCUS DIVERSIFICATION: THE KEY TO MUMBAI'S SUCCESS
PICTURE: SJPAILKAR/GETTYIMAGES
While a large proportion of the city's workforce relies on the state and central government for its employment, there is also a large segment of those who are self-employed in both skilled and semi-skilled positions. The Mumbai Port is one of the most significant in the country. Spanning more than 150 square miles, the port is home to a wellestablished shipping industry as well as port services associated with it. http://mumbaiport.gov.in
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As part of its drive to diversify, Mumbai has become known as a hub for information technology companies. The Santacruz Electronic Export Processing Zone (SEEPZ) offers both business and tax incentives that are designed to spur rapid economic growth, attract technology and encourage foreign investment. Though it was originally created as an export processing zone, the SEEPZ has diversified into an area more focused on technology. Software and electronic hardware companies, as well as manufacturing companies and jewellery exporters, are located in the zone. More than 40% of India’s jewellery exports are based out of the SEEPZ. http://www.seepz.gov.in
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CITY FOCUS TECH TAKES OFF According to Deloitte’s Fast50 India, the following companies are ones to watch in the fast-growing tech sector:
MOBISY TECHNOLOGIES Mobisy Technologies was founded in 2006 and maintains an office in Mumbai. It focuses on supply chain automation and sales force solutions with its Bizom product. Mobisy Technologies was recognised by Deloitte as the third fastest-growing company in India. http://bizom.in/sfa/
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MARKETXPANDER SERVICES Providing marketing software designed for small and medium businesses under its Leadsquared banner, MarketXpander Services focuses on various industries including real estate, education and financial services. The company has offices in Mumbai, the United States and Gurgaon, and is headquartered in Bengaluru. https://www.leadsquared.com
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CITY FOCUS WHITE RIVERS DIGITAL Headquartered in Mumbai, White Rivers Digital was founded in 2012. Offering full-service digital and video marketing solutions to clients in eight countries, White Rivers Digital currently employs a team of more than 60 digital marketers. The company works with top Indian brands in the real estate, fashion retail, entertainment and food and beverage spaces. Deloitte recognised the firm as the 10th fastest-growing company in India. http://whiteriversmedia.com
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ZONE STARTUPS INDIA Zone Startups India is a startup accelerator with an office in Mumbai at the Bombay Stock Exchange Tower. Backed by the Ryerson Futures network in Toronto, Zone Startups India teams up with global partners to deliver innovative programs and unique experiences for startups. The company creates opportunities for promising startups that have disruptive and innovative ideas and technologies. In addition to the Bombay Stock Exchange, Zone Startups India has built partnerships with Viacom, Lodha, Axis Bank and BSE Institute. http://india.zonestartups.com
As the epicentre of India's growth and a direct link to the country's wealth of amenities, workforce and consumer base, coupled with its highly-strategic location as a major port city, Mumbai beckons new businesses.Â
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Top 10 high-growth financial services companies in Asia
TOP 10
The financial sector has always been a numbers game, and big numbers put these Asian companies in the lead when it comes to growth and income W r i t t e n b y TA M S I N O X F O R D
TOP 10
YAMADA SERVICER SYNTHETIC OFFICE NET PROTECTIONS Net Protections comes in at 570 on the FT1000, boasting revenue growth of 84% to a current figure of $81.44mn. The firm describes itself as a fintech company creating new standards in eCommerce. Net Protections created Japan’s first deferred payment settlement solution and is currently investing in new solutions in credit, payment and mobile payments. The Japanese company is focused primarily on post-pay mobile payments and has a wide variety of options available to the public.
https://corp.netprotections.com/
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Yamada Servicer Synthetic Office may not be as much of a mouthful in Japanese, but the company’s growth is definitely impressive in any language. This financial services firm has been in business since 1999, providing service solutions to financial institutions, investors and other organisations that require the management and collection of purchased loans and entrusted claims. The company showed an impressive 95% revenue growth over the past year and ranks highly in the listings of Asia’s high-growth companies. The company now boasts a revenue of $24.35mn, according to FT, and takes the 508th spot on the overall list.
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http://www.yamada-servicer.co.jp/
REALWORLD MERCURIA INVESTMENT Japan dominates the top 10 in financial services and fintech solutions in Asia. Mercuria Investment is a financial services organisation that focuses on investment opportunities across a wide range of industries and networks. The company looks to fields that show significant growth potential, both in Japan and abroad. Last year, Mercuria exhibited huge revenue growth of 95%, resulting in a figure of $23.1mn and placing the firm at 505 on the FT list.
Continuing Japan’s impressive lead in the financial services arena is Realworld, a company that empowers people to start their own businesses, enjoy a thriving microenterprise and earn money from anywhere. Realworld was founded in 2005 and is focused on using technology to change people’s lives. This year, the company enjoys the 382nd spot on the FT list, having seen a revenue increase of 123% to its current figure of $40.96mn.
http://realworld.co.jp/
http://www.mercuria.jp/
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TOP 10
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VENTURE SQUARE Venture Square specialises in startup media that introduces people, technology, products and services and helps them to take their initial startup steps. It plays in the financial services industry and connects startup investors and government agencies to brilliant young businesses. The South Korea-based company achieved 101st place on the FT list this year, having experienced a revenue increase of 462%. Venture Square’s current revenue stands at $2.94mn.
http://www.venturesquare.net/about-us
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SMARTOWNER SmartOwner was ranked one of the fastest growing fintech companies in both South Asia and Asia-Pacific as a whole, gaining 99th spot on the overall list. It is one of the largest marketplaces for investors in India, offering them opportunities that aren’t usually available anywhere else. It’s all about savvy investment into high-value opportunities and the significant growth streak is testament to its success. The Singaporebased business saw its revenue rise by a massive 465% last year, and the figure now stands at $5.55mn.
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'SOFT SPACE CREATED A MOBILE POS CARD READER THAT ALLOWS ANY MOBILE DEVICE TO ACCEPT ANY FORM OF PAYMENT'
SOFT SPACE
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CATAPULT VENTURES Catapult Ventures is another Singapore-based fintech company with a remarkable growth trajectory. Last year’s revenue increase of 667% resulted in an impressive figure of $2.4mn and earned Catapult 71st spot on the FT list. It started out as a mortgage comparison site but has evolved into helping customers maximise financial decisions by providing them with an engine that allows them to compare everything from mortgages to credit cards.
