BC-EMEA-April-2021

April 2021 | businesschief.eu

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The Business Chief Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

GEORGIA WILSON EDITORAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH

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VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

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SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

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PROJECT DIRECTORS

KARL GREEN THOMAS LIVERMORE JAMES RICHARDSON MICHAEL BANYARD JOE PALLISTER JAKE MEGEARY KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR RYAN HALL BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO STUART IRVING CRAIG KILLINGBACK JAMES BERRY JORDAN HUBBARD

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

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LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITORS LETTER

Global supply chains take another hit If events of the past year haven’t been enough to rattle the supply chain industry, March 23 saw hundreds of container carriers and vessels navigating the Suez Canal grind to a halt when the ‘Ever Given’ ran aground in one of the world’s most important trade routes

“It is estimated that the owners could face over US$3bn in liability claims”

BUSINESS CHIEF MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Following a week long battle to free the ‘Ever Given’, the ship is finally free and on its way to Felixstowe, but what effect has it had on global supply chains?

With figures reportedly in the three hundreds, the ship that ran aground on March 23 at 05:40AM GMT caused a significant backlog in the Suez Canal. While those that could begin to take the costly voyage around Africa, 320 remained waiting for the vessel to be freed.

Suspending all traffic through the Suez Canal, excavators, salvage teams and tugboats worked tirelessly to refloat the vessel coinciding their efforts with high tides.

It wasn’t until 3:00PM local time on March 29, that the ‘Ever Given’ was finally freed heading to the Great Bitter Lake for a full inspection. It is estimated that the owners could face over US$3bn in liability claims.

But can the damage to global supply chains be reversed? Time will tell.

While the Suez Canal Authority is expected to increase the number of vessels moving through each day, more than 18,000 containers still have no fixed delivery date, which is likely to continue to damage global supply chains. The FIATA expects there to be high delays in shipments, increased costs, and product shortages.

GEORGIA WILSON

georgia.wilson@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

businesschief.eu

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 12 Big Picture 14 The Brief 16 Global News 18 People Moves 20 Timeline: Pfizer/Biontech

COVID-19 vaccine 22 Legend:

Jane Fraser 24 Five Mins With:

Nicolas Maechler

44

Leadership

2021 and Beyond: The evolving role of a digital leader

28

52

Technology for Customer Experience

Setting the tone for socially responsible data centres

Liberty Global

Ark Data Centres

72

Human Capital

Why employee wellbeing should be your priority

80

NTT Global Sourcing The Power of One

100

Corporate

The Future of audits and Assurance

108 130

Vodafone Procurement Company Ready for an Exciting Future

Digital Strategy

Digital agility: the future for digital transformation success

138

SAP Cloud

Preparing Businesses for Change Through Innovation

154

Technology

A new era of intelligent automation

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LAUNCHES:

June 2021 JOIN THE COMMUNITY

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Creating Digital Communities in Cyber

166

182 Top Ten

Strategic consultants in the EMEA

SAP Retail

Driving the Digital Journey for Retailers

194

SAP Cloud for Utilities

206

Building Solutions for Utility Companies and Industry Cloud

Comdata

The Four Pillars to Strategic Procurement and a Better CX

222 SAS

Democratising artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing

236

Manchester University NHS MFT The Digital Transformation of Manchester's Hospital Trust

CONTENTS

248 P&G

How IWS is Driving Operational Excellence

264

The Gym Group

Digital Journey Through Covid-19 and Beyond

276

The Travel Corporation Technology Enabling Success

298 288

Flooid

Headless Commerce for a New Era of Retail

CSG

An Industry Leader in Digital Acceleration

312

328

Think Big to Enable a Connected Future in Latin America

Security in Digital Transformation

Scala data centre

Dell Technology

340

Huawei Sweden

350

CGI Netherlands

Sustainability Guides Our Innovation Power

Data harvesting: Key on Journey to Smart Manufacturing

364

374

At the HEART of Digital Banking in Nigeria

Digital Transformation Led by Customer Centricity

Sterling Bank

NOVO BANCO

390

Vanarama

Expands Tech Tools to Grow Vehicle Leasing Sales

402

NHS England and NHS Improvement

Innovation in the NHS Through Covid-19 and Beyond

414

Marsh France

Accelerating New Technologies for Clients

CONTENTS

440

SonicWall

Keeping Cybersecurity Agile and Adaptable

426

Siemens

Integrating Engineering and Infrastructure to Enhance Urban Mobility

450

Virgin Media

Partner-powered Connections

460

474

Driving Growth in Asia

Driving the People Experience

JTEC Material Handling

Unit4

500

DEVOTEAM

Putting People at the Heart of Digital Transformation

488

516

Transforming the Future of Digital Health in Qatar

Building Brighter Futures Through Insurance

Cerner Qatar

Zurich International

530

SAP CEE

Guiding governments through digital transformation

000 540

Xxxxx International Clariant

Xxxx Xxxx Xxxxand Xxxx Sustainability Xxxx Xxxx Xxxxin Procurement Transparency

566 550 Save the Children

xxxxxx Save the Childrene An international approach to IT

BIG PICTURE

12

April 2021

The light at the end of the tunnel Global

COVID-19 caused major disruptions to organisations around the world in 2020, but the promise of worldwide vaccination in the near future is providing a light at the end of the tunnel.

With 7.79 billion people vaccinated around the world so far, organisations emerging from this global threat will certainly face challenges, but the innovations, transformations, agility and partnerships gained from the pandemic stands to build solid foundations for surviving and thriving post COVID-19.

businesschief.com

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THE BRIEF “THE CHALLENGE AHEAD IS TO LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY WITHOUT COMPROMISING DATA SECURITY AND AUDIT QUALITY”

BY THE NUMBERS

Which changes made in response to COVID-19 are here to stay?

Source: Gartner

65%

Emilio Pera

Partner and Head of Audit, KPMG Lower Gulf  READ MORE

“Digital agility needs people who are flexible, that think creatively and value change”

Flexibility on when people work

44%

90%

Changes to monitoring productivity for remote workers

Allowing employees to work remotely at least part time

Phil Lewis

Vice President, Solution Consulting EMEA, Infor  READ MORE

“Over the next few uncertain months and beyond the pandemic, intelligent automation is here to stay”

84% 80%

of employers are set to rapidly digitalise working processes

Simon Coombs

Industry X Digital Manufacturing & Operations Lead, Accenture UK  READ MORE

14

April 2021

READ MORE

31%

of CEOs of decision believe that makers a shortage of said their skills in the firms have workforce is increased one of the key their spending threats to their on RPA in the organisation’s past three growth months prospects READ MORE

READ MORE

 APPLE Apple announces its largest quarter by revenue of all time, totalling US$111.4bn for the first quarter of 2021.

INNOVACCER:

Breaking down information silos in healthcare Founded in 2014, unicorn company Innovaccer strives to connect and curate the world’s healthcare information making it accessible and useful.

What happened in Innovaccer’s Series D funding round? February 2021, Innovaccer announced its latest Series D funding round of US$105mn led by Tiger Global, joined by B Capital Group, Steadview Capital and M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund). The company’s Series D funding brings its total to US$225mn.

What are Innovaccer’s plans for the funding?

Innovaccer’s promise is to save hospitals (and patients) time and money by “breaking down information silos that prevent physicians from obtaining a holistic view of their patients.”

The company’s centralised information hub pulls data from healthcare giants, labs and insurance, harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to better predict and stop health problems before they become chronic.

 GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE) AND TOSHIBA General Electric (GE) and Toshiba in talks, discussing the possibility of co-producing technology for offshore wind turbines.

- KPMG KPMG has entered into exclusive talks with HIG Europe about a £400m sale of its UK restructuring business.  IKEA Ikea reports a 10% drop in UK sales to £1.9bn after closing its stores for nearly three months during the pandemic.  ASTON MARTIN Aston martin reports a £322m operating loss in 2020, alongside total retail sales dropping by 32%.

W A Y U P APR21

W A Y D O W N businesschief.com

15

GLOBAL NEWS

1

UNITED STATES

Goldman Sachs commits billions to impact black women’s lives The largest commitment of its kind, Goldman’s One Million Black Women initiative commits US10 bn in investment capital and US$100 mn in philanthropic capital to advance racial equity. In partnership with Black women-led firms, this will drive investment in housing, healthcare, education, job creation, and more.

16

April 2021

2

UNITED STATES

Mastercard follows Visa with debut sustainability bond Building on its pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and to bring one billion people and 50 million small businesses into the digital economy by 2025, Mastercard issues first-ever Sustainability Bond. This follows Visa’s green bond debut in August 2020.

3

SINGAPORE

Dell Technologies funds innovation lab Ideate. Experiment. Co-create.

That’s the idea behind Singapore’s Global Innovation Hub, an initiative funded by Dell Technologies (US$50 mn) to drive digital innovation. The Hub will focus on augmented reality, data analytics, cloud-native, cybersecurity and edge computing.

4

5

KOREA

Samsung breaks Ericsson’s 5G global speed record Recently reaching world record 5G data speeds of 6.23Gbps, Samsung beats Ericsson and Qualcomm’s January record of 5Gbps. The breakthrough speed was set using a flexible new approach combining 4G and 5G (EN-DC technology) to maximise the benefits of both networks.

EGYPT

Suez Canal Bank accelerates digital transformation Egypt’s Suez Canal Bank is digitally transforming its customer experience to increase financial inclusion, as just 32.8% of the population has a bank account. With Temenos Infinity, products and services will be more accessible and optimised for mobile and advance tech like AI will be leveraged, for a Chabot service, for example.

businesschief.com

17

PEOPLE MOVES BINA MEHTA FROM: KPMG TO: KPMG WAS: HEAD OF CLIENTS AND MARKETS AT KPMG UK NOW: ACTING CHAIRMAN For the first time in its 150 years of operations, KPMG UK has appointed its first female leaders. Bina Mehta, Head of Clients and Markets at KPMG UK has been appointed as acting Chairman following Bill Michael stepping down.

Mehta has over 20 years of experience in the international M&A and restructuring industry across the UK, USA and Canada.

Mehta is also Chair of KPMG’s Emerging Giants Centre of Excellence in the UK and is a regular commentator on issues that impact founders and fast growth businesses.

In addition to Mehta, KPMG has also appointed Mary O'Connor, who has taken on the role of acting senior partner. She is carrying out Michael’s day to day executive responsibilities.

18

April 2021

Mehta has over 20 years of experience in the international M&A and restructuring industry across the UK, USA and Canada.

JETTE NYGAARD-ANDERSEN FROM: ENTAIN TO: ENTAIN WAS: NON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NOW: CEO Replacing Shay Segev, Jette Nygaard-Andersen has been appointed by Entain as its first female Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The move made by Entain, increases the number of women leading the FTSE 100 to six.

With over 20 years of experience in leadership and operational roles in media, entertainment, sport and digital businesses, as well as a track record of working with fast-growing digital next generation online and mobile entertainment companies, Nygaard-Andersen joined Entain in 2019 as a Non Executive Director.

JIM BAILEY FROM: ACCENTURE TO: CAPGEMINI WAS: SENIOR MANAGING DIRECTOR NOW: CEO OF THE AMERICAS STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNIT With more than 30 years of experience in leadership, Jim Bailey has joined Capgemini as CEO of the Americas Strategic Business Unit. Coming to Capgemini from 30 years at Accenture as Senior Managing Director, Bailey was a founding member of the Accenture Digital Leadership team, he was responsible for its mobility and internet-of-things practices globally. businesschief.com

19

TIMELINE PFIZER/BIONTECH COVID -19 VACCINE A brief timeline of the development of the Pfizer/Biotech COVID-19 vaccine candidate

March 13th 2020

March 17th 2020

April 9th 2020

May 14th 2020

Pfizer’s five point plan

Pfizer and BionTech co-develop vaccine

Pfizer and BionTech begin human trials

Responding to the global outbreak of COVID-19, Pfizer released a fivepoint plan. The plan called on the biopharmaceutical industry to join its commitment to unprecedented collaboration in order to battle COVID-19.

Pfizer and BionTech agreed to a letter of intent for the co-development and distribution of a potential mRNAbased coronavirus vaccine to prevent the infection of COVID-19

Pfizer advances the battle against COVID-19

20

April 2021

To further advance the battle against COVID-19, Pfizer Inc. and the Pfizer Foundation pledged US$40mn in medical and charitable cash grants to combat the global health effects of the pandemic.

As part of the global COVID-19 vaccine development programme, Pfizer and BionTech began human trials on May 14, 2020. The first participants were dosed in the US in a clinical trial for the BNT162 vaccine programme.

Nov 18th 2020

Dec 2nd 2020

Dec 8-21 2020

Pfizer and BionTech complete phase 3

MHRA gives temporary authorisation for the vaccine

UK, US and Asia administer first doses of Pfizer vaccine

Following the completion of Phase 2 of the trial, Pfizer and BionTech reported on November 18, 2020 the completion of its worldwide third phase in which their mRNA-based COVID19 vaccine candidate - BNT162b2 - met all primary efficacy endpoints.

December 2, 2020 saw the Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the U.K. grant temporary authorisation for the use of the COVID19 mRNA vaccine. Marking the first authorisation of the vaccine following its worldwide

Six days after the temporary authorisation granted by MHRA - the UK administered its first dose of the Pfizer/ BionTech vaccine. Seven days after the UK, the US administered its first dose on December 14, 2020, and on December 21, 2020 Singapore received Asia’s first batch of the Pfizer/BionTech vaccine.

businesschief.com

21

LEGEND

Taking the Citi by storm Jane Fraser CEO, Citi

J

ane Fraser’s appointment as the first female CEO of a major Wall Street bank is quite an accomplishment. A personal one for Fraser, but a much bigger one for women on Wall Street attempting to penetrate the traditional steppingstone roles to CEO positions that are overwhelmingly filled by men.

In a report on gender parity in finance in 2020, consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that women held just 6% of CEO positions at major financial firms globally in 2019, a 2% drop since 2016.

Fraser was named CEO of Citigroup in September and started the job on March 1, 2021, becoming the first woman to take the reins of one of Wall Street’s four major banks, just as momentum for Women’s International Day was kicking off.

During her very first day in office, Fraser made a public pledge that Citigroup Inc. would achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Legend, indeed, though not unsurprising, as Fraser has become known as a leader who ‘gets stuff done’.

22

April 2021

The number of women among CEOs of the Fortune 500 firms.

37

A McKinsey consultant turned financial executive, who’s been with Citi for 16 years, most recently in the bank’s number two spot as President of Citi and CEO of the Global Consumer Bank, Fraser is renowned for having a ‘solid track record’ and for being a ‘fixer’, having worked her way through key business units at Citi, leaving each in a better state than she found it.

Take Latin America. When Fraser was appointed as CEO of Citi’s Latin America business in 2015, the division was tarnished. Fraser turned it around, not just growing net revenue and profit, but also enhancing the work culture.

Little surprise that she’s been heralded as the ‘Number 1 Woman to Watch’ for two consecutive years by American Banker, and that her name’s been circulating top banking circles for the last year with rumours swirling that she’d been earmarked for top jobs at Wells Fargo and HSBC. And while her credentials (University of Cambridge, Goldman Sachs, Partner at McKinsey, MBA Harvard), and Wall Street reputation, speak for themselves, it’s what has been described as her ‘ferocious work ethic’ yet reluctance to sacrifice her personal life to get to the top, that has resonated with many in financial circles.

And especially women.

Here’s hoping her captainship of the world’s ‘most global bank’ proves not just a success for Fraser, and for Citi, but marks a catalyst for gender equity industry wide.

“I’m often asked, ‘Can you have it all? Can you do it all?’ And I say, ‘Yes, you can, but you can’t do it all at once and don’t expect everything at once.”

businesschief.com

23

5MINS WITH...

NICOLAS MAECHLER NICOLAS MAECHLER, SENIOR PARTNER AT MCKINSEY & COMPANY DISCUSSES CURRENT TRENDS IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX)

Q. HOW HAS THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) LANDSCAPE CHANGED SINCE THE OUTBREAK OF COVID-19?

» The last few years have seen

a huge increase in management focus on customer experience (CX) for business, which was seen somewhat traditionally as a consumers’ topic. The impact has been significant as customer experience matters in all industries.

Moving from simple annual surveys to real feedback loops, they have started redesigning their operating models to be more customer centric. COVID-19 accelerated this shift: when your industry is at risk, those focusing on their customers come through stronger.

Q. HOW ARE ORGANISATIONS CURRENTLY MANAGING THEIR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PERFORMANCE?

» Companies of all types – airlines,

banks, department stores - are still heavily reliant on survey-based tools and feedback loop systems to gather and respond to customer feedback. By touching 5-10% of your customers, these approaches act as a good temperature check to see how the company is doing. However, it falls short of understanding and proactively addressing what the core of your customers want.

“ IN A DIGITAL-FIRST WORLD, COLLABORATIVE TOOLS, AUTOMATION, AND DATA AND ANALYTICS WILL BE KEY” 24

April 2021

Q. WHAT ARE THE TOP THREE TECHNOLOGIES THAT ORGANISATIONS SHOULD LOOK TO INVEST IN WHEN IT COMES TO CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE?

» In a digital-first world, collaborative

“ THE LAST FEW YEARS HAVE SEEN A HUGE INCREASE IN MANAGEMENT FOCUS ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) FOR BUSINESS” Q. HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS MOVE BEYOND SURVEY-BASED SYSTEMS TO DELIVER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES AND MANAGE PERFORMANCE?

» We noticed that many customer

dissatisfactions could be predicted based on a certain course of actions (e.g. a late delivery, a missing customs form). Using innovative analytics platforms with real-time insights, CX leaders can translate the massive volume of existing customer and operational data to spot signals and take immediate actions. This in turn helps to drive customer acquisition, retention, market differentiation, and higher customer satisfaction (and many times lowers costs as well).

tools, automation, and data and analytics will be key. Here’s why: by using big data, predictive analytics, and machine learning, companies can go from “How are we doing?” to “How do we deliver on what customers want, now?”. This customer-focused, datadriven approach will allow companies to unlock efficiencies, predict customer behavior, track satisfaction drivers, anticipate churn, and flag opportunities to turn loyalty into profitability. But we also have to remember that CX is a team sport – and integrating people, process, and the right technology – will be a differentiator.

Q. HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS BENEFIT FROM ADOPTING SUCH METHODS AND TECHNOLOGY?

» One leading airline built a

machine-learning system based on 1,500 customer, operations, and financial data points to predict both satisfaction and future revenue for all of its 130 million customers, every day. The airline used this data to identify and prioritise those customers whose relationship was most at risk. Working with a combined team of approximately 12-15 data scientists, CX experts, and external partners over three months, the programme resulted in an 800 per cent uplift in satisfaction and a 60 per cent reduction in churn for priority customers. businesschief.com

25

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LIBERTY GLOBAL

Nicolas Fortineau

28

March 2021

LIBERTY GLOBAL

LIBERTY GLOBAL: Technology for customer experience Liberty Global’s Nicolas Fortineau and David Wagenborg discuss the telco firm’s focus on the customer and how it’s risen to the challenge of COVID-19 WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

A

s one of the world’s leading converged video, broadband and communications companies, Liberty Global is investing in infrastructure to empower customers to make the most of the digital revolution. Operating in seven European countries under brands such as Virgin Media and Telenet, the company is combining fixed and mobile assets to offer a true converged product to its customers and boosting speeds across the board. “We are pushing out gigabit broadband speeds pretty much across all our portfolio,” says Nicolas Fortineau, Director in-home Connectivity Products. “We've put a lot of effort into our network, spearheading a roadmap that will get us to the stage where we will be able to offer 10G speeds over our fixed networks across Europe.” businesschief.eu

29

LIBERTY GLOBAL

The scale of the company's ambition is backed up by its culture, as David Wagenborg, Vice President Connectivity Products and Business Markets, explains.

“It's a very entrepreneurial space. There are constantly new ways to organise, new ways to develop, and new developments themselves. Liberty Global has been instrumental in really challenging the incumbents in several markets, and therefore gaining the position that it has today.”

That privileged position is based in part on a reputation for reliability. “We are one of the few operators who invest as much money back into the network and into the further development of our portfolio as we do – in some cases almost double 30

March 2021

“ It all leads to one very simple objective: deliver the absolute best possible customer experience” NICOLAS FORTINEAU

PRODUCT DIRECTOR OF CONNECTIVITY PLATFORMS, LIBERTY GLOBAL

LIBERTY GLOBAL

NICOLAS FORTINEAU TITLE: P RODUCT DIRECTOR OF CONNECTIVITY PLATFORMS INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: THE RANDSTAD Nicolas Fortineau is Product Director of Connectivity Platforms at Liberty Global and his work involves redefining Meaning of connectivity. His product portfolio reaches over 10 million households across seven countries for residential and SoHo customers.

Customer-centric at heart, Nicolas uses the best technology (including Artificial Intelligence, Cloud, 5G and

WiFi) to bring lifeenhancing services to customers, improving their connectivity.

Nicolas has been working in Media, Technology and Telecommunication companies for over 12 years; living and working in Europe, Asia, the US and Africa.

LIBERTY GLOBAL

64.82988853642085%

Internet without boundaries Fast forward to 10G and beyond with help from CommScope.

We’ve teamed up with Liberty Global to bring blazing-fast internet that will change how people live, work and play.

ARE YOU READY?

32

March 2021

LIBERTY GLOBAL

the amount of what our competitors are investing,” says Wagenborg. Because of that investment, Liberty Global is able to offer facilities such as device management to further improve the customer experience. “What we effectively have is a cloud where all of our customers’ connected devices – everything from your mobile phone, to your doorbell, to your

DAVID WAGENBORG

ICE PRESIDENT CONNECTIVITY V PRODUCTS AND BUSINESS MARKETS, LIBERTY GLOBAL

TITLE: V ICE PRESIDENT CONNECTIVITY PRODUCTS AND BUSINESS MARKETS INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: AMSTERDAM

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We have the ambition to make sure that, first of all, we are fully digital ourselves, but also that we can help our customers become digital-first”

DAVID WAGENBORG

David is overseeing Connectivity and B2B developments within Liberty Global, driving the strategic deployment and agenda for consumer platforms, services and experiences, as well as enabling Liberty Global business markets. Previously David has held roles in product marketing within Liberty Global, VodafoneZiggo, UPC and BT Global Services.

His mantra?

Do not regret!

businesschief.eu

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LIBERTY GLOBAL

European Broadband Leader XGS-PON

DOCSIS

ADVERT PAGE GOLD SWAN

®

4G / 5G FWA

Wi-Fi 6 Mesh

Collaborative innovation partnerships Delivering all broadband technologies including 5G Deploying all main broadband software solutions: Swan® OpenWrt-based, RDK-B, OpenSyncTM Time-to-market leadership with technology breakthroughs Eco-design core to our values improving global sustainability

34

March 2021

Sagemcom Swan® software is not affiliated with OpenWrt. OpenWrt is a registered trademark owned by Software Freedom Conservancy (SFC) https://openwrt.org

LIBERTY GLOBAL

TV – are managed and optimised in real time to ensure that you always get the best out of the connectivity solution,” says Fortineau.

Conceptually, the cloud is of huge importance to the company’s offering.

“Connect Cloud, which is the internal name, is effectively the technical enabler that we use to power all new features, functionality and services above and beyond pure speed,” says Fortineau.

“The cloud is effectively a suite of microservices, each enabling a very specific feature set.” For consumers, that might include voice services or adaptive wifi, while also presenting an opportunity to increase their cyber security. “Our customers often feel that cyberspace is a bit of a jungle. What we do is offer two types of solutions. On one hand this involves preventing cyber attacks on your personal devices by putting a security layer on top businesschief.eu

35

LIBERTY GLOBAL

Liberty Global Intelligent WiFi

$12bn Revenue in US dollars

2005

Year Founded

20,200+ Number of Employees

36

March 2021

LIBERTY GLOBAL

businesschief.eu

37

LIBERTY GLOBAL

Smart homes are evolving.

So should you.

With the explosion of devices, data demands, and security risks, today’s smart homes need Adapt.™ Part of our HomePass™ suite of services, Adapt is a cloud-coordinated system that offers the first and only self-optimizing, whole-home WiFi technology.

Learn more at plume.com

38

© 2021 Plume Design, Inc. All rights reserved.

March 2021

LIBERTY GLOBAL

Nicolas Fortineau and David Wagenborg from Liberty Global talk about their products & services

of the device cloud. We combine that with tools that allow you to protect your family in terms of curating content, but also cyber bullying. It’s all about helping people with their digital wellness.”

“ We all need absolutely pristine 100% reliable connectivity” DAVID WAGENBORG

ICE PRESIDENT CONNECTIVITY V PRODUCTS AND BUSINESS MARKETS, LIBERTY GLOBAL

Liberty Global also makes extensive use of AI, for instance in its adaptive wifi microservice. “That leverages artificial intelligence and cloud-based machine learning to track changing patterns in the way you use your devices. Whether it’s your phone, your tablet, or even your doorbell, all these connected devices can benefit from real time optimisation to ensure that they remain connected at the same time.”

The company has an extensive partner network facilitating its ecosystem. “We rely on unique expertise in every part of our connectivity Holy Trinity,” says Fortineau. “For instance, we have bestin-class hardware and networking, from Sercomm, Sagemcom and Commscope, which ensures that customers get the best connectivity wherever they are. We also have best-in-class cloud services.

Here, Plume has been highly instrumental businesschief.eu

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Liberty Global’s New Connectivity Cockpit H O W E P A M ’ S I N N O VAT I V E S O L U T I O N H E L P E D T U R N E D I T S D ATA I N T O P R E D I C T I V E , ACTIONABLE INSIGHTS

COLLECT

STREAMLINE

SYNC

Pull in data across the Liberty Global Ecosystem

A single data lake and analytics engine is the heart of the cockpit

Customers can access relevant information across all touchpoints

The Connectivity Cockpit THE FULL CONNECTED CUSTOMER SOLUTION CLICK HERE

LIBERTY GLOBAL

“It’s paramount to have the best partners and vendors in their respective areas.

We, as an ISP, would not be able to build the patchwork of services we have without them” NICOLAS FORTINEAU

PRODUCT DIRECTOR OF CONNECTIVITY PLATFORMS, LIBERTY GLOBAL

BULIDING A GIGABIT WORLD Over 25 million of the homes and businesses served by our networks in Europe and another seven million served by VodafoneZiggo2 in the Netherlands will be capable of GIGABit speeds once the newest version of DOCSIS technology is rolled out.

We expect to connect millions more customers over the coming years.

businesschief.eu

DID YOU KNOW...

on our journey to build our adaptive wifi microservices and enable the digital services we offer, as well as Epam, which has been working very closely with us on building the overall Connect Cloud infrastructure.” Fortineau reiterates the importance of its partners in enabling its projects. “It’s paramount to have the best partners and vendors in their respective areas. We, as an ISP, would not be able to build the patchwork of services we have without them.”

The company’s offerings, and its emphasis on reliability, have only become more important thanks to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Companies such as Liberty Global have been the lifeblood keeping companies running while offices have shut, and it recognises the importance of the role it has to play. “If you look at how we live on a day to day

41

LIBERTY GLOBAL

Building a Smart Connected World Sercomm gateway and home networking solutions support advanced access technologies and in-home wireless connectivity to deliver better performance and speeds greater than 10Gbps.

42

March 2021

How can we help you?

LIBERTY GLOBAL

26m

Homes passed

8.5m Mobile Customers

11.3m Customers

26m

Digital Services (RGUS)

7

Country operatations

basis in the new normal of COVID, while I am talking to you, my daughter is on Zoom with her school and my wife is doing a video conference upstairs,” says Fortineau. “We all need absolutely pristine 100% reliable connectivity, more than ever.” The company was well placed to rise to that challenge, as Wagenborg explains. “It's accelerated the need for elements that we already had on our roadmap. What we saw was a desire for mobile backup alongside smart wifi – both of which we had scheduled already for quite some time.”

Looking ahead, the pandemic has not deviated Liberty Global from its mission to further improve speeds in its networks, as well as continuing with the rollout of 5G. It’s equality cognizant of its responsibilities in the sustainability space, as Fortineau describes. “We have different initiatives that are helping us contribute to the greater good. From a connectivity

perspective, we’ve imposed a rule on ourselves that all the hardware we deliver to customers is going to transition to only using recyclable plastic, as well as making sure that we send you only the stuff that you need. It's important that, across the industry, we think about our businesses in the greenest possible way.”

It’s also evolving the way it presents to customers. “We're close to the next step whereby we move towards becoming a full digital service provider,” says Wagenborg.

“We have the ambition to make sure that, first of all, we are fully digital ourselves, but also that we can help our customers become digital-first.” Fortineau concurs, adding that “it all leads to one very simple objective: deliver the absolute best possible customer experience. That is paramount to everything we do.”

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DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A DIGITAL LEADER IN AND BEYOND?

2021

Speaking with Accenture and IBM we take a look at what it means to be a global digital leader in 2021 and beyond WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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“

s the pandemic continues to accelerate businesses into a new normal where digital adoption is paramount, we’re seeing experience-led leadership truly become a business imperative,” begins Glen Hartman, Head of Accenture Interactive (North America).

“While a focus on experience is not new, Accenture Interactive developed a new category of leadership in response to this shift called the Business Of Experience (BX).

As consumers seek new and differentiated experiences coming out of the pandemic, businesses need to be prioritising experience across their entire organisations.”

When it comes to being a digital leader in a post-pandemic era, Hartman explains that this will mean “prioritising experience throughout the organisation so it runs through the veins of the organisation. BX has taken on an urgent business imperative today in large part because the way experience has been traditionally approached is focused on just the customer experience – a series of touchpoints 44

April 2021

that leads to a sale or conversion – whereas BX is a new approach for the entire organisation – from c-suite to supply chain. BX is a mindset reset that starts with the CEO and taps into every C-level executive and leader inside both front- and back-office functions.”

Agreeing with Hartman, Sreeram Visvanathan, Chief Executive, IBM UKI adds, “the ever-changing pressures of the pandemic-dominated reality we now live in have emphasised the critical importance of things like remote working, business agility and digital customer engagement. Entire industries are being re-imagined by technologies that create disruptive opportunities to respond to an ever-evolving business landscape and changing customer expectations. And so, the greatest priority business leaders face today – irrespective of the industry they operate in – is to rethink their digital business models.”

Visvanathan explains that central to these new digital business models is “a review of the role IT plays in their organisations – it’s

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

“ THE ABILITY TO SIMPLIFY, PRIORITISE, ACT FAST, ITERATE AND LEARN AT EVERY STEP ALONG THE WAY IS CRITICAL” SREERAM VISVANATHAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, IBM UKI

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Pack the essentials for your business trip: Laptop Charger Business insights Payment solutions

From T&E expertise to business insights to payment solutions, the American Express Corporate Program gives you all the tools and services you need, so you’re fully prepared for business wherever you are.

To learn more about the American Express Corporate Program, visit www.americanexpress.com.

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

“ TRADITIONAL APPROACHES ARE NO LONGER RELEVANT AND ORGANISATIONS NEED TO LOOK INWARD AND FIND THEIR COMPASS”

Best strategy to realise digital potential Business Of Experience (BX) is an experience-led approach focused on rewiring the DNA of your entire organisation. When you improve the experience, you improve lives and in turn, you improve business. This new reality has forced businesses to understand their customers and their employees in a way they never had before and find ways to deliver experiences that respond to their unmet needs.

GLEN HARTMAN,

HEAD OF ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE (NORTH AMERICA)

time for technologies like Cloud, AI, IoT and cybersecurity to be the lead actors in areas like customer engagement, product development, business agility, innovation and resilience, rather than simply performing supporting roles.

This is an essential step towards thriving in a post-lockdown world and preparing for the future. This is digital leadership – ultimately, these actions set outperforming organisations apart from those that are struggling or simply managing to survive.”

Agreeing, Visvanathan adds, “the ability to simplify, prioritise, act fast, iterate and learn at every step along the way is critical. At IBM we believe in being ‘learn-it-all’ leaders (versus the ‘know-it-all kind’ and foster that sense of ‘curiosity first’ at every level of our organisation.

The essential traits of a digital leader When asked to define the essential traits of a digital leader, Hartman begins by explaining that “many organisations can be out of sync, moving slower than changes in consumer behaviour. As such, digital flexibility is a must for leaders. But, how do you quickly pivot your digital business to adapt to rapidly shifting experiential trends? You must use empathy as your compass. Listen to your employees purpose. You can’t be a digital leader if you’re not focused on the right priorities.” businesschief.eu

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DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

Leaders who invest energy and resources into priority projects, while iterating and remembering to apply the principles of agility and flexibility, will be most successful.”

Looking to 2021 and beyond, Hartman further adds that “traditional approaches are no longer relevant and organisations need to look inward and find their compass. If you look in the right places and listen effectively, you will find that your employees and customers are signaling their needs to you – and using empathy as your compass will allow you to unlock the right insights and a path forward.”

“With this employee-first infrastructure in place, leaders can then lean into the three main drivers pushing our BX approach to the forefront: keeping up with customer demands, working against brands drowning in a sea of sameness, and finding a renewed flight to purpose, which is the intense pressure that brands are under to stand for something bigger than the products and services they sell.”

The role of a digital leader post COVID-19 “There is no denying COVID-19 has created an interesting call to action for all companies, particularly when it comes to how customers, employees and society experience their brand digitally,” says Hartman. “As leadership continues to evolve during the pandemic, our new leadership category’s significance has only grown, reminding organisations that having an innovative digital-first mindset is important not only because attitudes towards remote work, online shopping and virtual events have been forever disrupted, but also in case another event of this calibre happens again.”

Post-pandemic, Hartman continues to explain that “this pivotal moment has given brands an opportunity to reimagine how they lead, run and grow their businesses. Leaders and brands should use this as a once-in-ageneration opportunity to reset, pivot and 48

April 2021

“ THIS PIVOTAL MOMENT HAS GIVEN BRANDS AN OPPORTUNITY TO REIMAGINE HOW THEY LEAD, RUN AND GROW THEIR BUSINESSES” GLEN HARTMAN,

HEAD OF ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE (NORTH AMERICA)

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

Glen Hartman HEAD OF ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE (NORTH AMERICA) As brands look ahead to the future, they must recognize their pre-COVID approaches won’t serve them long-term.

The Business of Experience is not customer experience (CX); it’s evolved beyond the CMO’s purview and is now a CEO priority, becoming an urgent business imperative, as companies look to move past recovery mode and pivot back to growth."

Sreeram Visvanathan CHIEF EXECUTIVE, IBM UKI

rewire their company around experience.

Today’s environment allows us to use a new compass to become customer-obsessed and allow experience to flow through the veins of every person and every company digitally.”

Adding to this, Visvanathan says, “the past 12 months alone have forced us all to refocus. The central question of the pandemic era is ‘what will it take to be essential – to my customers, to my employees, to our stakeholders, to our investors?’ I believe that has to be the guideline, the ‘north star’ that informs every decision a business leader makes. This question enables leaders to focus on the sharpest edge of their business – why the business matters (its purpose, its values), what differentiates it from similar, competitive organisations (the unique value it offers) and what is essential to

Digital leaders are those who make bold bets on the future. Now is the time to bet on the strategic application of technologies to bring the future forward.

the operation of the business (this is where the central role of technology automation comes in). Change, although uncomfortable, is an absolutely fundamental part of driving business success – this takes bravery, boldness, comfort with discomfort, an ability to challenge the status quo and an ability to lead others while change inevitably disrupts perceptions, ways of working and more.”

Looking to the future of what it will mean to be a digital leader, Visvanathan reflects that “after the drive to rapid digital transformation of businesschief.eu

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DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

The digital leaders role following the initial outbreak of COVID-19 2020 was one of the most disruptive years in the history of mankind, and CEOs worldwide quickly had to take stock of what was most essential to their business growth and value proposition in the years ahead.

Pre-pandemic, digital leadership was considered voluntary or low priority for some organisations, but this is now at the forefront.

IBM commissioned Omdia to survey around 300 companies in the UK in the third quarter of last year and we found that 78% of business leaders believed their business continuity and disaster recovery plans were not strong enough.

They were not prepared. However, 88% agreed that technology significantly mitigated the impact of the crisis.

Following the initial ‘shock to action’ leaders are quickly pivoting towards the adoption of digital technologies that are now considered essential.

AI-enabled chatbots – often able to be spun up in just a matter of days – to help respond to customers with simple questions and to help manage the flow of calls to customer contact centres in healthcare and financial services organisations, for example, have been widely popular and add quick value to a business’ initial investment.

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DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

“ENTIRE INDUSTRIES ARE BEING RE-IMAGINED BY TECHNOLOGIES THAT CREATE DISRUPTIVE OPPORTUNITIES TO RESPOND TO AN EVER-EVOLVING BUSINESS LANDSCAPE AND CHANGING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS” SREERAM VISVANATHAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE, IBM UKI

2020, many of our clients are seeing value from embracing an open hybrid cloud platform, deploying AI and automation tools to make critical business processes more intelligent, insightful and responsive, as well as enhancing cybersecurity capabilities to protect their businesses and prepare them for the future.

Leaning in to partnerships and ecosystems can help scale a business’ capabilities and give broader access to evermore innovative ways of operating.”

Concluding Visvanathan says, “we cannot forget a mission-critical point – a business is ultimately as strong as its people. Empathetic and authentic leadership is paramount today more than ever. Leadership that listens and encourages two-way dialogues is key. To thrive, leaders must also attend to employees’ wellbeing, offering opportunities for them to learn continuously, as well as provide truly flexible and inclusive working environments all designed to enable adaptability for whatever the future holds.”

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ARK DATA CENTRES

SETTING THE TONE FOR SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE DATA CENTRES WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE

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April 2021

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

ARK DATA CENTRES

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ARK DATA CENTRES

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ARK DATA CENTRES

Empowering businesses to work from anywhere in the world with mission critical facilities fueled by 100% green energy

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rk Data Centres specialise in the design, construction and operation of high integrity data centres which lead the market in sustainability, deliver optimum security, combined with the highest levels of availability. Ark’s objective is to industrialise the data centre market, eliminating the errors and costs associated with one-off custom-built solutions; favouring the inherent quality, improved performance and economies of a modular, manufactured solution.

The green agenda Industry leaders like Amazon, Microsoft and Google are driving uptake in the data centre market and have made categorical statements about their sustainability goals and how they will be achieved. Ark Data Centres openly share similar values and is approaching business in a different way says its CEO Huw Owen.

“There’s been too much greenwashing and not enough action,” he says. “We don't think that's good enough, because it's not addressing the actual problems in a meaningful way that effects real change.

The data centre industry is hungry on power and water so we need to develop a fit for purpose green agenda.”

The last decade has seen a huge and exponential growth in the use of data highlights Owen. “We’re seeing growth in the hundreds of percent when it comes to the amount of storage and power we’re offering. And if you actually look at the growth in power usage, it isn't matching it. Evidently, some good things

have been done to control that, but more needs to be done. And what's achieved that in large part is getting out of the old sweaty real estate data center sites into more modern and sustainable footprints.”

Ark’s goal is to create socially responsible data centres via a journey of continuous improvement towards sustainability objectives that benefit both its customers and the planet.

Net-Zero connectivity Ark has been sourcing green energy since 2015. All of its facilities are now powered by 100% renewable energy using purely natural sources. “Our customers benefit from the lowest renewable energy prices available in the UK market, while dramatically lowering their own carbon footprint,” reveals Owen.

It’s a fundamental approach that informs each stage of Ark’s design, build and operations cycle. All existing sites which have businesschief.eu

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www.gratte.com

Specialists in mission critical systems

Telephone 020 7837 6433

Gratte Brothers Group

Gratte Brothers: Mechanical & Electrical Precision Enabling modular and sustainable data centre solutions with resilient engineering Gratte Brothers is a third-generation family business, established in 1946 that has been offering combined M&E solutions for over 35 years; its first data centre project dates back to 1995. During the last six years the company has consistently delivered 30 megawatts of IT power to the mission critical construction market every year.

Resilient “We offer specialist knowledge when it comes to resilient engineering services” assures Gratte’s Engineering Director, Remi Suzan. “We’ve worked with DC supply chains for decades, and have good relationships with our manufacturers and specialist subcontractors.

Our contract engineers, site managers, and in-house commissioning teams don’t just understand how they work, but ‘why’ they need to work that way, and they bring that deep knowledge to every project.”

Modular Gratte Brothers has worked with Ark for over a decade; an integral part of its partner ecosystem developing modular DC solutions with low energy consumption

at their core. “ Together with Ark’s other partner contractors, we worked on developing a modular energy centre that could be associated with the prefabricated data centres that could then be deployed either as a single unit or as multiple units, depending on what Ark needed at the time,” confirms Suzan.

“The energy centres containing the UPSs and LV panels were all provided with a cooling system designed on external fresh air. It was calculated that for 98% of the year it could operate without mechanical cooling which was only required in exceptional circumstances at high-peak summer periods.”

Sustainable “Ark are way ahead of the game when it comes to sustainability,” reckons Suzan. “Their approach is more than just a green message on their website; they really mean it. Now that we can use adiabatic fresh air cooling systems for IT equipment with heat recovery in all of our air solutions, allied with the use of photovoltaic panels and LED lighting, energy efficiency has greatly improved.”

Engineering energy efficient data centres

Learn more Learn more now

ARK DATA CENTRES

historically leveraged diesel generators are in the process of being transitioned to bio-diesel.

For every new London facility Ark is committed to eliminating diesel by deploying back-up gas generators proven to run effectively on up to 30% hydrogen. “We support the UK’s ambition to incrementally increase the hydrogen mix in its utility gas network and we are pushing hard for the tests to be completed which will allow 100% usage,” adds Owen.

“Our campuses are ecologically level and feature green areas where wildlife can 58

April 2021

coexist. We have eco-toilets on our sites that save thousands of litres of water each year.

We’ve also extended our typical rainwater harvesting process to capture water from the roof but also from the run-off of the car parks which can then be filtered and stored.

It may involve a more intense filtration process but by re-using this water, we only use the mains to top up the rainwater supply as required, significantly reducing our usage.”

Water consumption is a key example where a data centre could either potentially

ARK DATA CENTRES

add to the problem or employ some innovative thinking. That’s why the team at Ark has developed a water buffering and saving mode for its cooling equipment which reduces the utility water supply requirement from 33 litres to just five litres per second (reducing its original peak water usage by a staggering 85%).

Ark’s net zero approach is the adoption of an ethos, not just a box-ticking exercise. Its waste management strategy is to become a “zero waste to landfill business” by reducing

the unnecessary use of raw materials.

Simultaneously, Ark aims to encourage re-use of materials and products, and reduce waste to landfill through recycling, composting or energy recovery, leading to a lower environmental impact and positive carbon reductions.

Modular data centre design “We’ve partnered with Bladeroom since 2011 developing our ‘data centre in a box’ concept,” explains Ark’s Director of Design, businesschief.eu

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Creating A More Responsible Digital Future BladeRoom are global leaders in the provision of highly energy–efficient data centres, manufacturing a sustainable and scalable solution capable of being deployed anywhere in the world.

Watch the future for sustainable data centres

Socially Responsible Data Centres For many businesses, improving sustainability now sits squarely at the top of the agenda and it’s a principle we share with the customers we serve. That’s why our data centres are designed around innovative technology that is proven to dramatically reduce energy consumption and carbon emissions.

A BladeRoom data centre, with its latest technological advances, uses zero mechanical cooling or refrigerants, and can operate at an annualised PUE of 1.04. This represents less than 4% of the total energy required to power the entire data centre and compared to the industry average, it is over 10 times more efficient. At the scale of a 100MW BladeRoom campus, situated in the UK, this results in annual carbon emission savings of up to 110,000 tonnes.

The real and significant reductions in carbon footprint that we are helping our clients to deliver today are the result of our 10-year commitment to innovation and continuous improvement and it is our mission to continue this journey towards a better and more responsible digital future.

Data Centres Don’t Get Any Cooler Than This BladeRoom facilities use an advanced cooling system, maximising free, filtered, ambient air with evaporative cooling. Free cooling is available for up to 100% of the time depending on the climate and supply air setpoints - saving significant cost and carbon emissions.

Rather than re-circulating and cooling the hot air from the IT as with traditional data centre cooling, a BladeRoom data centre operates like a server by drawing in highly filtered fresh air, intelligently matching air supply to IT demand and exhausting or partially recirculating warm air from the data centre as required.

Evaporative and free cooling enables the IT equipment to be cooled with supply air temperatures of between 18°C and 30 °C for more than 99% of the year in the UK without the need for mechanical cooling across a range of IT loads, still performing efficiently at 15% utilisation of racks.

Why ‘Factory-First’ Matters By manufacturing our data centres in our 110,000ft2 factory, we offer a sustainable alternative to site-based construction which in turn, provides a more resource-efficient way to create socially responsible facilities.

Our ‘Factory-first’ production approach allows deliveries to be made to the factory in bulk from local suppliers, minimising transport and heavy goods emissions. Materials are tightly controlled which dramatically reduces waste, with noise and pollution levels minimised, and site-based operational risks are transferred to a more secure environment.

Visit our website or follow us on social media to learn more about our commitment to a responsible digital future.

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ARK DATA CENTRES

Construction & Operations, Andy Garvin.

“Built off-site, delivered by lorry and then re-erected on site within 14 days of leaving the manufacturing facility it was our first approach towards a volumetric solution.”

Now focused on a flat pack solution that can be built off the cladding on site, the design has been developed through various iterations over the past decade to reduce waste and cost. “We’ve developed a really efficient approach with dedicated factory space for Bladeroom to 'build-to- order' for our clients. The standardisation they’ve been able to offer has been really important.

We've worked closely with Bladeroom, particularly around the cooling technologies 62

April 2021

- we use indirect and direct air solutions.

The majority of our data centers are direct air, which allows fresh air to come in. It's conditioned, filtered and then approaches the OT space and is either exhausted or recirculated, depending on the conditions within the room.”

Ark also works alongside Bladeroom with Gratte Brothers and JCA to develop improved energy centre solutions. “Gratte Brothers and JCA are our preferred mechanical and electrical engineering partners,” confirms Garvin. Ark were also keen to modularise this process so together the partners came up with a unique solution which not only utilises

ARK DATA CENTRES

“ The data centre industry is hungry on power and water so we need to develop a fit for purpose green agenda”

HUW OWEN TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: WILTSHIRE, UK Huw Owen joined Ark in November 2012 as Chief Executive Officer to lead a new management team following the recapitalisation of the company. He has held key roles at a number of organisations, including BT Global Services and HP Defence & Security.

Previous roles across a diverse career include Chief Executive of the Atlas Consortium, delivering the Ministry of Defence DII (Defence Information Infrastructure) programme.

Owen also worked for the Asia Foundation, formulating and driving national reform programmes in Cambodia, as well as advising the United Nations on their efforts in Central Asia. Before this, he served with the Royal Hong Kong Police Force, latterly as a Detective Inspector.

HUW OWEN

CEO, ARK DATA CENTRES

Partnering with the UK Government The UK government utilises a disparate set of data centres of varying scales and efficiencies. Entering the fray when a tender was held in 2013, Ark subsequently won through to secure a deal to partner with the UK Cabinet Office in a joint venture to create Crown Hosting Data Centres to deliver increased efficiency, improved value, and transparency of data centre hosting utilisation across the entire UK Public Sector. Doing just that, Ark delivered £105m in savings which contributed towards over £2bn in savings for the UK government.

EXECUTIVE BIO

the data center cooling to cool the energy center, but also allows Ark to build the energy center off site - improving health and safety while reducing material waste and cost.

“Though competitors in the market, Gratte Brothers and JCA are both familyrun businesses that integrate well with Ark,” says Garvin. “They’re really adaptable and always looking to innovate. When we need to ensure speed to market, and in times of crisis like we’ve experienced during the pandemic, we rely on these partnerships to deliver safely to our customers.”

BUILDING THE FUTURE Drawing on a wealth of industry experience, Sweet Projects design and construct specialist buildings for our clients across the Defence, Aerospace and Data industries with unrivalled levels of focus and service.

sweet-projects.com

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SWEET PROJECTS AND ARK DATA CENTRES: CUTTING-EDGE BUILDINGS

WATCH NOW

Sweet Projects’ Robert Smart discusses the data centre construction specialist’s philosophy and its close partnership with Ark Data Centres.

worked together for over 14 years, growing and supporting Ark’s development to become one of the UK’s foremost data centre providers.

Sweet Projects are turnkey Design and Build contractor operating in the UK & Europe and provide specialised services to the Advanced Technology, Data and Commercial sectors, as Robert Smart, Executive Director at the company, explains:

Going forwards, Smart is clear that the company is poised to evolve with the latest technologies as they emerge. “Complex projects call for complex solutions and the key area of growth in the last few years has been around the use of Information Technology.

At Sweet Projects, we have a clearly defined and continually evolving Digital Strategy which allows us to invest and embrace cutting—edge advances in construction technology to continue to improve our offering — from Building Information Modelling, which allows us to coordinate from design to construction, to Geo-enabled Technologies and Biometrics which set us apart in the physical delivery of projects.” It’s thanks to this approach that Sweet Projects is confident that the partnership with Ark will continue going from strength to strength. “Through these, we can meet the ever-growing demand for security of process and certainty of outcome that our partnership with Ark is based upon. Sharing knowledge through digitised platforms, we take our collaboration to the next level — which ultimately drives future success.”

“Sweet Projects’ modus operandi is simple — provide excellent service and deliver consistent with the expectations of our key clients across the Defence, Data and Aerospace industries. Upholding those values requires being laser-focused on the needs of clients as well as workers. “Our management team consists of high-calibre people with experience across the construction industry,” says Smart. “We are passionate about ensuring safe working environments and protecting the personal health and wellbeing of our employees and supply chain.

Health and safety is always at the forefront of our operations.”

The company is a committed and long-term partner of UK data centre firm Ark Data Centres. “We are committed to working with and for Ark and to this end, with each other, to deliver for the long-term, providing a strong legacy for Ark’s customers and stakeholders.

Testament to our exceptional relationship, founded on delivery and innovation, we've

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ARK DATA CENTRES

Huw Owen from Ark Data Centres talks about sustainability

“ Gratte Brothers and JCA are both familyrun businesses that integrate well with Ark. They’re really adaptable and always looking to innovate” ANDY GARVIN

DIRECTOR OF DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION & OPERATIONS, ARK DATA CENTRES

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“There's a joint board which sits between the government and Ark,” explains Owen.

“The framework – procurement, vetting, security and pricing – is pre-done. Instead of having to do procurement, if you take a pound of government money you can utilise that framework, save your management time, save your expense of procurement, and you can use our facilities. We’re highly flexible, you can take it for a month, you can take it for five years, take your reversion release at the end a highly compelling offer. We've been through UK government benchmarking exercises and been found to be right up in the top quartile.”

In terms of sustainability goals, Owen estimates that Ark’s involvement has taken the equivalent of 140,000 cars off the road in

ARK DATA CENTRES

CONNECTIVITY COOLED WITHOUT COMPROMISE Direct Air Cooled Data Centre – Operating free cooling 99% of the year, Ark’s Direct Air technology offers the perfect choice to lower a company’s footprint while also lowering costs. Convenient, green and efficient data centres, with world leading PUE performances.

DID YOU KNOW...

carbon savings. The joint venture, accounting for around 45% of Ark’s business. has been extended to 2023 as the UK government seeks to further transform its data centre footprint.

Trusted by governments and multinationals alike to deliver flexible and reliable data centre solutions, each new project and partnership is more than just another business transaction for Ark. “A few years back we went through a branding exercise,” recalls Owen. “Our clients were asked to be brutally honest. Their feedback?

‘They’re capable’, ‘A breath of fresh air to do business with’ and most importantly of all, ‘They care’. So, we don’t court awards and adulation, we’re discreet and listen to our customers.”

Indirect Air Cooled Data Centre – Maintaining its industry leading PUE figures, Ark’s Indirect Air Cooled facilities use high tech adiabatic coolers and specifically designed heat exchangers to let companies choose their perfect data centre cooling configuration.

Chilled Water Data Centre – Delivering the most robust physical security available, Ark’s mechanical and electrical infrastructure has been developed to compliment the enhanced physical environment while still providing signature benefits – high flexibility and reliability.

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a fully integrated service provider for data centre infrastructure engineering led principal contractor with a proven track record of designing, building and maintaining award-winning and energy efficient data centres

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design | build | maintain

JCA: dynamic data centre engineering

Watch JCA discuss engineering and their relationship with Ark Data Centres

Providing robust and scalable infrastructure solutions to enable the secure growth of IT systems JCA offers trusted world class engineering services to the data centre sector. Working across the design, construction, operation and maintenance of mission critical facilities for 17 years, JCA takes a holistic view with a pragmatic approach to the benefits and pitfalls of resilient engineering strategies.

Expertise “When working with clients like Ark, we appreciate what drives their business and understand their key business goals,” confirms JCA’s Managing Director Tom Absalom. “Engineering expertise we hold can be applied to support our partners’ business plans and market offering. In recent years, we’ve made great strides in terms of reduced CapEx and OpEx, albeit with increased availability and enhanced environmental credentials.”

