Business Chief Europe Magazine – March 2018

A major technology overhaul makes profound progress March 2018 • EUROPE EDITION

HENSOLDTHENSOLDT

Hellenic Bottling Company DIGITISING EUROPE’S DRINKS INDUSTRY

Jo Bertram UBER TO EXECUTIVE IN RESIDENCE AT EQT VENTURES

Reframing company culture FOR BETTER DIVERSITY IN THE WORKPLACE

City Focus: Zurich THE EUROPEAN HUB WITH AN IMPRESSIVE STARTUP CULTURE

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WELCOME TO MARCH’S issue of Business Chief’s Europe edition, which this month features one of the world’s biggest brands in our cover story.

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company is responsible for the packaging and distribution of some of the iconic drinks group’s most famous beverages, and we spoke with its Group CIO Alain Brouhard for an exclusive interview.

“We are connecting with the consumer 24/7, from morning to night,” says Brouhard, as he talks us through the digitisation of a business which recently celebrated its 50th birthday.

Elsewhere in the magazine this month, we chat to Jo Bertram – formerly UK chief for Uber – about her new role at Swedish private equity group EQT Ventures, while Colonial Life’s Michelle Boucher advises on how creativity can grow in the workplace.

Stuart Hodge has been busy, finding out why data infrastructure is vital for modern business and speaking to General Motors’ Global Manager of Renewables Rob Threlkeld on developing sustainable solutions for your company.

March’s City Focus feature moves to Switzerland and Zurich, which has garnered a startup culture to rival any on the continent, while our Top 10 lists Europe’s most expensive restaurants.

Finally, our exclusive digital reports feature interviews with, as well as the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, HENSOLDT, JTI, KPN, Nokia and TalkTalk – all involving in-depth discussions with top executives and industry experts.

Enjoy the magazine, and join the conversation on Twitter: @Business_Chief.

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C A P I TA L

Jo Bertram’s New Challenge

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Why getting data infrastructure right is vital for modern businesses

Reframing company culture for better workplace diversity

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CocaCola Hellenic Bottling Co Construction

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Jo Bertram’s new challenge

Written by STUART HODGE

BUSINESS CHIEF CAUGHT UP WITH JO BERTRAM, WHO OVERSAW UBER’S MASSIVE GROWTH IN NORTHERN EUROPE OVER THE PAST FOUR YEARS BEFORE TAKING HER NEW ROLE AS EXECUTIVE IN RESIDENCE FOR EQT VENTURES

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y JO BERTRAM IS someone who knows what it takes to make a business successful. In her previous role, the 36-year-old was responsible for Uber’s Northern European operations between September 2013 and the end of last year. She grew the company from just three employees to 300 and during this time, in the United Kingdom alone, the number of drivers grew from a couple of hundred to over 50,000.

After that, she led the company’s expansion into Ireland as well as the Nordic, Baltic, and Benelux countries.

Bertram’s departure garnered headlines largely due to timing, with Uber embroiled in various lawsuits and its very presence in London under threat. Although she appreciates that the timing wasn’t ideal, Bertram is proud of the work she did whilst at Uber and has now dived headfirst into her new role as Executive in Residence for EQT Ventures, a European venture capital firm which focuses on turning tech companies into “major global players”.

The EQT Ventures fund, which launched in May 2016, has €566mn ($687mn) in commitments and a 14

March 2018

large team of experts with firsthand experience to support every firm it invests in. Bertram’s job is to identify tech startups which can be successful and support them on their growth journey. It marks a significant change from her job at Uber, but Bertram is very much embracing it. “It’s quite a big shift from what was a very operational and hands-on role at Uber, back into an advisory role. That’s always a bit of a mindset shift, and takes

“ It’s a great team here and I’ve been exposed to lots of new challenges, and new areas I didn’t know about, so I’m really excited about the future” – Jo Bertram, Executive in Residence, EQT Ventures

some adjustment,” says Bertram, adding: “I’m really excited about it.

It’s a great team here and I’ve been exposed to lots of new challenges and new areas I didn’t know about, so I’m really excited about the future.

“For one thing it’s really interesting to sit on the other side of the fence, on the investment side. So, I’m starting to understand how venture capital firms, other investors, think about companies and their challenges, rather than thinking about it only from

the operational and management perspective. That’s not something I’ve had exposure to before, so that’s an area where I’ve learned a lot.”

Bertram started her career in consulting, and spent the best part of a decade working firstly at Accenture, and then at McKinsey & Company, across a range of different industries.

Her role at Accenture focused primarily on large-scale programme management and IT-related topics, whereas at McKinsey she focused 15

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y much more on strategy, mainly growth strategy, regulatory strategy – another role spanning many industries.

In the middle of that, Bertram completed her MBA, studying at INSEAD in Singapore and then in France, but aside from her multitude of education and experience, what unique qualities does she believe she can bring to the new role?

“From one angle, my consultancy background means that I’m used to taking an advisory role,” she says.

“Probably more importantly though, in the four years at Uber, I had a lot of experience growing a team very, very quickly – taking my team from three to 300 in a matter of a few years, and all of the challenges that come with that. I’m able to help portfolio companies think about how they recruit and retain talent, how they structure their team as they grow through different phases, and how they scale operational processes.

“Most of these companies may be very rapidly doubling in size, so how do you build operational processes that will be robust enough to manage that? How do you launch and grow new markets? Where 16

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“ Entrepreneurs don’t just need capital, they need access to the people who have all different types of expertise” – Jo Bertram, Executive in Residence, EQT Ventures

and how do you expand, and what do you need to have in place?

“Uber in particular is a marketplace business. So, for any marketplace business that needs to balance supply and demand, what are the different tools and techniques at different stages that you can use to find and attract customers on both side of the marketplace?

“More generally, I have general management skills that many CEOs and GMs need to pick up on, so it’s just figuring out how I can help the different portfolio companies that all have their own unique challenges, and are at different stages in their journey.”

Bertram is undoubtedly passionate about the companies she is now being paid to guide to a prosperous future, but she is quick to point out that one of her main reasons for joining EQT Ventures was the fabulous team she has around her in her new role.

“As well as providing the capital for portfolio companies, the EQT Ventures team also believes in providing access to an ecosystem of expertise. Entrepreneurs don’t just need capital, they need access to the people who have all of 17

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y those different types of expertise, and so it’s a team of investment specialists as well as operational experts who’ve built companies, exited their own companies or been experts in their field. I’m quite

‘ EQT Ventures’ selfproclaimed goal is to provide the assistance and support that all of its partners wish they’d had during their startup journey’ excited to see how that plays out.”

The company’s self-proclaimed goal is to provide the assistance and support that all of its partners wish they’d had during their startup journey. The fact that EQT Ventures’ portfolio companies are also very varied across a number of sectors was also a draw for Bertram.

“EQT Ventures doesn’t have a specific industry focus, so its portfolio companies span a large 18

March 2018

number of industries, and obviously a lot of different companies at very different stages,” she explains.

“I think that’s a really interesting challenge, and opportunity to figure out how can we best help each of those companies face the specific challenges that they’re facing.

“I think the interesting thing is for any company that grows that quickly, everything you think about, whether it’s the team, or the processes,

you have to be planning for the fact that in six months it’s going to be double or triple the size.

“You’re always thinking about ‘how do I find people who are going to be able to scale? How do I not hire for what I need now, but for what I’m going to need in six or 12 months when the business might be three or four times bigger?’

“And the same with the processes, ‘how do I design a process that

won’t break as soon as the business grows by 20%, but is going to be robust to that growth? How do I keep looking at our organisational structure, our people, our processes, our tools, and evaluating how we need to evolve them?’

“I really enjoy the stage of the journey where someone has got an idea and it’s a nascent business model, but you help figure out ‘how do we make this into a longterm, sustainable, and successful company?’ To do that it does eventually have to make money, and figuring out how to find the right business model with unit economics that are going to work at scale and offer some kind of sustainable competitive advantage. Once you have that, how do you put all of the analytics, processes, tools and culture in place to make sure that you can get there? Both from a profitability perspective, but also from a competitive perspective, product perspective, and things like that. This freedom and flexibility is something I’m quite excited about, so I’m expecting lots of different new opportunities and challenges along the way.”

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TECHNOLOGY

WHY GETTING DATA INFRASTRUCTURE RIGHT IS VITAL FOR MODERN BUSINESSES Stuart Hodge speaks to experts from SAP, Cisco and Warwick Analytics to outline how quality, effective data infrastructure can help optimise a company’s business processes…

Writ ten by STUART HODGE

TECHNOLOGY ONE OF THE most important hires for companies across most sectors these days is that of the data scientist.

As data analysis and technology strategy expert Q Ethan McCallum observes on his website, there is no point in hiring a data scientist until you have the correct data infrastructure in place. Doing so would be akin to hiring Lewis Hamilton for a racing team, but providing him with a car liable to break down before the finish line. “To invest in such a data infrastructure is to invest in the longterm success of your firm’s data science activities,” Q McCallum notes.

The principal challenges with data come mainly from the volume, the plurality of sources and types, and the discrepancies in how it is gathered, processed and ultimately used.

Sven Denecken, Head of Product Management and Co-Innovation for SAP’s S/4HANA business suite, embraces the challenge of navigating the ever-changing tides when it comes to data. “As a product manager, I’m like a kid in a candy store. I want to use that technology. I want to use that data. I want to use those concepts, but my job is to bring it all together with an actual business process. Big 24

March 2018

“You cannot know exactly what your customers want tomorrow, but you want to predict it as much as you can” SVEN DENECKEN Head of Product Management and Co-Innovation for SAP’s S/4HANA

data is more important than ever and the technology is there to compute it in vast amounts and with great speed.

The more you can virtualise and put into in-memory speed computing, the better you will be able to adapt your business processes. You cannot know exactly what your customers want tomorrow, but you want to predict it as much as you can.”

That’s how companies can ensure proper enterprise resource planning, and that is what the SAP S/4HANA suite does: a real-time

enterprise resource management suite for digital business built on the company’s advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA, deployable in the cloud or on-premise.

Denecken, not unexpectedly, describes it as “the best enterprise resource planning software on the cloud” barring none, and he was happy to break down what he sees as the prerequisites for any company to succeed when it comes to structuring and interpreting data.

“I would argue infrastructure as a

service, security, and the availability of the data are three key ingredients you need to start with,” he asserts.

Whether talking about unstructured, structured or semi-structured data, Denecken is adamant these different types need to be combined if a company hopes to optimise its business processes. Everyone talks about big data. “I’m actually more a fan of the right data. Big data’s the starting point. It’s a commodity. The right data is bringing you a competitive advantage.

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TECHNOLOGY

“The trick is to analyse 100% of the right data in the right way” DAN SOMERS CEO Warwick Analytics

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“We need to realise that data itself is the new gold. It’s a case of the more data the better, in whatever shape or form: unstructured, structured, or semi-structured; we need to collect much more. The key question is how a company deals with it. For example, text messages, audio, semi-structured data, are much less voluminous… I want to make sure that we process this in the right way. This is where process knowledge and data knowledge need to come together.”

This is also where a lot of companies tend to fall down, according to Dan Somers, CEO of predictive analytics firm Warwick Analytics. “Less than 1% of data is analysed. This in itself is bad, but there are also a lot of types of data which are not very informative.

The trick is to analyse 100% of the right data in the right way. Mostly, people are just deploying analytics for visualisation. Unstructured and text data are very poorly analysed and form the majority of data today.

Much of the time there’s a ‘so what’ at the end of analysis because people are asking the wrong question.

“One example is analysing voice of customer data for topics and sentiment whereas the better

analysis is to validate (remove trolls and statistically validate across all customers removing skews) and then isolate the topics and sentiment which drive customer churn and/or loyalty, as these are the things that predictively make the difference.

“Start with the right question and analyse the right data,” Somers advises. “Then, once you start from there, find the tools that can help, don’t always just do what the data science team is capable of. It must fit the business and be flexible enough to be updated and ‘live’ as things inevitably evolve, rather than bogging the data science team down in curation.”

Being able to do all of these things requires a strong and robust network, or at least one which is attuned to a business’s own requirements and needs. That is very much the ‘domain’ of David Goff, who is Head of Enterprise Network for UK and Ireland for world networking leader Cisco.

“What my team is there to do, and what Enterprise Network is there to do, is to find ways that we can drastically simplify the network or actually make the network intuitive,” he explains. “To make it intuitive – that means to be able to see, 27

to think, and to act itself, without manual intervention requires data.

“Then it’s about how we use visibility of data to be able to inform the network and to ensure that the network is something that adapts and has the rigidity that business needs to be able to capture transitions on IAP, cloud and mobility.” But from a network point of view, it’s less about looking within the data itself and more about how its transportation can be facilitated.

All of the factors outlined so far need to be considered when it comes to how to structure data, but what 28

March 2018

also needs to be remembered is that technology is constantly evolving and that the playing field is always subject to disruption and change.

Goff says he expects “ongoing innovation, creating ecosystems” and Denecken agrees that there is further room for disruption in the data space – in fact, he expects it, saying that anyone who manages to marry “the combination of big data, AI and business processes” will be on to a winner in that regard. He acknowledges that more and more processes are going to become streamlined

TECHNOLOGY “I’m not going to hire a consultant to dig at that for a year – but I will rely on certain market data to sense it, and then based on that sensing, drive my business processes or my automation” DAVID GOFF Head of Enterprise Network for Cisco in UK and Ireland

or automated thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“There will be always niches where experts and very bright people will find an even better way or will fill in holes,” he adds. “Already today, what we can do with process robotic automation disrupts many business processes. So, would I, today, invest into a short service centre company to outsource labour tasks? Personally, I wouldn’t. I think those tasks will be automated first.