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Soft Space created a mobile point-of-sale (POS) card reader that allows any mobile device to accept any form of payment. The idea is, in every way, quite brilliant as it ensures secure transactions for all users across all forms of payment, mobile device and platform. The company is based in Malaysia and therefore can take advantage of the growing cashless payment market in Southeast Asia. Its impressive revenue of $6.73mn is a result of 718% year-on-year growth and earns the company 66th spot on the overall list.
http://www.softspace.com.my/
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JAPAN INVESTMENT ADVISOR Japan Investment Advisor is a financial services institution providing solutions to a broad client base including both financial and media-related businesses. Founded in 2006 and having been listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange in 2014, the company is a well-established institution which ranks highly both on the FT 1000 and on our list. JIA’s 48th spot on the FT1000 is a result of an impressive revenue of $54.19mn following an increase of 1,036%, year on year.
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https://www.jia-ltd.com/
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TOP 10
1
OCTA SOLUTIONS
The number one spot is taken by Octa Solutions, a fintech company that focuses on intelligent solutions to financial challenges using technology and digital genius. OCTA enjoyed a 1,340% increase in revenue year on year, to a current impressive figure of $1.81mn. The company has a variety of solutions on offer, invests into R&D extensively and pays attention to the latest trends in finance, investment and technology. Overall, the South Korean company takes 36th place on the FT list.
http://www.octasolution.co.kr/
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DRIVING DIRECT SELLING WITH TECHNOLOGY How QNET empowers entrepreneurs Written by Catherine Sturman Produced by James Pepper
QNET
IN ITS 20TH ANNIVERSARY YEAR, ASIAN INDUSTRY CHAMPION QNET IS USING TECHNOLOGY TO HELP GROW ITS GLOBAL DIRECT SELLING BUSINESS
D
irect selling remains big business across the world, amassing $183bn in revenue in 2016. The industry is growing rapidly in Asia and Middle East, with QNET playing a prominent role in the region. With sales increasing by up to 20% year on year, unlike its competitors, the e-commerce based direct sales company has adopted a 100% digital presence for two decades as part of its aim to further promote accessibility to customers and distributors (known as Independent Representatives at QNET). “As part of our three-year roadmap, we have identified key regions for growth which include countries in Africa, Middle East, and the Russia-CIS region. We also want to engage with millennials,
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as this demographic houses an entrepreneurship mindset,” explains Chief Information Officer, Ivan Woo. “We also want to significantly increase the female customer and distributor base. In certain countries, we’re aiming for a 30% rise. “Lastly, we also want to look further into consumer behaviours to see what we can do to become an integral part of our customers’ day-to-day lives.” The implementation of personalised tools has provided increased insights into the consumer experience within direct selling. However, Woo explains that QNET has differentiated themselves from the competition in a number of ways,
TECHNOLOGY
IVAN WOO
Chief Information Officer
Ivan Woo is the Chief Information Officer at QNET, a leading Asian direct selling company, headquartered in Hong Kong. Ivan has more than 15 years of progressive experience in Direct Selling & e-commerce infrastructure and emerging technologies. He understands that technology is not a stand-alone component but is the very core of revenue generation for e-commerce. As CIO at QNET, which has one of the fastest growing online business communities with millions of customers and independent distributors worldwide, Ivan is responsible for managing end-toend solutions for the e-commerce operations — from payment gateways to mobile apps for business. His expertise lies in e-commerce Infrastructure (Cloud & Data Centre Management, Payment Gateways, API Integration), Strategic, Tactical, and Operational IT Management as well as Security Management (Cyber Attack Planning & Protection).
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Benefits of Microsoft AI platform: • The Microsoft AI platform offers finished AI services for rapid development, and provides data science tools to innovate and operationalize AI products and services at scale • Rapidly compose intelligent applications with extensive APIs, customized to your enterprise’s security, compliance, availability, and SLA requirements • Build immersive applications easily with intelligent features – such as emotion and sentiment detection, vision and speech recognition, language understanding, knowledge, and search – into your app, across devices such as iOS, Android, and Windows • Leverage extensive deep learning frameworks of your choice - including Cognitive Toolkit, Caffe2, TensorFlow, Chainer, MxNet, Torch, Scikit-learn, and more • Explore the extensive choice of IDE and data science tools – Azure ML Studio, Visual Studio, Azure ML Workbench, Jupyter Notebooks, PyCharm, or Juno • Deploy your solutions on infrastructure that can virtually scale infinitely – all with enterprise-grade security, compliance, availability, manageability including dev-ops capabilities such as Continuous Integration/ Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) support for AI.
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QNET
TREVOR KUNA Chief Executive Officer
Trevor Kuna is the CEO of QNET, a prominent Asian direct selling company with a global footprint. Originally from Canada, Trevor joined QNET in 2008 bringing extensive experience in marketing and brand management. He has risen through the ranks in the last decade through a series of progressive roles in marketing, business development and operations. In his last role as the Chief Marketing Officer of QNET, Trevor led the transformation of QNET’s legacy e-commerce platform to an award-winning customer experienced focused portal that leverages the full power of context marketing, driving loyalty and delivering a tremendous digital experience. Trevor’s expertise lies in Marketing Management, Strategic Business Operations, E-commerce, and Business Development.
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with technology remaining a key driver. “At QNET, we have adopted the same IT infrastructure and processes worldwide to provide our customers with a seamless and familiar experience wherever in the world they are growing their business. We have millions of people in our database in more than 100 countries, and they speak different languages, come from different cultures and different levels of exposure to technology. “We wanted one unified platform serving the entire world. If you ask the other CIOs in the industry they may say you are dreaming, but this is what we are doing.
