Business Review Europe magazine - July 2017

Jul y 2017

www.businessrevieweurope.eu

SURF’N’FRIES: RIDING THE WAVE TO FRANCHISEE SUCCESS

KEEPING THE CUSTOMER CLOSE TO THE HEART

FOLLOWING AN AWARD WINNING 2016 AND AN EXPANDED PORTFOLIO, PLUSNET LOOKS SET TO REACH NEW HEIGHTS

TELEFÓNICA GERMANY Ready for a data growth

GBK: THE RISE OF THE POSH BURGER

ARE ROBOTS REALLY GOING TO STEAL OUR JOBS?

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FOREWORD WELCOME TO THE July edition of Business Review Europe.

This month’s cover story features internet services provider Plusnet in a story of customer service transformation. Following an award winning 2016 and with an expanded portfolio, the company looks set to reach new heights, so we spoke to Chief Operating Officer David Leather about these exciting times.

Sticking with technology, John O’Hanlon goes backstage with Telefonica Germany to discuss another story of customer service transformation. He speaks with Marcus Thurand, VP of Network Operations since 2013, about how data is central to this programme’s success.

We also feature a food focus in this issue, starting with a detailed look at the rise of the posh burger. In the UK, Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK) has eaten up a sizable chunk of the market, and CEO Alasdair Murdoch is not sitting still in his pursuit to reach more consumers. Find out what he has to say about this and the market in general, along with his favourite GBK burger of the moment.

In Croatia, Surf’n’Fries successfully reinvented the fries market and through drive, innovation and enthusiasm, looks to deliver continued success in markets all around the world.

Be sure to read our interview with Co-Founder Andrija Colak.

Other stories to look out for include an evaluation of the automation threat to human jobs and a look at the top 10 most resilient European economies.

www.businessrevieweurope.com www.bizclikmedia.com

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F E AT U R E S

PROFILE

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TECHNOLOGY

18 Are robots really going to steal our jobs?

LIST

TOP 10 RESILIENT ECONOMIES IN EUROPE 5

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C O M PA N Y PROFILES

100

METRO Cash & Carry SUPPLY CHAIN

Evoswitch Construction

32 122 Plusnet

Technology

Dataplex Ireland Construction

132

44

Deltalis

Construction

JT International Technology

86

Acceleris Technology

68

146

Technology

Food & Drink

Telefonica Germany

Surf‘n’Fries

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PROFILE

GOURMET BURGER KITCHEN CONTINUES TO EXPAND ON THE UK’S HIGH STREETS AMID A GROWING TIDE OF COMPETITION. WE SPEAK TO CEO ALASDAIR MURDOCH WRIT TEN BY TO M WAD LOW

PROFILE

“I’M A BIG fan of a medium-rare small cheeseburger with Red Leicester, and I might just add a slice of bacon onto that,” reveals Alasdair Murdoch, CEO of Gourmet Burger Kitchen. “It’s a close call between the Red Leicester and Smoked Applewood at the moment.”

Having just completed a run on a glorious morning on the UK’s south coast, Murdoch’s appetite to talk about all things burgers is gluttonous. The boss’s flavour of the month, he is keen to stress, changes periodically, but for now he is championing simplicity.

And it is a rather simple upwards trajectory that tells GBK’s story since 2010 when Murdoch and new leadership arrived. From what was still a successful business turning over up to £40 million, the casual dining chain now generates revenues closer to £100 million, a milestone in reach thanks to 23 consecutive quarters of sales growth.

The journey has been based on three major principles, the first being the food and the quality of GBK’s burgers. Murdoch describes how in his first year quite a few elements were changed, with food and drink offerings continually evaluated and tweaked 10

July 2017

90

APPROX. NUMBER OF GBK OUTLETS IN THE UK

THE RISE OF THE POSH BURGER

if needed. Motivated people and restaurants that match the quality of its burgers form principles two and three.

“One tiny example of the latter is looking at our knives,” Murdoch says. “We invested an extra £100,000 on improving the quality, which customers can feel when eating their burger. There are so many small touch points that we work on that add up to make a big difference.”

DELIVERING EXPANSION With new owners at the helm since October last year, the aim is very much to continue the growth drive. Currently there are around 90 Gourmet Burger Kitchens in the UK and Murdoch plans to hit 200-250 by opening a steady 10-12 new restaurants annually. Further afield, the company has recently opened up in Ireland and also operates in the Middle East. South Africa is another target for the new ownership.

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PROFILE

Away from restaurants, customers are increasingly enjoying gourmet burgers in their homes and offices, in no small part thanks to the explosion of Deliveroo into cities around the country. For GBK, this has been a lucrative disruption of the market.

“We think that delivery is a trend that’s here to stay,” Murdoch adds.

“We were Deliveroo’s first branded partner and are still one of their biggest partners today, and hope 12

July 2017

our work will continue to grow.

“Deliveroo has launched something called Deliveroo Additions, which is an out of home concept where lots of operators share the same space. At the moment we are working with them on one of these sites in Camberwell, and I imagine we’ll go into two or three more of these this year. The consumer will notice no difference, but it allows Deliveroo and operators like us to deliver on a bigger scale.”

THE RISE OF THE POSH BURGER

“We were Deliveroo’s fir st branded partner and still are one of their biggest partner s” CONGESTION Murdoch is the first to acknowledge just how competitive the posh burger space has become in recent years. The likes of Five Guys and Byron, among many others, are popping up alongside GBK in many towns and cities, forcing it to continually up its game.

The CEO welcomes the challenge, and is confident his company can differentiate itself from the rest,

ultimately because of its quality.

“You will have seen a couple of our key competitors open in your hometown Norwich recently,” he points out. “And you will probably go along and try it but we eventually expect you to come back to us.

We inherently believe our quality is better than some of our key competitors and our numbers appear to back to this up, but we cannot afford to be complacent.”

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PROFILE Market congestion also poses a challenge for the likes of GBK to differentiate through its marketing messages, something which Murdoch is all too aware. Indeed, a decision was taken some four years ago to channel the vast majority of GBK’s marketing budget into technology, a move which has given the company a massive head start with its app.

CONNECTED Loyalty rewards, referral schemes and click and collect functions have allowed 1.5 million users to connect with GBK via their smartphones.

Murdoch explains that one million of these are active customers who are on average 25 percent more loyal than those without the app.

It has clearly worked, and new functionality is being developed as we speak. A trial is currently taking place which is allowing customers to order from their tables via the app, saving a trip to what can be busy counters. Pre-ordering could also be rolled out at the push of a button, but Murdoch highlights operational challenges associated with doing this, not least on a financial level as 14

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it is not certain whether this would deliver much benefit, especially during busy walk-in periods.

Gourmet Burger Kitchen also offers something different when it comes to other means of marketing. While many casual dining chains offer vast amounts of vouchers to entice customers, GBK is reaping the rewards from periodic, all out freebies.

“Every now and then we put a free burger in your pocket,” Murdoch says. “All you need to do is go in and spend £6 on other stuff and you have a free burger. We’ve seen redemption rates on this at around 10 or 11 percent, which is really unheard of in this kind of field. It is targeted and not carried out very often, but it has worked extremely well.”

LAUGHTER IS GOOD Our conversation turns to the human side of the GBK business.

So often cited by companies as their lifeblood, and rightly so, Murdoch is keen to demonstrate that Gourmet Burger Kitchen is walking the walk when it comes to valuing staff.

He explains how the core value ‘laughter is good’ forms a key

THE RISE OF THE POSH BURGER

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PROFILE component of this, and then goes on to provide numerous examples of how GBK is a fun place to work.

“I can give any number of examples,” he says. “Every restaurant has what we call a fun fund built into its P&L, and every quarter we will give them money to help take their teams out. We have family days and Christmas parties for all employees, whether they work one hour a year or a thousand.”

If an employee completes five years of service, GBK will pay for a two week sabbatical, and four weeks for when a decade milestone is reached. “You may think this is quite an expensive cost,” Murdoch continues, “but in reality the benefits this brings for morale and staff loyalty offsets this.”

That GBK pays above minimum wage and offers an array of leadership courses and pathways

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to progression provides further evidence of the company walking the walk. Recruits at new restaurants are also treated to a special ‘grill warming’ prior to public opening.

LEGACY Ultimately, the longevity of GBK in both the UK and internationally is down to a combination of the work of dedicated personnel and a continuing

THE RISE OF THE POSH BURGER

public hunger for quality burgers.

But is the rise of the posh burger just a small phase in our dietary history?

“Gourmet burgers are undoubtedly here to stay,” Murdoch answers.

“There is a lot of competition out there, and while I think we can shake some of that competition out, there is always room for new entrants.”

The CEO points to the success of other cuisines whose chain restaurants have firmly cemented themselves onto the UK palette. For Murdoch, this is only the beginning.

“If you look at the Italian chains like Prezzo, Ask Italian and Zizi’s, there are loads of them and they are still expanding.

There is significant room for growth for us too.”

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Are robots really going to steal our jobs?

PwC analysis suggests that a third of UK and German workers will be at risk by 2030, but other research claims that robots are job creators.

We look at both sides of the debate Writ ten by: TO M WA D LOW

TECHNOLOGY AUTOMATION IS NOTHING new.

Industries all over the world have been subject to advances in technology over the course of centuries, even millennia.

Such advances through history, however, have often been met with resistance, especially when human capital is on the line in the short term. Indeed, being dubbed a Luddite stretches back to the early 1800s when handloom weavers protested against the mechanisation of the textiles trade.

While the immediate threat to livelihoods was no doubt a valid cause for Luddite angst, history has shown the Industrial Revolution led to enormous economic expansion and subsequent net gain of jobs versus those initially displaced by machinery.

So the questions begs, if history is to repeat itself again, should we really be worried about the latest wave of automation technology?

Fast-forward to 2017 and the world is an unrecognisable place compared to the 19th century. What was rapid in terms of technological progress during the Industrial Revolution seems pedestrian compared to what is commonly called the Fourth Industrial Revolution. The idea of a machine skilled enough to create textiles was alien in pre-industrial factories - the idea of machines talking to other machines probably a dream deriving from a generous dose of opium.

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RISE OF THE MACHINES? One commonality between automation today and in the Luddite era is that some industries’ human workforces appear to be at greater risk than others.

PwC has released research claiming that up to 30 percent of UK jobs (10.43 million) could potentially be at risk by 2030, with this rising to 35 percent in Germany and 38 percent in the USA. Japan, interestingly, is found to be at 21 percent.

Much of this risk is carried by a group of sectors that includes transportation and storage (where 56 percent of jobs are at risk), manufacturing (46 percent), wholesale/retail (44 percent) and admin (37 percent).

Has the Luddite fallacy finally come true? PwC does include some disclaimers, and ultimately concludes that the net impact of automation on total employment remains unclear. Indeed, it says that “new automation technologies in areas like AI and robotics will both create some totally new jobs

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in the digital technology area and, through productivity gains, generate additional wealth and spending that will support additional jobs of existing kinds, primarily in services sectors that are less easy to automate”.

JOB CREATORS? Other research carries a wholly more optimistic outlook from the outset.

‘should we really be worried about the latest wave of automation technology?’

A R E R O B O T S R E A L LY G O I N G T O S T E A L O U R J O B S ?

The Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors and job seeker and recruiting site CV Library present a fundamentally different outlook to the likes of PwC. Their studies reveal that more than 63 percent of the 1,000 UK industry professionals surveyed say that they have never witnessed job cuts due to automation or robot takeover.

More than a third revealed that this had actually led to the creation of more jobs in their organisations.

Further still, CIEHF and CV Library say that nearly three quarters of professionals hold the view that they and other workers are being

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TECHNOLOGY

scare mongered by negative coverage on robots and automation technology. While half admit that there is resistance to implanting newly automated processes, common belief appears to be that such resistance is misguided.

So what can be done to allay these fears? The same research claims that nearly 80 percent of manufacturers feel the need for greater efforts in promoting the benefits of new technology in the workplace. Nearly half of all industry professionals state their business fails to communicate these benefits, especially to those frontline staff who may feel the most threatened.

UPSKILLING This would seem the most sensible place to start, along with some meaningful joined up collaboration between commerce and governments both in the UK and across Europe to address skills deficits.

According to the European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training, Europe’s top

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‘workforces need to be suitably developed in order to maximise benefit from emerging technologies’ five skill shortage occupations are IT professionals, medical doctors, STEM professionals, nurses and midwives and teachers. However, the picture varies from one country to another. For example, all EU countries barring Finland lack IT workers, while Belgium, Greece, Spain, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Portugal have no shortage of teachers.