“On the other side, a lot of opportunities will be created. There’s a lot of discussion about things like

access to big data, access with algorithms to make it more intelligent etc., but the closer you get to the business process, the more you will own that piece of the data. The further you go away, the more you will rely on third-party resources. Maybe also to pre-empt it, to pre-condition it, to pre-extract certain data. If I want to know what my customer base is doing, I’m not going to hire a consultant to dig at that for a year – but I will rely on certain market data to sense it, and then based on that sensing, drive my business processes or my automation.”

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Reframing company culture for better workplace diversity Michelle Boucher, Vice President, Global Talent Management at Colonial Life advises how creativity can be fostered in the workplace

Writ ten by MICHELLE BOUCHER

PEOPLE

Google spent $265mn on a datadriven diversity programme 83% of Vodafone employees say flexible working has helped improve productivity

Boston Consulting Group’s stunning New York office

MOST OF US would agree the greater the diversity of minds in business, the greater the diversity of perspectives, talents and creative solutions.

However, progress of achieving workplace diversity has been surprisingly sluggish. For example, Google’s data-driven diversity program cost $265mn to implement, but still failed to significantly change the composition of its workforce. Such results imply money isn’t everything when it comes 34

March 2018

to implementing diversity initiatives.

However, with the right internal strategies and robust planning, there are steps any organisation can take to help its business embrace diversity.

REASSESS TRADITIONAL WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS From interview processes to decision making, most of our workplace environments are built around eye contact, noisy group work and

generally overstimulating settings. But traditional workplace environments and routines may not be for everyone.

By adapting your workplace to cater to a diverse array of age groups, personalities and work styles, you can drive better efficiency and performance.

For example, consider offering the option of open office spaces versus quieter, private working space for your employees, so they can pick an environment where they’ll be most

‘ It’s valuable to move the culture of your business away from being dominated by how many hours employees work in the office’

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PEOPLE 5 tips on how to improve your creative space…

• Allow employees to have a choice of which environment they will be productive in, for example between an open workspace and a quieter, private working space.

• Remember the workspace needn’t be the office and if your organisation offers flexible working, employees can choose their own space, with work from home options proving popular.

• If necessary, make use of virtual technology allowing users to remain in an environment they find comfortable, especially for interviews.

• Subtly encourage collaboration by making sure your office space has ample space to connect and chat, even if this may be in a break area.

• P rioritise organising employee affinity groups; communities within corporations that encourage people with similar experiences and backgrounds to connect.

Adobe’s Lehi offices boast an indoor climbing wall and is part of Adobe’s wellness initiative 36

March 2018

productive. Individuals with autism or hyper-sensitive personalities may need different workplace accommodations, such as changes to lighting or headphones to prevent auditory overstimulation.

Team meetings and brainstorms are central to many workplace routines, but not everyone excels in these conditions. In fact, research by Harvard shows some employees worry about other team members’ views and when they perceive others have more expertise, their performance declines. This is especially challenging for introverted or less confident individuals.

Encouraging a subtle collaborative environment can prevent employees from feeling forced into sharing ideas and concerns. Simple ways to do this include integrating mentoring into everyday practices and modelling collaborative behaviour from the top down.

CONSIDER INDIVIDUAL STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES What if we created tailored roles to really benefit from each employee’s unique talents and contributions?

‘ Could your interviews be conducted virtually?

Some candidates may interview better in surroundings that are familiar to them’

Some in the business world are already beginning to think this way: A PricewaterhouseCoopers 2030 report entitled ‘Workforce of the future’ discusses the benefits of workplaces that focus on individual talents to compete in the race to give consumers what they want.

Business leaders can tap into this by developing non-traditional roles that maximise individual strengths and are less reliant on linear thinking. For example, recent ground-breaking research from Johan Wiklund revealed many individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are great at solving certain types of complex issues in isolation because they become hyper-focused on a problem capturing their attention.

The research also discovered many 37

PEOPLE individuals with ADHD enjoy improvisation, so high-pressure pitches and shifting strategy may be less emotionally and cognitively taxing for these workers. If nurtured in the right way, these skills are extremely effective in business.

While it’s fine to set individual tasks, ensure non-traditional roles still include a collaborative element.

Encourage teams to share ideas and feedback on other workplace projects with each other to ensure everyone feels part of a team and no one becomes too isolated.

PROMOTE FLEXIBILITY AND TRANSPARENCY In a global workplace survey by Vodafone entitled ‘Flexible: friend or foe?’, 83% of respondents said adopting flexible working had helped improved productivity and 61% said it helped increase company profits.

That’s why it’s valuable to move the culture of your business away from being dominated by how many hours employees work in the office.

You can do this by writing flexible policies with work-from-home options and encouraging employees to use that time. Not only does this show 38

March 2018

Instagram’s Silicon Valley office

willingness to support individual needs, it’s a good way to alleviate the additional stress that comes with commuting or having to work overtime.

Help people understand the nuances of their jobs, too. We want to celebrate employees’ unique offerings and diverse perspectives, but we also want them to understand how their individual routines, what they do and why they do it, contribute to overall business success.

About Colonial Life

‘ Encouraging a subtle collaborative environment can prevent employees from feeling forced into sharing ideas and concerns’

CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL RECRUITING PROCESSES Employee Benefit News reports it costs employers 33% of a worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement if the worker leaves the company, so recruiting and retaining the right person for your business is vital.

However, the behaviour of some individuals may run counter to common notions of what makes a good employee.

This doesn’t mean solid communication skills, being a team player, emotional

Colonial Life is a market leader in providing financial protection benefits through the workplace, including disability, life, accident, dental, cancer, critical illness and hospital confinement indemnity insurance. The company’s benefit services and education, innovative enrolment technology and personal service support more than 86,000 businesses and organisations, representing 3.7mn of America’s workers and their families

intelligence and the ability to network aren’t all important skills to have in a workplace. But focusing only on traditional criteria may systematically screen out individuals with unique special talents.

Think about ways you can adapt your hiring policies to encourage diversity.

Could your interviews be conducted virtually? Some candidates may interview better in surroundings that are familiar to them. Or would it be better not to hold a traditional interview at all?

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PEOPLE CREATIVE SPACES AROUND THE WORLD… What makes a creative space?

Good design from the outset certainly helps. Fortune has mentioned some of its favourite offices around the world and these include…

Hyland Software

Adobe Systems – the company’s Lehi office features a rock-climbing wall so employees can take a break but stay motivated to make it to the top. The adaptation is part of Adobe’s wellness initiative and the idea was put forward by staff themselves.

Autodesk – the company’s California office features a green space with deckchairs and hammocks so employees can take a well-earned rest or nap. This is part of a sleek, fresh design.

Hyland Software – the company’s offices feature an onsite barber offering a relaxing wet shave in a comfortable chair.

Boston Consulting Group – the company’s New York offices have 40

March 2018

Zappos office a photo wall which employees can decorate with their own snaps. This touch of personality encourages employees to “own the space” but remains in keeping with the sleek wooden design.

Zappos.com – the Zappos Family office is bright and airy with an eclectic mix of styles and playful features, including a ball pit and stuffed camel.

‘ By adapting your workplace to cater to a diverse array of age groups, personalities and work styles, you can drive better efficiency and performance’

Autodesk’s San Francisco office Adapting how the interview process is structured was a key action taken

by Willis Towers Watson in its bid to attract colleagues on the autism spectrum. Company research revealed a work trial or test can often be a better way to assess someone’s suitability for a role.

CREATE CONNECTIONS While diversity is about celebrating and leveraging differences, no one wants to feel so unique they’re isolated from peers and adrift in the workplace.

Prioritise organising employee resource and affinity groups – communities

within corporations that encourage people with similar experiences and backgrounds to connect.

By providing such avenues for networking, socialising and mentoring, you demonstrate that diverse individuals are not only finding success within the company, they’re willing to help others succeed as well.

With tools like these at their disposal, employees are far more likely to feel part of a diverse yet inclusive workforce.

After all, what really matters is your workforce feels secure in an accepting work environment, allowing them – and your business – to thrive.

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ERGY ERGY ERGY DO DO DO

General Motors’ Global Manager of Renewables Rob Threlkeld says right now is the most exciting time to work in sustainability – Business Chief finds out why Writ ten by STUART HODGE

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y

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or a company like General Motors (GM), sustainability is now a vital cog in its global operations.

With businesses now working towards objectives set out in the Paris Agreement on Climate Action, there is now not just an incentive, but an imperative to work towards the goals delineated in the strategy, which aims for a global low-carbon economy by 2050.

Companies have been aware of the need to take a more ecological outlook for a number of years now, well before the agreement was submitted to the UN. A byproduct of this has been an exponential increase in the pace of innovation we’ve seen 46

March 2018

General Motors World Headquarters

in the renewables space across all industries. It’s particularly true for GM, which has signed up to the RE100 agreement, outlining how the world’s most influential companies are committed to 100% renewable power.

That pace of innovation is something that is only set to continue, says Rob Threlkeld, Global Manager of Renewables at GM. He believes it will only get quicker as time goes on. “You’ve definitely seen it rapidly

“From a company standpoint, we’re always looking for the most economic source of generation that we can procure and sometimes getting it to our facilities can be a challenge” – Rob Threlkeld, Global Manager of Renewables at GM

- Detroit, MI, USA

increase in the last five years,” he says, “especially with smart meters and other applications that allow you to choose when you use certain types of electricity – whether it’s green or not – and what the costs actually are.

“It’s also in the transportation sector. Five years ago, there was not a lot of talk around autonomous vehicles. Electrification was starting to just start to come around. We only had the (Chevrolet) Volt at that

time. We’ve now got the Volt and the (Chevrolet) Bolt. But you can see this massive switch to where autonomous vehicles are definitely part of a future with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion components. You’ve seen this technology revolution in both the utility and transportation sectors. You’re going to see more change in those sectors in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50-100 years.”

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BREAKING DOWN GM’S FOUR-PILLAR RENEWABLES STRATEGY… ENERGY EFFICIENCY GM knows that reducing its overall energy consumption, as a company, has a direct correlation to its renewable energy percentages. Whether it’s something as routine as switching out lights to LEDs, GM looks at how it can optimise its energy management systems around its production and manufacturing sites, in particular, to become energy efficient.

SOURCING RENEWABLES Finding out the cheapest and most efficient means by which renewable energy sources can be secured is vital to any company, particularly a global enterprise like GM. The main two methods GM uses to do this is through power purchase agreements or onsite generation.

ADDRESSING VARIANCE AND INTERMITTENCY On the automotive side, this can mean looking at what the company is doing in terms of its advanced transport operations, whether it's battery storage, electric vehicles, fuel cells, etc. On a more general basis it refers to what the company is doing to address the intermittency of renewables on the grid by innovating when it comes to, for example, using new storage technologies or electrification efforts.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES The final pillar is essentially how GM really leverages policy and scale to look at green tariffs, opportunities with utilities, and working with regional transmission operators. The company always looks to address the technology transformation that's going on in a way that has a “broader value” to the communities it builds manufacturing facilities on, as well as consumers.

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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y ENERGY DEMAND Despite these disruptive changes in mentality and attitude, there are still plenty of concerns around where these efforts are ultimately headed. In the US, which remains GM’s primary base of operations, a recent report from the Wind Energy Foundation identified a serious gap between corporate America’s near-term demand for renewable energy and the electricity grid’s ability to meet that demand. Threlkeld says the issues cited in the report are simply part of the natural progression of change.

“I think it’s just part of the evolution of the process,” he says. “Going back five years, as we looked at how corporations such as GM could scale up the use of renewables, it was more around what the companies really need to do in this space to engage with each other. The next logical step was: how do we gauge the utilities, which are really the natural potential owners of the renewable energy assets? That’s where we started to take off as we looked at green tariffs in the US and what utilities were starting to offer.

“The last component in this natural progression is the issue of moving this

low-cost electricity. From a company standpoint, we’re always looking for the most economic source of generation that we can procure and sometimes getting it to our facilities can be a challenge. How do we now engage relevant stakeholders – the regional transmission operators or the independent system operators in this process – as technology drives the future both in utilities and transport? It has to be in a way that ultimately benefits all the customers. We don’t want to do unnecessary upgrades should technology supersede our work.”

ELECTRIC CARS AND THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION While GM has grown to much more than just an automotive enterprise, it makes sense to scrutinise the sustainability of the company’s vehicular operations. The technological transformation of cars into electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and fuel cells has completely changed the way the organisation now looks at its automotive strategy.

“Where we used to be more worried about the price of a litre of gasoline, it’s now focused on the cost of electricity, 49

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y and when the consumer actually utilises that electricity,” says Threlkeld.

“You can see transformation with a lot of our efforts in energy efficiency and renewables in support of our manufacturing side of the operation that now impacts the product side.

From a competitive standpoint, they’re really linked together in a way they weren’t before, even a few years ago.

“Last October, we announced 20 new electric vehicles between now and 2023 as we march towards that all-electric future. The ‘zero emissions’ component is an important part of our product messaging and sets a competitive opportunity for us to look at how we viewed manufacturing in the past during our previous sustainability efforts. We’ve always focused the company in that direction. We’ve now got it both on the manufacturing and the product side when you look at the mobility component associated with the future of transportation.”