Innovation Keeping pace with the evolutionary cycle of incremental gains, JCA ensures the products it develops and deploys are enhanced over those that have gone before. “That can only happen when you work with organisations with shared goals and strategies for the entire supply chain,” says Absalom. “We make sure everyone is aligned towards a single aim. During our time working with Ark we’ve

progressed through some revolutionary concept designs which have trickled down into the world-class products you see them operating today.”

Aspiration “Ark’s commitment to sustainability creates an aspiration for JCA to deliver,” maintains the company’s Chairman and Founder Ian Jackson. “It’s the perfect partnership for us to showcase our desire and commitment to invest in the lifecycle of a building asset through the implementation of new digital building technologies. Equally, we’re investigating and testing new disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence to improve waste management controls and also provide the strategic direction to leverage real-time information from other construction sites throughout the country.

“We’re fortunate to have customers that share our values and appreciate the advantage collaborative partnerships can bring on a long-term basis. At JCA continuous improvement is key as we strive to enhance our consistency and processes.”

Learn more Learn more now

CAMPUS DEVELOPMENT

ARK DATA CENTRES

ARK DATA CENTRES CEO, HUW OWEN LISTS SIX OF ITS FACILITIES SETTING THE TONE FOR SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE DATA CENTRES IN THE UK: Spring Park, Corsham - 30mw under live operation, 27mw under design & build “Spring Park is where the British government were going to regress in the event of nuclear war - a million square feet of underground space where they once manufactured munitions and fighter planes. Very dense in power and fibre, it’s an excellent site.”

Cody Park, Farnborough - 32mw under live operation, 17mw under design & build “When I joined the company in 2012 Cody Park was just a plot of land with two derelict buildings, a large muddy field, and a pond. We’ve come a long way…”

Meridian Park, Enfield - 7.5 mw under live operation, 8.5mw under design & build “Meridian Park features a private wire straight into a waste generation plant.

It's absolutely compelling, both on an economic basis but also on that green agenda so we can give our customers

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a real, total cost of ownership, which really encourages them to come in for 100% green power.”

Union Park, Hayes - 75mw under design & build, 150mva dedicated site power “We’re planning to create our biggest and most ambitious, facility to date at Union Park which promises to set the tone for socially responsible data centres in the UK. We’re optimising power options to make sure what we build together with our clients will be configured to allow them to be as energy efficient and sustainable as possible.”

Longcross Park, Chertsey - 30mw under design & build, 90mba dedicated site power “We’re creating a purpose built 385,000 square foot facility. The data centre campus is part of the Enterprise M3 zone and is the first commercial development on the 300acre Longcross Garden Village.”

Alliance Park (Park Royal), London - under planning consultation, going live 2023 “We were delighted to acquire the Alliance Park site from Renault Retail Group. Our customers have an expectation for us to be both socially responsible, as well as provide best-in-class, market leading data centres in the locations where we can have the greatest impact. The exciting acquisition of Park Royal, our third in London, not only supports Ark’s own sustainability commitments but also empowers the customers we serve by helping them to honour their own carbon reduction goals.”

ARK DATA CENTRES

“There’s a great quote from a famous speech that Theodore Roosevelt gave at the Sorbonne in 1919: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great

devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

“I like to think that at Ark, we and our partners are that man striving to instigate the change that can create a Darwinian moment for the planet.”

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EMPLOYEE PERKS

WHY EMPLOYEE WELLBEING

SHOULD BE YOUR

TOP PRIORITY

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EMPLOYEE PERKS

From wellbeing programmes to virtual self-care, employee care is being redefined in the post-pandemic era across EMEA with HR leaders reshaping packages, a focus on mental health, and innovative wellbeing apps WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

W

hen it comes to employee benefits, supporting physical and emotional health is top priority for most employers in the post-pandemic world.

However, less than three in 10 employers say their wellbeing and caregiving programs have been effective.

That’s according to a new survey by Willis Towers Watson (WTW), which also found the majority of employers cite rising stress and burnout as the number-one wellbeing and mental health concern.

“The pandemic has taken its toll on employees especially in the areas of emotional and social wellbeing. In fact, the impact is so great that many employers expect these effects will continue in a postvaccine environment,” said Regina Ihrke, Wellbeing leader, North America, Willis Towers Watson.

“Therefore, many employers are now acting with urgency as they look to take their wellbeing programs to the next level.

To achieve this transformation, they will ramp up listening to their employee needs, communication efforts and realignment of benefit programs with a focus on mental health and caregiving.” businesschief.eu

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EMPLOYEE PERKS

Work From Home Health benefits remain key The reality is that COVID-19 has catalysed a new era, accelerating the shift from ‘traditional’ group insurance cover to employee health benefits characterised by health technology and a wider definition of wellbeing – that encompasses not just physical health, but increasingly mental health too. As businesses work to regain their footing post-pandemic, HR leaders will be looking to reshape company offers, adapting health, wellness and benefits programmes with the delivery of everything from enhanced sick leave and financial assistance, to adjusted hours of operation, childcare provisions and mental health support.

To address these challenges, 62% of those surveyed WTW said enhancing mental health services and stress/resilience management as a top priority over the next six months, compared with just 47% six months ago.

Encouragingly, twice as many employers report developing a strategy for benefits in a post-COVID-19 environment as a top priority, suggesting a shift from crisis management to future planning.

Employers expect nearly two in five employees will still be working remotely at the end of 2021, compared with 57% who work remotely now, although that varies by industry, according to WTW.

Mental health support in focus Even before the pandemic, prevalence of mental health had become a common workplace issue, leading HR managers to introduce wellness programmes into its benefit packages and insurers to deliver such policies.

In the wake of the pandemic and its aftermath (a recent global study by Qualtrics and SAP revealed that 67% of respondents were experiencing heightened stress levels) and as workplaces adjust to the ‘new normal’ and the struggles that come with it, more organisations are recognising the importance of mental health and emotional wellbeing programmes. businesschief.eu

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EMPLOYEE PERKS

“Employers have assessed their caregiving support was not as effective as hoped, and as a result the mental health of their workforce is suffering,” said Rachael McCann, senior director, Health and Benefits, Willis Towers Watson.

“Many solutions were short term in nature, which contributed to their ineffectiveness. With the stakes so high, employers need a revamped approach to caregiving support that includes a holistic view of benefits, paid time off and flexible work policies.”

Such numbers are reflected in Pacific Prime’s Global Employee Benefits Trends 2020 report. While 34 per cent of businesses have already introduced additional private mental health support, 44 per cent have started to provide professional mental health support, and 35 per cent have introduced extra physical or mental training sessions.

“Increasingly, companies are offering programmes that help employees monitor and reduce their stress levels, provide apps to assist with relaxation and sleep, and hold workshops on emotional resilience,” states Pacific Prime’s CEO, Neil Raymond.

“Employers are also progressively using telehealth programmes to provide mental health counselling and are more willing to offer counselling sessions through EAPs (emotional assistance programmes).”

The report highlights six global benefits trends: 1. Refinement and reassessment of group health insurance 2. Adoption of technology 3. Mental health benefits 4. Family-friendly benefits 5. Flexible working arrangements 6. Financial wellbeing 76

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EMPLOYEE PERKS

The long road to new normal According to the WTW survey, two-thirds of employers (67%) expect to reach a ‘new normal’ in terms of returning to the workplace and bringing to an end pandemicrelated policies and programs during the second half of 2021. One in four (26%) expect that to happen by Q1 2022 or later.

Leading companies are already doing their bit to tackle the stresses and strains created by the pandemic, and adjusting their health and wellness offerings.

Unilever has unveiled a 14-day mental wellbeing resilience programme, which utilises tools created by the Resilience Research Center to cover a wide range of topics, including dealing with negative thoughts.

EY Global’s employees can participate in daily workouts online through the EY Exercise programme as well as attend online seminars covering topics like nutrition and sleep.

In addition to wellbeing programmes, businesses are considering and trialling

“ The pandemic has taken its toll on employees especially in the areas of emotional and social wellbeing” REGINA IHRKE

WELLBEING LEADER, NORTH AMERICA, WILLIS TOWERS WATSON businesschief.eu

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EMPLOYEE PERKS

other employee perks, from flexible hours to continued remote working, that take into consideration the demands of the pandemic and subsequent working habits, with a focus on promoting work-life balance.

Wellness delivered via technology Driven by corporate demand, emerging selfhelp apps and digital health and wellness solutions have gained significant ground.

While mental health app Intellect supports users with a range of interventions, digital mental health provider Safe Space offers three tiers of service for corporates, from giving employees access to self-help resources, to letting corporates top up digital wallets so staff can attend counselling sessions to offering corporates curated employee programmes.

“Workplace mental well-being will be one of our top priorities going into 2021,” said Safe Space founder Antoinette Patterson.

“Safe Space’s vision is to make digital mental healthcare and education accessible and comprehensive to businesses of all sizes, from startups to MNCs.”

Room for disruption A recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey of more than 2,300 companies around the world for its annual Digital Acceleration Index (DAI), showed that healthcare is one of the least digitally mature industries, scoring an average of 44 out of 100. That score was 20% below the two leading industries (technology and financial institutions) with an average score of 55.

This suggests the healthcare industry is still ripe for disruption.

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Perkbox is a platform that offers a suite of products including Perks and Perkbox Medical. It serves companies of all sizes from SMEs to large companies such as Whole Foods and Levi Strauss & Co. Many companies are also offering employees access to virtual doctors appointments. While this technology has been around for a few years now, demand has soared during the pandemic as access to face-to-face healthcare has been limited.

These telehealth apps have been joined by a swathe of mental health apps in the

EMPLOYEE PERKS

“ Employers have assessed their caregiving support was not as effective as hoped, and as a result the mental health of their workforce is suffering” RACHAEL MCCANN

SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEALTH AND BENEFITS, WILLIS TOWERS WATSON

past 12 months. Youper, for example, uses AI technology to help manage depression via their downloadable app. The AI assistant works by talking back and forth with you. The assistant will ask prompts that encourage you to think about your thought patterns and behaviours. It will then summarise your conversations and provide insights.

With the world cautiously inching towards the lights at the end of this dark tunnel, it’s reassuring to know that technology can help alleviate some of the problems both employers and employees are facing. businesschief.eu

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NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

NTT Global Sourcing: The Power of One Arvind Kumar, Global VP of Indirects at NTT Global Sourcing, on partner ecosystems and how a novel approach to indirect sourcing delivers true value WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

Arvind Kumar

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It is 4 am in Houston, Texas, when Arvind Kumar checks his emails and preps for the day ahead. The Global Vice President of Indirects at NTT Global Sourcing has an important call with a team in India, 11 hours ahead, and will be working right through to the early evening. It is a demanding role, but one that Kumar relishes. He is an executive energised by the prospect of big picture programmes and an emphatic champion of bringing businesses together to achieve through collaboration that which would be impossible alone.

Kumar’s values very much align with the shared philosophy of the NTT Global Sourcing team, a 60-strong global outfit that was assembled two and a half years ago

by CEO Mark LeNeve to advance the role of sourcing within NTT and centralise the group’s buying power. Commanding upwards of $30bn in annual spend, it is a powerhouse of procurement.

From the outset, the startup identified three core areas that would need to be modernised and reformed to excel in the modern landscape, and to realise the vision of the group’s top executives. NTT GS’s primary directive is to leverage the group’s combined influence and unify the hundreds of companies and entities that operate under its banner. “Our whole focus has been to

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accurate, risk-free, reliable, repeatable and costoptimised operation by providing predictive and collaborative analytics.

Arul C.T, founder and CEO of HelixSense, holds more than 25 years of global experience in automation and venture exits calls HelixSense a “disruptive digital transformation company”. HelixSense aims to leverage technology and literally disrupt and reimagine how companies manage their assets.

Integrated Facility Management HelixSense provides stakeholders with real-time insights on assets, allowing one to take a proactive stance and mitigate risks with data-driven decision making that extends the life cycle of assets and improves returns.

Helixsense’s very own platform “Hsense” integrates people, processes and technologies. Arul describes the entire digital asset management process using four simple words -Connect, Compute, Monitor, Control and a four-step process to bring digital transformation.

Using unique edge analysers, the HSense platform collects data from assets and makes them self-reporting.”

Using the cloud only for secondary analytics, “HSense” orchestrates digital asset management, while following maintenance standards and allowing for highly reliable risk mitigation.

The process consists of IT-OT integration where “big data” is collected by connecting IT databases and building management systems to “HSense,” integration of people with process standards such as ISO55K and SMRP practices, analytics and AI with structured, relevant and auditable data. AI-powered reports alert on trends and predictions providing actionable insights.

Another game-changer is Helix’s R-FIT IOT ready to fit technology which accelerates transformation, creating Return on Investment (ROI) from the start.

Combining the Internet of Things (IoT) and operation technology, HelixSense’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) replaces traditionally siloed functions with a fully integrated digital ecosystem that leverages data for the betterment of all stakeholders, resulting in

Digital Twins “A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical object. In the case of building construction, a digital twin can tell you how to build, help you collaborate between stakeholders and assist you in maintaining and managing with optimum eff iciency. We are currently building a number of digital twins (cobots) to assist managers and technicians in using virtual reality. Our digital twins can also provide reports and prescribe risk mitigation actions.

“HelixSense partners with NTT Global Sourcing on their transformation road map. NTT supports us with an extensive global customer base. We collaborate to create new joint revenue models for our customers,” says Arul.

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

“NTT has created a meeting platform which allows everybody to work together seamlessly.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

bring the strength of NTT as a group into one programme. Our job is to make sure we bring projects into a central focus area that can help us drive the big picture value and give back to the various operating companies across the group.”

First, NTT GS established a common platform through which these decentralized

entities could bring their initiatives together.

Better planning and strategic sourcing allows for the consolidation of spend across the business and its categories. The team also identified roughly 200 best-in-class vendors with which to build long-term partnerships.

Kumar’s role with this newly minted procurement division is indirects, a broad remit that encompasses payment solutions, everything to do with real estate – from land acquisition and construction through to lease back and infrastructure built for data centres – and managing all the facility workplace services around the globe. It is also involved in the digital transformation programmes within the group, though “there's a slight difference in our approach,” Kumar explains.

The implementation of new digital platforms such as SAP Ariba are group-level decisions that roll down to the company level.

In this regard – in the traditional definition of digital transformation – Kumar’s division has little involvement. “But what we do in

Arvind Kumar; An insight into NTT Global Sourcing

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2018

NTT Global Sourcing Inc. founded

60

Number of Employees for NTT Global Sourcing Inc.

80+ Projects

$100m Estimated Savings

contributing to the digitalisation efforts is to look at the pre-existing programmes and processes across the group and within the categories that we manage. We also ensure there is automation, enforce digitalisation, and transform the category and processes from legacy to next-generation.”

Ecosystem of value This process of upscaling and reshaping legacy systems is also evident in Kumar’s approach to indirect sourcing. Traditionally, procurement is a one-way process of assessing and negotiating terms with a vendor to supply a product or service. Kumar’s model has upended this linear structure, instead creating an ecosystem of partners with an economy of shared capabilities, ideas and revenue generation opportunities.

“I’m very passionate about this,” Kumar says.

“I truly believe there's a larger picture that a lot of procurement organisations don't realise. The supplier partner ecosystem we are building on a strategic level provides vast opportunity to create and add incentives to businesses within

Executive Profile:

Arvind Kumar Title: Global VP of Indirects Industry: Strategic Sourcing Arvind Kumar joined NTT Global Sourcing when it was established in 2018, and oversees the group’s indirect sourcing as Global Vice President Indirects. His remit covers payment solutions, real estate construction, land acquisition, and managing all the facility and workplace services for NTT Group globally.

An experienced executive, Kumar’s 20-plus year career has seen him work with market-leading organisations in banking, real estate, sourcing, and telecommunications, among others. Prior to joining NTT, he held several senior roles at French multinational Capgemini, including Global Head Workplace Transformation / Furniture & Fixture Standardisation, and Regional Chief Procurement Officer for India, UAE and APAC.

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

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April 2021

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our group, and for partners to work together to generate new income and business. I am a big proponent of building a supplier ecosystem, depending on certain projects, initiatives or categories, and promote collaboration with NTT in the middle of it as an incubation hub.”

Kumar envisions NTT Global Sourcing as the “choirmaster” of this global network,

standing with an overview of the entire ecosystem, driving strategy and aligning these partners to work together – the upshots of which are beneficial to the entire value chain. “Not only does it help us generate better value with the partners, but also for our partners to work together in collaborative programmes,” Kumar says. “As a result, NTT businesschief.eu

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Deliver your global brand >

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has created a meeting platform, which allows everybody to work together seamlessly.”

He explains that today, partners that never knew each other before aligning with NTT are now working closely in conjunction to create new business and revenue opportunities.

At the same time, these collaborative projects strengthen NTT’s supply chain and develop go-to-market solutions that benefit the group’s existing and new clients.

Building the future This complex network of partners will soon be enshrined in a major capital project that has been in the works for some years and, in many ways, sits at the heart of NTT’s future. In Sunnyvale, California, the group is readying the unveiling of One NTT Vision Campus, a smart, sustainable building that is a physical manifestation of its capabilities

“ [One NTT Vision Campus] is a living, breathing showcase of our ecosystem partners and what they deliver together with us.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

NTT Global Sourcing

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Community impact

Supporting local partners is central to the One NTT Vision NTT is a global conglomerate, but remaining local and supporting the communities it works in is central to the One NTT Vision. Arvind Kumar, Global VP of Indirects at NTT Global Sourcing shares more: “I think it's our responsibility as a strategic sourcing arm of a company to maximize the benefit for everybody in the supply chain,” says Kumar. "We do that by making sure the vision and mission for a company gets translated to everybody that's in that combined team, whether internally or externally, because in many cases these are an extension of NTT.

At the same time, we must keep a focus on impacting the community.

“I strongly believe when you do projects in my space, in real estate, we should always look to local partners, local players who are in the community, because they need a lot of help through COVID. It’s a combination of taking the big boys that we work with and integrating it with the smaller partners in the community that are in a five, 10, 20-mile radius of our office. We want to bring value to them and make sure that they're sustainable, make sure they get through this hurdle, and give them an opportunity to truly live and breathe. At NTT these are the missions and values we stand by, the One NTT Vision, and that touches all these elements as a company.”

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Arvind Kumar: Sunnyvale, the one NTT vision substainable campus

and future goals. Upon its mention, Kumar is instantly energised.

“That is a very special project, very dear to my heart and the work I do every day because I've always wanted to be part of a sustainable, smart building programme.

This is the vision of our CEO, bringing NTT companies together in one common real estate platform, one common office, but also make it a smart and intelligent workplace which focuses on employee experience, sustainability, wellness – all the key measures that today are important. At the same time, it has state of the art technology in terms of sensors, automation, IoT, and so on. And on top of that, it is a sustainable building, which means we have a solar captive fuel cell hybrid system with backup power being managed to back up the building and save utility energy costs.

“This is a living, breathing showcase of our ecosystem partners and what they deliver together with us, how we use it

internally, and how we give back to employees.

And also it becomes a showcase to show clients what we can do for them with these kinds of platforms and technologies as a solution provider.”

For Kumar, the central role NTT Global

“The key for sourcing organisations in the future must be a solutions-driven approach.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

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Sourcing played in the Sunnyvale project illustrates how his division deviates from the traditional procurement function.

“Sunnyvale is a classic example of how we brought that spirit to life and really demonstrated that we go above and beyond standard procurement negotiation and other sourcing activities. We were also there

advising, guiding, developing the strategy, supporting the business, integrating the partners, bringing the ecosystem, creating this whole smart building concept of the One NTT Vision.”

The outbreak of COVID-19 threatened to derail this construction project, and Kumar vividly recalls the onset of the virus.

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“ I truly believe there's a larger picture that a lot of procurement organisations don't realise.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

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Returning from Sunnyvale to Texas on a flight last February, he awoke the next day to find companies shutting down, airports beginning to empty out, and individuals and businesses standing still, not quite sure how to react.

“Now imagine, I'm running a construction project in Sunnyvale, I'm sitting in Texas, and we are in the heart of COVID. But we still have a timeline to meet, and we are pressured, and there's a cost impact associated with shutting down, then reopening, and other delays.”

Here, indirect sourcing came into its own.

“We played a big role, as you can imagine.

In terms of procurement, we needed safety gear, PPE, masks, hand sanitiser – all of these things that were in short supply. On the other hand, we also had to help our clients

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

procure these things, so we used our supply chain to support them through that process.”

In the end, construction never stopped on the One NTT Vision campus. “We are close to completing the building and looking ahead to the big launch,” Kumar says. “We never stopped. We actually pulled through the businesschief.eu

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Arvind Kumar: Expresses his opinion on small businesses during these difficult times

times and really made it happen against all odds. We kept people-focused, kept people safe and positive, and ensured that the business could continue.”

With the global vaccine effort now well underway, Kumar believes we should remember the lessons learned during this turbulent period. “The key for sourcing organisations in the future must be a solutiondriven approach, focused on the value the supply ecosystem brings to the company when you build strategic partnerships. I think we need to look at a larger focus on that because in the next world that we're living in post-COVID, the supply chain partners and suppliers can add a lot of value in terms of not only managing the cost structure but being resilient to these activities.”

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The Future of AUDITS and

ASSURANCE Business Chief discusses the future of audits and assurance and the core priorities for the function in 2021 with KPMG WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

S

peaking with Emilio Pera, Partner and Head of Audit, KPMG Lower Gulf, he explains that “Audits are conducted in accordance with the International Standards on Auditing (ISA) on financial statements as a whole assurance, on the other hand, will provide different levels of comfort on specific elements of the financial statements and could include non-financial information as well.

Assurance is a much wider concept with a wider application.”

Initial impact of COVID-19 for audits and assurance Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Pera reflects that “the most significant change is rapid digitalisation.” While prior to COVID-19,

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

Emilio Pera, Partner and Head of Audit,

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

“ Audit firms are also using data analytics and in-house technology to effectively audit data held and processed in clients’ IT systems, to better identify risks” EMILIO PERA,

PARTNER AND HEAD OF AUDIT, KPMG LOWER GULF

“the winds were already changing,” comments Naveen Kalia, Partner, Audit, KPMG Canada. Auditors have had to adapt to new ways of working at a much quicker pace, harnessing remote tools and methods to deliver audits and connect with clients to review documentation, inspect evidence and engage in a secure environment. “As a result, information technology and data security have become key,” adds Pera.

In addition to new remote working technologies, Pera adds that “recent changes in auditing and accounting standards have led to the increased use of specialist resources and skills as part of the audit, and as technology is playing an increasingly important role in obtaining audit evidence, audit procedures are also reassessed to drive efficiency, whilst not compromising on quality.” businesschief.eu

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COVID-19 presents new risks “The standards haven't changed, yet the pandemic has resulted in new risks. There have been significant changes to internal controls as a result of remote work arrangements this makes business more vulnerable to fraud and cybersecurity attacks, often while facing resource constraints and staff reductions — making it even more difficult to design effective controls.”

The future for audits and assurance and the core priorities for 2021 “One of the priorities in 2021 is to understand how we can leverage what we learned during the pandemic to further enhance audit quality. For instance, technology has been widely adopted to improve audit quality, by driving efficiency and greater coverage of a client’s portfolio,” comments Pera.

It is important for the accounting industry to remain a step ahead of businesses transforming the way they collect and process data. As a result “continuing to invest in cognitive, machine learning and 104

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“The challenge ahead is to leverage technology without compromising data security and audit quality” EMILIO PERA,

PARTNER AND HEAD OF AUDIT, KPMG LOWER GULF

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“ After embracing digitisation and artificial intelligence for high-quality, highly efficient audits, there's no going back. The future of audit is within reach and closer than ever” NAVEEN KALIA,

PARTNER, AUDIT, KPMG CANADA

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artificial intelligence capabilities to provide organisations with data-driven business insights as well as evolving reporting and regulatory requirements,” will be vital going forward, explains Kalia.

“Audit firms are also using data analytics and in-house technology to effectively audit data held and processed in clients’ IT systems, to better identify risks,” adds Pera.

While KPMG states that investments in technology are critical, there is no onesize-fits-all solution. With new technologies and expectations evolving rapidly, auditors need to constantly upgrade their skills and approach to bridge the skills gap.

“The emergence of cutting-edge tools and innovation transforming audit has accountants thirsty for the knowledge to keep pace and thrive in the future of audit,” notes Kalia.

Another benefit for the future is remote working, Pera explains that such workplace models “provide more flexibility and agility in both the delivery and connection with clients. Looking at a market such as the Middle East for example, specialist resources can operate virtually across geographies rather than being restricted through physical presence. This has also benefited work-life balance as teams are not required to travel extensively and be present in office or at the client site all the time.”

Reflecting on the future for audits and assurance, Pera comments that “moving forward, auditors will be expected to exercise extraordinary judgement while evaluating asset impairments, valuations and estimates, even as they operate within uncertain markets exacerbated by the pandemic. The challenge ahead is to leverage technology without compromising data security and audit quality.” businesschief.eu

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT:

READY FOR AN EXCITING

FUTURE WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

Ninian Wilson, Group Procurement Director of Vodafone and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company, prepares for an exciting future fuelled

by AI, ML and predictive analytics

T

Ninian Wilson, CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company

here is nothing like chatting to a procurement leader with a 30-year career under his belt who still gets infectiously excited by the industry.

That’s Ninian Wilson, Group Procurement Director of Vodafone and CEO of its subsidiary, the Vodafone Procurement Company, who visibly lights up when talking about procurement being in the spotlight and the technology that is shaping its ongoing transformation. Or, maybe, he’s in a particularly good mood because his beloved Scotland just beat old rivals England at rugby – the first time that has happened in England for 38 years.

Of Scottish origin, Wilson is speaking to us from his home office in Luxembourg. Home working is just one aspect of the Covid-19 pandemic that has impacted Vodafone, from both a business and customer perspective. And where there is disruption, there is opportunity.

And when you’re Ninian Wilson with €24 billion to spend on behalf of Vodafone, and also responsible for all supply chain operations, opportunity is around every corner.

“I'm overall responsible for our procurement activity across four categories of spend,” says Wilson. “The total spend is about €24 billion euros and that's split across networks, indirect spend, content, and obviously devices.

“We always think about the cost savings we've made and, and the spend value coming down as we do more and more work with our internal clients, but also we've made a number of acquisitions. So that spend base has been broadly stable over the last few years, even with buying and selling of companies.” businesschief.eu

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SIRIONLABS, EMPOWERING TRUE COLLABORATION AND PARTNERSHIP Ajay Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of SirionLabs, discusses their fruitful partnership with Vodafone and how CLM enables smarter contracting enterprise-wide.

Ajay Agrawal, CEO & Co-Founder of SirionLabs, shares how the alignment of values and the power of CLM have made for an effective partnership with Vodafone. “We believe in the power of cost savings and superior customer experience, and therein lies the synergy between our organisations. What started out as a post-signature value realisation exercise back in 2016 has since grown into a full suite CLM solution encompassing customised pre-signature features to cater to local markets spread over more than 40 countries. Nothing gives me greater happiness than a customer who has been able to gain increased visibility and get a tighter grip over their contracts.”

“Vodafone has today around 2000 strategic supplier contracts managed through SirionLabs, which oversee a spend of close to 6 billion euros annually. Through our initial discussions, we saw great potential in addressing Vodafone’s commercial engagements, tracking and realising value at scale through a myriad of systems that were retrofitted to suit existing infrastructure.”

“Our four-way automated invoice matching solution has contributed to Vodafone’s bottom line, enabling them to save hundreds of millions of dollars. It has also reduced the friction in their supplier landscape,

ranging from missed commitments or complaints to disputes or disagreements. Automation also reaps many benefits and has enabled Vodafone to cut costs in contract management and supplier governance by more than 60%, reducing manual effort by almost 50% and generating further savings through reduced headcount cost. Post signature activities have also become smoother and a lot more efficient, with one enterprise contract repository across all suppliers and managing them according to their footprint.”

By leveraging AI and extracting valuable data, SirionLabs’ CLM solution empowers collaboration and continued cooperation and partnership long after contracts have been signed.

Agrawal explains, “Collaboration is essential to any partnership. That is really the heart and soul of any SirionLabs project. Unlike many conventional contract management systems that create, store, and maybe extract information from contracts, SirionLabs is unique because it allows both contracting parties to have continued access to the system, even after the contract is signed, while giving a single, consolidated view of data, further enhanced by rich dashboards and insights which help make quick business decisions. The purpose of that continued access is true collaboration across multiple business functions.”

Digitize Your Contracts Now

The spend may not have changed significantly in recent years – Wilson joined Vodafone 12 years ago – but the manner of the procurement process certainly has. That digital transformation story started around 5 years ago and, like many great developments, was born of frustration.

Wilson is the first to admit he was trying to get data and information which was not as simple then as it may now sound. kind of hard to get. Out to showcase the digital opportunity to his then boss Nick Reed (now the Group Chief Executive), Wilson and his team set about digitalising the supplier performance scorecard.

“From that initial scorecarding, we then worked really hard on some of our P2P processes and digitising all that work and creating scorecards and dashboards in near real time for all of that activity,” says Wilson.

“So we started around, strategically, how are we doing? And then we digitised the back 114

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and now our focus has shifted to what we call ‘autonomous sourcing’, which is going to be the next sort of quantum leap in procurement – procurement that runs itself with almost no human intervention.”

“ You've got to have a digital first mentality – you've got to really think about how you can digitise what we do” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

NINIAN WILSON TITLE: SUPPLY CHAIN DIRECTOR & CEO INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: LUXEMBOURG Ninian joined Vodafone in June 2009 as SCM IT Director, and was appointed to the board of Vodafone Procurement Company in November 2009.

From 2014–2016 Ninian held the role of SCM Technology Director, responsible for all Technology sourcing in Vodafone including Networks, IT and new product development.

March 2016 he was appointed Director of Group SCM and CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company.

Prior to joining Vodafone, Ninian held the position of Operations Director for

Royal Mail, where he managed the largest workforce in the UK with full accountability for the delivery of its transformation programme. Previously Ninian held senior positions in Cable & Wireless, and was a member of the board of the Caribbean business unit and Trustee of the Pension Scheme.

Ninian is also a member of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing & Supply and a life member of the Institute of Directors.

He lives in Luxembourg with his wife, Philippa.

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NINIAN WILSON CV

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DID YOU KNOW...

“My name is Ninian Wilson, and I'm the CEO of the Vodafone Procurement Company here in Luxembourg. I also run all supply chain operations for Vodafone. I started my career in a company called British Gas in 1990 in the department called supplies and transport. I worked in various roles in British Gas through the 1990s until 2000 and then I joined a telecommunications company called Cable & Wireless, becoming chief procurement officer, and chief property officer. In 2006, I joined Royal Mail as CPO then became Operation Director.

And then, in 2009, I joined Vodafone.”

Before any procurement professionals drop their mugs of coffee and reach for something a tad stronger, Wilson is not suggesting for one minute that the human role and input will become obsolete – far from it. However, what we will see is a streamlining of processes, leaning on data, artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate certain tasks to provide the best outcomes.

“Our jobs all change over time when we get new tools and it wouldn't apply to everything we do,” says Wilson. “But if we think of the vendor selection piece, a tool or a capability that looks at the internet can bring in some suppliers, probably picks a few common ones, create the tender document, send it out, do the balanced scorecard evaluation at the end.

“This'll be a cool bit if we get it to do the negotiation, then put it into a contract, and uploads pricing information into our ERP system. That's what we're calling autonomous sourcing. We're currently building that to go live with our POC at the end of April.”

It’s certainly an exciting time to be working in supply chain and procurement right now.

Can anyone remember a time when supply chain in particular may be leading the news agenda? And while nobody would have wished for the causes of this particular focus (the global shutdown and inevitable pivot caused by the pandemic), it’s good to see that the people responsible for ensuring that everything ran so magnificently for years are now being recognized. Just as scientists are once again trusted experts and key workers applauded from our doorsteps, supply chain specialists are here to solve our fundamental needs – from food to Pfizer-BioNTech.

Is 2021 procurement’s time to shine?

“It's probably the second S curve that we've been on as a function, with the first around e-procurement in the 2000s,” says Wilson. “I think we're genuinely on the second S curve

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

Ninian Wilson describes Vodafone Procurement's Digital Transformation

due to probably three drivers. We mentioned autonomous sourcing, machine learning, and artificial intelligence becoming real and deployable in business as usual activities.

“And yes, supply chains have come into very sharp relief through the pandemic because,

“ We will be making some more digital investments to make sure that we maintain that resilience NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

you know, does your supply chain work?

Does it work in a pandemic? Is it resilient?

Will it continue to be resilient? And I, for one, I've never had more airtime with the executive team here at Vodafone – you are high profile as a supply chain function right now. I think it’s a tremendously exciting time, a lot of risk to manage, but a lot of new things coming as well.”

The Vodafone Procurement Company -VPC - was well prepared for the pandemic when it really hit home. A lot of digitisation work had already been done. Within three weeks of the company experiencing its first case close to the business, they moved 98,000 working from home. So one of the big learnings was their investment in digital was how that helped them continue.

Wilson also recalls back in December 2019 that some Chinese partners mentioned, during a coffee break in London, that something ‘really bad was happening’ in a place called Wuhan. businesschief.eu

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Cyber Security & Technical Professional Service Global Field Engineering LEARN MORE

Sustainability / Green Credentials – Ricoh Company limited has received an “A” score rating for the Climate Change 2020 Programme – CDP*1 2020 Supplier Engagement Leaderboard

Ricoh: Empowering Vodafone’s digital capabilities

Watch Ricoh supporting Vodafone with their global services Joanna Parker, Business Development Director at Ricoh UK Ltd on delivering vital IT services directly into Vodafone UK & Group A global organisation historically known for its print services, Ricoh is also recognised today for IT services in its own right – empowering digital workplaces using innovative technologies and services to enterprise organisations around the world.

Joanna Parker, Business Development Director at Ricoh UK Ltd, is responsible for delivering cyber security and field services into Vodafone.

“Ricoh has worked in partnership with Vodafone since 2004,” says Parker, “supporting their mobile and, more recently, their fixed network with solutions and professional services around security infrastructure, cyber security services, and cloud infrastructure.”

When it comes to cyber security, for instance, Ricoh has a dedicated engineering team working with Vodafone’s own highly skilled security engineers, providing design, implementation and support for Vodafone’s critical security infrastructure.

“We support implementation, rationalisation and consolidation, as well as specific programmes to manage increased demand and generate more efficiencies across the Vodafone cellular network,” says Parker.

Ricoh has over 90,000 employees, giving the company significant capability to support field services and field engineering globally.

Boosting their capabilities even further, Ricoh has also recently acquired MTI Technology – specialising in data and cyber security, data centre modernisation, IT managed services and IT transformation services. MTI provide a range of professional and managed services designed to help customers accelerate and de-risk their IT transformation projects.

Such capability allows Ricoh to not only support Vodafone but also Vodafone's customers who are looking at cloud-based and secure managed security infrastructures.

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

VPC set up a crisis team in early January to start managing the supply chain, especially for consumer products.

“While we had a few blips in the supply chain, we've managed that as a company really well,” says Wilson. “One of the key learnings is really understanding your supply chain and how resilient your supply chain is.”

Which brings us around nicely to Procurement With A Purpose – an initiative introduced to place purpose at the centre of how Vodafone runs the business.

This means making it central to investment decisions, how they operate and how they engage with stakeholders, whether they're customers, NGOs, or governments.

“Our purpose strategy for the company is based on three pillars,” explains Wilson.

“One is helping society become more digital 120

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“ You should be doing machine learning, you should be doing artificial intelligence, but predictive is kind of cool if we can get there” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

“It's not a magic bullet, but our partners will learn that if they do more on these pillars, they will score higher and win more business. And that allows us to translate that purpose vision during the supply chain.”

– everybody can see during the pandemic that's a good thing to do. The second pillar is around diversity and inclusion, both in the workplace but also in our supply chain. And then the third pillar is around planning. And we think there's a fundamental opportunity for both our company Vodafone, but also for supply chains to really reinforce the point that we've only got one planet.

“I think if you're in supply chain and there's an opportunity to drive some real systematic change, then I think we should take it – and we've taken that opportunity.

Our tender documents now have 20% of the scoring based around purpose. So we're not just talking about it, we're actually putting it into tenders because we know if we do that then over time it will change behaviours.

Key Partners Being a global telecommunications giant means Vodafone inevitably works with householdnames from the consumer technology world.

That obviously means Google, Facebook, Apple, while Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Oracle are “key partners for Vodafone”.

The company also works with infrastructure partners including Nokia, Ericsson, Huawei and Cisco. On top of those, Wilson estimates Vodafone works with around 11,500 suppliers across the group. However, when considering organisations that are helping Vodafone to transform supply chain, then Wilson highlights some strategic partners that are of particular significance.

“There's probably four or five partners who are really important to us,” he says. “First of all, we have a real strategic relationship with SAP and SAP has become the backbone for a lot of our digital enablement within supply chain – whether it's inventory management, PO processing, or actually helping us work through awarding tenders. So SAP Ariba is there. Above that, we're using S/4HANA, which holds all of our data, but then what we've done is built niche products on top of that, to make sure that we could really capitalise on tools that help us visualise performance.

“We pull that data from S/4HANA and we then visualise it with a tool called Celonis – a German unicorn. It's a fantastic company to work with. And they've really helped us visualise all of our key metrics and scores, both on compliance and efficiency.

“The second to the company we've worked with is SirionLabs. They helped us with commercial contract management, capturing businesschief.eu

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the KPIs and making sure those are presented in the correct way. And also that we actually do manage the contract after the award, which is sometimes a bit of an Achilles heel for procurement.

“We've also just resigned with Vizibl – an SRM tool. They provide information and data on your strategic relationships.

So if we have a strategic relationship say with Microsoft then all of the data – what we buy from Microsoft, what we sell to Microsoft, what we do together – will be hosted in that tool and made visible to all key stakeholders. One of the challenges in, in distributed companies is keeping everybody joined up with where you are on key relationships, so Vizibl keeps everybody joined up, but also tracks progress against some key initiatives which we've got with each of those partners.”

Smarter data analytics Vodafone uses a wealth of smart tools to provide unprecedented visibility, transparency and increased efficiencies based on data, but what if you could take that to the next level with predictive analytics? Having that historical database helps to look ahead to potential problems or to reduce inefficiencies.

Wilson talks about getting to a point where he may even be able to predict contract failure.

While admitting those advanced analytics are not quite there yet, disruption like Covid-19 highlighted the need to assess and mitigate risk in the supply chain. That not only means being wary of companies that may be at risk of failure, but also supporting those that need it most by perhaps purchasing more inventory or adjusting payment terms.

And you've got 12,000 vendors. It's moderately difficult to answer. So I'd like to have all of that analytics in place where I can know, see I'm touching a button.

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“I think that becomes the new frontier for procurement,” says Wilson. “You should be doing machine learning, you should be doing artificial intelligence, but predictive is kind of cool if we can get there. Some companies are doing the cool bits of predictive. We saw some great work by Bob Murphy from IBM. I think there's a huge opportunity for us in predictive analytics, especially when you get into physical supply chain operations.

“We will be making some more digital investments to make sure that we maintain that resilience and build upon it over the next two to three years.”

“ I think it’s a tremendously exciting time, a lot of risk to manage, but a lot of new things coming as well” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

All of this brings us nicely to Wilson’s ambition to make Vodafone the best procurement function in the world and create sustainable competitive advantage for the company.

Our aim is to be the best procurement function in the World and create sustainable competitive advantage for Vodafone. But the billion-euro question is, how do you achieve that? And what does it actually look like?

Wilson is modest in his assessment of current performance when it comes to where they ultimately want to be in terms of innovation. He says on a good day, his team are scoring 6.5 out of 10. On a bad day, that might be a straight 6.

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Adobe solutions empower Vodafone to digitally transform Geoff Pennells, Global Account Director at Adobe, on the collaborative relationship with Vodafone Procurement Company As the inventors of the PDF and pioneers of other smart technologies, Adobe empowers businesses to meet the challenges of digital transformation.

Like Vodafone Procurement Company (VPC). Adobe provides it with a wide range of solutions that provide detailed data and insight, asset management, personalisation and data management.

“Vodafone Procurement Company is a critical part of our global partnership with Vodafone which has been in place for over 10 years,” explains Geoff Pennells, Global Account Director at Adobe.

“VPC is crucial to our ability to understand global demands for Adobe and we are in constant contact to ensure that we are responding to the needs of the business as they evolve over time.”

VPC and Adobe are always on the lookout for ways to improve their working relationship. Through continual and open collaboration, both parties provoke their respective broader businesses with challenges on how they can achieve things never before thought possible.

“The mindset of never settling for second best, always challenging the status quo where it doesn’t make sense and continuing to evolve our capabilities and value we deliver to Vodafone

with ever more flexible agreements – this is key to how we continue to drive innovation across all levels of our partnership with VPC,” says Pennells.

Adobe prides itself on its ability to bring to market industry-leading products and services that can help its customers deliver exceptional experiences to their customers. VPC and Adobe work together to make sure they are sharing innovations and mapping those to better understand the requirements of Vodafone in their own transformation to becoming a digital-first business.

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of digital solutions for businesses.

“Overnight, we have transitioned to a global digital economy. The pandemic accelerated the need for digital transformation among businesses of all sizes,” says Pennells.

“As the world begins to reopen, digital businesses will be the winners and only companies that can understand their customers’ preferences and personalise experiences will survive and thrive.”

Learn more here

VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

YOUR BUSINESS N E VE R STO P S .

Flexible technology for a scalable world.

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

HOW TO SPEND €24 BILLION

DID YOU KNOW...

“More than anything, it's a mindset around excellence and wanting to be the best at what you do,” he says. “We try and get everybody in the team to be at their best and we try and develop tools and technologies to help support them. Are we there at the moment?

No. Are there companies and sectors that are way ahead of us? Absolutely. So we've got a tremendous amount of work still to do.

“You've got to have a digital first mentality – you've got to really think about how you can digitise what we do. One of the other technologies we use to sign contracts is DocuSign. It's really simple.

You go in and you click it, you point and you put your signature right here. And I was sitting thinking this morning, we also have our compliance sheet on the front of it. So you look through the compliance sheet and see if you're happy. But I was thinking if I've got a compliance sheet and everything is positive, why am I actually spending time going and clicking and putting my signature on it and why isn't that completely AI and automated right through? And if that was automated and, given we sign off 3,500 contracts per annum at the Vodafone Procurement Company, how long does it take to do that?

“So I'm trying to think of the productivity gain. And then I'm trying to think if I got that extra time for me or my direct reports could be running more workshops with some of our key partners around how we can add more revenue together. So that's how I'm trying to think of the operational excellence question.

“I think you've got to be excellent in supply chain and you've got to have all of your processes really nailed because if you don't have that excellence at an operational level, how can you actually step up and add more value to the business?”

“If you think of what we spend to make Vodafone successful for both us and our customers, we have about €9 billion of spend in our network around about €3 billion of spend on IT, hardware, software and professional services.

What I'd call the indirect spend accounts for about €5 billion. So that's everything from property facilities to fleet. On content, which is a new category for us, which we're bringing into the Vodafone procurement company, we spend about a billion.

So that’s Spotify, Netflix, big deals with Discovery.

And then the final one is devices spend. With great companies such as Samsung and Apple, we spent about €6 billion a year. It gets you to roughly €24 billion, give a give or take a bit of loose change.”

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“ I think there's a huge opportunity for us in predictive analytics” NINIAN WILSON

CEO, VODAFONE PROCUREMENT

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VODAFONE PROCUREMENT COMPANY

Ninian Wilson describes Vodafone Procurement's Supply Chain

“So I think you'll never get me above 6.5 out of 10. The moment you think you're 8 or 9 is the moment you start going backwards.”

Future of Procurement Throughout our interview, Wilson comes across as amiable, energised and a man who has a clear vision of his global operations – both now and in the immediate future. If events of the last 12 months have taught us anything, it’s that anything can happen, and probably will at some stage. So how do you plan for the future and try to use predictive analytics in times like these? For Wilson, it’s about setting out clear priorities and ambitions.

“For us in supply chain for the next 12 to 18 months, there are three clear priorities,” he says. “Number one is the transformation of our physical logistics operation. So we're going to build a European platform, Sub-Saharan

platform and completely transform how we work with partners and how they supply product to us.

“Number two is autonomous sourcing.

We think that's coming, and we will have a POC up and running by the end of April and will invest in that. And then the third area for us is really thinking about how new buying models evolve. So I'm pretty convinced that the world's going to end up a number of different marketplaces and part of the CPO’s job or the category manager's job will be figuring out which marketplace they want to connect with to get best value, and then how their analytics platforms will help them actually make those decisions.”

“It's not easy to do, but it must be doable to actually get to that position.”

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AGILE DIGITAL

DIGITAL AGILITY: THE FUTURE FOR

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SUCCESS

Phil Lewis, Vice President, Solution Consulting EMEA at Infor answers five questions on the importance of digital agility for digital transformation success WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

Phil Lewis, Vice President, Solution Consulting EMEA

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AGILE DIGITAL

“ It is no longer if a business will go cloud but more a question of what type of cloud” PHIL LEWIS,

VICE PRESIDENT, SOLUTION CONSULTING EMEA, INFOR

What does the term ‘digital agility’ mean?

Digital agility can be understood as the readiness of an organisation to quickly take advantage of digital capabilities, without having to get bogged down in new projects just to get a new programme underway.

This necessitates an open, cloud-based application landscape so a business can seize new opportunities such as business intelligence, big data or AI without having to go through a cumbersome integration and bolt-on process. This makes an organisation

Cloud-based solutions “I foresee cloud-based solutions, particularly with regard to external workforce management, playing a vital role in lending businesses the flexibility they need to take steps toward recovery. Just as they always have, contingent labour and services providers deliver the depth of skills and expertise necessary to propel businesses forward. With the right sets of digital tools, organisations can achieve maximum visibility and value from these essential workers, ramping up and down efficiently as the new year unfolds.”

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AGILE DIGITAL

The impact of COVID-19 2020 was been defined by supply chain disruption. The impact of COVID-19 has accelerated trends that will not only lead to the diversification and localisation of supply chains, but also increase the need for digitalisation and end-toend visibility. Now more than ever, procurement is uniquely positioned to be transformative and highly impactful for businesses as we enter a new era of data-driven intelligence.

A shift away from the traditional, linear supply chain to a broader supply network, coupled with dynamic partnerships driving innovation, will be key to gaining a 360-degree view of supply, improving cash flow, developing new products and pursuing sustainability initiatives.

Breaking away from reactivity and focusing on proactivity will be essential in tackling new business challenges in a post-COVID-19 world.

Network strategies, and making use of data-driven insights, will be important in avoiding repercussions from future shocks and shifts, replacing linearity with interconnectivity.

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more agile, focusing on the creative application of the technology to the needs of the business, such as identifying new opportunities for revenue.

How important is digital agility when it comes to ensuring a successful digital transformation strategy?

Hugely important, but it is not just about the tools but also organisational culture.

Digital agility needs people who are flexible, that think creatively and value change. Many large-scale enterprises and businesses in our key sectors face huge, initial for ways into digital transformation – they are understandably fearful to ensure they have the right tools, people and culture to make it work. There needs to be a focused endeavour to see the end benefits of digital transformation and that is where the agility has to start – making

AGILE DIGITAL

sure there is consideration of the tools, platform and business processes right up front. Agility also leads a business towards realising the projects are not just about technology to incrementally improve the status quo, but an entire approach that – from the outset – aims towards optimisation and transformation. A key part of this is developing an agile culture – the freedom to have ideas. Too many employees are scared of ‘crazy’ ideas being shot down or putting a black mark against their name. For digital agility to lead to transformation, challenging of the norm must be built in to how the business thinks.

“ Businesses tend to assess digital projects with a focus on either customer, supply chain, internal efficiency or people - those are the four main drivers for digital” PHIL LEWIS,

VICE PRESIDENT, SOLUTION CONSULTING EMEA, INFOR

What is driving the transition to digital agility?

Businesses tend to assess digital projects with a focus on either customer, supply chain, internal efficiency or people – those are the four main drivers for digital. These are often organic and arise from an ongoing ‘how can we do better’ attitude. This has been accelerated by concerns of competition as companies are now fearful of being left behind competition and disruptive entrants.

There is palpable fear around being digitally relevant and this is promoting digital agility.

What have been the cornerstone technologies that have furthered digital agility, and what do you see emerging as a cornerstone technology?

It is all about how attitudes towards data have changed. It was previously seen as a necessary evil but is now the number one asset in a business. Typically this drives an obsession with big data labels but it is what you do with the data that matters – using the likes of AI / BI / IoT etc to turn that data into a truly valuable asset. The automotive industry is the prime example businesschief.eu

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“ It is all about how attitudes towards data have the changed. “ Mix and match size ofIt was previously seen as a necessary evil the quote. Keep the style but is now the number one asset consistent within the same in a business” article Keep the style consistent within article” PHIL LEWIS, VICE PRESIDENT, SOLUTION CONSULTING EMEA, INFOR NAME SURNAME JOB TITLE, COMPANY NAME

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AGILE DIGITAL

– using and selling the data produced by a car. Interestingly, we now almost take ‘cloud’ for granted – had we answered this question 24 months ago, cloud would have been the first consideration, but it is now table stakes. It is no longer if a business will go cloud but more a question of what type of cloud. We have moved far beyond the infrastructure conversation – the how – and into the what and why a business looks to embrace digital. In terms of the next specific technology, it really depends on the maturity of the individual company or project – businesses are only just reaching the point of a digital fabric rather than a bunch of digital projects. Prescriptive working, driven by AI and fed by masses of sensor data, holds a huge amount of promise for the B2B / industrial markets and we see some very encouraging early shoots in asset maintenance and field service.

How important is it to develop a digital culture and change management plan when it comes to digital agility, and what would you say are the best practices for these two concepts?

Communicating the vision of digital is vital but most employees these days accept the constant and relentless change of business – but a business still does need huge buy in from the workforce to be on board with constant evolution. The good news is that most businesses actually have this: people are realistic, especially in a post pandemic world that has enforced a huge mindset to accept change and exploit it. Again it comes down to people and culture – as long as people feel able and valued to contribute new ideas, it is going to work. This demands masses of communication to lead to embracing change at this pace. businesschief.eu

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SAP CLOUD

Preparing businesses for change through innovation WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

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PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

SAP CLOUD

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Nis Boy Naeve, VP of Platform Adoption Enablement, describes how SAP has continued to deliver customers the services they need in a rapidly evolving market

f 2020 proved anything it’s that everything can change, fast. As businesses attempt to settle into the ‘new normal’, or at least equip themselves to weather further disruption in a more manageable way, many will be looking to tech leaders to demonstrate the way forward.

German multinational software company SAP has continually proven itself to be an essential enterprise partner and always one step ahead of the curve throughout its almost 50 years in operation. To find out how it has been maintaining its trademark brand of customer-focused innovation during one of the most difficult periods in recent history, we spoke to Nis Boy Naeve, Vice President of Platform Adoption Enablement and former Chief Product Owner, SAP User Interfaces.

Describing the role of his team as “helping SAP’s customers adopt our Business Technology Platform in a very specific environment,” Naeve is able to offer a very informed opinion on the topic of change.

A trained physicist, he joined SAP over 25 years ago as a Developer and steadily gained experience from a range of projects, such as those relating to HR, “understanding how you can help run a business with programmes and digitalisation.” Eventually, Naeve began to learn more about the “other side”, namely how people actually interact with technologies themselves (user experience and user interface or UX and UI). “In my current role, we actually connect 140

April 2021

business technology platform services and other technical services and create business value out of that. In physics you learn how the world runs. With SAP you help the world run better,” he states.

The amount of change that SAP itself has undergone in the time since Naeve joined in 1995 seems emblematic of broader sector trends. For one thing, the company’s staff count has increased from around 6,000 employees to over 100,000 worldwide.

For another, its digital transformation has unfolded before his eyes: from large ‘classical’ PCs with tube monitors that took up entire desks to smartphones and most recently the cloud. Alongside all of this tech transformation has been a culture shift that emphasises Experience, “[which] has become absolutely key. One of the things I’m most proud of is that SAP has been working out this business user experience strategy in collaboration with our customers.

We get access to the end users and really

“ In physics you learn how the world runs.

With SAP you help the world run better” NIS BOY NAEVE

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER AND VP, SAP

SAP CLOUD

Nis Boy Naeve

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A Platform for Innovation, Done Better Enable, Extend and Innovate using SAP’s Business Technology Platform In an era of uncertainty, businesses need to respond and re-invent themselves, quickly.

In our experience, an enterprise architecture with a platform approach that provides ready to use services, integration to your core applications and low code development tools makes all the difference. For SAP-centric organizations, the following customer use cases show why SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) should be the platform of choice to deliver innovative solutions to your business challenges.

When a leading automotive coatings manufacturer had challenges tracking its mobile paint delivery containers through the entire supply chain, HCL’s Smart Logistics Accelerator based on BTP was the answer.

Paint containers were equipped with GPS tracking devices and a valve position sensor.

Location and valve event messages connected via a BTP IoT solution and integrated into S/4HANA to trigger supply chain planning and billing processes. The solution provided full supply chain visibility of all paint inventory and status, improved planning accuracy, and eliminated time delays in the billing process, leading to improved revenue recognition.

