Business Chief North America - June 2021

NORTH AMERICA EDITION

June 2021 | businesschief.com

U.S. AIR FORCE: The complex digital transformation NASCAR: Real time race stats and car performance data going mobile

Northwell Health: Defining tomorrow’s healthcare today eStruxture: Leading ecosystem builds

The Future of the Enterprise.

Deloitte’s Abdi Goodarzi discusses the Kinetic Enterprise, Business Agility, the Rise of Connectivity, Ecosystem Co-Innovation, and the Evolving Role of the CXO

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The Business Chief Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

SCOTT BIRCH

EDITORAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH CREATIVE TEAM

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

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH PRODUCTION EDITOR

JANET BRICE

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE MARKETING MANAGERS

ANDREW STUBBINGS SAJANA SAMARASINGHE

PROJECT DIRECTORS

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

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JAMES WHITE RICHARD TURNER MARK CAWSTON

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITORS LETTER

BEING SUSTAINABLE If digital transformation was the business buzzword of 2020, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, then 2021 is fast shaping up to be The Year of Sustainability.

Look around you. Everyone from governments to multinational organisations that previously would have been viewed as enemies of the environment are flashing their sustainability credentials.

“These are exciting times with the promise of opportunity.

And that’s as good a reason as any for Business Chief to undergo its own digital transformation”

Even more are wearing those as badges of honour, but it’s essential to understand that even the term sustainability has undergone its own transformation in the last two years – in no small part instigated by social issues from Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movement.

Diversity & Inclusion are top of the corporate agenda, and how you run your business is now under more scrutiny than ever. That extends far beyond the four walls of the boardroom, putting executives directly responsible for every business in their supply chain.

These are exciting times with the promise of opportunity. And that’s as good a reason as any for Business Chief to undergo its own digital transformation. Following this latest June issue, we will be back in September with a fresh look, new editions, and updated agenda as we better reflect the audiences we serve and represent.

Consider it our own sustainability initiative – making the Business Chief brand stronger for a brighter, exciting, fairer future.

SCOTT BIRCH BUSINESS CHIEF MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

scott.birch@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

businesschief.com

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CONTENTS

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

50 years of Starbucks 22 Legend:

Indra Nooyi 24 Five Mins With:

David Joosten

50

Leadership

Lessons from a crisis: leadership with heart and humanity

28

Deloitte

Deloitte's Abdi Goodarzi on the Future of Enterprise Performance

60

US Air Force

Feeling the need for innovation speed

84

Finance

Why we need more female CFOs (and how to reach that goal)

98

NASCAR

Driving technology at NASCAR for ultimate FX

118

Technology

The biggest cyber security threat to your organisation could be you

150

128 Verizon

Bringing in the 5G revolution

Human Capital

How tech is transforming HR in a hybrid workforce

158

178

Defining tomorrow’s healthcare today

Leveraging today’s tech for tomorrow’s wellbeing

Northwell Health

BCU

Top 100 Leaders in Supply Chain September 2021 To be announced at the Procurement & SupplyChain LIVE Event NOMINATE NOW

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

196

202

Marketing matters: from IBM to Kyndryl

Procurement excellence for the people

IBM

Metro Nashville

214

224

Leading the IT procurement transformation

Essence of Ensono to drive digital transformation

Telus

Ensono

242

254

Maximising value by embracing change

Unlocking the power of spatial analysis

Accenture & Anaplan

Esri

CONTENTS

282 NCAOC

North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts winds down mainframe and moves to hybrid cloud

266 HOOPP

Using tech to deliver a world-class pension plan

294

eStruxtures

Canadian company builds ecosystem of empowerment

308

320

Energizing the evolution of enterprise

Making mobile better

IBM

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

334

Munters

Cooling Mission Critical Infrastructure

390 Lumen

Network at the pace of compute

348

TAS Energy

The premier modular data centre solutions provider

402 362

CNA Insurance

Leveraging digital technology in the insurance Industry

APTIM

APTIM revamps its way to better procurement

376

Dril-Quip

The transformative power of Digitalisation

416

Emergent Holdings Inc.

Agility, innovation and diversity

BIG PICTURE

Austin calling Austin, Texas

While Silicon Valley’s tech migration to Austin (A.K.A. Silicon Hills) began in 2019, mainly tech unicorns like Katerra and Juul Labs, since the onset of the pandemic and Elon Musk calling it (in May 2020, Musk Tweeted he was moving Tesla HQ to Austin) the big tech transition to the Texan capital has snowballed.

By November 2020, Oracle and Hewlett Packard had announced HQ relocations there; followed this year

by Digital Realty, fintechs Harmonate and Green Dot, software firm Markaaz, and venture capital firm 8VC led by Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale. So, what’s the deal? Well, aside from Austin’s lower corporate taxes, looser regulation, and affordable living, the availability of top talent is the main pull. And with Tesla’s and Apple’s construction here of a 2.400-acre Gigafactory and US$1bn campus, respectively, and Lonsdale’s vision of an experimental Beta City, Silicon Valley 2.0 could be on the horizon.

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June 2021

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THE BRIEF “WHEN WE LEVERAGE DIGITAL CORRECTLY, WE CAN CREATE A MORE HUMAN EXPERIENCE WHERE WE SEE OUR PEOPLE BETTER, UNDERSTAND GAPS, INEQUITIES, AND NEEDS, AND DRIVE FRESH INSIGHTS” Francine Katsoudas

Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Cisco 

READ MORE

“AI has already proven it delivers against costsaving expectations and is now evolving into more refined uses such as enhanced decision making” Brian Kropp

Group Vice President, Gartner 

READ MORE

“The top cyber threat is ignorance… the lack of applying basic security protections lead to the big incidents” Ira Winkler

Chief Information Security Officer, Skyline Technology Solutions  READ MORE

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June 2021

BY THE NUMBERS

Global market share of leading cloud service providers

Cloud infrastructure services spending hit record highs in Q1 2021, growing 35% to US$42bn, according to Canalys

19%

32%

Amazon Web

Microsoft Azure

Services

(50% growth)

(35% growth)

7%

Google Cloud (56% growth)

55%

CIOs who plan to increase their total number of full-time employees in IT in 2021, according to a recent survey from Gartner.

68%

Workers willing to retrain for new jobs post-pandemic due to concerns regarding automation with increased concern from workers in financial institutions, insurance or telcos, according to Bain.

DID YOU KNOW?

NORTH AMERICA GIVES BIRTH TO THE LARGEST NUMBER OF UNICORNS, AND CURRENTLY OWNS NEARLY HALF (49%) OF THE 591 UNICORNS ALIVE GLOBALLY AS OF APRIL 2021 WITH CHINA OWNING 23% AND EUROPE 12%.

BX IS THE NEW CX Everyone’s talking about Business Experience (BX).

What is it?

Leadership approach that centres on organising the entire business around the delivery of exceptional experiences, with emphasis on being customer-obsessed.

But isn’t that just Customer Experience (CX)?

Not quite. BX is a more holistic approach, so while CX was limited to CMO or COO purview, BX is in the boardroom as a CEO priority because it ties back to every part of a company’s operations.

And the foundation of a BX approach centres on recognising that a brand’s purpose plays a critical role in its growth, so you need a deeply embedded purpose. BX means turning yourself into a listening organisation, so you pick up on signals through data and research to uncover unmet customer needs, embedding experience innovation into the entire ecosystem, expanding the experience remit so it’s everyone’s business, and empowering employees to feel accountable for customer outcomes.

Why should firms embrace BX now?

Customer expectations have shifted and firms need to catch up with the pace of consumer change. Accenture research shows that companies embracing practices key to BX have grown profitability YOY at least six times over industry peers.

So, will BX become a mainstream leadership approach?

It’s likely. 77% of CEOs said their company will shift to BX, fundamentally changing the way they engage and interact with customers, according to recent Accenture research.

 CHIPS UP FOR IBM IBM has created the smallest, most powerful microchip to date. At just 2 nanometers, it’s expected to achieve 45% higher performance and 75% lower energy usage than today’s most advanced 7-nanometer chips.  UNITED ON SUSTAINABLE FUEL United Airlines unveils EcoSkies Alliance, partnering with global firms like Nike and Siemens to finance 3.4 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel derived from trash in 2021, equalling the elimination of 31,000 metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.  CLOSING THE GLOBAL GENDER GAP It will take another 136 years to achieve gender parity, up from 100 years in 2020, as the impact of the pandemic continues to be felt, according to the latest WEF report.  MENTAL HEALTH AMERICA 41% of Americans report struggling with mentalhealth issues stemming from the pandemic, according to a recent McKinsey report.

W A Y U P Jun21

W A Y D O W N businesschief.com

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GLOBAL NEWS

1

NORTH AMERICA

M&A activity hits record high Global M&A activity hit a record high in the first quarter of 2021, with North America reaching its highest market share in 14 years netting 54.4% of global deal value and accounting for more than two-thirds of the US$200.9bn in global IPOs with SPACS playing a large part in US dealmaking.

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June April 2021

2

SINGAPORE

Reimagining global payments Three investment giants, JP Morgan, DBS and Temasek join forces to bring the existing infrastructure of global payments into the digital era. Under new tech company Partior, they are developing a first-of-its-kind industry platform that will utilise blockchain to fast-track value movements for payments, trade and foreign exchange settlement.

3

UK

Tech game-changer for Premier League The Premier League kicks off a new era of football with the adoption of Oracle Cloud to give its fans worldwide a gamechanging experience. Using Oracle’s data and analytics and machine learning technologies, the League will deliver groundbreaking statistics, insight and data-rich stories to fans on TV during matches and across social media channels.

4

5

INDIA

Big business ups the ante on aid to India With India’s death toll from COVID-19 surging, big business is putting its money where so much of its business is. US and Chinese tech titans Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Facebook, Xiaomi and Vivo commit millions towards recovery efforts; Amazon partners with Temasek to airlift oxygen concentrators; Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Blackstone together pledge US$58m; and Indian startups LogiNext and Zomato roll out innovative delivery features.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Food Tech Valley to debut Harnessing emerging technologies and modern farming techniques, the UAE government’s newly announced R&D-focused Food Tech Valley is set to not just fast-track self-sufficiency in food production for the country, while ensuring sustainability and waste reduction, but also spearhead groundbreaking food tech innovation globally.

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PEOPLE MOVES BOB STERNFELS FROM: MCKINSEY & COMPANY TO: MCKINSEY & COMPANY WAS: SENIOR PARTNER, CLIENT CAPABILITIES NOW: GLOBAL MANAGING PARTNER With a quarter of a century of consulting experience under his belt, Bob Sternfels has clinched the top job at McKinsey, making him the 13th partner to lead the global consulting firm since its founding in 1926. A graduate of both Oxford and Stanford, San Francisco-based Sternfels has spent 26 years at McKinsey working with colleagues in almost all of the company’s 130 global offices, leading practices in operations (Americas), private equity globally and most recently client capabilities globally, where he expanded the firm’s capabilities in digital and advanced analytics.

Described by colleagues as ‘organised, proactive, and a systems-thinker’, Sternfels was elected to the role by the firm’s 650 senior partners.

When he’s not working hard, he’s playing hard, with numerous ultramarathons under his belt and a passion for piloting planes.

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June 2021

“I really believe in distributed leadership and empowerment.

We are a global firm that works in local contexts, and I think this notion of trust and empowerment enables speed”

SAADIA MADSBJERG FROM: THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION TO: THE COCA-COLA FOUNDATION WAS: MANAGING DIRECTOR NOW: PRESIDENT

ALEXANDRE EBOLI

From advising multinationals on corporate strategy at McKinsey, to advising Fortune 500 firms on innovative tech at Cisco, Saadia Madsbjerg has a wealth of experience in strategising. She’s equally experienced in philanthropy, having launched and led sustainable, impact investing programs to address climate change, inequality and humanitarian crises, at the New York City Economic Development Corp., and most recently at The Rockefeller Foundation. Oh, and in her spare time she’s co-authored a book, Making Money Moral, on sustainable and impact investing.

FROM: UNILEVER TO: CONAGRA BRANDS WAS: HEAD OF SUPPLY CHAIN NOW: CHIEF SUPPLY CHAIN OFFICER A seasoned supply chain expert with 25 years of experience of global end-to-end supply chain leadership with Unilever, Alexandre Eboli held various leadership roles in finance, planning, distribution, logistics and manufacturing at the FMCG giant focused on the Americas, both North and Latin. Most recently serving as head of supply chain for North America, Eboli was responsible for overseeing manufacturing facilities and co-manufacturers producing personal, care, food and ice cream products.

He joins the Chicago-HQ food firm in August. businesschief.com

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TIMELINE CELEBRATING 50 YEARS OF

STARBUCKS

From the famed inaugural Seattle store in the 70s to 32,000 stores spanning 80 countries 50 years later, we chart five decades of Starbucks Corporation

1970s

1980s

1990s

Stores: 4

Stores: 55

Stores: 2,498

Starbucks was born in 1971 in Seattle by three friends from the University of San Francisco, all instructed in the art of roasting by gourmet coffee company Peet’s founder. They sold Peet’s roasted beans and grinders.

Branding was inspired by nautical mythology, the logo a mermaid (though brown, not green) and the name taken from Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Starbucks moved to its second location in 1977, Seattle’s famed Pike Place Market, where the store with the original brown logo remains.

In 1982, after Starbucks opened its fifth store, featuring the first Starbucks bar and selling brewed coffee, Howard Schultz joins as director of marketing and provides coffee to fine restaurants and espresso bars.

Following a trip to Milan, where he was inspired by the city’s coffee bars, Schultz tried to convince Starbucks to test the coffeehouse concept in downtown Seattle. They decline and Schultz opened his own coffee bar Il Giornale in 1985 using Starbucks beans.

In 1987, he acquires Starbucks for US$3.8m, becoming CEO of Starbucks Corporations.

Starbucks becomes the first privately owned US company to offer a stock option program and completes its initial IPO in 1992. The 90s saw a 45-fold increase in store openings, from 55 to 2,498, including debuting its first online store, first licensed airport store (Seattle), first drive-through location, and first store outside of the US (Japan in 96) before rolling out global stores in the UK, Malaysia, New Zealand, Thailand, China, Kuwait, and Lebanon, among others.

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June 2021

2000 2010

2011 2021

Stores: 16,858

Stores: 32,000

Ethics, health, sustainability and digital dominate the decade. Starbucks begins selling Fairtrade certified coffee, introduces ethical sourcing, debuts its first two Farmer Support Centers (Costa Rica, Rwanda), and unveils the industry’s first paper beverage cup. Store openings grow seven-times during the decade, across 42 new countries. Having stepped back from the CEO role in 2000, chairman Schultz returns in 2008, adopting a new mission statement focused on ‘inspiring and nurturing the human spirit’, and upping digital transformation.

Starbucks doubles its stores, with 15,000+ in the US alone, and extends its reach to 80 countries.

The company reaches a 99% ethically sourced coffee milestone in 2015 and opens an ethical coffee farming R&D centre in Costa Rica. Hiring its first chief community officer in 2012 and hires its first chief inclusion and diversity officer in 2020.

On March 18, 2019, Starbucks opens its milestone 30,000th store, in Shenzhen, China.

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LEGEND

Indra NOOYI As the first and only female CEO of PepsiCo, IndianAmerican Indra Nooyi not only smashed corporate America’s glass ceiling, but transformed both the performance and purpose of the soft beverage giant, proving that the two can co-exist.

A

t a recent Asia Pacific-focused event, organised by P&G and UN Women, the former CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi, shared why enabling a diverse and inclusive workforce can directly impact the bottom line. “If 80% of our products are bought by women because they were the gatekeepers at home, or make all the purchases, why don’t we have a large number of women represented in our ranks,” she told a virtual global crowd of thousands.

Such business advice may seem rather obvious today, but in 2006, when Nooyi put this business philosophy into practice at PepsiCo, it was both pioneering and progressive. Because not only did the performance of PepsiCo transform under Nooyi’s 12-year tenure as CEO, but so did its purpose and people, with Nooyi widely praised for 22

June 2021

80%

The percentage by which Indra Nooyi grew PepsiCo revenues in her 12-year tenure as CEO

The number of years Indra Nooyi was at PepsiCo

24

transforming the firm’s diversity and inclusion agenda.

And who better to do so than someone who had herself smashed the corporate American glass ceiling.

Because, when Nooyi became CEO in 2006, following 12 years as Chief Strategist, not only was she among just a handful of female CEOs leading Fortune 500 firms, and one of very few foreign-born executives, she was both the first female CEO to lead PepsiCo, and the first person of colour. Not to mention also being a wife and mother.

And she more than got the job done, growing PepsiCo revenues by 80%.

But it was Nooyi’s strategic redirection of PepsiCo, transforming both its purpose and people, that really made an impact. She transformed the firm’s D&I agenda, created a culture where workers were encouraged to stay with the company, moved corporate spending away from junk food and into healthier alternatives, redesigned packaging to reduce waste, and switched to renewable energy sources and recycling.

And while she has now retired from corporate life, Nooyi continues to wield the influence that so positively changed the direction of one of the world’s largest companies.

As well as serving on the board for ecommerce giant Amazon, she speaks at summits close to her heart, and has recently penned her memoir, advising corporates on better integrating work and family.

© JeffBedford

“ I wanted to make sure that PepsiCo was not only delivering top-tier financial returns but doing so in a way that was responsive to the needs of the world around us” businesschief.com

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FIVE MINS WITH...

DAVID JOOSTEN AS REGIONAL DIRECTOR AMERICAS AND PARTNER MARKETS FOR VODAFONE, DAVID LEADS BOTH THE VODAFONE BUSINESS COMMERCIAL OPERATIONS IN THE US, CANADA AND LATIN AMERICA AND IN FRANCE, BELUX, NORDICS, RUSSIA, AUSTRIA, SWITZERLAND AND THE INTERNATIONAL PUBLIC SECTOR.

Q. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

» I try to surround myself with the

best people I can find, delegate authority, and don't interfere as long as the policy we’ve decided upon is being carried out. I’m pretty hands off but ensure I check in regularly with my team. I set standards very high and hold people accountable. I’m very approachable and appreciate honest and open feedback from every employee. I focus on listening and ensuring people get praised for doing a good job.

Q. WHAT QUALITIES MAKE A GREAT LEADER?

» I believe a leader needs

to show candor, integrity, humility and be an active listener across all levels of the organization. They need to be flexible and be fast at adapting to changes. That’s especially true this year, where we had to make fast decisions to adapt to the massive disruption but also had to be consistent and clear in our communications.

Q. HOW HAS YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE CHANGED OVER THE LAST YEAR?

» Last year, I had to adapt to leading people completely remotely and make fast changes to adapt to the challenges the pandemic brought with regards to supporting our customers

and employees. Communication was critical and ensuring our customers and employees were supported was top of mind. Coming out of the pandemic, I believe I learned how to do this more effectively and collaboratively.

Q. WHAT HAVE BEEN THE MAIN CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES IN LEADING TEAMS OVER THE LAST YEAR?

» The fact that we had to do

everything remotely has been a challenge, and the reality that people had to juggle personal and professional lives at the same time.

Keeping people motivated and connected was our main priority and being empathic to their situation. It has allowed us to change how and where we will collaborate with each other in the future. Also, it was an opportunity to rethink our habits and routines and make changes, both professionally and personally. Positive lessons learned include keep listening to people, using all communication tools available. Set time aside to unwind and reflect.

“ IN A COVID-19 WORLD, I BELIEVE LEADERS SHOULD REALLY CONSIDER HOW THEY TREAT ALL OF THEIR STAKEHOLDERS”

Q. HOW DO YOU SEE THE ROLE OF SENIOR LEADERS CHANGING IN A COVID-19 WORLD?

» I believe leaders should really

consider how they treat all of their stakeholders — starting with their employees and the whole range of their human needs. There will be real ‘moments that matter’ for their employees that will contribute to the level of attachment (or lack thereof) they will have to the company in the future and to the ability of the company to thrive coming out of the crisis. It is also good to rethink the company’s purpose and what role it wants to play and how it will position itself.

Q. WHAT’S THE BEST PIECE OF LEADERSHIP ADVICE YOU’VE EVEN BEEN GIVEN?

» Listen more than you speak.

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THE FUTURE

OF TRAVEL

eDreams ODIGEO is one of the world’s largest online travel companies and one of the largest e-commerce businesses in Europe. We spoke to the business’ CEO, Dana Dunne, to get his view on the future of travel and the importance of tech innovation.

WHAT SETS EDREAMS ODIGEO APART FROM ITS COMPETITORS? Tech expertise and AI sit at the heart of our business, and our constant innovation in this area has enabled us to become a market leader offering unparalleled content to travelers across the world. We provide access to the entire travel market, including over 274,000 flight routes and 2.1 million hotels worldwide; this gives customers access to the largest combination of bookable options on a single platform. This scale of choice is not available elsewhere in the market and is a true distinction from other companies in the travel sector. Our ability to anticipate customer demand, be mobile first and develop new unique products, such as our subscription programme Prime, alongside the choice and convenience we offer has seen us become number two for flights in the global travel market.

WHY IS TECH INNOVATION AND AI SO IMPORTANT TO THE BUSINESS? Tech and AI are absolutely vital to cater to traveler needs and remain relevant within the travel sector. At eDreams ODIGEO we are proud to be continuously innovating and leveraging our tech capabilities to bring new products to market. We use AI to compare and combine billions of data points from the entire travel ecosystem to build our customers the ideal travel experience tailored to them. We are able to make up to eight billion pricing calculations per hour and compare millions of options in a matter of seconds. This all enables us to anticipate demands and offer personalised travel plans to consumers. eDreams ODIGEO has consistently been at the forefront of tech innovation, this has enabled us to provide customers with new products and provide a seamless end to end experience.

The travel journey starts for customers from the time they begin searching for their trip, this feeling will be heightened in the months ahead as people begin to make plans to reconnect with family and friends.

One product we are extremely proud of is Prime. It was the first travel related subscription program to be launched and we recently reached the

one million subscriber milestone. Prime gives consumers access to flights and hotels at highly competitive prices, presents travelers with the most relevant travel combinations and ultimately encourages loyalty.

WHAT IS EDREAMS ODIGEO’S CORE FOCUS IN THE YEAR AHEAD AS WE EMERGE FROM THE PANDEMIC? As a business we will continue to focus on the areas which took priority over the last 12 months: our team, our customers and our business. It has been absolutely critical that we have got all three correct as the travel industry dealt with an unprecedented global situation. We are immensely proud of how our team adapted to remote working.

As a company operating in the travel industry there were significant challenges and pressures, everyone in the team was incredibly engaged and committed to working together to the benefit of our customers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we launched a weekly presentation and Q&A with me and other members of the management team, this is an initiative we will keep in place as it’s been a fantastic forum to give business updates and for our team to ask questions. The most effective way of bringing our creative brain power together has been through ‘online festivals’. Each ‘festival’ has a different theme and employees can dropin to different sessions to share ideas and feedback on concepts. We try hard to make sure eDreams ODIGEO is a positive and motivating place for people to work. It is so important that our teams find their roles enjoyable and are with a company that inspires them.

Our customers have faced incredible disruption throughout the pandemic, with over two million canceled flights and refunds needing to be managed. Over the last 12 months we have worked incredibly hard on behalf of our customers, often working with airlines that have made it difficult to authorize and process refunds, causing significant delays for our customers.

Our self-service platform was enhanced to provide customers with a self-service online tool that enables them to autonomously manage their bookings, including changes and cancelations.

We will continue to focus on using our tech expertise to give customers the ability to seamlessly plan their end-to-end journey on one platform, from flights, to hotels, car hire, train and other ancillaries – our OTA model is well-placed to capture the consumer preference for convenience.

Our business has retained high levels of liquidity and a strong balance sheet throughout the pandemic. We have spent the last 12 months ensuring we are well-positioned to cater to post-pandemic traveler priorities. We have done this through product development and innovation, and this will continue to be our core focus in the months ahead.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST SHIFT IN TRAVEL OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? We are optimistic about the future and expect travel to rebound to pre-Covid levels.

The rollout of vaccination programs around the world is incredibly promising, and we have already seen how responsive travelers are to announcements and progress, with an uptick in search enquiries being seen as a result. We also saw last summer how willing people were to travel when restrictions allowed. Consumers quickly came back into the market and almost 50% of our bookings returned within two months. This year with vaccination programs underway across the world we expect a stronger bounce back.

The shift from offline to online has been accelerated due to the pandemic and this has translated into how our customers are accessing our products. Mobile bookings make up 58% of total bookings, up from 18% in 2015. The use of mobile also reflects changing booking habits brought about by the pandemic, with last minute bookings for travel on the rise.

The other big shift we will see is the increased shift to automation, as health and hygiene will continue to be a big factor in travelers’ decision-making. With health and hygiene front and centre people will be keen to complete journeys through airports autonomously via mobile and computer enabled security checks.

www.edreamsodigeo.com

DELOITTE

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June 2021

Deloitte's Abdi Goodarzi on the Future of Enterprise Performance Deloitte’s Abdi Goodarzi discusses the Kinetic Enterprise, Business Agility, the Rise of Connectivity, Ecosystem Co-Innovation, and the Evolving Role of the CXO WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

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DELOITTE Abdi Goodarzi

30

June 2021

DELOITTE

An Early Start It’s 6 a.m. Pacific Time when Deloitte Consulting Enterprise Performance (EP) leader Abdi Goodarzi steps into his Costa Mesa, California office to start the day.

Immediately, in conversation, one can feel the optimism – and there’s no shortage of reasons why.

Within Deloitte Consulting, Abdi leads an integrated portfolio of offerings with a robust set of digital transformation capabilities that enable enterprises to solve strategic and tactical business challenges and evolve into industry-leading competitors. The EP portfolio, which includes ERP platforms, supply chain and finance solutions, and IT optimisation services – provides an enterprise-wide lens, addressing the rapid, cross-business function change occurring at the heart of the modern enterprise. With COVID-19 response and recovery at the forefront of enterprise planning, the necessity of business resiliency and adaptability is more resonant than ever.

The impact his teams have on clients is represented in an expanding list of annual accolades. EP’s SAP practice recently won four SAP Pinnacle Awards, including Partner of the Year. The Oracle practice was named the Global Cloud Transformation Partner of the Year; the Emerging ERP practice was named the Infor Global Integrator of the Year; the Workday practice won two Partner Innovation Industry Awards; and the Government and Public Sector practice won the SAP Innovation Award for Business Transformation. And that’s just looking back over the past year.

Before delving further into the world of EP, we ask Abdi how his background shaped his path to the leader he is today. Born in the Middle East, Abdi shares his experiences living in Turkey, Canada, and Boston, before settling in southern California.

“Early on, I was surrounded by very strong women who were instrumental in making me who I am,” he says. “I learned a lot about being strong, being able to face challenges in life, being straight ahead, resilient, passionate and authentic.”

Abdi continues, “I consider myself a global citizen. Exposure to many cultures has helped me shape my views about life, my clients, the work that I do.”

“You recognise that each language and every culture has its own sophistications and benefits. Similarly, when you bring a collection of individuals from diverse backgrounds with the right set of capabilities and knowledge together to solve complex problems, you quickly realise that you have to think globally in order to bring minds together, leveraging the uniqueness of each point of view.”

As the conversation continues, the significance of this statement permeates across Abdi’s leadership principles and EP initiatives, during a time when organisations and their people had to come together to navigate a way through one of the most significant disruptions ever experienced.

With introductions completed, Abdi’s boundless sense of energy continues with a tour of six unique themes across the landscape of EP – why EP matters and agility lessons from the COVID-19 crisis, the rise of the Kinetic Enterprise™, co-innovation across ecosystems, the changing roles of CXOs, embracing the power of diversity and inclusion, and the power of teams. “ I consider myself a global citizen. Exposure to many cultures has helped me shape my views about life, my clients, the work that I do” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER businesschief.com

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Alex: A Life in a Digital World

Why EP Matters, Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis The first of Abdi’s themes ties the shocks of the pandemic to new understandings of enterprise resiliency and agility.

The battle against COVID-19 was in its early stages when EP jumped into the front lines.

The practice helped a syringe manufacturer enable their operations to deliver COVID vaccines by conducting a detailed capacity andand smart factory analysis on multiple manufacturing lines. The team delivered its rapid assessment virtually, using remote collaboration tools, and leveraging rich manufacturing data to identify near-term capacity improvements of as much as 20 percent to help increase supplies of this critical COVID-related medical device.

EP assisted another client in coordinating an ecosystem strategy across labs, universities, and businesses to support regional testing, including development of a new supply chain 32

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model for testing supplies. The end result of the project was the client’s ability to rapidly and safely address critical risk groups.

“With COVID-19, it was about crisis management,” says Abdi. “We saw that organisations that had invested in more advanced technologies earlier had better success dealing with this disruption. It took a lot of technical capabilities in the background to go overnight into 100 percent virtual operations.”

“A magnifying factor on enterprise disruption requires a look back. For the majority of the transformations completed in the ‘90s and early 2000s, it was about integration, consolidation and tech adoptions.

They did not consider or adopt the key elements needed to thrive or survive in a rapidly changing environment. The nonstandardisation of data, and resulting complex processes and systems, did not translate well to sudden changes in working methods.”

DELOITTE

“ For the post-COVID world, it will be all about speed, scale and insights,” Abdi says. “Some organisations are in a much better position today because they had the agility to adjust, modify and manage disruptions”

ABDI GOODARZI TITLE: DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, USA Abdi Goodarzi leads Deloitte Consulting’s Enterprise Performance practice. He has more than 25 years of diverse experience in large-scale global ERP enabled business transformations, Cloud, Data Management, UX, AI and Automation.

ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

Since joining Deloitte in 1998, he has successfully served many Fortune 500 companies with their large-scale transformations. He was pivotal in establishing and growing Deloitte’s SAP global delivery centers in India.

Abdi serves several high-profile Deloitte client CxOs as a trusted advisor. In his previous role as the Leader of the US SAP practice, he was instrumental in growing Deloitte’s SAP practice, earning many accolades with SAP.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“For the post-COVID world, it will be all about speed, scale and insights,” Abdi says.

“Some organisations are in a much better position today because they had the agility to adjust, modify and manage disruptions.

We have a new understanding of business resiliency today. Assisting enterprises ‘immunise’ from disruptions – creating agility for organisations to deal with unforeseeable events at a much faster pace in the future – is not just what we deliver, but where we walk the walk.”

“The investments we’ve made in technology over the years kept us ahead of trends and able to convert to 100 percent virtual operations overnight. Software, operations, and our people moved rapidly over foundational infrastructures that were pre-designed for a remote-collaboration model. Single-sources for data, accessible from anywhere, ensured our teams remained connected. In effect, we had vaccinated our business to become immune to certain kinds of disruption, which minimised the impact of the pandemic on our client projects. Now it’s clear to everyone that investments in business continuity and disaster recovery take on a whole new significance. Going forward, organisations will need to continue to find ways to vaccinate their businesses to stay immune to future disruptions. We are doing this work with our

Abdi has presented at many business and technology conferences and authored several articles, including the “You Got Cloud?” article in the WSJ CIO Journal in 2014.

DELOITTE

“ Many of our client conversations used to focus on cost reduction and making operations more manageable; today, the urgent discussion is about the acceleration of connectivity and automation between data, systems, processes, capabilities and the workforce. Autonomous businesses and processes are the must-haves for competitive relevancy today and tomorrow” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

The Kinetic Enterprise: Built to Evolve

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clients today, and continue to invest in the forefront of innovation and technology, demonstrated by our Smart Factory capabilities and the Kinetic Enterprise framework.”

A Smarter World and the Rise of the Kinetic Enterprise “Let’s talk about future-state capabilities that are transforming the foundations of businesses today,” Abdi says. “Smart stores, connected patients, drones, smart factories, autonomous vehicles, and intelligent farms – these are all part of our smarter world vision, and they all have two elements in common: They all need to connect to enterprise systems to process and analyse data, and they demand integration of cloud and AI into every aspect of the business.”

“There will be a race for AI and automation over the next five to 10 years,” Abdi continues. “Whoever wins that race will be

the ones that will thrive in their respective industries. Many of our client conversations used to focus on cost reduction and making operations more manageable; today, the urgent discussion is about the acceleration of connectivity and automation between data, systems, processes, capabilities and the workforce. Autonomous businesses and processes are the must-haves for competitive relevancy today and tomorrow.”

Underscoring EP’s commitment to connected devices and automation is the launch of an operating Smart Factory demo site in conjunction with Wichita State University. The Factory’s end-to-end smart production line demonstrates the art of the possible through advanced manufacturing methods and technologies. The functioning factory site makes digital transformations real by facilitating conversations with clients on how to merge leading technologies with operations. Clients are encouraged to

Supply Chain: We are Connected

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Business and technology services providers are no exception to the accelerating change in business models. In a world before the pandemic, EP had already leveraged the Kinetic pillars as the driver of innovations and investments in the shift to digital delivery capabilities and platforms. Within EP’s competitive landscape, the flexibility in these platforms and assets to provide value and insight as client’s business needs evolve, became a leading differentiator. One of EP’s

KINETIC CASE STUDY: USING THE CLOUD TO EVOLVE CLEAN

DID YOU KNOW...

explore the art of the possible, leaving with new perspectives on solving challenges, and a viable pathway to implementing change.

Tinged with excitement, Abdi summarises the significance of the Smart Factory with one question: “How do you create an entire end-to-end smart operation around your factory that is enabled by cloud and AI, and dramatically changes your positioning against your competitors? Let us show you.”

For EP, smart factories are just one example of the power of connectivity to transform an industry. Abdi highlights that technological disruption is a constant, and addressing continuous evolution in the frame of capability discussions is key for the success of the modern enterprise. Where once enterprise systems were “built to last,” the rapid acceleration of technological change required a new way forward – toward enterprises that are “built to evolve.” In conjunction with its ecosystem partners, Deloitte has defined the new “North Stars” of the enterprise – Clean, Intelligent, Inclusive, and Responsive. These are the four pillars of the Kinetic Enterprise, an enterprise perpetually in motion.

“With the Kinetic Enterprise framework,” Abdi states, “we ask – how do you build intelligent enterprise business platforms, inclusive of an ecosystem of applications and microservices, that can responsively scale on demand?”

Referencing recent business adaptability challenges, Abdi highlights, “Historically, the Clean pillar was one of the biggest challenges in technology adoption and transformation programs. The technology was customised to meet individualised and siloed business expectations – which led to sub-optimisation of the overall business. The ‘clean’ core is a big factor in creating fungibility and agility – nimble platforms that allow you to scale as your business changes.”

Technical debt from excessive customisation can inhibit the fastmoving enterprise. In addition, business customisation from ineffective business alignment only serves to slow the enterprise down. Clean requires resolving legacy issues and standardising capabilities; an enterprise better adapted to future disruption and continuous innovation.

A Fortune 30 Oil and Gas client engaged Deloitte to create a single source of financial truth for enterprise leadership, in advance of a larger transformation journey. The implementation of SAP’s S/4HANA Central Finance solution enabled the enterprise to have an end-toend view of Financials across the globe.

The solution was built using the Kinetic Clean approach, as the client wished to move to Cloud in the near future.

Deloitte’s delivery included a cloudcapable reporting strategy on top of the platform, and a transformation structure that enabled automated migration of applications across business landscapes, ensuring minimal customisations and process consistency.

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Reduce tech and operational debt and the need for customization.

Use the best possible combinations of data with tech and talent to make insight-driven business decisions.

Use the power of new platforms to enable frictionless scalability and speed to win in the market.

Alignment with industry and cross-industry business capabilities enables a framework for target states and comparable business outcomes.

Measures of business outcome in standardised form via the Enterprise Value Methodology enables outcome benchmarking.

Leveraging best-of-breed solutions to achieve optimal alignment with business objectives.

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Awards and Recognition: 2020-2021

Partner of the Year - Customer Experience (Large Enterprise) Partner of the Year - Delivery Excellence Partner of the Year - SAP S/4HANA (Large Enterprise) Partner of the Year - SAP SuccessFactors Solutions (Large Enterprise)

OPN Global Cloud Transformation Partner of the Year

Financial Services Industry Innovation Award Retail & Hospitality Industry Innovation Award

INFOR PARTNER EXCELLENCE AWARDS - GLOBAL SYSTEM INTEGRATOR OF THE YEAR

DELOITTE

early investments was the integrated Deloitte Ascend™ platform. Blending leading industry insight with digital platforms and automation, Ascend today delivers leading practices, benchmarking data, and solution frameworks across nearly 35 industries.

“Knowledge of each industry and the way an individual process is expected to operate or drive value in any given industry is a differentiator,” he says. “Ascend provides a digital platform to access that information, which accelerates and enriches our clients’ insights, enabling us to collaborate closely to define the best fit technology solution.”

For EP, the Kinetic framework has become a unifying beacon across both clients and ecosystem partners. Its unifying language, centred on value-driven capability delivery, is written in jargon-free terms that allow the business and technology to speak on the same plane.

Ecosystem Integration and the Importance of Innovation Abdi’s third theme is the necessity of coordination and innovation across the solution ecosystem. Crossing technology platforms, manufacturers and academia, Abdi views EP’s role as the ecosystem integrator, creating a universal language that creates enterprise-level alignment.

Expanding on EP’s ecosystem approach, Abdi highlights a familiar principle.

“As individuals have differing perspectives, so do each of our ecosystem partners – a software company can think about planning in a different way from someone who does in-house manufacturing at a factory,” he says.

“As long as you can understand and connect those perspectives, you can solve their problems in a much faster way.

“We bring our industry knowledge of what our clients will need today and in the future.

EP 101: Ecosystem Orchestrator

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“ We bring our industry knowledge of what our clients will need today and in the future. Our alliance partners bring the technical platform.

We then work with our ecosystem partners to help define foundational and enhanced expectations of the software. For us, the co-innovation approach is key” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

Our alliance partners bring the technical platform. We then work with our ecosystem partners to help define foundational and enhanced expectations of the software.

For us, the co-innovation approach is key,” he states.

“What we want to deliver to our clients is an implemented solution of the ideal version of the software – one that they can continuously evolve and operate as their business and processes transform, rather than replace, every few years.”

For Abdi, a successful ecosystem integration results in “maximum value for our clients by blending the ideal solution

of business needs, ecosystem capabilities, innovation and scalability, with a common understanding of how the solution assists the enterprise in becoming Kinetic.”

Abdi adds, “I keep mentioning this word ‘innovation’ – it has to be part of any organisation's ecosystem strategy.

Otherwise, you will not see a rise and decline is the only direction.”

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THE SMART FACTORY

DID YOU KNOW...