EFFECTIVE STRATEGISATION AND A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE GM’s four pillar sustainability strategy is fairly straightforward in terms of the goals it sets out and its implementation, but every 50

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decision the company makes is thoroughly considered and well thought out. Threlkeld says it is therefore important to stay on top of what’s happening with regards sustainability and renewables more widely. “I think it’s very important to strategise,” he affirms. “As a person who has always been educated by what’s going on in the industry, I like to read a lot of different articles on what the industry is doing. I need to feel the pulse of some of these technological changes and how they have an impact on the broader efforts in electrification, whether it’s transportation or renewables. It’s really about gaining that knowledge and then being able to strategise

GM’S RENEWABLE GOALS… • ALL FACILITIES TO BE POWERED BY 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY • ALL FACILITIES TO BE 100% LANDFILL FREE • ACHIEVE 20% REDUCTION IN ENERGY INTENSITY BY 2020 • ACHIEVE 20% REDUCTION IN CARBON INTENSITY BY 2020 • ACHIEVE 15% REDUCTION IN WATER INTENSITY BY 2020

HOW ARE THE EFFORTS GOING? “I think it's progressing well,” answers Threlkeld. “I just recently signed two 100-megawatt wind power purchase agreements to supply 100% of our load for seven of our manufacturing facilities in Ohio and Indiana. Those two were some of our largest deals to date and will actually get us to 20% of our electricity being matched with renewable energy by the end of 2018.”

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y

around all the changes taking place.

Another change that Threlkeld has seen is a move away from simply considering the environmental, operational and potential PR consequences of any decisions regarding renewables, to a situation now where sustainability efforts are as much motivated by financial considerations as the other factors. “In every project we do, we look at it from the financial perspective and obviously pull all the additional intangible benefits, 52

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environmental attributes, the right things for the company to do in our efforts towards sustainability.

Everything we’re looking at is purely driven by the financials now.�

The renewables space, like any other, has its daily ups and downs as demand increases and decreases, despite the generally increasing need for it, and it works similarly on a month-to-month or year-toyear trend. Threlkeld feels that the process of learning when the peaks and troughs happen is an important

“I think battery storage is definitely going to be a disruptor in this space, as well as blockchain and artificial intelligence” – Rob Threlkeld, Global Manager of Renewables at GM

component of integrating the proper generation sources at the lowest cost possible. He is also aware that, when it comes to technology, it’s an ever-changing landscape, and is in no doubt as to where the next disruption may be coming from.

“I think battery storage is definitely going to be a disruptor in this space, as well as blockchain and artificial intelligence,” asserts Threlkeld. “How do you leverage all the technology and what is going on in the systems, whether it’s the grid or an individual

solar array or your home? How do those all integrate together to move the system in a much smarter way so it could deploy generation assets when needed as well as reducing generation assets when not needed, such as charging electric vehicles when the grid is actually requesting you to do so. With those questions in mind, I think artificial intelligence, blockchain, and those efforts are going to be key for us going forward to really leverage this technological transformation.”

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CITY FOCUS

A EUROPEAN TRANSPORT HUB, ZURICH OFFERS TOP QUALITY EDUCATION WHICH HAS INCUBATED AN IMPRESSIVE STARTUP CULTURE. WE TAKE A CLOSER LOOK Edited by OLIVIA MINNOCK

CITY FOCUS

S

ITUATED ON LAKE Zürich’s north-western tip is Zürich, the largest city in Switzerland.

With more than 400,000 residents, the city is also the capital of the Zürich region. The entire metro area of Zürich boasts a population of approximately 1.83mn residents.

LEADING INFRASTRUCTURE The city of Zürich is a hub for diverse modes of transportation including

quality rail, air traffic road infrastructure, which makes it easier to move people and goods to and from the city.

Zürich Airport is the largest and busiest in Switzerland. Located less than seven miles from Kloten railway station, the airport has its own underground railway station. This connects the airport and its passengers directly to Zürich as well as many of the country’s major cities.

More than 60 passenger airlines have

‘ ZÜRICH AIRPORT IS THE LARGEST AND BUSIEST IN SWITZERLAND’

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a presence at the Zürich airport. It is also a hub for Swiss International Air Lines and is served by one cargo airline.

A number of major roadways pass close to the city. The A1 serves St. Gallen, Geneva and Bern, the A3 connects with Schaffhausen to the north and Altdorf to the south. Here, it also connects with Chiasso via the A2.

Driving along the A3 connects residents to Lake Walen, Sargans and Basel.

Passenger numbers on the ZVV

(Zürcher Verkehrsverbund) public transportation network, Zürich’s mass transportation system, are among of the largest in the world. Local trains, trolley buses, trams, boats and a cable car are all modes of mass transit widely in use in Zürich. Zürich’s main railway station, the Zürich HB (Hauptbahnhof) is a vital railway hub in Europe and the country’s busiest. The number of daily commuters that pass through the station each day amounts to between 350,000

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Zürich Airport

and 500,000, a figure that is especially significant considering the city’s overall population. These passengers ride more than 2,900 trains each day.

SWITZERLAND’S LEADING ECONOMIC CENTRE According to the 2017 Global Financial Centres Index, Zürich was the world’s 11th most competitive financial centre and the second most competitive in Europe behind London. The Zürich metro area is the economic centre of Switzerland, with numerous international companies making their home there.

A significant driver of the city’s economy is the service sector which employs nearly four-fifths of Zürich’s workers.

Textiles, light industry, tourism and the machine industry are other areas of importance to note.

A HIGH QUALITY OF LIFE THE KEY TO ECONOMIC SUCCESS? Zürich is known for its high quality of life. In fact, consulting firm Mercer has consistently ranked the city as being the place with the highest quality of life of anywhere in the world. This has also been cited as a contributing factor in the city’s economic success. In 58

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addition to a distinct separation between recreational and urban areas – thanks to the insight of local planning agencies – Zürich also rates highly when it comes to safety, housing, work and leisure.

The city is the stage for significant investments in education which provide a skilled labour force. With two major universities located in Zürich – the University of Zürich and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH

Zürich train station

Zürich) – companies have access to technological research, as well as a skilled and highly educated workforce.

STARTUPS IN ZÜRICH Zürich’s high quality of life has proven vital in promoting innovation and startup activity. The city’s liveability thrives in a stable economy that was built on strong banks, and is now shored up by leading academics.

‘ THE ZÜRICH HB IS A VITAL RAILWAY HUB IN EUROPE AND THE COUNTRY’S BUSIEST. THE NUMBER OF DAILY COMMUTERS THAT PASS THROUGH THE STATION EACH DAY AMOUNTS TO BETWEEN 350,000 AND 500,000’ 59

CITY FOCUS

In fact, Zürich has recently become known as a place where tech meets innovation and has given rise to a number of successful startups, including:

KNIP | www.knip.ch Started in 2013, Knip is an app that enables users to keep track of their insurance policies, benefits and premiums while they’re on the go. Based in Zürich, with a presence in Belgrade, Serbia and Berlin, Germany, Knip has now grown to more than 100 employees.

It was acquired by Digital Insurance Group in 2017.

TrekkSoft are a tech startup that grew out of a Swiss mountain town

‘ZÜRICH HAS RECENTLY BECOME KNOWN AS A PLACE WHERE TECH MEETS INNOVATION AND HAS GIVEN RISE TO A NUMBER OF SUCCESSFUL STARTUPS’ 60

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TREKKSOFT | www.trekksoft.com Trekksoft helps tour and activity companies run their businesses more efficiently and effectively. Users can take advantage of tour management software, a robust set of promotional tools including integration with social media and an integrated payment gateway. People interested in services can book them and make payment through the app. As of 2016, the

Knip is an app that enables users to keep track of their insurance policies, benefits and premiums while they’re on the go

Uepaa’s safety app connects emergency services to thousands of people and even works in areas without cell phone reception

$3.5mn equity

As of 2016, Trekksoft had secured nearly $3.5mn in equity funding

100+ employees

Started in 2013, Knip has now grown to more than 100 employees

1.83mn residents Zurich’s metro area has 1.83mn residents

company had secured nearly $3.5mn in equity funding.

UEPAA! | www.uepaa.ch

and/or living in remote areas so they can quickly summon help from those nearby or from emergency services.

It’s now found throughout Europe and is also being licensed. The company has raised about $5mn in funding as of 2015 and employs about 20 people.

Uepaa! was launched by CEO Mathias Haussmann in 2011 after a ski trip. It’s designed for people who are traveling 61

T O P 10

Top 10 Most expensive restaurants in Europe One continent.

Five nations.

Ten restaurants.

But which is the costliest?

Written by Sam Musguin-Rowe

T O P 10 M IC H E L I N R AT I NG HH

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Dinner by Heston Blumenthal London

dinnerbyheston.co.uk The British gastronaut provides the UK’s sole offering to this list, with his salute to UK cuisine. The nine-course ‘Chef’s Table’ experience, replete with service from chef director, Ashley Palmer-Watts, costs £225 ($320), but includes such culinary delights as earl grey tea cured salmon, spit roast pineapple the aptly titled ‘meat fruit’ (mandarin and chicken liver parfait).

Bon appétit!

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09

Le Pré Catelan Paris

restaurant.leprecatelan.com Located in the heart of the famous Bois de Boulogne park, chef Frédéric Anton promises “one-of-a-kind gourmet cuisine” to savour. Among its exquisite ‘Le Menu Du Pré’ which, considering it looks like it has been sculpted by Michelangelo, isn’t that exorbitant at €280 ($350). Crab with French caviar, cod with seaweed, veal sweetbreads and, to finish, fig compote with praline and pecan cream.

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08

Pic Drôme

www.anne-sophie-pic.com Anne-Sophie Pic is one of only a handful of female chefs to run a Michelin three-star kitchen, and the ‘Essential Menu’ at her homely restaurant in France shows why. Haute staples like veal, john dory, blue lobster and oysters are followed by modern desserts – white millefeuille, fig, dill and honey biscuits, plus barley beer liquorice and pear. Yours, for just €330 ($410).

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M IC H E L I N R AT I NG HHH

07

Le Louis XV Monte Carlo

hoteldeparismontecarlo.com/restaurants-and-bars The first of three entries for revered restaurateur, Alain Ducasse, Le Louis XV has seen foodies flock to Monaco’s l’Hôtel de Paris for more than a quarter of a century. Although deservedly renowned for the rum baba, or garden vegetables with black truffle, the truly decadent (and, in Monte Carlo, decadence is essentially law) opt for the chef-picked ‘Gourmet Menu’, for €360 ($450).

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06

B. Violier – Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville, Crissier

restaurantcrissier.com A mouthful of a name, a $420 sensation of taste. Franck Giovanni and his 25-strong team of chefs have curated a majestic, 11-course tasting menu in this swanky restaurant that valiantly flies the flag for Switzerland. More than a fine dining experience, it is “a moment where luxury, magic and wellness come together”.

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05

Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée, Paris

alainducasse-plazaathenee.com ‘Jardin-Marin’ (which, if you take Google at its word, translates as ‘Garden Submarine’) is Alain Ducasse’s celebration of all things natural. The menu is ever-changing, although a strong focus on super-fresh, super-tasty sea produce – for the price of €390 ($485) – is all-but guaranteed. Staying over in the adjoining Plaza hotel is not required but, after all that grub, strongly advised.

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22ND OF MARCH 2018

KISTAMÄSSAN, STOCKHOLM

www.datainnovationsummit.com

M IC H E L I N R AT I NG HHH

04

Arpège Paris

www.alain-passard.com The top-ranking Parisian restaurant in the 2017 World’s 50 Best Restaurants rundown. Alain Passard is both chef and owner, and still runs the pass more than three decades since he opened Arpège’s doors (in 1986), proudly upholding the three Michelin star quality the establishment received 10 years later.

The ‘Terre & Mer’ (land and sea) tasting menu will set you back €420 ($525).

T O P 10 M IC H E L I N R AT I NG HHH

03

Guy Savoy Paris

www.guysavoy.com ‘Colours, Textures & Flavours’ is the remit for the €415 ($515) tasting menu in Guy Savoy’s eponymous, flagship bistro.

Across 12-courses, expect a concassé of oysters, green and blue lobster, caviar with smoked sabayon, sweet spiced duck and, of course, Savoy’s famous artichoke soup with black truffle, plus plenty more besides.

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KICKSTART EUROPE 2018 THE ANNUAL EUROPEAN STRATEGY AND NETWORKING SUMMIT Summit to provide connectivity, data center and cloud industry stakeholders with a platform to learn, connect and grow business in Europe

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T O P 10 M IC H E L I N R AT I NG HH

02

Le Meurice Alain Ducasse Paris

dorchestercollection.com/en/paris/le-meurice When the walls of the restaurant in which you are dining are lined with actual gold, you can safely assume the contents of your plate will be a) delicious and b) not for the faint of wallet. Alain Ducasse’s iconic eatery preaches his concept of ‘Essential Cuisine’, with the current €450 ($560) ‘Chef’s Table’ menu including such essential items as Jerusalem artichokes, Ikejime line-caught sea bass, and frosted grapefruit with Sansho berries and aloe vera.

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01

Sublimotion Ibiza

sublimotionibiza.com On the one hand, this three-hour, multisensory dining extravaganza – that comprises “the best Spanish avant-garde cuisine and the most surprising and magical show” – is extortionately priced at €1,650 ($2,050) per head. On the other, wine and champagne is included. Sat within Ibiza’s Hard Rock Hotel (yes, really), Michelin two-starred chef, Paco Roncero, showcases his 20-course ode to molecular gastronomy for a tiny cast of 12 diners each night.