So while the question of whether robots and automation will significantly displace humans may still be up for debate, there is little doubt that workforces need to be suitably developed in order to maximise benefit from emerging technologies.

Failure to do this, and the Luddite fallacy may one day ring true.

A R E R O B O T S R E A L LY G O I N G T O S T E A L O U R J O B S ?

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TOP 10

TOP 10 RESILIENT ECONOMIES IN EUROPE Which countries in Europe are most resistant to global business challenges?

Wr i t t e n by : TO M WA D LOW

CYBER ATTACKS, NATURAL hazards and supply chain failure have been cited as the three most pressing risks to business performance.

The 2017 FM Global Resilience Index ranks 130 countries and territories by their enterprise resilience to disruptive events such as cyber attacks and natural disasters. Now in its fourth year, the index aims to help business executives site

facilities, select suppliers, evaluate established supply chains and identify customers who may be vulnerable.

The overall ranking given by FM Global is formed of three separate scores out of 100 looking at risk quality, supply chain and economic factors.

Europe dominates the top 10 rankings, accounting for the entire top eight in the world.

TOP 10

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NETHERLANDS (87.5) FRANCE (88.1) GLOBAL RANK: 12

GLOBAL RANK: 11

Scoring a massive 93 out of 100 for supply chain, the fifth highest in the world, the Netherlands features so highly because of its tremendous sea and air freight links to the rest of the world. It’s economic rating ranked 30th out of 130 countries globally, with risk quality at 17th.

As with the Netherlands, France’s overall rank is propped up by excellent risk and supply chain scores, which respectively rank fifth and 16th in the world. The economic factor, which represents political and macroeconomic influences on resilience, scores at 55.9 out of 100 (26th).

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TOP 10 RESILIENT ECONOMIES IN EUROPE

FINLAND (91.1)

DENMARK (91.1)

GLOBAL RANK: 8

GLOBAL RANK: 7

A similar story continues here, with Finland’s supply chain resilience scoring a huge 91.9 out of 100, ranking it seventh in the world. The supply chain rank comprises four drivers: control of corruption, quality of infrastructure, local supplier quality and supply chain visibility.

Just pipping Finland to seventh spot is another northern European country in the form of Denmark, which ranks 13th in the world for risk quality. The risk quality factor measures the relative commercial and industrial property risk across countries. It comprises three drivers sourced from FM Global (exposure to natural hazard, natural hazard risk quality and fire risk quality) and a fourth driver that captures the inherent cyber risk of a country.

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TOP 10

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NORWAY (93.3)

5

GERMANY (94.4)

GLOBAL RANK: 7

GLOBAL RANK: 5

Northern Europe is very well represented in FM Global’s rankings, and Norway scores very well on all three fronts, with its economic rating of 75.2 fourth best in the world. Risk ranks eighth and supply chain holds back at 20th.

Strong rankings of sixth in the world for risk quality and supply chain propel Germany into the top 5 overall resilient countries to do business in. The country ranks 13th economically – this score impacted by the lack of oil resources.

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TOP 10 RESILIENT ECONOMIES IN EUROPE

AUSTRIA (94.6)

SWEDEN (94.7)

GLOBAL RANK: 4

GLOBAL RANK: 3

Just ahead of its German neighbour is Austria, which ranks second in the world for supply chain resilience and credibility in areas such as supplier visibility and corruption control. Austria also comes ahead of Germany on economic resilience, ranking sixth globally.

Sweden is Northern Europe’s leading representative, praised for its stability and quality of supply chain infrastructure, second only to Japan, Austria and Switzerland.

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TOP 10

LUXEMBOURG (95.9) GLOBAL RANK: 2 Unsurprisingly, it is the economic strength of Luxembourg that launches it into the top two of FM Global’s rankings. Scoring a huge 85 out of 100, the strength of its financial services makes it a stable place to do business.

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TOP 10 RESILIENT ECONOMIES IN EUROPE

SWITZERLAND (100) GLOBAL RANK: 1 Despite being third in the world for economic factors and 20th for risk quality, FM Global has given Switzerland a rating of 100 out of 100 for its supply chain resilience, which translates directly into the perfect score overall. An acknowledged

1

area of stability for generations, the country has ranked first for the past five years. Excellent infrastructure and political stability contributed to the final ranking massively, with exposure to natural hazards bringing down the risk score. It has also been acknowledged that Switzerland has upped its game when it comes to tackling cyber security issues.

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Keeping the customer close to the heart Written by Dale Benton Produced by Danielle Harris

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PLUSNET HAS CONTINUED TO DELIVER CUSTOMER FOCUSED SERVICE OFFERINGS. FOLLOWING AN AWARD WINNING 2016 AND WITH AN EXPANDED PORTFOLIO, THE COMPANY LOOKS SET TO REACH NEW HEIGHTS.

P

lusnet has a simple goal: to think and act differently from other communications providers, to save customers money and to provide unrivalled customer service. It’s unsurprising then that the company brand promise of “We’ll do you proud” is at the forefront of its business strategy.

Coming off the back of an extremely successful 2016, including an impressive 21 award wins and the launch of Plusnet Mobile which firmly established the provider as a quadplay contender, David Leather, Chief Operating Officer at Plusnet, is keen for the company to continue momentum.

“The last year has been really strong for Plusnet and the launch of Plusnet Mobile was a particular highlight for the whole company,” he says. “I’m eager that we continue to push ahead and achieve even more this year.”

For Leather and Plusnet, the

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company must continue to scale and develop its offering in order to continue to meet and exceed the demands of its customers.

Astronomical change The challenge for Leather lies in that development.

“Customer expectations have changed astronomically with regards to product performance, the usage of those products and what customers expect in relation to the money they are spending,” he says.

“As an industry, we have a long way to go to match those expectations, and I think the danger for us is that that is where the benchmark is.”

Leather believes that the needs of the customer should form the basis of any improvements the company makes and is part of the company’s strategy for scaling its services and capabilities.

“Being a smaller company

TECHNOLOGY

Plusnet is headquartered in Sheffield, UK w w w. p l u s . n e t

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FROM STRATEGY TO EXECUTION: DRIVING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE AND BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION WITH PLUSNET It’s really important that we build strong partnerships with our suppliers who are as passionate about customer experience as we are. Working with Virtusa we have a partner who thinks the same way, starting with the customer intent and working back from that point” David Leather COO, Plusnet

Our business relationship with Plusnet goes back 10 years. Since then, we have worked on significant programmes of work to streamline operations and optimise costs in areas such as Network Assurance and White Labelling Platforms. Our expertise in working with our customers to create streamlined platforms with reduced complexity and cost of operations has been a cornerstone of our work together.

In 2015, our Pegasystems practice started working with Plusnet to transform the way billing systems were operating. That work focussed on providing a superior user experience for both customers and customer services agents. Since then, our teams have worked on automating provisioning and building a world class model for helping Plusnet customers when they have a service problem. Using the Pegasystems platform, we created a seamless multi-channel journey where customers would, by responding to questions about their problem, trigger sophisticated diagnostic tooling at BT Wholesale in real time to rapidly resolve faults. Meeting the business need to manage and change both the digital assets and the diagnostic journey without IT support was also straight forward using the Pega platform.

More recently, our teams have engaged on strategic innovation projects such as the end to end customer experience re-design and a simplified CRM system to enable customer services teams to focus on customer engagement, providing even better service more quickly. At the heart of the working relationship between the two companies is the recognition that competency already exists in Plusnet to carry out many improvement projects. Those skills and competencies need support and growth during business improvement initiatives and so teams are frequently formed from Virtusa, blended with core business and technology functions at Plusnet.

There is an uncompromising and determined culture at Plusnet to do the very best for all their customers and to embrace contact, that culture is shared and visible right from the top of the organisation. We are all proud to work with a multi award winning brand to relentlessly deliver the best possible customer service.

Learn how Virtusa can help transform your business at: www.virtusa.com

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Keeping customers happy means being proactive. Pega empowers you to transform the customer experience – reducing churn, increasing lifetime value and maximising satisfaction every step of the way.

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TECHNOLOGY

makes you think differently in order to compete with big corporate businesses,” he adds.

Customer centric Despite its successes, totalling 21 awards throughout 2016, Plusnet is very much undergoing a journey about understanding and continuing to put the customer at the forefront of everything it does. In order to grow in line with customer demand, the company invests heavily in research insights, sentiment analysis and customer feedback.

Leather wants to understand what the customer is actually saying about the company.

“In my view, customer experience is a feeling.

It’s hard to measure and not just a number,” he says.

Plusnet is on a mission to redefine its customer service and ask one simple question: is that in the best interest of the customer?

“Contact is not a bad thing. It’s an opportunity for us to fix things and better serve our customers,” he says.

“If they want to contact us, then let’s make it as easy as possible for them. Why make it harder?”

It is through this approach that Plusnet works to three main principles of customer management.

The need to get personal In order to better serve customers, Plusnet must understand who they are, what products they have and what events are happening within their lifecycle with the company.

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PLUSNET

“There’s a balance to be had in keeping customer validation both secure yet simple. People don’t want to jump through hoop after hoop in order for us to help understand their problem however we also need to keep our customer data protected as an absolute priority,” adds Leather.

Technology will play a major role in this situation, with Plusnet using information and technology to make

information to video self-help information. Mobile and the customer is a transformation that will only continue to get bigger,” he comments.

On your time A major challenge with customer service has been the inability to separate a customer in need of immediate support from a customer who is just making an

“Mobile and the customer is a transformation that will only continue to get bigger” decisions quickly and to provide better support to the customer.

On the move The second principle is the response to the proliferation of mobile and smart phones. Leather admits that Plusnet must recognise that the way to get through to this generation of customer is through mobile.

“It could be everything from rendering web pages, simplified

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enquiry. Ultimately, both customer types will need to queue for the same amount of time.

“This isn’t consistent with the way we operate in everyday life. We require information on the move, so why should we make people pause everything to obtain the information they need?” he says.

The three principles of customer management represent the customerfirst nature of Plusnet. It all serves to

With the power of true partnership, Capita helps Plusnet brings its customer promise to life.

Phil Hoggarth, Director of Divisional Trading Capita Customer Management

Capita Customer Management has had a strong presence in the telecoms customer service market for more than four decades, and so our growing relationship with Plusnet could be seen as relatively young.

But what began in 2015 as a short-term contract to help deliver customer service agents at a time of growth for Plusnet has rapidly evolved into a true transformational partnership.

Growing to around 100 insourced customer service agents, Capita’s focus has been to help enhance and transform Plusnet’s customer experience and the results have been speaking for themselves. In fact, the team at Capita have been continuously exceeding benchmark targets set by Plusnet by 15-30%. This ‘champion challenger’ model has proved hugely successful in unifying staff and ensuring customers are getting an enhanced service.

Crucially, we aim for real integration with our clients’ teams, so there is no operational difference between a Capita agent and their Plusnet colleagues.

All the agents work to the same targets and KPIs – set by Plusnet – and we use the same communications, incentivisation and management across all contact centre staff. There can often be a worry that insourcing can result in a ‘them and us’ culture among staff – Capita works hard with all its customers to ensure that this doesn’t happen.

“Collaboration and communication are key to Capita’s partnership with Plusnet. We are not reinventing the wheel, but getting more of the basics right, and we are always talking with the client to ensure the insourced team is an extension of their own team”, says Capita’s Director of Divisional Trading – Phil Hoggarth.

“We have placed a great deal of value on engagement at all levels of the partnership, from the agents up, and we regularly share feedback and best practice across all aspects of the transformation,” “Not only are we now in a position where Plusnet trusts Capita with their customers, we are working with Plusnet to leverage Capita’s extensive experience and depth of capabilities in customer management solutions to drive better customer interactions.”

“We do this by bringing our best practice to the partnership on how best to design and build and deploy optimal digital communications channels including mobile applications, social media, and webchat amongst others.”

Plusnet will undoubtedly continue to build on the growth it has experienced over the past 12 months and Capita is excited to be working handin-hand with our client to ensure that together, we deliver best-in-class service for both new and existing customers.

Learn more about how we could support your transformational journey at www.capitacustomermanagement.co.uk

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TECHNOLOGY

one single philosophy; how can the company make it easier for the customer to get the service they need?

Plusnet Mobile With the launch of Plusnet Mobile in November 2016, the company made the move into becoming a full-service quad-play provider.