“As part of our three-year roadmap, we want to engage with millennials, as this demographic houses an entrepreneurship mindset” Ivan Woo, CIO
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We are constantly looking for new technologies to improve our customer experience,” he says. Empowering entrepreneurs Technology has become a vital tool for QNET to engage with distributors and customers. With up to 40 different nationalities under its umbrella, it has built an exceptionally diverse and global employee base. QNET’s social media team routinely engages with customers in up to seven different languages through platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and even Instagram. “The way we communicate and engage with our distributors is constantly evolving. We are always experimenting with different types of messaging platforms and language-based demographics, age, gender etc.,” reflects Trevor Kuna, CEO of QNET. “Direct selling is not a unique industry and has been around for a very long time. However, I would say that one of the things that makes QNET different is the fact that we
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“We want one unified platform serving the entire world. If you ask the other CIOs in the industry they may say you are dreaming, but this is what we are doing” Ivan Woo, CIO
TECHNOLOGY
Video: The QNET Advantage
‘DIRECT SELLING IS GROWING RAPIDLY IN ASIA, MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA’
have a much stronger engagement with our network of distributors and customers than perhaps any other direct selling company anywhere else. “The founders of QNET used to be distributors, so they understand what it takes to really succeed in the field. They made it a point that if they were ever going to start a company, they would always make it a customer-first company and support the growth of the business and the distributors on the ground,” he says. Woo adds: “Our distributors have a growth path that enables them to increase their income potential over time. We offer different types of ranks and they have to qualify through each rank starting at Bronze, Silver and Gold, all the way up to Blue Diamond, the highest possible rank, with the largest income potential. “In the past, the distributors had to keep track of their own performance and figure out how to graduate to the next level. This year we have rolled out a mobile app that seamlessly integrates all business features into a single app to give our distributors
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‘WITH UP TO 40 DIFFERENT NATIONALITIES, QNET HAS BUILT AN EXCEPTIONALLY DIVERSE AND GLOBAL EMPLOYEE BASE’
the ease and convenience of tracking their performance. The app also helps them see what actions they need to take to qualify for the next rank. Since we are a global network, we have also added custom features for different countries. For example, we will soon launch an eKYC feature for distributors in India for digital authentication through the app. “With Microsoft AI and machine learning we are in the midst of transformation to enhance the
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TECHNOLOGY
technology capability to proactively tell our IRs the kind of things they can do in order to move to the next rank and improve commission performance,” he continues. “I believe this will take us to the next milestone, as we have a very loyal customer base, a very good product portfolio and a fantastic business opportunity.” Cloud integration Whilst the company originally built its front and back-end systems in-house, QNET has sought to overhaul its IT infrastructure with its people in mind. Partnering with Microsoft has enabled the business to develop its customer-focused eStore, as well as utilise Office 365 and Dynamics 365 to enhance its customer relationship management (CRM) capabilities. “Microsoft is changing itself to becoming more people-focused. They are helping us to move to much bigger cloud migration adoption,” explains Woo. “We decided to migrate our HR system to a Microsoft Dynamics 365
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“The founders of QNET used to be distributors, so they understand what it takes to really succeed in the field� Trevor Kuna, CEO
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for Talent. As a very diverse and international company, we needed a fully cloud-based solution to manage our 1000-plus employees in over 25 countries. Dynamics 365 for Talent has been very helpful in enabling our HR Transformation by helping us improve many of our core HR processes to better employee management. We see Microsoft as a key technology partner and are very happy to continue our more than a decade old partnership,” notes Woo. “For cloud migration, it’s no longer a choice; it’s how and what kind of things you can leverage and adopt. The challenge is to find the right formula to maximise your investment, leveraging public cloud computing power to achieve what you cannot achieve in one premise. It can be cost-saving, it can be speed to market, but I think the challenges for a CIO is to find the right formula that meets the needs of the company.” “Moving forward, we hope to accelerate digital transformation by embracing more AI based
‘QNET INSPIRES THOSE WHO WISH FOR WORK TO FIT AROUND THEIR LIFESTYLES AND NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND’ technologies. We are looking to explore the adoption of AI services and tools available on Azure in our operation, with the aim to enhance efficiency,” he adds. The user experience By partnering with Dynatrace, QNET has also eliminated any potential delays in service. Being a 100% digital business, the company believes in creating the best possible user experience for its customers, Dynatrace has been a key partner at QNET for the past five years and ensures that the company provides superior online
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“I don’t think there are any of the direct selling companies out there that can say that they are part of a group that has a university as it’s sister company” Trevor Kuna, CEO
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experience to customers at all times. “The digital experience insights provided by Dynatrace has helped us monitor our Mobile App & site performance in terms of speed and user experience. If users are unhappy, they are able to track the root cause and report back to our team,” explains Woo. “The proactive monitoring of our website and services also helped prevent any potential downtime which might have caused significant financial impact to our business.” This year, QNET is now focusing on expanding its coverage due to Dynatrace’s increased focus on AI.
TECHNOLOGY
“Looking the latest Dynatrace’s AI-powered, full stack, and automated monitoring capabilities, we are also considering expanding our investment with them. We see many opportunities leveraging on Dynatrace’s ability to support all types of cloud environments with easy, automatic deployment. This will allow us to scale faster and operate simpler as we embark on our cloud transformation,” continues Woo. “By late 2018, we will gain the ability to leverage the AI of Dynatrace to have auto-recovery. When issues happen in a specific region, we can
do sort of adjustment automatically to enable a positive user experience.” Providing opportunities Long-term, QNET will work to continue inspiring those who wish for work to fit around their lifestyles and not the other way around. The company will also seek to invest in areas which will benefit local communities. Investing in a full-fledged university in Malaysia, for example, has further given QNET an edge over competitors. “I don’t think there are any direct selling companies out there that can say that they are part
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‘QNET HAS INVESTED IN A FULLYFLEDGED UNIVERSITY IN MALAYSIA’
Video: Live Absolutely With QNET Products
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of a group that has a university as their sister company. We have a financial services company, as well as hotels and resorts in different parts of the world that help us support our holiday product line from QNET,” reflects Kuna. “Whilst technology helps us fuel the business through our e-commerce platform, it allows us to provide cross-border opportunities to people from all over the world and grow a network without encumbrances brought about by geographical lines,” he adds. “Many people become entrepreneurs thanks to direct selling. It’s not just about financial gain, but about other skills which you learn along the way: leadership, goal setting, financial planning etc. It’s also about how to talk to people, how to deal with people, how to overcome challenges, how to manage rejection. All of these things are an integral part of all of the training programmes that we provide to our distributors.” “I cannot think of any other company that encourages this kind of personal development and provides the type of opportunity that QNET does,” Woo concludes. “If you want a challenge and you want to do something that is impactful, direct selling is definitely an industry which people should embrace. I still find ways to enjoy this industry after 15 years in the business.”