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Digitising Europe’s drinks industry Written by Fran Roberts Produced by Andy Lloyd

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Selling more than 2bn unit cases every year – that’s 50bn servings – Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company is one of the world’s largest bottlers of The Coca-Cola Company’s brands. Alain Brouhard, Executive Committee Member & Group Chief Information Officer, explains how the business is embracing technology to drive further growth

“

It started in Nigeria. Then, it continued through Ireland. Then, because the family was of Greek origin, it went back to Greece where we created the bottling operation. We were soon able then to go much broader and to take over Central and Eastern Europe, all the way to Russia and the Baltics.” This is a potted 50-year history of CocaCola Hellenic Bottling Company (Coca-Cola HBC) as described by Alain Brouhard, Group CIO. Coca-Cola HBC is a bottling partner of The CocaCola Company. This means that The Coca-Cola Company manufactures and sells concentrates, bases and syrups to its bottling partners, owns the brands and is responsible for consumer brand marketing initiatives. Coca-Cola HBC uses the concentrates and syrups to manufacture, package,

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“We are one of the top three bottlers of Coca-Cola in the world, covering 28 countries” ALAIN BROUHARD, GROUP CIO

europe.businesschief.com

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ABOUT OTE OTE Group is the largest telecommunications provider in the Greek market, and, together with its subsidiaries, forms one of the leading telecom groups in South-eastern Europe. Offering a full range of telecommunications services - from fixed and mobile telephony, broadband services and pay TV, to highspeed data communications and ICT services - OTE Group is the largest investor in new technologies and infrastructure in Greece. With investments over â‚Ź2.4bn over the past six years OTE Group is will implement further investment for the period 2016-2019 in the range of â‚Ź1,3bn, primarily targeted at new generation networks.

In the field of System Integration, OTE Group has developed diverse capabilities and constitutes a leading partner of choice for businesses seeking innovative solutions in the fields of Data Centers, Cloud, Information Security, Networking, Big Data and Internet of Things technologies. Leveraging strategic partnerships with IT Market Leaders and due to its large IT & Network workforce, OTE Group has delivered large scale and complex ICT projects offering managed services to customers in Europe.

WE EMPOWER. YOU LEAD Focusing on continuously developing innovative solutions and building strategic partnerships with global IT leaders, OTE Group stands out to be a trusted technology partner for large business customers. By modernizing its IT infrastructure, as well as maintaining operational and people excellence, OTE Group delivers and supports sophisticated tailor-made projects.

The state-of-the-art services and solutions offered by OTE Group enable businesses dynamically to the new digital era and ensure their business continuity. The strategic partnership with Coca-Cola HBC acts as an accelerator of the company’s digital transformation journey through a robust technology strategy.

Coca-Cola HBC’s roadmap to the digital edge started with the implementation of a new Data Center, one of the 3 largest Data Centers in the EMEA region.

• Operational applications, such as ERP and CRM, and Databases were migrated within the set timeframes, with zero disruption to operations.

• The highly specialized personnel of OTE Group has been assigned to manage, operate and support data center facilities, systems and data network infrastructure on a 24 x 7 x 365 basis in 13 different time zones.

• The Tier 3 certified Data Center and its Disaster Recovery support the operation of 36,000 employees in 28 countries across the EMEA region.

www.cosmote.gr

The close collaboration between the two Groups and the disruptive approach has led to the realization of one of the largest SAP HANA installations in Europe.

• The Data Center infrastructure has been upgraded to accommodate the installation and operation of the SAP HANA environment.

• Being a pioneer in infrastructure and managed IT services, OTE Group undertook the operation, management as well as technical support of the SAP HANA environment.

• Adopting the latest technologies, Coca-Cola HBC has significantly optimized internal processes as well as ensured a faster and more flexible reporting model.

Expanding the partnership and its capabilities, OTE Group undertook and is implementing the IT Help Desk.

Looking at Coca-Cola HBC operations in a holistic manner, the purpose of OTE Group is to empower our customer’s vision to be the undisputed leading beverage company in every country where they do business.

CCHBC

merchandise and distribute the final branded products to its trade partners and consumers.

“We are one of the top three bottlers of Coca-Cola in the world, covering 28 countries,” Brouhard explains.

Coca-Cola HBC is now headquartered in Zug, Switzerland, and has a premium listing on the London Stock Exchange and a secondary listing on the Athens Exchange.

BECOMING A TOTAL BEVERAGE COMPANY

While the name Coca-Cola is synonymous with red packaging and a caffeinated fizzy drink, the company produces much more than this. “I believe one of the key characteristics of the business over the many years,

that’s specifically accelerating now, is becoming a total beverage company,” observes Brouhard, “meaning not only the Coca-Cola product, but expanding on the portfolio of what we call soft drinks, going much more into a broad portfolio, which includes products like water, juice, ready-todrink tea and energy drinks – all the way to premium spirits and coffee.”

Still drinks – water, juices and readyto-drink tea – make up to 31% of Coca-Cola HBC’s volume. This diverse portfolio means that the company is a strong partner for its customers and provides great choice for consumers.

In order to better serve its customers, Coca-Cola HBC has invested significantly in technology.

“We are deploying now an SAP

“I believe one of the business’s key characteristics over the many years - that’s specifically accelerating now is becoming a total beverage company” ALAIN BROUHARD, GROUP CIO

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Atos is a strategic partner for Coca-Cola HBC’s digital transformation, one of the world’s largest bottlers for The Coca-Cola System. The joint CCHBC & Atos achievement is a fantastic showcase of our digital journey.

From our Global Food & Beverage Delivery Center we are • gaining valuable consumer insights from connected coolers and other assets • accelerating time-to-market through a modern and fully managed SAP landscape • driving automation and efficiency on the shop floor

Stay cool and connec with Atos Atos is a global leader in digital transformation with approximately 100,000 employees in 72 countries and annual revenue of around € 12 billion.

cted

CCHBC

solution called SAP Hybris,” Brouhard advises. “Hybris is the B2B platform we are using to connect with our customers, to be connected 24/7 not with the consumer, but with the customer. A web customer portal, that’s what it is.”

CONNECTED COMMERCE

Of course, the end consumer has not been forgotten, and Coca-Cola HBC has also invested in technology to help it target this audience. “We have a suite of digital solutions that are

creating a connected commerce environment,” Brouhard comments.

“Most importantly, we are launching now across Hellenic an app aimed at teenagers. It is designed for us to be able to directly connect with the teenagers by having an app which is on their mobile phone – an app which is available on the App Store or the Google Store.”

The app, known as WOAH – Where Only Awesome Happens – is comprised of two key elements that help Coca-Cola HBC to connect with

TECHNOLOGY

its target audience. “It has an entertainment element, so a lot of content coming about the brand, concerts, new product launches and, as Coca-Cola is a sponsor of FIFA, anything that has to do with football,” Brouhard advises.

“All the things are content-driven, including sharing options.”

Running in parallel to the entertainment element is the activation element. “It’s basically our part to digitise promo activities. For example, e-coupons, push notifications,” Brouhard observes. “Using the app to connect us with the consumer enables us to find new ways of selling Coke and the rest of the portfolio.”

FULL HYDRATION

Coca-Cola HBC partners with several initiatives

The iconic red Coca-Cola coolers, found in stores worldwide, are also becoming part of the connected commerce environment. “Those Coca-Cola coolers are becoming smart. We are putting devices into the cooler, and the cooler is becoming active – active in a sense that we can measure performance of the cooler, door opening, temperature and energy consumption,” explains Brouhard.

“More importantly, the beacons sell to a consumer who has WOAH. If you are a teenager, you have downloaded WOAH, you pass by a store and you’re close to a cooler that is connected, the cooler sends a push notification saying, ‘Come here. If you buy one Coke, if you scan it, the second

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“We do have a large volume of valuable data coming from our big footprint, both our customers and consumers on a day-to-day basis, across the 28 countries where we operate” ALAIN BROUHARD, GROUP CIO 90

March 2018

TECHNOLOGY

Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company

Selling more than 2bn unit cases every year – that’s 50bn servings – Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (Coca-Cola HBC) is one of the world’s largest bottlers of The Coca-Cola Company’s brands Still drinks – water, juices, ready-todrink tea – make up to 31% of Coca-Cola HBC’s volume.

The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company and operates in more than 200 countries.

According to Statista, the soft drinks market in Europe is expected to grow annually by 1.6 % (CAGR 2018-2021).

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Coke is half-price.’ That’s the kind of activation that we have between the cooler and the WOAH app.”

The diverse portfolio offered by Coca-Cola HBC, and its work to become a total beverage company, further allows it to connect with consumers. “We are connecting with the consumer 24/7, from morning to night, including during the day with full hydration with water, with soft drinks with meals and so on – from morning with juice and coffee all the way to the night with premium spirits. Jack Daniels and Coke is a good example, as we are the distributor in some countries for Jack Daniels,” Brouhard enthuses.

SMART MANUFACTURING

The Coca-Cola Company is the world’s largest beverage company and operates in more than 200 countries.

Its brands include four of the world’s top five non-alcoholic sparkling drinks: Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola Light (Diet Coke), Sprite and Fanta.

As such, Coca-Cola HBC utilises numerous sales channels, including e-commerce. “We don’t do that

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ourselves. We do that with e-retailers, who already have websites, like Amazon, or the websites of brickand-mortar retailers, for example, Tesco Online,” Brouhard explains.

Coca-Cola’s embracing of technology and all things digital is not solely confined to commerce.

Operations at the company have also been enhanced. “We are creating a digital platform for endto-end integrated business planning.

Then there is smart manufacturing, which has to do mainly with RPA, robotic process automation, online sensors and automated production,” reveals Brouhard.

“Third is connected logistics.

Most of the time we outsource our logistics through 3PL partners, but we are connecting with them through digital platforms to know exactly where the product is. This is currently not live yet. Last, we have a shared service organisation, which is located in Sofia, servicing all the 28 countries for all the financial and HR transactional work. We are also working on exploring chatbot solutions for our shared services.”

TECHNOLOGY

Connected Coolers Pilot

29,494 The number of Coca-Cola HBC staff

Coca-Cola HBC opens its doors to visiting parties

CCHBC

PARTNERING PROWESS

In order to embrace digital so fully, Coca-Cola HBC has worked with a number of strategic partners.

“All our backend is on SAP, with one integrated infrastructure and one single integrated application.

All our ERP and CRM systems are on SAP across the 28 countries in an absolutely consistent way, all backed up by one single data centre, based in Athens, under the management of a company called OTE Group, which is a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom,” Brouhard advises. “That’s the very highlevel infrastructure. It’s not a cloud solution, it’s our own data centre, but managed by OTE Group.”

Naturally, with such a vast amount of data being managed within its systems, cybersecurity and data analytics are of critical importance to Coca-Cola

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1969 The year that Coca-Cola HBC was founded

TECHNOLOGY

HBC. “We are sitting on trillions of pieces of data because of our base in terms of number of consumers and number of customers, which is very big,” Brouhard explains. “We are the largest customer of SAP, in terms of the number of transaction endpoints, so you can imagine the size of our data centre. We are working hard to move from data to insights and we are developing commercial and supply chain use cases to transfer or translate that data into insights, which will drive the business faster and in a more efficient way.”

AN EMPOWERED WORKPLACE

On top of that, Coca-Cola HBC increasingly investing in and using cloud solutions, which are connected to the backend. “That’s the case for field sales automation, for HR management, and also for some solutions related to supply chain. We are creating strategic partnerships with big vendors, such as SAP, Microsoft, and OTE Group, member of Deutsche Telekom” states Brouhard. “We are strategically working with Google and Atos, the

French company, who is our exclusive outsourced IT Service company.”

Coca-Cola HBC has also formed a strategic partnership to create a people platform called Helo. “It is a solution that we have co-created with an external company called Cornerstone, which is a digital platform for learning, talent, and performance management,” Brouhard advises. This is part of the company’s aim of being an empowered workplace.

“We have a second key element in that empowered workplace – smart working,” Brouhard adds.

“Smart working is how technology can make the lives of our 29,494 employees easier, faster and more effective. That’s smart working.”

YOUTH EMPOWERED

It is not just Coca-Cola HBC’s employees who benefit from digital learning platforms – the company also gives back to society, helping to enrich the local community.

“We have a corporate community initiative, which we call Youth Empowered. Youth Empowered is our

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CCHBC

“We have huge growth potential, specifically in the developing and emerging markets, where beverage consumption per capita is relatively low” ALAIN BROUHARD, GROUP CIO

Coca-Cola HBC is a partner in the ‘Youth Empowered’

new centrally led, strategic initiative to help support 18-to-30-year-olds achieve their career ambitions and live a fuller life,” Brouhard advises.

“The programme targets those who are not in education, employment or training and seeks to address persistent underemployment issues in some of our markets. We aim to support young people’s needs in their transition from school to meaningful employment by helping them build fundamental life and

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business skills and long-lasting professional and peer networks.”

HUGE GROWTH POTENTIAL

According to Statista, the soft drinks market in Europe is expected to grow annually by 1.6 % (CAGR 20182021). With this in mind, what plans does Coca-Cola HBC have for the future? “It’s all about growth. The growth has two aspects. One is the portfolio and the second one has to do with the level of consumption.

We are quite fortunate to have a very balanced portfolio of countries and brands,” Brouhard acknowledges.

The 28 countries in which CocaCola HBC operates are split into three categories – established, developing and emerging. “For example, we have Italy, but we also have Poland and Nigeria. You understand immediately the differences between an established market like Italy, a developing market like Poland, and a really emerging market like Nigeria. What we know is

that we have huge growth potential, specifically in the developing and emerging markets, where beverage consumption per capita is relatively low,” Brouhard explains.

“Even with the same country portfolio that we have today, which is pretty big at 28 countries, we will be able to grow through the product portfolio expansion and new products, but also by increasing the consumption per capita.”

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Inside KPN’s journey to personalised connectivity KPN HAS SIMPLIFIED ITS SERVICE CAPABILITIES TO DELIVER A COMPLETE OMNICHANNEL EXPERIENCE FOR ITS CUSTOMERS. KPN’S IT LEADER, BOUKE HOVING EXPLAINS HOW

Written by Catherine Sturman Produced by Kiron Chavda

K

PN STANDS FOR connection. Its desire to connect its customers, engage stakeholders, and deliver a complete, omnichannel experience has seen it earn the title of the largest telecoms and IT service provider in the Netherlands.