The Smart Factory Advantage A smart factory is a highly digitized and connected production facility that uses technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics to manufacture products. Smart factory investments can boost productivity and efficiency while simultaneously driving costs down.

The Smart Factory @ Wichita Deloitte has convened a world-renowned ecosystem of solution providers, technology innovators, academic researchers, and futurists to launch The Smart Factory @ Wichita, an Industry 4.0 immersive experience center that will demonstrate how smart factory technologies are reshaping business today and offer hands-on learning opportunities on how to best partner human and technological capabilities on the shop floor. It’s an immersive experience for shop floor managers, CXOs, ecosystem partners, and students, providing tangible guidance on transforming manufacturing

processes for the next normal, integration into business operations, and building believers out of smart factory skeptics.

Deloitte and Wichita State University are constructing the brand-new facility on Wichita State’s Innovation Campus, which will include a full-scale production line, dedicated space for select ecosystem sponsors and experiential labs exploring smart factory capabilities. The facility will be a net-zero impact smart building on a smart grid featuring 60,000 square feet of sustainable space.

The Smart Factory @ Wichita will make digital transformations real by demonstrating how to merge existing technologies with new innovations, sparking a dialogue about how companies can accelerate their journey towards scalable and sustainable capabilities.

For more information on The Smart Factory, visit TheSmartFactory.io

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Evolution of the CXO, AI / Cloud as Value Multipliers For innovation to become core to an organisation’s strategy, CXO understanding and support of enterprise capabilities and platforms is critical. For his fourth theme, Abdi reflects on recent CXO conversations as he discusses the evolution of enterprise executive roles.

“First, the role of CXOs for every organisation has completely changed,” he begins. “Understanding the technology footprint is a part of every business transformation. CXOs today face the 44

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“ The only way that enterprises can reach these value multipliers is by taking advantage of more innovation and technology, such as cloud and AI, while establishing future-proof businesses and processes” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

necessity to understand the accelerating and mission-critical infusion of technology and innovation in everyday business processes.

DELOITTE

Culture, and Diversity and Inclusion In conversation, Abdi has addressed the critical elements for the enterprise of today and tomorrow, so far discussing the Kinetic Pillars, the necessity of innovation, a common language across expanding ecosystem choices, and value assessment.

For Abdi, there is another factor for executives to consider that will define long-term success for their organizations – their people. Abdi begins: “People should not be a siloed or a second-tier factor in any organization. People are at the heart of everything.”

INNOVATION ROUNDTABLE FOR ALLIANCES AND CLIENTS: EP’S ANNUAL CLIENT SUMMIT EP’s Client Summit is an exclusive annual event that brings together 200+ attendees comprised of C-level executives from selected enterprises, Deloitte leaders and EP alliance partners to discuss and share success stories and innovations across industries. Featuring industry and thought leader luminaries, the forum encourages ideation from shared understanding of successes and lessons learned as enterprises navigate change.

DID YOU KNOW

Every company will need to think of itself as a technology company – the traditional boundaries of the CIO now encompass other CXO roles.”

“Second, the days of focus on cost management as the sole factor are over.

Today, defined value generation is equal to cost-related outcomes. Many of our clients are asking for more investments from us and skin-in-the-game concepts to make sure those outcomes are generated at the end of complex investments.”

“We completely agree and support our clients’ perspectives. Why would you do a finance or supply chain transformation if it is not impacting your shareholder value, if it is not creating efficiencies and productivity for your people, and it is not improving and advancing your culture? You have to create those mappings and ties before you can invest in anything.”

“Third, technology itself has become a lot simpler to adopt and implement. We've gone from an age when it was important to have the right technology to where you can have many choices. As a result, CXOs’ mindsets about what they were expecting out of their investments are also changing – the amplification of outcomes and value that are driven out of these investments – those expectations are increasing by considerable multipliers.”

Abdi addresses the new CXO expectation, stating: “The only way enterprises can reach these value multipliers is by taking advantage of more innovation and technology, such as cloud and AI, which are dramatically changing the ways an enterprise can advance their business.

The more you invest in these concepts as enablers of innovation, the better you empower your business against disruptions and align your future enterprise goals.”

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The Future of Enterprise Resiliency

“In the context of transformations, investments in people have not been on par with investments in systems and processes.”

Abdi continues, “There's no point in having all the technology if you don't have the responsive culture and programs in which people can adapt to new ways of doing things, where the technology becomes a part of the company working alongside the people.”

“There has to be an appropriate level of investment in your most valuable asset to take advantage of the full spectrum of capabilities. This is not an afterthought for us – the people side is of such significance that we have underscored our AI practice with the theme ‘Age of With’ – humans with machines. We bring our Human Capital teams to the table to help us with the change management brought about 46

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by industrial and societal changes, with our Future of Work solutions.”

Abdi shifts to a wider angle, and discusses his own organization’s culture: “In addition to the investment in skills, as a leader of any group of people today, you have to understand what is happening in society – the differing points of view, expectations and passions of individuals working in your organisations, including their social views.

You have to have that clarity and that openness. Here at Deloitte, we consider diversity, equality, and inclusiveness a vital part of our cultural fabric.”

Abdi reflects, “That culture was what initially attracted me to Deloitte – our ability to provide the diversity, opportunities and performance expectations that get the best out of me and every person who is here.”

DELOITTE

“ In addition to the investment in skills, as a leader of any group of people today, you have to understand what is happening in society – the differing points of view, expectations and passions of individuals working in your organisations, including their social views. You have to have that clarity and that openness. Here at Deloitte, we consider diversity, equality, and inclusiveness a vital part of our cultural fabric” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

As part of Deloitte’s culture, Abdi and his team share how internal learnings go beyond keeping up to date on the latest platform updates and emerging technologies. The initiatives include open internal dialogue wherein individuals can share experiences of bias, inclusion principles and the changes that everyone needs to bring to the table to have a comprehensive set of values.

“I consider myself a ‘people person,’” he says. “You can learn a lot from everyone around you. Inclusivity includes understanding various cultures in different parts of the world. We want to make sure we have a good understanding of what those cultures are, how individuals in those cultures operate, and how we can honour our unique values. This is how we include the individuals and groups that constitute a global firm – we want them to feel like they belong to the organisation and have the best

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talent experience, regardless of where they live, what they believe, and what they do.”

The Power of Teams and Authenticity in Leadership As the sun begins to rise above California’s Santa Ana Mountains, Abdi discusses his final theme on the power of teams. He frames his approach referencing his passion for soccer and professional sports.

“First, what we do in the world of consulting isn’t a tennis match,” he says. “It’s a team sport.

It requires you to depend on others while they depend on you. It doesn’t matter who’s the captain and who’s the player – you have to trust the team, you have to respect the team and you have to empower the team. That’s been my mantra: Operate a team format.”

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“Second, every leader brings a different approach. Maintaining that authenticity to your perspective is important. The power of differentiated perspective is what turns a group of people into a powerful squad uniquely qualified to deliver exceptional outcomes.”

“Third, when a team is invested in the same cause, you must take the time to understand, respect and support what each party brings to the table. Creating a common language that is inclusive of all parties is integral to success.”

Abdi summarizes, “Then - collectively between our teams, our clients and ecosystem partners, we can solve any challenge ahead.”

The conversation ends as it began – a highenergy view into the world of tomorrow,

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Looking Forward: An Integrated World

“ When a team is invested in the same cause, you must take the time to understand, respect and support what each party brings to the table. Creating a common language that is inclusive of all parties is integral to success.

Then - collectively between our teams, our clients and ecosystem partners, we can solve any challenge ahead”

leveraging decades of experience and a people-centred mindset.

The ever-evolving path of enterprise evolution will require a big thinker, an innovator, a tactical mindset, and someone that can communicate across organisational borders, boundaries, and languages. For Abdi, the road ahead seems a natural fit.

“This is what I love about my role – the ability to leverage who I am,” Abdi concludes. “I love problem solving, dealing with complex challenges, and collaborating with people. For me, the glass isn’t half full.

It’s full – every day.”

ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER businesschief.com

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

LESSONS FROM A CRISIS:

LEADERSHIP WITH HEART AND HUMANITY

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Sally Helgesen Sally Helgesen

Max Morielli Amy Lui Abel Francine Katsoudas Accenture Interactive The Conference Board Cisco

When it comes to holding onto leadership gains made during the pandemic, prioritising people is a must.

Business Chief gains insight into leadership lessons learned from a crisis WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

W

hen talking with a leadership expert recently, she recalled a conversation she’d had back in May last year with the CHRO of a large American energy producer. The CHRO had explained how the company’s rigid prohibitions on working from home had made it tough for the company to attract and retain talented women. But now, forced by the pandemic to open up to remote working, the company’s executive team had witnessed no fall-off in productivity and decided that those rules were ‘going to change’.

Welcome to ‘leadership lessons learned from a crisis’ number one. Because while the COVID-19 crisis has given rise to more than a handful of headaches and hurdles, it has also inadvertently delivered on more than a handful of positive leadership gains.

Satish Shankar Bain & Company

Leadership lesson 1: Flexibility equals greater diversity The leadership expert in question, Sally Helgesen – cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership (and author of How Women Rise) – told Business Chief that this acute observation by the energy company suggests that “while the pandemic has had a well-publicised negative impact on working women, the aftermath may prove a boon”. It may also prove helpful to skilled workers whose careers have depended upon access to scarce visas, thereby “making the workforce more global as well as more diverse”.

It’s been a similar story for Fortune 500 firm Accenture Interactive, with remote working having forced the company to change both how it hires and how it enables its people to realise their full potential.

“There are ways in which the remote working revolution has been positive for diversity”, Max Morielli, President for Europe at Accenture Interactive tells Business Chief. For example, where some individuals may not have been able to attend a daily 9-5 office role, leaders are now able to draw on talent no matter where it is in the world.

“At Accenture Interaction, we aim to work with empathy and celebrate our differences as our greatest strength and the changes brought about by the pandemic have allowed us to create a more diverse, vibrant working experience for our talent,” Morielli says. businesschief.com

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WEBINAR

When Not If: Responding When Your OT Network Suffers a Ransomware Attack Thursday - June 24th REGISTER NOW

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Do Good to Lead Well Through Crisis

Sally Helgesen TITLE: WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP EXPERT COMPANY: SALLY HELGESEN INDUSTRY: INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER LOCATION: NEW YORK

But this is not the only leadership lesson learnt. According to Cisco’s Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Francine Katsoudas, the challenges of the past year have resulted in people looking for support more than ever, and this has led them to the unlikeliest source of guidance – their company.

“In learnings from 2020, global industry analyst Josh Bersin noted that ‘communication, listening, providing authentic feedback, and taking action on employee issues’ are perhaps the most important leadership and HR practices of all,” Katsoudas says.

Leadership lesson 2: Bring your humanity to work During a year where people have lost family members, jobs, and felt more isolated than ever before, leaders have been forced to be flexible, show compassion and give employees leeway and support. It’s also given leaders a chance to connect more deeply, to show they care, to be both vulnerable and authentic, ultimately, to be human in their leadership.

Sally Helgesen is a women’s leadership expert, speaker, consultant, and bestselling author, including of The Female Advantage: Women’s Way of Leadership and How Women Rise. cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership Helgesen delivers leadership programs and keynotes in corporations, universities and associations worldwide.

“ While the pandemic has had well-publicised negative impact on working women, the aftermath may prove a boon. It may also prove helpful to skilled workers whose careers have depended upon access to scarce visas, making the workforce more global as well as more diverse” SALLY HELGESEN

INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER, SALLY HELGESEN businesschief.com

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Max Morielli TITLE: PRESIDENT FOR EUROPE COMPANY: ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE INDUSTRY: CONSULTING LOCATION: ITALY Max Morielli is president for Europe at Accenture Interactive and as such ais responsible for defining the strategy and vision, overseeing business growth and building practice and team across the region. Based in Italy, Max has a wealth of experience and passion in helping clients transform their business through digital technologies.

For Satish Shankar, Regional Managing Partner of Bain & Company for AsiaPacific, the COVID-19 crisis has “reminded us of the power of authentic human engagement with our employees”, something Shankar believes is acutely needed in times of turbulence, but that is often quickly forgotten when things go back to normal.

“The best leader will maintain that proximity, transparency, vulnerability and personal storytelling to stay deeply connected with their teams post pandemic,” Shankar tells Business Chief.

Vikram Bhalla, Senior Partner at BCG Henderson Institute (BCG’s think tank) says that moving forward leaders should 54

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leave behind such leadership stereotypes as what he calls the “confident decision maker” and the “leader from the front” and instead bring their humanity to work.

What employees and others are looking for, he explains, is an authentic and fully accessible human being and “this means sharing much more of yourself, and not just your successes, with many more people”.

Bhalla asserts that leaders must engage with their teams and act with compassion and understanding and must make themselves more visible, available, and accessible through demo days with teams, joint working efforts, and live brainstorming sessions.

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

“ I believe that the reliance on remote working has brought an extra layer of humanity to the way we experience our professional lives. There is an opportunity here for leaders to leverage that in order to instil an open, positive, and freeing professional culture within their organisations” MAX MORIELLI

PRESIDENT FOR EUROPE, ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE

Leadership lesson 3: Prioritise employee wellbeing Acknowledging that one of the main challenges for leaders moving forward is that of workplace mental health, Amy Lui Abel, VP of Human Capital at research think tank The Conference Board, tells Business Chief that in a post-pandemic world, “leaders will need to know how to communicate with and lead their teams while demonstrating greater levels of empathy, compassion, and self-awareness”.

She adds: “The mental health challenges in our workforce will continue for a long time and will require support. Leaders can help their build resilience to thrive and create an environment of psychological safety and trust.” businesschief.com

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It’s time to get selfish and put your people first A global company with 70,000+ employees across almost 100 countries, Cisco prides itself on being an employeecentric culture with a purpose of powering an inclusive future for all, and the crisis has further amplified the need for this. Here, Francine Katsoudas, EVP and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, discusses the power of empathy in leadership.

Empathy is a superpower. We know that progress happens when we see the world through others' eyes. Proximity is a way of being. When we get proximate to someone else’s experience, especially those different than our own, we grow, develop new perspectives, and engage more effectively with others. In our work, then, we need to navigate how to listen, not tell; how to make space for things we may not agree with; and how to expand the space we make for our people.

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Empathy will change the way in which we engage with each other.

Today, trust in leadership is table stakes, and building this culture of trust has to start at the top. At this moment, CEOs and CHROs have the incredible opportunity to institutionalise inclusive leadership, marked by empathetic teams and leaders, and align to a broader societal purpose to compete for and retain top talent. Doing so is good for your employees, good for your company, and ultimately, good for the world.

Francine Katsoudas EVP and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Cisco

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Amy Lui Abel TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN CAPITAL OF RESEARCH COMPANY: THE CONFERENCE BOARD LOCATION: NEW YORK Amy Lui Abel is Vice President of Human Capital of research think tank The Conference Board. She leads research efforts focusing on an organisation’s human capital strategy, capabilities, needs, and performance that supports broader business objectives.

“ In the post-pandemic world, leaders will need to know how to communicate with and lead their teams while demonstrating greater levels of empathy, compassion, and self-awareness” AMY LUI ABEL

VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN CAPITAL OF RESEARCH, THE CONFERENCE BOARD

And many companies are already planning to do so, with 77% of outperforming company CEOs recently reporting plans to prioritise employee wellbeing even it if affects nearterm profitability, according to IBM research; and 50% of firms planning to increase their HR resources to help manage employee wellbeing and mental health, according to research by KPMG. Other organisations (and leaders) are already leading the charge in this. Take Cisco.

Katsoudas explains that when Cisco started its conversation with employees around mental health a few years ago, the leadership team had hoped it would contribute to breaking down the associated stigma. “In return, our employees started telling us about their families and their own struggles. This set the groundwork for us to expand these offerings during the pandemic, giving our people the businesschief.com

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Purpose, people, planet Satish Shankar, Regional Managing Partner of Bain & Company for AsiaPacific, shares with Business Chief three positive changes that he feels the COVID-19 crisis has brought about and urges business leaders to consider carefully how they lead the recovery in a post-pandemic world.

1. Strong sense of corporate purpose COVID-19 confirmed what years of Bain & Company research has told us – that a strong sense of corporate purpose is critical to a company’s ability to navigate change.

Purpose is the anchor that provides context and focus, and the glue that holds the organisation together through flux. Being able to define, articulate and renew that purpose was a differentiator through the crisis and will continue to be critical in the leadership toolkit going forward.

2. Much greater agility In a Bain study conducted at the height of the crisis last year, 50% of respondents said their corporate teams had become more

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agile, with better prioritisation of project objectives and scope. Leaders were also reported as being more willing to take bold risks, and more tolerant of failures. Leaders should reflect on what enable this agile approach and embed that more deeply into their BAU organisation.

3. A focus on ESG Finally, COVID-19 has provided tailwinds to the sustainability/ ESG agenda in many companies, creating more urgency around employee wellness, sustainable supply chains and the general need to identify and navigate environmental risks. Leaders should seize the moment to propel their sustainability agendas forward coming out of the crisis.

Satish Shankar, Regional Managing Partner of Bain & Company for Asia-Pacific

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

support they need. This focus on the whole person is something that is now a core belief, and we will continue to care for our employees in all aspects of their lives.”

To help achieve this, especially within a hybrid working environment, organisations are increasingly looking to how digital tools can be used to improve communications and aid collaboration, with 78% of CEOs saying they will continue to build on their current use of digital collaboration and communication tools.

And while many people don’t believe ‘digital’ and ‘humanise’ belong in the same sentence, Katsoudas argues that they can. “When we leverage digital correctly, we can create a more human experience where we see our people better, understand gaps, inequities, and needs, and drive fresh insights.”

Leadership lesson 4: Empower and engage employees Working remotely has automatically meant that leaders are less hands-on, and that can be a good thing, explains Morielli, noting that “people work best when they feel that trust and belief”.

He adds: “The reliance on remote working has brought an extra layer of humanity to the way we experience our professional lives and there is an opportunity here for leaders to leverage that in order to instil an open, positive, and freeing professional culture within their organisations. At Accenture Interactive, we’ve learned that everyone does their best work when our talent has the freedom to experiment, to fail, and are afforded space for their ideas to flourish.”

Shankar concurs, explaining how in a Bain & Company study conducted at the height of the crisis last year, leaders reported to be more willing to take bold risks, and also more tolerant of failures, an agile leadership approach that ultimately gives employees more freedom to innovate. businesschief.com

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US AIR FORCE: FEELING THE NEED FOR INNOVATION SPEED WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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As one of the largest organizations on the planet, the US Department of the Air Force is charting a new course in digital technology. It’s top tech brass talk about the different facets of a complex transformation

T

he US Department of Defence, were it a commercial company, would be one of the biggest in the world. Like a container ship, its size – while staggeringly impressive – is also a handicap. Changing tack is the work of an army of personnel under the command of strong leaders. And it happens slowly.

Or it used to. As far as technology is concerned, the need for agility and development speed is so pressing, the US Air Force has had to order a bigger rudder.

It installed a new Chief Information Officer, Lauren Knausenberger, in August 2020 and a number of other high profile hires have joined the mission to set a new course for the 21st century.

Knausenberger admits the DoD is “a little bit behind the commercial world” and occasionally stymied by old-world thinking. “I was at a conference and I heard something I hadn’t heard in a long time: ‘digital transformation is great and everything but it doesn’t really enable the war fighter’.

That used to be how a lot of people felt, but we look at that attitude now and think it’s pretty humorous. The dialogue has changed and more people are realizing that when it comes to future war fighting and especially future deterrence, it’s all about the digital realm.”

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The power to do great things.

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How innovation is transforming government Leidos is a global leader in the development and application of technology to solve their customers’ most demanding challenges.

Watch: How Leidos innovation helps transform government According to Washington Technology’s Top 100 list, Leidos is the largest IT provider to the government. But as Lieutenant General William J. Bender explains, “that barely scratches the surface” of the company’s portfolio and drive for innovation.

Bender, who spent three and a half decades in the military, including a stint as the U.S. Air Force’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), has seen action in the field and in technology during that time, and it runs in the family.

Bender’s son is an F-16 instructor pilot. So it stands to reason Bender senior intends to ensure a thriving technological base for the U.S. Air Force. “What we’re really doing here is transforming the federal government from the industrial age into the information age and doing it hand-in-hand with industry,” he says.

The significant changes that have taken place in the wider technology world are precisely the capabilities Leidos is trying to pilot the U.S. Air Force through. It boils down to developing cyberspace as a new domain of battle, globally

connected and constantly challenged by the threat of cybersecurity attacks.

“We recognize the importance of the U.S. Air Force’s missions,” says Bender, “and making sure they achieve those missions. We sit side-by-side with the air combat command, intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure across the Air Force. There are multiple large programs where the Air Force is partnering with Leidos to ensure their mission is successfully accomplished 24/7/365. In this company, we’re all in on making sure there’s no drop in capability.”

That partnership relies on a shared understanding of delivering successful national security outcomes, really understanding the mission at hand, and Leidos’ long-standing relationship of over 50 years with the federal government.

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Lauren Knausenberger | USAF

Digitally enabled airmen The emergence of digital warfare isn’t new, but the definition is morphing from a vision of bespectacled keyboard warriors towards “digitally enabled airmen and guardians” through “global ubiquitous connectivity – having things in the cloud, able to move between different levels of classification seamlessly, having meaningful data coming from sensors all over the world, AI for machine-driven insights. At any point in time, airmen and guardians can see their entire operating picture anywhere in the world and move assets, physical or digital, to meet the mission need.”

Knausenberger has three ingredients in her recipe for achieving this: digital modernization, all domain command and control, and AI (specifically automated valuation models, or AVMs). “The rest of it just comes down to use case and tying the 66

June 2021

technology together to achieve a mission, even on the fly.”

She is adamant that the path to this digital nirvana is not paved with old methods overlaid with new technologies. Nor old attitudes. For inspiration, the US Air Force is looking to adopt the agile workflow and disruptive mindset of Silicon Valley start-up culture.

Enter Nic Chaillan, the US Air Force’s Chief Software Officer, whose resume is a catalogue of entrepreneurial spirit having founded 12 companies over a 20-year career (he started his first aged 16).

Sensing that he could “make a difference” in a world of terrorist attacks he joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2016.

Three years later, he heads up software, DevSecOps, cloud and cybersecurity for USAF. Illustrating the DoD’s historic attitude to software, the role did not previously exist.

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

“ WHEN IT COMES TO FUTURE WAR FIGHTING AND ESPECIALLY FUTURE DETERRENCE, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DIGITAL REALM”

LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY LOCATION: WASHINGTON

LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER

Modular jets Chaillan’s history is the antithesis of the department’s size, structure and way of working. His companies were built fast and small, with all eyes on the exit strategy.

“Everything,” he admits, “is different.”

That meant he had to hit the ground running. Despite some progress prior to his arrival, there was still a waterfall approach to project management, a dearth of agile culture and a legacy pathway to talent requirements and acquisition. Chaillan accelerated DevSecOps to introduce a continuous engineering model where software would be delivered multiple times a day, rather than once every three to five years, in order to address issues in real time.

USAF is starting to embrace its newfound technological focus and the possibilities it affords. Key to this, Chaillan thinks, is the realization that hardware and software should be decoupled to allow for rapid delivery of prototypes. Effectively, this means taking a modular approach where, for example, aircraft sensors can be swapped out to upgrade hardware without building a new jet.

EXECUTIVE BIO

CIO, US AIR FORCE

Lauren Knausenberger has been with the US Air Force in a number of guises, joining as Director of Cyberspace Innovation in 2017 before becoming Chief Transformation Officer two years later. Last August, she became Chief Information Officer. The new role is, in Knausenberger’s typically no-nonsense words, “really, really hard.”

More stakeholders to manage, more complexity and problem solving across the board, for everyone, at scale.

“Sometimes we’re deploying too many to too many different environments. As the CIO, I look at that and make sure we have a really robust cloud environment and that we’re putting in place the right incentives to make sure people are using that enterprise environment so we don’t have development teams that have to maintain 20 different baselines.

“I have to make sure it’s global infrastructure in one place that everybody can access, so I’m looking at the whole tech stack at this point, rather than just the fun stuff at the top.”

Driving Federal IT Transformation Dell Technologies helps you prepare for what comes next, with a broad range of solutions and services that enable multi-cloud flexibility, the digital workplace, and data management and insight.

Dell Technologies and the USAF: partners in IT modernization Dell Technologies and the U.S. Air Force have a longstanding partnership. On several programs of record, Dell Technologies supports mission-oriented areas, including providing data-centric applications for platforms that the Air Force leverages in testing and operations. For example, certain high-performance jet fighters rely on Dell Technologies software that helps provide critical information about aircraft performance to the service and the aircraft manufacturer. After a test flight, data modules gathered from the aircraft’s sensors are downloaded, processed and analyzed to provide critical insights.

The Air Force has also made a concerted effort to drive technology to the edge so that warfighters can gain value from their data where it lives. Dell Technologies is enabling dynamic decision-making at the edge, where collection, management, analysis, and the distribution of data is critical. Dell Technologies’ software factories are supporting some of the largest Air Force programs, like Kessel Run and Kobayashi Maru.

Kobayashi Maru is a cloud-based program designed to modernize the way the Air Force (now the U.S. Space Force) interacts

with its allies. By the time Kobayashi Maru was a program, the service had a year or two of experience with the highly successful Kessel Run. According to the Air Force, this continuous user-centered approach enabled warfighters to quickly evaluate software improvements, provide direct feedback to Kessel Run developers, and rapidly iterate the software to provide maximum value and impact. Kobayashi Maru operates under the same principle: the existing software procurement process is too slow to satisfy requirements, so leverage best practices and partner with industry (in this case, Dell Technologies) to get new systems into the field as quickly as possible.

The U.S. Air Force is committed to IT modernization, as exemplified by its ability to embrace change and transformation in how critical systems are procured and deployed. And Dell Technologies is committed to supporting the Air Force in its endeavors, so the service will always be ready for what’s next.

Learn more

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Chaillan compares it to Lego, the modular building block toy. “The next generation jet fighters will be a mix of different ‘Lego’ blocks and reusing existing ‘Lego’ blocks so we don’t have to create everything from scratch. It’s still very early on, but this approach to software might be the difference between winning and losing. And you are going to save time and money, or you do more right with the same amount of money, which is likely even better.” It will also allow vulnerabilities in the security of particular components to be isolated and fixed, in line with Chaillan’s zero trust policy.

“Security is really foundational to the success of all of this because if you move fast but the next day your source code is in the hands of the wrong people you didn’t really move fast at all. You just give free IP to your potential competitor or enemy.”

Design systems As anyone who has mugged up on the history of Lego knows, the toy owes its original success to a design system that allowed

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THE ALPHA OF TECHNOLOGY Success isn’t just about where you’ll go and how you’ll get there. It’s also about who you’ll team with. That’s why we combine the most innovative emerging technologies with deep federal domain expertise through cutting-edge intelligence services. darkwolfsolutions.com

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DARK WOLF: ACCELERATING SECURITY FOR USAF Dark Wolf Solutions is small and agile, and its partnership with the US Air Force is helping to deliver critical security faster and better than ever before.

As a small company whose biggest customers are the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, Dark Wolf Solutions is a triple-threat, specializing in Cybersecurity, Software and DevOps, and Management Solutions. Dark Wolf secures and tests cloud platforms, develops and deploys applications, and offers consultancy services performing system engineering, system integration, and mission support.

The break for Dark Wolf came when the Department of Defense decided to explore software factories. Rick Tossavainen, Dark Wolf’s CEO, thinks it was an inspired path for the DoD to take.

It has been, Tossavainen says, “amazing to watch” and has energized the Federal Contracting Sector with an influx of new talent and improved working environments that foster creativity and innovative ways of approaching traditional problems.

“ We originally started working with the US Air Force about three years ago. The problem was at the time you could develop all the software you wanted but you couldn’t get it into production – you had to go through the traditional assessment and authorization process.

I talked to Lauren Knausenberger and she told me about Kessel Run and what eventually came out of this was the DoD’s first continuous ATO [Authority To Operate].”

The secret to Dark Wolf’s success – and its partnerships with USAF and Space Force – lies in a client-first attitude. “ We’re not looking to maximise revenue,” Tossavainen explains. “ We tell all of our employees, if you’re ever faced with an issue and you don’t know how to resolve it, and one solution is better for the customer and the second is better for Dark Wolf, you always do number one. We’ve just got to take care of our customers, and I look for other partners that want to do that. And let’s work together so that we can bring them the best answer we can.”

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NICOLAS M CHAILLAN TITLE: CHIEF SOFTWARE OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY LOCATION: WASHINGTON

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EXECUTIVE BIO

Nic Chaillan started young. He created his first computer game aged 12 and made some money from it, enabling him to start his first company aged 16. He would go on to found 12 companies over the next 20 years, selling 185 IP products to Fortune 500 companies. So what led him to the US Air Force, a far cry from the start-up culture he was used to?

“I wanted to make a difference,” says Chaillan. Terrorism was stalking the world, and the attacks had felt close to home when the capital of Chaillan’s native France, Paris, was one of the victims. He joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2016 as Chief Architect. The move would lead him to senior postings in the Department of Defense and, eventually, to his current role in the US Air Force where he is the first Chief Software Officer, not just in that branch of the military, but in government at large.

all the bricks to interlock with each other.

It’s an approach that has served software developers well, according to Colt Whittall, the US Air Force’s Chief Experience Officer (another new role for the organization).

“Design systems are the reason that when you’re interacting with Google or Microsoft or Shopify or Amazon, it all kind of looks the same even though you might be interacting with multiple different systems and sites on the back end. They’re applying a design system which has all the branding and style artefacts and standards and how those things interact and how things move etc. All of that is combined in the design system.”

Whittall’s approach isn’t new, but its arrival in the big thinking of the US Air Force is. It allows partners and in-house to build software that fits together. Like Lego.

The many threads of change weaving through the US Air Force are combining into a single tapestry. And it's the consolidation of agile working ideas shipped in from the commercial sector and built to common standards that allows for a future where innovation speed is maximised without compromising security, and new ideas flourish in an environment designed to propagate them.

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Nic Chaillan | USAF

One of the most important elements of this transformation is listening to the end user – the airmen and women, the ground personnel – whose safety and efficacy is so closely linked to the technology on which they increasingly depend.

“ THIS APPROACH TO SOFTWARE MIGHT BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WINNING AND LOSING” NIC CHAILLAN

CSO, US AIR FORCE

“In four of five years, I’d like to see at least the 100 – maybe 500 – most widely used applications in the Air Force have consistent user feedback,” says Whittall. “That would be a game changer. It would allow us to manage the entire portfolio with another set of data that would rank the 500 most widely used systems by user satisfaction.”

The US Air Force’s radical transformation is taking shape, but it still needs scale.

Innovation and adoption mean nothing until they permeate the fabric of the organisation. For Chaillan, that means breaking down silos and reusing code across multiple agencies.

“It’s already hard enough to compete against other nation states,” he says, “We can’t fight among ourselves. I’m not going to lie, when I joined I was a little surprised businesschief.com

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Setting Data in Motion for Government Missions

Government agencies understand that making smarter, more effective use of their data is critical to improved fiscal stewardship, accountability, public policies, program effectiveness, and mission success.

The Confluent event streaming platform, built on Apache Kafka, enables government organizations to unlock and repurpose their existing data for countless modern applications and use cases.

Confluent: data in motion Government data is vast and complex to manage. Confluent is partnering with the US Air Force to enable mission to process and react to data in real time Data in motion. That’s Confluent in a nutshell. For years, companies in the commercial and public sectors have collected and stored data, unable to unlock its potential. Confluent was formed in Silicon Valley seven years ago to set data in motion and bring insight where and when organisations need it. This transformational process is something Confluent helps a variety of clients with, not least the US Air Force, a project which sits under the wing of Public Sector CTO Will LaForest.

“I would characterize the US Air Force as early adopters in government,” he says. “Confluent (Enterprise Apache Kafka) happens to be really well

“Confluent happens to be really well aligned with the needs and mission of the Air Force. They have a ton of examples where they’re handling data in motion”

—

Will LaForest, CTO, Public Sector, Confluent

Bringing technology solutions to the military aligned with the needs and mission of the Air Force. They have a ton of examples where they need to rapidly process and react to data events in real time and they need to do across globally distributed operations.

We have a lot of data nerds who love this problem set, focusing on geographic data distribution. We love this sort of challenge.”

LaForest feels there has been a sea change in the government’s attitude towards technology. It has started to more aggressively adopt lessons learned from the commercial sector “working to infuse some silicon valley DNA”. It has changed the way companies such as Confluent interact with the government. “They have really begun to embrace this new norm, working closely with technology companies on the cutting edge, “ he says.

The difference between commercial projects and government work comes down, in LaForest’s view, to scale and scope. “Operations span the globe – land, air, sea and space – and the variety of infrastructure, security requirements, and networking available impose some tough challenges on how the data will flow. Confluent is really well positioned to address this because it’s at the heart of what we do.”

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FOUR PILLARS OF USAF DX STRATEGY • Build a rock solid infrastructure • User experience for warfighter effect • Enable digital talents • Provide tradespace

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DID YOU KNOW...

LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER ON DIVERSITY Lauren Knausenberger takes diversity seriously. On the one hand the USAF CIO is “just choosing people that are really awesome and really passionate and really know their stuff” but she balances this with a deep sense of what the modern workforce looks like. “It’s absolutely true that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. I see a lot of responsibility as the first female CIO in the department of the Air Force. I try to keep a diverse group of people. We talk a lot about making sure we can keep people included.”

The Black Lives Matter movement, in particular, shunted diversity into a prominent slot in the US Air Force’s agenda. “It was important to keep a really open dialog and ask people ‘how are you feeling?’, ‘what can we do to help?’, ‘what do you need to vent about?’. I’m blessed to have a pretty diverse staff to lean on and ask. That includes women and people of color and of all different backgrounds.”

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UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

COLT WHITTALL TITLE: CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY

by how much tension there is between the DoD services. It’s just not healthy. I’m pretty sure we’re not the enemy here.

“So we have to break that and reuse code and adopt more open-source applications and really have that baked-in security and continuous delivery of software multiple times a day. Right now the thought we can release software 21 times a day is pretty cool – for the government. But at Google or Netflix or Tesla or whatever, that’s not good enough. We need to go to even higher numbers. If you look at the teams moving to DevSecOps right now it’s maybe five or 10 percent of what they do. We need to move the needle to 80 or 90 percent.”

“ CONSISTENT USER FEEDBACK WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER” COLT WHITTALL

CXO, US AIR FORCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: ATLANTA Colt Whittall is obsessed with design. His background in digital agencies, designing and building visual products and services for the private sector companies was interspersed with stints of work for government bodies, including the US Air Force. In the 1990s, he joined Deloitte, eventually building a digital agency that broke away from the consultancy. “After that ran its course I was ready to do something else,” Whittall recalls. He loaded up the family car for a ‘gap year’ while he thought about his next move.

That move turned out to be with the US Air Force, where Whittall is the organization’s first CXO. “My job is to delight the customer. If you go into the commercial world that’s what they talk about. We are most definitely not a consumer products and services company. We need a different bar, one that is about efficiency, about a war fighter, one that is orientated towards the mission that we have for our software and its application.

Let’s make our airmen productive, efficient and effective.”

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Colt Whittall | USAF

A long way to go In Knausenberger’s view, the journey is also far from complete. “We’ve made a lot of progress over the past few years with the way we acquire technology, the way we do our contracting and the way we partner,” she says. “And I’ll just be very upfront and say that we still have a long way to go.”

She admits that part of the problem is to rationalise the legacy issues surrounding different types of technological application. The US military has been one of the greatest innovators of the past century, with a paradoxical inability to manage administrative technology effectively. “I used to joke that we could hit the backend of a fly from halfway around the planet,” she muses, “but,

like – whoo! – you want to deploy some business email?

“It’s mostly a joke when I say that, but we do incredible things with ease and we make really easy things – things that everybody else does very well – hard.”

Hard is the operative word. Focus is split between the day-to-day operational side of USAF, advocating for a change of culture and championing an innovative spirit. It’s a painstaking process requiring diplomacy, skill, knowledge and determination. And data. Lots and lots of data. The job of maneuvering the world’s largest company to face a new era of warfare is under way and in capable hands.

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CORPORATE FINANCE

WHY WE NEED MORE

FEMALE CFOs (AND HOW TO REACH THAT GOAL) Four female global financial experts weigh in on why there are so few female CFOs, and what organisations can do to redress the executive gender imbalance WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

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T

he number of women in CFO positions in Fortune 500 companies reached a record high late last year, hitting 90, up from 65 just a few years ago. It’s not surprising given the increased focus in recent years on C-suite and board parity by investors such as Blackrock, as well as other institutions including the Nasdaq, which recently stated that companies listed on its US exchange will need to have a minimum of two non-white or female Board members.

And if they do not, they must publicise the reasons as to why.

The picture is similar in the UK. According to Julia van den Bosch Wazen, CFO Practice consultant at Odgers Berndtson, The Financial Conduct Authority in the UK is now looking to the London Stock Exchange listings framework as to whether similar measures ought to be implemented, while for City firms, “there are already ongoing discussions about potentially using wider FCA powers, such as denying regulatory approves to drive diversity on Boards”.

CORPORATE FINANCE

ROUNDTAB LE

CORPORATE FINANCE

HANADY KHALIFE,

MAGGIE XU,

SENIOR DIRECTOR, MEA & INDIA OPERATIONS, INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANTS

PRINCIPAL, GREATER CHINA FINANCIAL SERVICES PRACTICE, OLIVER WYMAN

With financial and consultancy positions at the Central Bank of Lebanon and Nakheel under her belt, and deep knowledge of the MEA region having worked in the UAE, Lebanon and Saudi, Khalife has over the past 11 years led efforts to establish and grow IMA’s operations successfully designing programs and initiatives to engage industry stakeholders and help organisations execute business strategies.

Based in Shanghai, Maggie has more than 12 years of experience in serving financial institutions. She has a deep understanding of finance and risk management, interbank market business, governance and transformation of banks as well as other non-banking financial institutions in China.

JULIA VAN DEN BOSCH WAZEN, UK CONSULTANT, ODGERS BERNDTSON’S CFO PRACTICE At Odgers Berndtson, the largest executive search firm in the UK, Julia is a consultant in the CFO Practice, leading searches to place CFOs and their direct reports, working with clients, from the FTSE 100 to small-cap businesses, private equity to not-for-profit. She also spearheads the diversity agenda, which includes the bi-annual women’s networking lunches she founded in 2017, drawing together female leaders within financial management and giving them the opportunity to gain career advice from a Chairwoman or CFO keynote speaker.