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WHERE STRONG LEADERSHIP IS KEY TO LOGISTICS SUCCESS Linfox may have become a global leader in logistics, but it hasn’t forgotten its roots as a family business Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Charlotte Clarke
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n 1956 Lindsay Fox founded Linfox with just one truck in Melbourne, Australia. Fast forward to today and the company is regarded as a logistics giant, standing as the largest privately-owned logistics company in the Asia Pacific. Still owned by the iconic Australian family, Linfox’s footprint now stretches across the Asia-Pacific, with more than half of its growing team situated in Asia. Even with this acclaim, however, Linfox hasn’t forgotten its roots and remains now, more than ever, a company built on family values and compelling leadership. Andrew Johnstone, Operations Director at Linfox Thailand, says that, even as the company’s presence expands, Linfox’s foundation is one that will remain focused on those same meaningful family values that were instilled in the company from the beginning. “Whilst working at both Linfox Australia and Linfox Thailand, I’ve really seen the depth and breadth of how Linfox does business,” observes Johnstone. “The value that we have
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in our people and our leadership has allowed us to channel our vision from Australia through to Asia. “There are cultural differences, absolutely, but the fundamentals of doing business from a leadership perspective are very much the same,” he continues. “It’s about investing in great leaders, investing in partnerships, and bringing our vision to life to connect with our customers. “Fundamentally, I think one of our key differentiators is that we are a large business that operates with family values. We care about our people and customers like they’re our own family. Lindsay’s original vision of taking care of our people, our customers and building relationships, from back in 1956, still carries on in the business today and it’s stronger now than ever before. For me, that’s the key to the company’s success.” First joining Linfox in 2008, Johnstone understands the importance of strong leadership firsthand. Responsible for managing large-scale operations, warehouse management, supplier relations and more, he says that Linfox
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“ Lindsay’s original vision of taking care of our people, our customers and building relationships, from back in 1956, still carries on in the business today and it’s stronger now than ever before” Andrew Johnstone Operations Director at Linfox Thailand
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2,500 Number of staff on Andrew Johnstone’s team at LINFOX
recognised early on that it needs great leaders to connect and inspire its large, diverse workforce. “As a non-Thai speaking leader in this country, I utilise all my skills and past knowledge to navigate cultural differences,” he explains. “When it comes to leadership it comes back to the fundamentals of focusing on the company’s vision and managing change through effective communication. “Pace of change is much quicker here in Asia and Thailand particularly,” he adds. “Although there may be differences, there are also lots of similarities – I think it’s important to understand that wherever you go people are universal and the way we need to lead comes back to people first.” For great leaders to succeed they also need a clear strategic plan to follow and it seems that Linfox has
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LINFOX
developed a sure-fire vision for growth. Clear to grow its footprint, the firm has continued to make significant capital investments throughout Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. In doing so, it seems the logistics giant has a meticulous plan for expansion and sustainable growth. “This investment demonstrates to both the country (Thailand) and our customers that we’re serious about doing business here, not just in the next two or three years, but long into the future,” Johnstone explains. “Part of our long-term strategy for growth also involves
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attracting new business and investing across the Asia Pacific region.” With compelling leadership at the helm of the company, this is not only transforming the firm internally, but also having a tangible impact on the customer experience. “From my perspective, when I talk about the family values, it’s about people, it’s about relationships,” notes Johnstone. “People are our number one asset. If we can invest in our team and give them the opportunity to grow and develop, we believe that they’ll be thoroughly engaged and care for our customers’
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“ It’s about investing in great leaders, investing in partnerships, and bringing our vision to life to connect with our customers” Andrew Johnstone Operations Director at Linfox Thailand
needs on an authentic and genuine level. “The way you engage employees is by having great leaders,” he continues. “Every time we talk to an employee – a driver, a cleaner, a shift manager – it’s an opportunity to engage with them in a genuine, authentic way.” Personally responsible for a team of around 2,500 people, Johnstone says that the firm consistently invests in the upskilling and training of the team to create a workforce that is adaptable, agile and skilled. “Today, we’re investing in developing our leaders’ cross-functional capabilities so that they have transferable skills and can move from one role to another,” he explains. “This is because we don’t want to employ someone to just fill a vacant position, we are always thinking two or three positions ahead so that the employee has the opportunity to grow and develop. We want to build capability within our brand and become an employer of choice. “I believe we should hire for attitude and train for skill because bringing in the right people with the right attitude, the right mindset, and the right behaviour is key to success. My approach involves taking managers and developing them into leaders.” By creating a highly-skilled, driven workforce, this is also influencing the way that Linfox approaches key challenges such as health and safety. Safety is a top priority at Linfox and, as such, the logistics firm has created a dedicated Vision ZERO safety programme whereby it aims to achieve zero
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24,000 Linfox is Asia Pacific’s largest privately-owned logistics company with operations employing more than 24,000 people spanning 12 countries
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fatalities, injuries, motor vehicle incidents, net environmental emissions and also pledges zero tolerance of unsafe behaviour and practices. Since launching the programme, Linfox has reduced its Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LTIFR) by more than 90%. In Thailand, Johnstone says that whilst instilling a culture of safety and compliance has been a challenge at times, it was an important task because when it comes to safety, one injury is one too many. “Thailand frequently tops the rankings as the country with the
highest amounts of traffic incident rate in the world. Therefore, for us to see a year-on-year reduction in the number of incidents has been something that I’m extremely proud of,” Johnstone says. “My hope is that all of our people will do the right thing when no one’s watching,” he adds. “I want to ingrain the values and the principles of the organisation in our team so they truly understand the responsibility that they have to act safely, not only for Linfox but for themselves and their families. “In Asia, we have programmes
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LINFOX
to consistently improve the culture of safety and compliance as we don’t want our team to make decisions at any cost or put themselves in harm’s way to get a job done, so we’re educating our people – we have an extremely robust fatigue management policy, and we monitor our vehicles and driver hours. On top of this, we’re also partnering with our customers and the local authorities to ensure that we’ve got the best safety practices in place.” As well as promoting the highest safety practices, Linfox is also tapping into some of the industry’s most cutting-edge technologies to protect its people and support its customer relationships. By using state-of-the-art innovations such as driver monitoring, facial recognition, and fleet care, Linfox is making sure that its team operate in a safe and responsible manner. “We monitor our vehicles to ensure safety and we proudly partner with Michelin in Thailand. The fleet care programmes they offer are fully digitized and their monthly tyre inspections ensure our team are safe and our vehicles efficient at all times. “We also have a 24/7 monitoring capability which checks our drivers’ safety, performance, and efficiency,” explains Johnstone. “With this, we’ve been able to reduce incidents involving distractions and fatigue which are some of the biggest causes of road incidents in Asia. This investment has been made because we genuinely care about our people. For me, if we save one life it’s been successful.”
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“ Fundamentally, I think one of our key differentiators is that we are a large business that operates with family values� Andrew Johnstone Operations Director at Linfox Thailand
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1956 The year that LINFOX was founded
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Keen to tackle the pressing issue of sustainability and CO2 emissions, Linfox has also explored the use of electric vehicles, partnering with automotive behemoth Volvo. “We’re fortunate to have long standing partners in Michelin and Volvo who are aligned with our values and place the same level of importance on safety, efficiency and innovation.” Although challenges such as congested areas and unpredictable geography remain, the firm says it is striving to become more environmentally-aware. “We’re constantly researching and working on alternate fuel source vehicles and automation,” notes Johnstone. “In Asia, the region is increasingly looking for alternative fuel vehicle solutions particularly due to environmental issues such as air quality and pollution. At Linfox, we’ve partnered closely with Volvo, who are on the cutting edge for safety and innovation in electric heavy vehicle production. Anything we can do to reduce our emissions is absolutely being evaluated.” Whilst Linfox may have invested in state-ofthe-art technologies and implemented the very latest safety practices, the fundamentals of Lindsay’s original vision still ring true today. Looking to the future, Johnstone says that he is optimistic about the road ahead. “I would say that in the next five or 10 years, our relationship with our customers is going to be closer
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and more developed than ever and we will also attract new business because of our strong ethos, family values, and commitment to innovation,” he says. “Our safety record speaks for itself and our leaders are doing a phenomenal job in driving change and leading our people in the right direction. “I get really passionate when I talk about leadership and our team because I genuinely believe that that’s what the business about,” he adds. “We can have all the technology in the
world but it doesn’t mean a lot unless we have passionate leaders who share and integrate our vision to ensure that technology is used correctly. Today, if you want to send products and goods you need to rely on transport systems and logistics, and these systems still, and will likely always, rely on people. I believe if we get the people right, we’re on the road to success.”