Plusnet Mobile has built on the company’s ongoing commitment to offer customers great value deals without compromising on the excellent service the brand is famous for. The Plusnet Mobile network offers a range of tariffs, combining generous data, minutes and text bundles at great prices.

“Customers have responded incredibly well to our latest offering proving that there is definitely an appetite for it,” Leather expanded.

Future foundations Over the last 12 months, Plusnet has gone from strength to strength and while Leather admits that there is still a large amount of work ahead for the company, he fully believes that Plusnet stands in the perfect position to continue to deliver market leading service to its customers.

“Right now, I feel Plusnet stands at the forefront of innovatively thinking as to how we support customers. We are very much focused around customer expectation and customer need,” he says. “I hope we will continue to be recognised as number one in our industry for customer experience and service, but also recognised on a wider industry forum for our offering.” w w w. p l u s . n e t

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Modernising the tobacco industry Written by Nell Walker Produced by Andrew Lloyd 45

Diego De Coen, CIO of JTI, describes the ways in which the business has flown in the face of tobacco industry critics with high-level IT and a people-centred approach

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s Chief Information Officer of JTI (Japan Tobacco International), Diego De Coen is extremely keen to achieve the perfect balance between technology and people. With his wealth of experience in the sector, he knows that one cannot be sacrificed for the other, and this approach is certainly paying off in a sector known for being, at times, challenging to attract top talent into.

Having previously led the company’s Centre of Excellence for seven years, De Coen has since been responsible for JTI’s entire IT function for eight more, heading up a team of nearly 800 across the globe. His role has obviously changed with the times, but remains focussed on

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the two aforementioned themes.

“My role is about delivering high quality added-value solutions for the company at an optimised cost, of course,” De Coen explains, “but I’m also what we call the Guardian of Talent. Part of my job is also as a relationship-builder, bridging together different segments of IT and their counterparts such as corporate functions, markets, and factories. We are a real people-caring company, so talent management has always been very important to us, but even more so now that we’re embarking on this digital adventure.”

In an age where technology is becoming smarter and people are increasingly seen as surplus, De Coen values staff and what

TECHNOLOGY

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JTI JTI chose Orange to unify its global collaboration tools, to enhance unified communications experience for 23,000 end users and reduce costs To ensure the success of this major initiative, we selected Orange because of their expertise and knowledge about the existing environment to create a long-term strategy and associated roadmap.

Their global capabilities support our geographical footprint, and they have the ability to deliver end-toend services, from transformation to operation, including management of all underlying service blocks.

Highlights

Guilain Rogg Global Technical Center VP JTI

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n

n

JTI is a leading international tobacco manufacturer with over 26,000 employees operating in 120 countries There was an urgent need to streamline communications by moving to a unified strategy and solution, reduce costs and enhance service to end users Orange established a managed Unified Communications service in 40 countries on Microsoft Lync 2013 that includes IM, presence, web, video and audio conferencing across a mix of desktops and mobile devices Mobile workers now enjoy the same high-quality UC experience on any device at any location, and the unified workspace enables easy collaboration between employees, partners and customers – all with lower costs and improved security

9

Global flagship brands

26,000 Employees

364

Offices worldwide

Issues and challenges JTI is a leading international tobacco manufacturer with about 26,000 employees operating in over 120 countries worldwide.

The company has nine global flagship brands - Winston, Mevius, Camel, Benson & Hedges, Silk Cut, Sobranie, Glamour, LD and Natural American Spirit.

In such a large, highly-distributed organization, international collaboration is a major challenge. JTI had identified that communication was suffering due to legacy technology silos and a historic fragmented approach to collaboration tools. There was an urgent need to streamline operations by moving to a unified strategy and solution and, in the process, reduce costs and enhance the service to end users.

The objective

The Orange Business Services solution n

n n

n

n

n

Improve JTI’s global communication capabilities to increase collaboration among employees, partners and customers and lower operating costs.

The benefits The Orange Unified Communications solution has enabled JTI to increase global collaboration. n

n

n

Mobile workers enjoy the same high-quality UC experience on any device at any location

Orange managed Unified Communications service in 40 countries on Microsoft Lync 2013 hosted in Orange data centers and migration to Skype for Business 20,000 users: IM, presence, Web Conference 12,000 users: Lync Enterprise Voice, desktop video services and videoconferencing 3,000 users: Lync-enabled mobile devices, tablets and smartphones Dedicated Lync audio conferencing service, including Call Collect network in 51 countries Orange Managed Contact Center solution based on Genesys technology

The results n

Reduced costs

n

Simplified management via single global provider

n

Increased security

Unified workspace enables easy collaboration between employees, partners and customers Unified communications supports better and faster decision making

Digital transformation is key for us. Our trusted partner Orange Business Services understands our needs and helps us to stay competitive. We believe in their expertise and knowledge.

For more information about Orange Business Services, visit www.orange-business.com For more information about JTI, visit www.jti.com

Copyright Š Orange Business Services 2016. All rights reserved. Orange Business Services is a trading name of the Orange Group and is a trademark of Orange Brand Services Limited.

Product information, including specifications, is subject to change without prior notice.

1216/CCS-JTI-075(1)

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they add to business: “IT is very demanding, and currently full of buzzwords: the cloud, big data, Internet of Things (IoT), software as a service – what differentiates us is business knowledge and good oldfashioned IT skills. You don’t need to mimic best practices; they’re already built into the cloud solution so you don’t need to develop that application yourself. You just need to understand the business and activate the right functionalities within that already-implemented solution.”

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“We are a real people-caring company, so talent management has always been very important to us, but even more so now that we’re embarking on this digital adventure”

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Insourcing knowledge In the early 2000s, JTI set about creating two programmes which embraced the two big application pillars of that age: an ERP system based on SAP technology, and a frontoffice CRM application for sales and analytics, based on Oracle technology which refreshed the entire company’s basic application environment. Once they were complete, JTI found itself with a lot of technology and business experts that were then split into dual factions: Business Technology Services, which contains three smaller

teams within itself and deals with every element of the business side of IT, and the IT Factory, which is filled with the infrastructure, development, systems management and data centre experts.

“So over the years, these departments have evolved and become kind of a business consulting arm of IT, while the other ones are still there to develop solutions,” De Coen explains. “Between them, the teams keep the lights on. As a company, when it comes to our IT functions that work directly with the business, we have decided to keep this within

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5 DATA-DRIVEN TECH TRENDS Shaping CuStomer experienCe in 2017

By 2018, more than 50% of companies will shift their investments to customer experience innovations.1 But, which technology trends should you pay most attention to?

1

4

MOBILE CONTINUES TO INTENSIFy MICRO-MOMENTS

What starts as a micro-moment of ten leads to l arger Brand engagement, if the Brand gets it right.

THE INTERNET OF THINGS ENABLES BETTER AND FASTER CUSTOMER INSIGHTS

today, the information you’re aBle to collect aBout a customer over their entire Buyer journe y is more valuaBle than the actual sale.

82%

of smartphone users consult their phones while they’re standing in a store deciding which product to buy 2

52% 2

of customers are less likely to engage with brands after a bad mobile experience 3

ai has superhuman poWer that makes sense of millions of customer data points, getting smarter each time neW data is fed to it.

.5%

Only of all of the data in the world has been analyzed, or used 4

3

50 billion

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CREATES AN ABSOLUTE 360-DEGREE CUSTOMER VIEw

1.7

megabytes

of new information will be created every second by 2020 4

CHATBOTS ACT AS A “SELF-SERVE” wAy TO CONNECT wITH CUSTOMERS IMMEDIATELy

the aBility to parse questions for actual meaning + intent is a very poWerful tool to deliver smarter experiences.

51%

of customers believe a business needs to be available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week 5

85%

of customers will manage their relationship with a brand without human interaction by 2020 6

connected devices will be in the world by 20207

47%

of devices will be set up to automatically request customer service support by 2020 8

5

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE CLOUD SUITES PREVAIL

providers of cloud suites Will outperform providers of fragmented, “plug-and-play” technology.

86%

of senior-level executives say it’s critical to create a cohesive customer journey 9

87%

Of all buyers, believe companies need to provide more consistent experiences10

LEARN moRE THE LEADING DATA-DRIVEN TRENDS SHAPING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE IN 2017 IN OUR FREE EBOOK: ORACLE.COM/CXTRENDS

1) superoffice.com/blog/customer-experience-statistics 2) thinkwithgoogle.com/articles/how-micromomentsare-changing-rules.html 3) superoffice.com/blog/customer-experience-statistics 4) forbes.com/sites/ bernardmarr/2015/09/30/big-data-20-mind-boggling-facts-everyone-must-read/#404018c66c1d 5) hventurebeat.com/2016/08/26/3-stats-that-show-chatbots-are-here-to-stay 6) business2community.com/ infographics/customer-experience-statistics-know-infographic-01499626#ilB6CcpP3Q6e4Bte.97 7) info. csgi.com/m2m-internet-of-things 8) parature.com/internet-of-things 9) marketeer.kapost.com/customerexperience-marketing-stats 10) visioncritical.com/customer-experience-statistics Copyright © 2017, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Oracle cOnsumer GOOds custOmer experience

perfect stOre, every stOre

Bill Deakin, Oracle Vice President and Consumer Goods Customer Experience Evangelist, and Xavier Chabanne, Customer Experience Sales Director EMEA Region, discuss the emergence of Perfect Store for consumer goods and the need for consumer-centric business transformation.

Bill Deakin Vice President, Consumer Goods Customer Experience Evangelist

Xavier Chabanne Customer Experience Sales Director, EMEA Region

We are living in a fast-changing World, What are the most disruptive global forces? how, when and why consumers shop and buy is dramatically changing across the globe. as a result, both consumer goods companies and retailers are rapidly evolving their business models to meet the modern consumer where he or she is and deliver a personalized, seamless consumer journey across all of the brand’s owned and influenced touchpoints.

What does that mean When you go to market through retailers? at oracle, we believe that the point of sale is now at the moment of inspiration, well beyond the physical locations of traditional retail. this means brands and retailers have a bigger customer experience (cX) challenge than ever before, but it also provides unique opportunity for brands to be more involved in their consumer’s journey by being more aware and more prepared to engage and serve the consumer as they move through their day at home, online, and in-store. the challenge goes beyond engaging directly with the consumer, though. true and impactful consumer reach occurs at the intersection of digital and physical; which means that we need a simultaneous transformation in traditionally business-to-business oriented processes. We’re seeing leaders in this space orient these changes around the concept of “perfect store”: planning consumer-centrically to drive the right assortment and programs for the shoppers of the given stores, bringing forward the right insights to help drive the business at a store-level, and targeting sales resources wisely to deliver and respond to those insights. hoW do you maXimize retailer engagement in regulated markets?

We see increasing your value as a partner – providing better insights, more accurate planning, more effective execution – as the key to maximizing retailer engagement in all cases. this is most especially true in regulated markets, where your customer is the primary face to your consumers and your own consumer interactions are by necessity limited.

Oracle’s Perfect Store model focuses on flexibility to meet the driving needs of different channels, product categories, and markets. crafting these goals collaboratively with the retailer enhances commitment on both sides to achieve them. self-service is another key tool to increasing value, especially with smaller retailers. they’re often working round-the-clock, and need place orders, grab digital content, and approve promotions when they have the time – not when your sales representative is in front of them. We can help consumer goods companies provide these core services, as well as key insights and even customer loyalty awards and incentives to improve their standing as a valuable (and valued) business partner.

100 of the Top 100 Consumer Goods Companies Run Oracle

What innovations Will create the most value going forWard?

We’re delighted to have worked with the industry’s leading companies for decades, across a wide variety of critical industry issues, and we expect that continued partnership in innovation will be the fuel for sustainable success. it is no surprise that improved data and insights innovations are driving significant change in the industry. More interesting is that we see it driving not just unctional change but true business process change and significant business value: the evolution of consumercentric planning, the drive to connect digital and physical, the introduction of rich collaborative platforms, and the everincreasing targeting and intelligence of in-store execution actions. ultimately, this new age of consumer-centricity is only possible due to a vital pair of innovations: 1) the maturation of data aggregation and mining to harness the wealth of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd party data available to consumer goods companies plus 2) the new capabilities of machine learning to render meaning from massive data crunching. together these two innovations power oracle’s adaptive intelligence solutions, applying our massive computing power and rich intellectual capital to simply bring back to each user the right insights to drive optimal decision making.