The first telco to install 4G across the country, KPN seeks to deliver integrated, user-friendly products and services; from wireless telephony, internet, tv, mobile and fixed line, to end-to-end telecom and IT services.

However, its vision to not only overhaul, but enhance the customer experience has led it to reinvent its entire business model towards the customer journey.

Moving its consumer division from The Hague to Amsterdam has better placed the business for future growth. Housing both its commercial and its technology operations under one roof, KPN will increasingly attract talent from the competitive Dutch IT technology market, in addition to driving further international recruitment.

ADAPTABILITY Spanning up to five floors, it is clear to see that KPN continually looks to encourage innovation and creativity at every level, with ambitions to remain an essential leader within the telecommunications market.

Upon arrival, we are informed that it is undertaking its initiative, ‘Future Fit Friday’. With a keen awareness that technology will continue to be a key differentiator within its commercial propositions, every employee is asked to look at how they can keep up with new 100

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KPN was the first telecoms provider to install 4G across the Netherlands Partnering with Huwei and Cognizant has seen KPN become a major player in the telco sector

“ Whilst the lifetime of technology continues to shrink, the use of new digital tools, particularly within telecoms is becoming increasingly vital” – Bouke Hoving, Executive Vice President for Networks and IT, KPN

KPN has seen a steep increase in customer satisfaction, with 4.5 stars on Apple iOS

KPN has also partnered with Netflix to help jointly improve the customer experience

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Bouke Hoving (EVP Network & IT of KPN) & Steven Cai (CEO of Huawei Netherlands)

UNLOCKING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION The world as we know it has been transformed by cycles of technological innovation. In the 1950s, Schumpeter discussed creative destruction, where each revolutionary cycle destroys old structures from within in the process of creating those new models.

Progress does not wait for anyone or anything. Within the last decade, innovations such as mobile Internet, cloud computing, big data analytics have formed a new round of technological revolution. Today, we are truly in the age of Industry 4.0. Networks and AI technologies are reshaping our world – with the ability to simplify and enhance industry. If we unleash the potential of the technology at our fingertips, we can enter a world where computers and humans can cooperate with each other in real-time.

Digital transformation is a challenge and problem for every enterprise in the world. Take elevators as an example – in the past, there were only 12 sensors in one elevator. Now there can be more than 700 sensors in just one elevator. This finetuned technology has opened up a new world of remote diagnostics, usage understanding and minimal service disruption. Another example is the manufacturing industry, where technology has unlocked new levels of customer service, the individual needs of customers can be more easily understood which enables manufacturers to provide a quick response to customer enquiries.

Many companies are at the starting point for digital transformation, carefully considering their options to use digital features to develop new business models and create a road map for the future.

Huawei positioning in the digital process: enablers – “the Platform of Platforms, Foundation of Eco-system” Huawei aims to create an open, resilient, secure and reliable platform for ICT infrastructure. This will involve a cloud-based, managed and endto-end, all-stack ICT platform that provides onestop ICT services to customers and partners.

Together with its partners, Huawei will construct a multi-party synergistic digital transformation community for joint innovation and big ecology. Key components of this include

industry and business alliances, developer platforms and an open source community.

It is Huawei’s honor to participate in this huge transformation and work with leading companies to explore and launch joint innovation. Huawei is known for collaboration and tailored solutions, which is why 197 of the Fortune 500 companies have chosen Huawei as their transformation partner. Of those 197 companies, 45 are among the top 100.

In 2014, Huawei and KPN partnered to begin revamping KPN’s IT architecture to better support the company’s long-term business vision.

Huawei's innovative all-flash solution has helped the cloudification of KPN’s storage platform and provides enterprise customers with a highperformance and reliable customer experience.

Together with KPN, Huawei will build a highly stable, high-performance and highly scalable network architecture that can help to improve teaching quality and provide efficient, flexible and safe solutions for the education industry. In the digital city area, Huawei will build an open platform based on open source architecture, creates a new ecosystem of smart cities and jointly promote smart city construction.

In addition, a series of in-depth co-operations have also taken place in digital healthcare.

Huawei will work actively to embrace digital transformation in vertical industries such as education and government. Through the respective core technologies such as 5G, IoT and big data, Huawei has highlighted the advantages of both in the "Connect + Cloud Platform" and formed Cloud, Pipe, Device of the full-stack collaborative ICT platform and services. Meanwhile, Huawei will build a smart eco-system with local integrators, application developers, and many other partners. This eco-system will provide customers with a digital solution that is agile, reliable, secure, credible and sustainable.

Huawei will continue to help customers to build new business models and enhance competitiveness to meet the rapidly changing digital transformation needs, ultimately enabling customers to achieve business success.

technologies which will take KPN to the next level of connectivity.

“Whilst the lifetime of technology continues to shrink, the use of new digital tools, particularly within telecoms, is becoming increasingly vital,” explains KPN’s Executive Vice President for Networks and IT, Bouke Hoving.

“With Future Fit Friday, each and every one of us are now asking ourselves the question – what do we need to develop, what we need to learn and what we need to train in to keep fit for the future.”

The winner of last year’s CIO of the Year Award, Hoving’s leadership and drive to simplify KPN’s services has been essential to maintaining its strong position in the market. His expertise and passion to deliver connected services, specifically tailored towards KPN’s customer base, is not only palpable, but considerably engaging.

He explains that in order to remain adaptable in such a competitive market, KPN will seek to infuse a number of startup culture elements within its corporate culture to drive future innovation, develop new talent 104

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and deliver exceptional services to its customers.

“The pace of technological development is unprecedented, and therefore all our staff need to pay more attention to it,” he says.

“The fact that we operate in such a competitive market with, for example, four mobile operators, makes for a nice combination of fun, great technology and very fast developments. This combination makes KPN a very attractive and a fun place to work.

“We’re hiring more staff and retraining existing staff to really instil more of an engineering culture.

Engineering is becoming a more crucial part of our skills and over the last three years, we have hired 150 developers who have contributed to our whole transformation.”

CUSTOMER FOCUS Improving the customer experience whilst simultaneously reducing ongoing costs is an impressive feat for any business, and one in which Hoving expresses genuine pride.

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• Bouke Hoving won CIODAY CIO of the Year Award 2017 • K PN’s ‘Future Fit Friday’ explores how employees can keep up with the latest technological developments • Partnering with Huawei, Cognizant and Salesforce has enabled KPN to rebuild its IT infrastructure • Delivered over €500mn in savings through its simplification programme • K PN’s net promoter score has risen by 20 points in three years.

• Costs have come down across the board by €570mn • K PN has worked to decommission up to 25% of its IT services

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HELPING CUSTOMERS LEAD WITH DIGITAL

BUSINESS PROCES TRANSFORMATION AGILE & DEVOPS TRANSFORMATION LEGACY MODERNISATION IOT, M2M & SECURITY ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION COST OPTIMISATION

TRANSFORMING TIER 1 COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE PROVIDERS ACROSS EUROPE TO DIGITAL SERVICE PROVIDERS...

DATA ANALYTICS & AI DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TIME TO MARKET SOFTWARE DEFINED NETWORKING CLOUDIFICATION COGNITIVE SOLUTIONS

ways of working and a low financial performance set KPN on its remarkable simplification journey back in 2013, but this has not been without its challenges.

Utilising The Business Process Framework (eTOM) and partnering with telecommunications giant Cognizant, KPN strenuously worked to rebuild its entire IT infrastructure to move from its product-led operations to one which is increasingly consumer led.

“Cognizant has been instrumental

in modernising our back-end systems.

Firstly, by supporting the digital transformation of B2B, as well as in B2C, driving down costs. Secondly, the way they have made us increasingly agile has been essential in improving our time to market,” explains Hoving.

“By decoupling our front-end systems from the back-end systems, one team could focus purely on optimising the customer experience and rebuild it from scratch, whilst the other could

“ With product simplification, we’ve taken 80% of the products out, harmonising all our processes across products” – Bouke Hoving, Executive Vice President for Networks and IT, KPN

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focus on the modernisation and consolidation of the back-end,” he adds.

KPN’s partnership with Salesforce has further complemented the company’s aim to redesign the customer experience, where its technologies will support KPN’s SME customers, enabling future scalability for those who utilise its services.

“Salesforce has provided strong, standardised capabilities in delivering

a seamless customer experience across our different channels and products, bringing telecommunications and IT products together into a seamless customer experience,” reflects Hoving.

“What we did with home developers in the consumer market, we did on our satellite package with Salesforce in the B2B market. We have also benefited

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CONNECT TO YOUR CUSTOMERS IN A WHOLE NEW WAY WITH

T HE WO R L D ’S N Nºº 1 C R M

Find out more at salesforce.com/nl

KPN CHOOSES ONE TECHNOLOGY FOR ALL CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS This is the Industrial Revolution 4.0 where technologies like AI, social and mobile put customers in the driver's seat. Used to apps that personalise and simplify every interaction, customers expect more in their private lives and in business. KPN acknowledges that the key to winning the loyalty of its business customers and differentiating itself is exceeding these expectations by transforming customer experience.

KPN chose to partner with Salesforce for such a transformation.

One system of engagement Over years, KPN's legacy technologies had slowed it ability to innovate and transform fast enough to keep up with changing customer demands.

Also, a matrix of technologies created silos which prevented its employees from having a single view of the customer, necessary for knowing customers better and personalizing every interaction. KPN chose Salesforce because of its position as the #1 cloud Customer Relationship Management platform that would provide every employee with a complete view of the customer and innovate quickly around the customer experience. That both KPN and Salesforce have a common vision that puts the customer at the center of everything they do was an equally important factor.

KPN started using Salesforce to transform interaction with business customers of the newly launched KPN ÉÉN service package. With one system of engagement for key business processes

like Order Capturing, Opportunity Management and Case Management, every KPN sales and service employee has a real-time and complete view of every customer. This empowers them to know customers better than ever, personalise every customer interaction and deliver lightingfast service. KPN will extend the success of transforming the KPN ÉÉN service package experience all new and legacy products, phasing out the supporting technologies too.

Human factor Deploying the right technology is only one aspect of KPN's journey in transforming the customer experience. KPN understands that its people must fully embrace these technologies to maximise results as well as job satisfaction. Salesforce partners with KPN to guide employees through technological and business aspects, and facilitate knowledge sharing among employees. And with artificial intelligence (AI) integrated into the Salesforce platform, KPN employees have access to intelligence that will arm them with all the insight they need to understand and solve customer problems proactively and be more productive than ever.

Ultimately, it is the human factor that will help KPN respond even faster to changes in the market. After all, technology serves people, not the other way around. With Salesforce's focus on technology as well as empowering people, it is a win-win for KPN.

“ If we had to combine two product types, where one had a generous bundle and one a tighter bundle, we’ve always given the more generous bundle” – Bouke Hoving, Executive Vice President for Networks and IT, KPN

from Salesforce’s high level of standardisation and expertise across many industries.”

Delivering over more than €500mn in savings through its simplification programme, KPN’s net promoter score has also risen significantly by 20 points in three years. It has also witnessed the stabilisation and growth of its market shares.

“Costs have come down across the board by €570mn,” notes Hoving. “We have also worked to decommission 114

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up to 25% of our IT services since the start of the programme.”

MOBILE GROWTH With such increased demand for connectivity, mobile data was always going to be a significant area of focus for KPN. “In Western Europe, the markets are under pressure because of Over The Top substitution and commoditisation. We still see a massive growth of mobile data traffic; also, the

demand for cloud services is growing, but the question is how to capture that growth,” says Hoving.

“The growth of demand for converged quadplay has enabled us to serve the market significantly better from a competitive perspective.”

However, four different mobile MyKPN selfcare applications for KPN’s individual quadplay products with separate IT infrastructures not only created a number of silos within its operations, but also greatly

affected customers.

“Customers had difficulties logging in and were mixing up their fixed username with their mobile password or vice versa,” Hoving explains. “We completely redesigned these products from a customer perspective. All our customers were automatically calling our call centres as the apps were previously not user-friendly.”

By consolidating its services and rebuilding its IT infrastructure, KPN has integrated its services and enhanced its core selfcare application, MyKPN, to house all essential digital services.

From managing subscriptions to its invoicing capabilities, the application can be accessed through a number of solutions, from face ID and touch ID to the use of traditional lock systems.

Simplifying and enhancing its mobile services has also provided customers with the ability to share part of their mobile bundle with family members, therefore attracting an increasingly important market.

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“ We have deployed a complete state-of-the-art BSS suite with Huawei, where we have modernised our product catalogue and order capturing capabilities” – Bouke Hoving, Executive Vice President for Networks and IT, KPN

centres have also dropped by a factor of two,” says Hoving.

“Joint assignments with commercial colleagues in the organisation is therefore a big part of our success. With product simplification, we’ve taken 80% of the products out, harmonising all our processes across products.

“We’ve done this together with our commercial colleagues and this would not have been possible without their support. And on the external side, 116

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we’ve always taken the principal that any simplification should be beneficial for customers.

“If we had to combine two product types, where one had a generous bundle and one a tighter bundle, we’ve always given the more generous bundle.

“We’ve seen a steep increase in customer satisfaction. We are now ranked 4.5 stars on Apple iOS, whereas it used to be almost two stars less two years ago,” he continues.

“There has been tremendous change within all our IT processes, where we have designed the customer journey from a digital perspective. We are leading the way in how we set up the customer experience. Whereas we used to build our IT around individual products, we now build it around the customer experience.”

INTERNATIONAL PRESENCE Simplifying and integrating its products

has further enabled KPN to reduce its time to market from months to weeks, or from weeks to days. Nonetheless, throughout its transformation, the business has sought to drive long-term growth by building strong relationships both with its partners and stakeholders.