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Westpac and the virtuous supply circle Westpac New Zealand, as the government banker, is a leading figure in the islands’ financial sector. CPO Rob Halsall talks about digitisation, innovation and the indigenous economy Written by John O’Hanlon Produced by Glen White
Westpac New Zealand
It would be a mistake to think of Westpac in the same way as one thinks of the big global corporate banks, even though it is one of the ‘big four’ in Australia. For a start it doesn’t even sound like a bank, its portmanteau name, adopted in 1982 when it merged with a number of Australian banks, signifying the western pacific region rather than the finance sector. Westpac has been in New Zealand ever since it was founded as the Bank of New South Wales in 1861, and today Westpac New Zealand is the government banker as well as serving businesses throughout the country and more than 1.3mn customers. Talking to Rob Halsall, the bank’s Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), one quickly begins to appreciate why it is different. For a start, it is very closely aligned to the values that make New Zealand an outstanding place to live. That’s illustrated by three issues it places right at the front of its agenda – promoting electrification in transport, tailoring its services for people with dementia and providing equal opportunities to women, especially in leadership roles. The first of these is a passion of Westpac NZ CEO David McLean, who drives an electric car himself, and has joined a group of large corporations in committing the bank to a 30% electric fleet by the end of next year. Halsall himself is on the board of Drive Electric. “Transitioning to EVs is more complex than just ordering the cars: you have to take the infrastructure, people’s habits and preferences as well as total cost. At the bank we’ve been working on the project for the last twelve months.”
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“The P2P system gives us a level of transactional data and insight that we didn’t have previously” – Rob Halsall, Chief Procurement Officer
Rob Halsall provides leadership in commercial management and sustainable supply chain solutions across IT and non-IT services within the Westpac New Zealand business. He has more than 20 years domestic and international strategic procurement experience within automotive chemicals, aerospace, telecommunications, tertiary and financial services organisations, providing leadership in business strategy, commercial project delivery and endto-end procurement services. This includes category management, strategic sourcing and integrated supply chain management.
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Electrifying New Zealand’s oldest bank This year NZ’s oldest bank will electrify its fleet with NZ’s favourite electric vehicle, the Hyundai IONIQ. We couldn’t be prouder of Westpac New Zealand who are leading the way with their ongoing commitment to sustainability.
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Hyundai New Zealand has been partners with Westpac New Zealand for more than 10 years supplying more than 200 vehicles to its fleet. Today, Hyundai New Zealand is the preferred vehicle choice to provide the Electric Vehicles that will enable the Westpac New Zealand vision of converting 30% of its fleet to electric by 2019. As a partner to one of the oldest banks in New Zealand, Hyundai New Zealand has always strived to go above and beyond what is expected of a partner, and as champions of the Electric Vehicle industry in New Zealand, the company works closely with Westpac New Zealand on truly showcasing the viability of transforming a fleet to being Electric. With Westpac New Zealand’s transformation, Hyundai New Zealand
benefits from having a highly recognisable partner with a proven EV fleet solution that shows other customers electric fleets are a reality today here in New Zealand, not just in the future. Westpac New Zealand values the industry expertise Hyundai New Zealand provides. With Hyundai New Zealand being 100% Kiwi owned, it ensures Westpac New Zealand has the support and
information it needs as well as a New Zealand based customer support team. With the ever-evolving process of transformation, Hyundai New Zealand shares its experience from similar rollouts and provides invaluable learnings from these to support Westpac New Zealand with navigating the complex, yet highly rewarding process of having an electric vehicle fleet.
FAST FACTS >> The Hyundai IONIQ is the bestselling New Zealand new electric vehicle in the market due to its range of over 200km, practicality, styling and is backed by a 10 -year unlimited KM battery warranty. >> The Hyundai IONIQ is the only model in the world that offers three separate drive trains which provides flexibility and versatility for fleets. >> All Hyundai New Zealand EV dealerships are required to undergo a specific training programme and cerfification around Electric Vehicles. >> The Hyundai IONIQ was the 2017 winner of ‘NZ’s favourite electric vehicle’ Fairfax New Zealand, ‘Best electric vehicle’ – NZ Autocar, ‘Small Car of the Year’ Company Vehicle, ‘Motoring Green car of the year’ - NZ Herald Driven, ‘Best in class - EV/Plug-in Hybrid’ - AA Motoring, ‘Supreme Winner’ - Women’s World Car of the Year and DriveLife’s ‘Eco Warrior’s’ Car of the Year.
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Halsall is in his fifth year with the bank, and recently awarded Ernst & Young New Zealand Procurement Professional of the Year’ for 2018. A native of Belfast, he has over 20 years’ experience in procurement and supply chain management, 11 years of which were in manufacturing across telco, automotive and aerospace, with a further five years in tertiary before entering the financial services industry. Halsall joined the Westpac Group in Australia as Director of Commercial Services in 2014 and in 2016 he jumped at the chance to move to New Zealand when offered the role in Auckland. On his arrival in Auckland, he found a procurement culture that worked well, but needed to refocus on the basics which he thought necessary to support the bank through the next phase of its growth. “Before we could embark on full scale transformation, we had to get the basics right, and for me that meant looking at the core dimensions of our operating model and re-establish the purpose and value proposition of the function.”
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Westpac New Zealand
His strategy for changing the operating model was formulated under ‘eight Ps’:
1. People (capability maturity, learning & development roadmap, improved engagement);
2. Product (what are our core products and services and do our stakeholders understand them?);
3. Process (are the core processes effective and do business partners understand them?);
4. Platforms
5. Partners (the approach to internal business partner management and external supply partner management);
6. Planning (collaborative cycles, to cocreate on innovation, for example);
7. Pace (the rate of change and the cadence, or rhythm at which the business can regularly and consistently deliver projects that effect change);
(the right data, document and information management tools, 8. Progress source-to-manage, and simple (measuring everything so that task automation); all processes can be evaluated, Voice of Customer, Voice of Supplier, Value Creation).