What is oracle’s “secret sauce” in all this? enabling a “perfect store” standard in every store is a key innovation we are driving for consumer goods. driving real-time and adaptive insights in the hands of those that are in the best position to use them to their best advantage is a singular innovation that unlocks value for brands and their retailers. oracle cX for consumer goods transforms the end to end journeys for both customer and consumer. the breadth and depth of our cX offering is unmatched, and we’ve combined that portfolio with our deep industry expertise to deliver optimized process solutions specific to Consumer Goods. the future is still unfolding, and both technological and human innovations will continue to change its shape in ways we can’t even imagine today. building our industry solutions on our rich oracle cX cloud platform reduces it complexity while providing our customers with full flexibility to accelerate their own innovation into tomorrow. We continue to heavily invest in and create thought leading technologies to aid in their evolutions as well as our own - innovations like iot, big data, virtual assistance, and ai. and of course, we are looking at all of this through the lens of industry - industry needs, industry process, industry solutions. ultimately, there are many pieces and parts to each consumer goods company’s journey. the magic is in not just understanding the elements, but bringing them together to support that ultimate goal of perfect store at scale – perfect store, every store. for further information please visit oracle.com/cx

J T I N T E R N AT I O N A L

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IT. Some companies have these distributed inconsistently across their business functions, but this can create an ineffective delivery model. I believe our IT model is the most optimised to provide the best value and the tools and solutions for the business.”

He adds: “One of the basics of my IT strategy is to insource knowledge and outsource commodity. Over the years we’ve really focussed on that.”

The effort JTI puts in placing its staff in the best positions is reflected in its status as a Global Top Employer, which the company has been awarded for the past three years. Only 10 businesses have received this award worldwide. JTI takes part in employer certifications with the view to raise awareness as a business which cares about people, knowing full well that the tobacco industry could be a contentious issue for some.

“This is a wonderful place to work, with many opportunities for staff to develop and grow, but in this industry it’s sometimes more difficult to entice new employees,” says De Coen. “As such we must make more effort to get skilled people – the best

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RIGHT NOW, YOUR BUSINESS CAN GO IN A MILLION DIFFERENT DIRECTIONS. AND ONE OF THEM IS RIGHT.

©2017 SAP SE or an SAP affiliate company.

All rights reserved.

GROWTH IS LIVE. SAP S/4HANA® gives your company constant control over your business. Live and in the moment. On premise or in the cloud. So you can make the right decision – right now. sap.com/growth

IMMEDIATE, INTELLIGENT, INTEGRATED – SAP S/4HANA HELPS CUSTOMER CREATE A TRULY LIVE BUSINESS Transforming your digital business is a journey that requires strategic planning and solid, forward-looking innovative insight. Taking the next steps to grow your company can be a tedious game of hit or miss, but with the right solution partner, you can take control and start your journey with confidence today.

Japan Tobacco International (JTI), a leading tobacco manufacturer based in Switzerland, with operations in more than 120 countries and 26’000 employees worldwide, has chosen to implement SAP S/4HANA to help streamline and accelerate their digital business transformation strategy on one single platform.

The innovative power of S/4 HANA gives customers control over their business data to make informed

choices based on all available data – whether historical or extrapolated, predictive trends. After all, companies that are still running lastcentury IT have no hope of keeping pace now that transactions and analytics are ideally expected to run in real time.

As a modern digital core, SAP S/4HANA enables organizations of all sizes and industries to benefit from an intelligent and connected IT landscape, so they can act in the moment on a global scale, enabling embedded analytical and machine learning capabilities. Available in the cloud, on premise, or for hybrid scenarios, SAP S/4HANA unravels organizational complexity empowering companies to create new business models and users to simplify their

day-to-day tasks through the award-winning SAP Fiori user experience. It is designed to integrate with and utilize IoT, Big Data, Mobile, Business Networks, third party systems, and more.

SAP S/4HANA helps customers create a truly Live Business: It is immediate – empowering business users with insights to act in the moment It is intelligent – beyond automation to predictive suggestion It is integrated – not only between your departments, but connected to the world Let SAP be your digital compass. Always make the right business decisions. Any time. Any place. Choose the right direction now.

Choose SAP and watch your business grow.

For more information please contact SAP Switzerland: info.switzerland@sap.com

SAP AWARD FOR THE HIGHEST GROWTH IN TOTAL NEW LICENSE VOLUME IN 2016 Since 2001 undertaking international projects for information technology (IT) for business management, specializing in SAP and in line with the main market trends: HANA, Cloud, Mobility, Social Business, Internet of Things, etc

www.scl-consulting.com

TECHNOLOGY

26,000 Number of employees at JT International

in class – to join our ranks. We focus on investing in employee development and helping them grow their careers, as well as offering good compensation and benefits. Not only do we then give them a positive working environment and care for them, but we gain a reputation as an employer of choice, and we see in the staff surveys that our employees are really happy.”

In De Coen’s words, “Above and beyond the working conditions we

offer, the values we stand by are key for our customers, suppliers, and current and prospective employees alike.

This is notably reflected in our engagement with communities where we are established.

In close collaboration with partners, JTI regularly supports a wide range of initiatives across the world, from working with farmers and their communities in order to tackle child labour, to planting trees in tobacco

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growing areas where deforestation is a challenge. In addition, the JTI Foundation, a charitable organisation endowed by JTI, brings its support to less privileged people and victims of natural or man-made disasters through partnerships with reputable organisations.

Outsourcing commodity While JTI’s entire digital scope has changed a great deal in recent years, one of the biggest, most dramatic changes has been adopting IoT. JTI is a traditional company in many ways – producing high-quality tobacco products in a cost-effective way – which used to require a simpler business model. However, due to the highly-regulated nature of the industry restricting how it could reach out to consumers, JTI had to expand its technological capabilities and modernise to implement something new.

“Our traditional model has changed since we entered the market of emerging products, or e-cigarettes,” says De Coen. “Suddenly we have the ability to trade in some markets

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We help brands and businesses succeed in the digital economy

40,000 experts.

145 countries.

One passion.

Visit blue-inďŹ nity.com #PassionatelyDigital

TECHNOLOGY

with our consumers via e-commerce platforms. We are allowed to perform digital marketing and connect with social sites. It’s an environment that did not exist before because regulations dictated that we cannot sell tobacco products online.”

JTI is also utilising IoT on the shop floor, enabling it to gather and process data in a much more streamlined fashion. For example, predictive maintenance for continuously monitoring machinery is vital for any manufacturing company, because something can happen to the component being worked on at any moment. IoT is helping JTI to diminish any issues and remove downtime of the machines, easing the way for the business to become ever-more digital.

Partnerships These advances in technology have been made possible by the businesses with which JTI has aligned itself, and part of De Coen’s strategy is to keep partnerships minimal and strong.

“The fewer strategic partners you have the better it is for the company,” he says. “If you have

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too many, the word ‘strategic’ becomes meaningless.”

Thus, JTI concentrates on a select few, including Orange Business Services (OBS), SAP, Microsoft, Oracle, Accenture, blue-infinity, SCL-consulting and HCL. For example, the entire spectrum of communications is outsourced to OBS, which is JTI’s longest-serving partner; amazingly; they have worked together since the mid-90s.

The other partners all contribute additional – and vital – elements to the business and are encouraged to work as equals with JTI. “It’s not only about them providing a service and us paying a certain amount of money for that service,” De Coen explains. “I want these partners to understand our business inside and out, and when they do that, they’re able and encouraged to come up with new ideas and solutions with added value for the company in a proactive way, so that we don’t always have to run after them and ask if they can do this or what. They can come up with ideas themselves.”

These stable and trusted

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Diego De Coen CIO

Diego De Coen is an experienced manager whose management experience covers several business functions as well as different industries. He managed complete business entities as well as large service organizations including support desks, competence centers, pre- and post-sales consultancy structures and training departments.

Today, De Coen is the Chief Information Officer at JTI and is based at the Company’s Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. He joined JTI from Deloitte Consulting in 2002, and was ‘on deck’ for Partner/Director at the time of his move.

Prior to joining Deloitte Consulting, De Coen was Managing Director of Cubic (member of the Exact Group), the market leader for ERP software in Belgium, focussing on small and medium sized companies.

Before this, he was Technical Director at Selligent, a Belgium CRM (Customer Relationship Management) company.

Six years prior to joining Selligent, he worked in several EMEA wide management positions at EDS (Electronic Data Systems).

De Coen has a degree in Psychology and several military degrees.

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J T I N T E R N AT I O N A L

partnerships are more important than ever at a time when JTI is entering emerging markets, which bring several new challenges including, at times, less reliable IT infrastructures.

The close relationships between businesses are vital for ensuring the agility and flexibility JTI strives towards when so much change and expansion is occurring.

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“The company is moving so fast. We enter between three and five markets each year,” De Coen states. “Recently we’ve entered the Philippines, Indonesia, Dominican Republic and Colombia. In these emerging regions, we’re constantly moving. When you enter a new market, it’s only investment, there’s no return – you don’t make money

TECHNOLOGY

“One of the basics of my IT strategy is to insource knowledge and outsource commodity.

Over the years we’ve really focused on that” on day one. But thanks to our CRM and ERP solutions, which we’ve created lighter versions of, we have a toolset that we can use immediately in a new market and start doing business at a very low cost. Then, we bring in our partners.”

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

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Ready for a data growth Written by John O’Hanlon Produced by Danielle Harris

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Telefónica Deutschland, having outsourced its day to day network management, is taking steps to outstrip its rivals through proactive customer service. The company will know if there’s a problem, and will come up with a fix or an explanation before the network user even knows about it

S

ince it entered the German market in 2005 with the acquisition of the O2, Telefónica has become one of the three leading integrated telecommunications providers in Germany. In the mobile segment alone, Telefónica Deutschland is the market leader. In 2014 Telefónica Deutschland acquired E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH. Now the company is working on a simplified management structure across Telefónica Deutschland’s entire mobile access, core and fixed network operations.

Quality monitoring and surveillance this extensive network has been the responsibility of Marcus Thurand, VP of Network Operations since 2013, but his job has evolved almost out of recognition. The networks not only have to be reliable; they have to be smart enough to cope with a new era of communications. As the CEO Markus Haas pointed out in March at CeBIT,

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Marcus Thurand VP of Network Operations

building a better connected world Huawei Technologies is one of the world’s leading providers of information technology and telecommunication solutions. More than a third of the world’s population and more than half of the German population use Huawei technology directly or indirectly. Headquartered in Shenzhen, China, the company has 180,000 employees and operates in 170 countries with its three business units, Carrier Network, Enterprise Business and Consumer Business. Huawei employs 79,000 people in research and development, and operates 16 research and development clusters worldwide, as well as 28 partnerships with partners. Huawei has been operating in Germany since 2001 and employs over 2000 people at 18 locations. The headquarters of the European Research Center of Huawei is located in Munich.

TELEFÓNICA GERMANY

Hannover: “Due to the continuous progress of network technology, I have unlimited possibilities of using digital means to make life easier. Regarding the internet of things, we will see an enormous growth in connecting devices via Narrowband IoT. For instance electricity and water meters. Also with applications for consumer the internet of things will open entirely new dimensions in core areas such as mobility and health. This can only be beneficial for all of us.

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In order to meet all the increasing requirements the network has to be very resilient. Thurand and his team look after the 24-hour surveillance of the entire network, as well as configuration and integration and all new hardware and software affecting it, and providing network support to large business customers.

His department’s emphasis has radically shifted with the setting up of a new Service Operations Centre.

The company brought in Accenture to help define the shape of the

TECHNOLOGY

innovative network organisation and the process of transitioning from the former model to the new SOC organisation. Launched on April 16 2017, the Munich-based centre has its own premises and staff. Its very existence shows how significant both perspectives are.

The customer engagement is as much important as the inwardlooking network management, he says. “These days we’re looking at the network not only from a technical point of view but stronger

from the user experience by trying to understand what the customers are really doing with our services.”

The Service Operations Centre uses custom built software. The system technology is mainly made available by long-time Telefónica partner Huawei. “Using this software we are able to look into the customer experience from interactions on the network and assess whether it was good or not,” says Thurand.

We all know that checking out a YouTube clip, for example, can be a

“These days we’re looking at the network not so much from a technical point of view as trying to understand what the customers are really doing with our services”

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Š 2017 Accenture. All rights reserved.