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in both the B2B and B2C market, Hoving states. “We have deployed a complete state-of-the-art BSS suite with Huawei, where we have worked to modernise our product catalogue, billing and order capturing capabilities. On that basis, we can now provide a much better customer experience and get

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products quickly into the market. “This has been a very important cornerstone of the whole transformation.

Starting with the consumer, but ultimately taking all of our B2B customers onto that new IT suite.�

The collaboration has also led KPN to expand its footprint and partner with international companies, such as

Chinese conglomerate Tencent. Since last year, the company has offered essential WeChat branded SIM cards to Chinese tourists travelling across the EU and Australia. It has also offered its 4G services to users who wish to maintain access to Tencent’s WeChat Go service throughout their travels.

“We were competing against big

European telcos which could offer further network capabilities,” comments Hoving.

“However, we had superior digital and IT capabilities, with a reduced time to market. We were the only provider who could meet the challenging requirements of Tencent. Modern IT has not only helped us create a better

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customer experience, but also helped us improve our time to market.”

INFLUENTIAL TECHNOLOGIES Whilst Hoving is most proud of KPN’s breakthrough in transforming the customer experience, he stresses that this has been a company wide effort, both within its B2B and B2C operations. It’s aim to launch an API Store will further enable the business to partner with Dutch B2B customers and develop relative applications on the basis of connectivity, whilst remaining aware of how new technologies will reshape the telecommunications industry.

“The next phase is about transforming the network,” adds Hoving. “I think it’s a very important part of the future operating model of telcos, where we have unique assets in the edge of our network. We believe there to be huge potential in edge computing, particularly for our B2B customers. We believe there’s unique value to be captured in the tech industry with mobile edge and also fixed edge.

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“We are currently deploying a completely virtualised content delivery network, and it has already been decentralised. We have a lot of caches which we have decentralised to our main locations at the edge, but still in the core of our network. This really helps with enhancing the customer experience of our television product.

“We’re also partnering with companies such as Netflix to help jointly improve the customer experience.

Customer demand is increasingly becoming more converged. We now also see demand for a combination of telco and ICT propositions in B2B. “In the future, we’ll see an increased demand for converged customer demands, packaging telco with IT. This will make the industry even more attractive.

“There are tremendous cross company opportunities to be captured, which will enable us to take the customer experience to the next phase,” Hoving concludes.

Bouke Hoving is the Executive Vice President Networks & IT at KPN, the leading telecommunications and ICT service provider in the Netherlands.

He is responsible for delivering and operating KPN’s networks, platforms and IT systems.

Prior to his current position he was KPN’s Chief Information Officer and responsible for KPN’s business transformation program called Simplification – aimed at a radical simplification of products, processes, IT and way of working. Under his leadership the program was of instrumental contribution to the step change in customer satisfaction and digital customer interaction and delivered more than euro 500mn savings since start early 2014.

Previously, Hoving undertook a number of national and international product management, business development and procurement functions with KPN and KPNQwest. He holds a Double Honours degree in Applied Physics and Business Economics from the University of Groningen. Born in 1975 in the Netherlands, Hoving is married with two children. He enjoys travelling, reading and skiing. europe.businesschief.com

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TalkTalk’s digital transformation with Tech Mahindra TalkTalk called upon Tech Mahindra to navigate a major technology overhaul, and has made profound progress to date Written by DALE BENTON Produced by KIRON CHAVDA

I

N OCTOBER 2015, TalkTalk, telecoms provider to more than 4mn customers across the UK, was the victim of a cyberattack.

As a company that prides itself on its customer relationships in order to provide the best service possible, it took the decision to completely reassess its technology operations and undergo a major transformation.

Overseeing this transformation is Technology Director Philip Clayson, who was given a very clear message.

“I was told one thing – find out what happened and fix it,” says Clayson.

“As we unpicked what had happened, a task that took us many months and included some of the brightest people,

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both internally and from our supplier teams, we soon discovered that there was a combination of things we needed to fix.”

Operating for more than 15 years, TalkTalk has grown via acquisition, and is an aggregation or a portfolio of a number of companies that have come before it.

This, Clayson says has created significant “tech debt” and that was part of the challenge TalkTalk faced.

“The technology we used was siloed, fairly segmented and not well integrated,” he says. There were multiple generations of technology that we had acquired in our 15 years of operating.”

Tasked with finding out how the cyberattack happened, why it happened and more importantly, how not to let it happen again, Clayson embarked on a significant journey of understanding.

“We were trying to address 15 years of our history, remove our legacy and write the next chapter in a matter of months – a monumental task,” says Clayson.

The first step that TalkTalk took was to enlist the help of key partners, including Tech Mahindra, a company

After a cyberattack in 2015, TalkTalk took the decision to completely reassess its technology operations and undergo a major transformation with which it already had a longstanding relationship. Tech Mahindra was a key part of TalkTalk’s OSS code development team and the longevity of the relationship and the tacit knowledge helped the company to address the necessary re-platforming and replacement of old technology.

“Tech Mahindra has had a long standing strategic relationship with TalkTalk for almost a decade. We have been a value service provider to them which is aligned with their own motto of being an affordable and reliable

supplier to their customers,” says Ashish Pandey, VP & Client Executive, Tech Mahindra.

“Tech debt is one such important and high impact area where we have worked with TalkTalk, from the initial inception of the idea to model how can we help them rationalise and optimise their legacy estate so they could move towards more recent technology approaches.”

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“ Tech Mahindra has been in the trenches with us for the last two years. They would question us to look at what we do, how we do it, and most importantly why we do it. They unlocked new ways of thinking” – Philip Clayson, Technology Director, TalkTalk

comes a challenge that does not centre around technology alone. This is also a challenge of people and process.

As an organisation, one that has been operating for more than 15 years, TalkTalk’s fast-paced culture has delivered continued success through specific technology processes.

“My team are all highly capable committed engineers, but at the start it proved to be difficult to change the catalyst to enable them to break free from the historic culture that the business had built around them,” says Clayson.

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that Tech Mahindra played in enabling more transformation, by bringing in fresh thinking. Tech Mahindra did what Clayson believes is crucial to any multiparty collaborative transformation.

“Tech Mahindra has been in the trenches with us for the last two years,” he says. “They would question what we do, how we do it, and most importantly why we do it. They unlocked new ways of thinking, and provided us with valuable access to their other clients across Europe, and in so doing helped us learn from others.”

“In one specific example of our partnership, Tech Mahindra introduced us to a European Telco operator, where we two days of solid meetings, the result of which was we changed our strategy, shortened our transformation programme by at least one year and made financial savings.

That is true partnership behaviour,” Clayson adds.

It’s an approach that has continued to prove instrumental. This is part of Tech Mahindra’s approach to its relationship with TalkTalk, to not only support and guide the company through a challenging period and transformation,

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ÂŁ1.5bn Approximate revenue

2002

Year founded

1,800

Approximate number of employees

Philip Clayson, Technology Director, TalkTalk 128

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“ M y wish and my expectation is that Tech Mahindra will help us unlock benefits far quicker than we could do on our own. They know how we work culturally and operationally, and as a result, it’s much more fluid.”

but to work collaboratively and unlock future potential.

“Tech Mahindra has a policy to source and select the best enterprise leads to support its clients, and uses this skill and expertise to listen, shape, engage, challenge and question work and how best to address the stated business goals,” says Pandey.

“Whether it’s bringing the expertise from the industry’s best or showcasing – Philip Clayson, Technology Director, TalkTalk thought leadership by conducting analyst sessions with TalkTalk leadership, TechM has always took a consulting led collaborative approach out already, a huge achievement, whilst supporting opportunities for new especially as it is so soon after we business and growth of the account started this programme,” says Clayson. overall for delivery and fulfilment of “The target that I set across the entire agreed project work.” project was to reduce those 600 Through the last 18 months, Clayson applications by half by March 2018. was able to identify and set himself a And I can proudly say we are in the target of removing that tech debt. This final throws of achieving that.” involved in excess of 600 pieces of This of course was not without software, which Clayson has already challenge. Clayson points to the been able to significantly reduce to “tangled complexity” of technology 400 pieces in just the first 18 months that the company has amassed over of the programme.

15 years of operation and the difficulty This is no small feat to accomplish in trying to “fix” it without causing in such a short space of time. downtime to services.

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#UNLOCKEXPERIENCES FOR A CONNECTED FUTURE

FUTURISE WITH TECH MAHINDRA Tech Mahindra represents the connected world, offering innovative and customer-centric information technology experiences, enabling Enterprises, Associates and the Society to Rise™. We are a USD 4.7 billion company with 115,200+ professionals across 90 countries, helping over 903 global customers including Fortune 500 companies. Our convergent, digital, design experiences, innovation platforms and reusable assets connect across a number of technologies to deliver tangible business value and experiences to our stakeholders. Tech Mahindra is amongst the Fab 50 companies in Asia.

#UNLOCKEDEXPERIENCES FOR A CONNECTED FUTURE ANTHEM

By combining the expertise of Digital Change Agents – The BIO Agency and Legendary Design Firm – Pininfarina, we are transforming customer journeys across the digital, physical and convergent worlds.

To realize the potential of a connected future, we need to create extraordinary digital, physical and convergent experiences.

But for this to happen, ecosystems must be integrated.

Networks must be intuitive.

Applications must be built at the pace they are imagined.

Objects must have the power to converse.

Experiences must bridge worlds.

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Mahindra both locally in the UK and internationally in order to work through this technology and, ultimately, replace or switch off technology.

Clayson admits that in a transformation, there is a desire to move as quickly as possible, but that comes at the expense of effectiveness.

“You can’t just go in and switch off or remove technology in any order or as you like,” he says. “You have to have a proper migration plan in place and Tech Mahindra really

assisted us on this and really helped us get to where we are.”

“The next 12 months will be a more of the same, but it’s going to be much harder,” he says. “It will be more difficult to unpick the tech debt and to upgrade.

The easy part of the work is done.

“To get to where we are, a 50% reduction in tech debt in 18 months, has made a massive difference. But to continue at that pace will be harder in the year ahead.”

For Tech Mahindra, the relationship

“ We have been a value service provider to TalkTalk aligned with TalkTalk’s motto of being an affordable and reliable supplier to their customers” – Ashish Pandey, VP & Client Executive, Tech Mahindra

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with TalkTalk exceeds the simple concept of a partnership, as the company values the work it has done in order to enable TalkTalk to become a more effective and efficient organisation.

“By helping TalkTalk throughout this digital transformation journey we continue to look to help it assess and consider its internal business practices and operating models,” says Panday.

“We look to help the company achieve lasting improvement for all its diverse customer types, to effect significant

improvements in security, reliability and customer service experience.”

As the company continues along this journey, Clayson hopes that Tech Mahindra will continue to support it every step of the way.

“My wish and my expectation is that Tech Mahindra will help us unlock benefits far quicker than we could do on our own,” he says.

“They know how we work culturally and operationally, and as a result, it’s much more fluid.”

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JTI: Investing in people, investing in technology Japan Tobacco International looks to expand into the Middle East and Africa region, successfully bringing its global best practices and service offering through an investment in people Written by Dale Benton Produced by Andy Lloyd

JTI

JTI

(JAPAN TOBACCO INTERNATIONAL) is a member of the Japan Tobacco Group of Companies, and a leading multi-national tobacco company with a foothold in more than 120 countries, spreading across 399 offices, 25 factories and five tobacco-processing facilities. JTI continues to grow and to capture the global market to this day.

Since its formation back in 1999, following the acquisition of the US operations of R.J Reynolds, the company has continued to grow and “nurture” its internationally recognised brand roster, while being a major player in next generation products and new ways of doing business.

As the company continues this growth, it does so in part through strategic acquisitions of local companies within emerging markets. This is where Ozkan Donmez, Regional IT Director for Middle East, Near East, Africa and Turkey (MENEAT) and WorldWide Duty Operations, comes into play.

For Donmez, there is a crucial element of this growth journey that he is keen to focus on, the people.

“As of today, the region owns around 3.000 HP computers, more than 100 HP servers hosted on our data centers (as many on cloud, as well), running key business solutions supporting our business growth.

But, though my role is delivering technology for the business, I always consider people as the most crucial component, arguably as crucial as technology in general,” he says.

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TECHNOLOGY

Izmir Torbali Factory, Turkey

Tobacco production, Malawi

398.5 billion

JTI cigarettes sold globally in 2017 Cigarette production

120+ 40,000

Number of countries where JTI products are distributed

Approximate number of employees worldwide

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TECHNOLOGY

primarily in countries such as Turkey, Iran, Jordan, Tanzania and South Africa. This is further evident following acquisitions in Sudan, Egypt and Ethiopia, and the establishment of “Leaf” subsidiaries, including Malawi Leaf, Zambia Leaf and Tanzania Leaf.

Through these initiatives, Donmez has recognised the importance of establishing a talented IT team in order to deploy JTI global technologies and processes.

“We have to start with the change of mind-set as well as understand the core technology and capabilities in the local company,” he says.

“As we acquire these companies and establish our foothold, JTI works with the people on the ground to develop their capabilities and bring them to the required level to deliver to JTI’s global standards.”

When JTI acquires a new company, it brings with it high level team leaders, operational leaders and international employees that have worked with the company globally to “spread the JTI culture”.

From an IT perspective, this brings with it its own unique challenges.

“ Though my role is delivering technology for the business, I always consider people as the most crucial component, arguably as crucial as technology in general” – Ozkan Donmez, Regional IT Director

“IT in most local companies is often an afterthought, where there is no real one or two people responsible for the IT function,” says Donmez.

“What we do is we set up an IT technical project team in the first instance and running parallel alongside that is our HR team, where we work around the clock to find the best talent from the region.”

In this regard, the competency is one part, but for Donmez it’s of equal importance that the people JTI recruits and brings into the company have the right attitude – an attitude that is shared across JTI’s entire global footprint.