A leading city transport authority turned needed a fleet management solution for a

large mixed fleet of vehicles. HCL developed a fleet management app using BTP to provide a user- friendly, multi-device app for the fleet management team and fleet users. It integrates data from disparate systems, SAP ERP plant maintenance processes and usage data, GPS vehicle tracking, insurance and tax management and vehicle diagnostic integration for automated maintenance scheduling. Native integration into SAP ERP greatly reduced solution complexity, while BTP’s rapid development capabilities and HCL’s user-centric design approach let us deliver functionality usually associated with specialist fleet applications with minimal end user training.

A platform approach that provides effective development tools, integration into your core ERP processes and modular services such as IoT, predictive analytics, low code multioperating system app development tools, will ensure your organization can respond to change fast with innovative solutions – enabling your business to drive business value and improve customer experience.

HCL - SAP, done better.

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Nis Boy Naeve from SAP talks about SAP Business Technology Platform

“ We get access to the end users and really understand what it is that they need, and there’s often a big difference between what people ‘want’ and what they need” NIS BOY NAEVE

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER AND VP, SAP

understand what it is that they need, and there’s often a big difference between what people ‘want’ and what they need.” As innovation cycles get shorter and shorter, having the expertise to discern novelties from genuine essentials will be imperative.

Because of SAP’s global presence, Naeve claims, the company was largely able to avoid the operational disruption experienced elsewhere, having already established international teams connected by video 144

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conferencing solutions. However, the big question at the start of the pandemic was ‘how will SAP’s interactions with customers and partners fare?’ Once again, Naeve states that the answer is a highly positive one: “In a way, our customers were already wellprepared because by running SAP they had a very solid basis for a transformation. I think what the pandemic showed is the need for speed in a way that doesn’t also cause disruption.” The customer/user experience is everything, and to illustrate his point Naeve compares the evolution of music from vinyl to CDs and finally streaming services, “The business model was still the same

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NIS BOY NAEVE TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT PLATFORM ADOPTION ENABLEMENT INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE LOCATION: STUTTGART

1. A European food delivery service started up as an entirely digital business. “It could accomplish that because it was using SAP’s Business Technology Platform,” he says. “That company is now able to provide a unique experience to their customers that isn’t uniform, which also gives them a market advantage.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

when we had to go to a store, regardless of the format. What really changed things was the ability to buy music online.” He adds that a comparative evolution also happened within SAP: long, complicated and manually-driven HR systems were replaced with fast, streamlined, and integrated digital processes instead.

With old business paradigms made unworkable by COVID-19 conditions, businesses had to get creative in order to stay alive and harnessing digital platforms has become a core asset. In turn, the pandemic has presented SAP with many opportunities to prove the value of well-designed UX/UI. Naeve gives two particular examples:

Nis Boy is currently working on offering the best end to end experience for SAP’s Business Technology Platform. He and his team help customers and partners explore the business value of the platform and to quickly to realize their projects.​ In his 25 year career at SAP Nis Boy held various positions from development, project & program management to chief product ownership and product management.

He played an essential part in driving the UX and technology direction. He is also a patent-holder and published author on user experience and interface design.​ Nis Boy was and is always focused on making customers and partnerships successful.

Fast digital Innovations

Simplicity and Intelligence are key to drive business outcomes Since sovanta AG’s founding in 2009 we make the use of SAP more simple, more intelligent and more efficient.

With the means of User Experience we make people way more productive: Based on artificial intelligence we automate business processes and rise efficiency to a completely new level. We served hundreds of customers; millions of people especially in HR, Sales and Commerce are working with our solutions more productively every day saving time and money.

Right now there’s a need to take action The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to change the perspective. It dramatically accelerated the digital transformation – an evolution that was still there but now it’s obvious how necessary it is. Along with that it becomes obvious: Digitalization brings the need to change the way we work together and thanks to smart technologies like Artificial Intelligence, it was never easier to do that than today. To upgrade their business, companies must find the right platform, the best technologies and the most trustful partner to realize solutions which can unleash a tremendous potential for their business.

The good message: There are a lot of small levers that generate quick wins – you just have to know how.

“Companies now have a strong need for fast innovations with a short-time ROI.” Time is money Especially in these times companies expect fast innovations with a short-time ROI. SAP’s Business Technology Platform is the place to make it happen: It brings together all needed technologies as well as the speed, flexibility, and scalability of the cloud.

Tools like Design Thinking or the UX Score by sovanta bring the possibility to be fast: The UX Score for example identifies and measures improvement-potentials based on a scientific approach and proofs the business’ value. That’s the path to small projects with short realization-time but added business value.

Get your results fast Companies already have to face a lot of challenges: an increased volume of work in customer-, employeeor IT-service. They need more efficiency, more satisfaction, more automation to stay productive and to grow.

We already mastered those challenges together with our customers.

Michael Kern, COO, sovanta AG

In Cooperation with Peras GmbH we implemented several self-services for Fiducia & GAD IT GmbH. With small but effective solutions, we achieved a positive impact on productivity and satisfaction of the employees.

Together with Endress+Hauser AG we re-engineered their ordering process of very complex products. Customers now need 60% less clicks in configuring their product – they save time, they’re more satisfied, they buy more.

There’s even more added value: The results from the process are fed back into the company‘s strategic planning. Customers are generating more precise data, so Endress+Hauser can learn much more about the actual preferences of them.

The time to start is today Don’t wait! Everything you need to push your business to the next level is available right now. So get in touch with us and make your SAP systems more simple, more intelligent and more efficient.

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2. At the height of the initial pandemic, the German Minister of Foreign Affairs contacted our Business Technology Platform department and requested help in bringing back German citizens stranded internationally. “We were requested to create an app so that people could register and then have a flight organised to pick up and return them. SAP accomplished that within 24 hours over the weekend.” The importance of digital agility is, perhaps, best exemplified by the importance and fast turnaround of this impressive feat.

Accomplishing this level of transformation en masse requires a powerful product, which SAP suitably delivers through its Business Technology Platform. The more familiar ‘SAP Cloud Platform’ name was recently rebranded and expanded in scope, Naeve explains that this is to reflect a deliberate reemphasis on what SAP prioritises, “Business is what it’s all about. We want to give our customers the technology to improve their business.” Placing particular focus on the Platform’s integration and extension capabilities, he adds that SAP’s

NIS BOY NAEVE

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER AND VP, SAP

DID YOU KNOW...

“ In a way, our customers were already wellprepared because by running SAP they had a very solid basis for a transformation”

SAP: ON A MISSION “Very often our customers like to see and understand how other customers accomplished their transformation, learn from them, and understand how it fits into their specific landscape,” explains Naeve.

Therefore, SAP maintains an archive of ‘missions’ (ready-to-run projects) housed in its Discovery Center and accessible free-of-charge. Containing tools, content in the form of stepby-step guidance and customisable options, and often even a ‘coach’ to provide additional support.

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ultimate aim is to also empower those with “little or no development skills” to configure their specific applications with added flexibility and speed, as well as reduced risk.

Close collaboration with the client helps further this aim; SAP asks a rigorous set of questions to determine what will constitute ‘success’: • What challenge is the business facing?

• What does the customer need to achieve?

• Which area of their business process needs to be adjusted?

• What is the business value of the proposed solution?

“When I look at the way customers work, I see two types of people, or two ways for how they work with innovation,” he says.

“The first type comes with a very specific 148

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problem in mind and tweaks SAP’s solution to their specific needs. The second type I call ‘LEGO brick builders’: those are people

“ Being in the tech space is always a bit of a risk [...] As such, SAP tends to look at what we can build with newly available tools and technologies very early” NIS BOY NAEVE

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER AND VP, SAP

DID YOU KNOW...

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REGARDING SAP’S PARTNERS, NAEVE HAD THE FOLLOWING TO SAY: “SAP has a wide and diverse network of partners. These partners help our customers in so many ways. For example, they help with development and implementation or build apps on SAP BTP to realise specific use cases. 13 of them currently offer AppHaus and over 30 have already provided ‘missions’ for the Discovery Center. I’m confident that both sets will continue to grow.”

SAP started to build what we call ‘AppHaus’, offering customers a creative space to apply design thinking methodology and help humanise business software.

“Demand was high, so we started building up a partner network.” Partners like ConvergentIS and Sovanta are both part of SAP’s AppHaus Network.

Founded in 2009 and currently working with 100 customers and with 300 projects completed, Sovanta creates powerful solutions by combining SAP’s technology with ‘unbeaten user experience.’ Elsewhere, ConvergentIS has been an SAP partner since 2002. Based in Calgary, Canada, the company specialises in designing, building,

selling and servicing enterprise applications for North American clients who want enhanced UX, reduced complexity, greater productivity, and ultimately a significant competitive advantage.

“These partners follow a framework of requirements, such as design thinking coupled with a solid design and development skill set, a dedicated creative space for customer collaboration, and much more.”

Other partners like HCL Technologies and again Sovanta - offer specific missions and direct support via the SAP Discovery Center. “Through these missions, partners help customers to realise specific and relevant use cases and adopt them to very specific needs.”

HCL Technologies is a next-gen, global tech company that’s helping businesses adapt for the digital age. With an exceptional 40-year heritage and a rostrum of clients that includes 250 of the Fortune 500, HCL has proven to be a knowledgeable and valuable partnership for SAP.

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“ The worst thing that could happen for me would be a team of people who all think and act like I do, because then we would miss out on so much” NIS BOY NAEVE

CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER AND VP, SAP

who actually look at the technical path, the technical capabilities and what they can build themselves.” When considering innovation more broadly, Naeve considers it to be a distinctly two-way street: its customers can only innovate when SAP itself can. Therefore it has become an ingrained cultural quality throughout the company. “Being in the tech space is always a bit of a risk, because many of those innovation steps are bound to specific technologies. As such, SAP tends to look at what we can build with newly available tools and technologies very early.”

It is apparent, then, that SAP’s mindset and operating philosophy - ‘thinking busniesschief.eu

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SAP Cloud Platform Integration Suite

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before acting’ - is its primary competitive advantage in the industry. The company’s method of operating combines three primary elements: discovery, design, and delivery, but there is another that Naeve considers to hold critical importance within a team: diversity. “The worst thing that could happen for me would be a team of people who all think and act like I do, because then we would miss out on so much.” The pandemic has illustrated to him how devastating this lack of original thought could be during such a tumultuous socio-economic period. That

being said, however, industry changes can happen quickly and at any time; businesses need to be agile and open to change if they are to survive. “The right business technology platform enables customers to act quickly and stay secure without disrupting their growth,” concludes Naeve. “This goal is embedded in SAP’s Business Technology Platform and will help our customers run an intelligent enterprise.”

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MF

SC

A NEW ERA OF INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION Business Chief speaks to five executives from Blue Yonder, Red Hat, GE Digital, Accenture and UiPath to discuss the future of intelligent automation WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON 154

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MW

RT

THOSE PARTICIPATING IN THE ROUNDTABLE INCLUDE:

MW: Matt Wells, Vice President, Digital Product Management, GE Digital

AD: Alan Duncan, Senior Director of Industry Strategy (Manufacturing), EMEA, Blue Yonder

SC: Simon Coombs, Industry X Digital Manufacturing & Operations Lead, Accenture UK

MF: Massimo Ferrari, Consulting Product Manager, Red Hat

RT: Renzo Taal, SVP & Managing Director, UiPath EMEA businesschief.eu

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6 Ways Inventory Management Fuels Supply Chain Explore How Inventory Management Enables Supply Chain to Reach Its Fullest Potential For most businesses, the supply chain is not only the primary cost centre but one of the most challenging aspects of running a profitable operation.

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INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

1

Please could you define intelligent automation, and what it can provide organisations?

AD: Intelligent automation can enhance operations and provide supply chain efficiency, helping to predict problems before they arise and increase the ability to navigate disruptions even months in advance. This puts organisations in a much better position to meet demands than ever before, with the long-term goal being to build a fully autonomous supply chain that is capable of identifying and resolving problems without any human intervention.

MF: Intelligent Automation is a relatively new term, and as such, it's often framed in very different ways, sometimes called ‘cognitive automation’. It's used to describe the intersection of automation and AI-powered decision-making technologies.

“ Machine learning and analytics technologies are at the forefront of current technologies that are facilitating intelligent automation” MATT WELLS

VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGEMENT GE DIGITAL

The main benefit offered by intelligent automation is the ability to actually perform actions based on data-driven recommendations, as opposed to just reporting a problem.

MW: From proactive analysis to guiding operator response, modern intelligent automation technologies use the IoT’s connected systems, layered with new apps to help companies create and maintain revenue streams and improve operations. Companies around the world are blending combinations of digital capabilities and industrial assets to drive productivity and efficiency across an organisation or environment. In addition, intelligent automation technologies can businesschief.eu

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“ As organisations navigate through uncertain times, intelligent automation has played an increasingly crucial role, helping to make key decisions” ALAN DUNCAN

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF INDUSTRY STRATEGY (MANUFACTURING), EMEA, BLUE YONDER

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help companies to reduce risks and costs by leveraging the data within the organisation to avoid downtime and facilitate predictive maintenance.

SC: The role of automation has evolved across industries in the last decade, with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) accelerating the fulfilment of basic, repetitive tasks that require no human judgement. Intelligent automation is the next natural advancement of automation capabilities; by tightly integrating with AI and machine learning analytics, software platforms and models can learn, adapt and evolve to make business critical decisions – much like a human can.

RT: Intelligent automation is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) amplified by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Simply, intelligent automation unlocks potential by allowing for the automation of non-rule based processes.

The benefits include improved efficiency, business continuity and process resilience

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AI 101: What is Intelligent Automation? | Accenture

all while reducing human error, creating scale and increasing both customer and employee satisfaction.

2

What are the current trends when it comes to intelligent automation?

MF: Surprisingly, while AI has been used for quite some time in different areas of business analysis or IT, automation is a relatively recent adoption.

One of the major trends is the adoption of intelligent automation for response and remediation use cases. Take IT Security as an example, which is an area where automated response and remediation is growing. AI is well-established in this area, such as in the form of tools like threat analysis systems, but the use of automation to perform remediation actions on a threat identified by one of these technologies is a fairly new concept.

This is often intentional and reflects the maturity level of many enterprise organisations and the fact that AI and automation are orthogonal opportunities.

MW: Machine learning and analytics technologies are at the forefront of current technologies that are facilitating intelligent automation. Fourth generation HMI/SCADA can add a layer of proactive analysis to deliver predictive intelligent alarming that makes it possible to evolve from being reactionary to predicting when an event will occur and taking proactive steps to remediate a pending situation. Machine learning can help to reduce the ‘noise’ that is inherent in system deployments today. This technology allows companies to use raw data to derive intelligence that will improve efficiency, reduce unscheduled downtime, and decrease process risk by providing information to the right operators in context, at the right time and place. businesschief.eu

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SC: Businesses are increasingly scaling the use of automation from specific functions to their wider business strategy, with the particular benefits of intelligent automation now a key objective. To enable this, we are seeing many businesses take a step back and place greater focus on the quality of their data and how it informs their foundational framework for intelligent automation. Some of the key capabilities this framework gives businesses include intelligent virtual agents such as bots and chatbots, which can be used for all manner of functions such as customer service, the IT helpdesk and logistics. As businesses become more advanced with intelligent automation, we are seeing their solutions become highly intuitive, whether predicting events and recommending reactive strategies, or automatically resolving queries with no need for human input.

RT: As with many trends in 2021, intelligent automation is being further driven by the pandemic and the need to fully digitise workflows that can no longer be undertaken by teams in physical offices.

For example, online transactions have increased, as consumers and businesses continue to order more products and services via the Web. Demand for cloud services has risen, in part because of the need to support more ecommerce transactions and homebased workers. More than ever, we need to combine thinking (AI) and doing (RPA) to complete tasks and support employees working remotely.

As this happens, we will see workers embrace this change and start to demand more of automation – perhaps even becoming citizen developers and building their own intelligent automations. Moreover, these automations will become even more powerful with autonomous automation. To put this another way, we’ll see robots managing 160

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robots. They will be unattended – capable of monitoring and handling themselves.

3

How has the intelligent automation market been impacted by COVID-19?

AD: As organisations navigate through uncertain times, intelligent automation has played an increasingly crucial role, helping to make key decisions around everything from stock planning and management right the way through to shipping routes and price points. Ultimately automation has and will continue to help organisations to get ahead of the game: quickly responding to changes in consumer behavior by helping to make intelligent and profitable decisions. Those who don’t adopt the technology risk falling behind the competition, especially during unpredictable periods.

MF: This pandemic is a time of unprecedented challenge that affected all of

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“ The main benefit offered by intelligent automation is the ability to actually perform actions based on data-driven recommendations, as opposed to just reporting a problem” MASSIMO FERRARI

CONSULTING PRODUCT MANAGER, RED HAT

us in many different ways. It urged many organisations to change, from transitioning to a work-from-home productivity model to accelerating their adoption of public cloud services.

These are two examples where automation technologies became essential to cope with the scale and urgency of the demand. That's why automation, in general, moved from being an opportunity, discussed in technical groups, to an imperative at board level.

The technology evolved and is still evolving, and this is because of the new level of problems we're still trying to solve, which obviously are also driving more adoption.

MW: Now more than ever, software is mission critical for industrial companies as they meet the world’s toughest challenges with resilience, flexibility, and grit. Companies need the right tools to maintain business continuity with remote monitoring and control businesschief.eu

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capabilities so they can adapt production to extreme changes in volumes and mix of products. Today’s solutions must scale from plant to enterprise-wide and then beyond the four walls to enable connected workers as well as enterprise-wide visibility both on-premise and in the cloud.

SC: COVID-19 has made intelligent automation more important than ever. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) carried out on the factory floor has evolved to become more intelligent, which was critical for maintaining business continuity whilst keeping workers protected and socially distanced.

The other dramatic shift has been in the area of supply chain, with unexpected spikes in demand for certain products and services, and a complete drop off in others. The incorporation of intelligent automation across the supply chain has been crucial to ensuring continued efficiency, by adapting with agility and forecasting future needs.

The pandemic has shifted landscapes and mindsets more generally, too, shining a light on the need for investment in digital and data to both prevent and react to seismic change. Whether it’s manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare or finance – all sectors have been given a harsh push toward digital transformation in order to survive.

RT: COVID-19 has undoubtedly impacted intelligent automation. While many organisations were already undergoing digital transformations before the pandemic hit, the rapid change in businesses practices and climate forced them to accelerate these efforts.

Business leaders had to, and must continue to, innovate to find new ways of working, to adopt new business models and to increase efficiency in order to survive and thrive in less than favourable economic conditions.

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For many firms, intelligent automation (IA) has been the answer. Thirty-one percent of decision makers recently surveyed said their firms have increased their spending on RPA in the past three months – a key component in the landscape of IA technology

4

How can intelligent automation help industries navigate the global changes and challenges that are here to stay as a result of COVID-19?

AD: Within the manufacturing industry, adopting intelligent automation has made it realistic for supply chains to make recommendations and decisions without the need for human intervention. The time and human brain power saved will enable manufacturers to focus on increasing efficiency, productivity and accuracy of

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operations. It also helps to keep processes more robust in the event of staff turnover, so that supply chains can continue to operate efficiently if employees get sick from COVID19 or move onto new roles, retire or leave the business.

The role intelligent automation plays in keeping one step ahead on customer buying behaviour, rather than simply responding to incidents as they occur, is crucial as manufacturers navigate their way through the pandemic. This will play a key role in ensuring supply chains are resilient enough to cope with subsequent disruptive events that could occur in the future.

MF: Automation is usually associated with IT, as a way to simplify, accelerate and reduce the cost of provisioning and configuration of services and applications. While automation

proved to be very effective in those tasks, it can be used in many other areas of IT, like Network Operations, Security Analysts and Security Operations providing benefits across virtually any industry.

Intelligent automation can help organizations react faster to changes outside their control, but, once implemented as a core technology, allows people to do more with the resources they have at their disposal, overcoming the challenges of scale, of always growing digital services, complexity of a more distributed workforce and customer base and speed of changes required by market motion.

MW: As everyone has adapted to working remotely, there has been a large appetite for collaboration tools. However, most of these are IT tools, not operations technology tools, that industrial companies need to use to operate machines and continue to run and manage their business. Industrial automation technology tools allow for remote operations that promote policies like social distancing, while keeping teams safe and equipment maintained. This technology is the intersection between collaboration and enterprise productivity.

In addition, the push to faster, more agile production applications drives industrial

“While many organisations were already undergoing digital transformations before the pandemic hit, the rapid change in businesses practices and climate forced them to accelerate these efforts” RENZO TAAL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, UIPATH EMEA businesschief.eu

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“Over the next few uncertain months and beyond the pandemic, intelligent automation is here to stay” SIMON COOMBS

INDUSTRY X DIGITAL MANUFACTURING & OPERATIONS LEAD, ACCENTURE UK

companies toward a more holistic view of their operations that allow them to anticipate supply chain and production disruption.

They are looking for global solutions that can deliver global visibility, orchestrate the execution of all their processes, and optimise each of their assets and plants in the context of the enterprise. This involves tools that provide for Rapid Application Development (RAD), zero-downtime upgrades / updates, and deployment of self-serve analytics across assets.

Companies are also using industrial analytics to improve asset, process and people performance combining data across various data sources to rapidly identify problems, discover root causes and predict future performance. Enhanced software analytics improve quality, utilisation, productivity, and delivery of operations across the enterprise.

SC: In manufacturing and supply chain, we saw the rapid reshaping of production lines to cope with the volatile demand in the early months of the pandemic, when businesses pivoted to adapt to the sudden surge in demand, for example, for ventilators and PPE. Elsewhere, augmented reality, IoT and advanced analytics have allowed businesses to automate and streamline where they have had to scale back or re-direct their workforce. In call centres, whether supporting retail, hospitality or healthcare, for example, intelligent

automation has been put to good use by directing customers to the right department without having to go through human operators.

This has enabled human counterparts to focus on the important task of dealing with customer issues in a time of particular distress.

Over the next few uncertain months and beyond the pandemic, intelligent automation is here to stay. Corporations have seen firsthand how intelligent platforms are enabling agile business. The events of the last year have shown just how important preparation and adaptability are and when integrated with the business strategy, intelligent automation not only allows for agility in crisis, but can help to prepare for future challenges that humans cannot do alone, meaning business can proactively prepare for various situations.

RT: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, organisations and healthcare institutions around the world are facing extreme challenges – from hospital backlogs to influx in demands to business continuity challenges.

RPA is – and will continue to – offer relief to overwhelmed organisations, and is already being used by UiPath customers to automate processes.

Organisations across industries – including healthcare, insurance, government, retail, banking, and transportation – are using UiPath software robots to address the influx of demands brought on by COVID-19. businesschief.eu

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Driving the digital journey for retailers WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

SAP RETAIL

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Dr Christoph Schroeder, Global Vice President of Retail Industry Business Unit, SAP

SAP RETAIL

SAP’s integrated platform is leading the digital drive for retailers to create customer-centric, intelligent enterprises to leverage profitability in a sustainable way

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taying one step ahead of the game is how retailers thrive. Today, brickand-mortar stores are turning their backs on the high street and embarking on a digital transformation to join the online marketplace to leverage sales.

If we push the boundaries even further, the day will come when consumers will order a file from their preferred online sports store - instead of a physical pair of sneakers and print the trainers in the comfort of their own homes with the use of a 3D printer.

This fascinating glimpse into how digital technology is going to shape the future of our online shopping habits was provided

by Dr Christoph Schroeder, Global Vice President of Retail Industry Business Unit at SAP, which marks its golden year as a global brand.

“As technology evolves, I could see a time when we could use a 3D printer for shoes or clothes in the same way we are used to doing this for spare parts in a factory,” commented Schroeder, who has worked at SAP for 15 years.

This snapshot of tomorrow’s online retail landscape was presented by Schroeder as he discussed how SAP is today working with retailers to navigate the new post-pandemic climate to optimise their online presence to survive this new landscape.

SAP is the market leader in enterprise application software, helping companies of all sizes and in all industries run at their

best. 77 per cent of the world’s transaction revenue touches an SAP system. Machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT), and advanced analytics technologies to help turn customers’ businesses into intelligent enterprises. SAP’s end-to-end suite of applications and services enables their customers to operate profitably, adapt continuously, and make a difference.

“I believe one thing became very clear in the last year: digital transformation that would previously have been taken two years is now possible within a matter of weeks. Due to the pressure of economic environments, retailers don't have the time for organisational resistance,” said Schroeder, who has taken his dedication and focus as a top sportsman into his leadership role.

“ As technology evolves I could see a time when we could use a 3D printer for shoes or clothes in the same way we are now doing for spare parts in a factory” DR CHRISTOPH SCHROEDER

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF RETAIL INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT, SAP businesschief.eu

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Dr. Christoph Schroeder from SAP Retail talks about marketing strategy in retail

“Part of my role at SAP is to create a roadmap for retailers with our integrated platform to help them overcome challenges and to avoid pitfalls and prepare for the unknown,” said Schroeder, whose clients also include PVH, Luxottica, and adidas creating the popular customer experience.

“We work with retailers on the one hand getting the short-term things fixed and then help them create an experience, as it’s no longer enough to just have a good product.

It’s important you spend time with your consumer; if they spend time with you, they don't spend time with your competitor,” said Schroeder.

Digital soul creates customer centricity Reflecting on how retail has changed during the past five years, Schroeder points out there has been a move from being productcentric to customer-centric.

“When we look back at retail a couple of years ago, it was all physical. When you 170

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look at stores, for example, they are still managed like in the pre-internet world not much has happened since. But with the help of digitalisation, they are able to bring together data to understand the customer and really bring this kind of customer-centric philosophy to life.

“ Everyone wants to become an ‘Intelligent Enterprise’ and the idea is to not only to provide the technology and the tools but also the solutions to help our customers” DR CHRISTOPH SCHROEDER

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF RETAIL INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT, SAP

SAP RETAIL

“Retail has been a product centric, siloed operation with data and inventory segregated. But real-time inventory visibility allows retailers to create a consistent experience on every touchpoint. This is the ultimate goal where technology can help make that happen.

“You also need to have organisations following up on this - but how do you destroy kingdoms within organisations? Today, you might have one guy who is responsible for the retail chain, one guy who is responsible for online - but they need to work together because no matter where the sale happens it's a sale of the retailer.

“I believe this has been the biggest roadblock in the last five years to how digitisation and connectivity can be leveraged to its full extent. That leads us on to how retailers connect to the IoT and from a technology perspective, how do they bring it on one platform? From a historic perspective, retailers most likely started with bricks and mortar until they said, ‘let's create an online channel.’ So they created another silo. But eventually they need to bring that together in order to have a soullike digital platform, as that is the soul of the whole enterprise.

Revenue in 2020

50

Years since SAP was founded

200m+

Subscribers in SAP’s cloud-based user base

TITLE: GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF RETAIL INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE LOCATION: GERMANY

EXECUTIVE BIO

€27.34bn

CHRISTOPH SCHROEDER

"Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen." [Michael Jordan]. According to Dr Christoph Schroeder this quote sums up his approach to the role as Global Vice President, Retail Industry Business Unit at SAP. The former sportsman, who represented Germany in table tennis, has been with SAP for 15 years and is responsible for the strategy of SAP’s solutions, developing the roadmap, fostering executive level relationships with customers and partners.

“A key focus of my work is consulting and the conceptual design of IT strategies and process optimisation,” said Schroeder, who is also the Chief Solution Owner for Fashion, and is based in the Walldorf office of SAP SE. Schroeder has held a number of positions with SAP from being the Co-Founder of SAP Fashion Council to Chief Solution Owner & GMT Officer Fashion.

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Applexus: Innovate to transform

Watch Nittu Thomas | SAP Partnership and Digital Transformation

Driven by a passion for innovation, Applexus delivers on its promise of an intelligent enterprise through transformative SAP solutions and services Innovate to transform is what global technology leader Applexus offers its customers in the retail, fashion, life sciences, consumer goods and manufacturing industries.

Applexus provides advisory, implementation and management of SAP solutions to help its customers navigate the ‘new normal’.

“We are really excited to deliver digital transformation around the SAP landscape in a rapidly evolving world,” said Nittu Thomas, Chief Operating Officer, from the company’s headquarters in Seattle. “Along with SAP, we have the right industry expertise, people, IP assets and technology toolset to deliver this transformation,” he said.

“We help our customers modernise their technology landscape with SAP S/4HANA, and analytics,” said Thomas. Bringing industry specific IP assets, methodology and add-on products to SAP Programs sets them apart from competition and helps their customers: • Deliver a superior user experience • Infuse actionable insights through analytics embedded within SAP • Automate processes to drive up productivity

AI-powered digital solutions Applexus enables customers to scale up their businesses with AI-powered digital solutions which include InSITE for automated accounts payable processing, nEXIM for global trade

management and SimpleRetail for digital store enablement.

SimpleRetail is integrated with SAP and offers: 1.

Consumer apps for curbside pick-up, delivery or touchless in-store purchasing.

It also enables headless commerce by connecting with any shopping or delivery platform used by the retailer.

2.

A powerful in-store module that enables efficient store operations, pick-pack and delivery of digital orders, and real-time visibility of inventory.

3.

Unified pricing and promotions across channels leveraging AI to manage the overall consumer experience.

SAP Gold-level partner Applexus is an SAP Gold-level partner. “Our partnership with SAP is deep and covers many areas that help us serve our joint customers better,” said Chris Couch, VP of SAP Solutions.

“We are also excited to be partnering with SAP on their Retail Industry Cloud to help deliver a composable retail solution landscape,” said Couch.

CLICK HERE TO TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS

SAP RETAIL

“At SAP we call this the digital core, because that gives the companies an opportunity to leverage that from a solid foundation,” pointed out Schroeder, who says that retailers implementing these changes have now “started to eat” and have an advantage especially during the pandemic.

up the clutter and prepare for how they want to operate today and into the future.

RISE provides a blueprint that companies can implement at their own pace with the advantage of one contract, one responsible party for service level agreements, operations and issue handling.

RISE with SAP RISE with SAP is a completely new way for customers of all sizes, at any stage of their digital transformation, to move to the cloud and redesign and improve processes without high up-front investments. It will allow retailers to clean

The offering itself includes three elements:

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• A business model redesign based on SAP’s business process expertise • A technical migration leveraging SAP’s tools, services, and extensive ecosystem • An Intelligent Enterprise “starter pack”

SAP RETAIL

“I would say there's a big pull towards the cloud with all the advantages as retailers can consume innovation much faster and don't have to implement it in their data center and wait. It offers much more agility and flexibility.”

100+

Innovation and development centres

+400,000 Customers in more than 180 countries

21,000+

SAP partner companies globally

The Intelligent Enterprise starter pack comprises the SAP Business Technology Platform, which provides a single semantic layer across an enterprise.

The pack also includes SAP S/4HANA Cloud, an ERP system with built-in intelligent technologies, including artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, and advanced analytics. This enables businesses to transform their processes with intelligent automation.

“Everyone wants to become an ‘Intelligent Enterprise’ and the idea is to not only provide the technology and the tools but also the solutions to help our customers,” said Schroeder.

Power of technology in retail Schroeder is a believer that technology should be used as a tool to help solve problems. “I'm a strong believer and advocate of saying, first of all, we need to have a problem. And then let's find out what we can use to solve that problem, whether it be 5G, blockchain, AI, or machine learning.

“Blockchain is a good example, for creating transparency throughout the supply chain. But when we talk about the cost of a blockchain you could also argue by not creating a data pool where every player of the supply chain puts in their data, so that’s fine. But when you look at counterfeiting pharmaceuticals or luxury items, blockchain might become more interesting because this is really where it's about trust.”

FIVE KEY ENABLERS FOR RETAILERS Schroeder outlined the five enablers to help retailers on their digital transformation.“In retail we look at five priorities.

1. Customer-centricity “Put the customer at the centre of everything you do. If it's not helping the customer, you should seriously ask yourself, why did you do that as a retailer?”

2. Connect with your customer as a segment-of-one “Connect with your consumer on a oneon-one basis. When we look at marketing segmentation, for example, did you divide businesschief.eu

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SAP RETAIL

“ All software vendors use the term standard software but when we say standard software at SAP, we mean the industryleading software” DR CHRISTOPH SCHROEDER

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF RETAIL INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT, SAP

that by age, by gender, or by geography?

But within those buckets, you always have different preferences but that’s still not enough today. You want a one-to-one relationship understanding such as what someone bought in the past. This is how we get a personalisation point of view.”

3. Digital supply chain “Those companies which had the ability to be responsive to maybe leapfrog one or the other supply chains to get things delivered to where they were needed, they were really at a big advantage.

4. Redefined Store Experience “Looking at the squat topic - as we call it meaning a redefined store that will remain.

There should always be something new from an experience perspective for the consumer, because the question is always, why should you go there? It's all about the experience.

And that's why I believe the stores are an asset if they are used in the right way.”

5. New business models “This is where you would try out new revenue streams, whether it is small or more purposedriven retail, having services attached and having other offers that ideally increase your

The Intelligent Enterprise for the Retail Industry

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SAP RETAIL

TOP 3 QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS:

DID YOU KNOW...

Questions answered by Dr Dr Christoph Schroeder, Global Vice President of Retail Business Unit at SAP: What do you think our shopping experience will look like in three years?

“Fast fashion brands such as H&M will have less articles in store but generate more revenue due to the bigger basket size. Stores will become more of an experience in the future and more fun as you will be able to enter the store from your couch with the use of Virtual Reality on your smartphone.”

What technology trends will take off this year?

“I could see a time when we could use a 3D printer for shoes or clothes. I would argue that it's not entirely hip anymore to own stuff. So why not subscribe or rent which

would fuel sustainability. That is something that I like to see happening.”

Top 3 tips for online retailers in 2021?

“The first is to target your customer.

Retailers need to be in front of their customers because if they’re not, others will be.

“The second is, a retailer has to know their value proposition and they must keep that promise. What is your unique selling proposition? What is so great about your product and is it really trustworthy?

Brands get fueled by promises which need to be kept.

“Finally, I would say classical business administration - know your market needs and design your products accordingly. Do not assume just because you have a great product it will meet current demands.”

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SAP RETAIL

SAP RETAIL

‘share of shelf time’. If you spend time with me you potentially automatically also spend money with me, and that's where I believe these new business models become quite important.

Competitive edge SAP prides itself on being customercentric, which is just one factor that gives it a competitive edge along with industry-leading software and an integrated platform.

“All software vendors use the term ‘standard software’, but when we say standard software at SAP we mean the industry-leading software.

So when we build a solution, for example, in fashion we work together with the leading global brands to get their requirements in. I believe this gives us the competitive edge,” commented Schroeder.

He also pointed out that SAP’s integrated platform allows customers to have a retail, wholesale, manufacturing and e-commerce business all on the same platform.

THE PASSIONATES According to SAP, 88 per cent of consumers known as “the passionates” a growing consumer group who make their decisions based on their principles - want their fashion brands to be more environmentally friendly.

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DID YOU KNOW...

SAP RETAIL

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50 YEARS OF SAP SAP was founded 50 years ago in 1972 when Woolworth’s ruled the UK High Street, Ralph Lauren opened his first store on Rodeo Drive and Pong was the first successful video game.

Despite these early days of retail and technology, five entrepreneurs in Germany (Dietmar Hopp, Hasso Plattner, Hans-Werner Hector, Klaus Tschira, and Claus Wellenreuther) had a vision for the business potential of technology.

They started the company Systemanalyse Programmentwicklung (System Analysis and Program Development), now simply known around the world as SAP. Their idea was to create standard enterprise software that integrated all business processes and enabled data processing in real time.

Fast-forward, nearly 50 years to a world battling a pandemic, forcing the closure of many iconic high street stores and other retailers turning to on-line platforms to survive - with SAP leading the digital transformation.

April 2021

“ There should always be something new from an experience perspective for the consumer” DR CHRISTOPH SCHROEDER

GLOBAL VICE PRESIDENT OF RETAIL INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT, SAP

“This is also something that gives us a competitive advantage because we built one integrated platform with the help of our customers to make that happen. This is a big advantage today because if a CEO from a retail company decides to go into manufacturing you can more easily plug in or turn on the required functionality.

“In former times, you would have to implement an additional and often separate software. As a prerequisite, we put our customers at the center and we only build software together with our customers.

Value of ecosystem to SAP SAP operates an open partner strategy that involves working in a global ecosystem without preferred partners. Some of its important partners in retail and fashion include Applexus Technologies, Attune Consulting, Sovanta, Wipro and many others.

A seamless shopping experience built to engage consumers across all channels, this is what Applexus Technologies does for the retail industry. Its new technology, SimpleRetail, is powered by AI and includes features that optimise and support store operations.

Attune Consulting is a team of businesstechnology advisors who not only have deep solution knowledge but also understand the fashion industry extensively; enabling

SAP RETAIL

clients to derive benefits from technology investments faster.

Sovanta AG is regarded as an expert in creating a better user experience in the SAP environment. The company provides customers with end-to-end support – from the initial requirements to the operation of the innovative solution – and ensures that they can get everything “from a single source”. The customers benefit from a unique combination of in-depth SAP knowledge and extensive

experience in the area of user experience for business applications.

“There are many niche areas where we have a lot of well-experienced partners to really fill in the spaces to make sure we have a consistent portfolio. They have a lot of innovation going on to help out our customers,” concluded Schroeder.

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TOP TEN

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TOP TEN

STRATEGIC

CONSULTANTS

Business Chief EMEA ranks its Top 10 strategic consultants based on their revenue WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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TOP TEN

10

Implement Consulting Group US$182.92mn

Founded in 1996, Implement Consulting Group is “committed to leaving organisations and their people in a truly better place – more changeable, more engaged and better equipped for creating a better future.”

Implement Consulting Group’s core areas of expertise include strategy and transformation, operations and efficiency, digitalisation and IT, leadership and change, and growth and innovation.

“When we founded Implement, our dream was to help people and organisations succeed with their most important change initiatives.

It was a simple dream of moving something forward, to improve and create impact. To turn ambitions into reality. This will probably never change.”

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09

Roland Berger US$670mn

Headquartered in Germany and founded in 1967, Rolad Berger is an independent company, solely owned by its partners. Rolad Bergers operates in multiple regions where it believes it can truly make an impact.

“We have always strived to a different perspective in the field of consulting and business, and today we continue to constructively challenge standard patterns of thought and provide clients with new solutions to manage disruption and transformation.”

Rolad Berger’s offers multiple services such as digital, IT transformation, business operations and restructuring across multiple industries including automotive, chemical, finance, construction, aerospace.

TOP TEN

08

OC&C Strategy Consultants $150mn

Founded in 1987, OC&C Strategy Consultants has over 30 years of experience “unpicking the most complex business challenges with simple, uncommon sense.”

OC&C Strategy Consultants is an international consulting firm based in London. “To us, each client challenge is unique, so boilerplate solutions don’t cut it.

We interrogate a problem until we find its root. Then we develop a powerful way to solve it. We don’t duck the difficult answers, we give clients the strategies they need.”

07

Simon-Kucher & Partners US$432.94mn

Founded in 1985, Simon-Kucher & Partners, has 36 years of industry experience in pricing strategies, customer segmentation, user experience, offer design, and packaging, to negotiation techniques, and sales excellence.

Simon-Kucher & Partners, helps its clients to grow their revenues and profits, faster, better, and more sustainably by optimising their pricing, sales, and marketing strategies.

“We pride ourselves on being hands-on and results-driven.

We don’t apply one-size-fits-all approaches in our projects but tailor our solutions to our clients’ specific needs. Last but not least, we make sure our solutions get implemented properly. The ultimate measure of our success is our clients’ success.” businesschief.eu

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Listen Now

TOP TEN

06

Capgemini US$20.6bn

At the forefront of innovation, Capgemini – a leader in consulting, technology and digital transformation – was founded in 1967, with a mission to address the entire breadth of its clients’ opportunities.

Capgemini operates in multiple industries including automotive, manufacturing, distribution, insurance and banking, offering its digital services, technology solutions, business operations services and more.

Harnessing its heritage and industry-specific expertise, “Capgemini is driven by the conviction that the business value of technology comes from and through people.”

05 KPMG

US$28.2bn Dating back to 1891, KPMG has a worldwide presence, operating in 146 countries and territories. With a rich history KPMG has had many names, it wasn’t until 1987, when KMG Thomson McLintock merged into PMM, that the consultant company adopted the name that it is known for today – KPMG. With a commitment to quality and integrity, KPMG has a passion for client success and a purpose to serve and improve its communities. “In a world where rapid change and unprecedented disruption are the new normal, we inspire confidence and empower change in all we do.”

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04 EY

$37.2bn Founded in 1989, EY has been striving to build a better working world for 32 years. The insights and services the consulting company provides help to build trust and confidence in capital markets and economies.

EY provides four integrated service lines – assurance, consulting, strategy and transactions, and tax – to help its clients capitalise on new opportunities, as well as assess and manage risk to deliver responsible growth.

“We believe a better working world is one where economic growth is sustainable and inclusive.

We work continuously to improve the quality of all our services, investing in our people and innovation,” says EY.

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03 PwC

$43bn Founded in 1998, PwC (PricewaterhouseCoopers) strives to build trust in society and solve important problems. “It is this focus which informs the services we provide and the decisions we make.”

Led by five core priorities leveraging technology, delivering exceptional client outcomes, empowering our people, committed to high quality, and sustainable profitable growth. PwC’s services include the likes of business restructuring, economics, consulting, audits sustainability and climate change, across multiple industries such as automotive, education, hospitality, real estate and pharmaceutical.

“We’re a hugely diverse business, but what binds everything we do is our purpose – to build trust in society and solve important problems. It sums up our role beyond generating profit, to how we contribute to society more broadly,” states PwC.

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TOP TEN

Accenture $44.33bn

At number two is Accenture.

Founded in 1989, Accenture’s purpose is “to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity,” and embracing the power of change “to create a 360degree value for our clients, people and communities.”

Making “changes work for you and your business,” Accenture states that with the post-digital age showing no signs of slowing down, coupled with the need for rapid business transformation, the consulting company meets clients wherever they are on their journey in every industry around the world to create lasting value.

"Across the globe, one thing is universally true of the people of Accenture: We care deeply about what we do and the impact we have with our clients and communities.

It is personal to all of us,” says Julie Sweet, Chief Executive Officer, Accenture

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TOP TEN

History of Deloitte in 4 minutes

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Deloitte

US$47.6bn Founded in 1845, at number one is Deloitte. With 176 years of consulting experience, Deloitte is a global audit and assurance, consulting, financial advisory, risk advisory, tax, and related services provider.

Not only does Deloitte provide its services to multiple industries such as consumer, government and public services, energy, resources and industrial, financial services, and technology, media and communications, its “shared culture and mission – to make an impact that matters – remains unchanged,” which can be seen in its WorldClass ambitions to impact 50 million futures by 2030, its WorldClimate strategy to drive responsible climate choices within its organisation and beyond, and it's ALL IN diversity and inclusion strategy.

“This Purpose defines who we are and gives us our reasons to exist as an organisation. We are addressing the complex challenges society faces today by serving the public interest,” says Deloitte.

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SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

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SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

BUILDING SOLUTIONS

FOR UTILITY COMPANIES AND INDUSTRY CLOUD SAP Cloud for Utilities’ directors Mateu Munar and Stefan Engelhardt outline how it is strengthening its cloud propositions and building more partnerships with small and large companies WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

I

t’s appropriate that two of SAP Cloud for Utilities’ key directors are in attendance for today’s Zoom interview as the company is embracing transformation at the double. Mateu Munar, Senior Director, Industry Business Unit Utilities, and Stefan Engelhardt, Global VP Go-To-Market Strategy Industry Business Unit Utilities, spend exactly an hour talking me through all the exciting cloud developments that enable utilities to pursue new digital business models and achieve sustainable growth.

We start by focusing on solutions, reflecting on the major changes that have occurred since 2019, before discussing more significant changes coming up.

“We started this programme a couple of years ago to bring to the market an alternative to our own on-premise offering, and go with a new proposition that addresses the new market needs,” said Munar. “We began with Utilities Retail, and the focus of the development is on the end-to-end process requirements from our customers.

Even though we have different cloud solutions, a key objective of the programme is to make sure they work as one and businesschief.eu

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SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

“ Our partnership with Badenova shows the industry is going new ways to open new revenue streams, and the cloud is designed to support those new innovative business models.”

STEFAN ENGELHARDT,

GLOBAL VP GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT UTILITIES SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

consumed either as a whole or in a modular way. Integration is a fundamental stream in our development, integration among cloud solution and integration with S/4HANA Utilities as well.”

He proceeds to outline the new extension of SAP’s One Domain Model for Utilities, which from a data management and integration perspective, works as one orchestration layer between the individual cloud solutions, providing consistency of data and processes – what is called Cloud for Utilities Foundation. “If we get – for example – a new customer from the commerce system, the data around it is properly maintained across all the different solutions that are going to consume that data,” adds Engelhardt.

Another important focus of Cloud for Utilities is on a Market Communication solution, ensuring smooth data exchanges between distributors, retailers and meter data service providers based on the local market standards.

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“We see the changing dynamics of the energy market as an opportunity for utility companies to transform into multi-serviceoriented companies, and SAP provides a suite that addresses the non-commodity space with products that are complementary to traditional energy services,” added Engelhardt.

Badenova shows partnership potential To illustrate SAP Cloud for Utilities’ desire to maximise the digital potential for all its customers, Engelhardt illustrates the work it is doing with Badenova, an innovative energy service provider and distribution grid operator in the South of Germany.

As Germany has a heterogeneous market structure, with many small municipalities that would like to offer innovative multiservice offerings but can’t afford to build their own platforms, Badenova helps plug the gap – running and operating the platform and whole logistics.

“They have created an own e-commerce platform that bundles energy services with

SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

STEFAN ENGELHARDT TITLE: GLOBAL VP GOTO-MARKET STRATEGY INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT UTILITIES Stefan joined SAP in 1997 and held since then various management positions within SAP’s Industry Business Unit Utilities. He became Vice President Utilities in 2007 and is today responsible for SAP’s global Go-to-Market strategy for the utilities industry. Stefan studied GeoSciences and holds a PhD degree for Natural Sciences from the University of Heidelberg. Before joining SAP, Stefan worked at Technische Werke Ludwigshafen AG as Head of Energy Consulting.

MATEU MUNAR TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR, INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT UTILITIES

MEET THE TEAM

attractive new offerings of any kind,” he says. “They are becoming themselves a service provider, leveraging our platform as backend. This White-Labeling of own IP shows the industry is going in new ways to open revenue streams, and Cloud for Utilities is designed to support those innovative business models.”

Munar says SAP is currently integrating all its relevant industry solutions in a hybrid deployment model with out-of-the box integration flows, which will be available in the first quarter of 2021, ahead of a full cloud suite being completed next year.

SAP has since completed two successful test cycle rounds for its end-to-end integrated solution.

“Two major and successful test cycles of the end-to-end processes have happened, the first one in June (2006 Release) and the second one in November (2011 Release).

Tests were focused on the execution of the end-to-end scenario for selling and billing of commodity and non-commodity products and services.”

To date, it has involved 20 customers globally, from Germany, US and UK to Portugal, New Zealand, Hong Kong. “We align with them our development strategy, functionalities being developed, and they tell us their current and future needs and requirements, and they test the solutions, this will help us to build a solution that is fully aligned with the market expectations,” he added.

“One key element is that this first release will enable existing customers to easily connect their back-end solutions with cloud components, helping them capitalize on their previous SAP Industry Solutions investments.

That is a key achievement and supports the end-to-end process. We are working with our customers in different pilots and co-development of the solution.”

Mateu is currently working as Senior Director in the Industry Business Unit for Utilities, he’s responsible for the Go-to-Market of the SAP Cloud for Utilities Program. Mateu has over 20 years of experience in the Utilities Industry; before joining the Industry Business Unit Utilities, he played several roles in the Industry, first as Consultant and Solution Architect implementing the SAP for Utilities Solutions and afterwards leading the Utilities Consulting Team in the EMEA region. He has a wide experience working with Utilities customers in the different market roles, different countries and through the full cycle of the SAP for Utilities Solution.

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INFOSYS CATALYST INGENIOUS. INTERACTIVE. INTUITIVE. Pre-configured processes

Unique processes designed separately for each segment of electric, water and gas utilities

Platform solutions for the new age

Pre-identified interfaces and enhancements

Complete Data Migration solution

30-40% reduction in time and effort by Infosys Data Services Suite (iDSS)

Cloud Platform Use Cases 50+ use cases for efficiency and ease-of-use

Embedded Analytics

Traceability with SolMan focused build, Fiori Dashboards and rule based security

RAPID DEPLOYMENT | REDUCED IMPLEMENTATION COST | 70% + RE-USABILITY Infosys Catalyst reduces the adoption timeline of SAP S/4HANA by

53%

and SAP S/4HANA CIS by

44%

SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

AMPLIFY YOUR UTILITY BUSINESS MODEL WITH INFOSYS COBALT Utility companies are under pressure to upgrade their portfolio mixes and value propositions to meet mandates for carbon reduction, emergency response systems, smart grids, distributed generation, completion, and changes in customer expectations.

Infosys helps utility firms reimagine their business models using solutions that include a converged SAP S/4HANA-cloud solution, Infosys Catalyst for the utility industry, and Infosys Cobalt assets. We drive application modernization and re-platforming so that businesses can respond quickly, innovate at scale, and provide comprehensive security.

Backed by deep expertise, proven methodology, and cutting-edge tools, Infosys simplifies the enterprise cloud journey using a three-step approach to: • Assess change: Evaluate the current ERP landscape and discover problems and opportunities for SAP S/4HANA on cloud • Accelerate modernization: Streamline cloud adoption using the assessment findings and the 'Safe Passage Approach', part of Infosys Cobalt • Amplify value: Leverage smart Infosys-built solutions for customer experience, asset management solutions, electric vehicle charging, vegetation management, and renewable installations on top of Infosys Catalyst Infosys Cobalt is a set of services, solutions, and platforms that acts as a force multiplier for cloud-powered enterprise transformation.

www.infosys.com businesschief.eu 199 © 2021 Infosys Limited, Bengaluru, India.

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In the Cloud space, partners are becoming more pivotal.

“We have launched a big partner enablement programme to develop together and incorporate in our endto-end suite the solutions that partners are developing on top of our platform, we call it Industry Cloud. We will pay special attention to that in 2021, and want to have as many complementary partners as possible,” said Engelhardt.

More than ever, the role of customers as co-innovation partners is crucial for the agile development of industry-specific cloud offerings.

“E.ON and SAP announced in summer 2020 the joint development of a new cloud standard solution for the Energy Distribution

“I don’t know if there’s one clear direction – beyond everyone wanting to become green, and offering more sustainable products.”

STEFAN ENGELHARDT,

GLOBAL VP GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT UTILITIES SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

Business. Thus EON is a Cloud for Utilities customer and more importantly, an important partner, co-developing market standards – the same with Badenova in the Retail space. We must ensure the scope of our solutions is meeting market demands, opening new revenue streams and securing efficiency improvements for our customers.

What is clear is in this new cloud world, utility companies have multiple requirements, and we need partners to complement what we are bringing.” businesschief.eu

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RISE for Utilities - Experience the latest features delivered by the SAP Cloud for Utilities Program

Industry Cloud focus in 2021 Engelhardt anticipates two key product streams in the next 5 to 10 years. Firstly, the on-premise world, which will be deployed more and more on private cloud environments (incorporating the S/4HANA Utilities suite) and secondly, native cloud solutions that come with highly modularized architectures and simplified business processes.

The latter won’t support the same functional complexity of traditional on-premise solutions but are faster to implement and provide significant TCO advantages. “We believe most utilities will require a mix of both – at least until the majority of the traditional business processes has been fully transformed to the digital age,” he said. “A lot of traditional business processes cannot be supported

by native cloud applications unless the industry changes massively – and I don’t see that happening quickly. So having a solution strategy that supports both worlds, like S/4HANA on premise with the cloud, I think that’s very important. We can support both narratives – a complete end-to-end process on-premise and by the end of next year, a complete end-to-end in the native cloud, and any combination of both.”

Consequently, SAP’s on-premise solution will be further developed in parallel to SAP’s investment in the cloud, he added, identifying markets and segments which need it. “The good thing is we can offer the complete on-premise suite through a subscription model in a private cloud environment, leveraging hyper-scaler qualities,” he said. Other priorities include: businesschief.eu

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“ A lot of processes cannot be supported by cloud-only unless the industry changes massively – and I don’t see that happening. So having a solution that supports everything, like S/4HANA with the cloud, I think that’s very important.”

STEFAN ENGELHARDT, GLOBAL VP GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY INDUSTRY BUSINESS UNIT UTILITIES SAP CLOUD FOR UTILITIES

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• The integration of solutions around Marketing Communications, ensuring they can work with on-premise or cloudnative – taking advantage of the new One Domain Model for Utilities • Building proper meter-to-cash engine using SAP’s cloud-native solution Subscription Billing • Focusing on adoption, ensuring customers properly adopt SAP solutions, and learn how to implement systems Engelhardt said it must simplify how customers transform from current landscapes to new ones. “We are working on ways to automate what’s possible.