CAST A WIDER NETWORK

Build next generation platforms

Develop and launch new services

Create real-time operations

Accenture helps communication service providers to align their business objectives with technology capabilities, transform their operating models and engage a wider digital ecosystem to capture the promise of the pervasive network.

See how at accenture.com/widernetwork

TECHNOLOGY

Munich The regional HQ of Telefónica Germany

very different experience. Sometimes it’s perfect, sometimes it stalls or distorts. We are unlikely to know why, but now Telefónica can tell us.

“We aggregate anonymous user experiences to see whether certain services in a certain region are behaving well or poorly and deduce whether we can do something about that and help the customer have a better experience,” Thurand explains.

This is just a starting point. The next step is to use the information to interact with the customer.

“Perhaps a customer had a bad experience from our data service for example, and wants to complain,” Thurand continues. “We can provide information up-front to customer service, tell them the performance in an application was not as it should be and there really was something at fault in the network. In that case we can work out with customer service any incentives we can give the customer in compensation.

Going further we can be even more proactive because we already know about the issue. If the customer complains, we can tell them we’re

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“Using Huawei’s software we are able to look into the customer experience from interactions on the network and assess whether it was good or not”

Telefonica Puts Customers First Via Datameer “IP networks and services create major challenges to measuring the true customer experience. Datameer broke down the data and analytic barriers, letting us find insights faster to ensure we deliver the utmost experience and best services for our customers.”

Marcus Thurand, VP Network Operations, Telefonica Germany

At Telefonica, creating a “customer first” atmosphere required a cultural change of fostering new ideas through data. This required a nimble analytics platform that could bridge customer and network data, and democratize that data across the company for rapid data discovery. Telefonica partnered with Datameer to create an analytics environment that broke down silos of information for

Results Improved customer experience based on data-driven insights

customer and operational insights. Through Datameer, Telefonica generates new ideas to continuously deliver better networks and services for their customers.

Over 20 use cases discovered and acted on

About Datameer Datameer’s big data analytics platform turns complex data into actionable insights through agile data preparation and analytics.

Using Datameer, organizations like Telefonica deliver insights in hours instead of months and operationalize them rapidly, increasing business agility and market responsiveness.

Analytics That Drive Action www.datameer.com

Single view of customer and network data achieved

TECHNOLOGY

aware the service was not good on run applications on systems with that occasion and suggest what thousands of commodity hardware we can do to make it better.” nodes, and to handle thousands of The new organisation shifts terabytes of data, means it can not Telefónica’s focus away from only manage the requirements of the purely technical, bringing Telefónica’s existing network but customers into the discussion potentially the exponential increase from the standpoint of what they that will result for the growth of IoT as are really doing foreseen by Mr Haas. with the network Currently Marcus and experiencing Thurand and his it. No out-ofteam are engaged in the-box software analysing anonymous could do what was customers’ activity needed, so over a such as browsing, 12 month period a file downloading new platform was and uploading and The year Telefónica developed with popular applications Germany was Huawei. It’s so much like WhatsApp founded more than a matter and YouTube. “We of simply trawling for started in April and information. A key part of the mix is we need to see what applications advanced analytics that will extract our customers are using, and trying more information from the big data. to bring new applications such The Huawei software is built around as mytaxi which are very German a Hadoop cluster, a framework market specific. The idea is to that supports the processing and measure whether the app is working storage of extremely large data well for customer groups, provide sets in a distributed computing feedback to these groups and offer environment. Hadoop’s ability to help if we detect a problem.”

2005

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Once the system has been trialled for a reasonable period, he would like to collaborate with the companies that make the apps people access on the network. “In the future I’d like to have service level agreements (SLAs) with these companies and agree on certain key performance indicators (KPIs). After all we must surely collaborate to give the best service to our mutual customers. When we find a problem then we could call them, or they us, and say there is an issue.”

Perhaps surprisingly, this sort of cooperation is rare between network service providers and large software developers such as Google. “But why not start now?” Thurand says.

Telefónica Deutschland is the first group company to roll out this software. By correlating customer behaviour, customer complaints and customer churn it can help identify regional anomalies like poor data throughput, cut the numbers switching away and encouraging more to switch to Telefónica. “But we don’t just want them to stay,” says Thurand, “we want to get new customers on board and let them

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see the value we can give to them.

It started with my organisation at network operations but we are going to involve customer service, marketing, communications, and other departments. We want to roll it out into different areas of the company so we can all use this information we are now getting about our customer’s real-world experience.”

It’s been a busy year for Marcus Thurand and his team, who have had to expand their centre of attention from the system to its users. “We are investing a lot in the change management and training so employees have a better understanding of their future role,” he continues. “It has also been a challenge to set up the software, which for every single interaction on the network has to analyse and put an evaluation marker on it – assessing it, noting any problems and their severity and where they originate.”

Customers will quickly see the benefits in the form of fast responses to problems, even ones they may not

TECHNOLOGY

Customer Experience Assurance Empirix is the recognized leader in delivering solutions to optimize customer experiences. Using technologies for monitoring and analytics, Empirix empowers organizations to overcome challenges and promote informed decision making. We help clients around the world redefine their mobile business by accelerating new business models, improving customer loyalty, reducing operational costs, increasing revenues, and providing a holistic view of subscribers and devices.

Tel: +1 978 313 7008 | sales@empirix.com | www.emprix.com

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have been aware of. In a business with so many employees it can be harder to spot problems. The SLAs Telefónica has with customers may be comfortably achieved, yet small groups, senior executives or frequently travelling salespeople for example, may still have problems.

“With the new tools, we can quickly break down the macro information and see where problems lurk. That gives us the opportunity to revisit the SLAs and provide these customers with a better level of service.”

Thurand remains confident that the system will yield benefits in customer satisfaction, retention and acquisition as well as fitting Telefónica’s network for the exponential data growth that will come when everyone’s refrigerator is jostling for bandwidth.

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The sky’s the limit Acceleris and certified cloud solutions Wr i t te n by D a l e B e n t o n Pro d u c e d by D a n i e l l e H a r r i s

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Acceleris has evolved from a small-scale reseller of microsystems to an ISO certified cloud service solutions provider. With plans to continue to push the boundaries of its offering, the sky really is the limit for Acceleris.

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n the modern world of technology, IT and ICT systems software play a crucial part in almost every industry across the world. The task for companies is how to leverage their IT software to generate greater efficiencies and more importantly, lower operating costs. The technology in IT is transforming, with Big Data, IoT and cloud based software taking over, realising the cost benefits from innovation can prove a tricky business.

This is where Acceleris comes in to play.

An industry leader, providing ISO certified IT service solutions in Switzerland, Acceleris stands tall as ‘the’ go-to solutions provider, promising high and consistent quality solutions.

But life at the company did not always revolve around cloud based solutions.

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Head in the clouds Acceleris was founded in 2003 by Pascal Stürchler as a reseller of Sun microsystems, and through a difficult period of searching for partnerships that would enable the company to grow into a systems integrator and further down the line a cloud service provider, Stürchler refocused the company through two major partners in Red Hat and Oracle.

“We really moved from being a classical IT reseller who was just selling hardware and software and became a service provider for cloud solutions,” says Stürchler.

Today, the company focuses on the delivery of cloud services and infrastructure.

“We help the customers run really largescale infrastructure and help them operate said infrastructure properly, with high efficiency and

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Keeping business competitive and IT eco Cloud computing at a tipping point Cloud delivered computing is a reality. It has been around in one form or another for a decade but only recently has it been considered viable for a complete IT environment. The tipping point has been reached largely due to the availability of a broad range of IT services at a price point that cannot be ignored by business managers.Cloud offers business organizations a high degree of flexibility in determining how they enable their business, providing time or usage defined services which can be extended or contracted to meet the timely requirements of the business. Equally services can be acquired without large investment in software, hardware and the expertise required to run it. Specific services such as IOT based processes or big data management capabilities can be acquired for a fraction of the cost of a few years ago. This means that firms of all sizes can now afford what once were considered sophisticated IT services to support new business models. For example, customer engagement processes supported by SaaS apps in combination with chat bots, adaptive learning, information capture and management on Hadoop, NO-Sql or conventional RDBMS is paid via operating expenses. Subscriptionbased services provide scale flexibility, lowering up-front investments and lead times to realise business support.

The security offered by large IT suppliers is typically far superior to that provided by internal services. Cloud

services providers are a viable alternative corporate IT. However, the cloud service provider is no substitute for in house IT which ensures the tactical and strategic support of the business via various suppliers.

Adopting cloud computing The benefits of public / private cloud are apparent for most companies the transition to cloud is in some ways fraught with challenges • Need for a governance model to manage cloud service providers • Understanding how to integrate on premise and cloud systems • Local / national restrictions on data provenance • Adapting internal compliance policies and systems for security in a heterogeneous environment • Determining the cost of services. Little experience with subscription models Enterprises in regulated industries maybe constrained but it is not always abundantly clear where the limits are to be drawn. Before the adoption of cloud services risk, reward assessments are often a prerequisite.

Oracle’s cloud offering Oracle has addressed obstacles to the adoption of public cloud services in 2 ways. 1. With introducing the “Cloud at Customer” cloud service delivery model 2.

The launch of a Managed Service Provider programme

onomics in balance 1. Within the “Cloud at Customer” service delivery model the Oracle Cloud Machine (OCM), first offered in 2016, provides clients with a physical machine, configured to their specifications, behind their fire wall and on premise.

This offers identical Oracle Public Cloud services at subscription on fully managed Oracle machines in the clients data centre. These services include • Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) incorporating compute, storage, network • Platform as a service (PaaS) including • Oracle Java Cloud Service • Oracle Integration Cloud Service • Oracle Database Cloud Service The range of building blocks in “Cloud at Customer” cloud service delivery model includes today, apart of OCM, additionally Exadata Cloud Machine (ExaCM) and Big Data Cloud Machine. The ExaCM is delivered with full database licensing and flexible configuration and offers bursting capability which can radically alter the sizing requirements and consequently the economics of acquiring and operating a server. The big data cloud machine provides Hadoop services. Additional “Cloud at Customer” units are expected in the next months.

2. The Oracle Cloud Managed Service Provider (MSP) program identifies and recognizes partners who have skills, tools and processes to build, deploy,

run, and manage Oracle and non-Oracle workloads on Oracle Cloud Platform. With the Oracle Cloud Managed Service Provider Program, partners reap the benefits of building their services on a world-class cloud infrastructure, and customers receive the complete solution they need to optimize their cloud initiatives – reducing risk, cost, and complexity. If required the solution can be delivered on premise against the “Cloud at Customer” model. This provides companies with a trusted local management of Oracle’s cloud services.

Capitalising on Oracle’s Cloud offering Oracle’s “Cloud at Customer” offerings are cost effective infrastructure building blocks. If desired Oracle’s clients can select from the MSP Partners to manage customers’ cloud infrastructure, and/or end-user systems, and provide services including cloud advisory, service migration, DevOps, provisioning and orchestration, monitoring, 24x7 monitoring, incidence and change management, and cloud optimization, among many others. Upon qualification, Oracle Cloud Managed Service Providers can purchase Oracle Cloud Platform products for customers, package their MSP services, and provide a complete solution to the customer. This model shifts responsibility for all maintenance and support to the MSP Partner allowing clients to take full benefit of the cloud services. Pricing of the MSP is consistent with the equivalent service available in Oracle Public Cloud.

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all within a secure environment.”

This transformation towards a cloud service solutions provider has taken place over the last four years and following the decision to move into this direction, the company sought out ISO certifications to cement its position in the market.

But as with any transformation, the decision was not made without reason.

One major factor in this was the role of the customer, with Stürchler noting that customers are switching from capital expenditure to operating expense.

“Customers don’t want to invest in hardware, they just want to consume IT,” he says.

More and more small to medium sized companies are switching operating models to become more like e-commerce businesses. This in turn means these companies are seeking ICT operations that can run 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

This presents a major problem for these companies – operating costs.

“The costs for this kind of operation is too high, so companies are turning towards infrastructure partners and cloud services. This allows them

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to have a guaranteed service-level agreement and they can be safe in the knowledge that their e-commerce business is operating to those 24/7 requirements,” Stürchler says.

Leading the pack Acceleris defines itself on its cloud infrastructure NUBIQ, going as far as calling it as one of the most up to date cloud infrastructures in Switzerland. This is due to the fact that it is fully software defined. This means that Acceleris has software defined storage, network and compute power in an “open spec and open defined” open stack infrastructure.