This is where Donmez is hugely confident on JTI’s synergy, communication, sharing successes europe.businesschief.com

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and, more importantly, failures, in order to improve.

When building, growing and cementing any IT function, it is important to hit the ground running as fast as possible and this is something that Donmez actually considers a key success for JTI – its approach to finding the right people, with the right attitude and developing their capabilities.

“As long as the team is good enough in its attitude and it is open to learning and to communicating and working together as one, we feel comfortable 140

March 2018

enough. Then it’s a matter of time to induct the JTI IT mind-set, our process and our way of working and then how to apply that to the projects we are working on,” he says.

Once the people component is under control, Donmez is more confident on delivering global and standard technologies, for which he adheres to global pillars that JTI lives and breathes by.

“JTI’s ‘in-source knowledge’ approach is immeasurable comfort for me such that our global IT Business Technology

TECHNOLOGY

Services pillars – having deep business knowhow in all functional areas – and our global technical guru pillars in the IT kitchen, with all kinds of technology knowledge, are always providing endless support to modernise our operations in these new vicinities,” he says.

“So, to that end, the communication, the integration, the leadership and the project management is so important.”

But of course, as the company enters new markets, new geographies which bring with them new and perhaps

limited capabilities from a technology standpoint, it tailors its approach to fit.

“Working over the years across so many geographies and locations, we have been able to stage our approach to different countries,” says Donmez.

“We have interim solutions and can offer different models to approach the different markets. Through these different solutions/models, we are still able to instrument global processes and support the business growth, ultimately reaching to JTI global technology standards for those JTI IT europe.businesschief.com

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works with key partners worldwide.”

At JTI, one integrated global network, managed by two international partners – Orange Business Services (OBS) and British Telecom (BT) – guarantees seamless connectivity for all users.

HP is a key partner providing client and backend data centre hardware systems across all corners of the globe.

This ensures to streamline JTI’s technical operations (with fixed pricing, standard delivery/service conditions and JTI marked pre-images) and reduce total cost of ownership of IT operations.

“This global standard and integrated approach ensures significant workplace effectiveness in that, any JTI user can connect and work from anywhere in the world,” he says.

“They can also access JTI’s core business systems, like ERP – SAP technology, CRM applications and our Oracle based sales and analytics systems.”

In the world of technology and innovation, where technology is evolving faster and faster, it is important to stay on top of trends and keep up with this pace of change. This unified 142

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“ This strategy actually warrants us to follow and deploy the latest trends and enables us to do this far easier than if we acted alone” – Ozkan Donmez, Regional IT Director

TECHNOLOGY

Hung for several weeks in well ventilated barns, air-cured tobacco is low in sugar with a generally light and sweet flavour

Kaoma offices reforestation, Zambia

approach not only enables this, but encourages it also.

“In the end, JTI’s business model is simple all over the world – produce high quality products in a cost-effective way and sell. This strategy actually warrants us to follow and deploy the latest trends like movement to the cloud (MS Azure), mobility solutions, big data and analytics, use of Internet of Things (IoT) on production machines and new e-commerce channels,” says Donmez.

At this point, CIO of JT International, Diego De Coen, complements Donmez and shares his view about JTI’s technology strategy and people.

“One of the basics of my IT strategy is to insource knowledge and outsource commodity,” he says. “Over the years, we have really focused on that.

“When you enter a new market, it is only investment, there is no return – you do not make money on day one. But thanks to our CRM and ERP solutions, which we’ve created lighter versions of, we have a toolset that we can use immediately in new markets and start doing business at a very low cost.

“Then, we bring in our partners. europe.businesschief.com

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“ With our speed, with our readiness, with our standard solutions for different areas, we are able to start operations as quickly as possible, and that is everything for JTI” – Ozkan Donmez, Regional IT Director

JTI headquarters, Geneva Weybridge UK office

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TECHNOLOGY

JTI’s insistence on the best adoption of technology and its passion for people has cemented its relevance within a traditional industry, and will enable its already significant footprint to grow and grow.”

As JTI continues to grow, Donmez believes that growth is not simply increasing market share.

“The word growth has many different meanings to our business. Of course, we want to grow our sales volumes and market share,” he says.

“Nevertheless, there is also underlying growth that supports this – investment in technology and expanding our team through recruitment and retention.”

For the future, JTI maintains its objective of expanding its geographic footprint, notably in emerging markets.

Donmez will continue to support this growth and work with JTI to be able to deliver a flexible, efficient IT function that will enable it to deliver its global service offering into these new regions. But underlying this expansion is the investment in technology and more importantly, the people.

“Whenever we are in a new geography, the work we are doing, the people

space and the technology space is crucial,” says Donmez. “With our speed, with our readiness, with our standard solutions for different areas, we are able to start operations as quickly as possible, and that is everything for JTI.”

Ozkan Donmez, Regional IT Director – MENEAT & WWDF

Having accomplished several key IT assignments at JTI Turkey, Ozkan Donmez has for the past nine years been responsible for the IT operations of the MENEAT region and Worldwide Duty Free – totaling over 15 years at JTI. Previously, he worked in mining, textile, and the telecommunication sectors – accumulating over 23 years of IT experience along the way.

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Nokia’s ‘conscious’ factory of the futur

Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Charlotte Clarke

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Unveiling its groundbreaking ‘conscious factory,’ telecoms giant Nokia is truly ready for the fast-changing manufacturing needs of the future

S

everal years ago, Nokia set itself an ambitious objective: to envision and create the ‘factory of the future’. Fastforward to today and the telecoms giant has made this distant future a reality with its state-of-the-art concept – ‘the conscious factory’.

With every industrial revolution, factories have evolved to create something unlike anything that has come before. Now, in the midst of Industry 4.0, analytics, robotics, and 3D printing are just some of the emerging trends that are redefining the manufacturing space at large.

By harnessing the potential of these technological trends, Nokia’s

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NOKIA

“It’s a complete game changer” Johannes Giloth (left), Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

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Conscious Supply Network is ushering in a new era of supply chain transformation and battening down the hatches for Supply Chain 4.0.

Nokia’s vision was a simple one: to transform its factories into ‘the conscious factory’ – an agile and intelligent manufacturing service that is fully-automated, green, self-learning, and able to predict and prevent supply flexibly.

To make this hi-tech network a reality, the Finnish giant zeroed in on four crucial areas: digitisation, analytics, robotics and transparency. It leveraged tools such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA) as well as augmented and virtual reality. In doing so it has created an endto-end supply chain solution that is more visible, adaptable, and smarter than anything before.

A conscious supply network It has been a mammoth task for Nokia, but it is one which the team believes will revolutionise manufacturing forever.

“In former times, if you outsourced a factory it was like a black box,” explains Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia. “You placed an order there and waited until the delivery arrived but, in between, you couldn’t see anything. With our conscious factory, I can see in real-time

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Arttu Ollinaho, Global Key Account

and Chief Operating Officer: “With

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market requirements and to speed up new technology developments.”

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planning and supply tooling will enable Ampleon to become even more flexible with the aim to further grow our business with our key customers. Ampleon has embraced “Partnering for Success” as one of the key business drivers towards future growth. Together with our customers, suppliers and R&D partners, and with a next step in supply chain excellence and system support, we are well on our way.

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NOKIA

what happens in each factory and I can optimise the process.

“It’s a complete game changer.”

With over 30 factories worldwide, Nokia’s supply chain is a far-reaching one spanning several continents.

However, the Finnish company only owns three of these factories with the rest being outsourced. Instead of focusing on owning bricks-andmortar, Nokia is concentrating on owning the information, the data, and knowledge behind it. By understanding how the industry is connected together, the

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organisation is creating a conscious supply network, an end-to-end ecosystem built on end-to-end understanding and knowledge.

“Only three of our factories are owned by Nokia because we have not been focusing on manufacturing, we have been focusing on managing a manufacturing network,” observes Giloth. “I only can manage this network if I have data. I don’t care about owning the equipment, but I care about owning the data.

“We are putting thousands of sensors in our factories and

S U P P LY C H A I N

Nokia has more than 30 factories around the world

connecting all our manufacturing and logistics assets together so that they can talk to each other,” he continues.

“With that, we are creating what we call a ‘conscious factory’, where all transactions are visible in real-time in a controlled centre. With that, you can optimise throughput, inventories, quality, and you can apply machine learning to it. It helps you automate the entire process, it helps you ensure quality, it helps you to reduce cost in inventories, and it helps you be more flexible in adapting your supply chain. But having one conscious

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The company also has numerous regional support and service centers in order to keep the systems at the peak of performance in actual use, even long after the purchase by update and upgrade offers.

micro-computed tomography. The offer also includes solutions for conformal coatings and wire bond inspection. Thus, all inspection gates are covered by a single source.

The portfolio comprises automatic optical inspection, solder paste inspection as well as automatic and manual X-ray systems with

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Suppliers to the automotive industry make up the largest customer group. Viscom also has well-known purchasers in other industrial branches such as consumer electronics, aviation and aerospace, medical technology and industrial electronics.

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factory is just the start of it. We want to create an entire network.”

Presenting the ‘factory in a box’ This is just the beginning of Nokia’s vision for the future; it is also resigning the idea of large manufacturing locations to the past. Unveiling its ‘factory in a box’, Nokia is anticipating the fastchanging manufacturing needs of the future, by creating a conscious ‘Lego’ building block factory.

Offering unparalleled flexibility and agility, this factory in a box aims to revolutionise today’s factory floor. It can be transported to the location, build the necessary volume for ‘country of origin’ requirements and can be moved again as needed.

Agility is a factor which can make or break a company, especially in the telecoms industry, and so the factory in a box could be instrumental as it allows product prototypes to be quickly created, tested and fixed if necessary. What’s more, if a site is hit by a natural disaster, critical customer orders can still be achieved

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“Having one conscious factory is just the start of it. We want to create an entire network” Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

quickly with a portable factory.

“It is a step towards a modular supply chain factory,” says Giloth. “A big problem in the manufacturing space is that R&D and manufacturing should be close together because then you have an immediate feedback loop.

“Every time I have a factory request, whether it’s in Nigeria or elsewhere, I cannot create a factory there and demolish it after a year.

With the factory in a box, you can ship that modular container there, produce

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The future of intelligent productivity MY700 - The ultimate in high-speed jet printing and jet dispensing The future of electronics production belongs to those who can handle any solder paste or fluid deposit with absolute precision and unmatched speed. Part of the new MYPro series, the MY700 Jet Printer and Jet Dispenser combines solder paste jet printing with jet dispensing of adhesives, UV materials, epoxies and more – with micrometer precision and at speeds of more than one million dots per hour. Thanks to a combination of intelligent software and revolutionary jet-printing technology, you can accelerate your production with on the-spot revisions, 3D mounting, and perfect quality solder joints for both rigid and flexible boards. Simply put, it’s the smartest way to boost quality and utilization across a vast range of challenging applications.

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Number of employees at Nokia the product and when it’s ready for mass production, you go elsewhere.”

A global company with a local focus “This will not only transform the supply chain landscape at large, it will also create opportunities for unique regional players,” explains Bo Jensen, Head of Delivery Operations Asia Pacific & Japan at Nokia.

“If we look at it from a local perspective, it also allows us to adapt to local requirements, so this would be advantageous for regions such as Indonesia, for instance, where there’s a lot of discussion about local content and requirements. It creates a lot of flexibility and it also provokes our customers to take a bigger step,” he comments.

Sitting in Nokia’s gleaming regional office in Singapore, Giloth and Jensen passionately bounce back-and-forth as they talk about the latest exhibitions where they will showcase this ground-breaking concept. Sitting in the epicentre of the bustling business district, Nokia

has firmly cemented itself as a major player in the manufacturing space.

The ‘conscious’ factory may have seemed futuristic but it is possible - and Nokia made it happen.

However, this state-of-the-art concept didn’t come about in an instant. It is the result of over a decade’s work, and it is just one step in what has been a complete rootand-branch transformation of Nokia.

A high-level supply chain transformation On this journey, the organisation faced three successive challenges that created what Giloth called an ‘existential moment’ for Nokia – one which would bring about one of the biggest supply chain transformations in the industry. In the past two years, Nokia jumped from 101st to 15th in Gartner’s Top 25 Supply Chain ranking, an extraordinary turnaround that the research firm hailed as ‘triumphant.’ It has been a lengthy process for both the company and its people but Nokia is keen to keep up this momentum.

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“This supply chain transformation has been a journey of around eight years,” Giloth says.

“We were undergoing external shocks to a certain extent. The first challenge was the battle of profitability that was driven by major Chinese competitors, and because of this we needed to cut costs and drive efficiency in the supply chain, and therefore one of the solutions was to create an integrated supply chain.

“We applied a lot of lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen continuous improvement efforts – the bread and butter of a good supply chain,” he adds.

“We renovated our organisational setup. We introduced KPIs and that was just the first step.”

The next challenge confronting Nokia was the pressure to be agile and responsive in a volatile market.

“The need for an agile supply chain became more and more paramount,” Giloth reflects.

“We invested a lot of time and also money in making our supply chain and demand planning, reacting faster to the market changes while not compromising on the lean setup. Then that created an integrated and demand-driven supply network.”

Customer-focused The third and perhaps most pressing priority? Customer centricity.

In many organisations, supply chains are seen

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“We used to be in the trenches of the back office but now we’re more involved from the beginning of the opportunity in order to create the best possible customer experience” Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

as a back-end function, but at Nokia, that notion is being flipped on its head. Giloth and Jensen believe that ‘creating the technology to connect the world’ is more than just a tagline that people associate with the telecoms company – it is a core value that should be interwoven through all aspects of Nokia, including its supply chain.