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“These are the lenses I tend to use to examine our current state and where we need to be heading. When I joined the team there was room for improvement under all of these headings,” Halsall says. “Today, data is like oxygen to any business. From a Procurement specific perspective, we have moved over the last 18 months from a data poor, insight poor position to one where we are richer on the data side and have created more insights through the use of analytics.” The science of procurement is all about data and making the right choices based on the insights that the data provides, he believes. The art is the narrative around the data and the change it suggests.
“We focus heavily on both those areas. We built a repository of spend, contract and business unit data that we could interrogate and visualise using a Microsoft product that was available to us in-house.” The painstaking task of building a database and a data analytics structure has resulted in far better transparency across the supply base and the spending patterns of the bank. Not so much cost reduction, Halsall says, as cost management; enabling movement from the reactive to the proactive. “At the very least, we are now able to say that we know what we don’t know.”
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Westpac New Zealand
“Before we could embark on full scale transformation, we had to get the basics right, and for me that meant looking at the core dimensions of our operating model and re-establish the purpose and value proposition of the function” – Rob Halsall, Chief Procurement Officer
The data analytics structure is complementary to Westpac’s new networked Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) platform. The Basware system was introduced in 2017 and has made a big difference. “Until then, the bank didn’t have a P2P system. It gives us a level of transactional data and insight that we didn’t have previously and it has also allowed us to create supplier payment efficiencies, something that is of the first importance to them.” Another direct benefit of implementation was to rationalise the bank’s supplier base by 40%, with a further consolidation planned by 2020, Halsall adds. As a career procurement professional, Halsall naturally looks at ways to raise the profile of the team. “In my experience, it’s a question of overcoming any apathy that may exist towards procurement by demonstrating
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its value to stakeholders.” By rebranding the Procurement function to Commercial Services, he signalled his determination to move away from being viewed purely as a sourcing function to a trusted advisor to all the business units. “We have definitely increased our strategic role. The engagement at executive level is higher than it has ever been before. Collaboration with our key business partners on planning and identifying key projects is now embedded, where even a year ago it was minimal.” Procurement is now accepted by the executive leadership as a contributing partner in commercial decision-making. It is also seen as being more digitally enabled with improved operating disciplines. His team works very closely with the Technology team.
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PARTNERSHIPS IN FOCUS
Hyundai provides Westpac New Zealand with corporate fleet vehicles including electric vehicles (EVs). The company also provides thought leadership on the motor vehicle industry with a particular focus on EV adoption. Halsall adds: “The partnership with Hyundai has delivered great outcomes for Westpac New Zealand, they go above and beyond continually across all aspects of their service delivery and have been instrumental in Westpac being able to bring its sustainability agenda to life. “Hyundai and Westpac New Zealand have partnered as champions of electric vehicle adoption and the partnership will continue to evolve over time as Westpac New Zealand’s fleet becomes more sustainable.”
DXC provides document composition and multi-channel distribution, digital archiving, cheque processing in addition to development and maintenance services for a number of our core technology platforms and is pivotal to our ability to deliver financial transactions, account statements, and online banking services. “The partnership between Westpac New Zealand and DXC has delivered significant benefits to both Westpac New Zealand and its customers,” Halsall says. “Benefits include resource augmentation of specific skill sets (such as Java developers), alignment to and actively supporting Westpac New Zealand to embed an Agile methodology, driving transformation activities to position Westpac New Zealand as an innovator in the New Zealand banking industry and providing the flexibility enabling Westpac New Zealand to respond quickly to change. “DXC and Westpac New Zealand regularly collaborate to plan and refine the road map for continuous improvement and next generation banking, made possible due to the open and honest communication of our respective business strategies and the likely impacts on the other party.”
FCM provides customised, end-to-end travel management services to Westpac, from online/offline travel bookings through to strategic account management, providing global insights and innovation. Halsall comments: “FCM provide Westpac with a market leading service experience for corporate travel, including any bespoke event management requirements. They also service our customers as our exclusive hotpoints travel partner. FCM always go the extra mile whilst challenging the status quo and offering continuous improvement opportunities. “The partnership between both parties has grown and developed over several years. Westpac New Zealand and FCM will continue to innovate and work together to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes on both strategic and tactical initiatives and further embed our long standing partnership.”
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How will you grow today?
S U P P LY C H A I N
Fortnightly meetings to define priorities and shared targets have been so successful that the same style of collaboration now takes place with the operations and marketing teams. “IT, analytics, artificial intelligence, simple task automation, IoT and cognitive technologies mean the workforce of the future will do things very differently,” Halsall says. “Speaking as a procurement professional, I will be very surprised if around 40% of the tasks we do today cannot be automated or completed by cognitive systems within the next five years.” The profession will look different too. Halsall anticipates that relational, social and commercial skills, and the ability to think and act strategically, will take centre stage. “For me, procurement is about being a trusted advisor to the business: a commercial advisor delivering innovation and relationships for our market but also leveraging the technology so we can do our job faster and smarter.”
It’s a deep and ongoing change management process. Weekly 30-minute sprint sessions on relevant commercial and continuous improvement topics were introduced to leverage and transfer collective knowledge and create project delivery efficiencies. In practical terms, we have been able to understand who has experience in a particular subject area and we have created a knowledge hub within our team so everybody can benefit from that material and is key to the development of the team. Halsall also engaged ArcBlue, a specialist procurement consultancy and training provider and CIPS partner, to complete a competency assessment resulting in the delivery of technical training aligned to professional development goals within the function. The team also worked on a Vendor Open Learning Tribe (VOLT), a concept designed in partnership with the internal Technology business unit leaders to accelerate innovation with supply partners.
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Westpac New Zealand
Over three days, business units within the bank were invited to pitch challenges to key suppliers, who then came back with solutions. “VOLT was actively co-creating innovation, and it is amazing how quickly that can happen if you establish the correct forum,” Halsall comments. “We learned a lot from this experience and have plans to build on this in the future”.