To put that into context, there are currently three open stack infrastructures across Switzerland and Acceleris is one of them.

“With open spec and open defined infrastructure, we are able to provide cloud infrastructure on an incredibly large scale,” says Stürchler.

An advantage of such an infrastructure over say, Amazon or Azure, is that it allows Acceleris to provide services, backup / restore, security and, if necessary,

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“Customers don’t want to invest in hardware, they just want to consume IT”

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www.redhat.com/en/global/switzerland

TECHNOLOGY

Acceleris can run the whole server leader in cloud infrastructure through managed services. services is the company’s ISO “We can really work in a hybrid certifications - the holy grail of the service level agreement. That ICT service solution provider space. is unlike no other company in To date, Acceleris has obtained five Switzerland,” Stürchler adds.

ISO certifications and is one of the Acceleris is a company that in only companies to have done so. The essence is defined by its customers. most recent certification, and arguably Through the company’s base the most important with regards to in Switzerland, it provides an handling customer data in the cloud opportunity for space, is ISO 27018. customer engagement This certification is that is unrivalled. a code of practice “The response from for the protection of customers has really personally identifiable been amazing,” he says. information and “They really like the it provides a key The year Acceleris advantage for fact that we are based was founded in Switzerland and can Acceleris in a market have direct engagement that is ever growing. with our engineers. This allows a level “It shows that we have proper of service that can tailor to specific processes in place and it guarantees requirements and needs through the customers that we have a high one to one meetings. Customers are standard of security,” says Stürchler. really taking to the truly support role “It guarantees to them that each our engineers can have for them.” employee knows how exactly those safety processes are working.

Certification for success It guarantees high quality.”

Of course, one of the major factors The employee and the employee’s in Acceleris becoming a market knowledge of the company’s data

2003

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processes is crucial to the business, and this is an area that has historically provided the biggest challenge to the business. With every new software defined technology comes increased complexity and this is something that Stürchler is all too aware of.

“We must train our engineers and educate them continuously.

Acceleris has invested heavily into this area over the last four years and we will continue to do so,” he says.

Security threats and the way in which Acceleris approaches the issue of cyber security is a fundamental issue that the company values extremely highly in the world of data handling.

“We check our processes on a half-year basis and we check our risk management,” he says.

Part of the way Acceleris invests in the security of its processes is through the use of third parties and “controlled” hacks. This is where Acceleris allows a trusted third party to hack into their infrastructure in a controlled environment to identify potential security threats and open doors that could cause further problems.

It is through this approach that

Acceleris was able to avoid the threat of the global RansomWare cyber-attack earlier this year.

“We were really prepared on that front and our system was not, and is not, at risk as a direct result of our preparedness,” says Stürchler.

Powered by partners The cycle for new releases of the latest technologies is becoming increasingly shorter and customers are increasingly demanding these technologies. Thus, Stürchler has been able to call upon the support from its major partners, Oracle and Red Hat. “Reliable partnerships are the basis for our business success. In order to be able to concentrate on our core competencies, we therefore rely on strong and long-term partners,” says the company website, and this is certainly a feeling shared by Stürchler.

Acceleris sits on the board of both Oracle and Red Hat as well as having the highest certification as partners.

This allows Red Hat and Oracle to work together with Acceleris on the training and educating of its employees to be able to provide the latest state

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of the art knowledge and state of the art services to customers.

Through these reliable partnerships, Acceleris will also gain new business as both Oracle and Red Hat will point customers into the direction of the company when looking for the “right partner”.

“Acceleris is held in high regard from these big companies as a service solution provider with an extremely high level of service and knowledge,” says Stürchler.

Reach for the sky For Stürchler, the past four years with Acceleris has been a period of tremendous growth and there is a clear strategy in place to continue to grow and be recognised as a partner of choice when it comes to cloud infrastructure solutions.

The cloud service solutions market is continuously evolving, with a major trend seeing customers seeking out

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more private cloud infrastructure and Acceleris is already on the ball in this regard, with plans to run private cloud offerings as early as fall 2017.

Looking a little further ahead into the future, Stürchler sees the company expanding its offering to match the demand for technologies such as IoT, Big Data and analytics.

But there will also be a growth from an internal perspective.

“We are moving away from the traditional hierarchy organisation into a modern, more agile and project oriented organisation where the people are having more responsibility,” Stürchler says.

“For the future, it’s about the agility and the time to market. It means we need a new kind of organisation.

We want an agile organisation that can react to the demands of the customers, the market as well as our internal stuff.”

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“We are moving away from the traditional hierarchy organisation into a modern, more agile and project oriented organisation where the people are having more responsibility�

BEYOND “CASH AND CARRY” Written by Nye Longman Produced by Richard Durrant

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HOW METRO CASH & CARRY IS TRANSFORMING ITS OPERATIONAL MODEL TO DELIVER MORE FOR CUSTOMERS

“

The customer is not the king anymore,” says Patrick Dittli, METRO Cash & Carry’s Global Director of Supply Chain Management. “They have evolved into the master of the universe, standing in the middle of a multidimensional fulfilment matrix. The customer can choose where they want to get the product from; there’s full transparency over the price and full transparency about availability.”

About two years ago, METRO Cash & Carry made the decision to introduce a new operating model. Deploying a new operating board, backed up by strategic focus on digital and technological innovation and , while implementing a proactive supply chain strategy,

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the company is unlocking value for the next generation of customers.

We drill down to the core of this transformation and speak to one of the men making it all happen.

TRANSFORMING OPERATIONS “The way the entire value chain has been built in the past is not configured anymore to meet the needs of the new environment,” Dittli says. “There are profound impacts on supply and value chains because we are sitting on physical assets built on the traditional way of fulfilling a traditional customer need up to the supplier.”

METRO Cash & Carry is a sales division of the METRO GROUP Wholesale and Food Specialist

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120k

Number of employees at METRO Cash & Carry

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Company (W&FS Co.). Headquartered in DĂźsseldorf, Germany, METRO GROUP W&FS Co. is a leading international player in wholesale and foodservice distribution. With its sales lines METRO Cash & Carry and Real as well as its other associated companies, METRO GROUP W&FS Co. operates in 35 countries and employs more than 150,000 people around the world. In 2015/16, METRO GROUP W&FS Co. achieved sales

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of around â‚Ź37 billion. The company provides custom solutions to meet the regional and international needs of its wholesale and retail customers.

Through its Metro and Makro, METRO Cash & Carry captures the global food and non-food wholesale market, offering products and services to customers ranging from small independent bakeries, to elite hotels and restaurants.

Eager to deepen its value offering

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“Eager to deepen its value offering to a rapidly evolving, segmented customer base, METRO Cash & Carry is transforming its operational mode”

to a rapidly evolving, segmented customer base, METRO Cash & Carry is transforming its operational model.

One key step on this ongoing journey has been increasing autonomy amongst individual countries. Dittli explains: “The value is created in the countries. The new operating model therefore gives more autonomy but also responsibility to the countries to realize these values. The mandate of the head office therefore changed

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and consists of supporting the countries in delivering these values.

“They can define the strategy and are responsible and accountable to deliver that. Their local strategic focuses are the base and is the local strategy document that defines how we want to harvest and leverage the priories and values of the customers.”

The classical wholesale model continues to be METRO Cash & Carry’s backbone, he says, but the company is building up constantly its food delivery and services arm, “one of the biggest common denominators coming forward”.

METRO Cash & Carry is also re-examining how its distribution network is structured, particularly on the fulfilment side. By building dedicated fulfilment centres, the company is further improving its response times to customers through increased proximity. Alongside expanding its own assets, the company has recently acquired a couple of competent and leading food service distribution (FSD) companies, including one key food supplier of upmarket restaurants in the Far East.

Technology is also playing a critical role and data itself is being fully realised as a commodity.

“Money used to be the fuel,” Dittli explains. “This has been replaced by a new currency: data. Technology managed in an agile way has become the key decisive enabler.

Data has become the decisive element to make money or not, and technology is the key fundamental backbone to make that happen.”

Sustainable development Even before METRO Cash & Carry’s transformation, the company was well known for doing business sustainably, both when it comes to the environment and other businesses. Closer collaboration with suppliers has been central to this, with the aim of promoting a virtuous cycle. The company’s dedication has paid off, with Coca Cola or Procter & Gamble recognising METRO Cash & Carry’s efforts with a muchcoveted Supplier Excellence Award for Excellence in Collaboration. “The suppliers realise that how we respond to these needs is about to change.

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This is a win-win situation from us – we cannot do it on our own and need to get them on board,” Dittli adds.

The attention METRO Cash & Carry pays to environmental protection has positioned the company as a global leader in its industry. Notable aspects of its comprehensive CSR strategy include strong safeguards against slavery in the supply chain, FSC-certified packaging, and the use of sustainably farmed food. The

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use of a traceability app that enables customers to drill down to the fine details of food purchased in store, is one example among others It is little wonder that the METRO GROUP has been recognised, for the second year running, by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as an “industry group leader” in the Food & Staples Retailing category.

“Once you buy a fresh fish in METRO stores in Germany, they have a bar

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code attached,” Dittli explains. “You can take your smartphone and scan that barcode to know where this fish comes from – you download the number and you can know the name of that boat that has caught the fish and where it was caught.”

Having demonstrated its ability to respond to changes in the market proactively, METRO Cash & Carry has laid the foundation for fundamental change that will bring benefits

for customers, partners, and the business itself. Backed up by its commitments to serve customers’ needs and protect the environment, the company is sure to lead its industry for the foreseeable future.

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A DATA CENTER INDUSTRY FIRST FOR THE NETHERLANDS Written by Catherine Rowell Produced by Lewis Vaughan

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EVOSWITCH IS THE FIRST CARBON AND CARRIER-NEUTRAL DATA CENTER IN THE NETHERLANDS. CEO ERIC BOONSTRA DISCUSSES HOW THE COMPANY’S SERVICES MAKE THEM AN APPEALING PROVIDER, IN ADDITION TO THE COMPANY’S ONGOING EXPANSION

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stablished in 2007, privately owned internet services company EvoSwitch has grown significantly. Situated in Amsterdam, Europe and the US, with a colocation facility situated in Northern Virginia near Washington, the company provides a multitude of colocation and data center services for national and international clients.

With a number of solutions on offer, ranging from shared colocation, private cages and suites, the company has adopted a sustainable focus, and has become home to the largest data center campus in the Netherlands.

Aiming to expand its footprint within the growing European market,

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the Amsterdam area has become a hotbed for data center entrants.

With the need for businesses to securely house large quantities of data, EvoSwitch has situated itself within a competitive market against a rising client demand. Customers are wanting increased interconnected and hybrid cloud services, catering for a customer base that is both national and international. Amsterdam in particular has become home to a large number of new entrants, in addition to international players who seek to grow their services worldwide.

Nonetheless, EvoSwitch has become a force to be reckoned with, with their 15 MW datacenter campus. Such

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ERIC BOONSTRA CEO With Eric Boonstra as CEO EvoSwitch has grown fast. His main drivers are customer satisfaction, operational excellence, and industry leadership.

Eric played a vital role in the acquisition of a broad range of international customers. His management is always quality driven and he is passionate about taking EvoSwitch to the next level.

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EVOSWITCH

growth has consequently enabled the company to become the largest privately-owned internet-services and data center service provider in Europe.

ENERGY EFFICIENCY With an increased number of data center builds emitting large quantities of heat, energy efficiency has become a core focus for EvoSwitch. “From day one, we started being green,” explains Chief Executive Officer Eric Boonstra. “If you look into the world and environment, it is becoming increasingly important. From day one we started becoming energy efficient.”

With 12,000 square metres of premium space, there is scope for expansion opportunities to house the company’s colocation and data center services. Additionally, the current energy capacity of 15MW could be upped to 60MW, but with less power than traditional builds thanks to the building’s innovative design.

The Amsterdam facility is carbon neutral and features extremely low Power Usage Efficiency (PUE) scores.

With indirect adiabatic free cooling, air freely flows into the cooling system,

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“The role of the data center provider will change more into a center of opportunities, offering hybrid clouds that are not necessarily in companies own facilities” where warm air from the building becomes mixed and cooled with external air through heat transfer. This cooled air then re-enters the building, providing an optimum cooling solution.

Utilising 100 percent renewable energy sources, such as hydropower and wind power, the building also adopts a modular design, enabling additional modules to be added in and provides future scalability for businesses to grow and utilise EvoSwitch’s services.