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CRISTINA CATANIA, EUROPE, PARTNER, MCKINSEY & COMPANY Based in Milan, Cristina is the leader of McKinsey’s work in wealth and asset management in Europe and the head of the sustainability work in the banking sector. She is also a core leader of the Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice in EMEA. Cristina focuses on serving financial institutions throughout Europe across a broad range of services with an emphasis on large transformations in banking and a spike in asset and wealth management. She also has a passion for ESG transformation.

CORPORATE FINANCE

But while there’s certainly been improvement, the under-representation of women in executive finance positions remains less than rosy, with van den Bosch Wazen admitting that “whilst much has been done, we are still of the view that progress is too slow”.

Still too few women make CFO According to the government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review, of which Odgers Berndtson are active contributors, while women now make up one third of all board positions in the UK’s FTSE 100 companies, up from 12.5% less than a decade ago, there remains a concerning lack of female representation in senior leadership and key executive roles in FTSE companies, with just 15% of finance directors bring women.

“One of the Big Four partners informed me that their annual graduate intake split is around 52% women, 48% men. By the time this age group reaches their early thirties, The research suggests that as women the number goes down to 34% women,” advance through their careers, they steadily explains van den Bosch Wazen. “Since many lose ground to their male peers at every stage, CFOs of listed businesses in the UK take the suggesting the pathway to the CFOs office is audit route, before moving not as clearly illuminated into industry, the disparity for female candidates.

Women CFOs by of diverse talent coming into the market starts early Why women annual revenue and is not able to catch make good CFOs up later.”

According to Willard And yet the evidence Recent McKinsey Powell’s 2020 Breaking the suggests that when women research for its Women in CFO Glass Ceiling report, do make it to CFO, the the Workplace report for Women are taking on more payoff for organisations is North America backs this up.

CFO roles at larger firms. positive. Companies with While research shows that female CFOs and CEOs women and men in financial prove more profitable services begin their careers making up roughly than those led by men, with women-led firms equal portions of entry-level staff, once you get generating US$1.8 trillion more in gross profit higher up the ladder, women account for only than the sector average, according to a report 19% (one in five) of positions in the C-suite.

by S&P Global. businesschief.com

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CORPORATE FINANCE

“ For finance there is a clear need to create multiple role model examples that can inspire young women to join this career path, which is more and more at the centre of key company decision making” CRISTINA CATANIA

PARTNER, MCKINSEY & COMPANY

Furthermore, as van den Bosch Wazen points out, according to McKinsey’s latest Diversity Wins report, companies with more than 30% of women executives are more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10-30%.

“The benefits speak for themselves and I’m thrilled that investors are pushing harder for this,” states van den Bosch Wazen. “The more diverse your management team, the more engaged your workforce, and the better your customers are looked after. You are better informed of the world, you tend not to miss trends, making your balance sheet strong and your organisation run more efficiently.”

Cristina Catania, Partner at McKinsey & Company agrees that gender diversity “enriches decision-making and so has a positive impact on companies’ performance and sustainability”, however more specifically, and in the context of the finance function, she points out that studies have found that “women have higher risk aversion than men and that can be a good thing”.

Maggie Xu, Principal of Greater China Financial Services Practice at Oliver Wyman, agrees suggesting research shows that female CFOs are more risk averse and tend to adopt more conservative accounting 88

June 2021

policies. And for “those companies/ industries with higher litigation risk, default risk, systematic risk, or management turnover risk, who are more focused on accounting conservatism, female CFOs may well do a better job”.

Arguing that women are “equally qualified to effectively address current and future challenges and disruptions”, Hanady Khalife, Senior Director of MEA & India for the Institute of Management Accountants further points out that beyond operations,

CORPORATE FINANCE

3%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue greater than $100 billion

7%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue between $50 billion and $99 billion

28%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue between $10 billion and $49 billion

62%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue less than $9 billion

inclusive working cultures where women leaders exist have been known to attract and retain top talent.

“No matter how you look at it, women leaders are good for business and for building more sustainable, self-sufficient and increasingly shockproof businesses, even economies,” asserts Khalife.

In our roundtable, we talk to these four female financial leaders to identify the barriers facing women and discover how organisations and leaders can facilitate their advancement. businesschief.com

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CORPORATE FINANCE

Why are women under-represented in senior financial positions, and the CFO role specifically?

Julia van den Bosch Wazen Women in key financial management roles tend to have a shared set of challenges, such as balancing home/work life, which is overcome by having the right support and an engaged sponsor at work. Sponsors are often men in senior management positions. Men are essential in furthering the development of all strands of diversity in the workplace, and the more informed diversity and inclusion allies there are, the better the company performs.

COVID has forced the majority of companies to work from home and highlighted to many employers the dual nature of a working woman’s careers. That said, pre-pandemic, many female CFOs said to me that their life was a constant balancing act of whom to disappoint more – their partners, kids, or friends. Senior women rarely disappoint their employers, just like their male peers.

During the executive search processes we run, Boards will actively seek diversity,

though in a risk adverse hiring market, like the one that we are in, many end up choosing proven Board experience over and above stepping up talent. It is widely publicised that there are more men in those roles than there are women, and so the balance is again not restored, further facilitating the lack of Board experienced women.

Cristina Catania Unfortunately, this underrepresentation of women in senior roles isn’t exclusive to finance – it’s a similar picture in business management and strategy. But, prior to COVID, concentrated efforts were making some gains. Across all industries, we’ve seen women’s representation in the C-suite increase by 24% since 2015, including some notable appointments in the financial sector, like Jane Fraser at Citi. There is, however, a broken rung at the very bottom of the corporate ladder that is stalling progress.

Our annual Women in the Workplace study of women in North America shows that for every 100 men, just 72 women are promoted and hired to manager. Women get stuck at the entry level and fewer become managers. Not businesschief.com

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“ The more diverse your management team, the more engaged your workforce, and the better your customers are being looked after – in short. You are better informed of the world, you tend not to miss trends, making your balance sheet stronger and your organisation run more efficiently” JULIA VAN DEN BOSCH WAZEN

CONSULTANT, ODGERS BERNDTSON’S CFO PRACTICE

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surprisingly, men then end up holding 62% of manager-level positions, while women hold just 38%. The number of women decreases at every subsequent level, so despite improved hiring and promotion rates for women at senior levels, they aren’t able to catch up.

Hanady Khalife One would assume this is a problem most prevalent in the Middle East but it is global. A National Bureau of Economic Research study from Denmark found that even at the height of their careers, women tend to spend more time raising children, and so work fewer hours, take longer breaks from full-time employment, and are more likely to move into less demanding jobs with lower growth and less pay.

Other reasons include the pay gap, lack of mentorship and coaching, and aggressive

CORPORATE FINANCE

competition by male colleagues, as well as lack of female C-suite role models. When women don’t see role models or potential paths towards executive-level leadership, they are more likely to deselect themselves out of such roles.

Maggie Xu In research, we identified four critical barriers for women seeking leadership. Firstly, men and women define effective leadership differently, while women leadership candidates tend to be evaluated by men. This misalignment in key leadership traits between the genders creates obstacles to women rising to leadership roles. In China, although significant increase in the ratio of companies with female executives has been observed during the decade, extensive research indicates that the rate for female

CEO remains very low, and CEOs are critical in assessing the performance of CFO candidates.

Secondly, women’s focus or predisposition toward results, along with a dislike of ‘networking for networking’s sake,’ may cause them to miss an important dimension of what ultimately impacts leadership promotion decisions. We also discovered that qualified women are unintentionally left on the sidelines, partly because women are simply not top of mind, and so are less likely to self-advocate and must battle inaccurate assumptions related to their willingness to take on more intense roles.

Also, men and women perceive their readiness for the next role very differently, and most companies do not actively mitigate that bias at play. A woman often won’t apply to a job unless she feels she meets 100% of the described qualifications, while for men, it’s more like 60% and as we all know, raising one’s hand does not necessarily equate with capability.

Finally, research shows women are more likely to have ideas mis-attributed to others, be talked over in meetings, receive vague or unconstructive feedback, and be viewed negatively for visibly demonstrating the same confidence that is valued in male leaders.

Many high potential women, weary of bias, exit the talent pipeline, either opting out of the workforce or choosing a different career.

How can organisations and leaders motivate, empower and facilitate women in reaching CFO status?

Julia van den Bosch Wazen Mentorship from senior colleagues is vital in helping women to navigate the mid-point of their career. Our philosophy in the CFO Practice facilitates that same ethos: we want to help advise women early on to help build careers toward the three-stage interview businesschief.com

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CORPORATE FINANCE

process they will face when stepping up to their first Main Board role. A financial management career for a listed CFO role needs to be built to answer the questions a CEO will pose (do you have commercial and operational P&L experience to be my partner in setting strategic goals); the Audit Chair (will you give me comfort in your technical financial management skills to assure that the business will not have to restate its numbers); and the Chair (do you keep my CEO ‘in check’, and will you let my Audit Chair rest easy at night).

There are a number of roles within the finance function I strongly encourage women to take en route to Board, to gather experience against the above criteria. I also urge women to do more external networking.

I’ve set up bi-annual women’s networking lunches giving senior female talent the opportunity to hear how experienced finance leaders have successfully developed their careers. These have been well-received and have now broadened out to both our Regional CFO and Financial Services Practices to help deepen the advice shared.

When selecting a headhunting firm, I would urge that you ask what they are doing to support the D&I agenda during the pitch process. Your candidate list might well be diverse, but if you see that those who are looking likely to be shortlisted are all nondiverse, check why, and what can be actioned based on feedback.

Cristina Catania Talent attraction is the first step to sustaining a pipeline to fill CFO roles long term. For finance, there is a need to create multiple role model examples to inspire young women to join this career path, which is increasingly at the centre of key company decision-making. We know from our study that when employees believe that their company offers both fairness and 94

June 2021

CORPORATE FINANCE

“In China, although significant increase in the ratio of companies with female executives has been observed during the decade, extensive research indicates that the rate for female CEO remains very low, and CEOs are critical in assessing the performance of CFO candidates” MAGGIE XU

PRINCIPAL, GREATER CHINA FINANCIAL SERVICES PRACTICE, OLIVER WYMAN

opportunity, they are three times more likely to remain at the company, be fully engaged and recommend the company to a peer. What we know about the experiences of women at entry levels in financial services indicates that a perceived lack of fairness and opportunity could be contributing to the steep drop-off in female representation between entry-level and middle management roles.

Specifically, women early in their careers are less likely to aspire to top positions.

This could be due to a lack of female role models, but women also report less interest in executive roles due to concerns about balancing work and family and the perceived pressure that accompanies top jobs. Even when women do aspire to the top positions, they typically do not receive the sponsorship support that would enable them to succeed.

Our 2017 Women in the Workplace research shows that women who receive advice from senior leaders on career advancement are more likely to be promoted, and yet earlier-tenure women receive less encouragement and support from senior leaders than do their male counterparts.

The programmes that are showing impact in creating a sustainable pipeline of women start with the creation of a more ‘inclusive’ workplace, created through HR parental businesschief.com

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policies (applicable also to fathers, which in turn allows for shared parental responsibilities) and doubling-down on additional welfare services like in-office daycare.

Other measures include removing gender biases in assessing criteria for being eligible for a promotion, flexibility arrangements, leveraging maternity as an upskilling moment, the introduction of sponsorship programmes, and measuring and publishing target setting.

And all steps need to be truly sponsored and promoted by the CEO and cascaded throughout the whole organisation.

Hanady Khalife Increasing opportunities for women to advance to leadership roles in the organisation begins with understanding the internal pipeline to identify barriers and obstacles to advancement and in turn, establishing measurable goals for building equity.

Organisations need to develop corporate cultures that support women who wish to achieve a healthy work/life balance, rather than breed cultures that penalises them for attempting to balance priorities. But while firms need to focus on more affirmative action to ensure gender equality, whether through quotas or recruitment programmes, they also need to pay more attention to how women can be mentored better to keep pace with new and emerging industry requirements.

Maggie Xu Organisations can be more purposeful in levelling the playing field for women, and by changing the emphasis from fixing things bottom up to top-down, effects will take place faster. We believe there are three core elements in this effort: inclusive leadership starts at the top, so educate your existing leadership and motivate them to be change agents; target D&I like a business to get more results; and double down on sponsorship, improving the effectiveness of senior leaders’ sponsorship of the women. businesschief.com

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NASCAR

DRIVING TECHNOLOGY AT NASCAR FOR ULTIMATE FX

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NASCAR

NASCAR is in the fast lane of its digital journey following a US$2bn merger with ISC and Christine Stoffel-Moffett, VP of Enterprise Technology, is in the driving seat

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

T

o be the most innovative and technology advanced organisation across the sports entertainment industry within three years” is the message from Christine StoffelMoffett, who is driving the cloud and digital transformation at The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing – known around the world as NASCAR. Stoffel-Moffett, Vice President of Enterprise Technology at NASCAR, gives us an exclusive glimpse into the glamorous world of stock car racing epitomised by Hollywood actorturned-driver Tom Cruise, who put the iconic Daytona racetrack on the big screen in Days of Thunder.

Founded by Bill France in 1948 and still owned by the France Family today, each year, NASCAR sanctions more than 1,200 races in more than 30 US states, Canada, Mexico and Europe. It is the sanctioning body for the number one form of motorsports in the US and owner of 16 of the nation’s major motorsports entertainment facilities.

In the first of a three-part special, Stoffel-Moffett focuses on how she is leading NASCAR’s digital technology journey to improve operational efficiencies and enhance the fan experience (FX) as the sport navigates its way through a US$2bn merger with International Speedway Corporation (ISC) and challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. businesschief.com

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NASCAR

Christine Stoffel-Moffett | NASCAR

“My goal is to become the most technology advanced organisation across sports and entertainment within the next three years”

“When I came a growth mindset to NASCAR, I knew across the enterprise that not only were technology organisation we merging two and stretching into organisations, but we the business,” said really had to reposition Stoffel-Moffett who is our business with a recognised across the thoughtful and mindful sports industry from technology mindset her industry peers as and strive to be besta “transformational in-class through a deep leader” and she is clearly evaluation of how we're bringing this front and leveraging the right centre to NASCAR. technology, solutions For a sport that can and technology partners accommodate upwards for our business,” said of 190,000 spectators Stoffel-Moffett from her – far larger than any CHRISTINE STOFFEL-MOFFETT HEAD OF ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY, office in Daytona. non-motorsport venue NASCAR “Through the merger in North America – the of two very different FX is the lifeblood of businesses, we are now building a new stock car racing – which started with a 250culture of transparency, collaboration, mile race along Daytona Beach, Florida, US passion, adaptiveness and encouraging on 8 March 1936.

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NASCAR

CHRISTINE STOFFEL-MOFFETT TITLE: HEAD OF ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY

1948

INDUSTRY: MOTOR TECHNOLOGY

The year NASCAR was founded

by Bill France Snr following an unofficial car race 12 years earlier on Daytona Beach, Florida

LOCATION: FLORIDA, UNITED STATES Christine Stoffel-Moffett is well recognised as a deeply technical, inspirational, transformational executive, passionate sport and entertainment executive, operations and strategy leader.

Stoffel-Moffett joined NASCAR in March 2020, just before COVID19 took hold and just after a $2 billion merger with International Speedway Corporation (ISC). She is known as a mindful, visionary, strategic, transformational, and innovative C-level executive with an impressive track record of being a transformational change agent and influencer. StoffelMoffett is an award winner for her innovative growth of multi million to billion-dollar sports, entertainment, sales, operations, and technology environments.

2,250

A total of 27 drivers competed in coupes, convertibles and sports cars, but only 10 navigated their way through the sand and completed the race 10 miles shy of the finishing line. The winner was Milt Marian, and a young Bill France came fifth – the man who went on to be the founder of NASCAR in 1948 as he saw the potential for a unified series of racing competitions on a proper track.

More than 70 years later, the power of NASCAR and ISC looks set to create a new FX following the multi-billion dollar merger.

According to Stoffel-Moffett, they are now moving forward as one company to re-invent the experience for fans and shareholders with the use of technology in every corner of the business from HR, accounting, finance, network infrastructure, Internet, cloud, computers, servers, storage, applications, to new website, social media, virtual experiences, digital ticketing and simulated racing.

“In 2020, I launched an external mission statement for enterprise technology to become looked upon as the most inspiring future-forward, innovative and technology advanced organisation across the sports entertainment industry. This is a bold statement, but with the support of the France family, NASCAR Board and senior leadership behind us, this is our driving force and vision every day.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Number of employees

WE GET ADAPTING TO CHANGE EVEN AT 200 MPH.

CDW Amplified™ Services helps organizations react quickly to changing scenarios. Our experts understand your challenges and can orchestrate solutions that improve everything from business operations and workflows to data analytics and customer experience.

Learn more at CDW.com/services © 2021 CDW®, CDW•G® and PEOPLE WHO GET IT® are registered trademarks of CDW LLC.

GIVING EFFICIENCY THE FULL THROTTLE AT NASCAR CDW IS A LEADING PROVIDER OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS, OPTIMIZED BUSINESS WORKFLOW AND DATA CAPTURE SYSTEMS FOR THE AUTO RACING COMPANY. The NASCAR organization has long been synonymous with speed, agility and innovation. And so by extension, partnerships at NASCAR hold a similar reputation. One such partner for the organization has been CDW – a leading provider of information technology solutions to businesses, government, education and healthcare customers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada. CDW provides an array of products and services ranging from hardware and software to integrated IT solutions such as security, cloud hybrid infrastructure and digital experience. Customer need is the driving force at CDW, and the company helps clients by delivering integrated services and solutions that maximize their technology investment. So how does CDW help their customers achieve their business goals? Troy Okerberg, Field Sales Manager - North Florida at CDW adds “We strive to provide our customers with full stack expertise, helping them design, orchestrate and manage technologies that drive their business outcomes.”

NASCAR acquired International Speedway Corporation (ISC) in 2019, merging its operations into one, new company moving forward. CDW has been instrumental in bringing the two technology environments together to enable collaboration and efficiency as one organization.

With the onset of COVID-19, CDW’s distribution team worked tirelessly to ensure that all customers could still access the products that they were purchasing and needed for their organizations throughout the pandemic.

Okerberg adds that today, CDW continues to optimise their offering by hyper-localizing resources as well as providing need-based support based on the size and complexity of their accounts. CDW further helps identify and provide the best solution from a consolidation standpoint of both hardware and software clients so that the new merged organization is equipped with the best of what the industry has to offer.

NASCAR

“ There are so many advantages to this merger, as we're now one comprehensive company under one brand that can really be dynamic for our customers and our fans” CHRISTINE STOFFEL-MOFFETT

HEAD OF ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY, NASCAR

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“I put a line in the sand and said, here's our statement,” said Stoffel-Moffett. “In order to achieve this, we have to align with best-inclass technology partners. I believe I have a best-in-class technology organisation and for the last year we have been aligning ourselves with the best-in-class technology solutions, service providers and partners.

Everyday we get closer to the realisation of this mission statement. We stay focused on our vision, our deliverables to the business and strive to make the fan experience the best we can, one race at a time.”

$2 billion

merger with the International Speedway Corporation (ISC)

1,200

races are sanctioned by NASCAR each year in more than 30 US states, Canada, Mexico and Europe

13

race tracks that were owned by ISC and that can now be used by NASCAR following the merger

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IT projects and initiatives for 2021

Focus on the FX As NASCAR moves out of the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, it will be focusing on technology even more to give fans the ultimate experience. NASCAR’s purchase of ISC now means it is all privately owned, enabling NASCAR to reinvest money into both tracks and technology, which will improve the experience for the fans even further.

“There are so many advantages to this merger, as we're now one comprehensive company under one brand that can really be dynamic for our customers, corporate partners, consumers and our fans,” said Stoffel-Moffett.

“NASCAR has evolved over the last year and has truly transcended as a global brand and a world-class organisation. When COVID affected the sports industry, we took that opportunity and launched the eNASCAR iRacing Pro Invitational Series when no other sport was taking place as we wanted to entertain people while they were locked in their homes.

“NASCAR is not just about car, IMSA road races or truck racing, there are so many different facets – with NASCAR’s 73-yearhistory it's really an experience whether you’re watching it live, on TV or virtually, it’s businesschief.com

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DIGITA TRANSFORMA

SEES RENEWED VIGOR

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AL ATION

R IN 2021

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ork, life, health, safety and well-being are all inextricably linked.

Work has become much more dynamic, meaning the workspace itself needs to change. The physical office will remain, but people may not go every day, and may not have fixed hours. Organizations need to look deeply into the fundamentals with a common denominator in mind – people.

Cultural transformation in concert with technological transformation will be critical to success in this new workstyle, enabling a more resilient and adaptable organization that better serves its stakeholders.

A DIGITAL-FIRST APPROACH The future of work is about better connecting people, spaces and technology to drive transformation. Technologies are rapidly changing all facets of work. But, it’s never just about the technology. The accelerated digital work environment is requiring more emphasis on the human-to-human experience.

According to IDC, by 2022, 70% of all organizations will have accelerated use of digital technologies, transforming current processes to drive productivity, employee-employer relations, customer engagement and business resiliency.

With all of that in mind, data is at the center of how to operate a smoothrunning business on the cutting edge of digital transformation. At its most basic level, access to data enables people to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. To harness the value of data, businesses need platforms that allow data-sharing. And to support collaboration in a world where work practices will continue to be increasingly dynamic – be it remote or in-office – embracing the cloud will be key. An ERP system does the complex job of connecting an entire business, enabling companies to offer the benefits of mobile apps and cloud-based solutions to employees and stakeholders. This software implementation can simplify key business functions that are crucial to managing day-to-day operations.

According to IDC, cloud adoption will rise by 15-20% in the next six months.

Hand-in-hand with investing in the cloud, businesses need a robust security strategy in order to avoid the recent deluge of security threats.

RETHINK THE FUTURE OF WORK

NASCAR

NASCAR IN FOCUS

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The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC (NASCAR), based in Daytona Beach, Florida, is the sanctioning body for the Number one form of motorsports in the United States and owner of 16 of the nation’s major motorsports entertainment facilities.

announced that NASCAR would purchase ISC and inherit 13 tracks.

The privately-owned company was founded by Bill France Sr. in 1948, and his son, Jim France, has been Chairman and CEO since August 6, 2018. The company is headquartered in Daytona Beach, Florida.

Each year, NASCAR sanctions over 1,200 races in more than 30 US states as well as in Canada, Mexico, and Europe.

While originally not officially connected to NASCAR, ISC was also founded by Bill France Sr. in 1953 to construct and manage tracks at which NASCAR could hold competitions. In May 2019, it was

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June 2021

NASCAR consists: •

•

•

Three national series (NASCAR Cup Series™, NASCAR Xfinity Series™, and NASCAR Camping World Truck Series™) Three regional series (ARCA Menards Series, ARCA Menards Series East & West and the NASCAR Whelen Modified Tour), one local grassroots series and three international series.

The International Motor Sports Association™ (IMSA®) governs the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship™, the premier US sports car series.

NASCAR also owns Motor Racing Network, Racing Electronics, Americrown Service and ONE DAYTONA.

NASCAR

“ Through the merger of two very different businesses, we are now building a new culture of transparency, collaboration, passion, adaptiveness and encouraging a growth mindset” CHRISTINE STOFFEL-MOFFETT

HEAD OF ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY, NASCAR

an incredible experience everyone needs to try. Attending a NASCAR event is an affordable, fun family experience and with our racing electronics headsets, these make it THE ultimate, intimate experience listening to your favourite driver, the pits and becoming fully immersed in the full racing experience,” said Stoffel-Moffett.

“We've put a lot of emphases and focus over the last year to digitalise and cloudenable our work environment and to reimagine the FX, and so it's really exciting to see where NASCAR is headed in the future, said Stoffel-Moffett, who joined NASCAR in March 2020 just before COVID-19 took hold and “the world changed”.

She was immediately asked to focus on the merger between privately-owned NASCAR and publicly-owned ISC but then had to quickly pivot and focus on getting 2,000-plus employees working remotely, working with her IT organisations in implementing network secure protocols, as well as, providing as many tools and applications remotely to the NASCAR employees across the US with impromptu training and educating the workforce of how

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NASCAR puts fans in the race with AWS Media Services NASCAR Digital uses AWS Media Services to power its NASCAR Drive mobile app, and to deliver broadcast-quality content for more than 80 million fans worldwide across a wide range of delivery formats and device platforms.

See how

How AWS helps NASCAR delight its fans Customer obsession and working backwards from the customer is a mantra of Amazon Web Services (AWS), epitomizing its partnership with NASCAR AWS needs no introduction to readers of Technology Magazine but we rarely get an opportunity to look closely at how it serves the sports sector.

All major sports draw in a huge supporter base that they want to nurture and support. Technology is the key to every major sports organization and enabling this is the driving force for AWS, says Matt Hurst, Head of Global Sports Marketing and Communications for AWS. “In sports, as in every industry, machine learning and artificial intelligence and high performance computing are helping to usher in the next wave of technical sports innovation.”

AWS approaches sports in three principal areas. “The first is unlocking data potential: leagues and teams hold vast amounts of data and AWS is enabling them to analyze that data at scale and make better, more informed decisions. The second is engaging and delighting fans: with AWS fans are getting deeper insights through visually compelling on-screen graphics and interactive Second Screen experiences.

And the third is rapidly improving sports performance: leagues and teams are using AWS to innovate like never before!”

Among the many global brands that partner with AWS are Germany’s Bundesliga, the NFL, F1, the PGA Tour and of course NASCAR. NASCAR has worked with AWS on its digital transformation (migrating it’s 18 petabyte video archive containing 70 years of historical footage to AWS), to optimize its cloud data center operations and to enable its global brand expansion. AWS Media Services powers the NASCAR Drive mobile app, delivering broadcast-quality content for more than 80 million fans worldwide .

The platform, including AWS Elemental MediaLive and AWS Elemental MediaStore, helps NASCAR provide fans instant access to the driver’s view of the race track during races, augmented by audio and a continually updated leaderboard. “And NASCAR will use our flagship machine learning service Facemaker to train deep learning models to enhance metadata and video analytics.”

See how

NASCAR

“ Last year, we re-architected and redesigned our data warehouse, and we have now been executing that – it's been an amazing process, we now have Title of theand video a brand new data warehouse”

to work remotely, effectively, efficiently and effortlessly.

“One of the big challenges we had, when I joined the organisation, was assessing all technology because NASCAR and ISC were still merging its culture and technology solutions. We had to look at our enterprise applications, systems, network, core infrastructure across our entire company – not just siloed applications, systems and technologies.

“Last year became a very tactical year and reviewing, assessing and analysing everything we do as a company from a technology perspective, said Stoffel-Moffet, who oversees all technology from desktop engineering, help desk service desk, network engineering and architecture, enterprise applications and systems, servers, storage, cloud architecture, CRM, analytics, data engineering and architecture, ticketing technology and security.

Her role is to now improve business operations and business optimisation through enterprise-wide technology solutions, implement digital transformation through cloud and digital applications, effective collaboration tools, data capture improve workflow efficiency, improve data capture, data accuracy and rolling out reporting dashboards through implementing a formal data strategy and building efficiencies across the NASCAR enterprise organisation.

Digital data lake NASCAR is aiming to have created a digital lake by the end of 2022 – pulling together all the historical data from NASCAR and ISC. When Stoffel-Moffett took over she focused on the data warehouse of both companies and saw they did not mesh as each had its own working practices.

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CHRISTINE STOFFEL-MOFFETT

HEAD OF ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY, NASCAR

“Last year, we re-architected and redesigned our data warehouse and we have now been executing this new architecture – it's been an amazing process and we now have a brand new enterprise-wide consumer data warehouse. Ticketing, sales, corporate partnerships and sponsors are now able to capture data and become empowered with relevant reports that are meaningful to the business KPIs. “Simultaneously we're implementing bi-directional CRM, partnering with the internal sales organisations to implement new sales workflows and business process for the ticket sales and partnership marketing teams, finishing the build of a new MDM and pivoting NASCAR toward becoming a data-driven organisation by delivering the first version of executive dashboards in the coming weeks.

NASCAR

These are exciting and transformational times for NASCAR. “The media productions team is migrating 73-year history over 100 Pedabytes of video and picture archives to our AWS Cloud Media Archive Warehouse.

“We have a comprehensive plan around our data strategy. One piece is the analytics that we're capturing around our fan engagement, ticket sales and revenue to our corporate partners and how we're partnering with our corporate partners and the analytics that we can provide them as well as our historical data warehouse,” she said.

“Through all of these moving pieces, we have begun to start putting together a framework for our future data lake. This will enable us to connect our historical NASCAR archive to our consumer data warehouse for an incredible opportunity. We are excited to give our marketing teams the opportunity to share the NASCAR story in new and immersive ways to our global fans through every marketing campaign, every email, every social media post.”

Digital marketing NASCAR is looking to improve the fan experience with the following: • New website (for all the tracks) • Social media channels • Digital apps • Loyalty programs “Our digital marketing team is working on rolling out a new website and mobile app that will completely change the way that our fans engage with us through a web and digital media platform,” said Stoffel-Moffett.

“Previously, we had lots of mobile apps because all the tracks had their own, but now we're consolidating that and having a seamless experience for the fan.

“A more comprehensive loyalty program is in development over the next year that will all intersect between FX at the venue and through the mobile app, website, WiFi, fan engagement experiences and our social media. We're really focused on improving the FX. businesschief.com

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Security

When less is more, security is innovation Close gaps between point solutions and get coverage across your entire multiplatform, multicloud environment.

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Building a secure foundation to drive NASCAR Racing fans can expect the ultimate virtual experience as a result of the partnership with Microsoft and NASCAR Microsoft is a key partner of The National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR) and together they are driving ahead to create an inclusive and immersive new fan experience (FX).

These long-term partners have not only navigated the challenges posed by the pandemic with the use of Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365, but are now looking to a future packed with virtual events to enhance the FX, well beyond NASCAR’S famous Daytona racetrack.

“Together, we’ve created a secure environment that’s allowed for collaboration, but the future is all about the fans”, said Melinda Cook, General Manager for Microsoft, South USA Commercial Business, who cited a culture of transparency, passion, adaptiveness, and a growth mindset as to why this alignment is so successful.

“We’ve partnered to create a fluid, immersive experience for the users that is supported by a secure foundation with Microsoft. We are focused on empowering customers, like NASCAR, to reach their full potential. We do this with our cloud platform which provides data insights and security.”

“Our cloud environment allows NASCAR to move forward with their digital transformation journey while we are in the background,” said Cook who highlights that Microsoft is helping NASCAR • Empower employees productivity and collaboration • Improve fan engagement and experience • Improve environment security and IT productivity • Improve racing operations Microsoft Teams, which is part of the Microsoft 365 suite, enabled employees to work remotely, while staying productive, during the pandemic. “This allowed people to provide the same level of productivity with video conference and instant messaging to collaborate on documents. Increased automation also allows pit crews, IT, and the business to focus on safety, racing operations, and the fan experience.

“We will continue to improve automation with machine learning and artificial intelligence, from marketing to IT operations to finance to racing operations,” said Cook.

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KEY PARTNERSHIPS

NASCAR

“ We have more than 91 projects and initiatives for 2021 to get accomplished, and there are so many of these that we can't do without our technology partners at our side” CHRISTINE STOFFEL-MOFFETT

HEAD OF ENTERPRISE TECHNOLOGY, NASCAR

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AWS

“CDW came to our rescue when we needed to move our staff to work remotely,” said Stoffel-Moffett. “We needed additional monitors, computers, printers and additional licensing for a video conferencing solution. CDW was there with us the whole way to ensure we had the inventory as any superior partner would.

“CDW helped us to quickly pivot our software solutions, enabled us to implement hardware, backup, storage needs and kept us nimble and dynamic through 2020 “Without CDW, we would not have been able to be agile for our business leaders, employees and fans. CDW has been an incredible partner.

“Our AWS team, led by John Dwyer, is closely aligned with NASCAR tech teams on multiple initiatives. AWS cloud helped NASCAR bridge the historical gap between the legacy architecture and new technology,” said Stoffel-Moffett.

“This has led to a new digital library with 73 years of NASCAR history media assets.

AWS offers the cloud platform supporting the re-architecture of our consumer data warehouse. AWS’s platforms are critical to NASCAR’s journey to becoming more cloudcentric. Our cloud strategy is expansive – we are collaborating with AWS on building a Cloud Centre of Excellence and moving NASCAR to a data-driven business model.”

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NASCAR

MICROSOFT “Microsoft is one of NASCAR’s key partners when it comes to the cornerstone of our business applications, collaboration tools, solution deployment and desktop security. NASCAR acquired E5 Microsoft licenses providing additional support to move them on their digital transformation journey.

Our Microsoft partnership team, led by David Olivares, has been instrumental in helping the NASCAR enterprise technology team re-architect our Microsoft systems to ensure an advanced level of security across our environment. We have weekly collaboration meetings discussing our KPI’s, goals and future forward strategies, implementing best practices across our entire suite of Microsoft solutions. Through this collaboration, we are enabling our employees to work seamlessly.

KONICA MINOLTA “Konica Minolta has brought us innovative partners in the video and conference room solution space, helping us through our pilot evaluations to ensure we are selecting best in class for our new business optimisation vision.

“Our KM partners are also assisting us in an evaluation of our enterprise-wide copier and printing strategy. We drive toward green initiatives, less paper consumption and enabling our workforce to be as digital as possible. KM is known to be a market leader in managed print services, but they are so much more than this to NASCAR. KM is a technology partner with insightful vision.”

“The fan and customer experience is based on how much data we’re gathering from them. To understand our fan and event guests better, we want to be able to hear from them, to listen to them. Surveys, fan feedback, mobile apps, web portals provide us insights to build better relationships with our current fans, new fans, virtual fans and future fans. We are building more engaging methods for our fans to communicate with us so we can ask the questions and gather relevant and insightful information to ensure we can provide them a better experience.

How can we learn from our fans? And what mediums do they want to engage with us?

“I'm a big Instagram person, and obviously, I follow NASCAR on Instagram, but the engagement we have had on our social media platforms since leveraging the archive images has been amazing. It’s fun, fascinating and kudos to our NASCAR digital marketing team whom do a remarkable job in taking pictures of a current race event and an archived picture of the same race 20-30 years ago and sharing this story of evolution of our sport through social media” Next time Stoffel-Moffett will be taking a deep dive into security and reveal how NASCAR has become a ‘best-in-class’ technology partner in security. “Our goal is to become a zero-trust environment, and we are marching towards this mission for NASCAR,” she said.

Looking to the future, NASCAR is developing the Next-Gen car — expected to hit the track in 2021. The new car is going to feature a redesigned body and under-thehood enhancements to make NASCAR stock cars even more like the cars in showrooms across America.

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BIGGEST

CYBER SECURITY THREAT TO YOUR ORGANISATION COULD BE YOU

Cybersecurity is a major source of anxiety to CEOs, but they still aren’t spending to tackle it. Business Chief discusses cyber urgency and complacency WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

C

ybersecurity has fast become a major source of anxiety to businesses worldwide and is now second only to the chaos caused by the pandemic.

That’s according to the most recent PwC Global CEO Survey, in which nearly half of CEOs cited cyber as the biggest anxiety in 2021, up from just 33% last year. And among CEOs in North America and Western Europe, it is the top business threat, and therefore the number-one priority for CEOs in North America (69%), Western Europe (44%), the Middle East (41%) and Asia (40%).

And there’s good reason for such concern, given the increase in high-visibility cyberattacks that have occurred since the onset of the pandemic, including 2020’s most significant – SolarWinds, with hacking of the US IT firm leaving its clients including the US government and Microsoft vulnerable for nine months.

There were many others though in 2020.

In March, a major security breach with 118

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Marriott International led to the data of more than 5.2 million guests being compromised.

In May, healthcare insurance giant Magellan suffered a ransomware attack with up to 365,000 patients impacted. And in July, someone took control of 130 high-profile Twitter accounts (Apple, Elon Musk, Barack Obama) and conned people into sending Bitcoin to an account.

Even as this is being written, “Acer, ironically a tech company, has just been hit by ransomware with the criminals demanding US$50 million”, Ira Winkler, CISO of Skyline Technology Solutions, and one of the world’s most influential security professionals, tells me.

Cyberattacks happen all the time, and more frequently, and they cause tremendous damage, says Winkler, pointing to the Wannacry virus where organisations around the world suffered crippling outages.

Many incidents have been serious enough to lead “to the firing of CEOs”, he adds.

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And while organisations “which are completely IT-based, like banks, have more dependence on cybersecurity”, all types and sizes of organisations can be at risk. “If you’re a small business and you cannot service your clients without computers, which these days includes everyone from restaurants to retail stores, you need to be concerned,” warns Winkler.

The statistics are scarier still. Since the onset of the pandemic, the FBI has reported that the number of complaints about cyberattacks to its Cyber Division is up as many as 4,000 a day, a 400% increase since the COVID-19 outbreak; Interpol is seeing an “alarming rate of cyberattacks aimed at major corporations, governments, and critical infrastructure”; and according to VMware Carbon Black’s latest Modern Bank Heists report, there has been a 118% surge in cyberattacks against banks since 2020.

It’s the sort of numbers that keep banking CEOs awake at night. Like Uday Kotak, CEO of India-based Kotak Mahindra Bank, who cites cybersecurity as the company’s greatest business threat. Having “witnessed increased fraud in the banking system” during the pandemic, Kotak explains that it is the threat

Ira Winkler TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER COMPANY: SKYLINE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Dubbed a ‘Modern Day James Bond’ by the media, a title he earned by performing espionage simulations where he physical and technically ‘broke into’ some of the largest companies in the world, investigating crimes against them, and telling them how to cost effectively protect their information and computer infrastructure, Winkler is considered one of the world’s most influential security professionals.

Starting out at the National Security Agency, Winkler has since designed and implemented support security awareness programs at organisations of all sizes, industry-wide and worldwide.

Jean-Michel Azzopardi TITLE: FOUNDER AND CEO COMPANY: KRALANX CYBER SECURITY Founder of Kralanx, a one-stop-shop for advanced cyber security services and consulting located in Malta, Azzopardi has worked with IBM, SAP and Acunetix and has negotiated cyber security deals with companies and governments across Asia including Apple, Huawei and some of the largest Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Having been involved in a number of start-ups, he prides himself in striking a balance between corporate standards and SME efficiency.