Work in progress for his team is to continue to deliver commercial outcomes for the business, and deepen collaborative working with internal partners and external supply partners. Halsall intends to continue working on analytics using Microsoft Dynamics and Power BI data visualisation, exploring machine learning options and leveraging the LinkedIn ‘XRM’ functionality to improve the bank’s approach to supplier relationship Supply chain transformation management. Then, finally, there’s means having a greater sustainability. This is definitely a partnership with fewer suppliers supply chain matter, says Halsall, and doing it in a more collaborative from realising the NZ Chief way. Internally, implementing a Executive’s vision to convert 30% new intranet and the P2P system, of the fleet to electric by 2019, rebranding the function and kickto Westpac’s global responsible starting innovation in just one year, sourcing initiative, which aims to is something Halsall says would ensure that all suppliers meet have taken three in any other required ethical standards. “The organisation he has experienced. sustainability agenda is huge. “We have introduced rapid We’ve been leading the way in transformation into the team, sustainability leadership and and that was necessary because we remain a leading sustainable we had to build agility and bank globally. Our aim is to build effectiveness into our operating on what we’ve achieved and to model. We measure employee continue meeting our sustainability engagement using a global targets.” benchmark, and over the last year this has risen by 23% and is now above the global benchmark we use within the group.” 140
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“We believe that by working with other public and private partners in New Zealand, we have the opportunity to create a body that will help supplier diversity, including Maori suppliers in New Zealand” – Rob Halsall, Chief Procurement Officer
For Westpac NZ, a progressive procurement and sustainability objective, and passion of Halsall’s, is creating more opportunity to recognise and build on our supplier inclusion and diversity including Maori, as the country’s indigenous population. “We are working with partners to establish how we can develop a supplier database that would include Maori suppliers, categorised in a way that will allow all procurement practitioners within NZ to understand their services. New Zealand doesn’t have an equivalent to Australia’s Reconciliation Action Plan targets, or Supply Nation. However, we believe that by working with other public and private partners in New Zealand, we have the opportunity to create a body that will help supplier diversity, including Maori suppliers in New Zealand.
“We held a social procurement symposium in July 2017, with 200 local community leaders, procurement leaders and suppliers. We invited CPOs from telecommunications, banks, insurance, government and other community partners including Auckland Tourism (ATEED), Air New Zealand, Auckland Council, and also the chief executive of Supply Nation, to help share interest and knowledge in this area. The entire catering and product placement was provided by diverse local Maori and Pasifika suppliers.”
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Leveraging
proptech
to lead Australia’s real estate sector
Charter Hall has long been a leading Australian property management company: as the sector evolves it is also leading in the transition from traditional attitudes to a future enabled by proptech Written by John O’Hanlon Produced by Glen White
CHARTER HALL
T
he organisation that Aidan Coleman joined in 2014 as its transformational Chief Technical Officer is not as wellknown as it deserves to be. But it sits among the ASX top 100 companies with more than 350 properties and around A$23bn under management. It differs from its rivals somewhat – as well as managing assets for active funds in key retail, office complex and industrial markets it is also deeply involved in property finance as an investment manager for some 30 funds across the retail and wholesale space. Coleman found that
he had a dual role. The first objective was to create a scalable technology and information systems capability and platform that could support the business going forward. The second, no less important, was to understand the potential impact of technology disruption and help the business to identify opportunities that would get it onto the front foot and create a real commercial advantage. There was, he says, much work to be done to achieve the former and transform the internal employee experience. The latter he took to like a duck to water, taking leadership of the accelerator
Aidan Coleman CTO
Aidan Coleman joined Charter Hall in 2014, and has over 16 years technology experience across a range of industries and geographies including property, funds management, retail, media, consumer goods, consulting, financial services and telecommunications. In his current role, Coleman is responsible for providing leadership and direction for all strategic IT activities associated with supporting IT’s contribution to the organisation’s key business initiatives. Since joining in May, he has focused on improving the IT user experience 144
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at our head office and regional sites, whilst building the IT strategy and underlying capability that can leverage technology to power growth and productivity across the Charter Hall business. Prior to joining Charter Hall, Coleman worked at Stockland as IT Strategy and Planning Manager where he delivered significant improvements to customer, asset, development and financial systems. Aidan also transformed Stockland’s digital platform and online capability. His additional experience includes eight years at News Corporation Australia.
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programme described below. On his appointment Coleman found a business whose leadership, though attuned to the potential of IT, was experiencing growing pains as it put its EnterPRISE business technology transformation programme into effect, still relying on manual processing, spreadsheets and printtailored solutions. The first task that faced him was to make the case for an IT focused vision. “Bringing the business along on the transformation journey was a significant part of my first years. In the last 18 months we have gained positive momentum, and we have been able to shift our
focus more towards innovation and how we might utilise investment in some of the newer platforms and technologies to add value, not only empowering our employees with the information and tools they need, but giving a better experience to our tenants and customers.” There’s a new wave of younger property investors emerging, he says: more tech savvy and demanding than their predecessors and ready to embrace the concepts of proptech and fintech. The cloud beckons It quickly became clear to Coleman, from annual engagement surveys,
“IN THE LAST 18 MONTHS WE HAVE GAINED POSITIVE MOMENTUM AND WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO SHIFT OUR FOCUS MORE TOWARDS INNOVATIONT” – Aidan Coleman, CTO, Charter Hall
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that that investment in technology had not been prioritised, though that soon started to change. “People across the business are now encouraging us to continue to invest in and focus on digitisation.” A good example of transformation initiatives that have impacted cycle times and helped de-risk the business was the group wide Forecasting Analytics program, launched in 2016 and developed in partnership with MRI Software. “MRI is a well-known global platform in our industry,” Coleman says, “but less so in the investment management space. We have put our IP into MRI, and that allows us to really draw out the value of this platform.” In the past Charter Hall was doing this in a bespoke way, fund by fund: this has shifted to a more integrated real-time environment that admits of change. For example, what used to take 10 people 20 days in Excel will now take minutes, like reflecting a future interest rate assumption change across all property and fund valuations. “We’ve significantly improved our risk profile by moving our key inputs,
calculations and outputs/analytics into a centralised and controlled environment,” Coleman says. A principle he established from day one was to minimise the fixed footprint, whether in infrastructure or people, to minimise capital spend, moving it where possible to operational cost so as to create more elasticity in the business. “Property cycles go up and down. When we are booming we need to be able to dial up services and capability quite quickly and when they flatten we need to be able to do the opposite. But when you have fixed costs you can’t do that so we have been looking at platform- and software-as-a-service (PaaS and SaaS) strategies for any new applications or software that we bring on board. I also wanted to transition from on premise legacy platforms, either replatforming in a cloud-based environment or decommissioning them altogether.” Disaster recovery (DR) relying on a secondary data centre, both expensive and of doubtful efficacy, was a case in point. Considerable capital expenditure would have been
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CHARTER HALL
“PEOPLE ACROSS THE BUSINESS ARE NOW ENCOURAGING US TO CONTINUE TO INVEST IN AND FOCUS ON DIGITISATION” – Aidan Coleman, CTO, Charter Hall