DESIGN INNOVATION The EvoSwitch private suites

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are containerised and therefore genuinely modular. In fact, they are almost stand-alone data centers, with their own multiple UPS backup, distribution boards, cooler units and fire suppression systems. Boonstra explains that ‘’customers enjoy total autonomy – their own module, their own access and security control dedicated to the individual suite.’’ ‘’The latest generation modular containers offer 88 racks with 340 KvA; and these are extendable, like a harmonica, thanks to eight rack conjunction modules, which makes

the EvoSwitch modular system even more modular’’ Eric adds.

The containerised technology deployed by EvoSwitch delivers such high levels operational efficiency and customer value that it has been made proprietary with registered patents and IP.

A CHANGING LANDSCAPE The demand for data centers, cloud and colocation services will revolutionise the way businesses will operate in the future. “Most of the business will be in the cloud,”

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CONSTRUCTION

reflects Boonstra.

With 70 percent of EvoSwitch’s clientele becoming hosting and cloud providers, the company also houses direct connections with public clouds, such as Google, Azure and Amazon through EvoSwitch’s own cloud platform, OpenCloud. This cloud-neutral, partner-rich cloud interconnection platform beholds dozens of active members and keeps growing. OpenCloud creates a dynamic marketplace for the sale, development and consumption of next generation cloud architecture.

It brings together enterprises, networks, cloud infrastructure providers, specialist partners, and leading Internet Exchanges, offering a huge variety of low latency cloud connection options.

This enables businesses to choose whether they want part of their business on their own servers, or as part of a cloud service. “The role of the data center provider will change more into an ecosystem, offering hybrid clouds. All these possibilities combined give the customer the opportunity to develop strategic

advantages in an optimal environment in terms of security, compliance, performance and costs” Boonstra adds.

SERVICE WITH A UNIQUE TOUCH Nonetheless, with larger chain corporations building an increased number of data centers worldwide, there is a danger of compromising the level and quality of customer service. With this in mind, listening to customer requirements is an area of particular focus at EvoSwitch, which is clear through the company’s tailored services to meet specific customer requirements. “Customers will never become a number with us,” adds Boonstra. “They will have 24-7 support with a human

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touch. We know our customers and we act accordingly.”

This strategy has extended throughout the company’s operations, both with clients and highly experienced staff. Working as one team, with one result in mind, Boonstra explains: “Just because you are a director, it doesn’t make you more important than any other employee.

We all need each other.” With close contact between internal staff and suppliers, such as Priva, General Electric (GE) and Schneider, the company places as much emphasis on active communication and contact as possible to ensure customers receive world-class services and support. “It’s what we hear from our customers when we undertake our yearly customer survey,” comments Boonstra. “They all tell us that

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especially our support and commitment is key and very good in comparison to other places in the market.”

With an increased number of large corporations building data centers, Boonstra concludes that EvoSwitch is THE alternative, which can provide a bespoke level of service, flexibility and custom solutions, with quality results and quick turnaround. With a 24-7 support service, incorporating dedicated technical and engineering support 365 days a year, he adds, “that’s how we work and how we set up our support team, who do more than the average data center provider.” With an OpenCloud marketplace and a variety of cloud solutions, partnering with customers further enables increased connectivity and collaboration, leading to future business growth.

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DATAPLEX IRELAND THE DIGITAL LANDLORD Written by Nell Walker Produced by Lewis Vaughan

> Dataplex Ireland’s CEO, Eddie Kilbane, describes the ways in which the business overcame adversity to become a recognised choice for global giants, with simplified IT and strong partnerships

CONSTRUCTION

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ataplex Ireland is a newcomer to the data centre world and is already making itself known, having acquired worldleading businesses as clients and becoming the greenest data centre company in Ireland.

Eddie Kilbane is the CEO and co-founder of the company, and has watched Dataplex flourish since 2009; the business signed its first client in 2012, in the B10 Data Centre in North west Dublin. Among other things, this signing allowed it to showcase its Green Energy cooling solution, a deployment that was years in advance of any other data centre in Europe.

A turning point for the visibility of the business came when Dataplex won a contract in 2015 with a large global operator. “Having somebody on board with an internationally recognisable brand name gave it the validation through the global operator’s due diligence which we were struggling to get elsewhere,” says Kilbane. “The global operator’s data centre team was extremely tough and thorough in terms of their processes, so by winning that contract, we had an

example to show other customers.”

Kilbane has a long history in the construction industry, as part of a management team on large projects at Chelsea Harbour, Canary Wharf, and the Channel Tunnel, among others.

Whilst developing vast amounts of construction and communication network experience and gaining contacts, Kilbane saw the deregulation of the telecommunications market in Ireland as an opportunity to establish a company that would provide a turnkey solution of design, wayleave, construction and commission for the new telecomunications carriers.

More companies would be moving to the country to build a new cable and telecoms industry, and in 1998, he moved his family there from the UK to become a part of it.

While the inclusion of a global operator as a client did provide Dataplex with much-needed weight in the industry, it is elements of the company from within that have created the rising star it is today. For example, thanks to the temperate climate in Ireland, Dataplex maintains and operates the greenest data

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“We’ve rolled back what our technology does, switching to a simpler method.

We’ve got to make sure our clients can’t get touched, and that they know there’s no chance of someone hacking in and shutting us down” centre business in the country.

“We’re using a system to bring the cold air into the server room to cool it,” Kilbane explains. “In the middle of June it’s still 14 to 19 degrees outside, and these are not temperatures you’re going to see in many other parts of Europe. We’re lucky to have this weather for our business.”

Sustainability is an ever-present issue and a factor that can make or break a choice for a customer, and Dataplex’s green status certainly allows it a competitive edge, “but ultimately it’s a combination,” Kilbane says. “Certainly, green capabilities are important to hyperscale companies who are looking at Ireland because the power availability and climate mean they don’t have to run very large cooling solutions. So it’s

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definitely a factor, but it’s no one thing that brings companies to Ireland.

They make a huge difference to our economy by providing resources, and they become a catalyst for other companies to move closer to the source of these data centres.”

“We’ve seen a rise in technology companies coming in and clustering around data centres. In this business park, we have PayPal, Xerox and Vertis, amongst others: all very good, strong breeds of companies who then feed off having this data centre local to them.”

Simplified technology Another huge aspect of what makes Dataplex an attractive choice is its stripped-back approach to technology. In Kilbane’s words, “we’ve made our systems dumb,”

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meaning that the business offers a solid and reliable ‘vanilla’ service.

“My business is purely to support the real technology, which is the client’s business,” he continues. “We are a technical landlord – as data centre operators, we don’t operate any data.”

Dataplex simply offers the infrastructure which allows the data to flow. Its data centres sit in a silo; no information can be broadcast, ensuring a safe haven for customers.

In the event of a malware attack, Dataplex doesn’t have to worry

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about vulnerability because its building systems and servers are not connected to the internet.

“If we don’t connect to the internet, the internet can’t talk to us,” says Kilbane. “We’ve got to make sure our clients can’t get touched, and that they know there’s no chance of someone hacking in and shutting us down. We’ve rolled back what our technology does, switching to a simpler method. This is one aspect of the business clients don’t have to worry about, so they can

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concentrate on their own data.”

To allay any concerns regarding this process, Dataplex even allowed its larger customers to send their security teams to validate the security process put in place by Dataplex.

As an extra level of support, Dataplex offers resilient N+1 specification, meaning that for every single plug a client requires, a second plug that matches it is independently cabled and wired back the main power. Everything becomes dual-powered, and that service is enabled at all times, even during a service, meaning no downtime.

Dataplex’s youth as a company is among the reasons it has thrived so well even after a slow beginning.

With the lack of the ball-andchain of legacy systems behind it, Dataplex can be especially flexible.

“We’re not carrying any baggage, so we’re able to be a bit more daring,” says Kilbane. “We have to be different and push small buttons – enough that attractive companies come to us.”

In some ways, Dataplex has already proven itself to have industrychanging potential. In terms of the

Dublin The location of Dataplex Ireland HQ

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cool air technology the company uses to save energy, “there was nobody doing that in 2012 when we started off, so we were quite ‘out there’, and we’ve continued to stay out there in terms of innovation with our suppliers. As a small company, that’s one of the differentiators we have in the market that attracted clients like the global operators to our front door, as opposed to our competition which may be more traditionalist.”

Concrete partnerships None of this would have been possible without Dataplex’s trusted internal partners. Dornan Engineering enables the business to build what it needs to precise, well-negotiated specifications, allowing the best possible flexibility and speed to market.

“Dornan even represented us at meetings early on, pitching business and working with our customers,”

Kilbane says. “They’re very much a partner rather than a contractor, and clients can be assured that they don’t have to wait 3-6 months for us to find a contractor – we already have one on board. It creates a very strong partnership.”

Anord is Dataplex’s panel manufacturer and has also been working with the business since the start, ensuring deliveries are simple and smooth. EDPAC is the cooling partner creating bespoke solutions to a consistent quality, Schneider provides UPS’s and goes the extra mile for Dataplex regardless of its size as a company, and Ethos Engineering is a solid, trusted partner for design, pre and post-contract.

This combination of reliable partnerships, high levels of innovation, and stable, simplified service will undoubtedly serve Dataplex well to create a bright future for Kilbane and his team.

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SECURING MOUNTAINS OF DATA WRITTEN BY NELL WALKER PRODUCED BY LEWIS VAUGHAN

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FRANK HARZHEIM, CEO OF DELTALIS, EXPLAINS HOW A VERY YOUNG COMPANY ENTERED THE DATA CENTRE INDUSTRY AS AN UNKNOWN AND MADE AN INCREDIBLE IMPACT, WITH UNIQUE FEATURES THAT MAKE IT A POWERFUL CONTENDER

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wiss data centre company, Deltalis, holds a competitive edge that so many businesses can only dream of. Part of why it is such an engaging and attractive prospect for clients is its unique location; the Uri data centre is nestled within an exmilitary bunker in a mountain range, only an hour away from Zurich. The bunker was bought in 2007 by private investors, and it was originally intended to be a secure location for storing high-value goods. After speaking with data centre professionals, the bunker’s owners realised the potential of what they had, and more importantly, discovered that data was the most valuable commodity they could store.

“Data and information grows in value,” says Frank Harzheim, CEO and General Manager of Deltalis. “The

facility itself had some key features that were just perfect to turn into a data centre. The bunker provides its own cooling water – 730,000 litres of it, which has a constant temperature of 14 degrees. Plus, the mountain where the data centre is located lies right on one of Europe’s main internet backbone routes between Zurich and Milan; connectivity is vital for any data centre of course.”

He adds: “We are also in the fortunate position where our local region – Uri – produces more energy than it can consume. Switzerland is a country that has more energy stability than most, and all our energy is hydroelectric, meaning it’s also carbon-neutral.”

On top of this, Switzerland is an attractive location for international customers; the Deltalis team alone

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speaks six languages between them. In a time of instability, where data centre decisions are long-term developments requiring a stable environment, it provides strong value being one of the most secure countries in the world.

After four years of construction Deltalis opened its 15,000 square metre facility in 2011, and in 2014, Harzheim was approached to lead the business. He didn’t hesitate to accept.

The market Harzheim admits that once the Uri data centre was opened, approaching the market was a whole new challenge.

A strategic marketing campaign was arranged with the view to penetrate the international market in a serious way, and the introduction of Harzheim to the team was part of that plan.

In 2015 the marketing strategy and corporate identity were defined, but the priority for Harzheim was the acquisition of the necessary certifications that would prove Deltalis’s worth, despite the company’s youth.

“During that year, we got the mandatory certifications that are needed, like ISO27001,” he explains. “So we got

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“ONLY A FEW DATA CENTRES IN THE WORLD CAN CLAIM THEY ARE MILITARYGRADE EMP PROTECTED AND CERTIFIED”

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certified, we built an operational team and a sales team, and we were prepared to take Deltalis to the market as a strong business.�

To bolster this move even further, Deltalis chose to go above and beyond and acquired another certification.

In an expensive and thorough

examination, the data centre was tested for electromagnetic pulses and found to be completely EMP-protected.

IT infrastructure demands protection from EMP, as extended blackouts have the potential to be devastating. EMP attacks can be man-made or natural, and neither can truly be prepared

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for. Deltalis’s testing and certification was performed by EMShield GmbH, which is a leading expert in the field of planning and project implementation of electromagnetically shielded rooms.