When you move from an on-premise, IT environment – that was designed 10 to 15 years ago – and you go to a cloud environment, you always have a lot of change management, and technical things to consider. SAP has plenty of tools, and we’re looking to enhance them for utilities, and automate more processes.”

Asked about the industry’s future direction, Engelhardt said: “I don’t know if there’s one clear direction – beyond everyone wanting to become green, and offering more sustainable products. The trend to become customer-focused multiservice providers will definitively impact the underlying IT requirements at all Utilities.

“We see some customers saying ‘we can only achieve what we need with the most modern products’, but the majority are going step-by-step. Every company has to find the way that fits best to its strategy and we at SAP are committed to support this journey with all of our industry expertise.”

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THE FOUR PILLARS TO STRATEGIC PROCUREMENT AND A BETTER CX WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

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PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE

COMDATA

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COMDATA

1987 Year founded

€950mn Company revenue

50,000+ Number of employees in workforce

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COMDATA

Javier Baranda, Group Chief Procurement Officer at Comdata, shares his strategy on driving customer value through strategic procurement

C

JAVIER BARANDA TITLE: GROUP CPO COMPANY: COMDATA INDUSTRY: CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT BPO

EXECUTIVE BIO

omdata is a leading player in the customer journey, customer attention, and BPO services market with over thirty years in the industry. In the last five years, Comdata has experienced rapid growth through acquisitions in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. It now holds a presence in 21 countries across three different continents, with about 500 customers globally, 600 million customer interactions per year, and more than 50,000 employees.

Last year, for the first time, Comdata was included in the Gartner Quadrants as one of the top players in BPO services. I sat down with their Group Chief Procurement Officer, Javier Baranda, to discuss Comdata’s procurement transformation journey and how they drive customer value through strategic procurement.

“I started at Comdata about two years ago, after receiving an attractive project challenge. The CEO had a clear vision of how they wanted to leverage procurement to better support the business. And that, honestly, was music to my ears. I have seen in business units, companies, different organisations, different mindsets that believe procurement is purely an administrative function. After 20 years in procurement, I am convinced that procurement has much more to add than just placing orders.”

Javier Baranda leads Comdata’s procurement transformation since 2019 with the goal of implementing a strategic sourcing model globally that helps Comdata’s operations maximise the value obtained from its supply chain.

Prior to Comdata, Baranda spent 21 years at Telefonica, eight of them in international assignments across Asia and Europe, where he held various management roles covering all angles of the procurement function, from Category Management to Operations to Strategic Alliances. During his career, Baranda has focused strongly on value generation and stakeholder engagement, positioning Procurement as a strategic partner for the business.

Baranda holds a Master Degree in Business Administration from Instituto de Empresa Business School and a MSc in Telcommunications Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

COMDATA

The shift; from transactional to strategic procurement “This project allowed me to offer a model that could help combat costly transactional procurement habits and to leverage the strategic procurement concept. In the beginning, I saw that each region had a strong focus on administrative tasks. It was blended with facility services, but in the end, probably 80% of the time was dedicated to facilities and only maybe 20% to procurement. And at least 30%, the vast majority of which was spent placing orders, resolving incidents with suppliers, etcetera. There was, generally speaking, very little focus on the generation of efficiencies for the company.

“It was a very standard policy. You get three proposals, you choose the best one out of the three, and that's it. I wanted to 210

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implement a much more strategic ‘out of the box’ model in which procurement was leading innovation, heading discussions with stakeholders to present alternatives solutions, questioning things, and ensuring the right decisions were being made for the company and its customers.

“I also wanted to insert more knowledge about how to negotiate more strategically with our vendors. We started with our most critical contracts to see what we could do differently, such as aggregating and anticipating needs, improved planning and negotiation requirements. As soon as we were able to deliver tangible results with tangible savings, which is the most visible of procurement outcomes, the organisation realised that procurement could be a partner in not only executing

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purchases but optimising the budget.

In the end, my objective was not to buy cheaper but to buy better and maximise the value of the business.”

The Four Pillars of Procurement The journey Baranda is implementing is based on four pillars. “The first pillar is the procurement role itself and how we demonstrate that we can contribute much more than simply placing orders. That means also gaining a seat at the table of key decisions, being very close to the executive committee and presenting

and even championing viable alternatives that can drive cost efficiencies. This redefinition of the role needs to be sustained on a new organisational model, including a talent upgrade “WE HOLD GREAT to become a reference for the business in the different PRIDE IN THE categories of spend.”

FACT THAT WE The second pillar is ARE HELPING TO governance. In order to BUILD A COMPANY effect change, people must understand when and how THAT EVERY YEAR to engage with procurement.

BRINGS INCREASED Setting clear policies and VALUE TO ITS procedures helps facilitate, CUSTOMERS” in the first instance, the communication with Procurement and, as a JAVIER BARANDA consequence, enables the GROUP CPO AT COMDATA businesschief.eu

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DESIGNING YOUR FUTURE In a world where everything is connected, where logic meets intuition, we generate great ideas to power the progress.

NETCOM GROUP/COMDATA: 12 YEARS OF INNOVATIVE COLLABORATION

Watch: NetCom Group and Comdata Report

Founded in 2006 by a group of engineers with specialties in the telecommunications and ICT sectors, NetCom Group over the last 15 years has grown significantly. Reaching international levels by having an innovative impact through its research and development (R&D) of automation systems.

Speaking with Founder and CEO of NetCom Group, Domenico Lanzo explains that “NetCom Group has always had the vocation for applied engineering, and in particular, automation systems. Our strong presence in strategic markets has called for a complete offer that included the improvement of remote technical support to our Customers. The acquisition of Core Informatica completed our previous Offer by providing technical support.”

Explaining that NetCom Group is a service and product company, Lanzo says: “we design and develop solutions for the players in the engineering and ICT fields, where embedded software is written to digitally control automation systems.”

NetCom Group’s Partnership with Comdata Beginning their collaborative relationship in 2009, Lanzo reflects that “the historical presence of Core Informatica among the major suppliers of Comdata gives us the honor of considering ourselves a partner rather than a supplier. Our knowledge of the needs of Comdata, during all these years, has made it possible to build, through loyalty policies, our work group which, due to their speed of response to requests, is able to offer quick access to instant technical support.”

Over the years Core Informatica and Comdata’s collaborative partnership has gone from strength to strength. “From the remote and on-site helpdesk services provided from 14 offices, it has now moved on to managing 25 offices in 2020. NetCom Group helps Comdata in managing not only workstations and user services, but also provides support in managing new orders, selling ICT devices, provisioning of licenses, as well as in Data Loss Prevention and Virtual Patching.”

DESIGN YOUR FUTURE

COMDATA

21

No. of countries served

3

No. of continents served

30+

Years of experience in the market

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“AFTER 20 YEARS IN PROCUREMENT, I WAS CONVINCED THAT PROCUREMENT HAD MUCH MORE TO ADD THAN JUST PLACING ORDERS” JAVIER BARANDA

GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

mindset change of the organisation towards cost efficiency and, generally speaking, “value for money”. This helps increase “spend under management, and thus the opportunities to generate value for the company, and the decision-making process.”

“Systems are paramount for an effective governance, providing visibility in the spend, transparency and traceability of the procurement management, but also an additional efficiency to the end to end process.”

Akin to internal PR, the third pillar is the alignment with the business and its goals, ensuring internal stakeholders see procurement as a true partner. They can effectively and easily engage with procurement beyond policy requirements.

“It’s important to avoid the perception that procurement will bog down the process or that it’s simply a box-ticking exercise.

Stakeholders shouldn’t feel they need to convince or mobilise procurement to get what they need. Procurement needs to be a willing, proactive partner who will help them in terms of agility and innovation. We will bring ideas from new suppliers, and we will optimise outcomes. My objective is not to lead their business but to help them run their business better. “ The fourth pillar is monitoring and reporting. “When I started in this project, businesschief.eu

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“THE CUSTOMER’S VOICE HAS BEEN AMPLIFIED, PRESENTING BOTH AN OPPORTUNITY AND A RISK. IF YOU PERFORM POORLY WITH A CUSTOMER, IT NO LONGER STAYS BETWEEN YOU JAVIER BARANDA AND THE CUSTOMER” GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

we weren’t yet monitoring savings or spend by supplier or category. So we are building that framework on how we report spend and performance. That also allows us to benchmark across different regions, see, for instance, who is investing more in IT versus services and identify potential opportunities.”

These four pillars, role, governance, alignment with the business and monitoring and reporting, are the foundation of Comdata’s procurement transformation.

Leveraging AI for a better CX “Today, one of the main challenges of any industry is customer loyalty. Society has evolved in how we interact with companies or suppliers, especially in industries like retail banking, telcos, insurance. All these companies are facing a situation in which their customers have access to social networks where they share their opinions and experiences.

The customer’s voice has been amplified, presenting both an opportunity and a risk.

If you perform poorly with a customer, it no longer stays between you and the customer.”

Baranda says cost also remains a constant challenge. With increased competition comes increased pressures to reduce costs, and so Comdata must assist their clients in finding efficiencies and improving internal processes. “We need to help our customers 216

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COMDATA

Javier Baranda from Comdata Group talks about cyber security

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COMDATA

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“AS SOON AS WE WERE ABLE TO DELIVER TANGIBLE RESULTS WITH TANGIBLE SAVINGS, WHICH IS THE MOST VISIBLE OF PROCUREMENT OUTCOMES, THE ORGANISATION REALISED THAT PROCUREMENT COULD BE A PARTNER IN NOT ONLY EXECUTING PURCHASES BUT OPTIMISING THE BUDGET” JAVIER BARANDA

GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

enhance customer interactions, as well as improve the efficiency and cost. Comdata aims to achieve excellence in helping our customers to impart company values and improve customer retention. With the evolution of customer interactions through different channels, more and more, we are able to better serve our customers.”

AI is one of the technologies that Comdata is leveraging in this area, developing analytics to better understand the needs of customers and better manage perceptions.

“When a customer calls you, how is this customer feeling? How can I make them feel better? How can I help them better understand the situation? What previous interactions have we had with this customer, and how were those experiences? What businesschief.eu

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“WE HAVE SOME INITIATIVES WHERE WE CONTRIBUTE TO THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT IN DIFFERENT COUNTRIES, AND WE SHARE AND CELEBRATE

THESE THINGS.”

JAVIER BARANDA

GROUP CPO AT COMDATA

600mn Customer interactions managed every year

500+ Number of customers globally

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are the customer’s interests? It’s that sort of analysis and modelling that AI can provide that is extremely helpful in ensuring our customers feel they are listened to and understood. We need to make our interactions more relevant, more efficient, more effective, and for that, artificial intelligence is massively important.”

A deeply embedded culture It may sound cliche, but Comdata’s values are excellence, a strong customer focus, and innovation. In truth, however, it is much more than a cliche and is deeply embedded in the way they work and is evident at every level of the organisation.

“We push ourselves not to take things for granted, to revisit old processes for potential improvement opportunities, to challenge mindsets and drive innovation.

Our CEO has a very entrepreneurial mindset and is always challenging us to bring innovation. We want to be bigger, but we want to be bigger together, and with the participation of everyone.”

“We also have some initiatives where we contribute to the social environment in different countries, and we share and celebrate these things. It's a culture that brings people together and creates a sense of belonging and a sense of pride for what we do. We hold great pride in the fact that we are helping to build a company that every year brings increased value to its customers. And I love that approach, and I am personally very aligned with working collaboratively, seeking excellence, listening to others and remaining focused on our ultimate goal of always finding better ways to service our customers, together.”

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Democratising artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS

PRODUCED BY: KARL GREEN

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Executive perspective by Keld Zornig, Vice President Nordics, Executive Sponsor EMEA Manufacturing at SAS

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Keld Zornig

anufacturing leaders of today are boldly pioneering new efficient methods to modernise the business. Digital transformation in manufacturing has accelerated recently, one of the reasons being the need to respond to the changes caused by the pandemic. Companies are keen on experimenting with AI and analytics to turn the huge amounts of data available into insights that can help minimise risks, cut costs and drive new revenue.

AI and analytics need to deliver on their promises. If you invest in IoT and data analytics, it’s obvious you should expect to see results, soon. It is time to get into action, move forward from testing and scale-up analytical models to industrial processes.

We at SAS think the way to go is what is called democratising AI. It means making the technology widely available in the organisation and incorporating it into daily operational processes. This is possible with an integrated analytics platform on which people with different roles work together.

Our mission is to empower and inspire with the most trusted analytics. I hope you enjoy reading Adriaan Van Horenbeek sharing his insights on how analytics delivers value to your business. businesschief.eu

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Adriaan Van Horenbeek, Manufacturing Lead Advisory Western Europe at SAS, gives us the facts on the importance of digital transformation and analytics in the manufacturing industry

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AS is the leader in advanced and predictive analytics. Since 1976, SAS has empowered and inspired customers with the most trusted analytics, innovative software, and services. From machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, and natural language processing (NLP) to forecasting and optimization, their AI and IoT technologies support diverse environments and scale to meet changing business needs.

Adriaan Van Horenbeek, Manufacturing Lead Advisory Western Europe at SAS, believes that in the manufacturing industry advanced analytics is now essential for businesses to thrive. "Most companies are now aware that digital transformation is here to stay. One of the key pillars of digital transformation involves making smarter use of data, leading to better decision-making.

To do that you need advanced analytics."

Digital transformation is driven by people, processes, and technology. "People will start using the new technology, so they need to develop new skills and we need to guide them. Their roles might shift a little.

If you look at operators for example in the production plant, their role will become a bit more strategic as execution becomes automated by algorithms."

When it comes to the process, the key is how to derive long-term value from advanced analytics with AI and machine 226

April 2021

learning. "This means finding out how to scale within the organisation, and for that, you need a clear process in place," he says.

"We typically have a four-step-approach to work with the customer. The first one is to identify the business potential, to see where the largest opportunities are in terms of using analytics. The second one is to create lighthouse projects in a few weeks because this will show the organisation what the possibilities and value of using analytics are for them. The third step is to industrialise which means integrating advanced analytics in the day-to-day processes. The fourth step is scaling, which means accelerating digital transformation by expanding to other business units or their business clients."

“ One of the key pillars of digital transformation is about making smarter use of data, leading to better decision-making. To do that you need advanced analytics” ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK

MANUFACTURING LEAD ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE, SAS

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Adriaan Van Horenbeek businesschief.eu

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The power of people, process, and technology in data analytics | Adriaan Van Horenbeek | SAS

Then it’s time to make sure the right technology is in place to support the people and the process. "We talk about the analytics lifecycle getting the data, cleaning the data, then going into the analytics and modelling capabilities.

The final part is deployment, translating the insights that come out of an algorithm into day-to-day decisions. It's only here that you actually capture the value."

“Covering the entire analytics lifecycle is important”, Van Horenbeek says, “because sometimes we see that technology only covers certain parts and is a patchwork of different technologies which makes user adoption more difficult. We can support our clients to cover the entire analytics lifecycle.”

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“ We speak the language of our customers and we guide them through the entire journey” ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK

MANUFACTURING LEAD ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE, SAS

We speak the language of the clients we're supporting because for example in my team we come from an industry background, not purely with a data science background.

It helps us guide our clients through the entire journey.

SAS

SAS Corporate Headquarters

Every journey starts with the right data Manufacturing organisations typically capture large amounts of data, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it is the right data or there could be gaps. This is where IoT comes in, for example, you can easily place wireless sensors on a production line to capture additional data and store it in a cloud environment.

"However, while IoT data capture is very nice, this doesn't bring you value. It only brings you value once you apply analytics and start analysing this data and making smarter decisions,'' Van Horenbeek adds.

A specific area this can benefit is R&D. "We analyse data to identify new products faster, decreasing the go-to-market time.

Another example is the smarter use of data in the supply chain. You can look at demand forecasting, using AI and machine learning techniques to better predict the demand, and inventory optimisation – all are related to smarter scheduling of production.

"In the production plant, we use AI or machine learning to perform process optimisation in terms of yield and the quality of the product – we can identify the key drivers of variability in the quality of the product that we are producing."

It’s also possible to find sustainable ways of working, like using data to reduce the energy consumption of production lines. "For example, using less raw materials to produce the same end product,” Van Horenbeek says. businesschief.eu

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1976 Company Founded

$3bn+ Revenue

14,000 Number of Employees

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SPG Dry Cooling | Advanced Analytics Applied | SAS Customers

“ In addition to our core technology, we've built solutions for dedicated business problems to give our clients a headstart in using advanced analytics according to their business context” ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK

MANUFACTURING LEAD ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE, SAS

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Augmented Reality

Quality Engineers Hit Production Quality Targets With SAS Production Quality Analytics

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“ Our aim is the democratisation of AI, and we provide visual interfaces throughout the entire analytics lifecycle, so there is no need to be an expert in coding to use it”

ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK TITLE: MANUFACTURING LEAD, CUSTOMER ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE INDUSTRY: ANALYTICS SOFTWARE LOCATION: BELGIUM

ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK

Advanced analytics is also a valuable tool to serve customers in a better way. "In terms of pricing optimisation and customer intelligence, it can capture customers’ requirements and feed back into the R&D process to develop products that are aligned with the real customer needs."

SAS supports clients with several Industry 4.0 solutions specific to the particular business problems in their industry. "In addition to our core technology, we've built solutions for dedicated business problems to give our clients a headstart in using advanced analytics according to their business context. In manufacturing, we have specific solutions like SAS® Analytics for IoT, SAS® Production Quality Analytics, and SAS® Asset Performance Analytics which is more targeted towards predictive maintenance.

We also have SAS® Field Quality Analytics, targeted to analysing the data of a product during its lifetime."

SAS® Viya® platform is built to capture raw data from a variety of different sources and provide dashboarding, statistical analysis,

EXECUTIVE BIO

MANUFACTURING LEAD ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE, SAS

Adriaan holds master's degrees in electromechanical engineering and industrial management and received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the University of Leuven for research on predictive maintenance in cooperation with several industrial companies like Bekaert and Atlas Copco.

He worked two years as an industry asset management consultant for Stork where he performed reliability engineering projects at for example Umicore, BASF, and VPK. Today, at SAS he holds the position of manufacturing analytics expert and generates value through analytics within the process and manufacturing industry. His background of engineering skills, management skills, and data analytics skills, makes him an ideal partner to his clients to develop and embed analytics within their manufacturing processes.

SAS

“ Manufacturing businesses need to move from testing new technologies to using them at scale within their organisations” ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK

MANUFACTURING LEAD ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE, SAS

data mining, machine learning, and AI. "Our aim is the democratisation of AI, and we provide visual interfaces throughout the entire analytics lifecycle, so you do not need to be an expert in coding to use it."

"In digital transformation, we talk about open ecosystems and partnerships. Our technology is also built with that in mind. The SAS® Viya® platform is completely open, so you can integrate open source applications 234

April 2021

like Python. We want to integrate with the existing ecosystem of the customer that is already in place.

SAS partners with organisations that are leaders in key areas – for instance for cloud technology we partner with Microsoft, to enable our clients to define their cloud strategy. With Ericsson, we are leveraging IoT and 5G capabilities.

We also partner with startups to ensure

SAS

“ IoT data capture is very nice, but this doesn't bring you value. It only brings you value if you start analysing this data and making smarter decisions”

we are continuously harnessing innovation.

One example is BlueChem, an incubator in the chemical industry based in Belgium; another is Aerospace Valley in France.

"We are looking at how we support these companies with our technology in the first phase of their journey going from a startup to a scaleup. Having these dedicated partnerships also enables us to provide end-to-end solutions to our clients."

“In the next few years”, Van Horenbeek says, “manufacturing businesses need to move from testing new technologies to using them at scale within their organisations. To transform their way of working and putting analytics and AI in action is key. It will give them a significant competitive advantage.

"There is a discrepancy today between companies using data effectively compared to companies that haven't started yet, and this will only get bigger. I strongly believe that the companies that are not adopting digital transformation and analytics will decline and may even go out of business in the coming years. It's a matter of survival. We saw this with COVID-19, when many companies were not digitally transformed or making use of data, got hit much harder than others.

COVID-19 was a bit of a stress test in that respect, clearly showing that companies need to invest more in these technologies."

AI and machine learning are not new technologies, but today experiments often remain a proof of concept. “The time for experimenting with AI is over. It is time to democratize AI, make the technology widely available on an integrated platform and incorporate techniques into day-to-day operational processes for value.”

ADRIAAN VAN HORENBEEK

MANUFACTURING LEAD ADVISORY WESTERN EUROPE, SAS businesschief.eu

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COMPANY NAME MFT

THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION OF MANCHESTER'S HOSPITAL TRUST

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MFT

Dr Veronica Devlin, Chief Transformation Officer at one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK, tells us about building their electronic patient record, adopting a digital culture, and being digitally inclusive.

WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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anchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) was formed in 2017 following the merger of two of Manchester's hospitals, making it one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK with around 22,000 staff.

As its Chief Transformation Officer, Dr Veronica Devlin is overseeing the transformation element of a vast project that aims to integrate and simplify a mosaic of around 2,000 different systems, operating in 10 hospitals. The goal is to make the trust a data-driven organisation, and a key part of this is developing a new electronic patient record (EPR) system.

Working towards a go live date in summer 2022 while a global pandemic is ongoing has been a challenge, Dr Devlin explains, "but adversity does bring opportunity sometimes, and what we've all reflected on is how much more effective we could have been had we had a single electronic patient record before COVID came along. It has put a lot of unexpected demands on all our services and our need for data, for interoperability and the ability for staff to work flexibly across different areas. Having a standard approach for everything across the organisation would simplify this." businesschief.eu

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It will also benefit research initiatives, and encourage use of other technologies.

"Capturing information digitally instead of on paper opens up opportunities to use things like artificial intelligence to make predictions, on emergency department demand for example.

"We'll also be moving much more into technology to manage people's healthcare at home. We already do some of that with our cardiology team for example, remote monitoring patients with rhythm disturbances. But I think more and more of that will be happening in conjunction with our community partners" Dr Devlin adds.

The EPR will also incorporate a patient portal, where people can book appointments and communicate with their clinical team. "That in itself all of a sudden changes the relationship between the caregiver and the patient, making them much more of a team rather than the patient being the recipient of care.

Patients can become much more engaged and involved in their healthcare, which is what they want."

Another key development will be in medical imaging, as the Trust has recently signed a deal with Siemens Healthineers to upgrade their equipment. “Demand for our imaging services is increasing by 5%-10% every year, yet we’ve had to reduce our throughput to deal safely with COVID-19,” Catherine Walsh, Divisional Director of Imaging for MFT explains.

“This new relationship gives us the confidence that we’ll be able to continue to invest in the latest technology with the flexibility to adapt it to our needs, now and into the future. All associated factors such as maintenance and budgeting are taken care of. Ultimately, the partnership will enable us to focus on delivering the best 238

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“ Capturing information digitally instead of on paper opens up opportunities to use things like artificial intelligence to make predictions” DR VERONICA DEVLIN

CTO, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

MFT

DR VERONICA DEVLIN TITLE: CTO COMPANY: MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST (MFT) INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: MANCHESTER, UK

2017

Year founded

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Number of employees

EXECUTIVE BIO

patient experience while at the same time helping us to attract and retain leading talent, and develop staff to unlock their full potential.”

“This is so much more than a transaction. It’s a 15-year Value Partnership, a relationship enabling

Dr Veronica Devlin initially trained as a GP in Glasgow, working in emergency medicine for more than 20 years. In 2005 she became involved in the improvement of clinical services. Helping to set up the first ambulatory care unit in Scotland, she got involved in several national improvement programs.

A change of direction led to Dr Devlin becoming the National Clinical Lead for Emergency Care Pathways for NHS Scotland. Following this she moved to healthcare consulting with GE Healthcare as Medical Director for EMEA, involved in large scale transformation projects and technologyenabled change, and after five years Dr Devlin returned to the NHS in her current role at MFT.

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53-18-13339-01-76

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Optimise: enhance processes, streamline operations, and improve patient experience Expand: add new capabilities and scale up existing ones to transform care delivery while maintaining quality and financial sustainability Advance: elevate the quality and precision of care delivery by advancing the level of innovation in your organisation Value Partnerships optimise care delivery to create more value for you.

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Siemens Healthineers and MFT: improving patient outcomes

Siemens Healthineers has signed a 15-year deal with Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) - we found out how this will impact the region.

MFT, one of the largest hospital trusts in the UK, has signed a 15-year deal with Siemens Healthineers that will see them upgrading and maintaining all the trust's imaging equipment. Nancy West, Head of Enterprise Services at Siemens Healthineers in Great Britain and Ireland, explains that they’ll be supporting the Trust in delivering best in-class clinical outcomes and safety, in an environment that will help to enhance patients’ experience as well as improve staff satisfaction.

"At the core of the partnership is the provision of access to innovative technologies. Over the next 15 years, we'll support the imaging team with a technology-refresh programme, and we'll manage all of the imaging equipment which will help them solve that continual challenge of how to keep pace with innovations that transform care delivery” West says.

This will include around 350 installations, covering the selection of equipment, comprehensive training, and world class maintenance support through Siemens Healthineers' onsite team.

"Working together, we'll be embracing the opportunity to change and improve care delivery to help improve

the health and lives of many people across the area" West says. "The Value Partnership will see us really very deeply engaged with the team to improve patient pathways from referral right through to reporting, helping to improve diagnostic wait times, which is really important when we consider the impact that COVID has had on cancer and elective operation wait times" Catherine Walsh, Divisional Director of Imaging for MFT, adds: "In terms of innovation to pathways we absolutely want to work with Siemens Healthineers to provide for patients in response to the local health care plan, making sure that we've got equity of access for patients, and that we've got parity of services across all the sites."

"We are very excited to have this partnership in place.

We've been working on it for a number of years and to see it come to fruition is absolutely wonderful. All our staff are awaiting the go live date - it just consolidates all the effort we put into developing the contract over the last few years. We don't see it as a transaction, it's a relationship that can only go from strength to strength.” siemens-healthineers.co.uk/value-partnerships

MFT

Veronica Devlin discusses Manchester University Foundation Trust's digital strategy

“ The electronic patient record will allow patients to become much more engaged and involved in their healthcare, which is what they want” DR VERONICA DEVLIN

CTO, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

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us to provide the very best in care delivery for the people of Greater Manchester” she adds.

Internally, the trust has adopted RPA in the finance department, automating admin tasks so they can free up staff, which is helping them to address clerical staff shortages exacerbated by the COVID crisis. They've also been working closely with Siemens on interoperability between their electronic patient records and imaging systems, so information can be seamlessly brought across from people's records to be accessed by clinicians.

Dr Devlin says the pandemic has encouraged people to make quick decisions, and even take risks they

MFT

wouldn't have done before, to make resources available where needed.

"A huge amount of the operational teams' time is going into supporting the clinical staff, seeing how far and how fast we can go with change to support what they need to do. That's brought a massive amount of goodwill and we've seen it right across all of the NHS, with teams helping out other teams, even though people are tired."

One of the most obvious changes has been implementing virtual consultations, which happened very quickly despite the challenges. "We were able to set up some of the infrastructure and train clinicians on how to use the portal before we had all of the equipment, as some of it came behind

because there were delivery delays," Dr Devlin explains.

Despite this, clinicians adopted it with ease, and it was rolled out in a peer-to-peer way. Another benefit to implementing telehealth was that it forced MFT to confront issues with wifi connectivity in parts of its buildings.

"People put up with the fact that they don't have signal on their phone or can't get emails in a certain part of the building, but when you try to do a video consultation all of a sudden you see how problematic it can be. So it has flushed some of these issues out."

Now that it's been implemented, she believes telehealth is here to stay. "Younger businesschief.eu

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“We're thinking about how library or other public internet access can be made available, so that people can access care in a different way. We're thinking five to 10 years down the line, not just for the next 18 months to two years” DR VERONICA DEVLIN

CTO, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

patients seem to expect it now, and I think now that people have been consulting with their GP like this, we'll see this is how a large proportion of the country wants to carry on."

Her own partner is an example of how beneficial remote consultations can be.

Despite living in Scotland, he had complex heart surgery in London, and following that had to travel to London once a year for evaluations.

Now this can be undertaken virtually.

"This will be a big difference for us from the point of view of specialist intervention," she says. "It makes collaboration between his clinician in Scotland and the clinician in London much more feasible, and the communication seems to be much better."

However, large number of consultations will still need to be carried out by phone in the immediate future, as Greater Manchester has a huge amount of digital poverty.

Recent research showed that nine million people in the UK experience digital poverty, having little or no access to the internet; of this figure, 40 per cent are based in northern England.

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“ We're thinking about how we ensure access for everyone, such as people with sensory impairments or for multiple first languages, and how we build all that into the technology we use so everybody has equal access” DR VERONICA DEVLIN

CTO, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY NHS FOUNDATION TRUST

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population here. That will slowly change, but in the meantime there's a lot we can do by phone."

Digital poverty is one of the inequalities the pandemic has thrown into the spotlight, and while there is no easy fix, there is a big piece of work on digital inclusion currently happening within Greater Manchester.

"The digital strategy for North Manchester General Hospital, which is the largest hospital in the trust, is very much centered around recognising that the local population has a high level of deprivation on all fronts.

There's a completely different model of care planned for that facility and digital access is a critical part of it, because the plan is to build a new health and care campus there

MFT

which is very heavily dependent on digital and new technology in general."

"We're thinking about how library or other public internet access can be made available, so that people can access care in a different way. We're thinking five to 10 years down the line, not just for the next 18 months to two years" she adds.

"There's a huge amount of work to be done, but we carry out equality impact assessments as part of our COVID Recovery and Resilience Programme. We have multiple workstreams looking at outpatients including virtual clinics, elective care, urgent care and flow. It's thinking about how we ensure access for everyone, such as people with sensory impairments for example or with multiple first languages, and

how we build all of that into the technology and communications we use so that everybody has equal access to care."

Dr Devlin sees this as a very exciting time to work at MFT, with the opportunity to use technology to provide very high quality patient care. "Ultimately it's about making things better for patients, for the people of Manchester, but also for the staff because it has to be something that makes their working life better.

That's where our skills in Transformation come in, to try and help people adjust and motivate them when change gets hard - it's hard for everybody at some stage."

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HOW IWS

IS DRIVING OPERATIONAL

EXCELLENCE WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: KARL GREEN

PROCTER & GAMBLE

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Manufacturing mastery of P&G’s IWS delivered cost savings of up to $1 billion despite the pandemic, says Maciej Stawicki, Global Manufacturing VP powered to a large extent by IWS,” he said.

“We had a strong first half of the fiscal year with impressive sales. This was enabled by the Product Supply organisation and practically uninterrupted operation of manufacturing sites driven by IWS, while in

MACIEJ STAWICKI TITLE: VP GLOBAL MANUFACTURING INDUSTRY: CONSUMER

EXECUTIVE BIO

P

rocter & Gamble’s iconic family and home care products flew off supermarket shelves around the world during the past year - a surge fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Who would have thought that more than 180 years after Mr. Procter (a candlemaker) and Mr. Gamble (a soapmaker) opened their doors in Cincinnati promoting the ‘highest grade soaps and candles’ the company would again be focusing on its basic household hero products as they supply a world working from home during lockdown.

Despite COVID-19 causing massive distribution challenges for some companies, P&G has leveraged their manufacturing and supply chain resiliency to enjoy a competitive edge and always ensure their consumer products, from Charmin to Mr Proper, are on the shelf.

One key to success for such operational excellence is P&G’s Integrated Work Systems (IWS) which works on two principles; the power of zero defects and losses and the power of 100 per cent Total Employee Ownership (TEO).

“The power of IWS, has not only enabled us to go through the pandemic with minimal impact, but in some respects, has made our organisation stronger by building the learning into how we operate going forward,” said Maciej Stawicki Global Manufacturing Vice President speaking from his office in Geneva.

“Looking at the last calendar year, we continued to deliver to the company close to a billion dollars of total delivered cost savings

Maciej Stawicki is the P&G Global Manufacturing Vice President.

He owns the Integrated Work System capability building program for 113 manufacturing sites across the globe.

Stawicki earned his MS in Mechanical Engineering from Warsaw Technical University and worked as Process Engineer in CNC Machine Tools Design Center before joining P&G in 1993. Since then he successfully performed several manufacturing roles in several countries including leading three plants in Saudi Arabia, Poland, and Germany. Prior to his current role, Stawicki led the Baby Care category Product Supply organisation in India, Middle East, and Africa region.

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“Looking at the last calendar year, we continued to deliver to the company close to a billion dollars of total delivered cost savings powered to a large extent by IWS.” MACIEJ STAWICKI

GLOBAL MANUFACTURING VICE PRESIDENT, PROCTER & GAMBLE

parallel ensuring highest safety standards and effective COVID protocols. We were able to sustain our results while sometimes a significant number of our employees in our factories had to stay at home.”

MASTERY IN MANUFACTURING P&G is renowned for its ‘multiple decades of mastery in manufacturing, supply chain excellence and operations’ and with IWS P&G continues to be recognised. Industry accolades reflect this as the company has been awarded Supply Chain Master distinction from Gartner, Supplier of the Year from Walmart and close to 100 awards for individual plants across the world for example, the most recent “Fourth Industrial Revolution Lighthouse 252

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Factory Award by the World Economic Forum for P&G Lima, USA and P&G Amiens, France plants.

According to Stawicki, IWS has “evolved beyond the manufacturing discipline” and is now a fundamental element of an E2E supply chain blueprint for others to follow. It can be leveraged by other companies and shows a step-change in results within a timeframe of 16-20 weeks.

P&G partners with consultants from Ernst & Young to implement the systems in more than 400 non-P&G factories around the world.

“I think that the partnership with EY is unique. Together we can offer help to other global companies to reach worldclass standards,” he said.

PROCTER & GAMBLE

1837

Year founded

99,000+ Number of employees

$71bn revenue

$14bn

TDC savings in the last 10 years

$1bn

of cost savings over the last calendar year largely driven

by IWS

DID YOU KNOW...

ALLIANCE WITH ERNST & YOUNG (EY) P&G is now sharing the manufacturing excellence of IWS with other companies around the world - to improve their supply chain performance - via their partnership with EY. The alliance between P&G and EY combines their supply chain and manufacturing excellence capabilities to bring a different approach to attaining improved end-to-end supply chain performance and higher levels of manufacturing reliability.

The combination of P&G’s IWS program and EY’s consultants for implementation (including smart factory) is now used in more than 400 non-P&G factories around the world.

“On one side, we have P&G with multiple decades of mastery in manufacturing, supply chain excellence and operations. On the other side, we have EY who has expertise in delivering global transformation programs. Together we can offer help to other global companies to

reach world-class standards,” said Stawicki.

An example of IWS working in practice is an automotive supplier who implemented it and reduced unplanned stops by 90 per cent and unplanned downtime by 96 per cent.

“It was so successful that the company decided to roll out the IWS program across all of its sites,” said Stawicki. “The important thing to note is this does not have to take a long time.

We have a program that enables achieving breakthrough results within the timeframe of 16-20 weeks.

“Within this timeframe we have multiple examples where companies were able to reduce the unplanned stops by more than 50 per cent and increase the MTBF by a couple of hundred per cent. It doesn't have to be a very long journey to see the breakthrough results. It's also sector agnostic as it works for automotive, pharma, food companies and heavy industry,” he said.

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TOP HIGH GROWTH CATEGORIES IN 2020 Home care - Surface cleaners Family care - Toilet paper, paper towels

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF IWS: • Operational excellence driven by IWS is crucial to the delivery of Operating Total Shareholder Return (O-TSR) goals in every node of the E2E supply chain.

• IWS is the productivity enabler which drives convergence and focus on cost, cash, predictability and responsiveness.

• The framework applies to any industry, product type or form and drives a stepchange improvement in performance from any baseline or level of maturity.

• Enables financial flexibility (cost and cash) for re-investment in disruptive and transformative innovation that drives growth and shareholder value.

PEOPLE POWER OF IWS While many multinational companies struggled during the pandemic, P&G already had an infrastructure in place to navigate the challenges with the use of standard work processes that were digitally enabled in their plants and regional Planning Service Centres.

Immediate actions were triggered in line with the three top company priorities: ensuring the safety of employees and their families, providing the businesses with uninterrupted supply and supporting local communities.

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5bn

P&G consumers

113

P&G factories implement IWS

400+

non-P&G factories around the world have IWS as a result of alliance between P&G and EY

$10bn was achieved

by Pampers

“The power of IWS, has not only enabled us to go through the pandemic with minimal impact, but in some respects, has made our organisation stronger by building the learning into how we operate going forward.”

MACIEJ STAWICKI

GLOBAL MANUFACTURING VICE PRESIDENT, PROCTER & GAMBLE

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Unlock your potential The EY P&G Alliance can help you reach a leading-class standard that has helped our clients realize billions of dollars in value.

Don’t settle for good when you can have excellence.

© 2021 EYGM Limited. | All Rights Reserved.

EYG no. EYG no. 001777-21Gbl | ED none.

Expect more.

EY: Alliance with P&G role model for operational excellence

Watch the EY and Procter & Gamble partnership

Unlock the potential of your business and elevate performance with EY’s smart factory A successful alliance between Ernst & Young (EY) and Procter & Gamble (P&G) which - achieves operational excellence in manufacturing - is now used in 400 smart factories resulting in savings of $15b.

accountability. Lean manufacturing focuses on: • A drive to zero losses • 100 per cent employee ownership

The 10-year partnership between consultants EY and household product brand P&G - best known for Pampers, Gillette and Ariel - focuses on improving the end-to-end supply chain with an Integrated Work System (IWS). This smart factory model is now helping other global manufacturers and SMEs optimise their business.

What is a smart factory?

“We’ve taken an industry leader in performance, coupled it with an industry leader in operations consulting and transformation and together we’re offering organisations the ability to deliver transformational results,” said Craig Lyjak, EY Global Smart Factory Leader.

“It’s great that we can go into a site and have significant capacity improvement in a short period of time,” said Lyjak who pointed out EY has now renewed the contract with P&G.

Uplift in performance

What is IWS? P&G’s IWS empowers every employee through a vertical line-centric model that establishes clear ownership and

Cyber-physical systems monitor the physical processes, provide analysis and automate controls and decision-making to improve manufacturing efficiency.

By boosting overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), the smart factory helps manufacturers increase revenue and defer capital investment.

“When you combine IWS and EY’s smart factory this can quickly accelerate and sustain performance,” said Lyjak.

“From a timeline perspective there is generally a performance change in about eight to 12 weeks and within four to six months, you will have broad acceptance that it’s not just a blip but will continue.”

Lyjak pointed out that it is not just solving one problem but taking it step-by-step to solve the next and continue that uplift.

Learn more now

PROCTER & GAMBLE

Proctor & Gamble: How IWS is driving operational excellence

were working from home, the the teams and digital tools are brain of the whole supply leveraged to support daily chain was practically intact work,” said Stawicki. when the pandemic hit,” One example of this said Stawicki. being put into practice “When we look at was a factory in India the performance of following the town going into sudden our sites during the pandemic we have lockdown. seen a relatively minor “We were able to impact. This can be restart the facilities measured in terms of only within a matter of days MACIEJ STAWICKI GLOBAL MANUFACTURING two to three per cent of the despite the fact the VICE PRESIDENT, overall equipment efficiency plant was only managed PROCTER & GAMBLE loss for a very short time. Then by a reduced `number of immediately we got back to target - this technicians while managers had to was clearly a reflection of the power of IWS.” work remotely. This was enabled by the These superior results were enabled by fact that every single person in the plant a combination of extraordinary people, knew exactly what standards to follow standards and digital (SEE INFOGRAPHIC). and, supported by the digital tools, did “All our people know their IWS tools and not require a manager behind them. This how to use them, standards are in place for is the power of IWS,” he said.

“P&G has multiple decades of mastery in manufacturing, supply chain excellence, and operations.”

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“We continue to progress a strategy to shorten our supply chains and to move our supply points from single source materials to materials that can be sourced from multiple locations. So the pandemic also accelerated this journey and helped us move faster towards our vision.”

Serendipitous strokes of genius by P&G’s people that have defined the brand:

EXECUTIVE BIO

OVERALL EQUIPMENT EFFECTIVENESS One of the most critical metrics of manufacturing excellence is overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

“OEE is one of the key indicators we look at and compare performance across our plants as it has a major impact on cost and cash,” said Stawicki who pointed out that from a cost standpoint a high OEE performance means minimal losses and reduced waste.

“At the same time, operating equipment with a higher efficiency means we have much higher utilisation of our assets. So

FIRST BILLION DOLLAR BRAND

Pampers: When P&G researcher Vic Mills became frustrated with changing his newborn grandson’s cloth nappy he decided there must be a better alternative. In 1956 he asked R&D to work on developing the first disposable nappy. This led to the creation of Pampers - the number one nappy brand worldwide, serving 25 million babies in more than 100 countries and P&G’s first brand to generate more than $10 billion in annual sales. P&G now has 22 billion-dollar brands.

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we need less assets to produce the same volume. This means we are able to defer capital investments - often not only associated with incremental packing machines but sometimes associated with building a new plant - so this has a massive impact on deferring capital spending which is why OEE is so critical.”

Stawicki pointed out that one of the most important things of manufacturing excellence is preventing defects in a product which can be detrimental to building trust with our consumers in our brands, especially in the world of social media. “This is why ensuring that the zero defects are produced and shipped to the consumer is absolutely fundamental.”

TOUCHLESS FLOW OF INFORMATION P&G’s digital journey is also critical for the company to retain its competitive advantage.

“It can only be fully adopted when we create the right culture - what we think

ADVANTAGE OF P&G’S AGILE MANUFACTURING P&G’s manufacturing teams across the world harnessed their innovation capabilities to provide additional relief beyond their brands to help during the pandemic.

In Northern Europe, the agility of P&G teams enabled the production of 28,500 litres of hand sanitiser supplied to the WHO Formula 1 - the equivalent of 9.5 million hand washes.

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and what we look at – enabling us to engage and energise our people to achieve the current performance where certain losses like breakdowns and minor stops have been practically eliminated to zero,” said Stawicki.

“So as a next level loss, we look at the digital journey enabling touchless flow: creating end-to-end supply chain touchless flow of the information and in the other direction, touchless flow of the materials and product. Eliminating touches is the next vision we are progressing against and energising our organisation to deliver.”

STAWICKI POINTED OUT THE FOUR STAGES OF P&G’S DIGITAL ROADMAP: 1 | Build the right organisation structure in the manufacturing sites. This includes a strong partnership with the IT organisation and the right capability for the people in the organisation.

2 | Create the infrastructure, which is resilient and critically cyber secure, as well as ensuring everyone has the core set of solutions implemented as the foundation to build from.

3 | Harvest value creation with the integration phase. Unlock the significant benefits by integrating across the digital platforms and applications to drive a seamless flow of data to fully leverage the power of the digital transformation.

4 | Exploit what is possible in the amplification phase. The final phase is to leverage the power of the cloud to drive higher levels of analytics from digital twins and machine learning as well as enabling distributed innovation.

PROCTER & GAMBLE

“We had a strong first half of the fiscal year with impressive sales. This was enabled by the Product Supply organisation and practically uninterrupted operation of manufacturing sites driven by IWS” MACIEJ STAWICKI

GLOBAL MANUFACTURING VICE PRESIDENT, PROCTER & GAMBLE

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“All our people know their IWS tools and how to use them, standards are in place for the teams and digital tools are leveraged to support daily work” MACIEJ STAWICKI

GLOBAL MANUFACTURING VICE PRESIDENT, PROCTER & GAMBLE

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JOURNEY TO INDUSTRY 4.0 Stawicki explained that you can only leverage the smart factory and Industry 4.0 capabilities if you have a base fundamental excellence in place.

“If you have this in place then, of course, there are a lot of opportunities that come with a smart factory. The more advanced capabilities with machine learning or AI will get you to the next level and eliminate much more difficult defects that were not possible with the base human analysis.

“If you first maximise productivity gains through eliminating obvious work process inefficiencies and losses in the site, then bringing in automation makes sense. It builds on organisational gains and brings the next level of productivity improvement via automating high frequency, non-value added physical tasks. Similarly, you can leverage Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to eliminate repetitive tasks in the work processes.

“Finally, once you have a very reliable, predictable and agile E2E supply system you can effectively leverage extremely powerful capabilities across the end-toend supply chain like digital twins where you can model “what if” scenarios such as a pandemic,” he said.

Reflecting on what ultimately drives the company to future growth, Stawicki concluded: “The P&G mantra is that people are the main asset of the company. As our former CEO, Richard Dupree said: ‘If you leave us our money, our buildings and our brands, but you take away our people, our company will fail. But if you take away our money, our buildings and our brands, but you leave us our people, we will rebuild the company in a decade.’”

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S ' P U O R G M Y Y G E E N R TH U O J L 9 1 A T I D DIG GH COVI U O D R N O TH Y E B AND 264

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Jasper McIntosh, Chief Information Officer at The Gym Group, tells us how technology is enabling the business to successfully adapt to customers' needs in the new post-Covid world WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS

J

asper McIntosh, Chief Information Officer at The Gym Group, met John Treharne, the founder of the company, in 2011 when he was running a boutique technology company. Treharne set up The Gym three years earlier with a vision to be genuinely disruptive - to create a chain of low cost, no contract gyms open 24 hours a day, making them more accessible to the many people who needed early or late opening hours.

"John had taken some existing technology, like building access control systems and online subscription models, and applied them to the gym business" McIntosh says. "By looking at overseas models he saw that he could reduce running costs by using technology to support the sales process and enable the business to keep the doors open 24-7. This technology enabled low cost model means that more

PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER than a decade later membership fees are still on average less than £20 a month."When McIntosh joined the company there were 15 sites. Today, there are more than 180 across the UK. "The model had been proven, so we took the idea and scaled it out across the country" he says.

Up until March 2020 the company had been steadily growing. Then the COVID-19 pandemic arrived, but McIntosh explains that its challenges have led to a lot of innovation.

One example of this is their partnership with fitness app Fiit, which McIntosh says, "is really enabling us to expand our health and fitness experience outside of the four walls of the gym."

Additionally, some sites have been trialling dedicated Fiit areas. "These are custombuilt Fiit 'pods' where people can experience

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digital content inside the gym, but individually.

We've also converted an area of these gyms to custom-build Fiit studios where we deliver the content in a larger group exercise space, with immersive LCD displays and a fantastic audio experience,” he explains.

"We're coming at this from all different angles - there's the typical in-gym experience, there is bringing a digital experience into the gym environment, delivering a digital gym experience outside of the gym environment, and then there are digital product enhancements that wrap around all these to bring to other areas of people's exercise regime."

While the Fiit pods seem designed for social distancing, they were actually created before the pandemic. "The implementation went live in the post-Covid environment, but the thinking behind it pre-dated the pandemic,” says McIntosh. “The experience of group exercise is really powerful in a group of people, but also has value outside of a group setting.

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“ We made a price pledge during that national lockdown that we wouldn't charge anyone for a day that the gyms weren't open” JASPER MCINTOSH

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, THE GYM GROUP

An individual may feel connected and engaged with the content they see on the screen, but may not necessarily want to do that in a group environment, or there may not be a group session running at the time they want to do it.

It's about providing the member with options to have that experience in different settings and at a time that suits them."

During the UK's first lockdown period all gyms had to close to the public. McIntosh says this was an extremely busy time for The Gym Group, as they looked for new ways to keep

THE GYM GROUP

their members engaged. "We closed all our gyms at very short notice and took immediate steps to stop any payments being taken from members and communicate that we were closing and weren't sure how long for.

"We made a price pledge during that national lockdown that we wouldn't charge anyone for a day that the gyms weren't open.

When the dust settled on that initial piece of work, we took a multi-pronged approach to how we could manage our membership base through a period of high uncertainty, and also how we could start to build a product we thought members would want when we started to emerge from that first lockdown."

The launch of their Fiit collaboration was brought forward to offer members

JASPER MCINTOSH TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: HEALTH & FITNESS

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Jasper started working with The Gym Group in 2011, when the company was 3 years old and had 15 sites. Over the following 9 years, the company has grown to more than 180 locations and had more than 790,000 active members (at 31 Dec 2019), becoming the 2nd largest gym business in the UK and the 4th largest in Europe. The Gym Group serviced over 35 million member visits in 2019, delivering on the company’s vision to provide affordable access to exercise facilities and expertise to every person who wants to improve their wellbeing.

In 2015, Jasper was part of the management team that led the company through a successful IPO process, concluding with a full market listing on the London

Stock Exchange. Since then he’s focused on building new technical capabilities that allow the company to deliver its aggressive growth plans and increase customer engagement by constantly improving the member experience. In the last 3 years, he’s led a major programme of digital transformation, re-positioning inward- and outward-facing systems, and introducing significant new data and analytics capabilities.

Before starting at The Gym Group, Jasper spent a number of years in technology consultancy.

Prior to moving into technology, Jasper headed a financial derivatives trading desk for a major investment bank in London and New York.

The Gym Group & Okta – partners in strategy

Jasper McIntosh, CIO and Geoff Tinegate, Head of Infrastructure at The Gym Group, explain how Okta has supported them strategically, both throughout the pandemic and with their day—to—day business.

The Gym Group has a unique business model with a contract-free, low cost approach that has enabled them to grow into a successful business with over 180 sites in the UK. Technology has been a key enabler, and facilitating that technology, has been Okta.

“Okta plays a key part in our technology stack, fundamentally improving our security model, and enabling more features around things like multi-factor authentication” McIntosh says. “It’s got context-based policies around location-based awareness, and it’s really key for health-first strategy based applications that can help us scale. As we continue to grow as a business this is crucially important.”

The Gym Group has multiple cloud applications and a workforce that’s spread out all over the UK with diverse skills. “When we were evaluating Okta, we were looking for something that would fit with a wide range of different authentication processes that were in our existing applications” McIntosh says.

“We wanted to primarily provide an interface to our staff that was intuitive for them to pick up. It was really important that we had a level of reporting and understanding of how the tool was being used, where it was being used, and what our security profile was, so that we can bring new applications in confidently and understand how our staff are using them.”

With the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic they had to quickly adapt processes, and Okta helped ease these changes. “Okta’s absolutely helped us with that approach, automating a number of the identity access management features and access to applications that all our staff benefit from” Tinegate says.

“With the features of Okta around automated lifecycle management, and licence provisioning, it’s really helped remove those manual steps that are prone to error and reduce support calls, and also help staff on the ground and in the office be much more productive.”

Like so many other businesses, the Gym Group is looking forward to being fully operational once the pandemic is under control so they can get on with future plans. “We’re really excited to get back to the day job of delivering the gym experience to hundreds of thousands of members” McIntosh says. “Behind that initial re-enabling of the business, we’re looking to grow both in terms of our core products, and also affiliated products and services that we can bring in.

We see Okta having a major role to play in both of these strategies.” okta.com/uk

THE GYM GROUP

GEOFF TINEGATE

“ Particularly since Covid, people are looking at their health through a quite different lens and realising that without too much effort they can make a real change.”

TITLE: HEAD OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY: HEALTH & FITNESS LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Geoff joined The Gym Group’s technology leadership team in 2017. He has over 15 years’ experience in international and national senior technology roles in a broad range of industries including ecommerce travel, retail, health and leisure.

At The Gym Group, his focus has been on consistently improving processes, operations, infrastructure, data protection and information security. Before joining The Gym Group, Geoff was EMEA Director of Enterprise Architecture at the corporate real estate firm JLL.

JASPER MCINTOSH

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, THE GYM GROUP

EXECUTIVE BIO

THE GYM GROUP

a high quality, at-home digital experience.

Additionally, they leveraged the expertise within their staff to deliver free content on social media.

"While we were closed, we were able to tell members we had content going out on all our social channels that was free for them to access and share with friends and family. If they wanted a more rounded, comprehensive digital package they could try the free trial with our collaboration with Fiit. That really got the ball rolling."

They adapted their offering for the new post-Covid world by freezing membership fees until members were ready to return and implementing a monitoring tool for people to determine when the least busy time of day to visit was. While many public places - such as museums - reopened with a booking system, The Gym Group took this novel approach to ensure members had complete flexibility and a safe exercise environment.

"We built a tool that provides real time information on how busy the gym is, relative to its maximum capacity" McIntosh says. It also has a graph showing how busy it is at different times of day and on different days of the week.

We put this information into the hands of members both through the website and the app, giving them the maximum amount of flexibility.

"What we've seen, amazingly, is that the usage patterns in our gyms have changed quite fundamentally. Before, we had evening peaks or morning peaks in some sites, now we're seeing members choose to use gyms at different times of day. This gives them the best possible experience because it fits in with their new lifestyle and enables them to choose times when the gyms are less busy."

Data has been crucial to making these adaptations, however McIntosh explains this focus began some 18 months ago, prior to businesschief.eu

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The Gym group: Jasper McIntosh shares an insight into gym groups new technology

Covid-19. "Our business model lends itself particularly well to modern data methods, because we generate a lot of data. We're a contract-free subscription model so pricing, tenure and churn are fundamental metrics.

"With an automated access control system, we have something that most people in retail would really value because we know exactly who is in our gym. We can build a detailed picture of member engagement by combining this data with usage data from our digital products. We can understand when people visit, how often, for how long and how their visit patterns are changing.