“Our market is diversifying hugely,” observes Jensen. “We have new customers, new segments, and therefore it’s critical that we are more customer-specific and more consumer-driven. In all aspects, user experience is really influencing our behaviour.

“Interestingly, we’re also seeing that by making our supply chain more customer-centric, we can grow our top line,” he continues. “We are having more strategic engagement with our customers and more what we call ‘stickiness’. This is significant because the more we are in, the more we can help them, and the more likely it is that we can build on this.

“It’s also about building a company

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mentality in the organisation that shows we are an important part of what the customer is seeing in their daily life. We used to be in the trenches of the back office but now we’re more involved from the beginning of the opportunity in order to create the best possible customer experience.”

From top to bottom, customer needs are driving decisions at Nokia. But as each customer has their own unique demands, Giloth describes how the Finnish company has worked to understand and cluster its customers into segments so that it can deliver the things that really matter to them.

“Some customers want to have fast delivery, but they are not really price-sensitive,” Giloth says. “Others are looking at the price only, but the supply chain related KPIs are not that important. You need to really understand the different KPIs and what your customers want.

Our customers have completely different requirements in terms of throughput, reactiveness and on-time

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delivery so we need to understand the requests of the customer and segment our supply chain towards it.”

However, a customer segmented supply chain is just the start, Giloth says. “You also have to create customer intimacy, to really talk with your customers, and be exposed to the customers.

“Therefore, we have people like Bo in the regions being more and more connected with Nokia customers, rather than it being a very back-ended function. On top of that, you need to design your processes and your tools to make it easy for customers to use. Your product configuration can be cumbersome, or it can be Amazon-like. If the customer has a good feel of that user interface, that’s added value in itself.”

True digital transformation Often, ‘digitisation’ can seem like just another buzzword; a few syllables that have saturated business press releases worldwide. However, Nokia has proven it can be more than just on-trend lingo. Over the

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past several years, it has worked diligently to revamp its digital space but it doesn’t underestimate the challenges that lie ahead.

“Digitisation has become a buzzword because many global supply chains are far away from being truly digitalised,” says Giloth candidly. “The benefits and the potential have not been fully uncovered. At Nokia, we think that the next S-curve in achieving supply chain maturity is digitalisation.

“Nokia is a company of different legacies,” he continues. “It’s a combination of Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Motorola and Panasonic. All those companies we have merged with over the last few years have brought legacy systems and IT systems with it. It is unrealistic to have a monolithic IT system in a dynamic company like Nokia and so we are trying to bridge that by using technology like RPA and artificial intelligence, for example.”

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S U P P LY C H A I N

Sustaining supplier relationships Nokia is taking radical steps to accelerate its digital maturity and influence the shape of things to come, but it isn’t doing it alone.

Sustaining strong supplier relations has been key to unlocking Nokia’s supply chain transformation.

“We are working closely with companies to help us automate our processes on a daily basis,” Giloth says. “When it comes to that conscious factory environment, we have been working closely with a lot of sensor companies, small IoT startups, and cloud companies to

really get a deeper understanding.

When it comes to digitalising entire process chains, we have a lot of internal projects, but these are also supported by specialised consultants in those areas.

“As well as this, we have just consolidated our business process outsourcing and that strong focus has really helped us transform our auto management process,” adds Jensen. “We’re also using everyday tools like Office 365 and SharePoint Online to digitise the everyday life of the employee as much as possible.

We want to change the mindsets

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of our people and encourage them to utilise the opportunities that are at our fingertips every day.”

Open collaboration ‘No man is an island’, and the same can often be said about business.

In this ever-evolving industry, the right collaboration could set you miles ahead of a competitor and perhaps no one understands this better than Nokia. As a result, the Finnish company has turned to the Open Ecosystem Network. Built on the principle of data democracy,

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this innovative platform has shaken up traditional business models and proposed a new way of working with different ecosystems and industries.

By connecting developers, startups, business incubators, universities, subject experts and entrepreneurs, the platform allows groups to share ideas and find the right people to develop them.

“It revolves around co-ideation and co-creation with our suppliers, but also collaboration within the company,” Giloth explains. “It’s a digital platform where you can post

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“Getting that outsidein perspective was one of the key levers that helped us reach the next level�

Bo Jensen, Head of Delivery Operations Asia Pacific & Japan at Nokia.

S U P P LY C H A I N

your ideas, where you can have private rooms and where you can also have protected information in there, in case of sensitive intellectual property rights (IPR) discussions, for example. In this way, you can just accelerate the way you are dealing with your suppliers and prepare for the future. In the creation environment, it’s all about speed.”

An outside-in approach This sense of open collaboration is largely a result of what Jensen describes as an “outside-in”

approach. “Getting that outside-in perspective was one of the key levers that helped us reach the next level rather than being satisfied with what we’ve always been doing,” he says.

“After a very long time of trying to optimise looking at ourselves, we managed to turn it around.

We are working with a lot of exciting external companies in order to get a perspective on what others are doing.

“Instead of just looking at ourselves and polishing the chrome it’s about really asking ‘okay, what

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“Customer segmentation is going to become more important with 5G, because today our major customers are the major telecoms operators of the world, the big internet players. In the future, it could be someone like BMW or Tencent.

It could be a bank or a hospital�

Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

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can we do substantially different?

How can we disrupt the sector?”

5G ready With the looming roll-out of 5G on the horizon, the telecoms industry is a thrilling yet unpredictable one to be in. Nokia has consistently been readying itself for 5G, chipping away at any obstacles in its path. Whilst Giloth and Jensen recognise the challenges it still poses, they feel that conscious supply network will propel the firm to new heights.

“The first generations of mobile phone technologies were incremental to each other, but 5G is changing everything,” notes Giloth. “It will open the communications sector to hundreds of other industries because it is vital for uses like autonomous driving and robotics.

“It’s a huge technology shift. We have invested heavily in R&D which has helped to set us apart, but you cannot do this just alone, you need to have partners. We have strategic partnerships that are helping us develop the necessary chips

and technologies. Without those industry ties it’s difficult, and so it takes a much more collaborative approach in many areas. You need to have long-lasting partnerships.

“The market is changing and our customers are changing, and so our supply chain needs to be changing too,” he continues. “Customer segmentation is going to become more important with 5G because today our major customers are the major telecoms operators of the world, the big internet players. In the future, it could be someone like BMW or Tencent. It could be a bank or a hospital. With that, you need to completely rethink your value chains.”

A true telecoms behemoth, Nokia has always left a lasting mark on the sector. The Finnish giant has come a long way since the humble, hardwearing phones it became infamous for and now, as Giloth and Jensen take the ‘conscious factory’ to the global stage, it seems that Nokia’s historic legacy is beginning a new chapter.

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HENSOLDT

FOLLOWING A SUCCESSFUL CARVE OUT FROM AIRBUS, HENSOLDT LOOKS TO CAPTURE THE EUROPEAN MARKET

Written by DALE BENTON | Produced by ANDY LLOYD

H ENS OLDT

“BUILDING UP AND DEVELOPING IT, WHICH IS OFTEN A SUPPORT FUNCTION IN THAT SITUATION, IS A CHALLENGE IN ITSELF. BUT IN A SITUATION LIKE THIS IT’S EVEN MORE SO. YOU’RE WORKING ON A LOT OF ASSUMPTIONS AND YOU CAN’T LOOK TO ANOTHER BUSINESS SUPPORT FUNCTION AND ASK FOR HELP, BECAUSE THEY ARE IN THE SAME SITUATION” – Steffen Schreck, CIO

N THIS MODE RN era of digitisation, carving out and establishing a provider of sensors and integrated solutions for the European security and defence market requires strategic leadership and an in depth understanding of IT, technology and this changing technological landscape.

Thankfully, for HENSOLDT, that leader comes in the form of Steffen Schreck as CIO. Following a long career in IT, one that has seen him work in all roles within the IT function, Schreck has overseen significant transformations and mergers and acquisitions.

It is this experience, he feels, that makes him the right man to help shape HENSOLDT carve out from Airbus 182

March 2018

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and build a future IT infrastructure.

“My first task was and remains the execution of the carve out and the ramping up of the IT department entirely to the creation of an independent company altogether in HENSOLDT”, he says.

“This means building up all the business functions and all the other support processes such as IT. The challenge here, was that this was happening all at once and not as part of a long-term strategy, or from a

baseline because everything was and is being created from scratch.”

HENSOLDT was formed from Airbus, specifically the company’s defence electronics activities. In 2017, under the name HENSOLDT, which comes from the German pioneer of optics and precision mechanics Moritz Carl Hensoldt, the company embarked on an ambitious carve out journey.

As CIO, Schreck is tasked with creating not only an IT infrastructure for an entire company, but one that will europe.businesschief.com

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be capable in supporting the delivery of market leading, innovative data and sensor solutions.

“Building up and developing IT, which is often a support function in that situation, is a challenge in itself,” he says. “But in a situation like this it’s even more so. You’re working on a lot of assumptions and you can’t look to another business support function and ask for help, because they are in the same situation.

“This, in effect, creates a level of instability.”

No transformation of IT infrastructure is without it’s challenges and as Schreck points to, building that alongside the formation of the company itself only amplifies that challenge. The key challenge in this regard becomes one of prioritisation, or lack thereof in this case.

“Everything is operating parallel to one another and you simply cannot say that you’ll do it sequentially and start with this and prioritise that,” he says. “Of course, this applies to the business departments too, so you have the challenge of working with an entirely new approach model right from capturing requirements 184

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“AS WE WERE STARTING FROM SCRATCH WE ONLY HAD A VERY WEAK DEFINITION OF WHAT THE SEPARATION WOULD BE, AND I ALONE COULD NOT DEFINE WHAT WAS THE INTELLECTUAL DATA OF AIRBUS AND WHAT WAS THE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY OF THE CARVE OUT. THIS WAS SOMETHING THAT HAD TO BE CLARIFIED FROM THE BEGINNING” – Steffen Schreck, CIO

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to project execution.”

As with the forming of any company, this is a continuous process. When the decision was made to separate and carve out into a new independent organisation, the company set itself a timeframe of sixteen months.

Sixteen months to separate, build and set out into the market is no small feat, but HENSOLDT enters 2018 as a fully-fledged organisation with more than 4,300 employees worldwide, 1,000 patents and a turnover of more than €1bn ($1.24bn USD).

But despite this success, Schreck concedes that the journey took some time to get going in the first instance and this was a product of having to work with and ultimately convince various different stakeholders.

“Separation takes time,” he says.

“This meant we had to convince lawyers, convince the business managers and the shareholders that there is a clear business case here and one that will result in great success moving forward.”

The way in which Schreck overcame this and was effectively given the greenlight was simple – communication.

But as a technologist, someone who europe.businesschief.com

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M A N U FA C T U R I N G

has lived and breathed IT and technology throughout his entire life, he had to adapt.

Luckily in the beginning, Schreck was backed significantly by the board, but as he embarked on this new company, he had to make a decision as to what data and what property he would take with him to HENSOLDT. This is where the establishment of a solid base of communication proved key.

“It was very helpful to create a common understanding. Handling data and solutions like this, and of this scope, I needed to convince business

leaders to buy into what we were doing,” he says.

“It also proved very helpful in establishing a multi-functional team that would work with me on this. After all, as we were starting from scratch we only had a very weak definition of what the separation would be, and I alone could not define what was the intellectual data of Airbus and what was the intellectual property of the carve out. This was something that had to be clarified from the beginning.”

As the journey gathered steam, Schreck and his team had to migrate europe.businesschief.com

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“ YOU HAVE A MUCH BIGGER INFLUENCE ON THE ORGANISATION AND WITH THAT, THE CIO HAS TO BE AN INTEGRATOR. IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT CREATING PLATFORMS AND SOLUTIONS, IT’S MUCH MORE” – Steffen Schreck, CIO

close to 4,000 workplaces across three main sites in German, with a large number of smaller size and remote sites all over the world. When Schreck begun to dig deeper, that migration included more than 600 applications.

But the challenge before Schreck here was not a typical one, in fact the technical separation and installation was comparatively straightforward.

For Schreck, the challenge was one of licencing.

“We found out pretty quickly that the major problem is the licencing.

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licence, but when you’re dealing with a transformation of this size those licence models are in no way ready to accommodate that,” he says.

This required substantial negotiation and overall effort from a multifunctional team of procurement and licence experts, which again was difficult due to the creative journey which saw the IT users defining which applications were needed and to what scope.

“It was very difficult as we work with a large number of vendors, but in the end, it was solved effectively,” Schreck says.

M A N U FA C T U R I N G

HENSOLDT, through its very nature like Airbus before it, captures, processes and analyses data. As part of its market offering it offers sensor and data solutions and in doing so the company must ensure it has the capacity and the capabilities in place to do so.

This is where the company adopted a “cloud-first” strategy, which was born out of the concept of not wanting to migrate or merge “too much” from Airbus.

“We wanted to be quick in forming HENSOLDT, and so we realised that we could easily integrate too much from Airbus which would be both costly, and

time consuming,” says Schreck.

“And we looked at the handling of data, which is extremely confidential given our market, and we realised that we could utilise cloud software to store that data.

“It actually helps us further in the sense that we can push the separation and implement new solutions much quicker and more effectively.”

As HENSOLDT moves towards becoming a global blue chip brand, coming off the back of a transformational journey, Schreck feels that it is not only the company that has had to evolve and transform, but that the industry and the role of the CIO has changed alongside it.

“It’s no longer just business IT or being seen as just a support function,” says Schreck.

“You have a much bigger influence on the organisation and with that, the CIO has to be an integrator. It’s not just about creating platforms and solutions, it’s much more. Ultimately, it’s about supporting the business in a global process model, and that’s what we’ve achieved here with Hensoldt and will continue to do as we embrace the future.” europe.businesschief.com

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