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3 cybersecurity trends for 2021 These techniques, tools and approaches were revealed by analysts at Gartner’s Security & Risk Management Summit APAC in March. The summit is further planned globally: London and Florida, in September, and Tokyo in October.

Breach and Attack Simulation Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) tools are emerging to provide continuous defensive posture assessments. When CISOs include BAS as a part of their regular security assessments, they can help their teams identify gaps in their security posture more effectively and prioritise security initiatives more efficiently.

Privacy-Enhancing Computation These techniques protect data while it’s being used, rather than while it’s at rest or in motion, enabling secure data processing, sharing,

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cross-border transfers and analytics, even in untrusted environments. Implantations of this are on the rise in fraud analysis, intelligence, data sharing, financial services, pharma and healthcare, and Gartner predicts that by 2025, 50% of large organisations will adopt privacyenhancing computation for processing data.

Cybersecurity Mesh This is a modern security approach that consists of deploying controls where they are most needed. Rather than every security tool running in a silo, a cybersecurity mesh enables tools to interoperate by providing foundational security services and centralised policy management and orchestration. With many IT assets now outside traditional enterprise perimeters, a mesh architecture allows firms to extend security controls to distributed assets.

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In her first speech since taking the helm of the UK cybersecurity agency, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in March 2021, CEO Lindy Cameron warned against company complacency, saying that as “our reliance on technology grows, it sadly also presents opportunities for those who want to do us harm online”.

of a cyberattack and “the thought of losing my customers’ money to theft that keeps me up at night”.

Because as Kotak explains, “while COVID has brought about a significant increase in digital adoption and transactions, it has also increased the risk associated with digital”.

And with the shift to remote/hybrid working, the risks have been greater still, with many remote workers using insecure data transmission channels to transmit organisational data and organisations lacking in effective enterprise-grade firewalls, antivirus solutions and network security solutions.

Kralanx Cyber Security CEO, JeanMichel Azzopardi, explains that “information security has broached the frontline” due to the majority of employees now working remotely and this has therefore heavily increased “an enterprise’s risk and reliability on information security as a whole”.

Businesses not taking cybersecurity seriously And while our reliance on digital has become much greater, and companies are forging ahead with speedy digital transformations, according to Cameron, cybersecurity is still not taken as seriously as it should be.

And PwC’s research backs this up. While nearly half of CEOs are planning increases of 10% or more in their long-term investment in digital transformation, little is being put into cybersecurity technology. So, despite the level of concerns CEOs registered about cyberattacks, just under half of those planning for heightened digital investment are also planning to boost their spending on cybersecurity and data privacy by 10% or more.

This is not a surprise for Azzopardi, who says that cyber security generally falls quite low on most businesses’ priority list due to the fact that there’s “no quantifiable value generation from direct investment”. And despite the very real urgency, that priority is lower still now due to competing business priorities. “Unfortunately, with many companies cannibalising marketing budgets in order to retain employees, InfoSec has taken a back seat for the most part.”

Winkler says he is currently seeing businesses tactically implement security. “They are doing what is obviously required, such as work from home security, but for many companies, they need a strategic rearchitecting of their security, which just isn’t happening as much.” businesschief.com

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Cybersecurity, says Cameron, should be viewed with the same importance to CEOs as finance and legal and “our CEOs should be as close to their CISO as their finance director and general counsel”.

Though the stats suggest this simply isn’t happening. In the financial sector, for example, the majority (75%) of CISOs still report to the CIO rather than the CEO, according to VMWare’s Bank Heist report.

Azzopardi agrees, telling Business Chief that while the CISO has certainly become more important than it was previously, it’s still not as important as it should be. “Most CISOs spend their time touting the importance of what it is they do, and the reality is that most advice offered by CISOs falls on deaf ears until there is actually a breach. They are the most underappreciated, and probably the most stressed of the C-suite.”

That’s assuming of course an organisation can find a CISO. According to Gartner’s Research VP Peter Firstbrook, “80% of organisations tell us they have a hard time finding and hiring security professionals, and 71% say it’s impacting their ability to deliver security projects within their organisations”.

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“ MOST CISOS SPEND THEIR TIME TOUTING THE IMPORTANCE OF WHAT IT IS THEY DO, AND THE REALITY IS THAT MOST ADVICE OFFERED BY CISOS FALLS ON DEAF EARS UNTIL THERE IS ACTUALLY A BREACH. THEY ARE THE MOST UNDER-APPRECIATED, AND PROBABLY THE MOST STRESSED OF THE C-SUITE” JEAN-MICHEL AZZOPARDI CEO, KRALANX CYBER SECURITY

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Most common mistakes businesses make Not prioritising the CISO role is just one of many mistakes that businesses are making today. According to Winkler, businesses generally don’t focus enough on the basics and often focus too much on the obvious when what is actually needed is for firms “to focus on the underlying architecture”.

He points not to a specific cyberattack, like ransomware or phishing, as major threats to businesses in the security landscape, but “enterprise ignorance”, along with a company’s lack of applying basic security protection. And this, Winkler explains, can lead to big incidents.

“The reality is that the basics matter, we call it cyber hygiene, so while everyone loves to talk about the hype of advanced attacks, it’s the simple things that are usually exploited to create the major incidents.

Small businesses are dealing more with end user related issues and have to work

From ransomware to doxware Ransomware attacks, where cybercriminals hold your computer data or network hostage until a ransom is paid, is a serious and growing threat for businesses, both in scale and severity, and isn’t just about fraud and theft of money or data, but also “the loss of key services and unenviable choices for unprepared businesses”, says Lindy Cameron, CEO of NCSC. And ransomware has upped its game during the pandemic, with attacks up 800%, according to cybersecurity firm MonsterCloud, with founder Zohar Pinhasi suggesting that criminals have now converted ransomware to something called doxware. "If you're not going to pay us, we will sell your data and, in addition to that, notify your customers that you were hacked and that their data was compromised,” says Pinhasi. “This is a game-changer since the coronavirus started – we've seen it in the past, but not to this degree." businesschief.com

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Threats facing financial institutions in 2021 According to VMWare’s fourth annual Modern Bank Heists report (2021), while the financial services sector is probably one of the most secure, they are dealing with the “most sophisticated cybercrime cartels”, says VMware’s Head of Cybersecurity Strategy Tom Kellerman. Here are some of the increased risks for banks in the past year.

• Time stamp manipulation Criminals now know how to evade detection by manipulating time stamps, so financial institutions need to pay greater attention to securing the integrity of these stamps to ensure this method isn’t used to alter the value of capital or trades.

• Island hopping This increased 13% (excluding SolarWinds) in 2020 and

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happens when a hacker attacks an organisation within the large bank’s information supply chain and uses a third-party to ‘island hop’ onto the bank’s network. They are not limited to supplychain vendors or tech firms and once they are inside your infrastructure, will use that to get into your customers and partners’ systems too.

• Targeting Market Strategies Increase in attacks that target a bank’s non-public information and market strategies, suggesting says Kellerman, that cybercrime cartels have become more knowledgeable about the financial sector and know a banks’ non-public information is its most valuable asset.

TECHNOLOGY

“WHILE EVERYONE LOVES TO TALK ABOUT THE HYPE OF ADVANCED ATTACKS, IT’S THE SIMPLE THINGS THAT ARE USUALLY EXPLOITED TO CREATE THE MAJOR INCIDENTS.” IRA WINKLER

CISO, SKYLINE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

on PC security and good passwords, while large companies have to worry about infrastructure concerns.”

According to Azzopardi, one of the key mistakes that businesses make is believing that a hack can be detected instantly. The reality is that most companies take on average of six months to detect a data breach, even a major one, as the SolarWinds incident proved. Information such as passwords, credit card details and social security numbers may already be compromised by the time a company is notified.

Azzopardi also explains how businesses, big and small, simply don’t attribute enough importance to the human element. That’s despite the fact that 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.

“The main point of attack is, and will probably always be, the human element.

It’s way easier to fool a human than it is to

brute force login credentials,” explains Azzopardi. “The main issue with phishing is that it’s almost impossible to use technology in order to prevent it, instead security awareness training is perhaps our best tool and since we rely on humans to execute such a task, we must assume a significant rate of failure. It is our imperfection after all that makes us human.”

So, what should businesses prioritise in 2021 and beyond? Azzopardi points to the basics such as antivirus, antimalware, password managers and revoking of admin rights as organisational musts. “Throw in mandatory VPN access, regular training and exercises such as BCP testing and your organisation would already be much better prepared than most,” he says.

He also says that API security is right up there with companies forced to make certain APIs public. As such, a priority for security teams is to “design a robust and effective API testing strategy that doesn’t impede development too much while balancing security”.

Finally, he predicts that ransomware will continue to rise, and that cryptojacking will explode. “This is basically the process of creating a bot-net which unknowingly mines crypto for a single wallet. This can be delivered via phishing quite effectively and you will never know it's even there.” businesschief.com

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BRINGING IN THE 5G REVOLUTION WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH 128

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PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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Verizon Business’ SVP and Chief Product Officer Aamir Hussain discusses the role of 5G in the company’s digital transformation offering

T

elecommunications giant Verizon’s Business division was restructured in 2019 in order to provide better services for its enterprise public sector and business customers, which range from SMBs to wholesale customers. As Aamir Hussain, the company’s SVP and Chief Product Officer explains: “We combine both wireless and wireline entities, products, and customer sets together for business, and in 2020 we generated around $31bn of revenue.”

The company’s success rests on its extensive investments in its own networks. “We've gone through a major transformation,” says Hussain. “We are making a huge amount of strategic investment in our network platform, solutions, people and processes. It’s now a place where partners and employees are innovating hugely on behalf of our customers. We are building a 21st century network, which is there for mobility or fixed networks. And we call that Broadband Anywhere.” On top of that, the company is spearheading the 5G revolution. “In terms of 5G, we’re making massive investments in the 160 megahertz nationwide C-band spectrum.

We’re building that out to enhance our millimeter wave 5G investments and to give us the ability to provide fiber-like services to our customers.” businesschief.com

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Nokia and Verizon’s Transformative Private 5G Solution Nokia’s David de Lancellotti, Vice President, Global Verizon Sales, discusses the close partnership with Verizon and the private 5G offering that has resulted.

Nokia is a key technology partner of Verizon’s, with the two companies teaming up to offer a 5G Private Wireless Network solution, a highperformance, end-to-end enterprise network and edge computing platform. “The Nokia Verizon Private 5G Solution gives enterprises the power to manage critical assets through a simple web portal, eliminating the need for complex management systems,” says David de Lancellotti, Vice President,Global Verizon Sales at Nokia.

“The Nokia Verizon 5G solution is critical for our customers because it provides them with a single, reliable, secure 5G data network.”

The utility of a private network in particular is to enable the agile connection of enterprise assets over wireless networks, enabling new possibilities and applications. “Over 260 enterprise customers have deployed Nokia private wireless solution globally in a variety of vertical segments,” says de Lancellotti.

“Nokia’s 5G ‘factory of the future’ in Oulu, Finland utilises a private network that drives an 80% reduction in the time it takes to send out a specific product line.”

The Verizon partnership sees both sides combining their individual strengths for the benefit of customers. “The partnership with Verizon is really the critical piece that brings this entire solution together. We excel in the technology that drives industrial-grade private wireless and brings it to the cloud, while Verizon brings deep experience in the design, building and operation of mobile networks and extensive industry experience.

“5G is more than just the next generation of products” — David de Lancellotti, Vice President, Nokia, Global Verizon Sales

Watch David De Lancellotti discuss 5G and Verizon

Looking to the future, de Lancellotti sees Nokia and Verizon continuing to lead private 5G transformation. “5G is more than just the next generation of products - It’s really about a fifth generation for people and for enterprise. We’ve been focused on private wireless for several years and have led the move to Industry 4.0.

That and our end-to-end capabilities uniquely positions us to manage really every piece of a customer’s network.”

Discover Nokia Industrial-grade Private Wireless

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It’s thanks to this combined offering that the company is a leader in enabling digitalisation. “We are very well positioned to be the digital transformation partner of choice for our customers,” says Hussain.

“We enable the digital economy through our services, connectivity platform and solutions and we are totally focused on enabling customer digital transformation.

That's what we do every day - enabling experiences and making them predictable so that our customers know what outcome they'll achieve. That means they can focus on their business while we focus on their communications suite.”

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to enabling its customers to take full advantage. “We see an immense opportunity to help our customers on their journey towards the fourth industrial revolution.

Everybody is wanting to connect to the cloud and build innovative applications and connectivity is a cornerstone for everything.

I believe that 5G is the mechanism that helps them get there.” There are a number of concrete capabilities connected to 5G. “What we call the ‘currencies’ of 5G, a set of performance attributes for this next generation of wireless connectivity include high-speed mobility, reliability, network energy efficiency, higher bandwidth, very low latency and the ability to connect a significantly larger number of devices to

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AAMIR HUSSAIN TITLE: SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

the network. Imagine having all that in a technology that you can use to innovate in your own business.”

With its mm wave 5G network, available in parts of more than 65 US cities, customers are already experiencing speeds that reach beyond a gigabit per second. “We are well positioned as the 21st century platform for innovation and growth thanks to our 5G ecosystem. That’s not only in terms of connectivity, but also providing applications through partnerships on top of that platform.” But 5G is not just a technology for the future, and Verizon Business is already working on transformative realworld use cases. “We’re involved in the automation of inventory replenishment to

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Aamir Hussain is senior vice president of business products, joining Verizon in December 2019. Aamir has nearly three decades of experience implementing global technology operations, innovation, complex infrastructures, consumer and business solutions and digital transformation.

He is responsible for Verizon Business Groups holistic enterprise product families - including IoT and 5G services, networking solutions, security, advanced communications services, and managed and professional services - and will lead product management across all customer segments. A veteran international technology executive with experience in operations and technology functions within the cable and telecom industry, he is an investor, advisor and board member with a focus on the consumer and financial enterprise, wireless industry, technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector. Aamir has also held senior leadership roles at Liberty Global, Covad, TELUS and Qwest. Aamir sits on several startup and non-profit boards, is technical advisor to technology companies and holds 11 patents in telecommunications.

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All rights reserved.

All-in-one cloud contact centER solutions Providing valued interactions to build a great customer experience with trust and empathy

Watch: Using Empathy to provide Personalisation

"We also have integration with major tech partners, including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Zoom and Amazon."

Bruce Rosen, SVP, Genesys Great customer service improves brand loyalty; valuable interactions build the trust to facilitate that. “At Genesys we provide our customers with a way to manage and implement the qualities of empathy into their customer experience,” explains SVP Bruce Rosen. “We can drive a new level of personalization; our Experience As a ServiceSM offering allows every company, big or small, to deliver that personalization at scale.”

Genesys Cloud

Cloud accounts for 65% of the Genesys customer base with 85% of its business operating on a SaaS model with the flexibility to meet developing customer needs. “Our technology transformation highlights a cloud -first strategy,” says Rosen. “Our digital marketplace AppFoundry offers 400 applications that can be integrated to enhance Genesys solutions.

We also have integration with major technology

partners, including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Zoom and Amazon.”

Hyper Personalised Experience

Built for mission critical reliability and redundancy, the enterprise grade solutions Genesys deploy help companies like Verizon in their quest for the agility to be available for customers 24/7. Reacting to changing market conditions with the ability to add new features in real time is key. “We’re also seeing a rise in digital self-service,” notes Rosen.

“Genesys chatbots driven by AI and Machine Learning, as well as our predictive engagement, support companies with the ability to deliver a hyper-personalized experience for their customers with every interaction. And as we've all seen and experienced during this past year, the support of remote working from home and customer experience is now becoming the new normal.”

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“ W e are well positioned as the 21st century platform for innovation and growth thanks to our 5G ecosystem” AAMIR HUSSAIN

SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, VERIZON BUSINESS

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ensure planogram compliance, and we’re adding tremendous value to manufacturing and logistics by helping large businesses streamline their operations with realtime machine vision applications. We also provide gaming companies with a platform that enables a rich, console-like experience on smartphones.”

Existing trends in digital transformation have only been supercharged by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and Verizon Business has risen to the challenge. “I really have seen five years worth of transformation in the last year, quite literally. That has also changed the behavior of our customers, our employees, and ourselves in terms of how we show up on behalf of society.”

Customers are now urgently looking at how they can transform their networks,

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Verizon Business’s Technology Solutions in a Digital World

as Hussain explains: “De-centralisation of resources, the densification of the network, adoption of mobility and cloud security, and virtualisation are just a few of the trends we’re seeing. Businesses now want to use more advanced communications technologies. They want to use home networks and still remain secure and they want access to all of their corporate infrastructure in the cloud. We are helping provide all of those capabilities.”

Verizon Business’ work is enabled by the support of a number of key partners, slotting into the company’s conception of three product layers: connectivity, platform and solutions. “We're seeing a lot of customers move to the cloud,” says Hussain. “They're using the cloud for their communications needs. We, as a global services provider, have

the opportunity to work with partners such as Genesys for our end customer contact center needs. We also work with Cisco across our portfolio to provide networking, collaboration and calling solutions to our customers as they migrate their businesses to the cloud – taking them out of IT closet and towards the edge.”

Partners are also a vital part of the company’s 5G provision, as Hussain explains.

“Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson are part of our 4G and 5G networks, and we continue to build with them. We are also building private networks with them, which will help enable 5G’s industrial automation capabilities.” On the solutions side, partners include the likes of IBM and SAP. “IBM has obviously their cloud offering. They also have AI and ML platforms, and we are working with them very closely businesschief.com

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Deploy services your customers want, when and where they need them Meet your customer’s needs and create new revenue. The open, flexible, software-defined Cisco 5G architecture will help you maximize 5G profitability and create premium connected experiences.

Learn more

Getting up to speed with Cisco's 5G architecture

Watch: Cisco - 5G Pioneers

Cisco's Bob Everson, Senior Director of 5G Architecture talks about what it's like being one of the pioneers of 5G technology and Verizon's trusted partner Founded in 1984 in San Francisco, it is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Cisco is a market leader in advanced technology solutions for Enterprise, Service Providers and Cloud, helping their customers and partners to achieve their intended business outcomes.

As Verizon builds its 5G network, Cisco continues to act as a trusted partner.

However, before anything further is said about the benefits of 5G for telecom, it is important to understand what the 5G architecture encompasses. Speaking on the extent of implementation, Bob Everson, Cisco’s Senior Director of 5G Architecture says “5G is not a singular technology.

For us, it's really important that we take a systems approach on the components that deliver a 5G system, but then also look at the whole ecosystem of the applications and the users, and how all that ties together.”

Being a pioneer in 5G technology and applications, Cisco focuses on maximising the use of technology to improve business operations for its customers in order to

deliver tangible results. Everson states that although 5G is the future, it also makes systems vulnerable to threat. Owing to the deep-rooted nature of 5G integration, one of Cisco’s key tasks is developing a holistic approach in understanding these operations and providing solutions that predict and prevent any threat.

Speaking in conclusion on the application of 5G across different operations, Everson adds that organizations will see an increasing overlap in environments between enterprise and direct consumers, so having a protected connection and an infrastructure built to last will and should be any organization’s top objective.

As organisations look to the future of work and move to a more hybrid work model, service providers must ensure that their customers are well-connected with multiple levels of security and have a seamless environment to operate within.

Learn more today

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“ I really have seen five years worth of transformation in the last year, quite literally” AAMIR HUSSAIN

SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, VERIZON BUSINESS

to create the revolutionary industry of the future that allows our customers to be nimble and really helps them in their digital journey.

We bring the network, we bring our security, advanced communications, IoT, and other things, and IBM provides the applications. We do the same thing with SAP. SAP has some fundamental vertical solutions in the retail and manufacturing segments that we combine as part of our 5G network and provide really innovative solutions to our customers.”

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Another trusted partner is Mutualink.

“Working together, Verizon and Mutualink can instantly provide interoperability to any public safety stakeholder and bridge voice, video systems, data, alarms and sensors (including body cameras and fixed sensors) to enable real time collaboration and 360 degree situational awareness to

VERIZON BUSINESS

support our Verizon Frontline Responders,” says Hussain. “Verizon recently announced Verizon Frontline as a continuation of our commitment to public safety - Verizon has supported first responders for our entire 21 year history, leading the way on priority voice calls, virtual segmentation and network reliability. With well

over 10 years of commitment to first responders, Mutualink has led the public safety communications industry in the innovation of solutions for interoperable communications, and created the only platform available today that allows for the instant sharing of voice, video and data regardless of device or network.” businesschief.com

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ALINK

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“We enable the digital economy through our services, connectivity platform and solutions” AAMIR HUSSAIN

SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, VERIZON BUSINESS

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Aside from assisting its customers with COVID-19 disruption, Verizon Business has also embraced the changes it has wrought internally. “I started in Verizon in December of 2019, says Hussain. “And we went to work 100% from home in March of 2020. I haven't been back to the office since. Despite that being unthinkable a year or two ago, we've been very effective and have learned how

to carry on with advanced communications and virtual meetings. We’ve figured out how to be much more effective working from home. That means additional communications with employees, and making sure that we are doubling down on emotional intelligence.” That experience has informed the solutions it offers customers.

“We’ve begun to offer all kinds of secure businesschief.com

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5G: partnering to innovate Ericsson’s 5G technology and your networks deliver unprecedented speed and flexibility, carrying more data than ever before. Our 5G is made for innovation.

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work from home solutions. If we had taken that solution to a customer two years ago, they would have thought long and hard about adopting it. Now, our customers are driving us to create more and more solutions.”

Looking to the future, the company will continue to be guided by a number of key and unchanging principles. “The first is digital experience and putting the customer first.

Second is simplification. The third is about focusing on life cycle, managing what's out there, not just building it and sending it out, but also enhancing it over time. Last is 5G leadership. 5G is our future. It helps us create leadership on many fronts - not only providing high-speed connectivity, but also creating new applications and experiences

that can use the capabilities of 5G.” Hussain emphasises that even despite its successes, Verizon Business is only at the middle point of a continuing journey. “We’ve built a great network. We have a great team, we have great processes, and now we need to enable others to come use us as a platform to innovate for their own businesses and their own solutions. That is key to our success. We are forging large partnerships, and we feel that we have the assets, we have the tools, we have the capabilities and the platform for us to innovate together with our partners and customers.”

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HOW TECH IS TRANSFORMING HR

IN A HYBRID WORKFORCE With hybrid working the next normal, how can the HR function use technology as an enabler for better employee experiences?

Business Chief talks to Andrew Duncan, Infosys Consulting and Brian Kropp, Gartner WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

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or most of its history, the HR technology function has been more comfortable as an implementation partner than an innovator, handling technology enquiries from various stakeholders, collecting data and analytics, and dealing with system maintenance.

But this is starting to change, as HR technology budgets and expectations grow, says Gartner’s Group Vice President Brian Kropp, a man known for providing cutting-edge insights to the most progressive HR execs.

“With the widespread shift to remote work, HR technology leaders quickly had to address how to move a wide array of employee processes, such as performance management, onboarding and learning into a virtual space, sharply illustrating the increasing need to include HR technology input into workforce planning,” Kropp told Business Chief.

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programmes, according to Andrew Duncan, UK CEO at Infosys Consulting, with a phased approach over a number of years, and often held up by the involvement of too many stakeholders, lack of immediate ROI, and overcoming legacy systems and tech stacks.

“However, over 12 months into the pandemic, we have certainly seen organisations accelerate their HR digital transformation, as a necessity rather than a ‘nice-to-have’,” says Duncan, pointing in particular to the cloud, which, in an effort to maintain operations during the pandemic, has been “a winner of 2020 across all facets of business, including HR”.

And with hybrid expected to become the next working norm (Gartner projects that 48% of employees will keep working remotely at least some of the time postpandemic) digital transformation of the HR function utilising the cloud, AI, big data, analytics and VR, is expected to accelerate.

And fast.

HUMAN CAPITAL

40%

Businesses investing in AI to develop their HR function for whom the primary driver is to maximise cost savings, according to Gartner research.

80%

The number of organisations that have cancelled or are planning to cancel in-person Learning and Development training, with L&D instead pivoting its learning offerings to a virtual framework with the adoption of remote and hybrid work, according to Gartner research.

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Gartner says that around half of the organisations the firm has talked to are already investing in AI or planning to do so in the next three years. “AI has already proven it delivers against cost-saving expectations and is now evolving into more refined uses such as enhanced decision making, for example, not just by screening more CVs, but also by providing recommendations on which CVs to shortlist and why,” says Kropp.

And while there are those who argue that digitisation of the HR function will lead to loss of human touch, the opposite can in fact be true.

Using technology to support and engage people Duncan believes that in the future we will see AI being used as an ‘intelligent co-pilot’, complementing and enhancing the existing skills of HR teams rather than replacing them.

“AI provides HR departments with an opportunity to improve the candidate

and employee experience by automating repetitive, low-value tasks and freeing up time to focus on more strategic work,” says Duncan. He argues that with so many businesses looking at creating more flexible hybrid models of co-located and distributed work for the future, the focus long-term must shift from “how businesses can use technology to improve their bottom line to how can they use technology to support and engage their people”.

HR leaders should concentrate on using technology as an enabler for better employee experiences, working in the background to support greater workforce productivity and issue resolution.

For example, as a tool for augmented experiences, Duncan argues that technology can be a powerful enabler for connecting employees and teams who may not traditionally have face-toface interaction in an office. He points to new videoconferencing platforms based

“ Long-term, the focus must shift from how businesses can use technology to improve their bottom line to how can they can use technology to support and engage their people” ANDREW DUNCAN

CEO UK, INFOSYS CONSULTING

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on VR and AR which create simulated environments for users from around the world to meet, communicate and interact in a more natural setting.

“Similarly, virtual connection-building tools, or internal talent marketplaces, can encourage contacts between individuals and teams, make personalised recommendations to link employees with like-minded colleagues or mentors, and support onboarding processes by connecting new hires with their team,” states Duncan.

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Developing employees Since COVID-19, more organisations are employing learning experience platforms (LEPs) to facilitate continuous education and help foster employee feedback and transparency, says Kropp. “LEPs look to deliver personalised learning paths, channels and collections that enable learners to easily organise, access and share relevant resources.”

When it comes to employee training, Duncan also points to personalisation, and mobile. “I’m particularly interested in the use of AI to both virtualise and personalise

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L&D initiatives, moving away from onesize-fits-all programmes and I anticipate increased development and investment in training platforms that learn your strengths, weaknesses, learning style and working preferences,” he says. “These insights can be used to automatically suggest suitable training courses and modules to match your role, as well as adapting the way your training is delivered.”

Duncan believes VR also has extensive applications for remotely upskilling employees. “Developing presentation skills can now be achieved using virtual meeting rooms, populated with realistic elements like lighting distractions and background audience noise. Solutions like these can give feedback on interpersonal elements like pace of voice, number of hesitation words and even eye-contact.”

Empowering and engaging employees Listening to employees and the ways in which employers respond has never been more crucial, says Kropp, and this has given rise increasingly to tools like voice of the employee (VoE) solutions, which help foster employee feedback and transparency. “VoE solutions deliver insights with actionable guidance to help improve employee engagement, experience, productivity and performance,” explains Kropp. “The immediate, urgent and forced transition to remote work environments during the first half of 2020 has become an equally compelling driver of end-user demand.

Organisations now want to use VoE to communicate care, listen to employee concerns, prioritise investments and quickly take action where necessary.”

Duncan says that in a hybrid workplace, without regular face-to-face meetings or the spontaneous interactions of an office

setting, managers may find it harder to spot employees who are at risk for low productivity or thinking of looking elsewhere.

However, “new AI-driven technologies based on workplace data offer employers the ability to identify employees who are struggling with motivation”, he says.

“Digital feedback platforms and collaboration tools make it possible to gain unprecedented insights into what matters

AI can eliminate bias in hiring process According to Duncan, the processes used to find, recruit and retain talent are filled with human cognitive bias, where a person’s background, experiences, social stereotypes and cultural context will unconsciously impact their decisions and actions. The use of AI, however, can help HR leaders overcome human-bias in decision making, creating inclusive job descriptions and reviewing them for gender-coded language.

Additionally, says Duncan, “AI empowers leaders to make far more informed decisions about a candidate, unearthing their true potential and eliminating the risk of hiring based upon relationship”. businesschief.com

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HR Technologies Rising Andrew Duncan, UK CEO, Infosys Consulting, outlines the trends and technologies coming into play in the HR space.

• Chatbots These will make waves in employee experience in 2021 and beyond, solving many simple HR issues, like updating personal information. We will inevitably see a rise in voice biometrics and natural language speech recognition that improves employees’ ability to self-service, and aside from internal use, chatbots also show promise in streamlining the candidate experience, handling initial applicant screening and scheduling interviews.

• Digital Twins As we emerge from the pandemic, more organisations will turn to digital twins to better prepare for unexpected shocks and to build an intelligent and resilient employee ecosystem. A digital twin with layers of workplace insights provides a shared picture for key leadership, letting HR leaders experiment with a number of key variables, testing different scenarios and contingencies across space management, employee utilisation and facilities. With a digital twin, HR can also pair staffing forecasts with real estate costs and uncover innovative ways to maximise operational expenses.

• Health Tech Employee happiness is now a corporate responsibility, and one with a significant impact on productivity. The pandemic has shone a light on the vital role employees play in business success, and talent is more confident in expressing their needs to employers. Consequently, we will see the concept of Health Tech making its way into HR, supporting and monitoring physical fitness and the emotional and mental health of employees, from virtual meditation classes to AI-powered therapists.

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to employees, whether via surveys, chatbots or virtual feedback groups and by engaging people in a two-way dialogue, leaders have the ability to deliver personalised experiences that support their individual goals and needs and improve the employee experience.”

Monitoring employee performance Since the onset of the pandemic, according to Gartner, more than one out of four companies have purchased new technology, for the first time, to passively track and monitor their employees. However, says Kropp, “many of these same companies haven’t determined how to balance employee privacy with the technology, and employees are frustrated”.

“ AI has already proven it delivers against cost-saving expectations and is now evolving into more refined uses such as enhanced decision making, for example, not just by screening more CVs, but also by providing recommendations on which CVs to shortlist and why.”

BRIAN KROPP

GROUP VICE PRESIDENT, GARTNER

Duncan asserts that all HR leaders should make it a priority to balance such monitoring technology with employee privacy, and that when implementing such tools, leaders should build trust with a governance framework around the metrics they want to use, the data they want to collect, and how they will safeguard sensitive information.

Both Duncan and Kropp predict that new regulations will emerge this year, and these will start to put limits on what employers can track about their employees.

That’s not to say that monitoring performance can’t be beneficial. “By understanding data and behaviours that most closely correlate with workplace

success and failure, managers can identify team members suffering from emotional stress and fatigue and proactively intervene to address issues like poor engagement and feelings of low inclusivity,” explains Duncan.

“Simultaneously, they stand to improve work processes and create personalised employee experiences that create better engagement and outcomes.”

In the end, digital transformation will not be a cure-all for anything, says Duncan, but instead a platform for leadership to build their organisations of the future, “leading from the front and engaging all of their employees in the journey ahead, to shape that future ambition”. businesschief.com

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Defining tomorrow’s healthcare today WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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NORTHWELL HEALTH

A super-charged data lake strategy is helping Northwell Health connect with a population of 11 million New Yorkers – one seamless patient journey at a time

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here are not many private healthcare providers around the world who serve an urban population of 11 million people but Northwell Health is one of them.

New York’s largest health system is leveraging technology to deliver personalised patient experiences across its 23 hospitals and more than 830 outpatient facilities in order to outpace the accelerating digital landscape created by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The numbers and sheer scale of Northwell Health, which also includes medical research at the Feinstein Institutes as well as medical and nursing education through the Zucker School of Medicine, does not detract from its aim to transform the health of every unique patient with their mantra ‘be better tomorrow than we are today’ — a goal which has stood the test of time since they were founded nearly 25 years ago.

Today, it has never been more important for the 76,000-strong team to focus on a future driven by a digital transformation, which includes data lake solutions used to effectively ‘supercharge the data’. Northwell is focused on delivering connected digital patient experiences that complement their physical experiences inside and outside the Northwell system.

With more than five million patient engagements every year, this digital transformation has accelerated the ease in which patients can access their electronic health records (EHR) and consult physicians

through virtual consultations, which was vital at a time when the state of New York imposed new visitation policies.

Serving one of the biggest and most diverse populations on the planet could be perceived as a challenge but according to Marc d. Paradis, Vice President, Data Strategy for Northwell Holdings and Ventures, this provides a unique opportunity to “apply representative data and balanced analytics to real world clinical scenarios”.

As a data scientist who combines the best of academia and industry know-how to drive the data strategy for Northwell Health, Paradis is responsible for targeted investments,

“ We have to remember we’re dealing with people at the most sensitive and vulnerable points in their lives it's a real privilege to be a caring part of those moments and to help them in their journey to achieve their health and wellness goals” MARC D. PARADIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY FOR NORTHWELL HOLDINGS AND VENTURES businesschief.com

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Health Catalyst: An agile approach to healthcare data How to get the most out of your investment in data with Health Catalyst

Health Catalyst is quite literally a healthcare provider’s catalyst for change when it comes to their measurable, data-informed improvement in analytics, software and services.

Founded in 2008 in Salt Lake City, Utah, Health Catalyst enables health care organisations to build a healthcare -specific, open, flexible, and scalable data platform and fully integrated suite of analytics applications.

This enables health system partners, including Northwell Health in New York which serves a population of 11 million, to realise measurable value within months. “Our customers have recognised the potential to use data, to improve their clinical, financial and operational business outcomes,” said Mike Doyle, Chief Customer Officer.

Formed by a group of healthcare veterans - with a quest to develop a data warehouse that could handle the complexities unique to healthcare data - they discovered the solution now known as Adaptive Data Architecture. Today, Health Catalyst helps clinicians in more than 250 hospitals, caring for more than 100 million patients each year.

Health Catalyst offers a solution in three parts: Data Operating System Cloud-based DOS is healthcare-specific, open, flexible and scalable.

Analytics Applications Allows customers to make measurable clinical, financial and operational improvements.

Services Expertise Experts that leverage technology to help customers make measurable, data-informed improvements.

“I think a key differentiator is our open platform that enables our clients to accelerate their own integration of data, but it is customisable, configurable in ways that make it unique. For example, during the pandemic our clients were able to put this healthcare-specific, flexible platform and fully integrated suite of analytics applications to use in ways we could never have predicted,” said Doyle.

“We’re very grateful for our partnership with Northwell Health and want to thank these visionary leaders who are able to envision a future using data that is light years beyond what we can think of today.”

Learn more

NORTHWELL HEALTH

Title of the video

joint ventures and innovations that support Northwell’s clinical and social missions by leveraging Northwell's data assets, intellectual expertise and clinical platforms.

He also focuses on data strategy, predictive algorithms and digital partnerships.

“My role is to empower our patients, augment our providers, support their families and to improve the health of all of the communities we serve through the use of innovative data solutions,” said Paradis who joined Northwell in January of 2020, just before COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic.

“I have the privilege to help the system as a whole think through data strategy, looking at how we can enrich and leverage our differentiable and defensible assets.

We have a decade of data on 11 million lives covering all of Long Island, the five New York City Boroughs and Westchester County which is probably the most genetically, culturally and demographically diverse 164

June 2021

population and clinical data set in the world. This is a tremendous resource to have,” he said.

Paradis pointed out that the data set they are working with is unique and allows them to produce predictive models which can be validated on real world data in diverse clinical scenarios, which gives Northwell a competitive advantage. He also said that having such a vast platform of hospitals, ambulatory surgery centres and outpatient facilities enables them to rigorously test new technologies in the context of the full care continuum.

“It gives us this fantastic platform to test new ideas, new technologies and put them through their paces. We use evidence-based best practices to ensure that they are actually delivering clinically relevant hard outcomes on the basis of changes in people’s behavior at specific points of intervention in the clinical workflow. These model-driven interventions are then packaged in solutions

NORTHWELL HEALTH

that lead to measurable value and clinical impact,” he said.

MARC D. PARADIS TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY

• Northwell has a vast network of collaborators from research pioneers to entrepreneurs and educators who are all dedicated on their ‘mission to serve’ and are committed to providing: • The highest quality clinical care • Educating the current and future generations of healthcare professionals

INDUSTRY: HOSPITAL & HEALTH CARE LOCATION: NEW YORK Marc d. Paradis is Vice President of Data Strategy at Northwell Health. It is his responsibility to enrich Northwell Health's data assets in order to empower patients, augment providers, support families and raise the health of all the communities Northwell serves.

For 25 years, Marc has been implementing models that drive action, providing measurable value to all stakeholders. While leading Optum's Data Science University he taught his unique approach to Product-Centric Data Science, Machine Learning, and AI to more than 2,200 individuals.

He has a Master's in Cellular & Molecular Neurobiology from MIT and a Bachelor's in Chemistry from Cornell University.

Searching for new advances in medicine through the conduct of biomedical research Promoting health education and caring for the community regardless of the ability to pay

“ We have a decade of data on 11 million lives covering all of Long Island, the five New York City Boroughs and Westchester County which is probably the most genetically, culturally and demographically diverse population and clinical data set in the world. This is a tremendous resource to have” MARC D. PARADIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY, NORTHWELL HOLDINGS AND VENTURES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Response to the pandemic Northwell has been on their digital transformation journey for several years but what the pandemic emphasised was the crucial role of cross-functional teams in which everyone across the organisation worked together to achieve a common goal.

They quickly rolled out devices that enabled audio and video connections with patients.

We help you to digitize human experiences in healthcare by meeting you where you are.

Sutherland is your partner in your quest to achieve the Quadruple Aim of improving patient experience, clinical experience, and health outcomes— all while lowering costs. We meet you at any point along your journey and accelerate your digital transformation.

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Sutherland Healthcare human touch to digital world Combine a human-centered design with the scale and accuracy of real-time analytics with Sutherland Healthcare Sutherland Healthcare provides the human touch to any stage of a digital journey. They do this by combining a human-centered design with the scale and accuracy of real-time analytics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), cognitive technology and automation.

“We serve clients across the spectrum from backoffice processes, through to the end-of-customer experience and along the way, leverage big data and deep analytics”, said Matthew Collier, CEO of Sutherland Healthcare.

Founded in 1986, Sutherland Health Solutions is a global organisation covering 144 countries with a team of 38,000 professionals conducting more than 43 million transactions each month. They work with businesses across a broad range of industries, from healthcare to hospitality and banking to retail.

“We bring a deep domain expertise to each of the industries, particularly in healthcare,” commented Collier who stresses they meet their clients wherever they are on their digital transformation.