"As part of our wider digital transformation programme, we created a roadmap to develop a first class data environment, in terms of both the infrastructure we use to 272

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capture and process data, and the team we build to create value with it."

This has been hugely valuable to help deal with the challenges of the pandemic. "All of a sudden the business started asking more questions about things we hadn’t previously prioritised, like the maximum capacity of gyms, how many members used to visit but are no longer visiting, and how can we design communications and products to support members in this challenging new environment."

Along with technology, this access to data is helping the company move into new areas and make the business more efficient. They recently implemented Okta to streamline their operations, as McIntosh explains that their growth over the last five years led to an increase in the number of systems that are

THE GYM GROUP

2008

Year founded

2,000 Employees

Health & Fitness “ Our business model lends itself particularly well to modern data methods, because we generate a lot of high quality data.”

JASPER MCINTOSH

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, THE GYM GROUP

being used across the organisation. This growth brings new challenges around coordination, synchronisation of user accounts, and the need to continually raise the bar with regards to data security.

"We're bringing Okta in to replace our active directory and other authentication products. It

£153mln Revenue (FY ending 2019)

enables us to centralise these critical activities in a way that it makes it much easier for us to manage our people and our systems, and it provides a much higher standard of overall identity management and security. The initial implementation has seen us launch Okta across the business for our priority systems. Over time, in a series of phases, we will implement more of the features of the product to provide granular multi-factor access, implement tighter controls around international access into systems, and provide new security features and services for our staff."

Looking ahead, McIntosh says there is still huge opportunity for growth, despite the uncertainty presented by Covid. "We continue to see exponential growth in fitness and fitness technology, whether that's products like Peloton, innovation from big players like Apple businesschief.eu

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“ We're seeing continuing exponential growth in fitness technology, whether that's new products like Peloton, innovation from big players like Apple Fitness+, or the amalgamation of technology and fitness” JASPER MCINTOSH

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, THE GYM GROUP

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THE GYM GROUP

The Gym group: Geoff Tinegate shares with us how the gym group utilises efficiency

Fitness+, or the amalgamation of technology and fitness through a whole array of new products and services. There's a lot of change happening out there.

"Particularly as a result of Covid, people are looking at their health through a quite different lens and realising that without too much effort they can make a real change. When we look at what we're really good at, which is providing high quality exercise environments, a high quality digital experience, and connecting with many hundreds of thousands of people already on that exercise journey, we see some great opportunities to improve the health, fitness and wellbeing of an ever wider audience.

Technology really is at the heart of that opportunity."

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THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

TECHNOLOGY ENABLING SUCCESS

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Gunjan Verma, Chief Technology Officer of The Travel Corporation, discusses the role of tech­ nology in transformation and combatting COVID-19

WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

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ast year, The Travel Corporation (TTC) celebrated its hundredth anniversary. The globe-spanning organisation incorporates around 40 brands as part of the TTC family, as well as a number of Hotels. “Each of those brands is known in their categories to provide exceptional customer service and travel experiences at their core,” says Gunjan Verma, Chief Technology Officer of The Travel Corporation, and previously of one of those brands, Contiki.

“We’re passionate about making travel experiences personal, with a huge focus on sustainability. What­ever we do is with the aim of making travel matter.”

A large part of enabling that vision comes from technology. On the data front, the company is midway through a journey to maximise its data utilisation.

“There are two key initiatives to further leverage our data underway,” says Verma.

“We have made a significant investment in building a multi-system, multi-source data ecosystem. Over the next two to three years will see us taking data from Salesforce, from our reservation system, from our website, all coming into an AWS scalable platform for us to then start using that data to assist decision-making.” businesschief.eu

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Gunjan Verma discusses how The Travel Corporation is making travel easier

“WE FEEL THAT AS A TRAVEL OPERATOR WE ALSO HAVE TO PLAY OUR PART IN MAKING SURE THAT PEOPLE ARE LOOKED AFTER AND TAKEN CARE OF”

AI is another emerging The customer area into which Verma experience is at the core is looking to improve of the travel experience performance across the TTC offers. “We have company, including the a platform called My sorting of business leads.

Travel Portal,” says “We use some rules Verma. “We use it to right now to prioritize build excitement even some leads over others. before a vacation has We are now looking at begun. What are you how to use AI to say going to see? What this lead is better than are you going to eat GUNJAN VERMA the other in order to including any dietary CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, THE TRAVEL CORPORATION take that to the next requirements? What are level. Of course we the local experiences also employ AI in the customer experience that will be available to you? It also allows space on the digital front. When a customer our customers to express their travel comes to our website, their experience is passions. For example, you may say you’re personalised. The first time they might see actually very interested in architecture, while some inspirational imagery, but the next your partner may say they're very interested time we can detect that you have come in food and wine. We capture all of that before and, based on some rules, alter your detail.” Beyond that, it also has simplifying web experience.”. functions such as taking the businesschief.eu

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“ WE’RE PASSIONATE ABOUT MAKING TRAVEL EXPERIENCES PERSONAL” GUNJAN VERMA

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

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GUNJAN VERMA TITLE: CTO COMPANY: THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

EXECUTIVE BIO

INDUSTRY: LEISURE, TRAVEL & TOURISM Gunjan Verma is the Chief Technology Officer for The Travel Corporation (TTC.com), the world leader in travel. With a strong background in consumer internet, Gunjan brings with him a wealth of experience, driving technology, innovation & the digital agenda across TTC's global business.

Prior to joining TTC, Gunjan was at Groupon, as Managing Director of Operations in Australia and New Zealand, overseeing functions including customer operations, merchant operations, supply chain and key strategic/technology projects. He has also worked in various senior transformation, operations and technology roles within Accenture, Coca-Cola and Linde Group.

Gunjan received a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Delhi College of Engineering, India and a Graduate Diploma in Management from the University of New South Wales, Australia.

He loves travel (obviously!), reading, and following cricket, which he played at university.

TOGETHER TRAVEL COMPANIES

Delight your customers, increase loyalty, and drive competitive advantage. Salesforce enables you to harness your data to get a 360 view of your customer to deliver inspiring, seamless experiences.

Learn more at salesforce.com/uk.

We bring companies and customers together.

Salesforce and TTC: Transforming the customer experience

Michael Green, Senior Vice President - Travel, Transport & Hospitality at Salesforce on leveraging technology to meet the evolving expectations of today’s consumers The Travel Corporation (TTC) has been a Salesforce customer since 2014. “TTC has been leveraging Salesforce technology to consolidate processes and systems to help accelerate sales cycles, ensure consistent communication across marketing and deliver seamless customer service,” says Michael Green, Senior Vice-President, Head of Retail & TTH (Travel, Transport & Hospitality) in the UK & Ireland.

“Salesforce solutions have been helping TTC go to market through their indirect model - via travel agencies and resellers.”

In recent times, TTC has evolved their business model from a B2B (business to business) to a B2C (business to consumer) facing organisation. “TTC had a clear vision, they wanted to get closer to their customers, and they came to Salesorce to understand how to achieve this. The travel industry has faced enormous challenges of late, and the need to find different ways to serve customers and build resilience into entire business models has accelerated many brand’s digital transformation journey. TTC were already on that path with a clear end goal in sight.

“Part of the work we’ve been involved in, is harnessing TTC’s vast amount of data, which has been accrued over the brand’s one-hundred year lifespan. We have been able to unify that data to provide a single source of truth.

“We know customers are demanding more from their online experiences, they crave more personalised, high-value and easy to use services. By leveraging Salesforce technology TTC is able to deliver personalised experiences at scale. When a customer chooses to interact with the brand, they want to be known and understood.”

After seven years of working together, Salesforce is laser focussed on continuing to be a trusted digital advisor to TTC. “It’s not just about supporting them as they run their business but helping them change their business,” says Green. “At Salesforce, trust is our number one value, and it is a key component to the success of any digital transformation project. This is built through being honest, demonstrating proven credibility and drawing on a vast array of expertise to inform decision making.”

THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

How We Tread Right

“ WE DON’T JUST SAY AN IMAGE ON OUR WEBSITE LOOKS MORE INSPIRATIONAL THAN ANOTHER WE LET DATA TELL US” GUNJAN VERMA

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

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stress out of juggling travel documents by storing all relevant data for hotel check-ins or flight boarding.

Verma points out that just as important as the new technology is the culture supporting it, however, with a new emphasis on supporting decisions with data. “18 months ago, we embarked on an AB testing framework with everything we do. Now, we don’t just say an image on our website looks more inspirational than another - we let data tell us. We’re shifting the culture from inspiration to inspiration and data, instituting a culture of testing, learning and continuous improvement.” Alongside that is an emphasis on trusting teams to manage themselves. Verma sees this as not just a trend but a permanent evolution.

“It is actually well established now that self

THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

managing teams perform better.

Answering questions like: ‘What's the The question is how do you keep best way to unlock our data? What's business objectives in mind, give the best way to market our first-party them to your respective teams and data? What do we do with thirdThe Travel let them get on with it, promoting party data?’ All the issues that have Corporation was that culture of autonomy with a come up around adopting a multifirst founded in 1920. few guide rails.” channel strategy, they’ve helped Supporting TTC on its journey to answer.” have been a few key partners, among them The travel industry has been particularly Salesforce. “They’ve assisted as we’ve hard-hit by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, transformed our business from being a legacy leading TTC to adopt a number of proactive tour operator, to a omnichannel organisation. measures to ensure staff, customers and Salesforce of course has brought not just the partners all feel safe. “That is the single technology such as Einstein, but the thinking most important thing we have to do,” says which comes with being a digital-first business.”

Verma. “Of course we have a very robust One of the areas Salesforce has particularly hygiene and wellbeing protocol in place for focused upon is data. “The professional future travel. Governments will play their services arm of Salesforce has been moving part with vaccination, but we feel that as a things forwards with our approach to data. travel operator we also have to play our part

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in making sure that people are looked after and taken care of.” One such example of that focus is the institution of wellbeing directors to ensure social distancing at hotels and restaurants, akin to existing travel directors.

As Verma explains, responding to the pandemic has allowed the company to learn a few lessons. “We’ve learnt that we can move fast if the organisation is focused on a single objective, and proved that legacy businesses can also be agile when it comes to it. The ways we were able to pivot and the nimbleness we were able to build into our operating model means that it’s served to accelerate existing efforts.”

“WE’VE LEARNT THAT WE CAN MOVE FAST IF THE ORGANISATION IS FOCUSED ON A SINGLE OBJECTIVE” GUNJAN VERMA

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, THE TRAVEL CORPORATION

Going forwards, Verma sees his department as continuing to fulfill the measures upon which it judges itself, namely improving customer experience, providing productivity improvements, focusing on security and compliance, increasing distribution and building a culture of continuous improvement. “TTC’s technology department will continue using technology and digitalenabled tools and processes to make our brands more successful in their respective, competitive marketplaces.”

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James Kirby Head of EMEA Business

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AN INDUSTRY LEADER IN DIGITAL ACCELERATION James Kirby, Head of EMEA Business at CSG, explains how CSG helps companies future-proof their digital offerings with the power of a diverse portfolio WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS

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SG, an industry leader in providing revenue management and customer engagement solutions, has helped businesses acquire, monetise, engage, and retain customers for over 35 years. James Kirby, CSG’s Head of EMEA, believes that at its core, the company’s mission is to help solve their customers’ toughest business problems. Further, he considers CSG’s commitment to its mission to be integral to its success. “Solving our customers’ problems allows us to grow and provide returns to our stakeholders,” James explains. “This provides us with the growth needed to continuously innovate, feeding back further benefits to our customers as we continuously develop and evolve our solutions.”

While CSG maintains a diverse client roster, from leading communications service providers to governments to media and

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY entertainment providers, James believes that two common needs transcend industries: effective revenue management and the ability to provide a superior customer experience. CSG has solutions tailored for success in these crucial areas.

A significant number of CSG’s customers operate in the telecommunications and logistics industries, two sectors that have experienced considerable demand increases throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.

As end customers used more data and communicated more online, CSG was wellpositioned to seamlessly scale solutions to meet demand. The pandemic made it abundantly clear that businesses need to transform into digital organisations, with the ability to do so quickly.

James believes that CSG can speak with authority to the process because the businesschief.eu

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CSG – An Industry Leader in Digital Acceleration

“ TODAY’S WORLD IS DRIVEN BY ECOSYSTEMS. LONG GONE ARE THE DAYS WHEN A TELECOM FIRM PROVIDED ONLY A TELEPHONE SERVICE. TODAY, THEY TYPICALLY OFFER BUNDLES AND COMPLEMENTARY PRODUCTS, AND THAT ECOSYSTEM IS SET TO GROW EXPONENTIALLY AS BUSINESSES MOVE ONLINE” JAMES KIRBY

HEAD OF EMEA, CSG

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company has undergone a transformation themselves. “We find ourselves in a very fortunate position because we have been developing innovative solutions for a long time. Over the last few years, we have moved to the cloud, implemented digital front ends, and streamlined applications. As a result, we are uniquely positioned to help our customers react quickly to a constantly changing landscape. As the pandemic has unfolded, we have been able to offer capabilities that our customers can quickly adopt and integrate.”

Take, for example, a large global shipping company that has experienced a staggering increase in shipments processed, creating massive amounts of data. According to James, “data is key to almost any business, and the current increase in data generation means it is more important than ever to merge that data from multiple sources and place it in repositories for analytics and business intelligence.”

CSG

JAMES KIRBY TITLE: SVP & HEAD OF EMEA BUSINESS INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE LOCATION: LONDON, ENGLAND

CSG’s Digital Mediation platform was developed to help businesses manage their data streams more efficiently. “It allows us to take any type of data from any source, process that data, analyse it and then distribute it to other systems,” James explains.

CSG operates on the premise that technology is ever evolving, and that it is vital to always stay one step ahead. As a result of this approach, they can meet the everchanging needs of their customers. CSG has a unique take on digital transformation, which James describes below.

EXECUTIVE BIO

James Kirby is Senior Vice President and Head of EMEA at CSG, where he is responsible for the go-to-market strategy and business development across the region. His international experience helps him craft service offerings that improve customer experience. With 20 years’ experience at CSG, Kirby puts customer excellence and continuous improvement at the centre of his strategy. He has previously held product management, business development and services roles within CSG.

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CSG

$990.5M Revenue (2020)

1982

Year Founded

4,800+

Number of employees (2020)

“Many organisations have gone through transformation, especially large-scale IT projects, that can take years. They think there is a finish line to reach or a definite endpoint to digital transformations. But that era has come to an end. The pace at which technology changes and evolves requires a perpetual transformation. We have adapted to this new reality through continuous development and integration and by implementing agile methodologies in the way we develop and deploy our solutions.”

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business operations by deploying CSG’s innovative suite of services. Inmarsat, a United Kingdom-based satellite provider for the aviation and maritime sectors, has benefited from enhanced efficiency in data processing and invoicing after implementing CSG’s solutions.

In Africa, a key growth market for the company, “CSG is providing MTC Namibia with a future-proof digital technology stack to help personalise their customers’ experience across devices and channels. During the last 12 months, MTC has undergone a massive digital transformation that

CSG

“FORGING PARTNERSHIPS WITH LARGE INTERNATIONAL BRANDS IS VITALLY IMPORTANT. IN OUR CURRENT DIGITAL ERA, A LOT OF OUR CUSTOMERS ARE ADOPTING CLOUD TECHNOLOGY AS PART OF THEIR CORE IT STRATEGY, AND WE SEE THESE RELATIONSHIPS AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF HOW WE GO TO MARKET” JAMES KIRBY

HEAD OF EMEA, CSG businesschief.eu

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“ WE ARE HAVING TRULY EXCITING CONVERSATIONS WITH CLIENTS ABOUT WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS, AND WE EXPECT THIS TO INVOLVE FURTHER GROWTH OVER THE NEXT FEW YEARS” JAMES KIRBY

HEAD OF EMEA, CSG

included transforming a collection of legacy systems and integrating them into the CSG ecosystem. This accelerated MTC’s go-tomarket plans and allows them to better serve their customers,” James explains.

In addition to Africa, the Middle East is a major growth market. “CSG recently expanded its work with Mobily, one of the fastest-growing mobile operators in Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabian market is rapidly changing from a very oil-centric market to a truly digital economy,” James says. “It is very important for businesses in the region to provide a much more digital experience for their customers, who are becoming more demanding. By partnering with Mobily and deploying CSG products, they can accelerate their growth and significantly improve their customer experience.”

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Meet CSG

from a variety of different markets and industries to benefit their customers.

“Today’s world is driven by ecosystems.

Long gone are the days when a telecom firm provided only a telephone service. Today, they typically offer bundles and complementary products, and that ecosystem is set to grow exponentially as businesses move online—this is where we can really leverage our expertise,” James says.

CSG believes that customer relationships and partnerships are based on more than just a single transaction—they are enduring and continuously evolving. The company applies this knowledge when building its products and solutions, keeping the customer in mind throughout the process.

The methodologies and processes they have adopted allow them to work more effectively with customers and partners.

A robust partnership framework and an unwavering commitment to success have

led to strong relationships and even some awards. Last year, CSG was named Microsoft’s 2020 Media and Communications Partner of the Year for their work with Azure. “Forging partnerships with large international brands is vitally important. In our current digital era, a lot of our customers are adopting cloud technology as part of their core IT strategy, and we see these relationships as an essential part of how we go to market.”

In February this year, CSG recognised Microsoft as their 2020 Strategic Partner of the Year, awarding the company for its go-to-market partnering efforts together with CSG to launch solutions, drive market awareness, and support engagement with CSG customers worldwide.

Before approaching a customer with a solution, CSG conducts comprehensive pre-work with their partner vendors to ensure they are compatible, meet necessary standards, and can add value. businesschief.eu

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“ IF WE THINK THERE IS A BETTER WAY OF SOLVING A PROBLEM, WE ARE ABSOLUTELY OPEN WITH OUR CUSTOMERS. IT MAY BE EASIER TO OFFER EXACTLY WHAT THE CUSTOMER WANTS, BUT THAT MIGHT RESULT IN WASTED TIME AND RESOURCES. BUILDING A TRANSPARENT, COMMUNICATIVE RELATIONSHIP WITH CUSTOMERS SETS US APART” JAMES KIRBY

HEAD OF EMEA, CSG

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CSG

The company has enjoyed tremendous success through these win-win partnerships.

At the heart of these winning partnerships and customer relationships is a culture of openness—even if it means offering a different viewpoint. “If we think there is a better way of solving a problem, we are absolutely open with our customers,” James says. “It may be easier to offer exactly what the customer wants, but that might result in wasted time and resources.

Building a transparent, communicative relationship with customers sets us apart.”

Last year was CSG’s best yet in EMEA, and James anticipates that trend continuing. “We have a robust roadmap moving forward, and we are fortunate to be in a cashflow positive situation. There is tremendous potential for us to make acquisitions that will complement our existing offerings,” he explains.

CSG’s investments in digital transformation have paid off, and their cloud-first approach positions them well moving forward. “We are having truly exciting conversations with clients about what the future holds, and we expect this to involve further growth over the next few years.”

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FLOOID

HEADLESS COMMERCE FOR A NEW ERA OF RETAIL

WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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Flooid’s unified commerce solutions concentrate on the heavy lifting of basket management and pricing, leaving retailers free to concentrate on their customers

A

year ago, give or take, PCMS rebranded as Flooid. But the decision to change the name of the company was far from a whim. A slew of vendors in the point-of-sale market had initial-based names, and PCMS wanted to break free from being clubbed in with POSonly providers. As Flooid was born out of PCMS’ ashes, the board was intent on getting the message out that while POS was part of it’s offering, it wasn’t the whole package.

“We felt doing a rebrand would create a bit of noise in the market,” explains Flooid CEO EMEA Martyn Osborne. “Point of sale is just one of the things we provide to retailers, but we’ve always provided a slightly different mix of capabilities beyond just POS. We were able to amplify some of the other things we do.”

Osborne, who’s been with the business for 24 years, took the helm at the time of the rebrand. His roles in product development and operations mean he’s been heavily invested in the operational side of the business.

Customer experience is at the heart of Flooid’s selfcheckout technology.

Essential retail It hasn’t necessarily all been a smooth ride.

Many of Flooid’s customers are essential retailers: grocers, FMCG, health and beauty/ pharmacy, all to some extent protected from the worst retail fallout from Covid19 restrictions on opening. Another vertical for the company is fast fashion, which has businesschief.eu

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“ The rebrand gave us an opportunity to amplify some of the other things we do” MARTYN OSBORNE CEO, FLOOID

been hit harder by the global pandemic.

Fortunately for Flooid, because the company serves all retail verticals the work with essential retailers has helped balance the challenges seen in other retail sectors.

“We knew that some of our clients would be hit harder than others,” Osborne admits, “and this situation has certainly presented challenges.” On the plus side, convenience and supermarket operators “have fared better and they’ve innovated their way through it.”

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in its customers’ decision making. Even customers who have a tendency to “dibble around a bit” have sharpened their courses.

“We’ve seen a big acceleration of things like self-service and mobile payments within the supermarket area. We’ve seen some really quick decision making that would normally take months, and it’s been done in weeks.”

Build the platform, not the product One of Flooid’s strengths is that despite a broad portfolio that takes in pricing management, promotions, loyalty schemes

FLOOID

MARTYN OSBORNE TITLE: CEO COMPANY: FLOOID INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: WEST MIDLANDS, UK

and basket management on and offline, it doesn’t offer consumer apps. “We provide all the heavy lifting,” Osborne explains, “and the key thing is pricing consistency. If you think about consumer applications, it’s very different to building industrial apps. And we’ve decided not to build the consumer applications because we don’t do enough of it to be good at it consistently, every day. We work with a couple of partners and we’ve also extended the platform capabilities so that the retailer themselves can build their own assets. And this is key

EXECUTIVE BIO

Martyn Osborne is EMEA Chief Executive Officer, Group co-CEO and Group CPO of Flooid whose unified commerce platform technology is transforming the in-store experience and helping some of the biggest retail brands create frictionless customer journeys regardless of where a consumer decides to begin their shopping experience – whether it is online, in a store, or on a mobile app.

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Flooid and Intel: Enhancing the retail experience Flooid and Intel are enhancing the retail experience with a unified commerce edge-to-cloud solution that provides retailers with the ability to seamlessly follow the customer through the shopping journey. Flooid is also proud to be a member of Intel’s Open Retail Initiative (ORI); a collaborative effort to accelerate iteration, flexibility and innovation at scale. With Intel and Flooid every touchpoint can be a transaction and every customer experience a discovery.

LEARN MORE

The future you’re building starts here

For retailers, being open for business means being open to innovation.

Innovation that redefines what’s possible in store and inspires shopper loyalty across every channel.

“Surprise and delight” is all about timing. Having the right AI and analytics at the edge means your touchpoints are smart enough to know when the time is right. And what messages will turn your customers’ shopping experience into a truly remarkable one.

Let’s make retail remarkable.

Visit intel.com/retail © Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.

LEARN MORE

FLOOID

“ It’s no longer just how we’ll build the tool. It’s how can we build solutions that we can bring partners into the ecosystem that add value” MARTYN OSBORNE CEO, FLOOID

– in retail, we find that retailers want to build some of this capability in house rather than relying on a vendor to produce it.

“It’s changed how we think about the product investment and how we think about the solution. It’s no longer just how we’ll build the tool. It’s how can we build solutions that we can bring partners into the ecosystem that add value. How can 306

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we bring solutions to market that enable retailers to build some of their own assets on top of that platform?”

Headless commerce Flooid calls this approach the headless commerce platform. This architecture allows retailers the flexibility to separate the front and back end solutions and

FLOOID

Flooid dashboard reporting provides deep insight.

provides the flexibility to enrich the customer experience. Effectively it’s a set of tools that runs centrally in the cloud, allowing retailers to run POS, basket management and pricing. That means the customer can alter pricing in tandem in physical retail and on its ecommerce platform, and everything is run in a secure, centralised location.

“Whether you’re going into a store with an app on your phone, or you’re going to the checkout, or the self-checkout, if you come out of there with the same basket of goods, whether you bought it using a selfcheckout or POS or on your phone, the receipt will look the same. The items on the receipt will be the same and, crucially, the price and promotion calculation will be identical. That’s actually quite hard to pull off because getting consistency between different systems such as a POS and consumer mobile, which operate differently, isn’t that easy – invariably

Flooid: headless commerce for a new era of retail

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you’ll get inconsistencies with how things are done if it's not done properly.

“We’ve used many of the same technology assets in the headless commerce solution of what they’ve got running in a POS. They’re making changes to it quite frequently and they don’t want to rely on a vendor like us adding shopping lists and changing the graphics. We sell them the API, we sell them the engine and we charge it on a transaction basis, so there’s very little upfront cost to that.”

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manifestation of the rebrand – pulling sharp focus on software that seamlessly works across the retail spectrum, while offering customers the option to build the bit that’s seen by the people they know best: their customers.

Osborne feels the solution also fits with a world in which companies no longer want to be locked into a single monolithic vendor, which supplies every facet of their technology set-up. “I really feel the days of the single vendor coming in as a one-stop shop are, if not ended, then limited. Retailers are savvy, and they’ve got some really smart people in house as well that can do some of this. I

FLOOID

Flooid exhibits at an industry event.

think providing basket management – heavy lifting – is still in the vendor space, but the experiential side of it – apps and things – are quite personal and need to be tied into the brand offering.”

Small change Not all of Flooid’s customers are huge supermarkets. Osborne talks about customers which have between 400 to 1,000 shops. “They’re more inclined to take something that’s more turnkey. They generally don’t take as long as some of the big guys to make a decision, but they are still in the best of breed area, and they will

choose the best ecomm platform, they’ll choose the best POS. They might not have the propensity to build stuff themselves, but they still have the propensity to go out and get the best solution – best for the job, not just buy it all from one place. So actually, the strategy is working for us.

“And it helps with entry points, too.

So even if a customer is talking about replacing their point of sale, that might be a nine-month job and in essence we’re going to sell you a newer, shiny version of something you already have.

We can say ‘why don’t we start the project somewhere else? What can’t you do with your current platform?’ You might not be able to do mobile, or some of the omnichannel journeys. Why don’t we start with those and do the POS piece at the end?

So you deliver some really early value in the lifecycle chain. Our sales approach and strategy approach plays really well for what the market wants. And we get told that it’s refreshing that we’re not trying to land-grab everything. We’re trying to be really good at what we do, but we know where our boundaries are.”

As retail adjusts with its customers – to online, to self-checkout, to click-andcollect and to whatever is added to the basket of shopping requirements in future – it’s the platform that has to remain robust, and that’s what Flooid’s platform is delivering.

Security in aisle nine Speaking of robust, there is of course an element of security. Federico ‘Fred’ Vezzani is Head of Site Reliability Engineering at Flooid. For him, the key is to keep pace with the constantly changing threat landscape. “There are three major steps,” he says. “You need to monitor businesschief.eu

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everything, then you need to verify everything, then you need to encrypt everything.

“You need to have cyber defence solutions, for sure. In order to verify everything, you need to understand who is actually using the system, so you need digital identities and then to encrypt everything.

You need data protection systems. The technologies are changing really fast and that requires constant adaptation.”

What adaptation? “The biggest transformation is from old-school IT teams to Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps. It’s all about breaking down barriers and automating routine work. Our engineers should work 50 per cent on manual work, and 50 per cent to remove that work.”

Digital transformation in retail Covid-19 has sped the journey of retail bricks and mortar towards a hybrid future where shoppers are online and in the store, potentially at the same time. Attitudes to payments are changing, led by the increased use of contactless payments and, owing to their higher payment ceilings, mobile.

Osborne sees the change in payment habits becoming permanent. “These big accelerations we’ve seen due to Covid are not going to go away,” he predicts. “Once you’ve got the ability to go into M&S to buy a sandwich for your lunch on your phone, and you can get in and out very quickly, why are you ever going to stand in a queue again? And we’ve definitely seen those things as part of the digital transformation having a big impact within the store. They’d started anyway, but Covid has accelerated things like contactless payments. Those things have a big impact within the digital space within the store.”

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Flooid powers many self-service capabilities including FlooidPay a simple, safe contactless payment option.

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SCALA DATA CENTERS THINK BIG TO ENABLE A CONNECTED FUTURE IN LATIN AMERICA WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

SCALA DATA CENTERS

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SCALA DATA CENTERS

Scala Data Centers is driving the next generation of a sustainable hyperscale data centers across LATAM

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Marcos Peigo, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder

cala Data Centers is thinking big when it comes to enabling the next generation of mobile and internet connectivity throughout Latin America.

From Mexico in the north to Argentina in the south – a distance of more than 4,900 miles – Scala is building a series of huge campuses to underpin the region’s datadriven transformation within a time frame of only five years.

It is already the first hyper-scalable data centre company in LATAM to focus on its green credentials plus the expertise and global size of Digital Colony which has more than US $40 billion in assets under management and a powerful investment platform.

“We are investing in the long-term,” said Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Marcos Peigo of Scala Data Centers, a successful entrepreneur with 20 years of industry experience, who was speaking from his house close to São Paulo, Brazil.

“We are investing in huge campuses where customers can grow over the next 10-15 years in line with demand for computing power. We are finding places where we can apply 100 per cent renewable power, and we are developing all of these under templates of engineering and operations that are world class,” said Peigo.

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A DATA CENTRE MASTERPLAN In order to accelerate their platform for expansion the company is using the One Scala Template for all the campuses which can be customised in response to customer demand.

DID YOU KNOW...

The benefits include: • Win scale • Reduce delivery time • Keep construction costs down while maintaining highest possible quality • Ready-made design packages • Easier training of facility operations staff • Technicians can be shared between facilities and hit the ground running

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“The idea is that if you close your eyes and open them in a data centre in Brazil will be exactly the same as one in Mexico,” said Scala Data Centers Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Marcos Peigo.

“We are using the same architecture, equipment, design and features as a standard and will provide adjustments to the requirements of each customer,” he said.

April 2021

in lots of smaller data centers that are spread over the country we are developing big campuses,” commented Peigo who pointed out a standard campus for Scala will comprise of one to four buildings with a 20 megawatt critical capacity each, supporting high density (higher than 30kW per rack) deployments.

In 2017 Colony Capital acquired Digital Bridge Holdings and built a multi-milliondollar reserve for greenfield projects (starting from scratch) and inorganic growth in three areas: data centers, towers and fibres.

Scala Data Centers was officially formed in 2020 with the acquisition of the colocation assets of the Brazilian company UOLDiveo

by Digital Colony for US $429 million and is now leveraging on these three pillars to accelerate growth as the data centre platform for Latin America.

The company's data centre business model is based on hyperscale and colocation projects, building data infrastructure from the ground up to provide space, power supply and highspeed connections to accommodate servers and storage from major global cloud service providers.

“WE ARE BUILDING A VERY AGGRESSIVE AND BOLD PLAN OF EXPANSION” MARCOS PEIGO

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER, SCALA DATA CENTERS

SCALA DATA CENTERS

Scala Data Centers: The nervous system of the data centre

Focus on renewable energy With the acquisition, Scala took over two data centres: São Paulo One (known as SP1), with approximately 30 MW of total capacity, and SP2, with a capacity of 7 MW. Scala is now expanding its presence with the construction of five data centres in the region: one in Mexico, one in Colombia, one in Chile and two more in Brazil. All work is expected to begin later this year.

In Brazil, SP3 is expected to start operating in June, which should increase the total production capacity in Brazil to 50 MW this year. According to Peigo, it is the first data centre in Brazil with Tier III certification issued by TIA 942, which observes not only electrical but also mechanical aspects, including telecommunications and physical security.

Yet in 2020, Scala has migrated 100 per cent of its energy consumption from its data centres to renewable and certified sources of energy – the first data centre company in

2020 Year founded

200

Numebr of employees

Latin America to achieve this milestone and now is developing the next step of its ESG program, to become completely carbon neutral by the end of this year.

Commenting on Scala’s green focus Peigo said the campuses will be awarded with the LEED and CEEDA certification in energy and environmental design. “We are making the right decision at the beginning to be green.

I believe this is the least we can do. As we establish this is the new standard in the industry for Latin America we hope others will follow our lead in the next years, businesschief.eu

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“WE ARE MAKING THE RIGHT DECISION AT THE BEGINNING TO BE GREEN. I BELIEVE THIS IS THE LEAST WE CAN DO AND AS WE ESTABLISH THE NEW STANDARD IN THE INDUSTRY FOR LATIN AMERICA WE HOPE OTHERS WILL FOLLOW IN THE BEST INTEREST OF FUTURE GENERATIONS”

MARCOS PEIGO TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES LOCATION: BRAZIL Marcos Peigo, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Scala Data Centers is working to achieve world-class connectivity across Latin America.

Peigo, who is also an Operating Partner with global investment company Digital Colony, is leading Scala’s data centre business model which will offer mobile and internet connectivity to people from Mexico to Chile.

Peigo is based in São Paulo, Brazil, and provides critical insight into the Latin American data center and IT markets. He is a seasoned leader with more than 20 years of experience working with technology and infrastructurefocused firms in Brazil.

MARCOS PEIGO

as it is in the best interest of present and future generations.”

Scala has also developed an EHS policy which is key for the data center business.

“This is a priority at Scala. We are 100 per cent committed to the environment, health and safety of our employees, service providers, customers and visitors in all Scala facilities. We have built a dedicated team led by a senior leadership to conduct regular checks in our facilities and operations.” commented Peigo.

Scala currently has 17 deals between land purchases, greenfield investments and possible acquisitions in Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Chile and Argentina. “We are developing very aggressively and at a bold pace,” said Peigo.

EXECUTIVE BIO

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER, SCALA DATA CENTERS

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According to Peigo, Scala has a high quality, growing customer base including a global hyperscale provider and a leading IT platform in Brazil. It is now poised to capture market share in under-served geographies of Brazil and the rest of Latin America.

The power behind Scala is their global investor, Digital Colony, which has 125 data centers and 135,000 route miles of fibre assets. “Digital Colony is the leading investment firm in the infrastructure landscape in the world with more than 40 billion in assets,” said Peigo.

“WE ARE INVESTING IN HUGE CAMPUSES WHERE CUSTOMERS CAN GROW OVER THE NEXT 10-15 YEARS IN LINE WITH DEMAND FOR COMPUTING POWER. WE ARE FINDING PLACES WHERE WE CAN APPLY 100 PER CENT RENEWABLE POWER, AND WE ARE DEVELOPING ALL OF THESE UNDER TEMPLATES OF ENGINEERING AND OPERATIONS THAT ARE WORLD CLASS”

Three pillars of growth In a bid to accelerate growth during the next six years Digital Colony is focusing on three pillars; data centres, towers and fibre. “We believe the three pillars are the foundation of the new economy and the formation of the progress and the growth in the world,” commented Peigo.

The tower segment of the business includes small cells and distributed antenna systems (DAS) while fibre makes up the third pillar of the digital infrastructure strategy which will interconnect its towers and data centres and serve industries that seek to automate and digitise.

Digital Colony has three major investments in the region in this segment: Mexico Tower Partners (MTP), the largest private wireless tower operator in Mexico; Andean Telecom Partners (ATP), which operates fibre and towers in Chile, Peru and Colombia; and Highline do Brasil, focusing on the Brazilian tower business.

“That increases the size of the company by four times in LATAM. We control and operate more than 6,500 towers in this landscape and globally more than 350,000 towers,” said Peigo.

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SCALA DATA CENTERS

250MW

capacity to be developed in the next 5 years

5

Scala Data Centers campuses covering Latin America: Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Colombia and Argentina

100%

energy consumption comes from renewable sources of energy

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LZA ENGENHARIA, DESIGNING SOLUTIONS. LZA Engenharia is a leading mission critical company, focused on comprehensive engineering services to the largest datacenter operators in Brazil and Latin America.

Our professionals have more than 25 years in the market, delivering excellence in design, strategic planning and assessments to our clients.

LEARN MORE

SCALA DATA CENTERS

Hyperscale data centres Scala’s agile strategy means they will be developing initiatives where they will also deploy edge modular tier III data centres, closer to the demand for 5G rollout, Internet of Things (IoT) – which is all part of the evolution of their portfolio.

“We are building a very aggressive and bold plan of expansion,” said Peigo.

“For our campus in Tamboré, São Paulo we have plans under development for a total of six data centers, one already in production and the second under construction, taking advantage of the acquisition we concluded in last December of 45 per cent of the interest in the entire industrial park plus

DID YOU KNOW...

POWER BEHIND SCALA DATA CENTERS The power behind Scala Data Centers is Digital Colony – their operating partner which already has global assets of: Tower assets with 350,000 sites providing wireless network coverage and capability.

Small cell assets with 35,000 nodes – enabling additional wireless network densification in high demand areas.

Fibre assets with 135,000 route miles fueling global innovation and providing mission critical connectivity.

Enterprise and hyperscale data centres with 125 data centres – playing a pivotal role in the creation, computation, storage and management of information.

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100 per cent of the substation and the telecommunications infrastructure. A total capacity between 90 and 120MW makes this the biggest data centre campus in the country and in the region.

“We are acquiring two other campuses close to São Paulo to form a triangle offering availability zones in São Paulo State to our customers.

“We worked hard during 2020 to select very carefully where the demand will be in the next five to 10 years, according to our customers indications and market movements. And in that areas, we built a

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strong landbank to support the development of these large campuses with technology that is really up-to-date,” commented Peigo.

One example of this is SP3, scheduled to deliver on June 1 2021, which will deliver from 17 to 30 kilowatts in an innovative design with ion-lithium batteries and no ups – above the average of all other data centres in the country,” said Peigo.

Cloud and 5G rollout Demands from the consumer for moving data to the cloud and 5G will not only be improved in the future from core data centres

SCALA DATA CENTERS

“WE WORKED HARD DURING 2020 TO SELECT VERY CAREFULLY WHERE THE DEMAND WILL BE IN THE NEXT FIVE TO 10 YEARS, ACCORDING TO OUR CUSTOMERS INDICATIONS AND MARKET MOVEMENTS. AND IN THAT AREAS, WE BUILT A STRONG LANDBANK TO SUPPORT THE DEVELOPMENT OF THESE LARGE CAMPUSES WITH TECHNOLOGY THAT IS REALLY UP-TO-DATE” MARCOS PEIGO

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER, SCALA DATA CENTERS

LEADERSHIP QUOTE “I can navigate from finance to innovation, from architecture to engineering and this is really what drives me as a leader. I want to understand what my people are doing, what people might need and how I can support them to make better decisions.”

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INVESTING IN PEOPLE

DID YOU KNOW...

but also from the edge data centres across LATAM. “We will enable the development of new applications and new systems that will leverage the high density and low latency that goes in benefit of the customer,” said Peigo.

“We will naturally enable cloud providers to deploy their capacity in LATAM, which will increase the density of our connectivity, once this is directly related to the quantity and quality of the customers that are hosted into them. The ecosystem is built around the major cloud providers “We are creating the right conditions for cloud companies and hyperscalers to scale, so they can look at the region and find a global standard of data centres deployed, with a reasonable price delivered by a

The right people, in the right place, at the right time, is how Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder Marcos Peigo of Scala Data Centers describes his team.

“Who makes a company? It's not the money, it's the people, it's the team.

We are blessed at Scala Data Centers. I believe I have the right team and the right set of customers,” he said.

Scala is also investing in the future by offering 28 scholarships in electrical, civil and mechanical engineering for young talents with economical restrictions.

SCALA DATA CENTERS

“THE WAY WE ARE STRUCTURING THE COMPANY IS THAT WE ARE INVITING THE MARKET TO WORK WITH US ON THE SCALA ENGINEERING TEMPLATE AND THAT IS DESIGNED TO BE SUSTAINABLE” MARCOS PEIGO

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND CO-FOUNDER, SCALA DATA CENTERS

company, with an extensive proven track record of delivery and that is investing for the long term in the sector.

“And of course, we will leverage our sister companies’ portfolio in towers and fibre to help to spread this much faster than a single data centre company could do. For example, when we talk about IoT with the help of our sister companies we can provide a bundle of core data centre capacity, lT owner of real estate assets and fibre to offer a modular solution in the edge.

“We can connect that to the core data centres, where the capacity is located, and that can connect to our data centres anywhere in the globe, wherever these cloud companies are located – everything goes into our portfolio of digital assets. So this is

a massive competitive advantage we have when we leverage all types of assets we invest,” he said.

Scala is working along with their ecosystem partners LZA, Engie and Schneider. “The way we are structuring the company is that we are inviting the market to work with us on the Scala engineering template and that is designed to be sustainable.

“We are working with Schneider to develop SP3 which is the data centre we are delivering this semester. We are partnering with LZA to help us design the data centres templates that we are applying to our international expansion.

“It’s really about creating an ecosystem where they can invest in us because they see we are growing and will keep developing. We have the confidence that we can bring these world-class partners to work with us for the long-term,” he said.

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SECURITY IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION We hear how security and digital risk management have only become more necessary for digital transformation in 2020 WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

I

n a fast-changing world, the imperative for digital transformation has never been clearer. Effecting that change while managing digital risk and prioritising security requires expert assistance. “Our intention is to be a strategic partner to our customers, an essential technology vendor and a one-stop shop for organisations as they undergo digital transformation,” says Arash Ghazanfari, CTO (UK), Dell Technologies.

“Events in 2020 have proven that every business has to become a technology business in order to survive the unique operating environment we find ourselves

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

in. The need for digital transformation is stronger now than ever before. We’re finding that our customers have had to accelerate their digital transformation projects to take advantage of the emerging digital economy,” says Ghazanfari. “Our clients have recognised the need to leverage technology to create best-in-class experiences for their customers. Additionally, they need to empower a diverse, and in most cases distributed but connected workforce to collaborate on digital platforms with the ability to create value regardless of where they are. All of this means the amount of value you unlock from your data can

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Digital Transformation Index 2020

directly contribute to your competitive differentiation. It is now more important than ever before to consider your cyber resiliency and enterprise security as a matter of board level priority.”

One of the major transformational megatrends is the adoption of cloud, an area in which Dell Technologies specialises as an essential infrastructure provider. “As organisations think about adopting cloud operating models, it’s really important they understand the cost and operational implications of where they place their data,” says Liz Green, Cyber Security Specialist UK, Dell Technologies. “We help our clients to make sure they’re mitigating risks and costs and are able to understand what workloads fit best in the cloud.” The cloud landscape entails many choices, but that needn’t be an issue as Ghazanfari explains. “Businesses are increasingly adopting a multicloud strategy and we help our customers by delivering a consistent software defined enterprise 330

March 2021

architecture, so that workloads can be deployed in the empowered edge, or in existing on-premises and distributed private cloud environments, or in the public cloud ecosystem. Our multicloud strategy delivers a consistent software-defined architecture underpinned by a consistent and platformagnostic operating model helping IT departments deliver consistent value

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

“AS PART OF OUR WORK REDEFINED PROGRAMME, WE FOCUS ON THREE KEY AREAS: PRODUCTIVITY, TRUST, AND SAFETY” LIZ GREEN

CYBER SECURITY SPECIALIST UKI, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

ARASH GHAZANFARI TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER (UK) COMPANY: DELL TECHNOLOGY (UK) INDUSTRY: I NFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES Passionate about transforming great businesses in the digital age, experienced in start-ups and large corporations. Currently serving as a Chief Technology Officer, supporting the overall go to market strategy across the full breadth of the Dell Technologies Ecosystem in the United Kingdom.

EXECUTIVE BIO

added services to their lines of businesses and achieve unparalleled flexibility, control and choice. We believe this is the most optimum approach to maintain the security of and keeping control over application and data supply-chains.”

The number of subsectors experiencing digital transformation has led to a security landscape that is something of a headache for companies. “The security market is highly fragmented and there are many point solution providers out there.

Historically, businesses have also made tactical and reactive investments in cybersecurity,” says Ghazanfari. “The result is a proliferation of disjointed security controls that don’t necessarily talk to each other - adversely impacting the security posture of the enterprise. The approach that we take within the Dell Technologies ecosystem of capabilities, with VMware technology being at the heart of it all, is to focus on delivering more foundational and proactive security measures by delivering security by design intrinsically within our pre-validated solutions.

Building security controls intrinsically into our software defined capabilities reduces the need for bolt-on, threat centric and siloed approach to security.”

Among the trends in the transformation

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of security is virtualisation. “We’re seeing big transformations in network security, specifically in virtualising networks,” says Green. “Going from a physical to a software-defined network presents a lot of opportunities for greater levels of visibility and security. Micro-segmentation as an example, is a great way to prevent lateral progression of advanced threats,

LIZ GREEN TITLE: CYBER SECURITY SPECIALIST UK COMPANY: DELL TECHNOLOGY (UK) INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

ADVERT PAGE GOLD AND SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Data Protection and Cyber Recovery Strategist helping organizations to safeguard their most important asset, their data.

Passionate about helping drive human progress through technology.

Enthusiastic technical and financial sales leader that loves to work collaboratively towards common goals to drive positive outcomes for our clients.

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“GOING FROM A PHYSICAL TO A VIRTUAL NETWORK PRESENTS A LOT OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR GREATER LEVELS OF VISIBILITY AND SECURITY” LIZ GREEN

CYBER SECURITY SPECIALIST UKI, DELL TECHNOLOGIES

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

a common trait seen in modern destructive attack patterns.”

The fintech industry has kept up one of the fastest paces of transformation.

“Programmability, extensibility and visibility have played a major role in the success of open banking. What’s going to make organisations even more successful down the line is how they secure data and how they make sure that their customers understand how their data is being used and how the data is secured. We’re going to see a huge focus on security and

resilience for the fintech industry, but also as a huge catalyst for change across every sector.”

All of this has only been accelerated by the pandemic, which has served to catalyse new approaches and new understanding of security, with Dell Technologies offering a Work Redefined pathway for the new normal.

“We’re seeing fundamental shifts in operations, and how we talk to customers and clients in all industries. As part of our Work Redefined programme, we focus on three key areas: productivity, trust, and safety,” says Green. businesschief.eu

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Trusted workplace solutions from Trustmarque and Dell Technologies Take your workplace beyond the limits and enable safe, secure, and user-friendly remote working across your whole organisation.

Learn more

Trustmarque and Dell Technologies: delivering for customers

Andrew Downes, Head of Strategic Partnerships, Trustmarque, on the company’s digital transformation expertise and partnership with Dell Technologies IT solutions provider Trustmarque is laser-focused on customers, as Andrew Downes, Head of Strategic Partnerships, explains. “We provide customer-centric IT solutions which enable our customers to run their businesses more efficiently and give them a competitive edge in whatever marketplace that they happen to work in. We have six key go-to markets, namely cloud and data center, modern workplace, IT asset management, security, RPA and data and analytics.”

As a 20-year veteran of the industry, Downes has seen plenty of innovation. “The rate of change is phenomenal.

I think it’s actually one of the reasons that people get involved in the business in the first place. In my time, the biggest accelerant for that change that we’ve seen has been around the adoption of cloud technologies.”

He emphasises that it isn’t enough for IT solution providers to merely keep up with the rate of change.

“You need to stay ahead of it so that you’re best placed to advise your customers and guide them through new technologies as they come to market.”

Trustmarque is a trusted partner of Dell Technologies, holding Titanium partner status within Dell’s partner programme. “We’re one of the most accredited partners in the UK, with a specialism in unstructured data storage and next-gen elastic cloud storage,” says Downes. “We

were the first Dell partner in the UK to sell both Isilon and the object storage platform ECS - with us being the only partner accredited in the UK to deploy ECS.” As a key strategic partner, Downes emphasises that Dell is a keystone vendor with which Trustmarque collaborates closely.

Downes reiterates that the future heralds an acceleration in its customers’ digital transformation strategies, not least due to the events of 2020. “A great example of that has been in some of our healthcare customers, where we’ve seen cloud adoption like we’ve never seen before.” Also coming down the line are new and transformative technologies, such as the rollout of 5G. “We’re also going to have a more disparate workforce than we’ve ever seen, which throws up its own security challenges,” says Downes. “That’s why we’re working with Dell to facilitate this new working environment as part of their Workplace Redefined initiative.”

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Bearing those tenets in mind allows businesses to thrive, as Ghazanfari explains.

“It’s about assessing the risk of adoption of new digital technologies and providing a consumer-like, persona-driven experience

“OUR CUSTOMERS HAVE HAD TO ACCELERATE THEIR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION PROJECTS TO BE ABLE TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE EMERGING DIGITAL ECONOMY” ARASH GHAZANFARI

CTO (UK), DELL TECHNOLOGIES

that effectively makes the complexities around delivering a digital workspace disappear and enables businesses to focus on delivering business value.” Having that increased awareness of risk can then lead to better outcomes. “Organisations didn’t always have a comprehensive digital strategy. Now, it’s essential that they do. With that comes a need to look at how risk is being mitigated and managed effectively, but this can actually be a really positive thing. The more that we assess and evaluate digital risks, the faster and better organisations can transform digitally.”

From this viewpoint, security acts as a catalyst for, rather than a barrier to, innovation.

“In order to achieve that outcome, you need to have visibility of your threat landscape and your risk profile,” says Ghazanfari. “We can help our customers understand every aspect of their business architecture so that they have the end-to-end visibility businesschief.eu

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“ORGANISATIONS DIDN’T ALWAYS HAVE A COMPREHENSIVE DIGITAL STRATEGY. NOW, IT’S ESSENTIAL THAT THEY DO” ARASH GHAZANFARI CTO (UK), DELL TECHNOLOGIES

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that they need to maintain and manage risk, and then make calculated decisions around the steps that they need to take towards innovation. Fundamental to all of this is the recognition that we can’t secure the future in the same way we secured the past. Modern applications can have several cross platforms and complex lateral dependencies, a connected digital workspace can and will lead to the erosion

DELL TECHNOLOGIES

of traditional perimeters and a distributed data consumption model. This requires a context centric and unified approach to security transformation.”

Dell Technologies will continue to help companies make the most of technology in more flexible ways, as Ghazanfari explains. “We are seeing many businesses value and embrace consumption models.

We recognise our customers are looking

at consolidating, simplifying and de-risking their vendor relationships. Our broad ecosystem and open approach, as well as our diverse and inclusive consumption models, has put us in a position to serve the needs of our customers and the unique challenges they face in 2020.”

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HUAWEI

SUSTAINABILITY Guides Our Innovation Power Huawei Sweden’s Karin Thurberg and telco expert Erik Hallberg on the company’s 20year contribution to the digitalization of Sweden and industry cooperation WRITTEN BY: BIZCLIK MEDIA PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

T

he race to digital, accelerated by Covid-19, has not only shown the transformational capabilities of technology but also how much society as a whole depends upon connectivity.

Economies across the globe have been decimated by the pandemic and, as physical borders have been closed and supply chains disrupted, it has become increasingly clear that digitalization is potentially the silver lining to Covid’s dark cloud – and a route to recovery.

That can only happen when companies and countries collaborate, as they have done for decades.

Take Huawei in Sweden, for instance.

For more than 20 years, the company has contributed to the rapid digitalization of Swedish society, as a trusted local technology partner that delivers solutions to all the fixed and wireless networks in Sweden. Huawei has been integral to the 3G and 4G networks, as well as installing wifi in schools across the country.

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“ Collaboration is one of the core values that has shaped the success of the global telecom industry” KARIN THURBERG

DIRECTOR WIRELESS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, HUAWEI SWEDEN

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Karin Thurberg, Director Product Management, has 20 years of experience from leading positions in the telecommunications industry, and has been working at Huawei Sweden since 2011. She manages the market-leading Radio Access Network portfolio for the European market.

She says collaboration and close relationships are part of the DNA of the telecom industry.

“Collaboration is one of the core values that has shaped the success of the global telecom industry, together with unified

HUAWEI

standards,” says Thurberg. “These two cornerstones have brought interoperability across vendors and shared security standards, which creates a larger market and therefore lower consumer prices. I think the importance of cooperation, both up and down the value chain, will increase with 5G and beyond.”

“No one will have the resources and the innovation power for doing this advanced research on their own. I think it would be a giant step backwards in development if the industry was not going to manage this. It would be against the industry’s DNA.”

KARIN THURBERG TITLE: WIRELESS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT COMPANY: HUAWEI

EXECUTIVE BIO

Karin Thurberg is a Director Product Management at Huawei Technologies Sweden AB. Thurberg has 20 years of experience from leading positions in the telecommunications industry, and has been working at Huawei since 2011 with focus on the market-leading Radio Access Network portfolio for the European market.

Thurberg has a Master of Science in Engineering Physics from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and an Executive MBA in International Business Management from Uppsala University.

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“ 5G is an enabler to improve essential areas like healthcare education, and the climate” KARIN THURBERG

DIRECTOR WIRELESS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, HUAWEI SWEDEN

Thurberg is speaking as grave legal uncertainties hover above Sweden’s 5G rollout. In October 2020, PTS announced license conditions in the upcoming 5G auction that ban Huawei (and ZTE) due to security risks, and gave the telecom operators participating in the 5G auctions until 1 January 2025 to remove Huawei equipment from the existing infrastructure.

The very basic question is whether the license conditions that prohibit Huawei's equipment and services in the Swedish 5G network are unlawful or not. This is subject to review in the Administrative Court in Stockholm. The trial is likely to end in April 2021.