needed to upgrade it, and most of the time that capacity wouldn’t be needed. Bringing in technology partners like Microsoft and VMware to create a DR solution in the cloud meant that for a management fee Charter Hall moved millions of dollars off its balance sheet, at the same time enabling it to recover from any disaster scenario with speed and agility. Microsoft Azure is now Charter Hall’s platform of choice for conditioning all its data and documents, continues Coleman. “We have been able to
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eliminate all but between 5% and 10% of existing infrastructure in our data centres.” Unlocking the value of elements such as OneDrive, SharePoint in conjunction with Power BI, and the CRM capabilities of Dynamics has de-risked the business significantly as well as eliminating infrastructure cost. “From an infrastructure point of view, I would say that we are very close to being fully cloud enabled,” Coleman continues. “We are rolling out a network to our retail shopping centres and corporate sites over the next 12 months and
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Western Sydney University - Rethinking a University | Developed & Managed by Charter Hall
that will give us a lot capacity and bandwidth into all our properties. People in retail sites will be working in the cloud: all their applications, documents and key network points will be cloud-enabled and that will speed traffic over the large distances that separate these sites in Australia, reducing latency and congestion through to our data centre.” Proptech to the rescue Until recently real estate technology has been, relatively speaking, neither user friendly nor integrated,
he admits. Innovation, and not only in the IT space, is one of his passions, one in which he has taken a leadership role. One innovative solution his team delivered was a first in Australia in partnership with a proptech startup aptly named Comfy – an app that delivers ‘climate control on demand’, allowing people to make known their temperature preferences using their smartphones. “Before Comfy,” Coleman says, “we had very little information on how occupants were actually experiencing the temperature in the
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CHARTER HALL
building. The standard approach for temperature control in buildings has been ‘one temperature fits all’, and the feedback loop is manual and usually complaint-driven.” This is about more than end user satisfaction. It is expected to deliver between 15-25% energy savings across properties as it’s rolled out in more offices. For example, Comfy will use machine learning to track and learn how meeting rooms and shared spaces are used, heat or cool the room for the meetings and not waste energy conditioning an empty room. There are significant benefits from collaborating with these startups, Coleman believes. “Engaging with them is creating a palpable dynamism within the business that we have never seen before, and from a brand positioning perspective it
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has been fantastic. We have been getting a huge amount of feedback from our peers and lots of coverage from major news organisations in Australia, and among whom proptech is becoming a new hot topic.” So, ahead of most of the competition, Charter Hall has really thrown its weight behind proptech, partnering with the Australian incubator and accelerator Collective Campus in an initiative to find and encourage some of the most promising startups. After some discussion it lit upon three relevant segments – smart buildings, shared space (think of it as Airbnb for offices) and finally fintech. There has been a lot of disruption by financial technology of Australia’s financial institutions and this is starting to spill over into real estate fintech.
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The Charter Hall PropTech Accelerator was set up in 2017 in collaboration with Collective Campus. It’s an initiative very much led by Coleman: “We received applications from about 50 startups, went through a process of evaluation and shortlisting that reduced the list to 15. These we brought in to a two-day boot camp in Melbourne and took them through a very intensive two days of thrashing out their business case and their business model, culminating in a pitch night to which we invited peers, customers and potential investors.” Out of this group, four startups were invited to join a 13-week programme that stated in February 2018. The four companies have been given intensive training around business and product development, marketing and everything a startup needs to survive and grow. The programme culminates with a demo day when their products will be showcased to Charter Hall leaders and managers, and a range of investors that partner with Charter Hall. Why these technologies are of interest to Charter Hall is a no-brainer
“WE HAVE BEEN ABLE TO ELIMINATE ALL BUT BETWEEN 5% AND 10% OF EXISTING INFRASTRUCTURE IN OUR DATA CENTRES” – Aidan Coleman, CTO, Charter Hall
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THE FUTURE OF PROPTECH
The four companies Charter Hall is supporting
InSpaceXR Justin Liang, Co-founder and CEO of InspaceXR leads one of the startups recently selected to participate in a 13-week incubation period at Charter Hall. Liang’s virtual reality software helps architects visualise a project in 3D, leading to better design outcomes, reduced iteration times and easier discussions with engineers and project developers. “The majority of the top 10 architecture firms already have VR headsets and younger architects who know it’s the future of the profession, are a lot more active and receptive in picking up the tools. It’s moving in the architecture space, but I’m not sure if we’ll see the same kind of adoption rates across the rest of the industry,” says Liang. With the upcoming launch of his software to market, Liang recognises a mindset challenge in Australia in comparison to the tech hubs of the world.
BricksandAgent.com Bricks & Agent, founded by entrepreneurs Jon Stuhl (the son of Shopkins billionaire Manny Stuhl) and Rafael Niesten is a cloud-based platform focused on streamlining residential property management and maintenance. This will now be developed through the Charter Hall incubator program to handle retail property and facilities management. Stuhl said the company had enough
money to self-fund itself indefinitely but would consider taking on investors “if there is a strategic benefit”. “I would describe their product as the Uber for property maintenance,” comments Coleman. “We have 45,000 retail customers and we want to be able to give them some productivity tools so that they can manage their retail shop and easily communicate when they have issues.”
Snaploader Snaploader, which has developed a webviewer that enables potential tenants and investors to access an interactive 3D model of properties, is already being used by Charter Hall’s industrial business to support lease negotiations. The business was founded by former Hugo Boss Australia MD Erik Fink.
Estate Baron Estate Baron is a blockchain-enabled property development and investment crowdfunding platform. Coleman says Charter Hall saw potential synergies with this platform and its emerging millennial investor base: “It’s interesting because it is more investor-focused, having evolved from being a crowdfunding platform for retail investors. We are now looking at how to build a blockchain and streamline our whole retail investment process for what is becoming a very tech savvy and technically aware investor base.”
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for Coleman. “We are all about bringing to life the experiences that we can provide to our customers. For example we have investors spread around the globe, and potential tenant customers that we want to bring into our commercial offices, so why not use advanced visualisation technology to give them that experience wherever they are, showing them the fit-outs they might be able to achieve and the potential of the space? Till now we had to show potential clients, in person, our assets in the form of physical models or at best architects’ 3D plans. They may be based in Perth and we might want to take them through that asset in Sydney: virtually reality enables us to bring that experience to life.” Embarking on this process, and the collaboration with Collective Campus, has in a real sense augmented Coleman’s team, or at least the resources available to them. “These four startups are really trying to revolutionise different parts of our business. As the programme ends we can see how to continue to partner with them, whether that may be by investing in their business,
partnering with them as a strategic customer, or simply continuing to leverage the platforms they have developed.” It’s a kind of symbiosis that may have been explored in Silicon Valley, Cambridge or Sophia Antipolis but it is less common in ANZ. “We are blazing a trail here in Australia,” Coleman proclaims with satisfaction. IT at Charter Hall has a very different look and feel today compared with 2014. It has given the company a much more visual experience from the board down through the business units. “All this was a bit of a shock to the system but a shock that was needed in order to effect change,” Coleman concludes. “Now I feel that we have morphed into a steady state. People are very accepting, asking for more, looking to get even more engaged. We have a great cohort of business product owners at all levels of the business full.” More remains to be done in the way of change management and employee experience, but the business is ready now, he feels, to take full advantage of a proptech revolution that is still in its infancy.
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