“From the earliest spectrum of outsourcing through to the point of cloud, we can meet them.”

We help you to di experiences in he by meeting you wh

For 12 years, Sutherland has been a partner of Northwell Health-New York’s largest health system serving 11 million people. “This has been a true partnership and the outcomes have been really impressive,” said Collier. “I am looking forward to taking our partnership to the next level in this new era of big supercharged data sets, data lakes and deep analytics.”

The company heritage of being a “future-ready organisation” came to fruition during the pandemic.

Sutherland is your partner in your quest to “By having deeply digital technology enabled service in the RCM arena, we were experience, able to flex up andclinical down improving patient exp with demands from our clients,” said Collier.

all while lowering costs. We meet you at a

“Sutherland is, at its heart, a tech enabled services accelerate your digital transformation. company and that gives us the edge when the best solution is neither a technology or services solution, but rather the hybrid of the two.”

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NORTHWELL HEALTH

11m

population served

by Northwell Health

$13.4bn in annual revenue

23

Hospitals

830+ outpatient facilities

76,000 employees

$1.44bn investment in community impact

3,800

members of Northwell Health Physician Partners — the health system’s medical group

2m+

patients treated annually

5.5 m patient encounters annually

36,300

births each year

865,260 emergency visits

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NORTHWELL HEALTH

“ Part of our strategy over the coming years is continuing to build out that data Lake infrastructure and architecture. It's not just focused on EHR data. There are separate systems for lab data and radiology data, among others. The point of the data lake is to bring all of that data together in one place for a complete and personalized view of each patient that will supercharge Northwell’s data and analytics” MARC D. PARADIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY, NORTHWELL HOLDINGS AND VENTURES

“When COVID hit it demonstrated to us the priority to move this digital transformation to the very top of the list and we moved rapidly — today we are in a place which would have probably taken years to achieve pre-pandemic,” said Paradis who pointed out it only took weeks to implement the entire telemedicine infrastructure for over 8,000 clinicians, including physicians in training and medical students.

“People had been talking about telehealth for over a decade prior to COVID, and the foundational technology had been ready several years prior to the pandemic, but it required the pandemic to jump start the change management and adoption.

“Even though we are over the peak of the pandemic we still expect to see a portion of care in a telehealth format to give patients the flexibility and choice to see their care providers at more convenient times and with less interruption to their daily lives. Telehealth visits also have the additional advantage of helping with sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint in NYS.” Paradis pointed out it was one small step at a time when it comes to changes in healthcare. “The way we solve complex problems is not with one expansive technology or one big application. We solve it by lots of little improvements which might only make it better for one per cent businesschief.com

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Katz Institute for Women’s Health Northwell created the Katz Institute for Women’s Health, the only network of experts devoted to every aspect of women’s care as part of Northwell’s commitment to #RaiseHealth for all.

DID YOU KNOW...

Paradis pointed out much of medicine over the last 200 years has been defined by the simplistic research construct of the “75 kilogram spherical man”.

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“So much of the research, so much of the drug testing for so long has been based around adult males, sidelining women and minorities. We recently started an initiative to recognise what is different and unique about women’s health and how we can make sure that we address those appropriately,” he said.

June 2021

How Northwell is reaching out to New Yorkers The image of a simple bubble travelling on the breeze through the Big Apple is used by Northwell Healthcare as a symbol of life’s resilience and fragility and is part of their Raise Health awareness campaign.

The advert released in February 2021 challenges New Yorkers to collectively raise their expectations when it comes to healthcare – a year after the city became the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. As Northwell continues to roll-out the COVID-19 vaccines to millions of people, the healthcare provider has vowed to make public health their biggest priority.

NORTHWELL HEALTH

“ We have a decade of data on 11 million lives covering all of Long Island, the five New York City Boroughs and Westchester County which is probably the most genetically, culturally and demographically diverse population and clinical data set in the world. This is a tremendous resource to have” MARC D. PARADIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY, NORTHWELL HOLDINGS AND VENTURES

of the population. But if you do a hundred of those improvements, pretty soon you make it better for close to 100 per cent of the population.”

But Paradis pointed out that although the technological changes were rapidly altering the way Northwell delivered their healthcare, the patient is always put first. “We have to

remember we’re dealing with people at the most sensitive and vulnerable points in their lives it's a real privilege to be a caring part of those moments and to help them in their journey to achieve their health and wellness goals.”

‘Supercharged’ data lakes Data lakes are next-generation data management solutions that help data scientists meet big data challenges and drive new levels of real-time analytics and are being used at Northwell Health for EHR and laboratory data.

Their highly scalable environment supports large data volumes, collecting petabytes of structured, semi-structured and unstructured data in its native format from a variety of sources, including those previously untapped such as Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

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NORTHWELL HEALTH

“Part of our strategy over the coming years is continuing to build out that data Lake infrastructure and architecture,” said Paradis. “It's not just focused on EHR data.

There are separate systems for lab data and radiology data, among others. The point of the data lake is to bring all of that data together in one place for a complete and personalized view of each patient that will supercharge Northwell’s data and analytics.

“This will build the connections between those disparate data sets, while ensuring the appropriate data quality work resulting in datasets that, in a much more effective and efficient way, really follow and track the care journey within Northwell.

LIFE-CHANGING BENEFITS FROM NORTHWELL’S 3D PRINTING

DID YOU KNOW...

Northwell's automated 3D printing laboratory is creating state-of-the-art, personalised treatments which will change the life for their patients. By uniting world class resources in prosthetics, aerospace and 3D printing, Northwell created a first-of-its-kind prosthetic known as the Fin. The Fin allows an amputee to enter and exit the water without changing prosthetics. It uses state-of-the-art carbon fibre materials and an ergonomic shape to ensure durable and efficient movement.

The Fin is printed using a carbon fibre enhanced nylon to provide strength and flexibility. The result is a durable solution that is highly functional on land and in the water.

file, such as a computer-aided design (CAD) drawing or a CT/MRI scan. This creates a device that is matched to a patient’s anatomy and is used in the following: Anatomical models Tumor resection models – used to highlight a tumor and surrounding tissue Orthopedic models – built from bone-like materials used for pre-surgery measuring Vascular models – These can be printed to identify abnormalities in the organ, tumors, blood flow, sliced chambers, valves, muscle tissue and calcified tissue Dentistry – digital dentistry in the form of 3D printed dental appliances

3D printing is technology that produces a three-dimensional object from a digital 3D

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“Our health information exchange is done through InterSystems and they do a fantastic job of giving us a single view of the patients, at the time of care and the point of care — even if they’ve been to multiple different hospitals and touchpoints across Northwell.

“Bringing together our data lake and our health information exchange at an analytical level really empowers new kinds of analytics and applications that address each unique patient as a whole, not just limited to snapshots at points of time,” he said.

Commenting on the road ahead for a more digitised healthcare, Paradis said the dynamics of care are changing rapidly — using the analogy of cars merging onto a highway where drivers respond dynamically to each other’s actions.

“We make choices to deliver particular kinds of treatment or care and those choices impact the system, creating these interesting feedback 174

June 2021

loops. We're building out systems, machine learning systems and AI systems to understand and to track and to be able to intervene in these loops in a positive way that creates virtuous cycles of care. In effect we're learning how to merge onto these incredibly complex highways of health successfully and safely.”

Importance of partnership with Health Catalyst Commenting on the foundational importance to Northwell’s ecosystem, Paradis pointed out the value Health Catalyst, Athena, Sutherland and Allscripts.

“Health Catalyst is our data lake, they were very smart when they started by recognising that if you can’t efficiently and reliably connect to your data sources and move that data in a repeatable, scalable, high quality way, it doesn't matter what you build

NORTHWELL HEALTH

“ When COVID hit it demonstrated to us the priority to move this digital transformation to the very top of the list and we moved rapidly”

TOP 10 FACTS ABOUT NORTHWELL HEALTH

MARC D. PARADIS

downstream. It’s garbage in, garbage out.

Health Catalyst built out these connectors that allow us to pull in data from all of our transactional and operational systems, and to write directly into a data lake that then feeds into their Data Operating System (DOS™), a canonical healthcare data model that includes clinical, claims, administrative and other data. Downstream from that Data Operating System, Health Catalyst has a whole series of pre-built applications to support clinical workflows, patient flow, finance and regulatory issues, among many others.

“Health Catalyst is a fantastic partner from that standpoint and they also give us a world-class infrastructure that empowers us to generate our own insights in less time and with fewer resources.

Paradis pointed out that Northwell’s partnerships with Athena, Sutherland and Allscripts were also essential for the correct functioning of the transactional and operational systems that feed the data lake.

Sutherland’s robotic process automation automates outreach to payer websites for

DID YOU KNOW...

VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY, NORTHWELL HOLDINGS AND VENTURES

1. Pioneering bioelectronic medicine research at the Feinstein Institutes, which includes trial sites for treating lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and paralysis 2. Treats more New Yorkers for cancer than any other health care provider 3. One of the largest medical residency programs in the US, with 1,900+ residents and fellows 4. Sandra Atlas Bass Heart Hospital — one of top two cardiac surgery programs in US and Canada 5. Named a Best Place to Work by both Fortune and Glassdoor 6. Only hospital-based helicopter emergency transport service in the tri-state area 7. Largest hospital-based laboratory in North America 8. Lenox Hill Hospital the first on the East Coast to use the 3D video exoscope for neurosurgery 9. Created New York State’s first Centre for Cancer, Pregnancy and Reproduction 10. Cohen Children’s Medical Centre treats more paediatric cancer cases than any other children’s hospital in New York

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Better Care, Simplified.

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Helping patients stay healthy and safe is the mission. A trusted partnership that addresses new challenges through innovation is the path to success.

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claim status updates, coding validations for bundled denials and electronic submission of clinical medical records data to the payers.

These intelligent process automations have driven efficiencies of scale, increased productivity and accuracy across silos. In addition to RPA, Sutherland’s Health Analytics portal capabilities delivers actionable and prescriptive insights to end users via interactive dashboards, self-service BI and real-time business alerts.

Athena has been a crucial revenue cycle partner for many years with respect to administering physician billing, accounts receivable management and associated analytics. All told Sutherland and Athena help to ensure the accuracy, timeliness and impact of data from the administrative source systems that feed the Health Catalyst data lake.

“Of course, Paradis made sure to emphasise, none of this would be possible without the incredible partnership 176

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Northwell has with Allscripts. The Allscripts EHR powers everything that we are able to do for our patients and providers. The openness, scalability and extensibility of Allscripts are unique differentiators of their EHR. Other essential partners for the Northwell ecosystem include: • Tableau – an interface which helps to visualise and analyse data • Microsoft – provide the IT infrastructure • Microsoft Azure – platform for cloud, AI and ML • Google and Fitbit – wearables are being worked into the process of healthcare “Having a tool like Fitbit, which has wearables that can track heart rhythms to identify silent arrhythmias and atrial fibrillation, when tied to a user-interface, can empower a person, in partnership with

NORTHWELL HEALTH

VACCINE CLOUD TECHNOLOGY

DID YOU KNOW...

Northwell Health responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by leveraging Salesforce’s Vaccine Cloud technology.

When the pandemic hit New York, the city’s biggest healthcare provider was already using Health Cloud so they extended that to include Salesforce’s new suite for vaccine management.

Vaccine Cloud is part of Salesforce’s COVID-19 response technology solutions, which include vaccine inventory management, appointment scheduling, outcome monitoring, and public health outreach.

At the beginning of the pandemic, Northwell started using Experience Cloud to allow self-service appointmentbooking for patients to schedule COVID-19 PCR testing. They customised workflows for call centres to automate incoming calls and added live chat on the website and built another patient self-scheduling application for vaccine appointments.

The use of Marketing Cloud also helped them to communicate with patients through email and text messaging rounding off the patient experience.

“ I looked at ways to treat business data sets with the same methodological rigor and clarity of thought that we treat academic data sets with but on business timeframes and with a focus towards delivering products and services that work and provide value to people” MARC D. PARADIS

VICE PRESIDENT OF DATA STRATEGY, NORTHWELL HOLDINGS AND VENTURES

their care team, to change behaviours and prevent adverse outcomes,” said Paradis who pointed out that in the next couple of years streaming data sources such as wearables will revolutionise medicine.

Predicting the future of healthcare Paradis said there will be a focus on the genome which will help cancer care. “That's been driven by an understanding of the specific mutations in a patient tumors and designing drugs targeted at those. I think we can expect to see similar types of drugs, similar types of interventions and procedures in other areas along with a change in protocol linked to a more personalised care.

“My dream is that we begin to move the healthcare system from this episodic interventional system that we have now to fix a problem that's already occurred towards a continuous preventive maintenance and care model where the data from all aspects of your life is in full view of you and your care team in order to empower you to achieve your ideal health outcomes as you define them,” he said.

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WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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Driven by their tagline, “Here Today For Your Tomorrow,” BCU is leveraging tech to help members achieve financial well-being

I

Mike Valentine, President and CEO, BCU

n June of 2020, for the second consecutive year, BCU was named one of Forbes Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions, ranking #1 in Illinois and #5 in Minnesota. BCU’s purpose-driven strategy meets the member wherever they are, leveraging technology to empower people to improve their financial well-being and discover financial freedom. With shared values and a commitment to always put the member first, BCU's relationshipdriven culture is the catalyst that provides extraordinary service to enrich the lives of nearly 300,000 members. By nurturing a thriving work environment and recognizing employees as the valued individuals they are, BCU has become one of the fastest-growing credit unions over the last four decades. businesschief.com

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BCU - Leveraging today’s tech for tomorrow’s well-being

Here Today For Your Tomorrow Driven by its tagline, ‘Here Today For Your Tomorrow,’ BCU offers innovative resources to members while supporting employees through growth and opportunities. Mike Valentine, president and CEO, shares a shining example of how BCU helps members leverage today’s tech for tomorrow’s well-being.

“Annually, BCU hosts a roundtable with Company Partners to share information and garner valuable insight into their best practices while gaining a better understanding of their employees’ needs.”

“High-rate payday loans and lack of overdraft protections were issues affecting members' financial well-being that BCU needed to solve. To tackle this problem, we partnered with QCash Financial to roll out an express loan product that allows members to get quick approval and access to funds without requiring traditional underwriting criteria or a credit report screen.”

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“Instead, we utilize BCU's internal data on spending and deposit habits, as well as the member’s banking history to serve as the underwriting criteria for the loan. This provides members with quick approval and access to funds while building credit and saving versus other high-cost alternatives.

By partnering with QCash, we’re able to offer this as a fully digital experience.”

In less than 60 seconds, a member can apply for an express loan by answering six

“ It's exciting to see our partnerships strengthened as we work together to succeed in this environment” MIKE VALENTINE

PRESIDENT AND CEO BCU

BCU

MIKE VALENTINE

BCU was named to the annual Forbes list of Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions for the second consecutive year, ranking #1 in Illinois and #5 in Minnesota

LOCATION: USA

EXECUTIVE BIO

to eight questions using the mobile app and instantaneously receive funding. Features like auto-populated loan applications and single sign-on make the process even more streamlined and have proven essential to increasing adoption, especially during the pandemic as people have less access to physical locations.

BCU also provides a holistic financial well-being program that they’ve branded, Life. Money. You.®. Available to members and non-members alike, Life. Money. You. empowers people to make decisions today that will positively impact their financial future, like buying a home, repaying student debt, starting a family, or planning for retirement. The program is complimentary and includes one-on-one coaching with BCU-staff certified financial counselors, live (or virtual) events that cover a myriad of trending financial topics, and digital tools placed right in the palm of members’ hands using the BCU mobile app.

Partnering with companies like SavvyMoney® and using APIs and other transformative technologies, BCU members have free access to review credit scores at any time, so they can monitor their progress and achieve their financial health targets using mobile or online banking.

SavvyMoney is one of BCU’s strongest fintech relationships. Working together since 2013, more than half of the credit union’s digital banking users are enrolled with SavvyMoney and receive daily access

TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CEO

With over 41 years of sales and service experience, Mike brings unique insight and magnetic energy to the credit union industry. He joined BCU in 1984 as manager of lending and collections. After a decade of cultivating a strong sales and service culture, Mike was appointed president/CEO in 1994.

With a humble and approachable style, Mike sees himself as a coach and encourages his leadership team to treat BCU as a learning organization.

This team-based management style has led BCU to unparalleled success.

Mike received his bachelor’s degree from Western Illinois University and MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

BCU

to credit scores, reporting, monitoring, financial education, and pre-qualified loan offers. SavvyMoney’s innovative, memberfocused approach aligns well with BCU’s core strategy.

To help keep their clients safe, BCU is now also partnering with Breach Clarity.

“This year, we began working with Breach Clarity, a company providing identity protection services that help us monitor and locate data breaches or attempts made at identity theft.”

Meeting you where you’re at BCU realizes members all have their own unique preferred banking methods. While some still choose to walk into a Branch or call to speak with a representative, both options allow BCU to connect and consult the member on whatever they may need.

And yet, there is another fast-growing segment that prefers the convenience 186

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“ We work closely with our core institutional partners, such as Visa® and PSCU, to provide the best functionality on our digital interface as possible” MIKE VALENTINE

PRESIDENT AND CEO BCU

of accessing services anytime, anywhere through digital channels.

“That's always my dilemma in this digital world,” says Valentine. “We have been so successful with our personalized member relationships and service building. How do we translate that same experience

BCU

DAVE BLUM TITLE: SENIOR VICEPRESIDENT, CORPORATE RELATIONSHIPS/U.S. BRANCHES As a leader in relationship management, Dave is responsible for all domestic branches and leverages Company Partner relationships to maximize member and eligible non-member value. His experience in fostering partnerships makes him a key influence in corporate relationship management, business development, and member development. Dave holds a bachelor’s degree from North Park University and an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.

TITLE: VICE-PRESIDENT, MARKETING & BRAND STRATEGY Jill has accumulated 30 years of experience in financial services marketing. Her involvement in the industry began in 1991 when she joined BCU. She currently serves as vice-president of marketing & brand strategy, driving brand value, member engagement activity, and financial wellbeing initiatives. Recognized for her ability

MEET THE TEAM

with a digital device and create a unified experience?”

This is why BCU believes its job is to meet members wherever they are by providing a friction-free omnichannel member experience. By focusing on the intersection between human and digital, BCU hopes to humanize the digital experience and foster longstanding successful relationships that bring value.

“Our goal is to have a full product solution for our members, whatever their needs may be, both personally and professionally. From credit monitoring, investment advisory services, financing a house or a car, or improving their credit or even budgeting—we can help,” says Dave Blum, senior vice president, corporate services, and U.S. service centers.

“Over 50% of our existing members don't have access to a Branch. Over the years, we've put significant investment into

JILL SAMMONS

to manage strong cross-functional teams, communicate effectively, and positively influence others, her commitment to empowering people to discover financial freedom is reflected in everything she does.

Jill received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and MBA from Lake Forest Graduate School of Management.

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provide integrated credit score solution. ore to and reportantool explains key report factorsand that influence users’ onitors for changes. credit score “offer Thetheir creditreports score and report toolThe explains key factors that engine” influence users’ y savings opportunities withreports pre-qualified loan The offers based on“offer a engine” credit and monitors their for changes. credit score score. highlights key savings opportunities with pre-qualified loan offers based on a user’s credit score.

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Congratulations to BCU for their recognition as

Congratulations to BCU for their recognition as a Forbes #1 Best-in-State Bank and Credit Union for a Forbes #1 Best-in-State Bank and Credit Union for Illinois. Happy to have Happy been atoproud partner for 8partner years for 8 years Illinois. have been a proud

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Learn More Learn More

BCU

4 out of 10 Americans are unable to cover a $400 emergency expense fund Board of Goverment of the Federal Reserve System

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BCU

digital channels, both desktop, and mobile, with mobile logins making up 65% of digital logins. More than ever, it's crucial that we provide our members and potential members with the same experience banking digitally that they would have if visiting a Branch location.”

"We now offer mobile tools like remote deposit that lets members deposit a check from their phone instead of going into a Branch. They can also transfer funds, monitor their credit score, and view financial well-being content. By significantly investing in our digital channels over the years, members are given as much flexibility as possible when banking with us."

“We have been most successful with our one-to-one relationship and service building. How do we translate that same service through a device?”

MIKE VALENTINE

PRESIDENT AND CEO BCU

Standardized offerings, a customized approach Jill Sammons, vice president of marketing & brand strategy, shares how BCU takes a customized approach to designing a program to best provide workplace financial well-being. "We have 40 years of experience partnering with these great companies, getting to know their cultures, and understanding how much they care about their employees.

We take all of that into consideration in order to customize a well-rounded, relevant offering that meets the needs of all their employee segments. BCU delivers valuable financial solutions that support everyone from the entry-level employee who’s just starting out to the C-suite." businesschief.com

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COMPANY NAME

State-of-the-Art Technology.

State-of-the-Heart Service.

Your Possibilities Delivered.® Financial institutions are getting larger. Companies are merging.

Technology continues to rapidly evolve. But you shouldn’t have to choose between technology and service. PSCU delivers the best of both.

Our omni-channel payments solutions make it easy for members to personalize their experience, while our long-standing commitment to putting credit unions first makes it easy to personalize yours. What’s the state of your credit union’s solutions and support? Join PSCU today.

Payments ■ Risk Management ■ Digital Banking ■ Data Science and Analytics ■ Loyalty Mobile and Online Card Management ■ Contact Center Services and Solutions

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Strategic Consulting ■ Marketing ■ Delinquency Management

844.367.7728

BCU

Here Today For Your Tomorrow

In summarizing how the credit union successfully serves such a diverse portfolio of Company Partners, Blum explains, "I have a team of directors who work with our Company Partners daily to align initiatives, increase engagement with our existing members, and acquire new members.

This helps drive the business development activities that we do."

Valentine highlights that in order to offer full-service products to Company Partner segments, "We've had to also work closely with our core institutional partners, like Visa® and PSCU, to provide the best functionality on our digital interface so that we can introduce these new products and services."

Valentine further explains, "We've shifted from a linear vendor management approach to strategically aligning with business partners. CUNA Mutual Group has a venture arm investing in FinTech

companies. PSCU has also begun to look at ways they can start investing as well. It's exciting to see our partnerships strengthened as we work together to make sure the member experience, from start to finish, is as seamless as possible."

Forbes Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions Report As Covid-19 threw the economy into turmoil, forcing banks and credit unions to step up their efforts—never before has the credit union's low-cost financial product offerings and personalized member service been in higher demand.

According to the Forbes article, The Best Banks and Credit Unions in Every State 2020, “Small and midsized banks were some of the most active participants in the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program, pumping hundreds businesschief.com

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“Our goal is to have a full product solution for our members, whatever their needs may be, both personally and professionally.

From credit monitoring, investment advisory services, financing a house or a car, or improving their credit or even budgeting—we can help” DAVE BLUM

SENIOR VICE-PRESIDENT CORPORATE RELATIONSHIPS/U.S. BRANCHES BCU

of billions of dollars into millions of small businesses nationwide to help them retain staff and survive beyond the pandemic.

From banks to credit unions, lenders also help members with relief efforts like temporary forbearance or low-cost lending and refinancing options to take advantage of rock-bottom interest rates. When the economy recovers, these lenders are likely to continue offering the most competitive rates on mortgages, consumer loans, and deposit accounts as activity picks up.”

“But there is a massive divergence on how well financial institutions are at doing this.”

To gauge which firms had the most satisfied customers, Forbes partnered with research firm Statista and surveyed nearly 25,000 U.S. consumers for its Best-In-State Banks & Credit Unions report. Participants were asked to answer twenty questions regarding their financial dealings. Ratings were based on overall recommendations and satisfaction and five subdimensions; trust, terms and conditions, Branch services,

digital services, and financial advice.

BCU ranked #1 in Illinois and #5 in Minnesota. The credit union was voted to the top spots based on overall satisfaction, trust, service, product offerings, and financial well-being resources, all the things BCU strives to achieve.

"It's validating to know we're doing the right things,” says Valentine, “and it's also an indication that we need to keep hustling to find where we can do better. The report does a thorough job of seeing if members and customers are getting what they need from their financial institution. I'm proud of our performance based on that criteria because that's been our strategy, what we aim to do for every member, and it's a wonderful feeling to know our members feel we are succeeding."

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INTERVIEW

Maria Bartolome Winans

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MARKETING MATTERS:

from IBM to KYNDRYL Former CMO for IBM Americas Maria Bartolome Winans was recently named CMO for Kyndryl. Maria talks about her new role and her leadership style

WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

“ I want my legacy as a leader to include providing value in work culture, but also in leaving a personal impact on the lives of professionals who will carry the workforce forward” MARIA BARTOLOME WINANS CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, KYNDRYL

You've recently moved from IBM to Kyndryl, joining as CMO. Tell us about this exciting new role?

I’m Chief Marketing Officer for Kyndryl, the independent company that will be created following the separation from IBM of its Managed Infrastructure Services business, expected to occur by the end of 2021. My role is to plan, develop, and execute Kyndryl's marketing and advertising initiatives. This includes building a company culture and brand identity on which we base our marketing and advertising strategy.

We have an amazing opportunity ahead at Kyndryl to create a company brand that will stand apart in the market by leading with our people first. Once we are an independent company, each Kyndryl employee will advance the vital systems that power human progress. Our people are devoted, restless, empathetic, and anticipatory – key qualities needed as we build on existing customer relationships and cultivate new ones. Our people are at the heart of this business and I am deeply hopeful and excited for our future.

What experiences have helped prepare you for this new opportunity?

I’ve had a very rich and diverse career history at IBM that has lasted 25+ years. I started out in sales but landed explored opportunities at IBM in different roles, business units, geographies, and functions. Marketing and businesschief.com

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INTERVIEW

READ NOW

Technology Magazine is proud to launch a celebration of women in Global Technology.

Brought to you in association with:

A BizClik Media Group Brand 198 June 2021

Creating Digital Communities in Technology

INTERVIEW

MARIA BARTOLOME WINANS TITLE: CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER COMPANY: KYNDRYL

business are my passions and I landed on Marketing because it allowed me to utilise both my left and right brain, bringing together art and science. In college, I was not only a business major, but an art major.

I love marketing because I can leverage my extensive knowledge of business, while also being able to think openly and creatively.

The opportunities I was given during my time at IBM and my natural curiosity have led me to the path I’m on now and there’s no better next career step than a once-ina-lifetime-opportunity to help launch a company. The core of my role at Kyndryl is to create a culture centered on our people and growing up in my career at IBM has allowed me to see first-hand how to prioritise people and ensure they are at the heart of progress in everything Kyndryl will do.

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, US Prior to most recently joining Kyndryl as Chief Marketing Officer, Maria had a 25-year career at IBM, most recently as the tech giant’s CMO where she oversaw all marketing professionals and activities across North America, Canada and Latin America.

She has held senior global marketing positions in a variety of disciplines and business units across IBM, most notably strategic initiatives in Smarter Cities and Watson Customer Engagement, as well as leading teams in services, business analytics, and mobile and industry solutions. She is known for her work with teams to leverage data, analytics and cloud technologies to build deeper engagements with customers and partners. A native of Santiago, Chile, she served as co-chair of IBM’s Hispanic Executive Council and was awarded the ASPIRA Association’s Corporate Leadership Award. Equally active outside of work, she is a certified instructor in Kickboxing, TRX and Russian Kettlebells, teaches fitness classes, and has two children.

INTERVIEW

How would you describe your leadership style?

I believe that people aren't your greatest assets, they are your only assets. My platform and background for leadership has always been grounded in authenticity to who I am and centred on diversity and inclusion. I immigrated to the US from Chile when I was 10 years old and so I know the power and beauty that comes from leaning into what makes you different from other people, and that's what I want every person in my marketing organisation to feel – the value in bringing their most authentic self to work every day. The way our employees feel when they show up for themselves authentically is how they will also show up for our customers, and strong relationships drive growth.

I think this is especially true in light of a world forever changed by the pandemic.

Living through such an unprecedented time has reinforced that we are all humans. We can't lead or care for one another without empathy and I think leaders everywhere have been reminded of this.

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“ We have an amazing opportunity to create a brand that will stand apart by leading with our people first” MARIA BARTOLOME WINANS CHIEF MARKETING OFFICER, KYNDRYL

What’s the best leadership advice you’ve received?

When I was growing up as an immigrant in North Carolina, I often wanted to be just like everyone else. But my mother always told me: Be unique, be memorable – you have an authentic view and experience of the world that no one else will ever have, so don't try to be anyone else but you.

What does success look like to you?

I think the concept of success is multifaceted. From a career perspective, being in a job where you're respected and appreciated, and where you can see how your contributions are providing value by motivating your teams to be better – that's success! From a personal perspective, there is no greater accomplishment than investing in the next generation. I love mentoring younger professionals – they are the future.

I want my legacy as a leader to include providing value in work culture, but also in leaving a personal impact on the lives of professionals who will carry the workforce forward. Finding a position in life with a job and company that offers me a chance at all of that is what success looks like to me.

DID YOU KNOW...

INTERVIEW

Kyndryl is a spin-off of IBM IT infrastructure services, a business with an Intellectual Property portfolio of 3,000+ patents and recognised as a leader by industry analysts.

What advice would you give to your younger self just starting out in the industry?

I've always been a naturally curious person and it's easy for me to over-commit to projects that pique my interest. I've learned over years of practice how to manage that, so to my younger self I’d say… prioritise the things that are most important, and then become amazing at those things. businesschief.com

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PROCUREMENT EXCELLENCE FOR THE PEOPLE 202

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WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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Michelle Hernandez Lane, Purchasing Agent & Chief Procurement Officer, Metro Nashville, on digital excellence in government procurement and serving the community

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nside the office buildings of the Metropolitan Government of Nashville & Davidson sits the division of purchases.

In many ways, it is the beating heart of the Tennessee capital’s government, tasked with the singular purpose of advising and equipping more than 50 agencies, from the Fire Department to the Arts Commission, with the goods and services they need to fulfill their duties.

The procurement division, as it is colloquially known, manages all purchases in excess of $25,000. Departments, empowered

by Michelle Hernandez Lane, the Chief Procurement Officer, handle everything below that threshold. “Anything above that is going to come to our office,” she says.

Hernandez Lane was appointed to the role in 2017, but has served the Metro Nashville government in a variety of capacities for two decades, joining in 2001 developing small business initiatives, and more recently as its Chief Diversity Officer. Her unique perspective on the local community, and businesschief.com

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her grasp of government duty, places her at the centre of close to US$900mn worth of annual spend.

“Our goal is to assist the various departments in meeting their objectives by providing them with superior procurement services that are aligned with the administration priorities in a legal way. Many of those departments know what they need, but they don't always know all of the government procurement rules to get it.Our job is to provide them with those services.”

Hernandez Lane and her team touch nearly every major project, from the city’s streets and roads, to soccer stadiums and ballparks. As a result, she feels a great responsibility to represent the residents and communities of the Tennessee capital. “It is the people’s money that we spend,” she says. “So they should have some opportunity to participate in that process.” It is one of the biggest points of difference between Hernandez Lane’s procurement role and her private sector peers.

“There is such a stark difference between what you can do as a procurement officer in the private sector versus the public sector,”

“ We had to adjust some of our internal business processes, which we've done very well, but from the standpoint of day-to-day work and the procurement process, it was largely digital already” MICHELLE HERNANDEZ LANE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, METRO NASHVILLE

she says. "There are some who would say that the process in the public sector is not necessarily intuitive or common sense, but it is built the way that it is to ensure that there is integrity in that process, fairness, and that all potential offers have an opportunity.”

It is a system designed to rout out favoritism, but it can be limiting, Hernandez Lane admits. In her many years of experience

MICHELLE HERNANDEZ LANE TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER LOCATION: NASHVILLE Michelle Hernandez Lane is the purchasing agent and chief procurement officer for the Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. She previously served as the city’s chief diversity officer and director of the business assistance office.

She is the first person of color appointed to her current role.

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Title of the video

working in government, such stringent regulation can hamper the light speed shifts in development upon which the corporate world is contingent. The challenge is in “maintaining the spirit of fairness, integrity, and transparency”, all while navigating the ultra-competitive world of procurement.

“When you take strategic sourcing more generally, you're thinking about what those supplier relationships look like and how you can establish them in a way that ensures you're able to secure the goods and services, at the quality that you need, and at the best price. But some of the elements of that strategic sourcing almost fly in the face of the more specific rules for government procurement.

“So we’re always looking at ways to rethink our approaches. Something that we'll be undertaking here in the next few months is looking at how we approach

demonstrations and pilot projects, which appear to restrict your ability in procurement activity with whomever provided that pilot or demonstration. That is so counterintuitive to the way that sourcing working more broadly in the world, not just in the government sector.”

That ability to adapt and solve the vast number and high complexity of multidepartmental needs is powered by Metro Nashville’s early adoption of digitalization.

Here, the procurement team has a head start on much of the private sector, large segments of which are still struggling to realize the potential of digital transformation.

Metro Nashville’s entire procurement function operates electronically through the Oracle iProcurement system. All requests for proposals, competitive solicitation and other negotiation processes are handled digitally. As is contract management, businesschief.com

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purchase orders, and sign-off through digital signatures.

“I feel extraordinarily privileged that we operate in such a cutting-edge electronic procurement system, because from my discussions with peers and suppliers, many have struggled to successfully make this digital transformation,” Hernandez Lane says. “We had to adjust some of our internal business processes, which we've done very well, but from the standpoint of day-to-day work and the procurement process, it was largely digital already, and we were fully able to execute our functions in an efficient manner.”

This digital readiness mitigated much of the impact of the pandemic. When meeting physically was no longer an option, the team simply pivoted to a variety of digital platforms, such as WebEx and Zoom. In fact, these efficiencies will be carried forward at Metro Nashville. Still to define exactly what return-to-office work will look like, whether it’s fulltime on-premises or a hybrid approach, Hernandez Lane intends to take the digital tools that have kept them operating throughout the crisis into the future.

“No one wants this efficiency at the cost of something as horrific as the pandemic,” she says. “But the silver lining for me is that

MICHELLE HERNANDEZ LANE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, METRO NASHVILLE

DID YOU KNOW...

“ I feel extraordinarily privileged that we operate in such a cutting-edge electronic procurement system”

MICHELLE HERNANDEZ LANE ON DIVERSITY “Diversity and inclusion are important to us. We're always going to include that in our solicitation processes, in our competitive processes for construction. We have a sound partnership with the Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, and our efforts are to ensure that those business types are included in all of the outreach that we would engage for any other business, but especially with our small disadvantaged businesses.

“This is not just specific to procurement. I think it is a broader initiative across government. I had the privilege prior to this role to serve as the Chief Diversity Officer for the city, and we have a new Chief Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Officer who's picking up that work. One of the things that was really important was how do we identify those areas where we should be developing leadership pipelines within government.

“I don't want to tell you that it's 100% there, but it is something that we continue to work on within my office, specifically. Nashville has a very diverse resident base, and I'm very pleased that we look like Nashville.

Our people bring a variety of thoughts and a variety of backgrounds and experiences. I try to ensure that folks understand that there is a leadership path here, and that everyone here has an opportunity to grow and develop.”

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we have learned how to use the tools and resources that we have available to us in a more effective way.”

One major advantage is a transformation of the bidding process. Where once prospective suppliers were invited in to pitch and bid on a contract, those meetings are now held digitally on WebEx. It shifts the balance in favor of organizations of all sizes, Hernandez Lane says, who adds that the smaller businesses are often the most technologically savvy.

“People can log in, hear all of the information that's there, ask questions, we have a record of their attendance. All of those things are beneficial to us because it increases competition and the likelihood that we receive the best product or service at the best price. That’s certainly a net gain for the government, and it benefits suppliers because more of them have an opportunity to engage with us.

“We position ourselves to make sure that our suppliers understand what we're seeking and how to do business with us.

That was usually a session in person at 10am during the day, when many of these smaller businesses who don't have the privilege of a business development officer. They have to make a decision: do I go and learn something that could translate into more business opportunities with the city, or do I complete this project for an existing contract? Whereas now we have those sessions electronically, and it gives them the opportunity to be there, to ask questions, to learn, to understand without necessarily having to take away as much time.”

Beyond routine sourcing functions, Hernandez Lane’s team also acts as a response force. Vital to the government’s pandemic efforts, they are well versed in supporting departments during emergency 210

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“I want Metro Nashville to be that place in government procurement that folks look to and say, ‘They're really doing a really great job with digital procurement’ ” MICHELLE HERNANDEZ LANE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, METRO NASHVILLE

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situations; in the past year alone they’ve faced two tornadoes, and a bombing on Christmas morning.

“Our procurement regulations have very clear directions about how you manage the procurement process under emergency conditions. Our office is supportive of departments who do have some latitude to meet the need of the emergency. They're not going to stop repairing a water main break that was the result of an explosion downtown, for example, because they've got to go through the purchasing process.

The procurement regulations provide 212

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“ It is the people's money that we spend.

So they should have some opportunity to participate in that process” MICHELLE HERNANDEZ LANE CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, METRO NASHVILLE

METRO NASHVILLE

a detailed process for them to meet the need of that emergency. And then we work to execute the administrative piece of it on the backend.”

As life begins to return to pre-pandemic normality, Hernandez Lane has great ambitions to realize the insights and learnings of the past 12 months. On going reform will continue at all points throughout the procurement process.

“I hope that this time next year we see a full exploitation of our efforts around procurement reform. There's still a lot of work to do, but I want that procurement

process to be best in class. I want Metro Nashville to be that place in government procurement that folks look to and say, ‘They're really doing a really great job with digital procurement. They've got a really great approach to equity and inclusion in procurement, transparency, and processes where folks are able to service themselves and have insight into that process’. All of that to me builds a best in class organization that I know we can achieve.”

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TELUS

Leading the IT Procurement Transformation WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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Mariam Saad, Director of Procurement, IT & Technology Services at TELUS, discusses the importance of digital transformation and partner ecosystems

O

Mariam Saad, Director of Procurement, IT & Technology Services at TELUS

ne of Canada's largest telecommunications companies, TELUS, is leading the way in terms of digitally transforming its operations using advanced technologies to drive efficiencies.

In 2020 the organisation won the Digital Transformation Award under the AI-fueled Digital Transformation category from IT World Canada (ITWC). This award was presented to TELUS in recognition of its industry-leading innovation for AI chatbots and robotic process automation (RPA) solutions.

While TELUS became a national Canadian brand in 2000, its history dates back to the late 1800s when Alberta Government Telephones was founded to provide telephone lines for people in the western province. When the company was reorganised, it became part of the newly established TELUS Corporation, and sales of TELUS shares were the largest initial public offering in Canadian history up to that point, raising $896 million.