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In addition, the European Commission has sent a letter reminding Sweden that it has not fulfilled the obligation to notify in advance the changes to the Swedish Electronics and Communications law.

The amendment to the domestic law may therefore be invalid. Consequently the security evaluation made by the security police and armed forces should not have been carried out.

The ban was blasted even by Huawei’s biggest rival, Ericsson, with CEO Börje Ekholm reportedly threatening to remove Ericsson from its native Sweden if Huawei was not part of the 5G rollout. Excluding

HUAWEI

Huawei from the 5G network and wider infrastructure would have a negative impact on the global industry and wider society.

This sentiment is also supported by Erik Hallberg, the respected Swedish telecoms expert who is currently acting as an active board member and investor in different companies – private as well listed. He previously spent 17 years in executive positions with Telia around the globe and has been chairman of the board for mobile operators in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

Hallberg believes that Sweden is in danger of falling behind other countries when it comes to innovation if it does not have the

very best, latest technology available via 5G and beyond.

“The problem is that for Sweden, from Sweden’s perspective, if we are not on top, we will lose the innovation climate that we had in the past,” says Hallberg. “For me as a Swede, it's even more critical because that's where we have our future. We are a small country, 10 million people out of 10 billion.

So in reality, we must be on top to prosper.”

Hallberg goes on to say he believes Sweden is lagging behind European neighbors including Germany and the UK and that losing digital leadership which would be a blow for the country. businesschief.eu

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1987

Year founded

194,000

Number of employees Globally

600

Number of employees Sweden

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“I think that's scary for Sweden,” he says.

“This delay in 5G, the roadblocks put in place, is not only making life hard for Huawei. It is delaying the innovation climate in Sweden.

You can go to Finland where they already have five-year licenses. This is such a fastmoving enough industry that once you fall behind, it's difficult to catch up.”

The importance of innovation cannot be underestimated. What 5G brings is far more than faster mobile browsing and streaming video content that is being used to entice consumers.

The essential research that Huawei is doing right now in Sweden will be instrumental to 5G and the evolved 5.5G that is the next step towards 6G. Remove

“The network will deliver such high bandwidth and low latency that we will be able to digitally transfer ourselves as holograms” KARIN THURBERG

DIRECTOR WIRELESS PRODUCT MANAGEMENT, HUAWEI SWEDEN

Huawei’s contribution to the Swedish wireless networks and the global innovation cycle becomes disrupted.

Huawei’s Thurberg also has concerns for the future of innovation, and fears Sweden could miss out on 5.5G and 6G. “Much of what goes into the global networks is actually a result of Swedish research activities. In 2019 alone we invested 1.1 billion SEK into our local research,” she says “Sweden has a long history of both manufacturing and automotive industry, and we have come a long way in digitizing our society. businesschief.eu

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I think this will significantly reduce the need for physical travel over time, which will have positive environmental impact. AI will be an instrumental part of the 6G network architecture and will also be an enabler for energy reduction.”

ERIK HALLBERG Board member of HiQ and Edgeware, among others, and chairman of the board of Haltian.

He has previously also been CEO of Netmore Group and President of Telia Carrier.

“At the same time, Sweden is an early adopter market where you get quick feedback on new concepts targeting both consumers and enterprise users. The research on future wireless networks that we conduct in Sweden fits very well into that equation.”

“With 5.5G we will take social interaction to a next level by further reducing the gap between the physical and digital worlds. 5.5G is at the same time a response to the accelerating industry automation that will bring a more diverse set of IoT uses that will rely on sensing capabilities and heavy uplink transmission” “Continuing, the 6G network will deliver such high bandwidth and low latency that we will be able to digitally transfer ourselves as holograms,” says Thurberg. “And they will appear as truly realistic versions of ourselves.

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Champions of sustainability Huawei has always used innovation to address sustainability, and that is an evergreater focus with 5G and 6G networks.

Thurberg strongly believes that climate change has to be tackled for the sake of the planet, and also to tear down social barriers.

The United Nations set out its Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) in 2015. They are a call-for-action by all countries to promote prosperity while protecting the planet.

They recognise that ending poverty must go hand-in-hand with strategies that build economic growth and address a range of social needs while tackling climate change and environmental protection. The SDGs are intended to be achieved by the year 2030 – by which time the telecom industry aims to be delivering 6G. “5G and to a greater extent 6G will help us reduce the energy consumption in the mobile network significantly,” says Thurberg.

“It will enable the build-up of smart cities, and perhaps even more important support a wide range of industries to achieve their environmental targets.

“It is also an enabler for essential rights such as healthcare and education. The ultimate consequence of these sustainability development goals is that we have to generate more connectivity for more people from less energy. We therefore put a lot of effort into making our equipment more energy efficient and on solutions that can deliver coverage over large areas. And that could be either in developing countries

HUAWEI

“ The roadblocks put in place, is not only making life hard for Huawei. It is delaying the innovation climate in Sweden” ERIK HALLBERG

SWEDISH TELECOMS EXPERT

or it can be across Sweden’s sparsely populated areas.”

When it comes to the UN goals, they are a clear challenge, but one that Thurberg says have to be met.

“It’s not a question of if. We simply have to make it. No single company owns the responsibility alone – these goals should be on all companies’ agendas, and should therefore stimulate collaborations across the industry and within the ecosystem,” she says.

“I actually believe that companies that do not meet these strict goals will not survive commercially. They will not be accepted by society. The other side of this coin is that the sustainability goals themselves will also generate business for companies like Huawei. They will guide us where to focus our innovation power. They will push us to develop new breakthrough technologies.

“That's how we can differentiate ourselves with other vendors. The sustainability goals are an opportunity for us”

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DATA HARVESTING: Key on journey to smart manufacturing Smart manufacturing is achieved by harvesting data, says Coen Huesmann, CGI VP, Consulting Services Manufacturing Center of Excellence WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

O

ne isolated glitch in a manufacturing process could be the difference between life and death as pharmaceutical giants race against the clock to produce vaccines to fight COVID-19.

CGI is leading the way in consulting global manufacturers – from chemical plants to dairy companies to discrete manufacturers – on how to take the next step on the digital journey towards Industry 4.0 – a move which would also ease production problems. CGI’s IT and business consultants help enterprises harvest data to create agile, resilient supply chains which are responsive enough to identify and quickly correct operating issues.

Coen Huesmann, Vice President Manufacturing of CGI Nederland agrees the pandemic is putting a strain on companies and highlights the need for manufacturers to start moving away from a silo approach to an integrated end-to-end process.

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PRODUCED BY: KARL GREEN “Many customers have manufacturing sites that have been operating since the 70s or 80s and it's about bringing these in line with Industry 4.0 – lifetime of data in a manufacturing company cannot be ignored,” said Huesmann.

“This month we heard that vaccines in the Netherlands are delayed because one of the big pharmaceutical companies had an issue in their factory. And now everybody wants to know, why did this problem occur? But it's not easy to get these answers as a factory operates in a big ecosystem. Aside from the fact that vaccines contain living organisms.

You have a lot of different machines, and any of these machines can lead to an error. And all that information is sitting in silos and it is information without context,” he said.

Huesmann leads a team at CGI which helps manufacturing companies optimise operations and build agile supply

CGI NETHERLANDS

CGI NETHERLANDS

Coen Huesmann - key on journey to smart manufacturing

chains using a strong methodology called Manufacturing Atlas, providing innovative solutions to address new market realities and meet customer needs.

Bridging the gap between OT and IT “Harvesting information from all systems is key to providing all the answers that are necessary to run a factory and is vital in helping them achieve their end-goals and strategic vision,” points out Huesmann.

“Many older factories still have a lot of labour-intensive processes in place. We help our clients to identify their next steps and support them in their journey to automate processes from order to production to quality control to delivery. Taking in processes across the end-to-end value chain including logistics, quality control and production steps, while also maintaining the equipment in a factory. Together with our clients we increasingly focus on safety and sustainability.

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“For these as well as for their efficiency and productivity goals, they need to make decisions based on facts. Manufacturers want to use their data to make better decisions. Factories are the biggest generator of data, and it is hard for manufacturers to make sense of it. First you must collect it and then context it so you can unlock its value.”

Huesmann explains more about the automation of Operational processes and how CGI is bridging the gap between

“ We secure devices in different ways so we can dig the gold without exposing it to the external world” COEN HUESMANN

VICE PRESIDENT MANUFACTURING, CGI

CGI NETHERLANDS

COEN HUESMANN TITLE: V ICE PRESIDENT MANUFACTURING

45th

Anniversary of CGI

INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: UTRECHT, NETHERLANDS

400

Locations worldwide

EXECUTIVE BIO

operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT).

“We have a strong methodology for helping our manufacturing clients on their journey of becoming more mature in their processes and automation in their factories,” he said.

“An example of this is one of our chemical customers where we have built a fully integrated plant. Orders coming in from their SAP system trigger production in the plants. Every production step is executed in an automated way up until the truck that is steered in its navigation system to the right silo to pick up the finished product and deliver it to customers.”

“For this client we have programmed the programmable logic controllers (PLC’s) on the shop floor that drive pumps and valves and vessels, right through their decision control systems in the control room and in the manufacturing execution systems (MES).

We are able to track and trace, weigh and dispense, learn how to improve efficiency and more. At this moment we are working to connect this to the outside world by integrating the factory with logistics.”

“That is how many manufacturing operations can improve, but only processby-process or machine-by-machine. We try to really understand where the value of this process is from an end customer's

Coen leads the Manufacturing competence centre of CGI based in the Netherlands. Together we realise safe and sustainable solutions and improvements in the core of our manufacturing clients. Our customers percieve us as the trusted partner and expert of choice for realising their strategic manufacturing goals. As team we work together with COO's, site managers, production managers, IT and OT managers, continuous improvement managers and with the shop floor to improve manufacturing operations together. We are a one stop shop for • Manufacturing Consulting and analytics • MES implementation, transformation, service and support • Manufacturing Automation • OT security consulting and services

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Hexagon’s PPM division are specialists in asset lifecycle management and operations management, laying the foundation for successful digital transformation. To learn more about Hexagon and how we can help your business achieve operational excellence, contact us today.

Visit hexagonppm.com/emia/golden Email info.europe.ppm@hexagon.com

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Attain the Golden Batch with Digitalized Workflows In today’s marketplace achieving more with less, known as Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), has become increasingly important. Despite this, in the food and beverage industry alone nearly 90% of wasted food is lost within the supply chain - and batches that fall outside quality specifications become a loss that costs many companies up to six figures a year.

When each stakeholder is demanding an increase in resource efficiency and sustainability, the onus is on companies to reduce losses and strive for the golden batch in every production.

Accomplishing that golden batch requires a production where everything goes smoothly to create the maximum yield of the greatest quality. It is not an easy feat in practice where operations are dynamic and constantly changing.

Batch manufacturing industries have invested heavily in their quest towards this perfect production – using advanced data-driven approaches such as multivariate data analysis (MVDA) coupled with data historians and optimization simulations. However, human procedures are often an area that is not fully digitalized, preventing the best possible understanding of what really makes a golden batch.

Most operators still follow paper-based procedures, but where there are multiple products - each following a very similar structure - reducing batchto-batch variation itself is a challenge, let alone achieving the golden batch.

Hexagon’s PPM division is working with CGI to connect human input into manufacturing procedures, enabling the customization of MES (manufacturing execution systems). Working with CGI, and other partners, Hexagon has helped companies optimize their batch processes by digitalizing their workflows – allowing for a more

controlled, consistent work process. Connecting human processes to a data historian platform enables operators to know the full history of batches in production.

Neil Singh, Industry Consultant, Hexagon’s PPM Division, explains: “Digitalizing batch production and including the operator’s input gives companies the ability to truly understand the real consistency of their operations, and make the best use of their human sensor-generated information. This is very important for businesses where dozens of different batches are produced each day in flexible production environments.

“By digitally optimizing the production operations for each individual recipe, the process can be automated to alert the operator on the basics.

These include items such as changes to process profile, to more insightful elements such as lessons learned during setup, all the way to understanding patterns in operator responses, to help produce that golden batch each time. The goal is to increase safety, efficiency and agility - and ultimately enable sustainable production.”

Through providing digitally tailored and fit for purpose instructions to operators, they can better anticipate to batch-to-batch variances and ensure that production meets specifications each and every time.

To find out how Hexagon can help your business to optimize your production, visit hexagonppm.com/ emia/golden.

The goal is to increase safety, efficiency and agility - and ultimately enable sustainable production.

CGI NETHERLANDS

perspective. We can really save huge amounts of money for our customers, and improve the quality of the process at the same time. If you automate processes, you automatically improve the safety.”

Manufacturing Execution Systems But how do you go about harvesting old data over multiple sites within wellestablished manufacturing operations dating back 50 years?

“Factories are being renewed at a completely different speed compared to IT systems. So, we are building platforms that can connect all the data sources in a factory to a platform regardless of age and technology. These then enable

“ Many customers have manufacturing sites that have been operating since the 70s or 80s and it's about bringing these in line with Industry 4.0 – a lifetime of data in a manufacturing company cannot be ignored” COEN HUESMANN

VICE PRESIDENT MANUFACTURING, CGI

our customers to make well informed decisions,” explained Huesmann.

“Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) and these data platforms combined are enabling our customers to not only harvest traditional information that was already connected, but also access and harvest information from pumps and vessels and all things in the factory that were previously never connected.”

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CGI NETHERLANDS

1976

Year Founded

76,000 Number of Employees

$3.02bn

Q1-F2021 performance highlights revenue

CGI NETHERLANDS

DID YOU KNOW...

WHAT IS THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION?

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Industry 4.0 refers to the transformation in the way goods are produced and delivered – moving on from industrial automation and the flexible factory towards fully connected factories, based on the application of new technologies.

To have a competitive edge, manufacturers have recognised they must leverage digital technologies post-covid-19.

New technologies are developed at an increasing speed; Enabling ways of working that were not possible before. Technologies also enable each other: self-service analytics, IOT, AI, cloud, mobile, quantum computing, 5G, combined with a strong vision and process will enable and enforce manufacturers to become more agile and more responsive.

As an example, a secure wireless connectivity in connection with affordable sensors enables it to retrieve data from manufacturing segments that were never

April 2021

measured before. Feeding back the information to PLC’s, empowers factory automation, making industrial automation possible on a much larger scale which will in turn increase productivity and performance.

With the computation power of the cloud, AI algorithms can analyse vast amounts of data and create learning from these data in an automated way. This learning can be used to optimise processes in factories in a way that was not possible up until several years ago.

Huge gains await industries that go digital – in manufacturing, it enables flexible production by allowing smart factories to rapidly changeover production lines to shorten lead times and quickly identify glitches.

To accelerate smart manufacturing, digital twins of machines and operations will be a necessity for safe simulation and intelligent optimisation, as will factory automation and real-time control of equipment and tasks.

CGI NETHERLANDS

“ Harvesting information from all machines is key to providing all the answers that are necessary to run a factory and is vital in helping them achieve their end-goals and strategic vision” COEN HUESMANN

VICE PRESIDENT MANUFACTURING, CGI

“Then we add sensors to equipment, for example for heat exchange and to measure the vibrations or flow. So, factories are never just old technology. They're always a mix of old and new technology and they communicate in various ways. We make the connections to get data, but then we also bring context to the data.”

CGI regularly checks-in with customers on their digital experience and their MES experience via their MES survey. “This autumn, we will launch a new MES survey that will enable us to explore and present the latest trends,” said Huesmann.

Key partnerships on the journey to Industry 4.0 CGI’s partnership with SAS is an important one for both parties.

Huesmann said: “The MES systems are providing core information about factories to help our clients improve manufacturing processes. SAS is a platform for analytics that is uniquely positioned. They have a process of continuously harvesting data, analysing data and improving processes through our platform.”

“AI is an integral part of their platform.

When implemented in the right way this is where the real data from manufacturing

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CGI NETHERLANDS

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Smart Factory in a Box. Watch the movie!

CGI NETHERLANDS

CGI Manufacturing

“ Factories are never only old technology. They're always a mix of old and new technology and they communicate in various ways. We make the connections to get data, but then we also bring context to the data” COEN HUESMANN

VICE PRESIDENT MANUFACTURING, CGI

is harvested. The time to play around and proof concepts with AI is behind us. We see organisations are scaling AI and for that you need a strong platform partner like SAS. What we add as CGI is our technical knowledge and business knowledge to provide the right context and create value.”

CGI also partners with Hexagon, Aveva and Trendminer. “Hexagon is one of our partners in the automation of manual processes. For example for one of our manufacturing clients, we are jointly supporting the automation of the formulation of their products. With this solution our customer is able to bring new recipes to production in a standardised and automated way, making production and product change over safer and much more efficient.”

“With Aveva we have designed and built standardised MES platforms that support businesschief.eu

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INSIGHTS YOU CAN ACT ON In the year CGI marks its 45th anniversary, with new tagline, Insights you can act on, Huesmann gives his predictions for 2021.

DID YOU KNOW...

What is your top insight for 2021?

“Interaction between people and meeting on the shop floor will come back but not 24/7. Manufacturing is still key with new manufacturing operations built in each region.”

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What new technology do you think will have the most impact on manufacturing?

“I see the perfect storm for a range of new technologies to take off at this moment. This was confirmed last year just before the pandemic during a web summit attended by opinion makers, scientists, students, start-ups and politicians like Tony Blair and top CEOs and entrepreneurs. AI has been around for years but it is now being brought to a whole different level, enabled by other maturing technologies such as cloud and IOT. Quantum computing is not that big yet, but the amount of investment is huge and this will have an even greater effect on AI. We are about to see some very exciting things enabled by all of these technologies.”

April 2021

standardisation of processes across factories.

AI is part of this platform for more mature plants to optimise quality, efficiency and safety.”

“Trendminer is indeed one of our key partners. Self-service analytics platforms like Trendminer are designed to combine data sources in a standardised way, once data is contextualised, they provide the insights to enable breakthrough improvements. Where SAS contain more advanced options for AI and deeper analysis, self-service tools like Trendminer are for more pragmatic use close to manufacturing.”

CGI NETHERLANDS

Cyber security in manufacturing protects the gold It is vital manufacturers not only plan for Industry 4.0 but also keep data safe, as they make the digital transition. Data is gold, so how does data remain secure during this data harvest?

“This is arguably one of the biggest themes we are active in. With our MES and analytics propositions we help clients to unlock the data from manufacturing operations. These platforms are generally well secured according to the latest standards.”

“The vulnerability resides more in the OT environment. In modern factories, almost

every new piece of equipment is nowadays connected but older devices are not always secured in line with the latest IT security standards.”

“Therefore, we try to ring-fence this kind of equipment. But protecting assets may never come at the expense of usage. We have OT security specialists that help our clients with hardening of equipment. We secure devices in different ways so we can dig the gold without exposing it to the external world,” said Huesmann.

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STERLING BANK PLC

At the HEART of Digital Banking in Nigeria Sterling Bank is accelerating its digital innovations to further strengthen its links across key sectors to drive Nigeria’s economic growth WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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W

ith the majority of its arrows pointing refreshingly upwards, Nigeria’s Sterling Bank had a strong 2020 with key metrics showing deposits up 17.4 percent, and both EPS and Profit After Tax recording 15 percent growth.

After talking online to Olayinka Oni, who doubles up as Chief Information Officer and Chief Digital Officer, it’s not hard to see why the figures are heading in the right direction. He barely pauses with my questions, demonstrating a clear knowledge not only of every facet of the business but perhaps more crucially in these uncertain times, where the fully mobile, cloud-based bank is heading. Previously he was CTO at Microsoft Nigeria, who is now one of Sterling’s key partners.

Underpinning Sterling’s commercial foundations is a simple acronym, HEART, enabling all managers and employees to keep a firm eye on its five key sectors – Healthcare; Education; Agriculture; Renewables and Transportation – and beneath these are eight pivotal secondary

STERLING BANK PLC

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Work Smart, Achieve More!

Based in Lagos Nigeria, Wragby with its indigenous team of professionals provide innovative solutions for customers in various industries by leveraging its expertise in Cloud Platform & Application Infrastructure, Data & Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering & Application Development, Enterprise Workplace Security and Productivity, Business Solutions, and Advisory Services.

In addition to its Pedigree of firsts, Wragby recently attained the Microsoft Azure Expert MSP Status as the first partner in Nigeria and West East Central and Sub-Saharan Africa.

Wragby Solutions and Sterling Bank: an evolving partnership Oluyomi Alarape, Managing Director of Wragby Business Solutions & Technologies Ltd, outlines the Cloud services which are taking Sterling Bank’s business to a new level and major plans to boost Nigeria’s SME sector Our partnership with Sterling Bank started five years ago.

It’s a classic case of digital transformation – I don’t mean that from the perspective of technology, but from the view of strategy, business process and leadership, and the way Sterling leverages data for decision making, and creates innovative products and delivers value.

We created various cloud solutions that cuts across Business service monitoring, Disaster recovery Enterprise mobility & Security, Centralized communication & Collaboration and took Sterling from a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement to a Cloud Service Provider. With this, the bank has enhanced its operations and can now better manage costs, drive efficiency, empower their employees, optimize productively, and deliver superior returns to shareholders.

We are proud to be the premier Microsoft partner in Nigeria and been selected as worldwide finalists across a range of areas – Enterprise, Mobility and Security, and Application Innovation – in recent years.

Now we are looking at how we can maximise data, make faster services and raise revenues for the bank.

We have introduced a solution called Business

LEARN MORE

Service Monitoring (BSM) for Sterling, which talks to all the services across the chain, and gives the bank a competitive edge.

We build our own intellectual properties. We have built an ERP for SMEs (wBizmanager) – which plugs a major gap in Nigeria. It will be a core platform and major focus in the next 12-18 months.

We will continue to drive insightful decision making through data and provide more context-based products and solutions – developing new projects such as ‘Alt Mall’.

In the Enterprise space, we will be building application programming interface – a monetisation platform.

My leadership style ties into our mission, vision, and core values, combining responsibility and sensitivity. We have an open-door policy. We encourage ‘bottom up’ and create a fluid culture, which drives innovation.

Like the game of rugby, Wragby combines ruggedness and beauty, to make the world a better place through technology. We do this through our products, consulting services and transformation projects with our partners.

STERLING BANK PLC

“ One of our first objectives was to build a mobile and cloud first in strategy, and we are proudly the most advanced user of cloud in the country”

OLAYINKA ONI TITLE: CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER COMPANY: STERLING BANK PLC INDUSTRY: BANKING LOCATION: LAGOS, NIGERIA

OLAYINKA ONI

markets (Manufacturing, Real Estate, Wholesale & Trading, Power, Public Sector, Mining, Oil and gas, and telecoms).

Nigeria is one of those markets that demands constant focus, with its bustling 200-million population, and 22 million living in the business heartbeat, Lagos, alone; as a consumer-focused bank, Sterling is central to Nigerians’ business and leisure activities.

“When I joined in 2016, it was clear that we needed to find a different way to compete, so we pivoted our strategy to three areas – digital, agility and specialisation. We decided to concentrate on five core growth sectors, that also have a social impact from an outlook standpoint. We always seek to enrich lives.”

We skip through each of the five.

He proudly says the bank has made “significant progress” with all of them.

While he highlights achievements – such as with blockchain technology that allows commodities trading and tap-and-ride

EXECUTIVE BIO

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, STERLING BANK PLC

Yinka, as he is fondly called by colleagues and associates, is an experienced IT professional with over two decades in designing and implementing digital transformation solutions in Nigeria.

A published professional with a background spanning Accenture, Microsoft and some of the largest financial services providers in Nigeria, Yinka has successfully helmed some of the largest and most complex digitization projects in the recent history of financial services in Nigeria.

A fellow of the British Computer Society (now the Chartered Institute for Information Technology), Yinka has also served on the board of the National Broadband Council and on the consultative committee for partner ecosystems on the National Information Technology Development Agency, both in Nigeria.

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STERLING BANK PLC

The Rising Sun (Reveal)

“ There is increasingly a lot of desire to adopt blockchain – we’ve used it for commodities and finding an appetite for remittances, as Nigerians are spread all over the world and there is an active diaspora” OLAYINKA ONI

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, STERLING BANK PLC

contactless cards – he doesn’t gloss over the challenges, be it COVID, fake drugs or inadequacies in power supplies.

Without diminishing the pandemic’s impact, Sterling appears to have weathered it better than some of its rivals – as its 368

April 2021

results would indicate. One fortuitous element was last year’s March lockdown which coincided with the launch of the Onebank app, providing consumers with convenient services while living and working from home.

The crisis also prompted changes in employment contracts, with more flexible-work arrangements, as well as significant investment in fraud detection

STERLING BANK PLC

solutions (AI based and “Another trend we’re finding built internally) – which in is embedded banking – that’s many respects, was simply an area where we’re more a continuation of trends that advanced than competitors. were already underway. “When There’s no open banking Year founded COVID happened, it was a lot standard in Nigeria yet, but more seamless for us,” he said. we are taking API and open Moving forward, it is looking banking seriously,” he said. at the UI experience and “Before anyone in the market thinking about business more embraced data, we appointed a from a contactless and digital Chief Data Officer and aid a lot perspective. “The digital play more attention to analytics and Number of is open to anyone. On the recommendation services.” employees flip side, internet penetration This leads to deeper still has a way to go, so there relationships with third party is a place for the physical. But we’re finding a players – whether providing a wallet or rapid growth in agency networks – even if lending as a service. “There is increasingly physical branches are not growing, and ATM a lot of desire to adopt blockchain. We’ve networks are shrinking. used it for commodities but finding an

1960

1,0015,000

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STERLING BANK PLC

OWN TOMORROW Solving technological challenges often requires a simple approach; talking to those who think without limits. As Africa’s leading Information Technology solutions provider, we help business grow boundlessly.

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STERLING BANK PLC

“ Specta has been a runaway success for us and helped differentiate us in the market”

200million Population of Nigeria

22million Living in Lagos

appetite for remittances, as Nigerians are spread all over the world, and there is an active diaspora.”

In recent times, another positive development was the launch of the Specta lending platform, which cut time for approving loans from 48 hours to five minutes. Other eye-catching tools include Doubble by Sterling, an automated investment platform which accepts Naira or US dollars, either in lump sum or scheduled contributions.

“Specta has been a runaway success for us, and helped differentiate us in the market,” he said. “One of our first objectives was to build a mobile and cloud first in strategy, and we are proudly the most advanced user

OneBank by Sterling

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STERLING BANK PLC

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STERLING BANK PLC

The Rising Sun (Reveal)

“ Almost every company will become a fintech and if you’re not taking that seriously, you’ll be left behind”

of cloud in the country. Almost every company will become a fintech and if you’re not taking that seriously, you’ll be left behind.”

The four key objectives for Nigeria’s banks, identified by Sterling Bank, are efficient liquidity management; cost efficiency; excellent service delivery and asset protection in order to sustain optimal returns on capital. With his eyes on emerging technologies, Oni is ensuring that all four will flourish in the months and years ahead.

OLAYINKA ONI

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, STERLING BANK PLC

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Digital Transformation Led by Customer Centricity

WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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NOVO BANCO

NOVO BANCO

João Dias, Chief Digital Officer of NOVO BANCO, discusses how the bank’s customers are vital components in its digital transformation story

C

Joao Dias

reating a customer-centric banking culture is a priority for Joao Dias, Chief Digital Officer of NOVO BANCO. One of the organisation’s newest leaders, Dias joined NOVO BANCO following a 17-year stint with McKinsey & Company, and has extensive management consulting and business transformation skills.

As the Chief Digital Officer, Dias has had the task of orchestrating the digital transformation of NOVO BANCO, and managing new core competencies required to support the effort, such as service design, agile and data science.

It’s a task that has been meteoric in terms of changes required, but Dias is quietly confident in the current trajectory. Indeed, he says, NOVO BANCO has seen more innovation, growth and change in 2020 than in any other recent year.

“Last year in 2020, was probably the year we have done the most in terms of digital output and innovation – and that was mostly done with remote teams and people working from home. So far we have implemented working practices that allow teams to be very good at collaborating and working together,” Dias says.

He believes that by keeping as closely to the pre-pandemic positive work practices and habits as possible, his agile teams at NOVO BANCO have maintained a good sense of camaraderie and working goals. It is this factor that has enabled the bank to innovate, digitally transform and grow, despite the thoroughly challenging situation posed by COVID-19 all over Europe.

He explains, “Instead of having physical meetings we are constantly on Teams meetings. The growth businesschief.eu

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NOVO BANCO

NOVO BANCO’S Digital Transformation

and innovation has been made possible through discipline – and keeping to the rhythm of the ceremonies that allow us to be agile and adapt. Those are very effective at keeping teams together at a distance with technology.”

The process hasn’t been without its challenges, and more continue to arise.

But Dias is unflappable in his approach and places a great deal of emphasis on the value of his workforce being comfortable and communicative.

“The challenge is to keep that [team camaraderie] going over the long run because at some point, people start losing the social connectivity – which is the social fabric that makes great teams great,” he emphasises.

“That’s something we are working on very hard to maintain.

“The next issue is incorporating new people into teams. We now have a few new people who have joined the bank and they’ve never had any actual contact with 378

April 2021

any other team members. So the onboarding takes a lot of effort to make sure people are well integrated with the organisation.”

Customer-centric ecosystem As a leader, Dias believes in transparency and listening to feedback from colleagues, especially those on the front line. In recent months, NOVO BANCO has implemented a number of changes to increase the availability of online banking services, which have been used more during the pandemic.

NOVO BANCO’s digital strategy is to reinvent and personalise the key customer journeys for customer excellence, transition to digital channels and automate processes for efficiency, and start exploring new business model opportunities with open banking and ecosystem plays. Core to this strategy is customer centric design.

“One of the aspects that is often talked about in digital transformation is to be really customer focussed and centric,” he explains.

NOVO BANCO

“And it's hard because the understanding of customer needs, jobs to be done, what makes a great experience for customers; all of that requires competencies that are not traditionally in banking. It requires a mindset shift that is at times hard for banking managers and employees.

“That is not specific to banking – I think a lot of the incumbent industries have that kind of issue. But it's something we are constantly struggling with and investing in.

And we find ourselves getting completely surprised about how some customers pick up on some things.”

Nurturing a new mindset towards customer-led banking isn’t easy - but it is the future, says Dias. “Embracing curiosity about what really matters to customers is on one hand really hard – but once you have embraced it, you find it’s really interesting and fulfilling. It's about shaping the solution towards customer experience and benefits – it's one of the aspects that is talked about in a high level manner, but when you go down into the weeds it is really hard. However, it is also one aspect that we are finding particularly fulfilling.”

JOAO DIAS

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, NOVO BANCO

TITLE: CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: BANKING LOCATION: LISBON AREA, PORTUGAL As the Chief Digital Officer of NOVO BANCO since 2018, João is the orchestrator of the Digital Transformation of the bank, working in coordination with all departments across the bank, to transform the way customers are served and the way to work for the digital world. João is also Non-Executive Board Member at Best Bank in Portugal, and previously was a Partner in Digital McKinsey in Cologne and a leader of the Digital Services practice for 17 years. Throughout his career, he focused on transforming businesses, operations and technology in financial institutions across Europe.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ At NOVO BANCO we are working through a roadmap to transform the top customer journeys – from home buying to financing small businesses and SMEs”

JOAO DIAS

NOVO BANCO

2014

Year Founded

4,500 Number of Employees

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NOVO BANCO

Secure digital services As the world becomes more digitally connected, transformation has meant companies and organisations have had to increase their levels of security to keep customers and data secure.

Dias says that banks have invested significantly in technology and processes to prevent cyber-attacks seeking data and malicious disruption; it’s the customer and their security that concerns him the most “We’ve been increasing investments in security to combat these issues. Even before the pandemic, there had been an increase in phishing attacks on customers. These are scams that seek to steal digital banking credentials from users in attempts to move money away from them.

“Our strategy is to have a great mobile-centric, omnichannel banking experience” JOAO DIAS

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, NOVO BANCO

“One of our key role is to support and educate our customers not to be tricked into those types of fraudulent events. We have a lot of communication with our customers and we have ramped up processes internally to deal with that.”

“The good thing though is that many new solutions that are emerging are actually making digital banking safer. For example, we are in the process of introducing new, strong customer authentication methods that are more secure than the typical SMS one-time businesschief.eu

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LEVERAGING INSIGHTS IN DIGITAL BANKING RETAIL BANKING

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SUPPORTING NOVO BANCO IN ITS DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION Novo Banco, one of the most innovative banks in the world, chooses Strands to build its award-winning BFM solution, the first of its kind in Portugal.

T PAGE OLD The Challenge

Novo Banco was looking for a technological partner able to provide small business owners with the best digital banking experience in Portugal. The bank performed an in-depth analysis of the SME banking landscape in the country, and realized SMEs were being largely underserved by financial institutions.

Novo Banco soon realized that the key to position themselves as leaders in the SME banking segment was building a highly personalized and easy-to-use business financial management platform. And that’s how its partnership with Strands began.

The Solution Novo Banco’s strategy was based on a thorough assessment of the issues affecting small businesses.

These banking customers need a tool that takes the uncertainty out of money management and allows a 360º vision of all bank accounts, aggregating their entire financial picture on one platform.

Strands’ business financial management (BFM) solution was embedded into Novo Banco’s digital banking system Nbnetwork+. With this solution, which includes invoicing features and a categorization engine, Novo Banco allows its SME customers to keep track of their financial situation.

A real-time engine was also one of the bank’s top priorities. Novo Banco’s customers’ accounts are automatically updated whenever a transaction is processed. By offering the most up-to-date account information available in one single platform, this feature empowers SMEs to stay on top of their accounts and also helps further protect users from potential fraud.

Strands: Leveraging Insights in Digital Banking As one of the world’s largest providers of innovative banking solutions, Strands’ software, which allows banks to offer personalized digital experiences to their customers, has been implemented in more than 700 financial institutions in 30 countries.

Through Strands’ Engager engine, BFM is capable of generating insights. This is incredibly helpful for those companies that require some financial advice. For instance, the solution’s personalized alerts let SMEs know about expected payments, potential liquidity issues, or cash flow forecasts. By combining this technology with features such as a calendar and BFM’s transaction categorization engine, SME owners can easily understand where their money is coming from and where it is going.

Visit strands.com

NOVO BANCO

password. This is an example of innovation that helps make it safer as well as better for user experience.

“I think the key message is that banks put a lot of emphasis on keeping customers safe. We put a lot of emphasis on helping them, and on how to deal with these kinds of incidents. This is something people should take away with them.

Digital banking is remarkably secure compared to almost anything else that is in people’s lives.”

“ Banks put a lot of emphasis on keeping customers safe” JOAO DIAS

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, NOVO BANCO

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Banking, Portuguese-style One of the most challenging aspects of managing NOVO BANCO’s digital transformation, has been rooted in some cultural traits of the Portuguese society. As Dias explains, in terms of payment solutions and the adoption of online banking, Portugal is behind northern Europe for two reasons.

“You have two things that are different from most other countries – specifically with northern European countries,” says Dias.

“One is the level of e-commerce in Portugal, which is much lower compared to adoption in the UK, for instance. The pandemic is changing that. E-commerce has increased significantly over the past few months. But whilst people are used to using the internet – and use it as much as in any other European country, when it comes to more sensitive

NOVO BANCO

areas like online shopping, people don’t have the tradition or the habit.”

Dias believes there is a natural suspicion regarding online shopping, because the e-commerce infrastructure is not as developed as it is in other European nations.

“For example, if you purchase something online, there is always the risk that it won’t go well, and you’ll have to return it – it’s a hassle.

“I used to live in Germany, and it was super easy – you could buy everything online with free delivery and you could return things for free if they were not good. It was easy – and completely normal and most people feel very comfortable with that.

“But in Portugal, because the e-commerce market isn’t so developed, it’s a bit more clunky and expensive, and therefore people feel it’s a bit more hazardous. This mindset

has translated into the way people do their banking. Most customers are fine doing basic stuff with their banking apps like transferring money and making small deposits. But when it comes to more complicated features, people shy away from that because they prefer to interact with a human being.”

Dias believes that banks can overcome these barriers by creating slick, personalized customer journeys that make complex needs easier to fulfil in an omnichannel way.

“At NOVO BANCO we are working through a roadmap to transform the top customer journeys – from home buying to financing small businesses and SMEs. These journeys are being transformed by cross-functional teams that start with the customer needs and have capabilities to change processes and develop technology.” businesschief.eu

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How should culture and leadership work together to achieve optimum outcomes?

You need to lead people to form a culture of freedom and responsibility so they can achieve their individual objectives in a coordinated fashion that is in harmony with the objectives of the whole company.

Can you summarise the major change that increased digitisation will bring to banking?

The major change will be around the way we do business. It’s going to become increasingly a technology intermediated business and that will require big changes in the way we organise things and the core competencies that we have.

FOUR KEY QUESTIONS...

What are the traits of a great leader in these uncertain times?

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Be clear about the context, the objectives and the goals. Be caring with people. Be open to what people think and say because they tend to be much closer to customers and their problems, and they tend to know better than we do hich workplace trend originating W from COVID-19 is here to stay?

A: Working remotely is here to stay. We will probably go into a hybrid model of colocation, days of the week and remote days of the week. I think that is here to stay.

April 2021

ATM networks Dias also points out that the current ATM network in Portugal is a force to be reckoned with. It’s so convenient for customers, he says, that has turned out to be digital banking’s biggest rival.

“We have by far the best ATM network in Europe. It was historically built by a cooperative company that is owned by the banks. It has a lot of functionality. You don’t have to pay anything to use it, you can transfer money, you pay your taxes through it – you can even buy tickets to the opera via the ATM. It does everything – it’s very impressive.

“These are things that can be done in any corner of any city in Portugal for free

NOVO BANCO

“ Embracing curiosity about what really matters to customers is on one hand really hard – but once you have embraced it, you find it’s really interesting and fulfilling” JOAO DIAS

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, NOVO BANCO

because there is always an ATM available.

We segment our customers around their behaviour regarding digital services. The ATM lovers will go to a terminal eight or nine times a month to carry out basic services.

And you talk to them and they say – ‘hey, you know, I was on the way to the coffee shop so I just stopped at the ATM to do my banking, so why do I need an app?’”

Dias says that to overcome this bias NOVO BANCO is heavily investing in its mobile app, so that the convenience of the smart phone can surpass the convenience of ATMs. “Our strategy is to have a great mobilecentric, omnichannel banking experience.

For this we have just launched a new version of our app – NB smarter, that is extremely intuitive, personalized through extensive use of data science, commercial and co-created with users. We are confident that the increased convenience of this experience will persuade more customers to migrate to digital channels.

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“ We need a leadership style that relies on clarity of context and objectives, and that focuses leaders on supporting and unleashing the teams” JOAO DIAS

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, NOVO BANCO

Cash versus digital But what does this mean for the future of online banking in Portugal, which is at a different stage in online servicing compared to other countries?

“Of course it’s changing,” says Dias. “With the pandemic, people prefer not to step out of the house these days. But it's still very prevalent. If you talk to a Portuguese digital banking expert, they will tell you that their biggest competitor is the ATM network.”

The result is that cold, hard cash has a wider circulation and use within Portugal, another aspect that sets it apart from other nations.

So what does the future look like?

“The long-term strategy is similar to other European countries in making digital payment methods more accessible,” says Dias.

“We have a very successful peer-topeer in-store payment

acceptance scheme called MB Way and it's very widespread. A lot of people use it and it is helping to reduce levels of cash.

Because of digital banking, making payments and doing bank transfers has become so much easier, this has also reduced peer-topeer cash transactions. The EU regulations around interchange fees made the usage of cards much more economical for stores and merchants – so that is helping too.”

Dias says that although Portugal offers a unique banking climate, the strategy to transition payments to digital, is the same as it would be for other countries.

“NOVO BANCO’s strategy is to make payments convenient and rewarding for people. We have a large small business and SME franchise and we also are giving them lots of options to accept digital payments,” he explains.

Technology partnerships The rolling out of new services requires strong partnership support, he points out.

“As with all companies, we work with a lot of providers. Strands has a personal finance management and business financial management product that can be white labeled and can be used as a plug and play into our apps and websites. So we’ve been working with them to develop our Personal Finance Management (PFM) and our Business Finance Management (BFM) offerings. And they have been quite important for us on that journey.

“Deloitte is another big partner and has been our overarching business partner in terms of digital transformation. There is also a Portuguese fintech/regtech – called LOQR – that has been very important for us.”

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VANARAMA

EXPANDS TECH TOOLS TO GROW VEHICLE LEASING SALES WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

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VANARAMA

Vanarama Founder and CEO Andy Alderson charts the company’s growth from an online leasing broker into a fully fledged e-commerce retailer

A

ndy Alderson’s online journey started back in 2003, when he spotted an opportunity to sell a stock of Citroen C5s at half price.

By quickly setting up a domain, freephone number and taking out advertising, he managed to sell the entire stock in six weeks. Almost exclusively, he didn’t see a single customer – and that was when he realised his future lay in online sales.

Fast forward 18 years, and the Founder and CEO of Vanarama is firmly in the digital driving seat.

“We started as an online leasing broker in 2007, then became a fintech business – and in the last two years, we’ve become more of an automotive e-tailer,” he said. He expects to sell 25,000-30,000 vehicles online this year, fully e-commerce, and is targeting 100,000 within three years.

That optimism looks at odds with the unending challenges facing the automotive industry, what with the transition to electric, digital transformation and decline in car ownership. He says dealers need to inherently re-examine their businesses and not simply repackage themselves for the digital age.

“Click and collect isn’t digital retailing – we were doing that in 2003,” he said. “If solutions were good enough across the board, online would make up 50 percent of sales, but there’s not enough instances where they are good enough. Up to 50 percent of dealerships could go as part of the transformation by 2025, he predicts.

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Andy Alderson, Vanarama

VANARAMA

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Andy Alderson from Vanarama talks about online car leasing

“ The challenge for dealers is if they just use a website to do more of what they currently do, and see it as a sales channel or lead generation, they will make the same mistake as Blockbusters did” ANDY ALDERSON FOUNDER & CEO, VANARAMA

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AutoTrader, Car Gurus, and Whatcar? are already reporting that up to 60% of customers would consider buying online today, if solutions were good enough.

“The example I use is the BlockbustersNetflix moment. They were in the same business, renting DVDs online, but Netflix could see the move towards streaming. The challenge for dealers is if they just use a website to do more of what they currently do, and see it as a sales channel or lead generation, they will make the same mistake as Blockbusters did. They’ve got to look at everything digital first – removing friction, being transparent with pricing – and if they do that, they’ll get more offline too.”

The warnings stem from his approach to managing risk. One of his favourite books is Only The Paranoid Survive, by Andy Grove, the former Intel President and CEO. “You have to imagine the worst all the time, even when

VANARAMA

ANDY ALDERSON TITLE: FOUNDER & CEO INDUSTRY: AUTOMOTIVE E-COMMERCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Since joining the motor trade in 1992, Andy Alderson has seen some radical changes in how the industry operates. The most important change has been the rise of the internet and its evolution into a place customer can not only find vehicles deals, but carry out detailed research on the vehicles themselves. Now, Andy believes the industry is facing new challenges, including the transition to electric cars & commercial vehicles, the ongoing digital transformation, financial challenges such as Benefit-in-Kind (BIK) taxes which hit

company car users hard, and the move to usership rather than ownership.

We used to consider ourselves a ‘clicks and bricks’ business, but the reality now is you can retail from clicks alone, but you can’t retail from bricks alone.

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VANARAMA

things are going well. One of our core values is ‘even if it’s brilliant, make it better’,” he said.

As with most businesses, the 95 percent revenue drop in the first lockdown was akin to a “flock of black swans” although his outlook meant he was better prepared than most.

“What we saw with COVID was the acceleration of pre-existing trends – people already wanted to buy online, they were dissatisfied with the current process of buying a vehicle and didn’t want the grind of trawling 398

April 2021

“ By the time customers pick up the phone to enquire or order from us, they know more about the vehicle than we do” ANDY ALDERSON FOUNDER & CEO, VANARAMA

VANARAMA

around showrooms,” he said. “95% of our customers have never driven the vehicle they buy from us until the day we deliver it to them” “We sat down three days into lockdown and realised we had a golden opportunity to use the time to move forward, and we were in the final year of three-year digital transformation into a full e-commerce business. So we launched full e-commerce nine months earlier than planned, and started to develop more automation, AI and ML.”

DID YOU KNOW...

RISING EV LEASING OPPORTUNITIES The leasing model gives consumers a chance keep pace with change more easily, he believes, and even if drivers are on a PCP, 90 percent swap it for a new model within three years, which mirrors leasing behaviour.

“People are much more interested in user-ship rather than ownership,” he says. “When we talk to consumers now in context of EV, they will be happy to upgrade their vehicle every few years as technology and charging infrastructure improves.”

He expects more manufacturers to follow Volvo’s recent move and start selling EVs completely online by 2030.

“I don’t think it will be the death of the showroom as you’ll need service centers and delivery outlets, but we may see dealerships become distribution hubs and manufacturers do more internet-only franchises.”

Most website searches are for SUVs and 90 percent search under budget.

He says popular models include Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Tesla, Ford, Vauxhall, Renault and Nissan.

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AD TECH AND E-COMMERCE PARTNERS

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DID YOU KNOW...

Vanarama has three key partners which are driving its market and e-commerce profiles. Flashtalking is an independent ad serving, measuring and technology company, and Reply, a leader in e-commerce and omnichannel solutions.

“Flashtalking has helped us target audience and whatever asset you want to deploy, on any platform, while Reply enabled us to bring in new techniques for the delivery of e-commerce solutions,” he says.

Mina Energy shows customers how much electric they are consuming when charging and it sits on top of your normal energy supplier, and rates can be combined under one bill. Customers receive three months free EV home charging when they take up a subscription alongside the Vanarama lease.

Vanarama uses atomic web design, which means it can design in code, and allows you to see various components of the UX to work and interact with each other, before you actually build the site, and calls on the services of dev-ops engineers globally.

He says at some time in the next six months, it will launch a voicebot, and integrate it with Alexa.

“We’re just deploying the first version of it now, that’s the core technology that underpins the omnichannel solution. Integrating marketing and sales data is key, so you know not only who you’re targeting but how you will reach that audience, and then we find the best price through our smart panel of lenders.

“The technology means we’re getting more customers to the site, we’re converting more, and talking to them in different channels and giving them a better experience. Customers can choose to interact or deal with a person,

VANARAMA

“You have to imagine the worst all the time, even when things are going well. One of our core values is ‘even if it’s brilliant, make it better” ANDY ALDERSON

FOUNDER & CEO, VANARAMA

but we find most are happy to integrate with a bot if it means getting a quicker response. If you want to add insurance, for example, the voicebot will be able to do it for you.”

The ingrained nature of digital is best illustrated when he says they sold 1,200 vehicles through Facebook Messenger alone, completely end-to-end.

“By the time customers pick up the phone to enquire or order from us, they know more about the vehicle than we do,” he says. “People are watching videos, talking to peers, getting recommendations and reading reviews, and are much better informed and comfortable online, because they’re spending an average

of 14 hours researching the vehicle online. But because of the amount of data we have, and capability to identify consumers we want to market to, we know what kind of customers will buy a certain type of vehicle.”

He foresees three camps emerging as the digital transformation accelerates. “The people who don’t want to change and don’t think they need to; those that know they have to change but don’t have the investment or ability; and those that know what they need to do and get on with it.”

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NHS ENGLAND AND NHS IMPROVEMENT

INNOVATION in the NHS Through Covid-19 and BEYOND WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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Daniel Hallen, Regional Head of Digital Technology, Digital Urgent & Emergency Care Lead (North West), tells us about innovation in the NHS

D

aniel Hallen, Regional Head of Digital Technology, Digital Urgent & Emergency Care Lead (North West), has one of the most complex jobs in UK healthcare. As the NHS faces huge demand under unprecedented conditions, Hallen has overseen the development of a capsule digital-first strategy covering the North West of England, which the NHS is now rolling out nationally.

Working with an interconnected team linking neighbouring regions in the North West, the system provides a conduit for a major digital transformation programme, tailored to differing local needs.

Each area presents different challenges for the same systems – what’s appropriate in low-density rural Cumbria won't work in high demand city centre hospitals with specialist wards in Manchester or Liverpool.

Hallen says he's proud of the legacy the North West has in terms of digital advances.

Recently they launched the 111-First service, which aims to cut down A&E visits by improving patient access to referrals. The service encourages patients with an urgent medical need to contact NHS 111 either online or via telephone before attending A&E. It’s been highly successful - Hallen states that between 70 and 80 per cent of patients who contact 111 first are finding that speaking to a doctor or pharmacist is more appropriate than attending A&E.

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NHS ENGLAND AND NHS “Covid 19 will always beIMPROVEMENT the most defining memory of 2020, but it’s the impact of Covid 19 that will determine our future” Re-imagining how you work comes with its own risks and challenges and effective cyber security is critical to its success, safeguarding digital trust, driving innovation and empowering progress.

We help organisations turn cyber security into a competitive advantage, to fully realise business change, not just process automation.

Find out how we’re helping transform healthcare for the good of all.

Click here to join one of our Cylera Technology overviews.

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© Core to Cloud 2021

NHS ENGLAND AND NHS IMPROVEMENT

The NHS is "a really wide family", Hallen says. "There's public and private working together in a really good, collective way.

Our medicines and our machines from suppliers, we source our technology from suppliers with expertise according to what we need. Core to Cloud is one of the suppliers that has worked really closely with us on cybersecurity, and on developing security approaches and capabilities across our hospitals and sites. Together we’ve developed a blueprint over the last two years that we've rolled out across the country."

The average hospital will have hundreds of different IT systems for different clinical specialties, and as well as ensuring they are secure, Hallen states it is important that these systems are able to talk to each other. "When you take into account the complexity of the many systems or devices that a clinician might use, ranging from laptops to MRI scanners and ECG monitors, you've got to make sure those devices are really stable and secure, but also easy to access - you can't lock them away in a room. We worked with both Core to Cloud and Imprivata colleagues to develop applications that help us both secure and detect our systems."

DANIEL HALLEN,

REGIONAL HEAD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL URGENT & EMERGENCY CARE LEAD (NORTH WEST)

TITLE: REGIONAL HEAD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL URGENT & EMERGENCY CARE LEAD

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ The NHS is a really wide family. There's public and private working together in a really good, collective way”

DANIEL HALLEN

Daniel Hallen has had a varied career to date, with roles in both the private and public sector, but always revolving around transformation.

He studied law originally, but had an interest in technology, data and people, and what the three can achieve together.

"For most of my career I've been looking at transformation, and how we can improve things. I'm very passionate about creating a healthcare system that really works for our patients and clinical staff" he says.

As a leader he says his approach aligns with his core values of compassion, honesty, consensus, and openness.

"Sometimes my position is to set the vision and lead, but other times my role is to harness that vision, let others be creative and help them make that happen."

Rather than use the phrase "managing people" he sees this as working together, with compassion and understanding.

He sees these two elements as especially important, "particularly over the last 12 months. I think we've grown closer as a community with a really big understanding of how things actually work." Consensus is also crucial.

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1948 Year founded

1.2m

Number of employees

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“ We've learned how to protect data in a better way, protect vulnerabilities and ensure it is kept safe and secure, but still accessible" DANIEL HALLEN,

REGIONAL HEAD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL URGENT & EMERGENCY CARE LEAD (NORTH WEST)

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The Importance of Digital Identity in Today’s Healthcare Environment Wes Wright, CTO at Imprivata, offers insight into the Imprivata Digital Identity Framework as a holistic approach to identity and access management, tailored to healthcare.

“41% of all security breaches in 2019 occurred in the healthcare industry, and due to the mass mobilisation of healthcare thanks to COVID, it’s only getting worse”, says Wright. “What can healthcare organisations do? Answer — make digital identity the new control plane through which all access to clinical and patient data systems is managed.”

Most healthcare organisations already use identity and access management tools, yet few integrate them into a holistic digital identity strategy. Navigating through this complex IT environment requires an easy to manage yet robust approach to Identity Access Management (IAM). To help healthcare providers assess how they approach this challenge, Imprivata has designed a Digital Identity Framework for healthcare encompassing

Watch the video now ⊲ governance and administration, identity management, authorisation, and authentication access. Using a maturity model, it helps organisations to manage digital identity and develop a strategic roadmap to address critical areas of security and efficiency gaps.

The success of digital identity management can be seen at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust. The team implemented Imprivata Identity Governance to improve the processes for managing access to systems and data for staff joiners, movers, and leavers. Now it takes line managers minutes instead of weeks to onboard a new employee.

Contact Andy Wilcox, Senior Product Marketing Manager, International at Imprivata: awilcox@imprivata.com to book a session to review the Digital Identity Framework and maturity model.

LEARN MORE

NHS ENGLAND AND NHS IMPROVEMENT

One of the most critical components of the NHS' digital transformation is ensuring patient data is kept secure. "Cyber security will only take us so far" Hallen says. "Our ever growing reliance on digital systems means that we've got to understand who and what you want this information for. Being able to verify that a nurse, a paramedic, a doctor or a healthcare professional are the people that need to have access to that information is really important. A Digital Identity is one of the tools that is a really critical part of that, especially now that we're not in the same physical environment.