“Of course ISO27001 is a tough one, and it’s important, but it doesn’t differentiate you in the market,” Harzheim explains. “Only a few data centres in the world can claim they are military-grade EMP protected and certified. Since then, we’ve been working on the commercial side of the business, and are experiencing excellent momentum and growth.”

Challenges While Deltalis has immersed itself in the market at incredible speed, there are of course pros and cons to being such a young business. Those that have been around for longer have structure, resources, and visibility already – the latter being vital to success.

“Being a young company, we had to build momentum quickly,” Harzheim says. “That’s difficult. We took an existing facility and turned it into a data centre, which wasn’t its original function, so it took a lot of important

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due diligence to make sure the facility was perfect. This is something that was not necessarily an advantage compared to other companies.

“When you make a decision like this, you have to look at all the parts, and know what is going to be an advantage and what will be a disadvantage.”

Of course, the advantages Deltalis enjoys far outweigh any challenges it has faced. Another aspect of the business which – like the EMP protection – acts as a true differentiator, is that it’s officially hyper secure.

Most data centres are secure places, but others are simply far more so.

“We were approached by a group of auditors on behalf of a bank, and they were ticking boxes about our security,” Harzheim explains. “They had specific data centre questionnaires, like ‘how much weight of snow does your roof support?’, and ‘do you have any obstacles to avoid vehicles attacking the building?’ The questions sound silly, but because our data centre is 300 metres inside a mountain, we are able to offer things you wouldn’t normally think about. The facility isn’t even reachable except for staff

‘HYPER SECURITY IN TIMES OF INSTABILITY’

“If you look at an ordinary data centre compared to ours, you’ll see there’s a huge gap between secure and hyper secure”

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“IT’S ALL ABOUT TRUST“ A FILM BY DELTALIS

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and customers. If you look at an ordinary data centre compared to ours, you’ll see there’s a huge gap between secure and hyper secure.”

Continuous improvement While Deltalis achieves top marks for efficiency, green credentials, and security, it does not waver from its quest to keep improving. The main challenge for co-location projects is intelligent capacity planning, and this is something Harzheim prioritises. He aims to propel technology according to growth, and the growth Deltalis has experienced already has meant that it is currently building a new co-location room and two private suites.

“In this sense, we are of course adapting our technology. It’s standard in the data centre business that even if you have a large or a new building for a data centre, one part is completely equipped and the rest is ready to be completed, considering projects that are expected to come.”

Of course, a vital key to successful penetration of the market is having a team of people who believe in the vision.

For a young and growing company,

sourcing the best talent is more difficult than for a more established business, but Deltalis holds an edge of attractiveness that a lot of newcomers do not.

“You need people who believe in the potential of the business,” Harzheim explains. “What is important is that everyone has an area of responsibility and everyone is a team player.

Leadership isn’t about telling others what to do, it’s about letting them know what they could do and giving them the responsibility of doing what’s best for the business. This is one thing we’ve implemented in our leadership culture. I’m proud of the team – they are great people with passion and excellent knowledge.”

Deltalis has also created strong processes that are integrated company-wide and followed by everybody. Staff are required to support the hyper secure nature of the business, and in return, they are cared for every step of the way – from prior employment, to during employment, to after employment.

This care for people extends beyond employees and to the customers: “What further differentiates us is

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KEEPING DATA SAFE IN A MOUNTAIN

our customer focus,” Harzheim states. “We are adding new services, such as Remote Management as a Service (Deltalis Virtual Reach), and DCIM as a service (Deltalis Virtual View). With this we offer our clients to connect to IT equipment remotely, anywhere and anytime.”

Milestones Deltalis has proven its industry impact already, with two key events that occurred in London earlier this year.

After Harzheim spoke at Data Centre

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World about the very complex realm in which he works and how Deltalis can simplify it, Deltalis then brought together lawyers, politicians, and other interested top-level UK parties to talk about data protection and its ongoing projects. This in particular was a milestone for the company – one even a lot of established organisations have not yet enjoyed. Government officials, other businesses, and customers alike are discovering the power of the rare and incredible advantages Deltalis boasts, and it is

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“Location is so important at the moment, and we have the right answer for it” something that will continue to propel the company forward at speed.

“The most important aspect of this business is security, both digital and physical,” Harzheim concludes.

“People want a place they can store their data knowing it’s there and only there. Then they start to say ‘I love this application, but I only want it if I know it’s physically secure in the right place, and in the right country’.

That’s an issue we see. Location is so important at the moment, and we have the right answer for it.”

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Surf’n’Fries: riding the wave to franchisee success Written by Dale Benton Produced by Ryan Day

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Surf’n’Fries successfully reinvented the fries market in small town Croatia and through drive, innovation and enthusiasm, looks to deliver continued success in markets all across the globe

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t could be argued that any attempt to create a new and innovative way of consuming fries could be seen as trying to reinvent the wheel. Fries have been consumed in essentially the same way throughout history, but in 2008 the little-known Croatian based Surf’n’Fries set out to do exactly that, completely reinventing the way we eat fries through innovation, drive and unrivalled enthusiasm.

For Andrija Colak, Co-Founder of Surf’n’Fries, the first step was to solve what he described as an age-old problem – the boring, and impractical, old packaging “The old school fries are often sold in a paper cone, or even a flat tray with the fries sitting on top,” he says.

“Any sauces that you would elect to put on would sit on top of that first layer of fries, meaning the bottom layers would be without.”

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create an incredibly unique, but equal parts simple, solution. This new packaging could hold not only your fries, but multiple tubs of sauce as well as two drinks.

Simple, and incredibly effective.

This was a design choice that sat perfectly with the new millennial generation of consumers, ones who are very much on the go.

The packaging also represents the purest form of marketing that any company would die for.

“People stop and see people walking down the street eating fries in our innovative packaging and they immediately want to find out more,” he says.

A brave new world With an innovative packaging solution, it was time to build a

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McCain Fry’ n’ Dip fries.

GIVE A TWIST TO YOUR MENU. Half-pipe shape perfect for dipping.

Genuine potato taste

Soft potato inside

Thin crispy edges

For any enquiries contact your McCain sales representative or visit our local site at www.mccainfoodservice

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“We didn’t plan to franchise, but with the level of interest we needed a solution” store front. The very first Surf’n’Fries store was built in Colak’s home town of Rijeka, a mere 27 square meters.

There were initial doubts from the wider market, Rijeka is only a small town in a relatively small country how could it possibly tap into, let alone reinvent, the multibillion global QSR Market?

Colak saw almost immediate success for the store (to the tune of an average of 1,000 transactions per day).

Within less than a year, the Surf’n’Fries tale was in full swing, with Colak already laying down the foundations of becoming an unrivalled franchisor.

“We generated a lot of interest from tourists in Croatia, wanting to open their own Surf’n’Fries in their home countries,” says Colak.

“We didn’t plan to franchise, but with the level of interest we needed a solution. This is where the franchise of Surf’n’Fries was born.”

Before success though, came challenges.

An innate challenge for Colak was born out of his roots in Croatia.

“It’s challenging to grow international business from Croatia.

You have to prove yourself and build international credibility.”

Just 12 months after opening the first Surf’n’Fries store in Rijeka, the franchise concept cemented itself within the capital, Zagreb, and in a surprise to no one customers craved the signature taste and feel of Surf’n’Fries.

SURF N FRIES

Surf’n’Fries developed its franchise concept further and fully embraced the tourism market of Croatia, creating the very first Surf’n’fries Mobile concept in 2009.

This versatile bitesize rendition of Surf’n’Fries was placed along the beaches of Croatia and became an overnight success.

The Surf‘n’Fries Mobile asset continues to be the most successful concept, which is no small feat considering it is the smallest point of sale for fries across the whole company.

Naturally, the tourism boom of Croatia generated even more interest in adopting the Surf‘n’Fries Mobile and in 2011, Surf’n’Fries had landed Austria, Germany and Ireland.

Germany in particular has been an incredibly successful base of operations, with the festival and sports event market.

In just a few years that small store front in Croatia was making waves up and down the country, and riding that wave of success into new and uncharted markets.

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Making waves As we speak, the delicious taste of Surf’n’Fries is being enjoyed in 15 countries and around 60 stores throughout the world.

“People would see it in Croatia and want it in their own countries,” says Colak.

And want it they did.

The German franchisee, through Surf’n’Fries Mobile, recently sold 1,142 portions in one 90-minute soccer game.

Proving that through innovative concepts, and a really great product, Surf’n’Fries could tap into any market.

“Germany is quite literally kicking ass on that front,” beams Colak.

This incredible response saw Surf’n’Fries develop new concepts, the Surf’n’Fries Trailer and the ShopinShop Concept.

“The ShopinShop Concept is ideal for the German franchisee. Their core business is in gas stations, with a lot of people heading to gas stations for lunch. This concept slots perfectly into these gas stations, and into the lifestyle of German consumers,” says Colak.

With plans to expand even further

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into Dubai and more recently Russia, one could argue that Surf’n’Fries is a sure fire hit wherever it lands, but Colak stresses the challenge in franchising.

“At the beginning, you find yourself saying yes to everyone, but its only later that problems emerge that can compromise the entire brand.”

One such example that Colak cites as franchisee in Turkey. The entire concept of Surf’n’Fries is consuming food on the go, but this clashed with the cultural differences of Turkey and the franchisee simply did not work.

“We will probably endure more challenges in the future, but it’s important as a business to experience them and become a better business in the long run.”

Whatever challenges that will come its way, Surf’n’Fries continues to make its mark in markets all over the world.

Markets, that you wouldn’t immediately think of when it comes to French fries.

“Some of the countries we are operating in, some of the craziest ones were certainly Vietnam and Iran. Which is something I’d never dreamed of back in Rijeka.”

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Guidance from above As a franchisor, Colak plays a key role at the beginning of a new franchise, overseeing quality control with regards to overseeing the direction of the franchisee. This is a position that sees initial training, verification of location and guidance with regards to rent and supply costs, before backing off and allowing the franchisee to grow.

“The company will support them in terms of promotion of new products or incorporating new technologies, as well as quality control through mystery shopping,” says Colak.

“It’s not about imposing what

“It’s not about imposing what we think is right, but welcoming opinions as to what they want and the customers want” – Andrija Colak, Co-Founder

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we think is right, but welcoming opinions as to what they want and the customers want,” he says.

“We don’t want to have the same Surf’n’Fries in every country in every market. We want to be different and blend into local markets.”

Targeting a millennial market requires an eye for technology and innovation.

As more and more people are consuming products on the go, Surf ‘n’ Fries has had to respond to the ever-growing role of technology in the modern world, and think outside of the box.

Across the food industry, health

issues represent a major obstacle, one that all food companies are trying to overcome. For Surf’n’Fries, reinventing fries didn’t stop with reinventing the packaging.

“Around 2/3 years ago, we had our first concept store that actually makes fries and our chicken and mozzarella sticks, all without a drop of oil,” he says.

This truly innovative technology that uses hot air to fry the products and will play a significant role in reducing the health issues of the food industry.

This is only one example, with Colak stressing that innovation and creativity is really the secret to the

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recipe of the company’s success.

“As a company, we definitely emphasise innovation and creativity, as these really are the two things that have kept us afloat,” says Colak.

You say potato Rolling back the clocks to 2008, with a small store in Rijeka and no idea as to the unbelievable success story that was about to happen. Colak was approached by a representative of McCain, one of the world’s largest manufacturer of French fries products, to bring together the drive of Surf’n’Fries with the experienced hand of McCain.

For Colak, McCain married perfectly with one simple element of Surf’n’Fries offering, dipping sauce.

“You have to be lucky, because this product is very special and is suited for scooping the sauces. So, this potato is perfect to realise that,” he says.

“On the other hand, people say it’s so smart your chips are shaped like a surfboard – this wasn’t planned, it was purely coincidental.”

McCain has paved the way for Surf’n’Fries growth across

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the world, with factories in 56 countries and locations.

“They really have been our biggest supporters and it helps us have the same quality product, anywhere in the world.

The only way is up For Colak, it really has been wave after wave of success for Surf‘n’Fries and the company certainly shows no signs of slowing down.

With the aforementioned store openings in Russia and Dubai, Colak has his eyes set on further expansion into South Africa and the U.S, something of a longterm goal for the company.

“We were actually recognised by the International Franchise Association, which meant the world to us. Those are some of the biggest movers and shakers in the food industry recognising our small company from Croatia,” he says.

“It shows we have the capability to enter that market and really cement our presence and it is something I hope we can achieve over the next few years.”

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