Following a merger with BC TELECOM, and acquiring Clearnet, TELUS is today one of Canada's largest technology companies and a leading national telecoms provider.

But as Director of Procurement in IT & Technology Services Mariam Saad tells us, now they are focusing on growing several new verticals including home security, agriculture, and health.

Saad has a background in sales. After studying international business and marketing she completed a leadership businesschief.com

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" Bringing our data into the Google Cloud Platform will enable us to clean the data, create actionable insights for teams, and integrate the data flow right across the organisation" MARIAM SAAD

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, TELUS

certificate in the Executive MBA programme.

She spent the first 10 years of her career in sales, specifically in IT sales, working for Compuware and Upland among others. Then she was headhunted by mining company Rio Tinto, who were looking for someone with commercial and business skills - Saad was a perfect match.

This led to working in procurement, and after 6 years at Rio Tinto she joined TELUS, initially as their Strategic Sourcing Manager for IT software and hardware. Within five years she moved up to her current role as Director of Procurement, IT & Technology Services, TELUS. "At TELUS, my role in procurement has been heavily weighted towards transformation of our overall capabilities," Saad says. "From a day-to-day delivery 218

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MARIAM SAAD TITLE: DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: TELUS Having studied business and completed a Certificate at the McGill Executive MBA programme in leadership, Saad's career led to her working in the three top industries in Canada: IT, natural resources and telecoms. Currently, Saad actively supports the Montreal Women's Network, and sits on the board of Business Development Committee for WBE. Saad is a mentor to numerous supply chain and procurement professionals, and is a mentor for MOSAIC, a multilingual non-profit organisation dedicated to addressing issues that affect immigrants and refugees in the course of their settlement and integration into Canadian society.

Additionally Saad is the proud mother of Maya, 13, and Michael, 7.

TELUS

TELUS Health’s IT Procurement Transformation

" We've built very strategic partnerships that have allowed us to build the fastest, highest quality network in the world" MARIAM SAAD

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, TELUS

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standpoint I support IT software, cloud, and the technology business."

The organisation has a clear goal: to become a software-first, cloud native organisation. Within procurement, key strategic aims are to reduce purchase order cycle time, and drive end-to-end integration across all TELUS platforms. To do this they are leveraging automation, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, all of which are helping them accelerate their digital capabilities.

Saad explains that this digital transformation is delivering four major benefits: reducing time, reducing risk, leveraging more innovation, and creating more actionable insights. "I would say the benefits are reducing time to source, reducing risks, leveraging more innovation

TELUS

and driving incremental value. in a digital format, in language Also bringing our data into the that is readable by both humans Google Cloud Platform will and machines. Typically run on a TELUS became a enable us to clean the data, create blockchain, they can also contain national Canadian brand in actionable insights for teams, and an algorithm that automates the integrate the data flow right across performance of the agreement the organisation." itself - in procurement and supply but its history dates back to the late "Reducing the time it takes chain, they are increasingly used to get the relevant data is our for inventory management and the biggest challenge" Saad adds. To automation of payments. address this they are deploying a range of The aim of these tools, Saad explains, is to advanced technologies like NLP, machine do the administrative work to enable their learning, advanced analytics and AI. teams to focus on leveraging relationships Deploying AI tools with hyper automation with suppliers, as well as innovation. is particularly important, to enable them While their priority is to develop their to automate tasks, and to aid end-to-end core competencies and enhance in-house visibility from suppliers. capabilities, only using third parties when Another important tool is smart necessary, their partner ecosystem is contracting. Smart contracts are written crucial to advancing the business, as

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Saad says, "we've built very strategic partnerships that have allowed us to build some of the fastest, highest quality networks in the world."

Several of these have won awards, including Best Customer Service Strategy for their partnership with Samsung Electronics, and being named Cisco’s Cloud Partner of the Year for Americas-Canada.

Along with important partnerships with IBM, AWS, and Microsoft, in February this year TELUS announced a 10-year partnership with Google Cloud. "This will help us accelerate our digital transformation journey to become a software-first company cloud native organisation" Saad says.

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" I really take pride in driving our team members, allowing them the autonomy to select and take on their own projects" MARIAM SAAD

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, TELUS

TELUS

"We have these partnerships because they are mutually beneficial, and they really have a high degree of collaboration with a focus on a multi-year relationship and consistent business results. They enable our business customers to streamline their IT and network operations. These partnerships are crucial because they help us deliver on our priorities."

As part of this partnership, both companies will generate new industry solutions and strategies to drive growth in telecoms, healthcare, home security and agriculture.

Their focus on agriculture is a great example of innovation. Launched in November last year, TELUS Agriculture has the ambitious aim of digitally transforming the global food system. Using advanced data analytics and AI, the goal is to streamline operations and improve food traceability.

"TELUS is redefining the way healthcare and agriculture are delivered by increasing collaboration efficiency between healthcare providers, and providing consumers with fresher, healthier food, by creating systems that allow people to trace the origins of their food, which can lead to better nutrition and ultimately, health outcomes" Saad explains.

Despite forming relatively recently, TELUS Agriculture already supports more than 150 million acres of agricultural land, with a team of over 1,200 experts across the Americas, the United Kingdom, Europe, China, and Australia.

It's certainly something that sets TELUS apart, as Saad says, "other telecom companies here in Canada focus on media for example, but our focus is really on helping Canadians by delivering healthcare, We are helping Canadians live healthier lives by applying innovative technologies to revolutionise healthcare.

For agriculture, we are on a mission to tackle one of the most signifcant social challenges of our generation—feeding the world—while improving the quality and safety of our food by leveraging technology innovation and human compassion and home security, and in the future we will continue to invest in these key industries.

That's how we'll become the leading company in these sectors."

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ESSENCE OF ENSONO

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WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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Ensono delivers complete hybrid cloud solutions, from mainframe to public cloud, tailored to each client’s transformation journey

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he essence of Ensono is they are a customer's relentless ally on their digital transformation journey while providing operational excellence on mission critical systems supported by an intelligent governance platform – Ensono Envision.

Ensono is a hybrid cloud managed services company which delivers design, build and run managed services to operate and optimise mission critical platforms, like mainframes, private and public cloud environments – while keeping each business running – vital to their clients who are navigating the new normal following the COVID-19 pandemic.

“At Ensono we offer a truly hybrid transformation experience from assessment to architecture to build, run, operate, and innovate from mainframe to public cloud,” said Paola Doebel, SVP & Managing Director of Ensono North America.

“We are a relentless ally for all our customers – flexible, creative and transformative,” said Doebel who pointed out the recent acquisition of Amido – a UK-based cloud-native consultancy and implementation company delivering design, build and run cloud services on AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure – will help customers grow, optimise and innovate for the future.

“One of the unique things about us is we have expert capabilities from mainframe to public cloud – being able to look at the

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customer’s end-to-end environment is a really unique capability in the market,” said Doebel from Ensono’s headquarters in Chicago. With more than 50 years of experience they bridge the old and new for their customers.

Competitive edge of Ensono According to Doebel, Ensono has that competitive edge because of its end-toend managed services and consultancy and advisory capabilities bolstered by the company’s acquisition of Amido.

“We are a relentless ally for our customers enabling transformation. We will follow through on that last mile with them when it requires creativity, flexibility and real partnership which gives us a competitive advantage. The entire company, regardless of the role or function, rallies around our customers and their success.

We pride ourselves on our customer-centric culture at all levels of Ensono which is hard for a competitor to replicate,” she said.

“ At Ensono we offer a truly hybrid transformative experience from assessment to architecture to build, run, operate, and innovate from mainframe to public cloud” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

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Don’t know where to start with migrating to the cloud? Here’s one answer

Doebel pointed out the pandemic shined a spotlight on technology professionals.

“COVID-19 pushed technology professionals to the forefront of their companies to keep operations going. For

$650M Revenue

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the year Ensono was founded

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associates around the world

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example: suddenly all employees had to work remotely, and IT had to enable that transition quickly and safely. In industries like retail, the customer experience shifted from in-store to online. Technology teams had to ensure their environments could handle the additional capacity and transaction volume. The company depended on it. Technology teams became part of the company’s critical response efforts to mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 to their employees and their customers.

“COVID-19 has also exposed pressure points in a customer’s environment or forced a strategy acceleration to adapt to the new demands of the organisation and the market. We step into the arena as a partner knowing there is pressure for them and we go on the journey with our customers.

“We can architect, build, and run an environment from mission critical platforms like mainframe to public cloud migrations and help our clients transform over that

ENSONO

“ We are a relentless ally for all our customers – flexible, creative and transformative”

PAOLA DOEBEL TITLE: SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR OF ENSONO NORTH AMERICA INDUSTRY: IT & SERVICES LOCATION: GREATER CHICAGO AREA

PAOLA DOEBEL

Paola joined Enonso from Hewlett Packard Enterprise where she served as the Vice President and General Manager for the North America Compute, Software Defined, HPC and AI business. Prior to her North America roles, Paola lived in Asia-Pacific for 8.5 years where she held various leadership roles at Dell Technologies and HPE based in Seoul, South Korea and Singapore. Paola started her technology career at Dell based in Austin, Texas and North Carolina where she held roles ranging from product marketing management to global business and product development.

Paola is a Founding Advisory Board Member of “Sales Community” which is a network of sales leaders. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

time. We enable them to look end-to-end and encourage them to look end-to-end in their environment – all aligned to what their company objectives are. We work with them individually to figure out what the right solution is to get them where they are trying to go,” she said.

Midrange and Mainframe Managed Services Ensono can keep applications running faster, smoother and cheaper with mainframe and midrange services.

According to Doebel this can help companies reduce IT costs and simplify utility-based models while providing a strong IT foundation which can benefit the following: • Immediately lower hardware, software and labor costs • Reduce risk of retiring workforce and hiring new talent • Reduce technical debt and ensure regulatory compliance • Get flexible options for changing business needs

EXECUTIVE BIO

Ensono focuses on: • Perfecting IT operational strategies • Propelling cloud journeys • Optimising IT performance • Powering insights • Delivering transformation objectives

Ensono Envision Success with Broadcom AIOps Alert Management

Artificial Intelligence for IT Operations (AIOps) is the application of machine learning algorithms and data science to establish proactive, automated remediation capabilities that help IT teams deliver superior digital experiences, while offering fundamental breakthroughs in scale and efficiency. It enables a move away from siloed IT operations management and provides intelligent insights that drive automation and collaboration for continuous improvement.

Broadcom and Ensono partnered to adopt AIOPs best practices to deliver an improved digital experience. These capabilities help IT teams establish proactive, automated remediation capabilities that drive operational efficiency while improving digital experiences.

The result? Transformation and optimization through visualization and automation, integral to Ensono delivering on their IT insights platform, Ensono Envision.

IT Operations teams accept the fact that problems will arise. When a problem surfaces, every effort is made to resolve the matter as quickly as possible. Ensono needed help managing their product lifecycle and determined their event management solution providers could not scale to their performance expectations and were cost prohibitive.

Ensono collaborated with Broadcom to have measurable inputs into the product design, its capabilities and to provide valuable feedback that influenced several features. The partnership started with a series of design workshops to mock-up an effective alert management system.

Ensono now utilizes a single portal to automate monitoring across all mainframe clients. The solution helps IT better focus on higher priority issues, and increase automation across their tool chain with the following benefits: • • • • • •

Single place to view all mainframe issues Automate the resolution to most issues Reduce “noise” for false-positives Create consistency and removing response variations and delays Connect issues to service tickets Readily know who is working on an issue

Learn more about Broadcom Copyright disclaimers: © 2021 Ensono LP. All rights reserved.

Learn more about Ensono

ENSONO

ENSONO TIMELINE:

Jan 2016

Acxiom IT rebrands to Ensono, signifying our commitment to innovation in IT solutions

Sep 2016

Ensono acquires Attenda, expanding our ability to manage complex environments across the globe

Mar 2017

Ensono acquires Inframon.

As a Microsoft Cloud Productivity Partner of the Year, this specialist cloud server provider acquisition built on our ability to deliver the best technology solutions, tailors to our clients' needs on an even bigger scale

Jun 2018

Ensono acquires Wipro’s Hosted Data Center Service, growing in size and scale to accelerate our clients’ innovation and transformation

Apr 2021

Acquisition of Amido, a UK-based cloud native consultancy

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Mainframe modernisation services The investment reduces barriers to innovation and agility by adding new mainframe capabilities, transforming legacy code and data to run anywhere, and developing modern cross-platform applications, helping to fund and propel future transformation.

“Our Mainframe Modernisation offerings and solutions cover the ‘full art of the possible’ to help clients leverage modern mainframe capabilities from a platform perspective, as well as modern application and data structures,” said Doebel “The latter may lead to replatforming converted code and data on the Mainframe, or off the Mainframe to an Ensono-managed public or private cloud. We provide flexibility for clients to choose paths based on already established or preferred patterns within the enterprise.”

Managed hybrid cloud services According to Ensono, managed infrastructure services can optimise the infrastructure of a company, improve agility, availability and security of business applications.

Managed public cloud services Ensono’s Cloud Transformation services are designed to help companies realise the full promise of the cloud and transform existing on-premises applications beyond migrating them to the cloud. It can be flexibly mixedand-matched to deliver business services and objectives.

• Improve total cost of ownership and drive optimal ROI • Leverage cloud native services in pursuit of agility and business impact • Provide assurance for governance and compliance as you transform businesschief.com

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“ One of the unique things about us is we have expert capabilities from mainframe to public cloud – being able to look at the customer’s end-to-end environment is a really unique capability in the market” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

“Ensono follows a phased approach based on best practices to align with our customer’s cloud readiness and business objectives, including cloud readiness assessment and planning, design, deploy, pilot and then migration, said Doebel.

“We architect and migrate client's IT workloads into the selected cloud platform(s) and manage all aspects of the management, security and governance layers. We offer two services Cloud Activate and Cloud Migrate to enable clients to migrate to the cloud.”

• Cloud Activate includes five phases: • Envisioning workshop – TCO and application assessment • Cloud architecture design • Cloud health check

SUPERHERO STRATEGIES FOR MAINFRAME MODERNIZATION – Maximize the value of mainframe technology.

– Build a bridge to the cloud.

– Accelerate your transforma�onal journey.

Our partnership is grounded in a unified technology vision - with a focus on you.

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Ensono Essence

• Cloud Landing Zone – DR deployment • Pilot migration of one application “Once this phase is completed, our client will not only be ‘cloud ready’ but will be operating at least one workload from the cloud,” commented Doebel. “Cloud Migrate is designed to provide a flexible engagement model to support the migration and transformation of applications to the Cloud.”

Consulting and advisory services According to Doebel, Ensono takes a complete hybrid cloud view focusing on the specific outcomes and needs of each client to ensure they provide a’ fit for purpose’ approach to advisory and consulting engagements.

“Our advisory and consulting capabilities include: discovery assessments, application dependency mapping, security assessments,

distributed infrastructure consolidation, legacy hardware and software modernisation and migration of application workloads to private or public cloud,” cites Doebel.

“Transformative 'Reimagine' programs, drive large scale change programs for our clients, enabling them to establish cloud centres of excellence and automated DevOps practices and leveraging cloud native services to drive agility and innovation into our clients' business.”

“No matter what area of advisory and consulting, we ensure the right combination of technologies are in place and working harmoniously together to deliver on the business goals,” she said.

Best-in-breed partnership with Dell Technologies Commenting on Ensono’s partnership with Dell, Doebel said they have a close business businesschief.com

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and executive relationships with the Dell team. “Ensono is a Platinum Cloud Service Provider (CSP), one of only 10 in the US. The Ensono and Dell Technologies partnership combines mainframe expertise and best-ofbreed Dell technology.

“We have combined forces to help enterprises drive mainframe performance and set the foundation for migration to the cloud by modernising and optimising their environment. We work side-by-side with our customers to identify and implement 236

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the solutions that will help them achieve the outcomes they want. End-to-end, we deliver what our customers need with our partners.”

“Ensono is a leader in hybrid cloud managed services, offering boutique services at a global scale, and Dell Technologies is a leader in infrastructure innovation including mainframe storage and backup solutions.

Together, we deliver flexible mainframe-asa-service (MFaaS) solutions powered by Dell EMC storage products as well as a best in class private cloud solutions,” she said.

ENSONO

Customer-centricity is at the heart of Ensono Customer-centricity is at the heart of Ensono and each team member is reminded of this when they join as they are presented with the Ensono bear, named Ernesto, who represents our customers. “I know that sounds funny at first, but what it really represents is that the customer is at the centre of all of the decisions we make, all of our discussions, and all of our strategies – so we all have Ernesto bears in our offices and on our desks reminding us of our customers every day.”

Award-winning experts in AWS and Azure • Microsoft US Partner Award for Azure Datacenter Migration • Launch partner for Professional Services in AWS Marketplace • Azure Expert MSP • 10 Microsoft Gold Competencies • AWS MSP Partner • AWS Migration Competency

Associations: Cloud Industry Forum in the UK Illinois Technology Association in Chicago, Illinois (now 1871) NASSCOM Events: Each year they participate in IBM Think, Microsoft Ignite, AWS Re:Invent, and Microsoft Future Decoded. Whether that’s through sponsorship or speaking sessions to support their partners. The public sector is a big industry focus for Ensono, so they always have a presence at NASCIO.

“ We can architect, build, and run an environment from mission critical platforms like mainframe to public cloud migrations and help our clients transform over that time” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

INDUSTRY INSIGHTS...

Doebel points out these accolades are important as it shows Ensono has spent time, effort, dollars and resources to be competent.

Awards: Inc. 5000 America’s Top Private Held Companies list – 2020 Crain’s Chicago Business Top Privately Held Companies – 2019, 2020 Microsoft US Partner Award Winner for Azure – Datacenter Migration 2020 UK Cloud Awards – 2018, 2019 Chicago Innovation Award 2018 for Ensono Envision Microsoft Data Center Transformation Partner of the Year 2018

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“ The new acquisition of Amido is part of our inorganic growth where we're constantly staying ahead of the curve and enabling ourselves and our customers to be agile” PAOLA DOEBEL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, ENSONO NORTH AMERICA

“There is a limited amount of talent in the market and for a customer that talent can be very expensive. Additionally, they simply might not be able to get people ramped up on all of these possible certifications and ways of operating within each of the different cloud environments especially if they have a multi-cloud strategy.”

“We are able to provide expertise, credibility, and competency and we are constantly looking at where we need to go next with our capabilities. We are focused on what capabilities we need to acquire or build and ensure we're certified to deliver next.

I think it's really important that customers have a partner they can fall back on.”

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THE MEANING BEHIND ENSONO The name Ensono combines the Zen concept of enso, which means freeing the mind to create and the Italian expression in sogna meaning in dreams.

According to the company the name reflects how their associates constantly look at opportunities from different angles, make unexpected connections and arrive at unprecedented solutions.

Doebel’s key message is to reinforce that Ensono is a relentless ally in this time of mass disruption. “We understand the intensity of the environment and we're capable and have the desire to partner with companies on their multi-year journey as they support their organisation’s efforts to deliver for their customers,” she said.

QUICK FIRE: What benefit is digital transformation to a company?

“Customers need to go on the digital journey to achieve scale, agility, scalability, flexibility and resilience. You have to design, build and

run an environment that serves that purpose, and most customers need to go on a digital transformation journey to get there. The reason you need to do that is to then deliver value for your customers and your company at the speed that the market requires.”

What technology trends do you predict taking off in the next five years?

“I think autonomous transportation is going to come to fruition in the next five years, but I think it's going to be on the commercial and freight side first. I say transportation because it could be vehicles or even shipping.

“I also see an expansion in edge computing, Dell has an edge technology solution, HPE businesschief.com

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DID YOU KNOW...

AMIDO

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Ensono’s latest acquisition is Amido – a UK-based cloud native consultancy – which will drive digital transformation to the next level.

They specialise in helping clients build innovative applications and services with complex transitions from legacy technologies to hybrid or cloud-based systems.

The strategic move brings cloud native application and service development expertise to Ensono and significantly expands their digital transformation capabilities. Joining forces with Amido takes Ensono beyond traditional IT outsourcing and will help clients design, build and run successful transformations.

Welcoming this acquisition Doebel said this would help Ensono retain their agility for the customers as they grow in an organic and inorganic way.

Amido, a Google partner and fellow Microsoft Gold partner, shares many of Ensono’s values, including having a clientcentric focus and desire to constantly innovate. Their cloud native expertise includes application development and data engineering across a diverse set of clients.

June 2021

“The new acquisition of Amido is part of our inorganic growth where we're constantly staying ahead of the curve and enabling ourselves and our customers to be agile,” she said.

“The organic portion is the development and expansion of our consultancy and advisory capabilities. We're expanding our security services, mainframe modernisation services and capabilities,” she said.

ENSONO

has EdgeLine, and AWS Outposts edge computing which brings compute capability to the edge where insights and data analytics need to be delivered in real time.

“I can also see Virtual Augmented Reality expanding in the next five years. I can see retail driving this. It will be interesting to see how that transpires after COVID. People were forced out of an on-site retail experience to a digital experience. I think it could kick digital and augmented reality off for the mass market.

“Finally in the insurance world – in which we have more than 40 customers – we see a lot of things happening that are disrupting this sector. I think you're going to see more things like telematic devices, which capture data and help insurance companies analyse driver risk on an individual basis. InsurTech is disrupting the industry by combining various technology solutions with insurance solutions like claims processing, fraud detection, underwriting and others to drive down costs and create a better customer experience and outcome.”

How do you sum up Ensono’s unique selling point after more than 50 years of business?

“At Ensono we offer a truly hybrid transformative experience from assessment to architecture to build, run, operate, and innovate from mainframe to public cloud.

And we're relentless allies in the pursuit of that effort.”

What message would you give to women thinking about choosing a career in technology?

“I think it's exciting and brings a lot of opportunity certainly for women or any underrepresented group who feels like there's no way in. I would say in technology there is always a way in – technology

is the land of startups, bold ideas and entrepreneurship.

“Technology is dynamic and fast and takes a lot of mental and intellectual agility. You have to be willing to fail fast and pivot, or fail fast and adjust, and really accept the bold moves necessary to be successful. You also have to be a constant learner because it moves so fast. Just be fearless.

“This is an industry of fearless leaders with bold ideas and if you want to be a part of that you've got to embrace that edginess and be a contributor”.

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ACCENTURE & ANAPLAN

Maximising Value

by Embracing Change

WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE

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ANAPLAN & ACCENTURE

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Anaplan Office

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By embracing change, Accenture and Anaplan continue a long term partnership in maximising customer value. We take a look at what they’re doing right

A

cross 200 cities and 19 industries, Accenture works as a unified team.

Collaborating with an ecosystem of over 180 partnerships, they aim towards a common goal— to harness the full potential of platforms and accelerate the path to 360° value for every one of its customers by embracing change.

Bringing together leaders in strategy, industry experts, enterprise function practitioners, business intelligence professionals, cloud migration and management specialists, designers, data scientists, and many other service providers, Accenture co-creates a unique path to customer success.

By bridging finance to operations, Anaplan helps to build a dynamic, resilient future where connected leaders and teams are able to adapt, transform and redesign their business models to react to ever-changing market dynamics. Anaplan makes it possible to make agile decisions with confidence to drive growth, increase margin, improve cash efficiency, and manage risk via real-time, complex scenarios and intelligent forecasting.

“Culture follows mindset” EVAN QUASNEY

GLOBAL VP OF SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS, ANAPLAN

With more than 175 partners worldwide, Anaplan is proud to be partnering with many of the world’s leading experts. By strategically aligning with a wide range of organisations from large, global system integrators to smaller regional integrators and specialty consulting firms that provide transformation services around the world, Anaplan delivers successful digital transformation to their customers.

Together, Accenture and Anaplan remain a long-standing, powerful duo whose shared success speaks for itself and is exemplified in their successful joint deliveries.

Accenture + Anaplan, Sharing in Customer Success Accenture and Anaplan’s long-standing partnership is rooted in collective goals, equalled drive, and shared values. Accenture began working with Anaplan in 2011, becoming an official partner in 2014.

Although, as Evan Quasney, Global VP of Supply Chain Solutions at Anaplan, says, “It started under the moniker of connected planning, as the companies grew, so did the partnership.” Today, Accenture is a "Global Strategic Partner,” the highest partner level defined by Anaplan, and was recognised as both APAC Partner of the Year and Japan Partner of the Year in 2021.

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Anaplan UX

for thousands of clients around the world and the outcomes that they like to achieve for their customers, Anaplan really seemed to be a natural fit,” Quasney says. “Oftentimes, Accenture is charged with transformations across processes, people, and technology for all types of organisations. Given Accenture's strong focus on being able to drive outcomes and deliver the results, what their clients were seeking was a natural fit for Anaplan to plug in and provide that next-generation platform that enables digital transformation.”

Yasunori Tomita from Accenture Technology at Accenture Japan continues the train of thought, sharing how Anaplan’s cloud-based business planning software helps maximise value. “Using Anaplan as a platform for sales, production, procurement, and inventory planning, users can maximise their corporate value by unifying supply chain planning. We believe that Anaplan's platform features are very suitable for global PSI reforms that Accenture promotes with 246

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our clients, where sharing and collaboration of plans across departments are essential.”

Promoting Innovation and Fuelling Growth Anaplan understands the importance of growing alongside customers and continually adapts to meet their changing needs, helping to power their clients’ growth and maintain successful long-term partnerships.

“ If you can't do it manually in small steps, you can't do it digitally in large steps” YASUNORI TOMITA

ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY, ACCENTURE JAPAN

ACCENTURE & ANAPLAN

After working as a technology consultant for years, he moved to the strategy group in 2011. He has executed many domestic and international supply chain planning and design projects for manufacturing and high-tech industries. Currently, he is leading Supply Chain & Operations within Accenture Japan.

EVAN QUASNEY TITLE: GLOBAL VP OF SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS COMPANY: ANAPLAN INDUSTRY: IT & SERVICES LOCATION:

EXECUTIVE BIOS

UNITED STATES

Technology consulting group, Anaplan center of excellence team lead at Accenture Japan. For more than 15 years, supported global Japanese companies in transforming their business operations, especially by leveraging cloud solutions.

A lot of experience in planning-related areas such as supply chain planning, demand/sales planning, and management accounting transformation using Anaplan and other solutions

YOSUKE OHTA TITLE: SUPPLY CHAIN & OPERATIONS LEAD, MANAGING DIRECTOR COMPANY: ACCENTURE JAPAN INDUSTRY: IT & SERVICES LOCATION: JAPAN

Evan Quasney is Anaplan’s Global Vice President of Supply Chain Solutions, bringing a decade and a half of experience spanning supply chain consulting, software, and hands-on industry experience across a range of industries. He is responsible for Anaplan's supply chain offerings, working with customers and prospective customers to define solutions to address their supply chain challenges, and helping those customers achieve their expected topand bottom-line outcomes.

YASUNORI TOMITA TITLE: TECHNOLOGY CONSULTING GROUP, ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR COMPANY: ACCENTURE JAPAN INDUSTRY: IT & SERVICES LOCATION: JAPAN

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Quasney explains, “One of the things about Anaplan that I believe is most compelling is that as an organisation, we are all about bridging the gap between finance and operations. Particularly as it relates to the supply chain landscape, I believe our capabilities to tailor our product to meet a customer where they are today and then grow with them over time is one of the single biggest differentiators we have to offer.”

Tomita concurs, “Accenture believes it is essential to work with ecosystem partners to ensure that we have the weapons we need to meet our clients' current and future business needs. We also believe that Accenture can maximise the value we can provide for our clients. People well-versed

in our clients' business promote innovation with a correct understanding of our partner's product characteristics and usage.”

Yosuke Ohta from Supply Chain & Operations Lead at Accenture Japan says, “The ultimate goal of digital transformation is to increase corporate value from a 360° perspective that includes the perspectives of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and compliance. Even in the age of ‘digital is everywhere,’ the purpose of transforming operations remains the same: to increase corporate value. It is essential to continue updating and implementing the means to achieve this goal with the latest technology, and in the process, to always capture the extent of the contribution quantitatively to

ACCENTURE & ANAPLAN

“ When I look at the power of transformation that Accenture has delivered for tens and hundreds of thousands of clients around the world and the outcomes that they like to achieve for their customers, Anaplan really seemed to be a natural fit” EVAN QUASNEY

GLOBAL VP OF SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS, ANAPLAN

increasing corporate value. It is our mission to ensure customer success and provide our clients with support throughout their transformation journey.”

Building Resilience in a VUCA World The COVID world remains very much a VUCA world, where businesses currently operate under nebulous circumstances and constant change brought on by market volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity.

“We have experienced decades of the VUCA era,” says Tomita. “But we believe that only a few companies have capabilities of detecting changes that may occur in the future and act accordingly. As most companies are faced with many barriers, including existing

organisations, business processes, and legacy systems, they are looking for what and how to start building resilience.”

“By leveraging our global expertise, Accenture provides end-to-end support for such companies, from defining the vision of what they want to achieve, to developing a roadmap for realising the vision to working with clients to form project teams to deliver results.”

“Our clients in the manufacturing industry are particularly lagging far behind in digital transformation in the planning area. A majority of companies have already implemented EPR systems and are able to automatically obtain the minimum required data for financial accounting purposes, such as inventory receipt and delivery information and production results. However, many companies still have only partial or limited digitalisation capabilities in the supply chain planning area, from demand prediction to sales and production planning based on supply capacity restrictions, transportation and delivery planning, and inventory optimisation. The reality is that business supplychainglobal.com

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operations are run with a huge amount of manpower, using EXCEL that depends on individual skills. As a result, the speed and accuracy with which companies respond to change are not keeping pace with the needs of the market, which we believe is the biggest challenge.”

Yet, things aren’t likely to slow down. “The trend of VUCA will increasingly accelerate.

From the perspective of supply chain management in the manufacturing industry, it will become more and more difficult to correctly grasp the market demand and supply products and services appropriately.

Under these circumstances, companies that manage to stay in business through a vast amount of manual operations will soon find themselves unable to keep up with the changes. To make or break a company's success depends on how quickly it can move away from manual operations.

“We recommend companies start on a small scale. Large companies with global operations tend to have disparate business rules and processes, as well as IT systems and master data/code systems for each business, so efforts to standardise and unify them are necessary to increase the resilience of organisations. Toward realising this initiative, companies need to carefully select members well versed in the business processes and IT situation of each country and business to form a large-scale project team. Only a few companies can launch such a large-scale initiative right away, and even they will take years to realise it. In recent years, we have seen an increase in the number of companies that have started with a small reform by focusing on a specific business or product, using readily available SaaS solutions. They can obtain steady results by gradually expanding the reform across the company while quickly checking the effects.”

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However, when it comes to planning and decision making, Ohta believes companies need to pick up the pace. “I suggest speeding up the decision-making cycle. In the age of VUCA, however excellent a leader you are, the probability of making the right decision is decreasing. We should acquire an opportunity to make decisions more frequently rather than pursue 100% correct decisions. As an example, many global companies from Japan still conduct monthly S&OP, which is behind the global standard where weekly S&OP is the norm. It goes without saying that the inefficient bucketrelay of operations need to be eliminated to make decisions more frequently.

Change Management, Culture Follows Mindset Anaplan has proven themselves to be successful implementers of change, consistently helping their customers in driving implementations, ensuring adoption rates and optimising value. Quasney shares the importance of culture and how Anaplan is getting it right.

ACCENTURE & ANAPLAN

“ Anaplan is a cloudbased business planning software.

Using Anaplan as a platform for sales, production, procurement, and inventory planning, users can maximise their corporate value by unifying supply chain planning” YASUNORI TOMITA

ACCENTURE TECHNOLOGY, ACCENTURE JAPAN

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“When I look at the power of transformation that Accenture has delivered for tens and hundreds of thousands of clients around the world and the outcomes that they like to achieve for their customers, Anaplan really seemed to be a natural fi” EVAN QUASNEY

GLOBAL VP OF SUPPLY CHAIN SOLUTIONS, ANAPLAN

“There are a couple of ways that we believe we excel. The first is we take an agile approach to our implementations. On the software side, we work with our partners and teach what we call the Anaplan Way. The Anaplan Way is very different from a traditional software implementation methodology like waterfall. It's more like agile. What that allows our partners to do when they're driving transformations is to move very quickly and iteratively to build a mock-up of the concept they wish to test with the customer, focus on that outcome, on the dashboard, or the technology solution and get buy-in immediately.”

“Culture and mindset are absolutely critical to achieving any type of digital transformation. At the root of digital transformation is becoming more agile, more flexible, more adaptive, and more 252

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responsive to the end goals of improving your business’s overall performance and agility. In order to do that, you require a fundamentally different mindset to how you look at and how you think about operating an organisation, making that organisational shift to a digital native or digital-first mindset.”

“And to that end, culture follows mindset.

If I can take the approach that I need to drive this transformation and the business imperative is to become more agile, culture will follow along.”

The road isn’t always a straight one, however.

Tomita shares some of the pitfalls and explains how small success can lead to big wins.

“In many cases where change management is not successful, the purpose and effect of the change are unclear. Even though you have been briefed on new tools and system

ACCENTURE & ANAPLAN

functions, you may be unsure of what kind of data you can get that you couldn't handle before, what kind of decision-making you can do with the data available, and what kind of effects it can produce. It is important to have first-hand experience on such points before implementing a tool. If you can't do it manually in small steps, you can't do it digitally in large steps. Accenture promotes a ‘change management free implementation pattern by simultaneously implementing Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) and digitalisation.”

“A major cause of failure in transformation lies in resistance from opponents within the organisation. Change management is a key factor in mitigating this risk. The first step is to build up your confidence by experiencing small successes, and then

transforming the confidence into certainty enables great results. Creating business benefits will help build momentum for transformation and turn opponents into allies. Based on the change management methodologies that we have developed over many years, we believe that we can develop communication plans for all layers of people, from management to front-line workers, and implement the plans together with our clients.”

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ESRI

UNLOCKING THE POWER OF

SPATIAL ANALYSIS WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

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PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

ESRI

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Esri’s Arthur Haddad, Chief Technology Officer, Location Analytics, runs through the GIS pioneer’s offering and how it is revolutionising access to the technology

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“ IT’S ABOUT EASE OF USE AND MAKING GIS TOOLS ACCESSIBLE TO MANY MORE PEOPLE” ARTHUR HADDAD

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, LOCATION ANALYTICS, ESRI

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rthur Haddad’s 25-year career at geographic information system (GIS) leader Esri has seen him rise to the position of Chief Technology Officer, Location Analytics. “I started off as a professional services consultant and I immediately started working with CEO Jack Dangermond himself on the front lines, out there writing code and solving our users’ problems. Soon that translated into working on the team that created the GIS Data Server, an internet-based server that evolved into today’s ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online SaaS offering.” That project (among others) was one of the efforts that cemented Esri’s status as a GIS pioneer, with the company today offering on-premise GIS infrastructure as well as software-as-a-service (SaaS) implementations to cater to the differing demands of its various customers.

“We're the world leader in GIS software,” says Haddad. “We pioneered it and our innovations have led to advances within the geographical sciences towards solving problems around the world.” Haddad emphasises that Esri’s solutions unlock a whole new realm of data with potentially huge ramifications. “GIS software is really a superset of everything that everyone does today. People work with qualitative, quantitative and temporal aspects of information to make critical decisions around the world. What about that fourth spatial or location data type?”

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Arthur Haddad Chief Technology Officer, Location Analytics, Esri businesschief.com

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See The World with Esri Location Technology | See What Others Can’t

It’s often only with that spatial dimension in mind that the true contextual value of data can be realised. “80% of the challenge is data wrangling - trying to find data that will augment analyses and provide more context towards information, whether that’s spatial data or any other type. ArcGIS provides the largest authoritative living atlas of the world, and a lot of it is publicly accessible, curated by the organisations that put it out. We augment their analysis and on top of that, we have a team of demographers, cartographers and data engineers dealing with information from over 120 countries around the world.”

Having that context can lead to measurable real-world impact, as Haddad explains.

“Informed stakeholders and executives make better decisions and save money. My Location Analytics group created a product called ArcGIS Insights. And one of the first customers that picked it up realised $30,000 258

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“ 80% OF THE CHALLENGE IS DATA WRANGLING - TRYING TO FIND DATA THAT WILL AUGMENT ANALYSES AND PROVIDE MORE CONTEXT TOWARDS INFORMATION” ARTHUR HADDAD

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, LOCATION ANALYTICS, ESRI

ESRI

ARTHUR HADDAD TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, LOCATION ANALYTICS INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE LOCATION: UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

in savings a month within the first few hours of implementing it.”

Haddad’s Location Analytics department is enabling everyone to leverage the power of ArcGIS, the most powerful GIS system, with capabilities included in over 100 products. “That’s anything from field collection to dashboarding, interactive reporting, mapping location intelligence and integrations as well.” On that last point, the company’s offering meshes with Microsoft 365, enabling users to make use of mapping capabilities in environments such as Excel, Powerpoint, Teams and Microsoft Power BI. Another of the company’s endeavours is in making mapping accessible to more users within an organisation - enabling even GIS non-experts to make use of its tools.

“Creating a map is a complex process,” says Haddad. “People earn PhDs in cartography for a reason, and it's a lifetime of creative

Arthur (Art) Haddad is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Esri in the area of Location Analytics. He has worked in the computer industry for over 35 years with years dedicated to the field of GIS. Art is a Computer Scientist with a strong passion for GIS and all technologies. With many years in the Computer industry, Art has worked at Esri for more than 25 years and has a deep technical knowledge of the ArcGIS platform and the latest in enterprise and SaaS computing and technologies. He takes great pride in working with people to define, build, and deploy practical and sound business solutions applying geographic science and GIS technologies.

Find clarity when you need it most Enable everyone at every level of your organization to make confident decisions using up-to-the-minute analytics.

Start discovering Power BI and Esri ArcGIS: aka.ms/PBIEsri.

Enabling data culture through innovation

A peek into Microsoft Power BI’s roadmap revealing exciting capabilities like real-time analytics and organisational goals tracking Today, data comes from the real world – whether it is the devices people use, to everyday human interaction. Power BI’s mission is to make access to data paramount to every business operation through its solutions and empowers individuals, teams and organizations to drive a data culture. Some of the latest innovations include bringing performance management to Power BI for the first time with the introduction of Goals and low-code real-time data analysis with Streaming Data Flows. Power BI helps make tracking business goals accessible and personalised. It is also worth noting that Goals is natively integrated into the Microsoft Teams experience. The goals algorithm is also AI assisted so organisations can better understand how they’re doing and where are the opportunities for improvement.