“Our national organisations have seen more than a few cybersecurity attacks over the years” he adds, “but with each one we've learned how to protect data in a better way, protect vulnerabilities and ensure it is kept safe and secure, but still accessible."

“ We must make sure our healthcare system is accessible to all, not just to those that have the access to this technology” DANIEL HALLEN,

REGIONAL HEAD OF DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY, DIGITAL URGENT & EMERGENCY CARE LEAD (NORTH WEST)

When asked about the pandemic, Hallen says "it has changed many things about life, technology and the broader world. I pay tribute to every single NHS employee, in clinical, digital care, cleaning, catering, businesschief.eu

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Delivering patient-based systems | Daniel Hallen | NHS England & Improvement

every single person who has worked utterly tirelessly for the last 12 months. We're not at the end of that journey yet, but what is clear is how closely and well people work together.

"If anything, our strategic aims and intentions have expanded to include COVID-19 specific responses to handle the circumstances. But it's really shone a light on the capability of what digital can do in healthcare, and can continue to do in a space where pandemic distancing rules have changed again."

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last 12 months, demonstrating the benefits of this technology. “I have a device in my chest that previously would have involved three or four trips every year to the hospital for check-ups” Hallen says. “The results were downloaded from the system, I’d sit and chat with clinicians and there’s the time spent getting there and back.

Now this is remotely downloaded every night from a device by the side of my bed that's about the size of the box that you might get a smartphone in. It analyses data automatically and alerts the clinicians if there are unusual issues.

NHS ENGLAND AND NHS IMPROVEMENT

“This saves travel, saves fuel emissions and saves time. In terms of ecological sustainability it comes down to the shared social contract that we all have.”

While the acceleration of digital tools has enabled them to "see exactly what we can do with it to revolutionise healthcare” he adds a note of caution, “We must make sure our healthcare system is accessible to all, not just to those that have the access to this technology. We don't want to start to increasing health inequalities by assuming everything can be digital. Digital must be accessible for all, not just to those with economic means.

"I think the pandemic has, from a strategic point of view, made us kinder to each other. We're all working long hours to deliver the care that we need to our colleagues, friends and patients, and that really does have an impact on the individual. We interact in different ways and we have a different insight into people's lives, and that has changed us as an organisation - but our digital strategy continues to be very ambitious."

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ACCELERATING NEW TECHNOLOGIES

FOR CLIENTS Julien Alzouniès, Chief Operating Officer, describes Marsh France’s pursuit of operational excellence and simplified, digitalised insurance processes WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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ith a rich and far-reaching history that extends to more than 130 countries over the course of almost 150 years, Marsh’s reputation as an insurance innovator has been crystallised by several notable achievements: inventor of the ‘self insurance’ concept, the first broker to use on-site risk experts, creator of ‘space’ life insurance for astronauts, and much more. When we spoke to Julien Alzouniès, COO of Marsh France & BeLux, he made it clear that the company’s innovative, adaptive and thoroughly modern approach to the industry is helping it optimise digital processes and achieve a perennial goal: operational excellence.

Coming from a long career as a consultant, Alzouniès joined Marsh France in 2018 at a time when the team consisted of only 20 people. Recognising that, as COO, he could make a direct impact on the company’s growth and portfolio retention in an era when client servicing activities are recognised as a key quality differentiator in insurance, Alzouniès chose “service quality

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Julien Alzouniès discusses transformation at Marsh France

simplification” and “digitalisation” as his guiding principles. Subsequently, the team was expanded 1,000% to 200 people. “The objective was to put the key enablers of user experience transformation under the same scope of accountability, namely data and project management, as well as two main business activities: policy servicing and claims,” he explains.

Marsh France added automated dashboards for its sales placement and servicing activities, modernised its client portals, and implemented internal workflow systems to track tasks and monitor service performance more effectively. The company also launched several new digital solutions, including: • MarshSignature: an electronic signature solution, wherein contracts can be “recorded, validated, certified, signed and archived” via an online platform (EDICourtage).

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• MarshOnline and MarshPartner: online underwriting platforms in support of the company’s Affinity portfolio.

• MarshMotor: a multi-device solution allowing the user to report vehicle-related accidents, select a repair company from Marsh’s approved partners and benefit from remote damage expertise.

The latter solution was developed with Paris-based insurtech WeProov. Founded in 2015, the company is transforming claims through photo recognition AI (artificial intelligence) capable of facilitating easy, fast, and secure online FNOL (first notice of loss).

“WeProov is one of our key partners and working with a fintech has actually enriched Marsh by providing added value and agility,” Alzouniès explains. “MarshMotor is a great way to collect information documenting damage and the process has been simplified enough to work on a smartphone; you can raise a claim in as little as five minutes.”

MARSH FRANCE

JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS TITLE: CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER COMPANY: MARSH FRANCE INDUSTRY: RISK MANAGEMENT & INSURANCE BROKERAGE

“ The objective was to put the key enablers of user experience transformation under the same scope of accountability” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: FRANCE Julien Alzounies is O&T leader for France and BeLux and a member of the Executive Committee of Marsh France.

Julien Alzounies began his career at Capgemini Consulting, then worked at Stanwell Consulting. He then worked as a change lead at Axa Group Solutions on international transformation programs in Western Europe. He joined AIG Europe Limited in 2012 and AIG France's Management Committee in 2016. In February 2018, he joins Marsh France as Chief Operating Officer, in charge of Operations & Client Service and Technology & Client Solutions. Julien Alzounies holds a Master in Management from Skema Business School and an MBA from the Asian Institute of Technology.

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Another key partner is LTI, one of Marsh’s largest global strategic partners over the last two decades. During that time, LTI has supported Marsh on a number of transformational and digital initiatives. “In developing the newly revamped digital extranet offering, LTI has been playing an extremely important role by bringing its deep domain knowledge of our systems and processes acquired through supporting Marsh’s legacy BCP platform,” says

“ It's very important for us to harmonise our platforms” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

Alzouniès. In the digitisation journey, LTI has helped in improving the user experience, enabling a SSO (single sign on) mechanism for clients, building more advanced reporting capabilities, and partnering on the optimisation of approximately onethird of Marsh’s processes, thus providing clients additional flexibility. “LTI has brought very high-quality technical and domain expertise to the initiative, which has augmented Marsh’s capacity to build and launch the new, enhanced Marsh BCP. With LTI strengthening its offerings around cloud, we look forward to strengthening this partnership further.”

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paradigms. Marsh France’s staff were already well versed in remote working methods, meaning the general shift was weathered with poise. However, this is not to say that the totality of the change wasn’t challenging: “Moving to a new operating model, where we previously had only an average of 10 to 20% of our people working remotely to close to 100%, was a significant challenge.

Nevertheless, it only took us about one week to reach the optimal level of performance for all our employees,” says Alzouniès.

This impressive achievement is made even more resounding by the concurrent finalisation of Marsh’s integration with

“WeProov is one of our key partners and working with a fintech has actually enriched Marsh by providing added value and agility” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

British multinational insurer Jardine Lloyd Thompson (JLT), which formed a significant logistical obstacle in terms of HR and client data migration.

For Alzouniès, remote working is just one component of a larger consideration: the digitalisation of processes, data and document exchanges. “The need has only been accelerated by the pandemic situation and it’s going to become even more important in the future.” Having met this internal transformation with businesschief.eu

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Digitizing the Core Experience Transformation Operate to Transform Data Driven Organization Learn More

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“Marsh wants to enrich the quality of the data that we provide clients, not only to deal with risk management but also to enhance risk prevention” JULIEN ALZOUNIÈS

CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER MARSH FRANCE

aplomb, Alzouniès states that refining the company through a new OPEX (operational excellence) programme will feature strongly in Marsh’s strategy for 2021. Started at the end of 2020, this will be an ongoing and far-reaching initiative that is currently scheduled to last until 2023. “We decided to launch this at a global level across all our geographies as a major transformation programme. Its scope covers all of our business functions, including sales, placement, policy

servicing, finance, and claims through digitalisation, service enhancement and quality improvement.” The end goal of this process is the “harmonisation” of Marsh globally through modernised operating models. “It's very important for us to harmonise our platforms,” continues Alzouniès. “System automation and service integration will also enable Marsh to capture and capitalise on more client data from a risk analysis and placement benchmarking perspective.” businesschief.eu

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“ Data is important for our clients because they expect more benchmarking information. We also need to continue mastering our service performance, because it’s crucial to operate in the insurance market efficiently.”

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Alzouniès is determined to further develop Marsh France’s core business solutions aligned with the company’s other offices in continental Europe. Taking a data-centric stance that emphasises the use of “maturing” technology like AI will form the crux of accomplishing this aim, although he states that this focus is not entirely new. “Data is important for our clients because they expect more benchmarking information. We also need to continue mastering our service performance, because it’s crucial to operate in the insurance market efficiently.”

When he considers the benefits that enhanced digitalisation will bring to the company as a whole, Alzouniès summarises them as service improvement through more efficient workforce deployment and overall service simplification. Through its OPEX programme, Marsh France has secured a flying start for incorporating these benefits. First and foremost in 2021, he states, the company’s main objective will be the finalised roll-out of MarshMotor, with the goal of making all the company’s French clients benefit from using the new application. Furthermore, new versions of client portals such as Marsh BCP (business continuity planning) will be launched before the end of Q1, as well as a new portal for real estate insurance management. “Over 2021, we want to significantly improve our work reporting capabilities and the quality of client reporting from a claims perspective. Marsh wants to enrich the quality of the data that we provide clients, not only to deal with risk management but also to enhance risk prevention.”

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INTEGRATING

ENGINEERING AND INFRASTRUCTURE

TO ENHANCE URBAN MOBILITY WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: KARL GREEN

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Kunal Chandra Vice President, Shared Autonomous Mobility at Siemens Mobility

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How Siemens is developing a digital twin vehicle model for smart cities to help enable a safe and accessible future for autonomous transport.

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ow will the hard-fought vision of autonomous mobility finally be realised? Siemens has brought together two of its global businesses to achieve a goal that will pave the way for safer, greener more efficient modes of travel in our cities. Siemens Digital Industries Software is working with OEMs to guide the development of the hardware and software required for safe, highly autonomous vehicles. Allied to this, Siemens Mobility’s efforts to deliver the compute requirements and communication capabilities needed for the smart city infrastructure will allow vehicles to apply the information received and make intelligent decisions.

A challenge met through collaboration “Ours is a multi-pronged approach,” explains David Fritz, Senior Director, Autonomous and ADAS at Siemens Digital Industries Software (DISW). “At Siemens, we’re engineeringcentric and, with automotive, need to help our partners understand how to make the journey from the mechanical to the digital.

It's a big leap and the Siemens Xcelerator portfolio of integrated software and services is helping us make that jump, by providing our partners with the ability to transition many disparate parts into a cohesive system. This includes not only engineering level simulation, but also requirements tracking and traceability from concept all the way through to the production of the vehicle itself.” businesschief.eu

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DAVID FRITZ TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR, AUTONOMOUS AND ADAS AT SIEMENS DIGITAL INDUSTRIES SOFTWARE (DISW) David Fritz joined Siemens with the acquisition of Mentor Graphics and is currently the Senior Director for Autonomous and ADAS systems at Siemens Digital Industries. David is focused on the modelling of autonomous vehicles and addressing the complexities that the automotive industry and its suppliers are encountering. Before joining Mentor Graphics, Fritz was Senior Director of Technical Program Management at Qualcomm. Previously Fritz worked for NVIDIA as a Tegra chip manager.

KUNAL CHANDRA

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT, SHARED AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY AT SIEMENS MOBILITY

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Kunal Chandra is currently the VicePresident for Shared Autonomous Mobility in Siemens Mobility. In his role Kunal leads the development of autonomous mobility solutions for cities and public transport operators. Prior to this Kunal led the New Energy Businesses for Siemens energy where he was responsible for diversification of its portfolio into new energy value chains. In this role Kunal developed the hydrogen and Powerto-X portfolio. Kunal holds a Bachelor in Technology degree from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and an MBA (Hons.) from IMD Business School, Switzerland.

April 2021

Siemens Mobility is working to prove the concept of smart cities with governmental bodies and municipalities to deliver the future of mobility, particularly in urban environments. “Technology works best when it’s in the background,” maintains Kunal Chandra, Vice President, Shared Autonomous Mobility at Siemens Mobility.

“The purpose that a technology serves should be the driving factor. If you apply autonomous vehicles to public transport you can achieve much higher decongestion

SIEMENS

of cities. Right now, cities are designed around accommodating vehicles. Frankly, it's bizarre that we have so many journeys of two kilometers where a 75-kilo person is transported in a two-ton car. It’s a problem we’re aiming to solve while making that solution cost-efficient, safe, demand responsive, accessible, and convenient.”

Safety, Security & Reliability “If you're going to entrust your well-being to a computer, you want to make sure it’s

safe to do so,” reasons Fritz. “A big part of the problem is how you can actually show that the vehicle making decisions for you is making them with the appropriate amount of caution. We’re working with governments and regulatory bodies on solutions that make engineering and practical sense.”

Fritz explains his team’s approach is based around scenario level testing for safety. This is combined with security that goes beyond software, starting at the chipset level with integrated circuit design implementation. businesschief.eu

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“We’re working with governments and regulatory bodies on solutions for safety, reliability and security that make engineering and statistical sense” DAVID FRITZ

SENIOR DIRECTOR, AUTONOMOUS AND ADAS, SIEMENS DIGITAL INDUSTRIES SOFTWARE (DISW)

Reliability is key, because, he reasons, it’s no good having a safe and secure vehicle you can’t rely on to get you from A to B. “There are many standards emerging to address the key issues at various levels.

Therefore, getting involved in their creation and promoting those initiatives is key.

However, the big issue remains: How do you show safe, secure, and reliable? Today, everyone is aware of the likes of Tesla and GM, but it's going to take a fleet of hundreds of cars, decades, if not centuries, to drive enough unique miles and encounter enough unique situations to statistically show they're safer than a human driver.”

That approach is, of course, totally impractical and not the one preferred by engineers like Fritz and Chandra. “We’re leveraging the formalism and determinism of digital twins of the vehicle,” explains Fritz.

“It can then be shown to behave just like the physical vehicle it models, and it can be driven in a virtual world with all of its practical and complex scenarios validated.”

Digital Twin Using a digital twin enables Siemens to simulate thousands of scenarios to develop the learning that will ultimately support intelligent and safe decisions. In the virtual businesschief.eu

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world there are no boundaries to the scenarios the vehicle can learn from. “I can guarantee you that no autonomous vehicle is sitting at the base of a bridge in San Francisco waiting for an earthquake so it can drive across that bridge to ensure it behaves properly,” reasons Fritz.

“Yet, if you're in San Francisco and want to buy an autonomous vehicle, that's an important consideration.”

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need to be validated. Many of these are too unsafe or just too difficult to do in a physical vehicle, which is what makes the use of a digital twin so vital.

“Driving students are taught to watch out for pedestrians crossing the road between cars, we’ve all been through that standard process,” reasons Fritz. “If we take that process and identify 50 things you’ve got to learn, we can begin to set up the scenarios for autonomous vehicles that can deliver timeless learnings applicable in all regional settings. Sure, there

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“The purpose that a technology serves should be the driving factor. If we apply autonomous vehicles to public transport we can achieve much higher decongestion of cities” KUNAL CHANDRA

VICE PRESIDENT, SHARED AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY SIEMENS MOBILITY businesschief.eu

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“ The vision for this technology is to make our cities less passive. Cities need to become smarter and ready to interact with citizens, however they choose to travel.”

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VICE PRESIDENT, SHARED AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY SIEMENS MOBILITY

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are many thousands of potential variants of scenarios, but a new driver does not need to experience them all before getting a learner’s permit. What we are saying is that there should be a reasonable set of unsafe and practical scenarios that must be navigated virtually for an autonomous vehicle to earn its learner’s permit.”

Smart Cities Outside of the Middle East - Neom in Saudia Arabia and Masdar in the UAE being recent examples - there are very few cities that can be built smart from the ground up. In most cities across the globe it’s a case of brownfield development notes Chandra.

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“It’s important to accurately diagnose the current status of the system before you can implement change. You might want to deploy autonomous shuttles across Paris, but without understanding the overall impact it will have on the city, we might end up creating many unpriced externalities. Therefore, it is crucial to create a digital twin of the city before you implement any large-scale changes to be able to properly evaluate the overall system impact of the changes. Paris is already on track with this approach, and countries like Singapore are building on the work already done with analogue twins.

The synergy between the digital twin of the autonomous vehicle and the smart city it will operate within needs to be nurtured. “By interfacing with a digital version of the smart city infrastructure we can show that when these vehicles are produced in reality will behave properly in thousands of important scenarios,” adds Fritz.

The ability to communicate across that environment will be supported by cloudbased data handling that allows vehicles to understand, recover and re-use information.

Chandra highlights that fast data requirements will rely on low latency communications, which the advent of 5G will further enhance.

“The next step would be to take a vehicle into a real urban environment for testing,” continues Fritz. “In effect, the vehicle would have earned its learner’s permit in the virtual world before it is tested to ensure the physical vehicle behaves as the digital twin predicted it would. This requires the application of a practical methodology based on engineering principles to deliver a safe vehicle.”

To gain traction, Siemens is working with major metropolitan municipalities to develop this synergy and put together a certification process to provide a pathway for autonomous vehicles to get their learner’s permit. “It’s the same process your smartphone has to go

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“ By interfacing with a digital version of the smart city infrastructure we can show that when these vehicles are produced in reality they will behave properly in thousands of important scenarios” DAVID FRITZ SENIOR DIRECTOR, AUTONOMOUS AND ADAS, SIEMENS DIGITAL INDUSTRIES, SOFTWARE (DISW)

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through before it can be placed on a network,” says Fritz. “There are environments used to show correct operation before you could take that device to market and connect up to a carrier’s network. Obviously, vehicles require many more checks and balances, which is where the digital twin can help us demonstrate correct interoperability with the smart city infrastructure that will support safe operation.”

A new vision for mobility Siemens aims to deploy solutions that give back more space to people in cities so they can actually use it to live. “In the long-term, we need to tackle the peak hour problem,” maintains Chandra. “There are certain hours of the day when the demand placed on the entire city infrastructure is high. Yet, as this demand starts to plateau, much of this peak hour infrastructure is sitting there without being utilized.”

Chandra believes it’s vital to make it extremely easy for people to move from one place to another, without having to find a parking spot, or match their schedule with this peak hour problem. “We have to make things demand-responsive,” he says.

“The vision for this technology is to make our cities less passive. They need to become smart and ready to interact with their citizens, however they choose to travel.

With the development of fast, low latency communications, we can actually make our cities talk. And with sensors everywhere to monitor the quality of life, to monitor all aspects of mobility, this information would enhance the driving experience and ultimately lower accident rates. Cities can tell us so much, we just need to embrace the opportunity to listen.”

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Terry Greer-King, VP of SonicWall EMEA, explains the importance of implementing variable security and risk management solutions at an architectural level WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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eadquartered in Milpitas, California, SonicWall is a Silicon Valley firewall and cybersecurity solutions company originally founded in 1991. Acquired by Dell in 2012 and later sold as a subsidiary to Francisco Partners and Elliott Management in 2016, the company’s history is one punctuated by award-winning innovation, deft stakeholder management and prescient industry development. At a time when the rules for enterprise cybersecurity are being rewritten at an unprecedented rate by remote working and an ever-increasingly digital workplace, these qualities have proven to be invaluable. Fundamentally, SonicWall is a company that believes in embracing change and doesn’t shy away from investing time, money and energy into making it happen.

It was this attitude that first enticed Terry Greer-King, Vice President of SonicWall EMEA, to join. Beginning his career in the semiconductors industry during the late ‘70s, moving through the ‘PC boom’ of the ‘80s, and then finding himself in the cybersecurity arena, Greer-King emphasises that the power of technology to empower, enable and drive change in society is what motivates him. “Cybersecurity has been a growing phenomenon,” he says. “Nowadays, the threats are much more diverse. If you want to establish a security infrastructure and not touch it for five years, you’re going to expose businesschief.eu

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“ FOR ME, THE ATTRACTION OF CYBERSECURITY IS THAT IT’S QUICK, DYNAMIC, INTERESTING AND CONSTANTLY CHALLENGING” TERRY GREER-KING, VP EMEA, SONICWALL

yourself to lots of risk. For me, the attraction of cybersecurity is that it’s quick, dynamic, interesting and constantly challenging.”

SonicWall is rapidly approaching its 30th year in operation. Despite this, GreerKing states, the temptation to become ‘set in its ways’ is furthest from its mind.

Evolving with the times isn’t easy, but it is eminently necessary. “Change is really difficult for a business, much more than you would be led to believe. It’s not just about technology; it’s how you approach the market and customers and how you deal with business partners.” To say that COVID19 has been one of the most significant harbingers of change in cybersecurity is an understatement. In the first months of the 442

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Spring 2020 lockdown, SonicWall noted an acceleration in digital awareness and a rapid increase in business. It seemed that enterprise digital transformation journeys that might have been completed over 10 years were instead driven through in weeks.

Ultimately, Greer-King reasons, this is because businesses have realised that the ‘new normal’ is here to stay, “Many people don’t think we’re going to ‘snap back’ to how things were beforehand. I believe the new challenges are going to be constant.”

Indeed, even for a cybersecurity expert like SonicWall, there is no denying that remote working poses some difficult questions requiring solutions on a previously unimagined scale. Less than a decade

SONICWALL

TERRY GREER-KING TITLE: VP EMEA COMPANY: SONIC WALL INDUSTRY: CYBERSECURITY LOCATION: CALIFORNIA

ago, companies could easily protect their systems through robust firewalls in an office environment. Now, the same uniform protection cannot be guaranteed while employees work from home on potentially unsecured networks. Digital technology’s ubiquitous presence and devices that are connected 24/7 present even more targets for attack from cyber criminals.

“People are and should be part of the solution, as well as part of the problem.

What technology can do is mitigate risk and understand it,” says Greer-King. “Using machine learning, SonicWall can operate much quicker and learn at a code level what’s bad and what isn’t.” Technology’s role at SonicWall could be summarised

EXECUTIVE BIO

Terry Greer-King is currently Vice President of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Sales at SonicWall. Prior to joining the SonicWall team, Terry served as Akamai Technology’s Director of Security Sales for EMEA, Cisco’s Director of EMEA Cybersecurity Sales, as well as the UK Managing Director for Check Point. Terry brings extensive experience providing cybersecurity solutions to partners and customers across the EMEA region and works with EMEA sales leaders to increase direct touch results and grow the SonicWall business.

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1991

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1,400 Number of employees

“ MANY PEOPLE DON’T THINK WE’RE GOING TO ‘SNAP BACK’ TO HOW THINGS WERE BEFOREHAND. I BELIEVE THE NEW CHALLENGES ARE GOING TO BE CONSTANT” TERRY GREER-KING, VP EMEA, SONICWALL

as ‘pushing security beyond the limits of human ability’. In fact, with its Boundless Cybersecurity strategy, the company can collect data points across 215 countries and apply the aforementioned machine learning

or artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to detect and respond quickly to cyber threats.

Capable of actioning these processes in real-time, SonicWall claims to be able to resolve 80% of cyber attacks in less than two seconds.

Greer-King adds that although SonicWall’s investment in technology has been “huge,” there is another highly important aspect to its approach: understanding. The impact of culture on cybersecurity is arguably of a similar magnitude to the purely technical, and successfully communicating the philosophical divergence between previous iterations of security and the modern dynamic is essential.

“Previously we sold ‘padlocks’ against viruses, but you can’t stop bad guys from doing bad things. What you can do is understand the way your business operates and plan for the future.

If you can understand the threats inherent in the way that your business operates, then you can start to prioritise risk.” businesschief.eu

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“ IF YOU CAN UNDERSTAND THE THREATS INHERENT IN THE WAY THAT YOUR BUSINESS OPERATES, THEN YOU CAN START TO PRIORITISE RISK” TERRY GREER-KING, VP EMEA, SONICWALL

The abundance of legacy infrastructure at many companies, even FTSE 100 entities, is unfortunately pervasive and forms a key obstacle for SonicWall to overcome. In purely operational terms, the pandemic has fortunately sent a clear signal that adapting to a new way of working is non-negotiable in modern business. True security, in GreerKing’s view, must be an architectural concern. However, companies often have 446

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disparate and inharmonious protection stitched together from multiple sources.

SonicWall’s Boundless Cybersecurity combats this problem by providing a suite of consonant solutions that protect every facet of the customer’s digital operations, including secure email, cloud app security, secure remote access, wireless security and more.

SonicWall has been the recipient of several accolades and industry citations for excellence in 2020 alone. Although unquestionably the result of visionary leadership and wise development of core

SONICWALL

Terry Greer-King from SonicWall talks about cyber security

technologies, Greer-King puts Greer-King outlines how this forward a different assessment managed service provider has for how the company been integral throughout the maintains its innovative two companies’ shared history SonicWall claims to output: “What we’re trying and why their relationship is be able to resolve to do is build empathy with special: “We’ve been involved customers. The idea is that in a couple of projects we don’t want to sit in an ivory together recently. Ignite’s of cyber attacks tower and muse upon what client base stretches from in less than the right product or solution small-medium businesses to could be. SonicWall listens to global enterprises. We’ve been real-world problems and realworking with Ignite and some world challenges, and therefore develops of the larger organisations on boundless technology with relevance to the market.” architecture, future-proofing security and Who a company partners with can new ways to support customers. Ignite’s be essential to the product development solution set is highly cost-effective and helps journey and one of SonicWall’s key them protect against contemporary cyber collaborators, UK-based tech company threats; I think the work we’ve done with Ignite, has distinguished itself from the rest.

Ignite is what we aspire to do everywhere.”

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The potential for business disruption in 2021 is, according to Greer-King, almost impossible to comprehend. In addition to the ongoing challenge of COVID-19, Brexit, lifestyle changes, shifting markets and new working conditions are all conspiring to make predicting the future of cybersecurity nearly impossible. However, with uncertainty paradoxically the only certainty, SonicWall is embracing the inevitability of change and educating customers on risk’s 21st-century paradigm. The company’s approach acknowledges that no ‘catch-all’ solution could ever solve each client’s unique circumstances and instead embraces agility, variability and genuine leadership.

“PEOPLE CAN DO AMAZING THINGS IF ONLY YOU’D LET THEM” TERRY GREER-KING, VP EMEA, SONICWALL

“Leadership is about listening; we should be socially conscious enough to bring others with us. I think the sooner people get on board with cybersecurity, the sooner they’ll reap the benefits from it,” Greer-King concludes. “There is a requirement for clear leadership and a clear sense of direction, but it shouldn’t be done in an isolated way.

It should be done by listening to customers, partners and employees. People can do amazing things if only you’d let them.”

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Virgin Media: Partner-powered Connections Nick Good explores the invaluable contribution of partner engagement and a collaborative culture on the road to Gigabit Ready by the end of 2021 WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

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irgin Media powers the lives of millions of consumers and businesses across the UK and Ireland. From TV and digital video content, to data, voice and transmission, it provides critical services to 3.5m mobile customers and 6.1m cable customers through an ecosystem of market-leading partners.

Ensuring every partner is working in concert is key to Virgin Media’s leading position in the market, and it is Nick Good, Director of Partner Operations, whose mission it is to support them.

“My team manages the day-to-day operational performance and provide partner support services to ensure that the partner teams have all they need to do the best job for our customers,” he says. “We also provide engagement initiatives that make the partnerships work as a true partnership; our goal is to make sure that our partner teams feel like they're actually part of Virgin Media, not an external partner.”

Good’s job is not just about solving issues and checking in, however, but to engage with partners and form strong, working relationships to the benefit of all within the ecosystem. To do this, Good’s team take a businesschief.eu

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VIRGIN MEDIA

“ The more connected we are to our partners, the more connected they are to our customers”

NICK GOOD TITLE: DIRECTOR OF PARTNER OPERATIONS COMPANY: VIRGIN MEDIA INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

NICK GOOD

Nick is responsible for the key operations partnerships behind the customer facing services that Virgin Media provides to more than five million homes in the UK, namely TV, Transmission, Data, Voice, Power and Cooling, and has direct responsibility for Power and Voice network maintenance services.

He is also responsible for partner performance, engagement, communications and inclusion. His career spans thirty years in IT and Network leadership roles covering delivery, strategy, planning and operations, as well as consulting, business development and product management.

DIRECTOR OF PARTNER OPERATIONS VIRGIN MEDIA

EXECUTIVE BIO

five-point approach. The first is open lines of communication to share news and “call out individual contributions from specific people that have gone above and beyond.” Co-branded work environments are another pillar, through office artwork and branded desktop platforms “to bring the teams closer together.”

Biannual surveys are also conducted to gauge the connectedness of the Virgin Media operational partners, and to solicit feedback - a valuable loop that helps Good and his team learn what they should be doing differently.

That feedback is used to create a ‘one-team plan’ (point four), a combined course of action to inform where there is room for improvement, and what goals they can work towards together.

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The fifth is presence and face time. “The more connected we are to our partners, the more connected they are to our customers,” Good says. “Probably the most important point that's suffered the most throughout the year is face time. Being out with the partners, working with them and getting to meet the guys on the ground to really create those connections is vital. Unfortunately this aspect has been heavily impacted, as you can imagine, throughout 2020, but I’m hopeful it won’t suffer too much more throughout 2021.”

The impact of COVID-19 is a common thread in everyone’s lives. One year on since the outbreak was declared a pandemic, our lives have irrevocably changed, and as

“ Being out with the partners, working with them and getting to meet the guys on the ground to really create those connections is vital” NICK GOOD

DIRECTOR OF PARTNER OPERATIONS VIRGIN MEDIA

such, the role of Good’s team has been of particular importance. As millions of people shift to working from home, remote learning, and using digital channels for all aspects of day-to-day life, Virgin Media’s services “have been more critical than they've ever been.” As the UK’s largest gigabit (1,000Mbps) broadband provider, Virgin Media has been pivotal in keeping people and businesses connected over the past 12 months. And it is poised to be fully gigabit ready by the end of 2021, an organisation-wide goal in which Good’s team is central for ensuring that businesschief.eu

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partners have “the knowledge, the tools and the information that they need to support our network as it evolves and grows.”

“Gigabit readiness for our partner community is really about making sure they can keep supporting the network and therefore the enhanced gigabit service that runs over it to our customers,” he explains. “And bear in mind, that's not just about consumer customers; it's also Virgin Media’s business customers, where we have a lot of critical businesses within the UK that rely on our network, including many blue-light services, hospitals and schools.”

Engaging partners will be key to maintaining the high level of service that Virgin Media’s customers have come to expect. “In partner operations, our key principles are based on linking the partner's engagement with that performance,” says Good. “We’ve seen partner performance increase steadily over the time that we've implemented and tightened the governance practices and also where we've increased the focus on engagement. Ultimately their performance reflects directly on the network performance, and therefore the experience that our customers receive.”

KPIs that paint the most insightful story of how each partner is performing have been given close attention by the performance management team. And Good has traced a correlation between increases in these key indicators and increased engagement. "So that's how we link through to trying to provide that superior performance: making sure the partners are performing as optimally as they can,” Good says. “And that's partly through the performance management, but it's also through that engagement management too. My team and I have been able to bring the two together.”

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The UK's Largest gigabit provider

3.4m

Mobile customers in the UK

5.6m+

Cable customers in the UK

VIRGIN MEDIA

Nick Good tells us about Partner Operations at Virgin Media

“We’ve seen partner performance increase steadily where we've increased the focus on engagement” NICK GOOD

DIRECTOR OF PARTNER OPERATIONS, VIRGIN MEDIA

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“ If we can bring elements of gameplay to the partner teams, that will allow us to enrich the interactions” NICK GOOD

DIRECTOR OF PARTNER OPERATIONS, VIRGIN MEDIA

Data is also central to the management process from an automated perspective, but also in being “more proactive” in identifying and resolving issues as they arise. “We have a significant initiative in progress with one of our partners, Accenture, to introduce new tools and practices that will enhance data correlation ability, and ultimately help us deliver superior performance on the network.”

In the future, Good hopes to extend the engagement practices and expand his team’s work to create an environment of even greater cooperation, and what he terms “cross-partner collaboration”. “At the moment, all our partners provide a specific service to us to support 458

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that particular part of the network - and they do that very well. But in terms of Virgin Media getting the best out of them, by being able to collaborate across them, that's one focus that we're going to be working on through 2021,” Good says. “We certainly think there's a definite opportunity to get them working closer together, rather than just working more closely with us, which is what we've been focused on today.”

A prime example for this more cohesive marriage between partners is BTMSL, which provides the time-division multiplexing (TDM) network, and ISS, Virgin Media’s power and air conditioning services provider for technical

VIRGIN MEDIA

sites. “When ISS understand more about how the switches relate to the technical sites that they support the power into, then there can be a greater working relationship in terms of managing the whole network. Certainly when there are issues on the network - as there are now and again - getting the two closer together to fix issues where the power may have interrupted a switch’s operation, that’s the sort of event where we need to get them working more collaboratively for the future.”

One means to make this a seamless experience for partners is "the use of more advanced engagement techniques and

gamification," Good says. Gamification has been proven to increase engagement, whether between brands and consumers, or internally. “We’re in the very early phases of this, and still considering what, exactly, the model will look like. But what we do know is that if we can bring elements of gameplay to the partner teams, it will allow us to enrich the interactions that their people have with us and their daily duties. As engagement increases, it will hopefully allow us to continually push for increased performance.”

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J - TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

J - TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

DRIVING

GROWTH

IN ASIA

Process know-how, open control systems and independence from suppliers is leveraging business growth for J-Tec Material Handling in South-East Asia

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE

O

pen control systems, an independent approach to suppliers and the skill to design tailor-made solutions is helping J-Tec Material Handling leverage its growth throughout South-East Asia.

Just three years after the Belgium-owned company - a wholly-owned business unit of its parent company Katoen Natie - put down roots in Rayong, Thailand they are driving growth across SEA as a process engineering partner to clients in the food and chemical industry.

“Part of our business plan focused on the possible synergies with Katoen Natie who have been in Thailand (and Asia) for more than 20 years,” said Arnaud Nelissen Grade, Sales Director Asia at J-Tec Material Handling.

“Aligning ourselves with Katoen Natie allows us to share resources like IT and HR more efficiently. But more importantly, it has resulted in a closer cooperation between the existing business units here which now makes our group quite unique in the region in terms of what we can offer to our clients. businesschief.eu

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“ In terms of growth we just got started, but we've already exceeded most company targets and expectations that we set up three years ago.”

ARNAUD NELISSEN GRADE SALES DIRECTOR ASIA, J-TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

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“We were also attracted to Thailand because it is a big market with a lot of investments going on in the food and the chemical industry. On top of that, J-Tec previously had some success with significant projects in Thailand - so we felt that we could easily build on those to gain momentum.”

For more than five decades, J-Tec has focused on its customer-centric approach and has retained its competitive edge in handling solids and liquids due to the fact it is totally supplier independent and offers clients open control systems moving away from the more standardised approach of most of their competitors.

“This means we can guarantee a customised solution for every challenge,”

J - TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

ARNAUD NELISSEN GRADE TITLE: SALES DIRECTOR COMPANY: J-TEC MATERIAL HANDLING LOCATION: ASIA

said Nelissen Grade who bridges the gap between Europe and Asia as he spearheads the rapid growth in the region.

Speaking from J-Tec’s Asian headquarters in Rayong, he said: “We don’t offer a onesize-fits-all approach; instead we listen to the client and use our in-house knowledge and tools to develop a tailored solution for their project.

“J-Tec acts as a partner during the complete process: from the conceptual design, on through detailed engineering, procurement and manufacturing, up until installation and commissioning, and if required training and maintenance.”

He pointed out the open control systems mean clients are not ‘handcuffed’ to J-Tec

EXECUTIVE BIO

INDUSTRY: INDUSTRIAL AUTOMATION Arnaud holds a Master Degree in Industrial Engineering from GroupT Leuven Engineering School.

Graduating in 2009, he spent most of his career abroad, mostly in China for Jan De Nul and in Rotterdam for Fabricom, working in various project and construction engineering roles.

After earning a Postgraduate Degree in Business Administration, he joined J-Tec in late 2014 where he immediately contributed to J-Tec’s success as a Sales Engineer.

In 2016, he moved to Thailand to spearhead J-Tec’s business development in SEA. Since then, he has devoted his time to putting J-Tec on the Asian map, taking the lead in Sales, HR and Strategy, establishing J-Tec Material Handling Ltd. as the regional HQ and focusing on building a sustainable foundation for J-Tec’s growth in the future.

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J - TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

“We have all the experience and all the competencies in-house at J-Tec but we just need to keep working on how to effectively apply this in Asia without really rushing it.”

ARNAUD NELISSEN GRADE SALES DIRECTOR ASIA, J-TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

if they want to extend the factory or system in the future. “Instead, we believe in delivering quality and that keeping this promise means J-Tec will hopefully be involved again in the future” he said.

Supplier independent Independence from suppliers is one of J-Tec’s key differentiators. “If we look back 50 years, J-Tec started as a representative of certain brands of component manufacturers. Over the years the projects became more complex and we evolved towards an engineering company,” commented Nelissen Grade.

“We knew our competitors and at that time, we made a very clear decision to start designing our own systems and become completely supplier independent in order to offer that additional flexibility.

“Today, in contrast with many of our competitors, we don't produce our own equipment. Most of the equipment in our systems are purchased from third parties, OEM for standard equipment and independent manufacturers for custommade equipment that we design ourselves, but is then manufactured by these third parties.

“The way we make a difference is by leveraging this strategy. We always focus on finding the real optimal process design for

any given application, which will then define which original equipment manufacturer (OEM) equipment we will source and where to source it. If it doesn't exist or if it needs to be custom made, we will design it and have it fabricated, typically in the region where the project is located.”

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Arnaud NelisseN Grade talks J-Tec Material Handling

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J-Tec is a company member of EHEDG The European hygienic engineering & design group.

“We are involved in several relevant associations related to our industry, the most important one being EHEDG. J-Tec is an active, contributing member of EHEDG and has been assisting in the development of the industry standards with regards to hygienic design for Dry Material Handling for more than 10 years now. Such collaborations help us stay up-to-date and highly relevant in what we do.”

1970

J-Tec Material Handling was founded in 1970.

140+

Number of employees

€50+mn Company revenue

Three-dimensional experience One way in which J-Tec is turning to technology to give them a competitive edge is offering customers a virtual tour of a proposed factory development. “By using the power of Virtual Reality (VR) we are able to elevate a factory design from a flat plan to a three dimensional experience,” said Nelissen Grade.

“It enables us to show the customer and let them discover their future factory before it's even built which also helps us in the design of our systems. If our engineers and our customers can walk around a realistic 3D representation of the plant, we can discover potential problems, find alternative solutions and adjust the design much faster and more efficiently which benefits both J-Tec and its customers.

“A small thing like being able to visualise their factory also adds an element of wonder for the customer,” he said.

Commenting on J-Tec’s digital transformation to Industry 4.0, Nelissen Grade said: “Like many companies, we have an Industry “4.0” plan that is being rolled out to improve and expand our services during and after projects.

“We are developing several technologies involving the use of big data related to the businesschief.eu

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systems we build. This can, in turn, lead to remote monitoring of certain metrics and KPIs, preventive maintenance and the further expansion of our internal know-how on how to design the best possible systems with optimal performance using realistic process simulations.

“Furthermore, we have accelerated our remote assistance program, finding ways to support our global customers without needing to be physically present, for example using AR, which has become highly relevant due to the pandemic.”

Future technology trends “For our industry specifically, we do believe and invest in big data and remote assistance and see this as a trend across several industries,” said Nelissen Grade.

“Also, hygienic design, contamination prevention… are big trends and we are continuously developing solutions for our clients in this regard, particularly in infant nutrition.

“Lastly, automation is gaining momentum even in countries with a lower labour cost.

Automation has many advantages such as a higher efficiency and accuracy, improved working conditions… but especially in these COVID times, it limits the required manpower needed in factories and prevents The company's contamination to a large extent.” headquaters are located in Antwerp, Nelissen Grade helped Belgium spearhead the original business plan on the value of J-Tec moving into the Asia market.

Locations worldwide “The ultimate goal was to set up an entity in Thailand that acts as a regional headquarters. We will Year regional take the lead from here for our headquarters in Rayong, further expansion in the region. In Thailand openned

HQ

8

2018

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“This means we can guarantee a customised solution for every challenge,” said Arnaud Nelissen Grade, Sales Director Asia at J-Tec Material Handling, who bridges the gap between Europe and Asia as he spearheads the growth in the region.”

ARNAUD NELISSEN GRADE

SALES DIRECTOR ASIA, J-TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

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-Tec’s open control systems is just one of the key differentiators setting them apart from most of their competitors. Nelissen Grade explains the main reasons why this gives the company such an advantage.

“The first is flexibility - which is something we're proud of because we are independent. We are flexible in selecting equipment and in the same way, we want to make sure that that flexibility is translated into the control system. More often than not, our main competitors have more standardized control systems that are not very flexible, based on their own equipment. J-Tec is different in that we also have limited standards that guide us, but every system is completely custom made based on specific needs of the project. This results in a more lean control system with smaller and cheaper hardware.

“Number two is that our systems are “open”. We are not like some of our competitors who design “black box” type systems which means the client needs their intervention if they want to expand.

We had an example of this when one of our key accounts in Indonesia actually contacted us. They wanted us to do an expansion to their factory, but in the end, they were forced to go back to the previous supplier because the control system was locked which would be very costly to change. Instead, we offer open and transparent control systems using building blocks that are then ‘assembled’ based on the process design. The blocks themselves may be protected, but the program itself is open-source and can be accessed by our clients directly.

“Number three is the fact that our independence from suppliers means that we work with a large variety of different

suppliers from all over the world. As a result, our experts have gained quite a significant understanding of how to control the variety of equipment. They often have a better understanding of how to control certain equipment as part of a broader system than the actual manufacturer of that equipment. This means that they can correctly use the specific characteristics of each equipment to optimise the performance through automation. And since these programmers are actually involved during commissioning on site, this greatly improves the efficiency, expedites commissioning and avoids all the hassle of finding bugs that would happen when using third-party programmers.”

“Finally, we are able to design a fully comprehensive control system involving all aspects of the production line, even for equipment that normally comes with its own control software. We can use our experience and know-how in using many different systems to program software for that equipment and integrate this in a single control system. As an example, whether the extruder itself is part of our scope or not, we can integrate it in a single SCADA system, avoiding the need for communication between various control systems from various suppliers.”

“In the same way Steve jobs did with Apple - controlling the product design from end to end: hardware and software - we are doing exactly the same with our control systems.”

“All these things means that we are very good at designing and offering control systems that are lean and simple - a single control system for the entire process, regardless of whether the equipment in that process is supplied by J-Tec or not.

J - TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

terms of growth we just got started, but we've already exceeded most company targets and expectations that we set up three years ago.

“One of the targets we had was to grow a local team to perform key client-oriented activities like Sales and Project Management more locally. And so we grew from a fulltime equivalent of two to about 13 people permanently based in the office in Thailand in just three years. We are still actively hiring but with the mindset that we have only got started, so we are slowly building the foundation of a durable business.

“We have all the experience and all the competencies in-house at J-Tec but we just need to keep working on how to effectively apply that experience and competencies in Asia without really rushing it. There's no point coming to Asia just to be in Asia, we need to do it right. That is what we are focusing on right now.”

“When it comes to highly advanced packaging systems, we have worked with Statec Binder on various occasions.

They share a lot of our values such as high quality and an impeccable service.”

ARNAUD NELISSEN GRADE

SALES DIRECTOR ASIA, J-TEC MATERIAL HANDLING businesschief.eu

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Partnership with Statec Binder Although we don’t have fixed partnership agreements with any supplier – one of our core strategies – we do have a list of preferred OEM that we tend to work with.

This follows a rigorous supplier selection process to make sure that our approved suppliers can support us and our customers in the best possible way.

“In the same way Steve jobs did with Apple - controlling the product design from end to end: hardware and software - we are doing exactly the same with our control systems.”

ARNAUD NELISSEN GRADE

SALES DIRECTOR ASIA, J-TEC MATERIAL HANDLING

One of J-Tec’s preferred suppliers is Statec Binder who offer high-performance packaging systems for open-mouth bags, FFS machines and related palletising and bagging systems used in a wide variety of industries for packing different products worldwide.

“When it comes to highly advanced packaging systems, we have worked with Statec Binder on various occasions worldwide. They share a lot of our values such as an impeccable service and a high quality and performance level. I hope that the global partnership can continue for many years to come.

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DRIVING THE PEOPLE EXPERIENCE WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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Unit4 PSA Smart Cloud Collaboration platform for better workflow, faster decision making, and an agile workforce empowered to focus on what matters

U

Manav Singh General Manager and Scaleup Leader

nit4 PSA’s ecosystem of powerful teams and partnerships are perfectly aligned to make for an exceptional people experience that drives customer success for Professional Services, so you can offer a better way to work that makes for a better place to work.

From Magneto quotes to the value of authenticity, speaking to Manav Singh, General Manager and Scaleup Leader for Unit4 PSA, is anything but boring. The man has an intense passion for what he does, and it’s apparent from the moment you meet him and is reflected in everything he does.

It’s what fuses and fuels Professional Services Automation (PSA), bringing their people and their partners together, empowered and focused on a collective goal, a cohesive ecosystem designed to optimise success.

Built on Microsoft's Power Platform, Unit4 PSA focuses on the operation front end of professional practices, enabling them to optimize operations, innovate business models and win more business.

The secret to Unit4 PSA’s success is that Singh himself remains married to a winning framework rooted in the belief in his people and the strategic alignment of business partners. It’s old-school thoughts done in a new age way, with heart, passion, and conviction. And his customers are better for it. businesschief.eu

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MANAV SINGH TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE LOCATION: NETHERLANDS I am a scale-up leader embarked on a current mission to create a globally leading business, enabling professional services organizations to optimize their project and peopledriven business by deliverin a leading practice management suite supporting the end to end proces from opportunities to cash. I am energized to bring an innovative technology to market enabling professional services organization to execute their business flawlessly.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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UNIT 4 | Know Your Customer

Redefining PSA to help practices Pivot, Strengthen, and Amplify To achieve operational excellence, you must address the following four key areas: Executing profitable projects, optimising resource utilisation, billing with precision, and winning more business. Unit4 PSA gets you there, despite our ever-changing world.

Practices built for the future create an environment that allows their people to focus on what matters most – delivering customer value. By leveraging technology, companies can remove non-valueadd administrative tasks and streamline workflows, and empower their people, providing all the information employees need to be successful at their fingertips.

Remote-work and a global pandemic pose epic challenges, but Singh and his “team of teams” are up to the task.

Engineered for flawless execution and customer success, Singh sticks to old principles, but like vinyl records, and hipster

trends, he has made the old new again by understanding and leveraging their true value.

A unified platform focused on optimising front-end operations with automated setups, seamless data flow and integrations, and built-in intelligence ensures that practices are focused on delivering value to customers timely and profitably. With a clear view of current operations, practices plan for the future by making sure they have the right resources and strategic customers. All this within a simplified IT landscape.

Built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power platform, Unit4’s PSA Practice Management is a full end-to-end solution built for professional services to standardise work, from sales, automation to onboarding your customer, project management, expenses, invoicing, financial transactions, and human competence management.

Singh explains, “We help practices manage their end-to-end process from the

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point an opportunity presents itself until the point that they invoice the end customer.

We cover everything from managing an opportunity, creating projects, staffing people, measuring utilisation, booking time, managing expenses, approvals, and so forth, all the way until invoicing the end customer.

“All of that in a single solution that is built on Microsoft technology which has its own advantage of making sure that we don't have any legacy technology. Being ERP independent 480

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also has the added benefit of delivering faster time to value. That is, essentially, what we offer. But, in actuality, we’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your business pivot. We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before.”

Team of Teams “The magic is in the combination of a clear goal, energised and empowered people,

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SOFTWARE Industry

20

We operate in 20 countries

Tailor-made

For Accountancies, Consultancies, IT services and Engineering practices

GLOBAL PARTNER NETWORK

and creating a safe space where it's okay to make mistakes. I think that’s what fuels a productive and effective organisation.

And from there, you amplify and scale,” says Singh.

“When it comes to decision-making, a traditional team gums itself up, creating a choke point. And at the pace at which the world moves today, what you need is a ‘team of teams’, a segregated autonomous unit. You give these teams the autonomy

to make decisions and execute on visions.

If you do that right, then the only factor you need to bind these teams together is a common goal.”

Unit4 PSA enables practices to realise the power of this construct. With its Smart Cloud Collaboration, Unit4 PSA delivers a single solution leveraging Microsoft Power Platform with seamless integration to O365, Power BI and Azure toolsets – making information and intelligence available to all fringes of a practice and empowering individuals to make the right decisions at the right time.

As Singh says, “There needs to be a common-sense of consciousness. Everyone needs to understand what the aim is so that day-to-day, they can make the right decisions and ultimately get you to your goal. This engrains a sense of agility, and an ability to pivot and react to changing conditions dynamically, and delivering a resilience that a traditional way of working does not give you.”

ITK: In The Know Solutions Group With customer in over 20 countries, Unit4 PSA's success is supported with a robust ecosystem of strategic global partners. ITK stands as a shining example of the close collaborations that make up Unit4’s rich global partner ecosystem.

“Our partners are very important to us, and ITK is a great example of a very successful partnership that we highly value. They are very true to their name and bring a bounty of industry practice that make them not just a technology partner but a trusted advisor.

That’s really where their experience shines.

“We have a very close collaboration with our partners, ITK being one of our key ones, and we are always on the same page in terms of how we are addressing the market, what can we do for them, and how we can make them more successful. businesschief.eu

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“So that relationship really works very, very closely. The interesting thing is that all our partners are not just software partners; they’re users. ITK is an IP services firm, and they use PSA to manage their practice. So they’re not only advocates for us but can showcase the value that PSA brings. They can speak to some of the challenges that they faced and how we helped them to manoeuvre them.”

When it comes to selecting partners and ensuring mutually beneficial relationships, Singh prefers quality over quantity.

“Otherwise, you spread yourself out too thin, and you’re able to provide them with the right level of focus and attention that they need, and it really doesn’t help you to mutually grow. So our philosophy is to focus on the right partners.

“This means that we're going to have fewer partners, but the partners that we

“ We’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your business pivot.

We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

are going to have will be equally invested in our vision as we are. This allows us to throw all of our weight behind those select partners and make sure they are successful, and together, we’ll drive market penetration and make them the face of the region.

“You have 120% of our support, and we will make you successful. In return, all we ask is that you be as equally invested as we businesschief.eu

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are in delivering on the vision we have for the business and the product.” It’s a nice, intimate circle of partners, backed by the right people, empowered for success.

Hunger. Persistence. Authenticity.

Unit4 PSA has created a team that is passionate and aligned towards a common goal – enabling next-generation practices to thrive in the new business reality. But it’s not done yet. Unit4 holds fast to the belief that improvements are never done, and business should never remain static and continues to move at the speed in which today’s challenging business environment requires.

The other key component of a successful “team of teams” is ensuring they consist of the right people with an alignment on personal goals and expectations.

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“ For me, the strongest relationships are built when people want to collaborate with you rather than need to collaborate with you.

Being open, honest, and genuine have always been key pillars for me to achieve this” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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In order to clearly communicate goals, Singh says his construct consists of three areas, “First, I give them a crystal clear picture of what we want the end state of the business to be. How big do we want to grow? What regions do we want to capture?

What customers do we want to target?

And how are we going to get them?” All components of a standard business plan, Singh points out, but the difference is in the clarity and execution.

With an unrelenting focus on the end goal, and teams of teams all pointing towards the bullseye, Singh then sets a schedule, prioritises, and measures the efficacy of solutions. Those that are considered to be

successful are amplified. Those that aren’t are scrapped before moving on to the next idea. It’s a systematic, quantified process that allows them to arrive at the best possible solution— A perhaps simple yet powerful concept that optimises outcomes.

“I want them to be hungry and to do things because they want to do them, not because I told them to. So, let’s mutually agree on what’s important for you and for the company, and let’s consider that the floor because there is no ceiling.

“The second thing I ask for is persistence.

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aim to fail at what I do. However, things will rarely work out the way you want them to. There will always be problems, either you don't have the right people, or you don't have the right budget, or you have a global pandemic. There are a gazillion things that could happen. You have to keep persisting and not let the challenges bog you down.”

“If you're using half your concentration to look normal, then you're only half paying attention to whatever else you're doing.” — Erik Lehnsherr 486

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“ I’ll show up a hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

UNIT 4

Cringing at the analogy, Singh references a quote from Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto, from the X-Men comics. Despite its perceived “cringyness”, however, it’s perfectly apropos to his thoughts on the importance of authenticity.

“The third thing I ask from an individual is for them to be genuine. Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits. I’ll show up a

hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me,” Singh says.

“The world is not static. It’s dynamic, and as things change, you must be able to pivot. To avoid becoming extinct, your business must evolve at pace with the changes. You must redesign your business models to meet the challenges of the day, that’s what teams of teams is for, and that’s what Unit4 PSA is for.”