Finally, Microsoft is working towards

integrating it with Power Automate, so organisations can define business processes that get automatically triggered as the goals change status. Goals will soon be available as a mobile experience too, so teams can stay up to date and take action in real-time. On that note, another major announcement from Microsoft features real-time analytics. Power BI has been a pioneer in real time analytics from the start with a simple vision – that the distinctions between batch, real time, and streaming data today will disappear over time. Power BI will launch Streaming Data Flows soon, allowing a low-code approach to working with real-time data for every business.

Arun Ulagarathchagan, Corporate Vice President of the Power BI team says that the business analytics tool has a clear, data-driven purpose, adding “Our vision here in the Power BI team is to help you drive a data culture where everyone can make every decision with data.”

Learn more

ESRI

“ OUR INNOVATIONS HAVE LED TO ADVANCES WITHIN THE GEOGRAPHIC SCIENCES TOWARDS SOLVING PROBLEMS AROUND THE WORLD” ARTHUR HADDAD

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, LOCATION ANALYTICS, ESRI

inspiration to create maps that actually tell a story.” The answer, in part, is the company’s smart mapping solution as part of ArcGIS. “Smart mapping takes a statistical representation of your data, interrogates it, understands what the categories are and provides you with options. We then go a step further and provide intelligent defaults so that right off the bat you can automatically have a correct representation of your data. It means that you don’t have to know much about cartography to create the proper map.”

Along the same lines, the company is expanding access via its ArcGIS Online platform, which enables individuals to work with its GIS via a simple browser. “After signing up for an ArcGIS online subscription, you can get working immediately,” says Haddad. “At the same time, administrators can add additional capabilities as they need to, whether creating maps, organising teams and groups and enabling specific essential app bundles. Even the Microsoft bundles directly inside of ArcGIS online are simply a matter of configuration. Think of it as a no-coding approach to working with geographic information systems.” Naturally, the online experience has parity with other 262

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versions. “Everything that’s online is also available on premises - so you don't have to leave your company structure if you don’t want to. It’s about ease of use and making GIS tools accessible to many more people via SaaS or on-premises offerings.”

As with all companies around the globe, Esri has had to adapt to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic. “We've had to quickly shift from our traditional ways of working - from the hallway conversations, gathering in meeting rooms and going out to the pub

ESRI

1969

YEAR FOUNDED

1,001 - 5,000 NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

Computer Software INDUSTRY

afterwards to a virtual place. Of course, we already had people from around the world working with us, so in a lot of cases, we already dealt with time zones and communicated via Teams.” Vital to managing that transition successfully was the company’s culture. “It wasn't easy at first, but people started getting the hang of things. The culture here is such that we're a very passionate bunch, very smart - not just academically but in terms of common sense.

Everyone managed to adjust because of the businesschief.com

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“ PEOPLE EARN PhDS IN CARTOGRAPHY FOR A REASON, AND IT'S A LIFETIME OF CREATIVE INSPIRATION TO CREATE MAPS THAT ACTUALLY TELL A STORY” ARTHUR HADDAD

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, LOCATION ANALYTICS, ESRI

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diverse and multinational types of people that Esri is made up of and the passion that they have.”

That culture has not only been crucial for getting through the pandemic, but for the company’s overall success since its foundation by CEO Jack Dangermond in 1969. “Jack's vision for Esri is tremendous: use the power of GIS to make the world a better place. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that culture?” Such ambition demands space to learn from mistakes, and Haddad is clear that is an approach he promotes.

“Failure is not failure to me. Failure is: you tried your best, but for all kinds of reasons, it didn't work out. That's okay. You can learn from it and come back. Failure is experience.

And we want to enable a place where failure isn't viewed as a negative but is viewed as an opportunity to grow.”

The future of Esri and GIS at large is bright, with new AI techniques only further improving its offering. “AI, machine learning and data science as a whole are coming into play. We have a whole initiative around spatial analysis and data science. ArcGIS Insights has a model where you can connect to your existing open data science world and start coding into an analytics workbench, for instance.” That’s very much in line with Esri’s broader mission to continue innovating and create solutions for all users and industries. “We want to give everybody the power to succeed through the use of the geographic sciences and GIS, even if they’re not experts. We want to advance the world of spatial analysis and data science and allow the creation of authoritative mapping products that the world needs.”

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WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

Using Tech to Deliver a World-class Pension Plan 266

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HOOPP

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Raif Murray, VP, Corporate Solutions Group, and Jennifer Williams, Senior Director of Information Security, provide an account of HOOPP’s cloud migration

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very business strives to be among the best in its sector, but only a privileged few manage to attain that goal. The Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) is certainly one of them.

Established in 1960, the organisation is one of Canada’s largest and most esteemed pension funds, delivering on the pension promise for more than 400,000 healthcare professionals at over 600 employers within the province of Ontario. Across those decades until the present day, the same spirit of innovation has permeated HOOPP’s approach; it is committed to the journey of continual improvement and strives to remain at the cutting edge of technologies that can make it happen. More than this, HOOPP’s five core values – accountability, collaboration, compassion, professionalism, and trustworthiness – emphasise a strong central message that it is a business ultimately driven by its members and their financial wellbeing.

Reflecting at a time when the pandemic is reinforcing the value of healthcare workers on a daily basis, Jennifer Williams, Senior Director of Information Security, states that it was actually HOOPP’s enduring dedication to supporting them that drew her to join the company in 2018. “I really believe in the importance of our healthcare workers receiving one of the best pensions in Canada.

I jumped at the chance to help deliver a security program that aligned with a very innovative digital transformation strategy.”

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“ I fell in love with the organisation's mission. Companies in the private sector are very financially motivated, but at HOOPP it's all about the members, all the time” RAIF MURRAY

VP CORPORATE SOLUTIONS GROUP, HOOPP

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Raif Murray, VP Corporate Solutions Group, agrees with this sentiment; first and foremost, it is a pension delivery organisation and HOOPP’s activities are singularly focused on one goal: delivering on the pension promise, which is to provide a secure financial future for life. “I fell in love with the organisation's mission. Companies in the private sector are very financially motivated, but at HOOPP it's all about the members, all the time.”

Coordinated between Williams’ and Murray’s departments, HOOPP has been engaged in a significant transformation of its enterprise digital technologies. This has been a journey consisting of four primary aspects: implementing Agile methodologies, shifting to a flat structure, migrating to the cloud, and incorporating a “work from anywhere” program. Never one for shying away from experimentation or prototyping, the company acknowledges that technology is becoming increasingly

HOOPP

RAIF MURRAY

1960

TITLE: VP CORPORATE SOLUTIONS GROUP

Year founded

COMPANY: HOOPP

Finance/ Investments

Raif Murray is the VP of Corporate Solutions at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, where he leads the organisation’s Digital Transformation and Operational Teams within the IT & Facilities Services Division (IT&FS). Raif has 25 years’ experience in IT and has led many teams across multiple industries. Prior to joining HOOPP, he was Principal Consultant with ObjectSharp and, prior to that, was VP of Delivery at Navantis. Raif is a veteran of transformational programs and has a reputation for improving efficiency and quality within organisations. His work at HOOPP has included moving the IT&FS division to an Agile and clientcentric model.

Industry

700+

vital at HOOPP to support the delivery of a world-class pension plan. “If you are not in the technology business in the 21st century, what business are you in?” asks Murray.

“Technology plays a very critical role, particularly in keeping our investment teams competitive in an increasingly challenging market.” One of the most important changes that has taken place is HOOPP’s cloud migration program. However, unlike others who in the last 12 months have done so as a result of COVID-19, Murray says that the organisation had already planted the seed for cloud in 2016, planned its execution over the next few years, and then implemented it in 2019. Subsequently, by the time the pandemic struck Canada, HOOPP had already moved “out of the data center business.” In total, over 1,000 virtual machines comprising over 250 apps, 350 terabytes of data, and 19 racks of data centre computing, storage, and appliances were migrated.

Other IT investments included Microsoft Teams and the Office 365 stack (rolled out across 2018 and 2019), which were developed with the intention of creating a “work from anywhere” program — a very

EXECUTIVE BIO

Number of Employees

Do More in the Cloud with Check Point CloudGuard and Microsoft Azure Check Point CloudGuard offers a full suite of security solutions targeted to critical cloud security use cases, such as protecting against advanced threats, achieving continuous compliance, and securing workloads— delivering unified security for Microsoft Azure.

LEARN MORE

Check Point: Securing the future of enterprise IT Erez Yarkoni, Global VP, explains how a three-way partnership between Check Point, HOOPP, and Microsoft is yielding optimum cloud security.

Cybersecurity solutions provider Check Point was founded in 1993 with a mission to secure ‘everything,’ and that includes the cloud. Conscious that nothing remains static in the digital world, the company prides itself on an ability to integrate new technology with its solutions.

for this very reason when it was in the process of selecting Microsoft Azure as its cloud provider.

“Let’s be clear: Azure is a secure cloud, but when you operate in a cloud you need several layers of security and governance to prevent mistakes from becoming risks,” Yarkoni clarifies.

“The pandemic has been somewhat of an accelerator in the evolution of cyber risk,” explains Erez Yarkoni, Global VP for Cloud Business. “We had remote workers and cloud adoption a long time beforehand, but now the volume and surface area is far greater.”

The partnership is a distinctly three-way split, with each bringing its own core expertise and competencies. That kind of focus is proving to be invaluable in the digital era, when the challenges and threats of tomorrow remain unpredictable. In this climate, only the best protected will survive and Check Point is standing by, ready to help.

In many ways, Check Point’s solutions’ capabilities have actually converged to meet the exact working requirements of contemporary enterprise IT. As more companies embark on their own digital transformation journeys in the wake of COVID-19, the inevitability of unforeseen threats increases, which also makes forming security-based partnerships essential. Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan (HOOPP) sought out Check Point

“HOOPP is an amazing organisation,” concludes Yarkoni. “For us to be successful with a customer and be selected as a partner is actually a badge of honor. It says, ‘We passed a very intense and in-depth inspection by very smart people,’ and for me that’s the best thing about working with organisations like HOOPP.”

“The pandemic has been somewhat of an accelerator in the evolution of cyber risk” — Erez Yarkoni, Global VP for Cloud Business

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HOOPP

prescient move given the subsequent operational restrictions imposed by the pandemic. This is not to say, however, that lockdown conditions were without challenges. “We had to switch from having an on-premises culture to remote practically overnight,” Murray adds. “But once everybody was set up it’s been business as usual for the most part.” In fact, the efficacy of the cloud migration was such that, when the plug was pulled at midday, nobody noticed the data centre was gone. Achieving a more agile operating model was HOOPP’s prize, and Williams is quick to highlight the security benefits it has brought, too.

Providing advice and recommendations for action in a timely way, the security team works to expedite the delivery of technology.

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“The cloud migration that happened in 2019 set us up for success in 2020. Our security program can now pivot much quicker and has been well-equipped for the transition to remote working.”

In total, the cloud migration took the combined efforts of up to 10 teams, a significant logistical challenge but one that HOOPP was able to carry off through teamwork and strong executive leadership.

Once cloud was in place, Williams says that the security team began examining the best way to transition from ‘on-prem’ infrastructure to a multi-cloud environment.

Her team’s goal was to make sense of the new operating paradigm and search for innovation opportunities. “You don't typically hear about security programs

HOOPP

“ You don't typically hear about security programs being innovative (because that implies a level of risk-taking), but in order to make a successful digital transformation you have to be comfortable trying new technologies”

JENNIFER WILLIAMS TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY COMPANY: HOOPP Jennifer Williams is the Senior Director of Information Security at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. Jennifer brings close to 20 years of experience in information security for private and public sectors. She has held various roles, leveraging her knowledge in privacy, risk management, compliance and information security. Previous to HOOPP, Jennifer led the Information Security Program for a large healthcare system. Jennifer is a leader in the equity, diversity and inclusion space and an advocate for women entering and growing within the field of cyber security. Jennifer’s passion is to help organisations and people understand how best to protect their information and systems.

JENNIFER WILLIAMS

being innovative (because that implies a level of risk-taking), but in order to make a successful digital transformation you have to be comfortable trying new technologies, weighing the options with your team, and building a strong program with the right skill set.” The primary challenge, she notes, was how to monitor that security compliance standards were being met while operating remotely. Partnering with cybersecurity solutions provider Check Point helped resolve this by adding layers of governance to HOOPP’s Azure and AWS cloud environments. The partnership also created automation opportunities, which Williams notes could be used for detecting instances of non-compliance quickly and accurately.

HOOPP would then be able to note any

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SENIOR DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY, HOOPP

HOOPP

HOOPP: A GTA TOP EMPLOYER HOOPP has been honoured as one of the Greater Toronto Area’s (GTA) top employers of 2021, which recognises it as providing a good social/work atmosphere and strong health/financial/ family benefits.

“HOOPP is absolutely a top employer in my mind. I love working here, the atmosphere, and how we collaborate as a team. We really give our teams the autonomy they need to be successful; they take things on and run with them,” comments Williams.

“Compassion is one of our key values and culture has always been the strength of HOOPP,” adds Murray. “We have a culture where it's safe to fail — obviously with safeguards, but with technology moving as fast as it is, you need to take some chances. I work with a great team of people across the organisation and we wouldn't have accomplished our goals without them. I’m very proud.”

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misconfigurations and effect fast changes to reduce risk.

HOOPP’s strategy is truly ‘cloud first’, and Murray notes that many developments are happening within operations and security simultaneously. “At the end of the day, our members’ top priority is for HOOPP to pay their pensions, and they trust us to do that. A close second is trusting our ability to protect their data.” The organisation’s transformation has helped move all our content onto online platforms to make it easier for our employees to access our technology securely without the requirement for VPN.” All of this development also has a much

HOOPP

broader goal in mind: enhanced ease for end-users, leading to greater productivity among employees and therefore a better experience for members.

This isn’t the only way HOOPP is seeking to improve the member experience - it has also invested in a new, more modern, fully integrated portal. “[Members’] feedback has been that, with the service we're providing through that technology, we have enhanced both our rating and the perception of our services,” says Murray. However, he adds, the need to balance technology with efficiency and members’ requirements is always present.

“We’re not a massive IT shop, so the real challenge for organisations like HOOPP is finding the perfect balance between adding and maintaining so many different technologies. We're always searching for refinement and rationalisation.”

HOOPP has a tangible sense of purpose and direction, qualities that subsequently guide the organisation when choosing IT partners and vendors. While looking for the most long-lasting relationships possible, Williams pointedly asks, “Do they share our values, does their roadmap align with ours, do they have long-term vision and are they able to keep pace with us?”

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Jennifer Williams and Raif Murray from HOOPP talks about digital transformation and cloud migration

To ensure commitment to this shared purpose and direction, both the IT and security departments have developed concurrent three-year plans based on four pillars: 1. Intelligent innovation: in partnership with others in the organisation, applying HOOPP IT’s acumen, thought leadership and expertise to address their challenges and help them transform their businesses. HOOPP investigates which areas to invest in by first reflecting on the potential business benefits it will bring, as opposed to merely selecting tech that is ‘fashionable’.

2. Drive data insights: enable timely and effective decision-making across the organisation to drive new data and insights, develop capabilities that make them efficient and easy to use and unlock new opportunities through improved decision making.

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3. Resilience and security: facilitating the evolution of security by enabling automation that can improve response.

The ultimate goal being to maintain a resilient foundation for strengthening IT risk management and ensuring the technology infrastructure is robust, stable and capable of withstanding constant change.

4. Invest in talent: perhaps the most important of all. Murray: “we simply don't believe we can achieve the other three without [people/talent]” - HOOPP is striving to help its people acclimatise to the post-COVID new normal and all that it entails. As staff are the “first line of defense”, their significance cannot be overstated. HOOPP is fostering collaborative teams to bridge subjectmatter expertise, networks and technology solutions, and the business outcomes required for the organisation’s growth and innovation.

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“If you are not in the technology business in the 21st century, what business are you in?”

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VP CORPORATE SOLUTIONS GROUP, HOOPP

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“ All of the things we've accomplished in the last two years have been the result of our very supportive and skilled teams” JENNIFER WILLIAMS

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF INFORMATION SECURITY, HOOPP

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HOOPP

The latter point reinforces what makes HOOPP special: success doesn’t belong to one person or department, but rather the organisation as a whole. “HOOPP is driven by our mission to deliver pensions to our members,” Murray declares. “We strive to be a world-class pension plan and want to make sure that everything we need to remain in that position is in place. In this way, we'll constantly reassess ourselves and strive for more.”

And so the journey goes on; as the organisation continues to innovate in its characteristic way, it will use the experiences of its members and staff to produce a better solution for everyone. HOOPP’s skilled teams exhibit dedication, optimism, collaboration and perseverance at all times; they refuse to give in when confronted with a challenge and instead tackle it head on. “All of the things we've accomplished in the last two years have been the result of our very supportive and skilled teams,” Williams concludes. “Without those great people working together, I'm not sure how successful we could have been.”

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North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts winds down mainframe and moves to hybrid cloud Anthony Whitmore explains the two key priorities for the NCAOC as it decommissions its mainframe and scales up its hybrid cloud network WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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nthony Whitmore has lived a unique ‘double life’ at North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC), and the Chief Technology Officer is now tasked with managing two divergent priorities in 2021.

Having worked at NCAOC for 32 years, he left in 2017, only to come out of retirement and be re-appointed CTO, as NCAOC made a strategic decision to outsource application development. With this second tenure, IT stakes have been raised. As a statewide 100- county migration to the cloud gets underway, mainframe decommissioning will begin.

“We must continue to manage this legacy mainframe over the next three years as we build out more counties, every few months, to our new case management system,” Whitmore explains. “We’re going to be managing two business continuity efforts, one gradually decommissioning and the cloud gradually increasing.”

By winding down the mainframe, NCAOC benefits from cost avoidance on its current infrastructure which can be applied to businesschief.com

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STRATEGIC PARTNERS • Presidio, a leading US IT solutions provider, is NCAOC’s Value Added Reseller.

• NCAOC is partnering with CISCO with the design of the hybrid Cloud, based on SD-WAN (Software Defined Networking Architecture). It is assisting NCAOC’s team in the rollout of the network infrastructure across the state –replacing 10,000 devices across the state this calendar year.

• Texas-based Tyler Technologies – the largest provider of software to the US public sector – provides metrics enabling NCAOC to have a better understanding of how people are using its case management system, e-filing and licensing, and access to justice.

• Microsoft has greatly assisted NCAOC designing its identity and access system, which is in the implementation phase. It will allow NCAOC to have more automated user accounts, and drive account creation.

Identity and access will allow NCAOC to have federated identity services capability with its business partners.

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SaaS rollout and engagement. “We won’t be purchasing a 100-county infrastructure – this way it’s more scalable and cost effective.

Some of our applications are still based on mainframe and we want to get off it, for cost effectiveness and resource management. Five counties will be cloud based by the end of the year.”

Key strategic partner Tyler Technologies, the largest provider of software to the US public sector, was chosen as application hosting vendor, and the Texas-based firm has been selected as NCAOC’s case management vendor too. “We had to create a technology strategic plan, to see how we get to be where we need to be for this new cloud hosted integrated cloud management system. There were lots of transformations, and we designed the network to support hybrid cloud.”

NCAOC

ANTHONY WHITMORE TITLE: CTO COMPANY: NCAOC INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: NORTH CAROLINA, USA

With 2020 spent in the design phase, implementation is about to start. The statewide rollout for an initial application replacement will complete in April and a second statewide application replacement effort will complete in the May time frame. At that point some mainframe services will gradually be wound down. The bulk of application replacement will occur with sub-sets of counties being migrated to the new ICMS starting in July of 2021, with an incremental number of counties being migrated through 2023-24.

Each county rollout will allow for mainframe service decommissioning.

The new hybrid cloud network aims to be completed by October, covering 250 sites across North Carolina. “Hybrid will provide us with a more robust, resilient, scalable and secure network infrastructure, as the case

EXECUTIVE BIO

Anthony Whitmore is a skilled IT strategic governance and project management leader.

With over 20 years of service as a manager and most recently as the director of infrastructure operations, he currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts. Overseeing a multi-year transition from on-premise data and service applications to cloud-based hosted technology, Mr. Whitmore is dedicated to the NCAOC eCourts mission of expanding access to justice across North Carolina.

Helping clients achieve business outcomes @Distruptor speed.

We are a Digital Systems Integrator providing customers the secure cloud environments that form the backbone of digital transformation.

We guide you from initial assessments, strategy and consulting – to implementation and deployment – to managed services that run IT for you, topped off with a suite of flexible financing and consumption options to simplify procurement.

The backbone of public sector IT transformation

Presidio: Keeping North Carolina safe

From cloud to physical and virtual IT infrastructure, Presidio is the digital integrator of choice for America's busiest public sector organizations.

The pandemic has led to many activities now becoming virtual-first, and this includes judicial services. This led to the North Carolina Administrative Offices of the Court partnering with Presidio, a digital systems integrator to implement a SaaS case management infrastructure and telejustice capabilities.

Originally brought in to consult on the NCAOC’s incumbent third party solutions framework, Presidio used the opportunity to really integrate with the court’s infrastructure on a consultancy level and evaluate their vendor partners, so the NCAOC could make the best decisions for their preferred infrastructure moving forward.

Speaking of the challenges faced, Presidio VP of Digital Solutions Rob Kim breaks it down to two important factors – funding and talent. Presidio works with public sector organizations on the legislative level in order to justify government spending and fund issuance, as this is a critical step in ensuring that projects see the light of day. Another is the constraint around the talent needed to support newer digital and cloud native technologies in addition to prioritizing investments in training for the current IT resources to manage and maintain the digital solutions that are deployed. Understandably so, public sector IT departments are busy

'Allowing integrators like Presidio handle the operations also means that organizations can now go back to focusing on their priorities.' prioritizing traditional infrastructure needs over IT or cloud operations as this isn’t their sole focus.

What a company like Presidio really does is it adds a layer of expertise to an existing infrastructure along with the right ‘service approach’, which means supporting the organization from a grassroots level all the way up rather than trying to sign them off with a cookie-cutter solution.

Allowing integrators like Presidio handle the operations also means that organizations can now go back to focusing on their priorities.

Learn more today

NCAOC

1965

Year Founded

10,000 Number of Employees

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“ Hybrid cloud will provide us with a more robust, resilient, scalable and secure network infrastructure.”

ANTHONY WHITMORE CTO, NCAOC

management system moves to a paper-less system,” he said. “The projects on the books right now are going to take us well into 2021, potentially into 2022.”

Microsoft is another key partner, as NCAOC moved from an on-premise email system to O365 across the state. “We completed that effort in 2019, moving to cloud-based email, and replaced all of our difficult file-based infrastructure with Cloud storage – OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. That was a foundational technology to integrate with the case management system.”

Acceleration into eCourts era The Office365 migration proved fortuitous as it allowed NCAOC to respond quickly to COVID-19 and provide teleworking capability, although the acceleration did present legislative challenges.

“The pandemic threw us into ‘e-Courts’ quicker than we anticipated. The adoption rate for video conferencing, to replace typical court processes and some of the legal aspects, has accelerated our effort, and we’ve seen over 1,000% increase in video. We’re probably not going to revert some of our processes back to in-court, because of the efficiencies and effectiveness of video conferencing.

“We deployed infrastructure in response to COVID-19 that was originally destined for the ICMS – the Integrated Case Management System rollout, which saw us replace desktops with 3,000 laptops, giving core personnel the ability to work from home,” Whitmore said. With an eye to the future, and the new case management system, they are now a ‘mobile workforce’, enabling them to work in the courtroom or at home. Through federal COVID funding, NCAOC purchased infrastructure that businesschief.com

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Anthony Whitmore: Customizing products to meet North Carolina’s AOC requirements

“ We’ve seen over 1,000% increase in video.

We’re probably not going to revert some of our processes back to in-court, because of the efficiencies and effectiveness of video conferencing.”

ANTHONY WHITMORE CTO, NCAOC

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enabled creation of more immersive courtroom proceedings, encompassing cameras, large monitors, with integrated speakers and microphones, to allow the judge, prosecution and defense to talk to remote witnesses and defendants.

“We have the courtroom AV infrastructure in place but don’t plan to implement it until the latter part of this year, and intend to expand wireless,” he said. “Currently we offer it in the courtroom only and will expand it across NCAOC offices to provide a more mobile experience. In the future, wireless will allow us to incur cost savings by reducing switchport counts.”

As a CISCO partner, NCAOC also has Webex in place, which offers another

NCAOC

benefit when moving from in-court appearances to video conference solutions.

Whitmore added that NCAOC is looking at online tools to monitor digital courtrooms, to be proactive and predictive, and know when devices are about to have issues.

NCAOC has also worked with partners in the Executive Branch and public safety, to test and integrate their respective video solution infrastructures, negating the need to transport prisoners to the courthouse.

There is also opportunity to partner with local police departments across the state.

Heightened security and risk management With cloud technologies, and in adhering to state statute, security initiatives are paramount. “We brought on a new

Chief Information Security Officer, Risk Management Officer and Privacy Officer, and adopted a Security Governance structure based on national standards – and that’s allowed us to create our security framework to be able to support service level agreements with Tyler Technologies and Microsoft, and other Cloud business partners,” says Whitmore.

“The security office has been expanded with other personnel; I want to make sure they’re capable of auditing and monitoring our operational security, to ensure our network ops and infrastructure teams are compliant with all policies, and all our vendors are compliant with our procedures too. We put a strong emphasis on Risk Management to make sure we’re businesschief.com

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“ The pandemic threw us into ‘eCourts’ quicker than we anticipated.”

ANTHONY WHITMORE CTO, NCAOC

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NCAOC STRUCTURES • There are 3 branches of government in North Carolina – Executive, Judicial and Legislative • NCAOC is the administrative arm of the Judicial Branch • NCAOC supports all 100 counties in North Carolina

compliant internally and externally.

NCAOC has also purchased AWS storage infrastructure where we will be piloting some NCAOC-owned and managed storage infrastructure and an application.”

“We are going to have to evaluate our field support resources, because we’re moving to paper-less court system and with the new technologies, we are going to need to assess our ability to support 100 counties across the state.”

A third party program management team is tasked with managing all risk, to ensure data conversion that we’re migrating off the mainframe is being carried out on time and customized with Tyler applications. “We attempt to mitigate risk by hiring the external project managers, so everything is seamless,” said Whitmore.

In the meantime, training is being stepped up, predominantly online. “We started the e-Citation last year and will continue to train officers this year. It will take magistrates six months to be familiar with e-Warrant applications, and training will be mostly online through Tyler.”

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ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

Canadian Company Builds ECOSYSTEM OF EMPOWERMENT WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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We spoke to eStruxture's CEO and Founder Todd Coleman about how he's encouraging a diverse and inclusive culture at his data centre

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n the spirit of all things diversity and inclusion, we caught up with Todd Coleman, CEO, Founder, President and Chairman at eStruxture, a Canadian-born data centre, headquartered in Montreal.

What started off as a chat about eStruxture’s latest acquisition, Aptum Technologies, soon turned into a deep dive on the topic of inclusion in the workplace, and the charismatic leader didn’t disappoint.

With over 25 years experience in the IT, data centre and telecommunications industries, Coleman was most recently Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Cologix.

He has also held several senior positions at Level 3 Communications, a global telecommunications company, including Senior Vice President of Data Centers, Senior Vice President of Media Operations and President of Level 3 Communications Europe. Todd holds a juris doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems. With a long-standing vision to grow largely within Canada, Coleman believes that their focus will always remain on empowering the organisation with diversity and a generous touch of empathy.

Todd Coleman Founder, President, Chairman & CEO at eStruxture

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The eStruxture mantra on leadership Coleman, a thorough businessman with an unmatched acumen, comes with a leadership strategy that is very hands-on, to say the least. Speaking of his experience running a business as large as eStruxture, he adds “I have a philosophy – never ask someone to do something that you're not willing to do yourself – and so we're a very roll-up-your-sleeves entrepreneurial environment where we all wear multiple hats every single day.” He stresses that although eStruxture is in the technology and infrastructure space, they are very much a people business that’s built on relationships and an intra-workforce dynamic that’s constantly evolving.

Speaking of people, Coleman shares his philosophy on giving back to the community that helped build the business in the first place. He says that the success of eStruxture 298

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is dependent largely on the staff and their families, and this holistic mission is a clear indicator of the empathy that Coleman brings along with his leadership.

Having founded eStruxture in 2017, Coleman believes that there is still a lot to be done in terms of inclusion and challenging the status quo of how things are, specifically within the data centre industry. Traditionally a “good old white boys club”, Coleman quips that this is something they are quickly and actively changing, adding that around 40% of his executive team is now female and that this is only the beginning.

Aptum acquisition only the beginning eStruxture now provides access to an ecosystem of approximately 1500 customers that depend on their infrastructure and customer support. Headquartered out of Montreal, eStruxture is the country’s largest

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

TODD COLEMAN TITLE: FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN, CEO

TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ I have a philosophy – never ask someone to do something that you're not willing to do yourself – and so we're a very rollup-your-sleeves entrepreneurial environment where we all wear multiple hats every single day”

Todd Coleman is the President and CEO of eStruxture.

Todd brings more than 25 years experience in the IT, data centre and telecommunications industries. Most recently, Todd was the Chief Operating Officer and co-founder of Cologix.

Todd has also held several senior positions at Level 3 Communications, a global telecommunications company, including Senior Vice President of Data Centers, Senior Vice President of Media Operations and President of Level 3 Communications Europe.

Todd holds a juris doctorate and a bachelor’s degree in computer information systems.

Modular Design for a Diverse World eStruxture Delivers Flexibility Vertiv solutions, including the Vertiv™ Liebert® DSE economization system, allow eStruxture to bring equipment online faster and support the unique service level requirements of its customers.

Read the Case Study

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

Title of the video

“ The institutional knowledge and the employees that come along with it have to fit into our strategic mix. And so, when we looked at the Aptum deal we were blown away because it made complete sense for us to get that deal done” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

Canadian-owned data centre provider, having recently acquired Aptum’s Canadian colocation business. This expansion has furthered eStruxture’s presence into every major territory in Canada, including Toronto, thereby expanding their national footprint.

Speaking of the acquisition, Coleman adds “The institutional knowledge and the employees that come along with it have to fit into our strategic mix. And so, when we looked at the Aptum deal we were blown away because it made complete sense for us to get that deal done.”

Coleman is excited about adding Aptum’s existing data centre employees and colocation customers to the eStruxture family and says that this collaboration is only the beginning when it comes to achieving the company’s long-standing vision of fully taking over the Canadian market. Going forward, the company aims to integrate fully with the current acquisition before making room for future partnerships. businesschief.com

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2017

Year Founded

51-200

Number of Employees

53%

Workforce is from a diverse background

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Sustainability at the core of every partnership Coming to partnerships, sustainability is a big factor in driving any collaborations at eStruxture. Coleman ensures that every partnership to date has been made on the basis of a common goal of sustainability, stating “There's a reason why we're headquartered in Montreal. We've partnered with Hydro Quebec where 99% of their power supply is renewable. We have a strong position in Vancouver having partnered with BC Hydro where 95% of their electrical grid is green and so that that's very important to us.” When it comes to challenges faced while acquiring or

“When it starts at the top and you start showing that your actions and words align, the rest of your organisation embraces it and it begins to take a life of itself” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

partnering with legacy structures, he adds “We've gone out of our way to avoid the use of water, and that's a key area where data centres have been talking about efficiency and green power for a long, long time.” eStruxture has gone out of its way to become water-neutral across all of its legacy facilities, and this is a drumbeat that Coleman continues to pound on, as the amount of usable water is less than 3% across the the the globe and data centres are one of the largest consumers of water – a forecast states that data centres utilise around 660 billion litres of water annually. businesschief.com

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Cloud, Where Data Thrives Explore simple and scalable cloud infrastructure and data solutions to meet your business-critical workload needs.

Build, deploy and scale via a global channel partner network and data centre footprint across Canada, USA, UK, and the Caribbean.

Learn More

ESTRUXTURE DATA CENTERS

“ This company was built on diversity and inclusion, we want this to be a welcoming environment. Our employees mean everything to us – we're a technology firm at its heart, but at the end of the day, we're built around people” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

computing partner, further led to developing the company’s cloud-neutral model, allowing customers to find what they were looking for, tailor-made to their needs.

A top-down approach to inclusion Diversity and inclusion have always been Coleman's personal core values, and it's been his mission to bring that into the workplace. As a thought leader in the data centre industry, Coleman aims to make diversity and inclusion a hot topic in every meeting room, as more needs to be said and done now, more than ever. eStruxture is proudly inclusive, with over 50% of their workforce diverse in some way, and nearly 40% of their top management female-led.

Coleman stresses that steps have already been taken to ensure this is not just a fleeting phase but something that becomes a core

Speaking specifically about ThinkOn, Vertiv and Belden, Coleman says that these partners have been at the top of their list since the very beginning. Four years ago, eStruxture was small and relatively unknown, and Coleman remembers the partners who backed the company from the beginning when we were just getting started. Apart from providing solutions and expertise, these partners also invested in the company in its early days, when they were an up and coming facility. To this day, Coleman believes that partnership programs at eStuxture are built purely on “relationships and a handshake”. Vertiv was a partner from day one, offering everything from equipment to expertise on priority, and it’s something Coleman won’t easily forget. Belden, too, was a partner right from the start, offering a full research and development scope including their latest technology and top resources. ThinkOn, eStruxture’s cloud businesschief.com

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“ There's a reason why we're headquartered in Montreal.

We've partnered with Hydro Quebec where 99% of their power supply is renewable. We have a strong position in Vancouver having partnered with BC Hydro where 95% of their electrical grid is green and so that that's pretty important to us” TODD COLEMAN

FOUNDER, PRESIDENT, CHAIRMAN & CEO AT ESTRUXTURE

Belden offers a Collaborative Approach to Colocation Data Center Solutions Watch how Belden helps eStruxture manage high ber density while saving space with the new DCX Optical Distribution Frame (ODF) System.

Speak to Sales

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ethic within the industry, and eStruxture is already ahead of its time.

Commenting on the steps taken by eStruxture on building a diverse work culture, Coleman says that any change of that magnitude needs to start from the top. “When it starts at the top and you start showing that your actions and words align, the rest of your organisation embraces it and it begins to take a life of itself.” eStruxture’s long-term vision is to continue to diversify its workforce, in the hopes that this will be their key differentiator in a market that’s quickly developing. eStruxture, and particularly Todd, has also gained recognition among industry peers for his relentless pursuit for diversity and inclusion. Speaking to this, Simon Allen, Executive Director of Infrastructure Masons says “Todd was a key contributor to the Digital Infrastructure Industry’s 1st Diversity and Inclusion Best Practice Guide, published by the Infrastructure Masons. Todd’s genuine

and demonstrable commitment to drive cultural change from the top down has delivered benefits that he’s discovered go far beyond commercial advantage. Todd’s conviction to “walk the talk” has inspired many to follow in his footsteps.”

As a closing statement, Coleman adds “This company was built on diversity and inclusion, we want this to be a welcoming environment. Our employees mean everything to us – we're a technology firm at its heart, but at the end of the day, we're built around people.”

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IBM

ENERGIZING THE EVOLUTION OF ENTERPRISE WRITTEN BY: JOHN O'HANLON

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PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

IBM

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IBM needs no introduction to any segment of the technology estate: we speak to GMD, CTO and VP Bridget Karlin

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hen IBM appeared in 1911, 13 years later adopting the name International Business Machines, it was already a pioneer in automation, developing machines that made calculating, tabulating, measuring – and the like – faster and less labor-intensive. In some fundamental ways, its relationship with business has been consistent. Throughout the growth of computing, the internet, and now digitization, migration to the cloud, AI, blockchain and quantum computing, it has continued to lead, partner and innovate, leveraging possibilities and pushing the envelope.

Engineered solutions are still IBM's stockin-trade, even if these solutions are very different in nature from the mechanical advances of a century ago. The faster the industry changes, the more exciting it gets, says Bridget Karlin, Global Managing Director, CTO and VP at IBM. “IBM is an innovator and continues to lead the industry in new patent inventions. AI, analytics, blockchain, cloud and advanced computing are all technologies that emerged from deep investment in our talent and R&D.” One thing that's very important to a CEO or CIO today is the speed of delivering the value of innovation out to their customers: IBM helps them do this.

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Bridget Karlin, IBM

IBM

IBM

Client first Of the many transformations that IBM has taken to maintain its lead for so long, perhaps the most defining is its customer-centric approach. “Our priority is our clients. We apply our technology and our expertise to help solve their problems and to enable new capabilities.

That is the hallmark by which we measure our success, ” says Karlin.

She has the responsibility to look after IBM's clients' IT environment, from their infrastructure to their security to their applications and data. “We work with our clients to ensure they have everything necessary to successfully transform the business. We do this by leveraging AI, automation, hybrid cloud and security 312

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“ THE CO-CREATION APPROACH HELPS YOU FOCUS ON THE SOLUTIONS THAT GIVE CLIENTS THE HIGHEST VALUE” BRIDGET KARLIN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CTO AND VP IBM

IBM

practices, aiming to reduce software development cycles to weeks or even days, the traditional 'tacked-on' approach to security would have caused bottlenecks. DevSecOps reorganizes roles and practices to encourage collaboration across development, operations, and security to streamline development lifecycle, release-engineering, implementation and maintenance.”

Site reliability engineering (SRE) is another important model for news ways of working that IBM helps customers to utilize. Karlin adds, “SRE incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems to create scalable and highly reliable software systems. We help clients adopt SRE to evolve from traditional defect/fix processes to more end-to-end application-centric practices.”

technologies to enable transformation while modernizing their environment.

Digital transformation is driving business acceleration, and IBM is one of the technology leaders enabling companies globally.”

In addition to technology, IBM utilizes new ways of working, using DevSecOps and Agile as part of digital transformation.

Practiced together, DevSecOps and Agile improve the quality of the code as well as help to accelerate the time to deployment. Agile practices permeate development work, says Karlin, and tools such as IBM’s Urban Code helps customers to automate software deployment and achieve greater agility. “As software developers adopted Agile and DevSecOps

A new, accelerated digital world At least 75% of companies will say that Covid19 underscored the need to accelerate their digital transformation, Karlin comments, “Setting up employees to work remotely, in a safe, secure manner so that all the privacy and security controls of the business are implemented and monitored, presented challenges to companies worldwide and exposed the need for broader, more secure digitization.” It’s her job to enable client digital reinvention with a global team of distinguished engineers, data scientists and advanced architects. She also oversees open source solutions offered to clients, which is an important focus since IBM acquired Red Hat in 2019. “With a clear vision of the technology roadmap, we make sure that IBM can deliver a common set of tooling and seek out opportunities to improve performance, reduce cost, increase control and visibility of the client’s IT environment as we help them accelerate their digital transformation.” businesschief.com

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Veritas and IBM deliver solutions for enterprise cloud customers

We deliver unified data protection to accelerate data transformation and migration, extend data protection to the cloud, and ensure availability for mission-critical applications. Enterprise solutions deliver powerful tools across physical, virtual and cloud environments.