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CERNER AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE CORPORATION

TRANSFORMING

THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL HEALTH IN QATAR WRITTEN BY LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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We look at how Cerner is streamlining Qatar’s healthcare with data analytics and artificial intelligence.

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hen Covid-19 arrived in Qatar, the state’s Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) was well-prepared to protect the people most at risk from the virus and keep transmission rates low. Thanks to their electronic health record (EHR) system, they could quickly identify patients with underlying health conditions that would make them more vulnerable to the disease and limit their access to health centers where they could be put at risk.

Their EHR is provided by Cerner, who mark their 30th anniversary operating in the Middle East this year. Established in seven countries across the Middle East, they cover approximately 30 million unique patients, and have been voted “Best in KLAS” for Acute Care EMR (Middle East/Africa) for the last three years.

"We had a huge advantage by having data already recorded in our databases thanks to Cerner," explains Alexandra Tarazi, Executive Director of Health Information and Communication Technology at PHCC. Virtual consultations, a medication delivery service via WhatsApp, and drivethrough testing facilities were set up “at the speed of light" she says. "What usually takes months was delivered within weeks, and that's thanks to our partners, who sat down with us to design the services and find optimal solutions."

Adrian Dey, General Manager for Cerner Qatar, explains that much of their early work had been establishing a common centralized EHR across the public health system in businesschief.eu

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ALEXANDRA TARAZI TITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY AT PHCC Tarazi has accumulated 30 years of health ICT experience having worked in Australia, USA, Asia and the Middle East. Since 2013, she holds the post of Executive Director - Health Information & Communication at Primary Health Care Corporation (PHCC) in Doha, Qatar.

ADRIAN DEY TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER FOR CERNER QATAR Dey joined Cerner in 2017 as the General Manager for Qatar, where he's responsible for Cerner's overall operations in the country. In his current role at Cerner, he's focused on building deeper levels of engagement and partnership with Cerner's clients and stakeholders.

VERONICA FREEMAN

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: HEALTH CARE EXECUTIVE AT CERNER Freeman has more than 25 years' experience of working in healthcare, including as a Registered Nurse and as navy medical personnel.

Her role at Cerner sees her establishing and maintaining nursing and clinical executive relationships, and she has assisted with the implementation of Qatar's first ambulatory solution.

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Qatar. "Since 2011 along with HMC and PHCC we've rolled out a single EHR across 80 percent of healthcare within Qatar," he says. "We've helped integrate care across 13 hospitals and 27 primary healthcare institutions. As we continue our journey together, our attention has shifted, to drive how our systems are used by the clinical community in a more optimal manner to create the best outcomes for the individual as well as those institutions."

"There's a common understanding now that individuals no longer receive

CERNER AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE CORPORATION

their health services and care from one institution within the community in which they live,” Dey says. “I think we will start to see a prevalence of consumerism, where individuals as consumers of health and care are going to be more informed to make better personal decisions based on performance, convenience and access. To facilitate that, you've really got to open things up, and Cerner is at the forefront of pushing for open standards and sharing data across all platforms, giving access to

that data to clinician, patients, researcher and developers.”

This is illustrated in part by the rise in health apps for both the provider and for the consumer, as people take greater control over their health and care. In turn, this is creating a wealth of additional data to make more informed decisions. “We are seeing additional data points - whether that's through wearables or devices at home, or social determinants of health – that are now forming a valuable factor

“ Virtual consultations, a medication delivery service via WhatsApp, and drive-through testing facilities were set up “at the speed of light” ALEXANDRA TARAZI, PHCC

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WE MAKE YOUR EHR BETTER TransformativeMed is on a mission to help hospitals, doctors, nurses and patients by supporting specialty-specific user interfaces and enhancing clinical collaboration and communication. With its suite of embedded apps, TransformativeMed makes your Cerner EHR better.

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“ The need for e-services is enormous. We are undergoing a total digital transformation of the way we deliver administrative and certain clinical services to the public” provider for early intervention which ALEXANDRA TARAZI, PHCC

within someone’s personal health record,” Dey says.

Big data analytics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence will be key to help clinicians classify all this new information.

Veronica Freeman, Health Care Executive at Cerner explains: “If we begin with the patient accessing clinical data through the patient portal to facilitate syncing with their Apple Watch and also being able to enter glucose results, the provider is able to see that information in the medical record. This brings real time data to the

ultimately leads to better outcomes.”

The data mentioned previously can be the catalyst for conversations with the patient about smoking cessation, exercising, or other forms of preventative care before the patient arrives at the health center. “This data is also available for other providers across the continuum, of care which can be analyzed it with AI or machine learning, to look at Qatar’s patient populations. For instance, do I have a cohort of patients that might be in downtown Doha with high glucose, or with more smokers, as opposed to in a different area?” This is one benefit of having a countrywide EHR and data in a single repository.

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has identified to improve the health of the Qatari population with technology. These are aligned with Qatar's National Health Strategy.

"A large area is chronic disease management from home,” Tarazi says. “We believe we can do much better using technology, mobile apps and different types of wearables to achieve better outcomes”.

"There is also a large area that sort of went to sleep during the pandemic, which is wellness; we intend to launch digital fitness services to support our wellness activities as soon as the pandemic is under control. There is a lot of work to do in smoking cessation. Young mothers can be better served better by making digital services available over mobile devices in terms of consultations and support for pregnancies and baby wellness."

During the pandemic PHCC launched a number of online services, which have had high levels of engagement from users. "Before the pandemic we had about 50,000 patients using our patient portal," Tarazi says. "This has grown to almost half a million people now. Launching e-services to the public helped us enormously to conduct dayto-day activities from home. We launched our new website - eight months ahead of time - enabling online registration, so people don't need to come to the health centers to register themselves or a new family member. They can request an appointment or change family physician and health centers remotely by submitting the right documents.”

In some respects, Covid-19 merely sped up plans they already had in place; virtual consultations were originally set to be introduced later on in 2020, and the medication delivery service was set to be rolled out through a mobile app. businesschief.eu

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Implementation of Cerner Clinical Information System at Primary Health Care Corporation in Qatar

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“ We believe we can do much better using technology, mobile apps and different types of wearables to achieve better outcomes” ALEXANDRA TARAZI, PHCC

Now that Qatar’s Covid-19 vaccination programme is in progress, there are vaccination clinics at each of PHCC’s centers, along with a mass vaccination clinic at the Qatar Exhibition and Convention Centre.

Patients are able to visit the online portal, fill out a questionnaire, book an appointment and later access their results. “For patients to log in, look at their results and print out their certificates is an enormous improvement, and obviously for health information management this is a huge advantage,” Tarazi adds.

"The need for e-services is enormous now. We are undergoing a total digital transformation of the way we deliver administrative and certain clinical services to the public. Areas like physiotherapy and dermatology, and even dentistry opened their services to virtual consultations, and there's been great acceptance. Patient engagement is key, and partners like Cerner help us to make the technology more patient-friendly and capable of connecting to our main data sources in clinical information systems."

Another major project is the upcoming FIFA World Cup which will be held in Qatar next year, and PHCC is providing services at stadiums and throughout the country. "PHCC currently manages 27 health centers, we intend to open three more in the catchment areas of those facilities and launch a number of electronic services to support the World Cup in the coming months,” Tarazi says.

"Major planning operations will be deployed across the country to support FIFA, and we're working very closely with secondary care providers Hamad Corporation to design the services. We're really looking forward to this fantastic piece of work."

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PEOPLE PUTTING

@HEART THE

OF DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

DEVOTEAM

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DEVOTEAM

Digital transformation experts Devoteam put people at the centre of the digital transformation journey, bringing business and technology together.

€760.4 mn Company revenue in 2020.

8,000

professionals dedicated to ensure clients win their digital battles.

18

countries covered by Devoteam

“T

ech for people unlocks the future" is the message and purpose of digital transformation company Devoteam.

Devoteam invites its clients into a ‘technology driven world where people come first’. They work collaboratively with organisations on designing and executing their transformation journeys, creating a bridge between technology and business success.

For over 25 years Devoteam has been helping clients in 18 countries across Europe and the Middle East take their business performance to the next level and is growing at pace as we speak.

Richard Andrews, Managing Director of Devoteam UK, said: “Devoteam operates at the intersection of people, business processes and technology. We enable clients to leverage technology, not for the sake of it, but to enable our client's people which we see as key to their success.

“Our ‘Tech for People’ ethos resonates strongly with all Devoteamers. By living and breathing this, we empower clients to imagine and realise change, unlocking their potential and helping them achieve their goal of becoming a digital organisation.

That is the core of what we do.”

Today, the expertise of Devoteam’s 8,000 professionals is helping companies to reassess the technologies at their disposal.

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Richard Andrews from Devoteam talks about digital transformation

“ We help our clients make the right business decisions to deliver the best outcomes. In any organisation, be it B2B or B2C, we're there to deliver results for our clients that will delight them” RICHARD ANDREWS

DEVOTEAM MANAGING DIRECTOR UK

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they work with have the right tools, in the right hands, that will allow their businesses to accelerate.

With many organisations still navigating a path to recovery from COVID-19, this has never been more important. For Devoteam, creatively employing technology is seen as an absolute necessity if businesses are to remain competitive. It’s role - helping clients to recognise the opportunity a post-COVID 19 world presents to leverage the power of technology, not just to survive, but to thrive.

“We believe that the way to achieve success with technology is through a creative mindset. Being agile, innovative, sharing knowledge and working cross-functionally.

In our vision, technology does not only meet challenges and solve problems, it actively make changes for the better” Andrews added.

DEVOTEAM

RICHARD ANDREWS TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR COMPANY: DEVOTEAM LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM INDUSTRY: IT AND SERVICES “Empowering and collaborative” is how Richard Andrews, Managing Director of Devoteam UK describes his leadership style at digital transformation company, Devoteam.

Andrews was appointed Managing Director in October 2020. He now leads the digital transformation of UK organisations for Devotam who operate across the EMEA and generated an income of €764 million last year.

Prior to joining Devoteam Andrews was Managing Director of Crogdene Consulting Limited where he consulted on transformation and regulatory change initiatives.

My job is to enable the success of others within Devoteam and for our clients,” said Andrews.

Andrews reflected on how COVID-19 is forcing companies to rely on technology, as they move from ‘bricks and mortar’ to remote and flexible working. “Modern cloud-based collaboration tools have proved their necessity and effectiveness in keeping businesses running and people and ideas connected,” he said.

“We’ve adapted some of our core offerings to this “new reality”, however, the core of what we do hasn't changed.

Our focus is on creating digital strategy, understanding how businesses can best leverage tech platforms, and cybersecurity.

Through the creative use of technology we are helping organisations to adapt

EXECUTIVE BIO

HELPING ORGANISATIONS OPERATE IN THE NEW REALITY

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ACCORDING TO DEVOTEAM THE FIVE POINTS TO ADDRESS THE NEW REALITY INCLUDE: 1. COST REDUCE COST AND INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY According to Devoteam smart leaders should deliver external value by focusing internally and seeking excellence in operations. This includes platform adoption and process automation that will remove repetitive and manual tasks to drive operational transformation and empower users. Result: lower costs and higher performance.

2. REVENUE INCREASE OMNICHANNEL REVENUE Creating value is an end-to-end process in which nothing should be left to chance.

‘Facts replace luck’ by uncovering user insights, testing new ideas by prototyping and leading to digital solutions. Devoteam warns the best user experience and products will underperform if they are not supported by a clear Go To Market which is an efficient sales and marketing machine.

3. PEOPLE DEPLOY THE EXTENDED WORKPLACE Enable excellence with a reliable and scalable workplace for your people, recommends Devoteam. Strengthen the workplace with powerful collaborative tools, e-training platforms and the right cultural shift to unleash your people’s potential.

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4. RESILIENCE ENSURE 360° ENTERPRISE RESILIENCE Devoteam says that to operate in the new reality, a business needs to spread enterprise-wide resilience from automation of business continuity and cybersecurity.

5. ADAPTABILITY RE-SHAPE BUSINESS MODELS FOR AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE Transforming the core of the organisation to become a true ‘digital corporation’, requires deep changes: operational, technological but also cultural.

DEVOTEAM

Devoteam at a glance

and accelerate digital journeys, while empowering the people within them to work collaboratively with the agility to drive innovation and deliver better change.”

Devoteam has created five “new reality” priorities that every firm should consider accelerating now. “We looked at our offerings and identified priorities for business continuity and more rapid adoption of digital tech and ways of working. Despite the challenges of the last year, organisations that adopt these priorities will come out stronger, more powerful and with a more people centric business model. This delivers resilience and deeper engagement with customers, staff and partners.” he said.

Looking ahead to how the pandemic will shape working practices, Andrews predicts a more ‘phygital world’ - a hybrid mix of physical and digital.

“People want positive experiences regardless of channel. All organisations must consider how they deliver seamless and remarkable omnichannel experiences in both the physical and digital worlds”.

DEFINING BUSINESS PRIORITIES Andrews highlighted some of the areas that Devoteam believes should be high on the agenda for organisations looking to build in resilience and improve their ability to gain actionable insights.

“One of the key things we're prompting clients to think about is the increased importance of cybersecurity, particularly as people are not in their offices with the comfort of closed networks. We're now accessing information through multiple devices in multiple locations, across many different types of networks”.

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6 Key Offers Digital Business and Products Data Driven Intelligence Distributed Cloud Business Automation Trust and Cybersecurity Sustainability Enabled by Digital

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Paris HQ, Atrium Levallois

DEVOTEAM

“ Adopting innovative technologies is key to empowering your people; giving them cloud-based platforms so you can operate anytime, anywhere with the appropriate security and resilience. This really does support an organisation’s digital journey”

DEVOTEAMS’ 6 STRATEGIC DOMAINS: Digital Business and Products Making organisations be better, faster, stronger by leveraging cloudbased platforms. Devoteam assists in setting up multidisciplinary teams to shape innovative business models and create outstanding digital products enabled by tech.

Data Driven Intelligence Supporting clients in mastering the key competencies to scale insights-driven principles across the business, enabling them to turn data into actions that will give them competitive advantage and drive tangible business impact.

RICHARD ANDREWS

Distributed Cloud A full spectrum of cloud services designed to speed up innovation, drive business agility, streamline operations, and optimize costs.

employees, and their customers the ability to transact with them without hindering the user experience.”

Andrews continued: “Another aspect we’re evangelical about is how we can support organisations to access and harness data.

Businesses need data that can tell them how they’re engaging with customers and business financial performance, delivered in as close to real time as possible. Things have been changing so quickly over the last year, it's never been more important to be looking at accurate information, rather than data that might already be three or four weeks old. This way organisations can be sure that they are making the right decisions at the right moment, ensuring the best possible outcomes”

Business Automation Building end-to-end intelligent automation ecosystems driven by platforms that improve processes, connect people and make the system smarter.

DEVOTEAM MANAGING DIRECTOR UK

Trust and Cybersecurity.

Helping organisations understand their ‘threat’ landscape and manage risks by capitalizing on the innovative solutions of technology partners.

Sustainability Enabled by Digital Support organisation in becoming responsible digital companies ready to turn Sustainable Development challenges into opportunities. businesschief.eu

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1995

Devoteam was co-founded

by Stanislas de Bentzmann and Godefroy de Bentzmann

Digitize your workflows, so you can do what you love ServiceNow delivers digital workflows that create great experiences and unlock productivity for employees and the enterprise.

The Now Platform is the intelligent and intuitive cloud platform for work.

Meet The Now Platform

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DEVOTEAM

CREATING AND REALISING THE THE CLIENTS’ VISION

What Devoteam offers may be comprehensive, but at the core of its approach is the desire to understand where clients currently are on their digital transformation journeys, and working with them collaboratively to create a vision that best supports their business objectives and ambitions.

Andrews explained: “We focus on helping clients define their digital vision, strategy and roadmap, which Devoteam supports with insights and business cases. We create a sustainable plan that's achievable for our client.”

“An intrinsic part of the strategy is to see how you can make organisations more agile and services oriented. This change allows an organisation to operate effectively, without being shackled by legacy infrastructure.

“Another important element is to create a truly digital workplace by looking at how

“ Our ‘Tech for People’ ethos resonates strongly with all Devoteamers. By living and breathing this, we empower clients to imagine and realise change, unlocking their potential and helping them achieve their goal” RICHARD ANDREWS

DEVOTEAM MANAGING DIRECTOR UK

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you leverage technology and tools in order to empower your employees to be better at what they're doing.

“Adopting innovative technologies is key to empowering your people; giving them cloud-based platforms so you can operate anytime, anywhere with the appropriate security and resilience. This really does support an organisation’s digital journey.

“Digital platforms allow you to create really great and engaging experiences, so your employees are fully engaged with your goals and vision, and you can bring customers closer to your business through the amazing experiences you create for them.”

STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIPS THAT DRIVE INNOVATION

Devoteam works with five world leading tech partners; Servicenow, Google (for whom it is a Premier Cloud Partner), Salesforce and Microsoft and AWS. All are best-in-class for Cloud and represent the market game changers for digital transformation.

“By combining Devoteam’s creativity and data insights with world leading and innovative technology platforms and cloud solutions, we enable our customers to transform their businesses and unlock the future”. Andrews said.

“We live in ecosystems; no one can do everything or go it alone. It’s the same for organisations aiming to go digital. Mutually beneficial partnerships and collaboration are critical to achieving success.”

Devoteam was recently recognised as the 2021 ServiceNow EMEA IT Workflow Partner of the Year, having been EMEA Elite Partner of the Year in 2020.

“ServiceNow is a great example of an innovative technology partner that we know can really deliver great value to our clients.

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“We believe that the way to achieve success with technology is through a creative mindset. Being agile, innovative, sharing knowledge and working cross-functionally” RICHARD ANDREWS

DEVOTEAM MANAGING DIRECTOR UK businesschief.eu

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2,000 certifications in 2020

300

Junior consultants entered into the Devoteam 'Knowledge Up Program' in 2020

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We work collaboratively to implement that technology and provide greater operational efficiency, as well as real time data and insights which aid decision-making. It's a very powerful platform and one which is evolving all the time,” he said.

While concentrating on the technologies and partners that can add real value right now for clients, Devteam is always future facing. Looking to the future Andrews said: “We are looking increasingly at how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other cutting edge technologies can drive better processing activity, better execution and also better insights to aid decision-making at scale”.

FOCUSED ON DELIVERING THE BEST POSSIBLE OUTCOMES

“We help our clients make the right business decisions to deliver the best outcomes. In any organisation, be it B2B or B2C, we're there to deliver results for our clients that will delight them.”

Andrews continued “It doesn't matter whether the digital platform is connecting you with your own employees or with your end consumers, the focus should always be on how you can make that interaction as pleasurable and profitable an experience as possible.”

“The question becomes how does the client need to adjust their business processes to empower their people to be more effective in what they're doing?

So it goes way beyond technology, it's about understanding how our clients need to reshape themselves to become fully digital organisations, and how we ensure their people are at the heart of that change for the better.”

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ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

Building brighter futures through insurance WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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Peter Huber, CEO, details Zurich International’s digital transformation journey and explains why maintaining a strong customer commitment today is crucial

Peter Huber, CEO, Zurich International

E

stablished in 1982 as a registered arm of industry heavyweight Zurich Insurance Group, Zurich International has since developed into a bona fide success in its own right. Based on the Isle of Man, with branches also located in Argentina, Bahrain, Hong Kong, Qatar, Singapore, the UAE and a life insurance entity in Luxembourg, the company currently manages approximately US$13bn worth of assets and serves over 600,000 corporate and retail customers worldwide.

“I joined Zurich International because it's very multifaceted, very international, and there's a lot of opportunities for growth,” explains Peter Huber, CEO. “I've been with Zurich for a long time, and so I've performed many different roles across multiple locations.” Indeed, Huber’s journey began in 2013 as CEO of Zurich Life Singapore, then running the Zurich business as President Director in Indonesia and subsequently taking on his current role in 2017. Prior to this, he built an impressive résumé of executive experience at several premier global insurance institutions.

That Zurich has managed to create a reputation for its diverse portfolio is hardly surprising: now approaching its 150th year, the company has committed itself to reinvention and adaptation throughout all that time, which Huber claims it can afford to do because of strong capitalisation and a customer-centric focus. “We do what we say on the tin and deliver what we promise,” he states. “The insurance industry generally has always been more introverted rather than extroverted, but Zurich has dedicated a lot of its investment businesschief.eu

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Peter Huber from Zurich International talks about Insurance Technology

towards consumer engagement, always focused on delivering against evolving customer needs.” To this end, the company has also been pursuing maximum transparency by publishing annual life and disability claims payment percentages, which Huber notes have consistently remained >90% for years.

“ I joined Zurich International because it's very multifaceted, very international, and there's a lot of opportunities for growth” PETER HUBER

CEO, ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

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It has been Zurich’s adherence to portfolio diversity and its culture of support for both customers and employees alike that has seen it weather the COVID-19 pandemic with aplomb. Far from being a time of disruption, the last 12 months have served to reinforce the values that Zurich holds true. These same qualities, Huber claims, will continue to guide it throughout 2021 and beyond, “We’re obviously still living through a health crisis; getting through that will be our first priority, but the second will be to continue our efforts of being a strong partner to customers, employees and distributors alike.”

Technology will have a decisive role to play in Zurich’s attainment of this goal. In line with its vision for greater customer engagement with its products and services, the company has developed its Global Business Platforms (GBP) unit. This unit, launched in 2020, aims provide a fully digital and streamlined consumer experience, that

ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

PETER HUBER TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: INSURANCE LOCATION: ISLE OF MAN Peter Huber is the Chief Executive Officer for Zurich International since 2017.

He joined Zurich in 2013 as Chief Executive Officer for Zurich Global Life Singapore. From 2015 he was President Director and CEO of Zurich Topas Life (Indonesia). Peter has over 20 years of industry experience, and joined Zurich from Swiss Reinsurance Company Ltd, where he was Managing Director in the Reinsurance division.

Prior to that, he was Regional General Manager, Life & Health for Allianz SE Asia-Pacific.

Peter has a Masters degree in commercial law from the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland and in Finance from London Business School. In 2005, he attended the Advanced Management Program at the Harvard Business School.

EXECUTIVE BIO

will deliver new propositions and services through complementary partnerships and channels. At Zurich International, the digital transformation started as a response to fast changing customer expectations as well as regulatory change, mainly in the Middle East.

“Crucially, we didn't want to just digitise paper processes, that would be to miss the point entirely. Instead, Zurich looked at processes end-to-end and asked, ‘What is it we’re trying to achieve?’ The answer was an experience that delivers against customers’ needs, is intuitive and engaging.” Inadvertently hastened by the pandemic, which saw the insurance industry embrace digital to maintain continuity, this served to boost Zurich’s transformation of its global business and meet the fast-changing needs of its customers.

With regards to its efficacy, Huber reports that Zurich International’s focus on digitisation has proven “very fruitful” so far.

“We redesigned the end-to-end process for getting a product quote, how it’s priced, underwritten, and ultimately even the way customers can pay. The results speak for themselves: a process that previously might have taken 20 days from enquiry to receipt of policy has been shortened to potentially three days. “Simple solutions can be enacted instantaneously,” Huber continues, “and our transaction net promoter score, which measures whether our customers would recommend Zurich to their friends and family, has seen a big increase.”

Striking the right partnerships that can enable this and future aspects of Zurich’s transformation is paramount, “the future is about being able to connect different partners and solutions within your tech stack.” Cloud, Huber says, cannot be overestimated in terms of its importance to agile and flexible IT infrastructure. Other tools such as 360F’s ‘ProVestment’ use

ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

WHAT’S NEXT FOR UNDERWRITING By utilizing AURA NEXT’s digital decision management tool, you can generate faster underwriting decisions – powered by the life insurance experts at RGA.

INVEST IN TOMORROW WITH THE MOST ADVANCED SYSTEM IN THE MARKET TODAY.

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April 2021

LEARN MORE

ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

GLOBAL BUSINESS PLATFORMS AND LIVEWELL

“ Today, insurance needs to be present wherever customers want it” PETER HUBER

artificial intelligence (AI) to remove human bias from data by processing millions of scenarios in mere seconds and then advising a holistic solution based on the customer’s investment needs. Notably, one of the company’s key partners during this time has been Reinsurance Group of America, Incorporated (RGA). By using RGA’s automated underwriting system, AURA NEXT, Zurich has been streamlining its customer experience even further.

“During our medical underwriting, for

DID YOU KNOW...

CEO, ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

The Global Business Platforms unit consists of six entities, including Zurich International itself. One that Zurich International works particularly closely with is LiveWell. Launched in 2020, LiveWell is a global unit that offers mobile health solutions to inspire positive change and provide impactful services that encourage customers to improve their mental, social, financial and physical health.

Helene Westerlind, CEO of LiveWell, said, “Our objective is to provide personalised, evidence-led and innovative services and solutions to empower each individual to take charge of their own health and wellbeing, leveraging our digital capabilities to offer them easy access.”

Find out more at LiveWell’s website: livewell.zurich.com

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“ Zurich has dedicated a lot of its investment towards consumer engagement, always focused on delivering against evolving customer needs” PETER HUBER

CEO, ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

example, we'll ask some very personal but relevant questions and, depending on how the customer answers, the tool is dynamically

built to add more or fewer questions. It’s a very smooth, interactive process and customer uncertainty has really diminished. This type of innovative, collaborative approach is why Zurich loves working with RGA so much.”

Fundamentally, Huber makes it clear that Zurich understands a vital truth about digital transformation: it is only by fusing technology with a culture that businesses can achieve optimal outcomes. Moving towards a fully digital way of thinking has also transformed Zurich’s methodology for product design; whereas before it employed waterfall project management, the company now opts for faster, sprint-driven agile delivery using ‘pods’. “Pods deliver two-week sprints, and in working in this way we’ve become ruthless at prioritising things,” he explains. Essentially, if a pod doesn't deliver its target within the time

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ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

“ We redesigned the end-to-end process for getting a product quote, how it’s priced, underwritten, and ultimately even the way customers can pay” PETER HUBER

CEO, ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

AMAZON PAYMENT SERVICES

CEO STATEMENT

“Zurich International fully appreciates that when ensuring a slick end-to-end process for our customers, a robust payment gateway integrated within our environment is vital. Amazon Payment Services (APS) have proven to be a strong partner and provided us with an effective solution that performs well in terms of security, integration and cost effectiveness. Using APS, our customers can now digitally pay insurance premiums across all our products, in local currencies, without incurring currency conversion fees on their cards.

Payment can be made on any day of the month they choose with the highest levels of customer data security.”

Walter Jopp, CEO of Zurich in the Middle East, added: “Partnering with Amazon Payment Services has enabled us to provide a seamless digital payment experience for our customers that offers more payment flexibility while improving data security and optimizing operating costs, ultimately benefitting the end customers. Zurich’s instant life and critical illness insurance solutions, YourLife and YourCare, can now be purchased online in a matter of minutes with absolute peace of mind.”

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ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

1982

Founded in

700+

Number of employees

$100m+

Consistently delivered Business Operating Profit over USD100m over the last 3 years.

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period it will be ‘retired’ and Zurich’s focus will shift to another priority. This allows the company to maintain momentum and innovate on a larger scale within a ‘learn-fast’ environment. “Everyone in the insurance industry has been very shy at experimenting. I always remind people, ‘We don't fly planes; we don't do open heart surgery. We don't need perfection, because if something goes wrong it can be fixed easily. Funnily enough, not many things go wrong at all; I guess it’s in Zurich’s DNA to go for getting it right the first time.”

What Huber is alluding to is a general change in consumer attitudes, which are now far more tolerant of ongoing

ZURICH INTERNATIONAL

DID YOU KNOW...

ZURICH: SERIOUS ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY Although COVID-19 is still dominating headlines around the world, Zurich is aware that the greatest threat (and insurance’s biggest challenge) remains climate change.

Natural disasters caused $76bn worth of insurance losses in 2020, a 40% increase on 2019’s figure. In response to the increasing incidence of weather-related catastrophes, as well as their dedication to build a brighter future, the company has developed a robust policy on sustainability.

“Finding a sustainable business model is so important and we all don't have much time. Zurich is really leading the way and I think it's great to work for a company that has made such a strong commitment to sustainability. The plan itself comes from our Group CEO Mario Greco, who has been very vocal about this for a number of years already. Everyone in our organisation is keen to support it.”

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updates and improvement, such as the Android / App Store experience. Bug fixes and improvements are pushed to the users on a daily basis and the acceptance of these has become normal. Gaining a better understanding of customers has allowed Zurich to innovate in a new way, and this is an advantage it intends to use continually. The implications of COVID-19 on service have also reshaped the company’s approach, “We retrained some of our staff to become virtual agents so that we could offer our customers an additional access point to get in touch with us.” Taking his cue from the convenience displayed by e-commerce innovators, Huber’s philosophy is that Zurich’s customers should be able to communicate through any means they see fit, “It's not up to me to tell them, that's the old way of thinking. Today, insurance needs to be present wherever customers want it.”

Zurich’s enduring legacy throughout its long history has been to improve the lives of its policyholders and deliver brighter futures for all. Although the method for achieving that ideal may change through the decades, its commitment to positive customer outcomes remains undiminished. It is ultimately Zurich’s culture that Huber identifies as its key

“ Everyone in our organisation is keen to support [sustainability]”

competitive differentiator, an advantage that it carefully directs towards its employees, too. “Throughout the pandemic, Zurich didn't furlough or dismiss people. We paid them as usual, including bonuses, and stood by them. We will continue to do so,” he proudly states. As the ‘new normal’ becomes ever clearer, Zurich International stands ready to use its trademark mix of technology, partnerships and culture to bring customers the cover they desire.

PETER HUBER

CEO, ZURICH INTERNATIONAL businesschief.eu

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SAP SEE

GUIDING GOVERNMENTS THROUGH DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SAP takes a leading role in guiding the public and private sectors through digital transformation in the burgeoning South East Europe region WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

D

igital transformation in the private sector has taken on new urgency.

Amid COVID-19, businesses were quick to adopt new technology and automation systems to forge a path through economic downturn and place themselves on strong footing to compete in the postpandemic landscape - one that will look very different compared to just 18 months ago.

But in South East Europe, commercial organisations are now charting a near vertical trajectory in adapting to digital processes.

In the words of Josephin Galla, Managing Director for SAP South East Europe, the region has “grown up”. The notion that it is the “little brother or sister” in Europe is not only outdated, but misinformed. “We are very strong, particularly in the public sector and consumer products industries,” she says. “My heart is with South East Europe because I can see the dedication and open mindset of the people here. Serbia is set to be labelled the next Silicon Valley anytime now.”

SAP SEE has been guiding businesses through rapid change for many years.

Galla says “the world is actually opening businesschief.eu

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Josephin Galla and Predrag Cirkovic discuss SAP SEE's strategies and development

“We have a constant learning mindset about how do we react faster to what the market wants”

up because of the shut perspective. “South down,” and businesses East Europe is a very across the territory have diversified region,” he responded. This means explains. “In the West a more global approach Balkans, it is clear to procurement, companies are trying to rather than previously adopt to a new reality when domestic or by making efforts to local efforts were the digitize their businesses, priority. “We also see work remotely as much the human element as possible, and going JOSEPHIN GALLA of the entire business online with their sales MANAGING DIRECTOR, value chain has been and marketing. In this SOUTH EAST EUROPE given more weight, so it market environment, becomes more relevant to have an actual we act as an “economic enabler”, helping employee experience. We talk a lot about the commercial sector to go digital and to customer experience, and yes, that will go online through our products and our remain important. But the impact of this platforms for back office, online sales, web pandemic is so big that employers have to commerce and online marketing.” take responsibility, and therefore employee The fulcrum of this private sector shift experience has become equally important.” across the territory is the public sector, and it Predrag Cirkovic, Managing Director, SAP is here that SAP SEE is focusing its expertise.

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SAP SEE

to help commercial companies adapt and grow while facing, let’s call it, a new reality with new challenges,” Cirkovic says. “The public sector is a key business focus for our investment in the West Balkans, and we have become a trusted advisor.”

Twelve months since the coronavirus outbreak was declared a pandemic, however, it is clear that governments are lagging behind. COVID-19 exposed weaknesses in their fundamental operations.

Fiscal consolidation, tax administration modernisation, and citizen engagement are all essential functions that are underdeveloped compared to their counterparts in Western Europe, Cirkovic points out: “The government sector is still using old systems which, though still functional, are sometimes 15 to 20 years old. But this is the opportunity.”

Diversity in the region throws up additional issues. Some countries such as Bulgaria, which “is all over digital transformation and smart cities,” are gaining pace. “We have very close cooperation with the municipalities,” Galla says. “Just to mention one example, after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sofia Municipality and six other municipalities in the country introduced SAP SEE’s COVID-19 Pre-Screen & Routing Qualtrics Questionnaire. This is an intelligent online information platform for the citizens which gathers up-to-date information on

SAP partner companies globally

400,000+ SAP customers in more than 180 countries

TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR COMPANY: SAP AREA: SOUTH EAST EUROPE

EXECUTIVE BIO

21,000+

JOSEPHIN GALLA

Josephin Galla assumed the role of Managing Director of SAP South East Europe in July 2020, covering Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, and the seven countries of the West Balkans. Based in Bucharest, Romania she is responsible for driving SAP’s strategy, operations, revenue, and customer success in 12 countries focusing on People, Business and Brand across the region. Born in Berlin, her professional career has taken her from SAP Germany to SAP China, SAP Asia in various roles from sales executive to industry expert, with her previous role being the Managing Director of SAP Vietnam with a proven track record of business growth. She is a wellrespected speaker at international conferences bringing more than a decade of experience in technology, public services and sales leadership to the table. Her passion is to promote talents and education – bringing together industry, academia and governments around the globe.

Josephin has been with SAP since February 2008, heading for 13 years.

She holds a Diploma in International Economics from the International Business School Berlin and a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the University of Sunderland.

SAP SEE

the coronavirus and current developments, identifies high-risk groups with filter questions, and automatically redirects them to the appropriate channels. The system also sends summary reports to the municipalities, providing feedback on the trends of the disease, while helping authorities understand what information needs to be messaged more strongly to the public. I am also proud to mention that in all 264 municipalities of Bulgaria, our flagship ERP solution SAP S/4HANA will be the core digital platform to drive digital transformation.”

Other nations are a little slower to adapt, Galla says. Romania and Ukraine, which have also had to deal with other legacy infrastructure problems, have been slower to drive their digital initiatives and allocate funding, for instance. But this is part and

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“Not every organisation can do a big bang, wall-to-wall project; it's all about change management” JOSEPHIN GALLA

MANAGING DIRECTOR, SOUTH EAST EUROPE

PREDRAG CIRKOVIC TITLE: MANAGING DIRECTOR COMPANY: SAP WEST BALKANS INDUSTRY: ICT

EXECUTIVE BIO

parcel of working within the public sector.

Galla points to the many issues families have faced in simply connecting their children with their teachers. SAP cooperated with the Romanian Ministry of Education and Research last year, supporting remote learning of students through specific modern applications.

“Not every organisation can do a big bang, wall-to-wall project; it's all about change management, and we deliver all of the components to a successful project and are always there to stay,” Galla says. “With SAP’s experience, with more than 47 years in the market dealing with key players, we bring best practices to the table, as much as we bring technology, which can then help governments, private organisations, even healthcare organisations envision, ‘This is where I am now, and this is where I want to be’. We put a lot of effort into not only selling the products, but helping to develop roadmaps.

“Actually, this is exactly what our new cloud offering, the recently announced RISE with SAP, is focusing on,” Galla continues. “To deliver business transformation as a service, offering customers at all stages of digital transformation a completely new way to redesign processes to increase their resilience, operational efficiency, and their agility, and to enable them to innovate faster and more frequently.”

Predrag Cirkovic is an experi­ enced ICT and management professional, with more than 20 years’ industry experience. He joined SAP in 2013, initially as Senior Services Account Manager, a role he held for five years, before his promotion to Managing Director of SAP West Balkans.

In his current role, Cirkovic oversees operations throughout the region, covering the following countries: Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Moldova and Macedonia. Prior to SAP, he served for seven years as Executive ICT Director of a regional system integration company called Comrade Solutions and Services, and has held roles at other major companies, including Coca Cola.

SAP SEE

“In the West Balkans, exactly as Josephin says, we are using SAP best practices to create roadmaps towards a potential future, and the most efficient route,” Cirkovic adds. “We are one of the rare companies providing everything for the back office, and the new way of doing business online through our customer experience portfolio, web commerce, customer experience measurement software and so on. So we are bringing technology, we are bringing best practices, all the while remaining very close to all these projects. Whether SAP or a partner is implementing the solution doesn’t matter; we are always present to offer quality assurance

“The public sector is a key business focus for our investment in the West Balkans, and we have become a trusted advisor” PREDRAG CIRKOVIC

MANAGING DIRECTOR, SAP WEST BALKANS

and be that trusted advisor for our customers.”

Infrastructure reform, which underpins the entire process of government digitalisation, is well underway and has already yielded positive, proactive steps towards more pressing concerns. “We are at the beginning of the project for tax modernisation based on a new back-office fiscalization platform which aims to simplify the process for citizens and business,” Cirkovic says. “We also have citizen engagement initiatives, which essentially bring greater transparency and ease the process for citizens to approach and access city services.”

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200 m+

Subscribers in the SAP cloud user base

100+

Innovation and development centers

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“We are always present to offer quality assurance and be the trusted advisor for our customers” PREDRAG CIRKOVIC

MANAGING DIRECTOR, SAP WEST BALKANS

As governments gain pace under on mental health, and I think this is a really the stewardship of SAP SEE, Galla great thing. The paradigm shift that we're concedes that the “next few years will seeing right now will yield results in new be tough,” though now things are rolling, fields that we haven't even thought of yet.” governments can take swifter action As governments and businesses adapt to become leaner. “Similar to private in the region, Galla says that internally SAP corporations, they want to understands it also needs increase revenue, decrease to evolve. “We have a SAP CUSTOMERS costs, and increase constant learning mindset INCLUDE: cashflow, because this about how we must react cashflow enables them to 92 % of the Forbes Global faster to what the market reinvest into government.

2000 companies wants. How we provide There will be education 98% of the 100 most the right solutions to the and innovation, and we valued brands business challenges that foresee the trend to 97% of the greenest our customers have. The optimise business and companies (Newsweek) transition to a more agile, government processes SAP customers distribute millennial-style company continuing.”

78% of the world’s food is something we are all Already this has had a and 82% of the world’s constantly developing. positive impact on how medical devices "I'm very happy that governments consider 77% of the world’s I have leaders that are and interact with transaction revenue driving that. Predrag and citizens beyond the cold touches an SAP system all the other leaders of the mechanics of economic respective countries are governance, business relationships and working in areas that are highly innovative handling the strains in healthcare caused and forward-thinking. I love that because by the ever-present threat of COVID-19. that means we are in the right mindset “There has actually been quite a shift in and always one step ahead to boost our the empathetic part of governing,” Galla customers’ success. The pace of change says. “We’re seeing governments reaching in the market is picking up speed.” out to their citizens and saying, “It’s okay not to be okay’. They’re placing emphasis businesschief.eu

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CLARIANT

SUSTAINABILITY and TRANSPARENCY in PROCUREMENT WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Markus Mirgeler Head of Global Procurement, Clariant

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Markus Mirgeler, Head of Group Procurement at Clariant, on the company’s drive for sustainable and transparent procurement operations in the chemicals industry “ Typically, at least 60% of your greenhouse gas emissions on record are coming from your supply chains in the form of raw materials and transportation” MARKUS MIRGELER

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, CLARIANT

W

ith Clariant being a Europe-based player in the chemicals industry, Markus Mirgeler, Head of Group Procurement explains that “the challenge for anybody in Europe is greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction, and this is spreading globally.” Interestingly, Mirgeler reflects that most CO2 emissions are coming from the suppliers in the chemicals industry. “A chemical company’s operation makes up around 30% of its greenhouse gas emissions, whilst the main share comes from the upstream and downstream value chain activities. For Clariant, a significant share is generated from the raw materials procured.”

With most organisations having a 10 year timeframe, which outlines how much they want to have reduced their GHG emissions by 2030, 2035 or 2040, Mirgeler explains that “at Clariant we have defined science-based climate targets that we want to achieve by 2030. But in the chemicals industry this requires technology changes, which we know can take four to five years, so if you don’t have an idea by 2024 of what you want to do, there is no way you can achieve the target in 2030.” Whilst the timeline seems long, by the time each element comes together there are only a few years left to achieve the desired targets.

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MARKUS MIRGELER TITLE: HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT COMPANY: CLARIANT INDUSTRY: CHEMICALS LOCATION: BASEL, SWITZERLAND

EXECUTIVE BIO

Born in Cologne, Germany and now holding more than 30 years of experience in the chemicals industry, Markus Mirgeler has been the Head of Group Procurement at Clariant since 2016, a big shift from the commercial side that he operated in prior to the procurement side he operates in now.

Mirgeler believes that although the Chemical industry is mature, it offers substantial opportunities to create valuable change through procurement, specifically in the areas of sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction, geopolitical challenges, automation and robotics, supplier collaborations and supply chain resilience.

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“ A chemical company’s operation makes up around 30% of its greenhouse gas emissions, whilst the main share comes from the upstream and downstream value chain activities” MARKUS MIRGELER

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, CLARIANT

CLARIANT

Specifically looking at indirect GHG emissions from suppliers, Mirgeler discusses the importance of directly engaging with them, “ask ‘what can I do for you?’ in order to reduce or change their technologies to reduce GHG emissions.”

Other ways the chemical industry can reduce its GHG emissions include taking a more local approach for supply to reduce transportation. “This is a big trend, and you have to create a balance. A lot of the raw materials that we are buying originates from China, India, Indonesia, and Vietnam. You have to look back and say, ‘maybe I need to buy some things more locally in the US for our plants there, or in Europe for those in that region’. Obviously, this may result in more expense but, on the counterbalance,

you get a better CO2 footprint and you’re doing something good for the environment.”

With this thought, Mirgeler reflects on the challenges of adopting sustainable methods depending on the types of consumer being sold to. “If you look at companies in the consumer products areas, they committed that a large portion of their cleaning products will be free of fossil oil derivatives by the year 2025. That's not far out in time.

That's a real challenge. So now of course, you can imagine they ask suppliers ‘you're supplying me these raw materials for X, can you make them bio based or can you get this out of recycled products.’ Given the timeframe, this is of course also an opportunity for suppliers to change the way they looked at their portfolio in history. businesschief.eu

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Energy Management & Sustainability Solutions to Optimize Business Performance NUS Consulting Group is a global energy management and sustainability consultancy.

We provide data-driven insight and solutions to optimize financial, operational and environmental performance.

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Markus Mirgeler from Clariant International talks about sustainability

“ Our focus is where we can have technologies help us to make smarter decisions on when we buy, where we buy and how we buy” MARKUS MIRGELER

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, CLARIANT

Giving an example of what he means, Mirgeler says “if you look into catalysts, what is the raw material of a catalyst that we're supplying to an industrial application.

More and more questions arise ‘where are the materials coming from? What are the mining operations? What about child labour?’

Industry to industry we are seeing a much higher level of responsibility and curiosity around transparency of value chains. For the chemical industry this is quite new.”

When it comes to procurement transparency at Clariant, Mirgeler reflects that the company has been using automation for many years, “It wasn't probably called digital at the time, but we have a really seamless process. We have a fully automated rate of 80% of our purchase orders from demand to placing it at the supplier.” In addition to this automation, Mirgeler also explains that Clariant has a negotiations robot available.

However, he adds that the big question is “how much do you want to automate?

Clariant has 25,000 suppliers, and a lot of orders in the chemicals industry are repetitive.

Without automation, we wouldn’t be able to manage.” businesschief.eu

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1995 Year founded

10,000+ Number of employees

3.860bn 2020 Revenue

This is not what saves Clariant costs in procurement. Mirgeler explains that to drive cost saving “we need to look at artificial intelligence (AI) or digital tools to reduce spend. Our focus is where we can have technologies help us to make smarter decisions on when we buy, where we buy and how we buy.” An example of how Clariant is harnessing AI in this way is for forecasting. “We have launched a raw material forecasting tool for ourselves, which essentially simulates raw materials prices applying artificial intelligence, so we can make smarter decisions on when is the best time to buy certain raw materials, it's very specific, but very powerful. We 548

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call this end to end forecasting, this is actually quite interesting, and we actually have a collaboration with our developing company for further improvements.”

When asked about the importance of cost savings, Mirgeler states, “of course, savings are essential in business. So we have targets, we have them broken down into each category and buyer, identifying seven areas where we are active and where we are providing actual value, whether this is employee engagement and development of people or if it's looking at the inventories that we can control, the cash that we can generate, or moving noncore activities to suppliers.”

CLARIANT

“We have a fully automated rate of 80% of our purchase orders from demand to placing it at the supplier” MARKUS MIRGELER

HEAD OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, CLARIANT

Circling back to GHG emissions management, Mirgeler emphasises this as a challenge for the industry, “currently we’re engaging into solar based power generation, and contracts with wind parks to get renewable energies into our sites.

Clariant’s made quite some progress to increase the supply of renewable energy in recent years.” A particular interest for Mirgeler when it comes to sustainability is transparency, “supply chain transparency is good for the industry,” says Mirgeler, “but one of the secrets of making chemicals is what ingredients you have, and you don’t want anyone else to know this. This then presents supply

chain transparency challenges when 60% of what you are buying is from the chemicals industry,” explains Mirgeler.

“In the chemical industry we all make chemicals. If I know which chemical you are producing and how you produce it, I can probably make it very quickly myself.”

Using the food industry as an analogy, Mirgeler continues, “Whoever buys food doesn't raise pigs. So, you can talk about where you get your pigs from or where you get your beef from. But in the chemicals industry, we're all doing the same kind of things and there is a needed trust level between supplier and customer to engage into a higher level of transparency.

Whilst these challenges are prominent in the industry, Mirgeler concludes that “if you talk about challenges for Clariant Procurement, firstly it is to make our business more profitable, then it is now to engage with suppliers to reduce GHG, and to enable differentiation for our company via supply chain transparency and last but not least it is holistic supplier risk management and the values beyond savings we can provide to our company.

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AN INTERNATIONAL APPROACH TO IT WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

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PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

SAVE THE CHILDREN

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Gerry Waterfield, Director of IT Global Operations at Save the Children International, discusses the charity’s IT evolution and its response to COVID-19

G

erry Waterfield is Director of various systems and people would literally IT Global Operations at Save create a ticketing system for each system. the Children International, the Now what we've done is brought them into world’s leading charity focused on one tool, providing a much improved and children. In his role, Waterfield ensures the easier experience.” charity’s vital work is supported by robust A big focus has been on moving entirely to the cloud, which Waterfield accomplished IT systems. Having had a long career in the private sector, Waterfield brought a fresh in November. “We're now cloud-first set of eyes to Save the Children when he and that's been objective for some time joined five years ago. “It's - four or five years. honestly the best thing That allows us a work anywhere approach.” In I've done,” he enthuses.

“It’s almost like all my some of the areas and other experiences were situations in which the done to bring me to a charity must work, for greater purpose. We deal instance responding to with 30 to 50 million an earthquake, that’s children a year, literally particularly important. saving lives, providing “That’s why we have all our global, core services, education, all those kinds of things.” identity and network GERRY WATERFIELD DIRECTOR OF IT GLOBAL OPERATIONS, As a global infrastructure in the SAVE THE CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL organisation, creating a cloud. We still have unified IT infrastructure some infrastructure left in some countries and that's the next part of requires the consideration of many moving pieces. “Save The Children International our journey - removing the localised stuff.” was born about seven years ago from 24 The organisation must also be ready to members that were created a hundred years react 24/7, but the previous method of ago. When I joined, it was best described as achieving this had inherent problems. “One of the challenges we had were single points effectively a multi-billion dollar startup. The challenge we faced was that we had of failure all over the world,” says Waterfield.

“We literally had one person responsible for all these different solutions for the same thing, globally.” One such example is the system A, serving 17,000 people, two people recently accomplished relaunch of its in Africa for system B. If one of them went on service desk. “Five years ago, there were holiday or fell sick, everyone sweated for two

“WE'RE NOW CLOUD-FIRST AND THAT'S BEEN OBJECTIVE FOR SOME TIME”

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1919 Year founded

$2bn

Save The Children's approximate revenue

GERRY WATERFIELD

17,000

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF IT GLOBAL OPERATIONS

Number of employees

COMPANY: SAVE THE CHILDREN INDUSTRY: CHARITY LOCATION: LONDON

EXECUTIVE BIO

weeks. We had to fix that.” The answer was a follow-the-sun model. “The infrastructure's all in the UK serving globally, but we've got people in Asia, people in Africa, Europe, Latin America who we started cross training to fill those gaps.”

In line with that, the organisation has set up tech hubs globally. “In my team, there’s only one or two people left in the UK, with about 200 people around the world in different countries. It’s a federated model with about 85 in my wider team and the rest run by country offices.” We already had a technology Hub in Nairobi and opened a second in Q4 2019 in the Philippines to better serve our Asia users. “We had been operating for about two months when the Philippines Government shut the country down due to Coronavirus, and they’ve been working from home ever since. So we had quite a difficult start, but the business and the members are recognising the value of doing it. And then we are also trying to expand our capability in Latin America. It’s one of our smaller operations, but time-wise, it gives us really good coverage.”

Gerry is a highly experienced Technologist who is able to adapt to technology and business trends. He is experienced in Satellite, Robotics and Semiconductor manufacturing, through to implementing large changes in the Media, BPO and NGO sectors.

Organisations he has worked for include the Daily Mail, Serco, Texas Instruments and Save the Children.

He is a problem solver with a wealth of experience in change, innovation, software development and service delivery, which has allowed him to consolidate systems, people and businesses to provide simpler, streamlined and cost effective solutions to meet the demands of the organisation.

He possesses a proven record of accomplishment delivering “digital enabled business transformation”.

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Gerald Waterfield on becoming a cloud first organisation

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38.7mn children

and 29.1 million adults directly supported by the Save the Children movement, working across 117 countries*

5.9mn children

and 8 million adults supported by the Save the Children movement in 130 humanitarian emergency responses across 55 countries

£307mn

raised by Save the Children UK in 2019

5,460

volunteers in the UK gave their time, energy and skills to support our cause *Annual Report 2019

“WHEN I JOINED, IT WAS BEST DESCRIBED AS A MULTI-BILLION DOLLAR STARTUP” GERRY WATERFIELD DIRECTOR OF IT GLOBAL OPERATIONS, SAVE THE CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL businesschief.eu

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It’s time to start your digital revolution We’ll help you maximise the value you get from technology today, no matter how you need to use it. And make sure you are ready to take on the challenges of the future.

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“IT HAS TO BE ABOUT THE MISSION. IF YOU CAN BRING PEOPLE ON THAT JOURNEY, THEY WANT TO WORK HARDER” GERRY WATERFIELD

DIRECTOR OF IT GLOBAL OPERATIONS, SAVE THE CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL

In the NGO environment, a strong culture can go a long way, as Waterfield explains.

“In our NGO space there's very little resources, it's very underfunded, there's a 1000 things, and 10 people to do them. It has to be about the mission. If you can bring people on that journey, they want to work

harder. So it's all about a real team sense of purpose, and feeling rewarded by what you do.” That sense of purpose has had broader ramifications, with the trust the organisation places in people across the globe leading to upskilling programmes and improved retention. “It's allowed us to grow and to promote people from within into higher roles or different roles, and then fill from the bottom. That then builds a sense of empowerment and achievement for people. Whenever we advertise a vacancy now everyone's clamoring to get into these teams.”

Accomplishing its ambitions has required the support of partners such as businesschief.eu

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“ WHENEVER WE ADVERTISE A VACANCY NOW EVERYONE'S CLAMORING TO GET INTO THESE TEAMS” GERRY WATERFIELD DIRECTOR OF IT GLOBAL OPERATIONS, SAVE THE CHILDREN INTERNATIONAL

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SAVE THE CHILDREN

Content+Cloud, which provides the Charity’s service desks in the UK. “They run those services in London, supporting users and things in the building. They do a very good deal for us as we’re an NGO. They've got some really good people - if you go out to the actual staff in the office, they just see them as part of my team, they don't realise they're part of another company.”

The work that Save the Children already had underway stood it in good stead for the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. “We rolled out Teams in four weeks flats at the beginning of lockdown. We were planning to do that anyway in a phased approach - It’s always hard with 17,000 users - but then COVID landed. I managed to get six people from Accenture for four weeks to help us for free, which really helped.” The changes mandated

by COVID-19 were not too dissimilar to its existing digital workplace ambitions. “ What it potentially helped us think about is how far we are on our digital workplace journey.

We're just about to do some self assessments to see where we are compared to others in the market, and I have a feeling we're quite a way along compared to others.”

Going forwards, the charity is implementing automation in its HR system and improved security while the tech hubs initiative continues at pace. “We started with one in Kenya when I first arrived and I launched another one at the end of 2019 in Asia,” says Waterfield. “The aim is to move to our hubs where we can have local people servicing the local users real time.

If you’re in Australia, you are still separated by five hours from East Africa, which is one of our current hubs. We're building those out to help people, and it also gives us an opportunity to look at wider shared IT services.”

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