Learn more

Protecting data in the cloud Veritas Technologies in its 10-year strategic relationship with IBM has forged an alliance ensuring availability, protection and insight to their customers

Watch: Digital Transformation at Veritas with IBM

Veritas and IBM – securing critical data Today 94% of Fortune Global 100 companies as well as most leading banks, financial services and telecoms companies rely on Veritas to reveal data insights that drive competitive advantage, ROI, and their core data protection capabilities. “We’re focused on the recovery aspects of data protection, and we’re trusted with more data than any other data protection company on the planet.” explains Mike Walkey, VP of global channels, strategic partners and alliances. “Ransomware is a ubiquitous threat, and you need a security provider that helps you prevent those ransomware attacks – and if they occur, a partner that you trust to recover from those events.”

In 2017 IBM certified NetBackup to run on IBM Cloud to offer clients additional data protection for cloud-based workloads. Today IBM finishes up certification on NetBackup 9.0 to offer resiliency and further cloud migration capabilities. The Veritas NetBackup application simplifies data protection in physical, virtual, software-defined or cloud environments. The solution lets organizations choose the right software for managing and protecting data while simplifying backup administration, improving efficiency and delivering scalable capacity.

Veritas empowers businesses of all sizes to discover the truth in information – their most important digital asset. Using the Veritas platform, businesses can accelerate their digital transformation and solve pressing IT and business challenges including multi-cloud data management, data protection, storage optimization, compliance readiness and workload portability – with no cloud vendor lock-in.

The shift to remote working in 2020 drove digitization and cloud migration. Prevention and recovery are critical to every business today. NetBackup is Veritas’s flagship product, Walkey concludes. “It protects customers’ most valuable asset – their data– while giving them the resilience to recover in the event of a ransomware attack, or any other type of outage. Availability, protection and insight are the three key foundational legs of the stool that we bring together with IBM to deliver to their customers.”

Learn more

IBM

Title of the video

With a geographically dispersed organization behind her, it's essential for Bridget Karlin to work on a matrix basis. This means defining a compelling technology strategy, with clearly defined deliverables and making sure her leaders are motivated and inspired to drive effective collaboration globally. “Effective collaboration requires clear purpose, supported by technical communities that share knowledge, best practices and work together to ensure the best outcomes are delivered.

This community culture is an essential component to our innovation and client success.” Karlin adds, “And you do not have to be a developer to be an innovator; ideas come from many different skill sets. So my job, in addition to delivering value to clients, is to build technical communities across a wide range of individuals with mechanisms that encourage partnership for both our internal and external ecosystems, 316

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engaging partners in business and academia as well.”

Co-creation and AIOps IBM's collaboration with its clients sets it apart.

“As a technology leader, throughout my career, I have admired the range of interesting ideas and innovative technology developed by others as a result of co-creation. For example, AI for IT Operations, or AIOps, is a solution we developed as a result of client co-creation, where we apply AI to the data flowing through the client’s IT operations, being able to analyze that data throughout those operations and generate insights that can help identify and prevent problems or enable new capabilities that provide competitive advantage. ” As an example of AIOps in practice, she gives the client case of a car rental agency: “We helped them bring together the data from different sources including the mobile devices they use to rent cars, as well as the back end

IBM

BRIDGET KARLIN TITLE: GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: UNITED STATES

“ I BELIEVE IN ACCOUNTABILITY: IF SOMETHING GOES WRONG, I TAKE RESPONSIBILITY AND NEVER LOOK TO FIND FAULT ELSEWHERE, AND I EXPECT THAT FROM OTHERS TOO” BRIDGET KARLIN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CTO AND VP IBM

EXECUTIVE BIO

Ms. Karlin brings more than 25 years of extensive experience in developing and supporting advanced technology solutions, delivering dramatically improved digital transformation, quality, and efficiency, while reducing cost and enabling modernization. Based on her leadership, Industry eminence and high value contribution, Ms. Karlin serves on the CEO’s top Executive Acceleration Team that defines the growth strategy and planning for IBM.

IBM

“ ONE OF THE THINGS THAT ATTRACTED ME TO IBM WAS ITS COMMITMENT TO PUSHING THE INNOVATION ENVELOPE” BRIDGET KARLIN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CTO AND VP IBM

systems running the IT environment. If the mobile devices failed whereby, they could no longer rent the cars, with AIOps, we were able to reduce the time to identify and resolve the issue from days and weeks, to just minutes.

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The client can now immediately locate the application and the server that is causing the problem and know the actionable insights to fix the issue. This example of advanced technology, working across multiple vendor technologies in a client’s heterogeneous IT environment - ingesting data, analyzing it and generating actionable insights, illustrates how the IT Ops person can do their job more

IBM

measures to protect the workers involved.

The same applies in other industries – such as with the healthcare sector where AI has been used to identify patients targeted for clinical trials or to keep track of rapid mass vaccination programs.

efficiently, get a solution out to the user and prevent the issue from recurring. The co-creation approach helps you focus on the solutions that give clients the highest value.”

With access to vast amounts of data, added to advances in software and computing power, Bridget Karlin enthuses about the ability of AI to change society for the better. “It's not just changing the way we work; it's also changing the way businesses operate and carry out their digital transformation.” For example, as the pandemic disrupted global supply chains and travel, with ships waiting out at sea unable to dock, IBM was able to utilize AI to help these businesses and also put in place safety

The power of data Data is an inexhaustible mine. “I am excited every time I think about the possibilities that data opens for us. While cloud has been a transformational technology for quite a few years where we are now really understanding the value of a hybrid, mulitcloud environment, AI is proving to be an even more influential technology.” Karlin adds, “AI is one of the greatest opportunities of our time, transforming how we work and live, and helping solve the world’s toughest problems of today, and tomorrow. However, it’s important to recognize that all AI is not equal. Our biases and prejudices can easily enter AI systems through the data that we create, collect, train, or process. As stewards of AI and its models, we need to take action to ensure the decisions AI is making are explainable, unbiased, and transparent.”

Quantum computing is another great example of advanced technology that excites Karlin. “IBM has made quantum computing more accessible to industry and academia alike. And its possibilities are unfolding fast. Challenges like having more efficient food supply, a cleaner environment, safer exploration are just a few areas where IBM’s Quantum computing is making our world better. Humanity's greatest challenges demand entrepreneurial thinking, advanced technology and a model of co-creation: this is why I am in the industry.”

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Making e l i b Mo

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

Better

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Three million Customers

Four

out of six GCC countries in which Virgin Mobile MEA is present

2006

Year founded

$20m Net revenue

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

Customer experience drives the digital journey for Virgin Mobile MEA as they move into Kuwait with a focus on FinTech apps

D

Erik Dudman Nielsen Founder and Chief Executive Officer

riving innovation to improve the customer experience across the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Oman is the focus of Erik Dudman Nielsen, Founder & Group CEO of Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa.

Virgin Mobile MEA serves three million customers in the region, with operations in Saudi Arabia and Oman, as well as providing advisory services to Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC) in the UAE. It is the only mobile virtual network provider in the GCC with multiple live operations and millions of active customers.

The Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) now looks set to extend its coverage with the announcement it will launch in Kuwait and that it has secured a banking licence in Saudia Arabia.

The news is welcomed by Dudman Nielsen who has led the innovation since the company was founded in 2006.

“Virgin Mobile MEA is focused on driving innovation and always improving CX (customer experience),” he said. “We’re happy that we are the first to get a MVNO licence in Kuwait and look forward to opening this new digital lifestyle for our customers.

“In 2020 we were awarded the very first banking agent licence in Saudi Arabia through our partner, Saudi Investment Bank, and we will now be able to offer money remittance for customers in this region.” businesschief.com

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Dudman Nielsen from Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa talks about mobile financial services

Dudman Nielsen has been leading digital innovation since the beginning and launched the region's first digital proposition under the Virgin brand which is a digital MVNO where 100 per cent of customer engagement is done digitally through an app.

Driving the CX He is driving the CX at Virgin Mobile MEA which he says is achieved by the company’s “relentless focus on listening to the customers” through focus groups, studies, and work sessions. “Our core proposition is to make mobile better,” said Dudman Nielsen speaking from the company headquarters in Dubai Internet City.

“We do so in a digital manner utilising our digital capabilities and the benefit of doing this is that you end up getting a much higher net promoter score - which is a nice expression for how well the customers are willing to recommend you to friends 324

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and family. We're happy that we, in our partnership with EITC have managed to have the highest net promoter score in the region which is testament to the continuous work we do.”

Dudman Nielsen pointed out the company operates a dual brand strategy with its Virgin Mobile brand, which has a CX focus on the young Arab youth and people who are ‘young at heart’ and use lots of apps and data, and the FRiENDi mobile brand which targets Asian expats. The apps include a move to financial services with the e-wallet in Saudi Arabia.

Virgin Mobile Flexibility, choice and cool products for the consumer is what Virgin Mobile offers as its CX and according to Dudman Nielsen always has done since Sir Richard Branson started stirring up the telco market back in the 1990s.

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN TITLE: FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We believe that this is just the beginning and the more you focus and invest into the digital space, the more successful you will be because this is the future”

Erik Dudman Nielsen founded Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa in 2006 and has more than 20 years of experience in both MNO and MVNO. Dudman Nielsen has a proven track record of building successful MVNOs in multiple markets, working with both frequency-based and MVNO-based greenfield mobile companies and traditional telecom companies offering both fixed and mobile services.

Prior to Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa, Dudman was CEO of Realtime, a global VAS provider developing digital customer generated solutions, where he successfully managed a turnaround of the business and developed a strong growth strategy for the company in Europe, South America and the Middle East.

NetNumber: Time for a cloud-native transformation Matt Rosenberg, Chief Revenue Officer at NetNumber, discusses how cloud-native architecture is accelerating the transition to 5G for telcos NetNumber is accelerating the transition in the telecom industry to 5G as it shifts to cloudnative architecture to address the fast-paced demands of global subscribers and businesses NetNumber is offering the industry’s first cloudnative platform designed to ensure InterGENerational™ network performance addresses both the legacy and next-generation requirements of telecom networks.

“We have developed the industry’s most robust cloud-native, InterGENerational platform that addresses both the legacy and 5G requirements of telcos,” said Matt Rosenberg, Chief Revenue Officer of NetNumber.

“We’ve created our latest platform TITAN.IUM to allow customers to take any generation of applications, legacy services and protocols and move them into the new world of cloud-native architecture.

“This is a really important part for a carrier to harmonise their network, bring data services together, bring legacy with new together in order to make a more effective network and reduce their cost,” he said.

Established in 1999 and based outside of Boston with presence in over 20 countries, NetNumber delivers a range of products that address all generations (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) of network functions in the core network, deep rooted security products and services, STIR/ SHAKEN and set of options around data services in more than 90 countries.

“We provide customers a strong ROI through platform-based solutions that reduce Capex and Opex,,” commented Rosenberg

NetNumber and Virgin Mobile MEA “We’re very proud of our partnership with Virgin Mobile MEA as they’ve taken the concept of the InterGENerational platform into their regional network strategy,” commented Rosenberg.

“We’ve had a long-term relationship with Virgin Mobile in Saudi Arabia, and recently signed an agreement with Virgin Mobile in Kuwait. We work with them to deliver multiple applications onto our platform which has enabled them to provide innovative services to their customers across The Middle East and Africa region.”

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

“The Virgin Mobile brand is targeted more for the Arab youth and tech-refined expats who are into their digital apps - and, last but not least, the people who are young at heart - which I claim to be,” said Dudman Nielsen.

FRiENDi mobile is the brand for those with a piece of their heart abroad, offering highly affordable international prepaid mobile and Internet services in Oman and Saudi Arabia.”

FRiENDi Mobile According to Dudman Nielsen, FRiENDi mobile brings outstanding value for money to customers in Oman and Saudi Arabia, empowering them to stay connected to family, friends and the world around them.

“FRiENDi mobile is the brand for those with a piece of their heart abroad, offering highly affordable international prepaid mobile and Internet services in Oman and 328

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Saudi Arabia,” comments Dudman Nielsen.

FRiENDi (which combines the English word friend and Arabic Habibi for my love or friend) mobile helps its customers enjoy international and local call quality at the best rates and provides the relevant data bundles for VoIP calls.

“The mobile service is built for expats living in the GCC from Pakistani Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and India who would like to have services in their own languages. It is presented in a simple way to understand and very much focused on blue collar expat workers - which is a completely different segment than the high-end digital Virgin mobile segment.

“Whether they’re calling a friend across the globe, sending a text or surfing the web, we’re working hard to make sure they enjoy that experience.”

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

“ FRiENDi mobile is the brand for those with a piece of their heart abroad, offering highly affordable international prepaid mobile and Internet services in Oman and Saudi Arabia” ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

Virgin Mobile MEA apps Focusing on the smooth CX of the Virgin Mobile apps, Dudman Nielsen points out they are easy to understand and all built around the customers needs.

“For example if you want content services you can pay your Netflix account with the click of a button inside the app or if you’re in Saudi Arabia you might want free music streaming services, which you can get with a certain package. These kinds of offers are tailored around the customer's needs in a very easy to understand and very smooth experience. That's what we offer.

“We deem ourselves as payment gateway experts so we ensure your payments always succeed. We're also logistics experts in making sure that your home delivery succeeds. Those are the kinds of things that you make sure the app

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

“ Our core proposition is to make mobile better” ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

aid works and it's built around what you want as a customer in a modern day life,” he said.

Commenting on Virgin Mobile MEA’s competitive edge, Dudman Nielsen points out this is due to three important elements: • Customer focus • Digital platform capabilities • Great partnerships “Those three components allow us to deliver astounding results,” he said.

Virgin Mobile MEA move into FinTech E-wallets will enable the 170 million smartphones in use across the region to access banking services and this is the focus of Virgin Mobile MEA as they move into mobile financial services following the banking licence issued in Saudia Arabia.

“We have close to 70 per cent of the population in the MENA region being 330

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unbanked,” points out Dudman Nielsen. “If you combine this with the 170 million smartphones then you sense that e-wallets are the way for people to become banked.

“Finally if you combine that within Saudi Arabia, and particularly in the GCC, all salary payments going forward will be electronic.

Today, people are receiving salaries on ATM cash cards - so you have the recipe for success of e-wallets.”

Dudman Nielsen pointed e-wallets will help a typical blue collar expat worker in Saudi Arabia who will not have to go to the ATM on a Friday (Holy day for Islam) to collect his cash to send home but can transfer his money back home with the click of a button.

“He will be able to trade on live exchange rates and trust us because he knows us as a trusted brand already. We see the huge potential of e-wallets and later move this capability into domestic national payments, but the first step for us is the international money remit.”

Pandemic drives rise in digital services According to Dudman Nielsen the COVID-19 pandemic has driven more customers to digital especially with the constraints of lockdown and limited access to banks and shops.

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

DID YOU KNOW...

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA LAUNCHES IN KUWAIT Virgin Mobile MEA has announced it will be launching in Kuwait.

The announcement follows the successful application for a business licence via a partnership with Kuwait Telecommunications Company (stc) to enable its operations, and secure debt and equity funding for the expansion.

The company will launch its fully digital app-based proposition in the country under the Virgin Mobile brand - becoming the fourth service provider. stc Kuwait will act as a host facilities-based provider with Virgin Mobile Kuwait to provide digital services to customers in the country. All of the new operations’ IT and app technology will be based on Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa’s digital operator platform.

“Our presence [in Kuwait], following other successful launches in the GCC, is part of our ongoing commitment to always provide more choices for consumers as well as to push the boundaries of traditional telco with our digital propositions,” commented Erik Dudman Nielsen, founder and chief executive officer of Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa.

Funding for the expansion into Kuwait has been provided by Wafra International Investment Company, Impulse International for Telecommunications and Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa.

“Debt funding of $13m has been provided

by Wafra to allow expansion of the Virgin brand into the Kuwait market. This is the first investment of its kind, established to set up a virtual telecommunications network,” said Wafra International Investment Company CEO, Ghazi Al Hajeri.

The remainder of the funding is supplied as equity funding, with Impulse International leading the equity transaction with $7m which is a milestone for the telecom sector in Kuwait.

“This deal will allow Virgin Mobile Kuwait to provide the best technological services in its field, transferring technology and knowledge in the telecom sector while providing a more digital platform which reflects the global trend of service providers, while also providing new job opportunities,” said Izzat Abou-Amarah, CEO at Impulse International for Telecommunications.

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“If you combine this with the 170 million smartphones then you sense that e-wallets are the way for people to become banked” ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

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“People have got used to using their credit cards to do home grocery shopping. I think we are experiencing a region where people have become much more comfortable with digital payments and online payments. We have seen this in both the Virgin mobile segment and in the FRiENDi mobile space.

We believe that this is just the beginning and the more you focus and invest into the digital space, the more successful you will be because this is the future.” eSIM - the way forward “In terms of new technology eSIMs are the way forward,” predicts Dudman Nielsen.

“More devices will come with what's called an embedded SIM so you will not have to go to a dealer although we have made it easy in the UAE as we launched with a one-hour home delivery service but that will soon be old school.

“The future is definitely with an eSIM. In Saudi Arabia, as an example, we have partnered with Absher which is a digital

ID and we have launched eSIM enabling this functionality. This effectively means when you have a new iPhone through your app share ID verification we can enable your eSIM from the comfort of your sofa at home.”

Great partnerships drive CX NetNumber is a strong partner of Virgin Mobile MEA along with Sinch and Workz.

“I always believe in strong partnerships the business needs to have strong, reliable long-term partnerships where there's mutual trust in that relationship because that opens up and gives opportunities for making strong development,” comments Dudman Nielsen.

“If we look at NetNumber, they are our vendor for HLR and HSS, which is the backend part of our systems, and they are also helping on the front end part – so we're very happy to have these vendors behind us.”

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MUNTERS

Cooling Mission Critical Infrastructure WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Enabling optimal operating conditions for the world’s most critical infrastructure and essential services

M

unters is a global leader of innovative, energy efficient climate control solutions serving a variety of industries including food, pharmaceutical, lithium battery production, agricultural, marine, and data centers.

With the demand for data centers growing at an ever-increasing rate, ensuring these mission critical facilities can provide the right indoor climate is essential. Efficiently maintaining the right conditions can improve reliability, reduce operating costs and ensure a data center can be run in a more sustainable way. Depending on several factors - such as type, location, size, and power density - data centers may require different solutions to provide the best possible operating performance. Munters offers a wide range of climate systems to ensure the perfect solution.

Cooling Technologies Cooling technologies are the foundation of Munters’ offering to its data center customers. “We offer a variety of different energy efficient cooling systems for data center end users,” explains Gantert.

“We take a project-based approach to developing solutions for customers, where we start with core technologies, and then work with engineers and owners to fine-tune the optimal solution for their projects. Our technology portfolio includes evaporative cooling (both direct and indirect), dry air-

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Michael Gantert President, Data Centers

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to-air heat exchangers (plate and heat pipe), waterless thermosyphon-based split systems (SyCool), and a fan-coil array for pairing with an air-cooled chiller offering.

We also manufacture air-cooled chillers and fan-coil arrays for a specific strategic partner. In addition to cooling technologies, we offer solutions for make-up air and humidification needs.”

Munters’ engineering experience, design expertise, R&D capability, and flexible manufacturing offer the ability to customize solutions to meet the needs of its customers – everything from footprint constraints to resource (water and power) availability and many other building design considerations.

The Munters Difference The ability to offer different cooling technologies packaged in various ways demonstrates Munters’ capacity to create custom solutions while also maintaining the manufacturing capabilities to scale as required. “It starts with our portfolio of energy efficient cooling technologies. We take these technologies and work with engineers and owners to develop a cooling solution that meets their needs. Then, we leverage our manufacturing capabilities to meet their demand,” adds Gantert.

“We recently expanded our portfolio to address a variety of factors owners and engineers consider when designing a data center, including water availability, first cost, energy efficiency, reliability, scalability, speed, and simplicity. Because we take a projectbased, solutions approach, Munters isn’t pushing pre-designed, standard products to our data center customers. We have the technical expertise to partner with our customers to develop a solution that fits their specific needs, and the proven manufacturing flexibility to meet their demand.”

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Innovation Carl Munters founded the company over 60 years ago - a company with innovation in its DNA. Gantert notes, “In addition to our new SyCool technology, we recently launched a new fan-coil array solution we call Modular ChilledWall (MCW). MCW is a configurable fan-coil platform for owners who utilise aircooled chiller platforms. In addition to new technologies and equipment solutions, we are further developing our systems integration and services offerings to better support our customers.”

Meeting demand in a Covid-19 world Demand for Munters’ solutions ramped up during the pandemic says Gantert. “Due to the increased demand, we’ve expanded our footprint to incorporate manufacturing for data center cooling equipment at both our Virginia and Texas facilities. Meanwhile, our top priority is to ensure we deliver reliable

MUNTERS

MICHAEL GANTERT TITLE: PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS COMPANY: MUNTERS

MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We take a projectbased approach to developing solutions for customers, where we start with core technologies, and then work with engineers and owners to fine-tune the optimal solution for their projects”

Michael Gantert is President of the Data Center Business at Munters, a business focused on providing innovative, energy efficient, sustainable climate control solutions to the data center industry. With over 10 years of experience at Munters, Michael is one of the founding members of the Munters data center business and held several roles, including an international assignment in Europe, prior to his appointment as President in 2018. Prior to joining Munters, Michael served in the US Army and worked in the construction industry, with positions in project management, engineering, and services.

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MUNTERS

SyCool 30 Second Video

“ We recently opened a new test lab at our Virginia factory to further expand our testing capabilities and offer owners and engineers the peace of mind that allows them to guarantee uptime” MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

solutions to our customers, both in terms of functional quality as well as performance.

We’ve spent years testing our technologies to validate performance and developing software tools to simulate performance at any geographical location. We recently opened a new test lab at our Virginia facility to further expand our testing capabilities, offering owners and engineers the peace of mind that allows them to guarantee uptime. We've also partnered with other manufacturers to expand our capacity to support our customers globally.”

Continuous Improvement Strategic partnerships are critical to Munters’ success believes Gantert. “We partner with suppliers who are willing to understand and support our unique business model. At times, in a project-based business model, forecasting becomes difficult. With some partners, we’ve arranged consignment programs and inventory management businesschief.com

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processes to better prepare for large projects. Several of our key suppliers have been our partners for many years, so they know us and they know our business.”

Among these trusted partners is Super Radiator, a coil manufacturer. Munters ties to Super Radiator go back many years before it entered the data center market.

“Coils are a key part of our solution,” says Gantert. “Many of our designs require a coil, either DX or CHW. We rely on Super Radiator to support our coil manufacturing needs, working closely together to forecast demand. Our relationship has become a mutually beneficial one over many years.”

Automated Logic Controls (ALC) is another key supplier for Munters. “We not only offer the cooling technology and the mechanical know-how to develop a solution

Experienced. Knowledgeable. Trusted.

Super Radiator Coils is proud to support Munters with our engineering and data center cooling products.

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“ Automated Logic Controls has years of experience in the data center and HVAC industries. They offer the flexibility to customize their solutions, and they work closely with us to develop our equipment controls programming for data center applications” MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

for our customers, we also integrate control systems into our offering,” explains Gantert.

“Our customers connect to our equipment controls system as part of their building automation controls platform, and so all of our systems must include a controls package. Our primary supplier is ALC; they have years of experience in the data center and HVAC industries. They offer the flexibility to customise their solutions, and they work closely with us to develop our equipment controls programming for data center applications. We meet with them routinely to stay in sync with the latest developments; continuous improvement is a shared goal.”

Collaboration is essential for success in the data center market maintains Gantert.

“Internally, our business team works closely with all areas of our company to ensure we deliver for our customers. We work in close collaboration with our partners and customers through the entire project lifecycle, from concept to commissioning, and we aim to maintain a strong relationship with our customers long after a facility is handed over to the end user.”

Supporting the Data Center of the Future…

Data center cooling continues to evolve.

As server technology adapts, and rack watt density increases to support various digital platforms, Gantert expects we will see a natural shift from air-cooled to liquid-cooled solutions for some applications. “As data centers become a larger part of the world’s infrastructure, the industry will shift to adopt more energy efficient, sustainable climate control solutions,” he says.

Water usage also continues to be at the forefront of the sustainability conversation.

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QTS Data Center - Case study

“ As data centers become a larger part of the world’s infrastructure, the industry will shift to adopt more energy efficient, sustainable climate control solutions” MICHAEL GANTERT PRESIDENT, DATA CENTERS

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solutions to reduce water consumption,” adds Gantert. “We recently received US Patents for two of our technologies very much at the forefront of sustainability for this industry: ‘Staged Indirect Evaporative Cooler Sprays’ reduces water consumption in our Indirect Evaporative Cooling (IEC) solution and ‘Air handling unit with indirect air-side economiser and decoupled variable speed scavenger and condenser fan control’ is a patent related to one of our water-less cooling technologies.” Gantert continues, “In addition, we offer a patented solution called MRM, which stands for Mineral Removal Media. We deployed this technology with a hyperscale customer, and they measured a 40% reduction in the water consumption from their direct evaporative cooling systems.

MUNTERS

SEK 7bn sales in 2020

Innovative solutions since

1955

3,500 Employees worldwide

17

Plants

30

Manufacturing and sales countries

2

Business areas: AirTech (includes Data Center Business) and FoodTech

“Speed is also a huge factor,” he adds.

“Manufacturers will need to configure solutions to meet specific customer needs and then quickly ramp up manufacturing to support the demand.”

A fully connected cooling solution, easily capable of integrating with a building automation platform, is important for data center operators. Gantert envisions an increase in demand for systems integration solutions from cooling equipment providers. “As a cooling equipment manufacturer, we have to provide a controls platform that can easily integrate with a building automation system, creating a connected climate if you will.

Facility operators need the capability to manipulate set points (both manually

and automatically) as dynamics change, whether it’s ambient conditions or data hall conditions. Munters is well positioned with our technologies and controls capabilities to support these trends in the future.”

Munters is set to expand its portfolio of cooling solutions, including new iterations of SyCool, while it seeks to broaden its operational footprint to support global data center customers in 2021 and beyond. “We'll continue to look at manufacturing footprint optimisation as we aim to further boost our capabilities to support global customers. We recently announced plans to relocate our Center of Excellence facility in Virginia to a new, state-of-the-art, sustainable manufacturing location. The site will businesschief.com

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SYCOOL Specifically developed for data centers, SyCool is a waterless thermosyphonbased split cooling system providing an efficient cooling solution for new and retrofit installations where access to a suitable water supply may be limited, expensive or unreliable. No pumps or mechanical assistance are required. The system is available in 400kW and 250kW blocks of cooling capacity. Thermosyphon heat exchangers move heat from the data center to ambient through the evaporation of liquid refrigerant in the SyCool CRAH, and condensing of that same refrigerant in the SyCool condenser.

The CRAH is connected to the condenser with refrigerant piping allowing up to 500’ of separation. As long as the condenser receives air cooler than the CRAH, heat is exchanged passively for ‘free cooling’ of the data center. SyCool

thermal effectiveness is nominally 70% which greatly exceeds that of competing economiser systems.

“It's quite an innovative approach to cooling a data center,” notes Michael Gantert, Munters’ President for Data Centers. “There are similar technologies that use pumps to circulate refrigerant between CRAH units and condensers.

We found that we could instead utilize thermosyphons to naturally circulate the refrigerant, eliminating the pumps while also achieving superior economising efficiency compared to other dry cooling solutions."

• Split systems eliminate duct penetrations • No water consumption • High efficiency economisation • Factory optimised controls

include 365,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing space and offices, as well as a 10,000 sq. ft. test lab with a climate control chamber for performance testing. The new facility will be powered by solar energy, adding to Munters overall sustainability objectives,” says Gantert.

“Whatever challenges a changing business climate may present, Munters is ready with the experience and expertise to help design the perfect climate solution for the data centers of the future.”

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TAS ENERGY

THE PREMIER

MODULAR DATA CENTER SOLUTIONS PROVIDER WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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TAS ENERGY

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Supporting Edge and Hyperscale customers with a full stack offering for a modular approach to design, customisation, manufacture and installation

T

AS Energy boasts more than two decades experience in off-site construction, delivering efficient, modular systems utilised in power and utility applications across the globe. When the company’s CEO JT Grumski joined the company in 2013, TAS began to focus more on manufacturing products for the data center/networks industry.

“I was inspired to join TAS energy because I could see a huge opportunity,” recalls Ron Mann, Vice President of Engineering at TAS Energy. “The data center space was one of the last vestiges for innovation that's ripe for disruption. If you look at traditional approaches to data center construction, they are becoming a lot harder to design and support based on where the IT's going.

“Modular is a big part of that going forward, whether it be at the Edge in support of IoT or the rise of 5G. Because of this changing technology landscape, it’s not a matter of if the data center industry is going to change, but a matter of when and who's going to lead it. TAS is in a great position to help inspire efforts at innovation.”

Integrating modular fabrication with innovation “During my time working for HP it became apparent that advances in IT cannot always be supported by traditional construction techniques; things like smaller U compute form factors leading to higher density components and rack systems,” notes Mann. “In the modular 350

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Ron Mann Vice President Engineering, TAS Energy

TAS ENERGY

TAS Products - Modular Data Center Products

21+

years delivering innovative modular solutions

600,000

square feet of manufacturing space

3,000+

modules supplied in 2019

400+

projects delivering efficient modular systems in over 32 countries

10

industries served: Data Centers, District Cooling, Edge, Education, Gaming, Government, Healthcare, LNG/Oil & Gas, Manufacturing/Pharma, Power/Industrial, Telco

space, there’s often been the need to engage with two different suppliers, one who was an expert in fabrication and design of the module, because we learned early on that you can't simply take a storage or shipping container and make it into a data center module, it just doesn't work. And then we'd have to find a module integrator who can unite the electrical and cooling together with all the other elements in the module for a complete modular data center solution. TAS has the ability and capability to perform all of these tasks.”

TAS Energy is well placed to meet those needs with best-in-class modular data center solutions that can bring connectivity to the Edge. “Ultimately, this has led to the development of our new TAS Edge Data Center module – the base design is a five-rack solution that can be expanded up to 17 racks by adding additional modules leveraging the same basic power and cooling building blocks with an initial maximum capacity of 20kw/rack..”

TAS ENERGY

The TAS Edge Data Center The TAS Edge Data Center was developed to deliver the future for Edge computing. Mann’s team focused on three major elements: power, cooling, and IT rack capacity. “We looked at power input and distribution, different approaches to cooling and the possibility for capacity options in the module,” he explains.

“We’ve aimed for a design that allows these three elements to be individually modified off the shelf to match customer requirements without having to redesign the entire product to meet specific customer requirements. At the same time, we’re avoiding under or overprovisioning of the power or cooling.”

“We're also utilising different types of clean technology for that cooling,” adds Mann. “At launch we have a chilled water and DX version, and we will be following up with adiabatic.

We're also working with cold plate technology for higher density applications. What's great about this approach is that you can take the same infrastructure we’ve developed, put in say the cold plate technology for CPUs and GPUs, taking away ~70% of the heat generated, then cooling the rest of the IT components with the airflow that is already available. It’s designed to be an adaptable product.”

RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING INDUSTRY: ENGINEERING LOCATION: UNITED STATES Ron Mann, VP of Engineering at TAS, has frequently been promoted and selected for critical projects and programs. Successful in identifying and seising untapped opportunities, anticipating market needs and developing products to meet them, Mann successfully builds interdisciplinary collaborations to achieve overall corporate objectives.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ WE’RE DEALING WITH THE TRANSITION FROM TRADITIONAL ARCHITECTURES AND STICK-BUILT CONSTRUCTION TO MODULARITY”

RON MANN

TAS ENERGY

“The TAS Edge Data Center’s monitoring capabilities encompass a lot of features including calculating things like PUE or pPUE via a configurable dashboard as well as monitoring and alerting for critical functions. “We can support modular IT on any scale, so the alerts can be modified to meet specific customer requirements and densities,” assures Mann.

“We understand that flexibility in software is a big part of the management of any solution.”

From stick-built construction to modularity The move to the Edge is being driven by the need for improved latency. With the adoption of AI, the growing impact of IoT devices, and the rise of 5G, what are some of the challenges that TAS is facing to meet this demand?

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“ MODULARITY LENDS ITSELF TO A REPEATABLE APPROACH THAT CAN BE DEPLOYED AS STANDARD, REDUCING WASTE AND SAVING BOTH TIME AND MONEY” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

TAS ENERGY

Being at the Edge, presents further challenges with modular DCs being placed inside of buildings, on rooftops, in parking lots, or in a field in the middle of nowhere. “The traditional, large data centers aren't going away, they're just being supplemented to remove the latency and other issues you must overcome for quick data at the Edge,” says Mann.

“Localised nodes are coming into play here. It might be hospitals needing diagnostic support closer to patients or IoT that needs supporting across industrial or manufacturing settings.”

“We've had customers trying to build factories that require specific IT elements that need to be repeatable to deploy at sites around the world. That's where it gets interesting. How do you make a standard when you have different standards in how things are applied across the globe? We’re approaching modular structures now as IT devices rather than buildings - it requires a different approach to upfront planning.”

“We’re dealing with the transition from traditional architectures and stick-built construction to modularity,” he reasons.

“Customers want to take advantage of modularity, but they still want some of the features of a traditional stick-build approach, so there is some mixing and matching going on as the industry adjusts to these new dynamics. Even Hyperscale customers want certain elements of their data centers to be modularized. However, when you are considering a modular approach at any level, not all of the applications or processes from traditional construction apply. Ultimately, we’re having to educate the customer, and also help any third parties involved, to understand modularity with respect to design considerations, operations and even how you ship the modules to site.”

TAS ENERGY

DID YOU KNOW...

PARTNERING FOR INNOVATION

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“TAS Energy has developed a trusted partner ecosystem to support rack and IT integration, cooling solutions and fire protection and suppression,” explains Engineering Vice President Ron Mann.

“Total Site Solutions do a great job with rack and IT integration bringing a value add to the customer. A client may want to integrate all of their IT and fully test it with their in-house software before deploying it, so it's literally ‘plug and play’ when it hits the site. Fully deployable IT is an important endto-end skillset that helps us make a project as cost effective as possible.”

“Stulz have a proven track record developing closely coupled cooling solutions for organisations like HP requiring energy efficient temperature and humidity management technology, specifically for mission critical applications. In many data centers you’ll find a three-foot cold aisle and a one or two-foot hot aisle. Reaction times are a lot quicker when something happens. The example I use is that if you're in Houston, Texas in July and there's five people in a conference room designed to

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host 15, and the cooling goes out, we may not even notice that for an hour because we have over capacity in the conference room and there's just five of us in there.

Which is a lot like what happens in a data center. But when you're in a closely coupled environment it's different. If you lose a cooling system, your redundancy model's different. You might have minutes to react before your servers hit thermal overload.

But we’ve learned that redundancy isn’t always important to customers if they have a failover strategy, so we aim to do the modularity on the different components: the power, the cooling and the IT.” “Viking helps us with fire protection and suppression. They have a neat rack modular solution for indoor cooling. Together, we’re adapting this contained solution to be able to scale it to the different sizes of modules requested without having to overprovision it. We’re rack and IT agnostic, so this partnership helps us meet the different requirements of our customers and allows us to ‘plug and play’ with different UPS technologies.”

TAS ENERGY

Customer Centricity Mann’s team have experience on both sides of the fence and appreciate the complexities of marrying physical infrastructure with IT. “The first thing we do with each new customer is to determine how modular they are. Is this their first deployment? Do they understand the dynamics? Can we scope it right? How can we be cost efficient to make sure that it meets their requirements? Site preparation is key. In my career I’ve seen deployments of IT modules arrive where the site costs spiraled because of a lack of communication or coordination.

“You have to understand the two elements: What's the site going to look like and what are you trying to do? Are you going to put that module on pilons or a pad? How is it going to be deployed? Is it permanent or is it temporary? You don't want to try to save money on the module side and then spend it all on the site because you didn't plan it the

“ IT’S NOT A MATTER OF IF THE DATA CENTER INDUSTRY IS GOING TO CHANGE, BUT A MATTER OF WHEN AND WHO'S GOING TO LEAD IT. TAS IS IN A GREAT POSITION TO HELP INSPIRE EFFORTS AT INNOVATION” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

same way. Understanding all of these dynamics is vital to create balance and promote efficiency.”

Efficiency & Sustainability TAS Energy’s full stack offering helps customers develop a greener approach to power by avoiding over-provisioning. “We make sure we’re supporting the customer with exactly what they need for their IT load. For example, if you’re running an average of 10kw/rack across five racks, but the application - maybe it's some type of algorithm for analysis or you’re running a business application – jumps up your compute load to 20kw/rack. How do you make sure your system is accounting for that? We can deploy a system capable of ramping up and back down again so that it matches the load and you're not wasting power, so for example, you're not always static at maximum of say 20kw/rack cooling when you only need 10kw.” businesschief.com

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“THE TAS EDGE DATA CENTER IS THE RIGHT MODULAR PRODUCT FOR THE RIGHT TIME. OUR GOAL IS TO NOT ONLY HAVE PRODUCTS THAT FIT THE ENVIRONMENT TODAY, BUT THAT CAN ALSO ADAPT AND GROW AS THE ENVIRONMENT CHANGES TOMORROW” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

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trade-offs both as the technology matures and the market adopts it. This is why we take a step approach using best of breed designs and technologies today while continuing to innovate with future technologies that will be used asIT applications and hardware continue to evolve.

TAS is also developing hybrid solutions featuring technologies like cold plate combined with optimised air cooling, says Mann. “As we reach the limits of what we can do with air alone especially as rack power densities increase, you have to look at these hybrid approaches” he continues. “People are getting past the hesitancy of introducing water to a server as they better understand the IT density cooling challenges.”

Trends Mann highlights the long-term strategy for companies will be to focus on more efficient and consistent design.

“Whatever geography

TAS is also at the forefront of the nascent market for immersion cooling technologies with two phase systems. Cooling happens by the natural process of heat evaporation and cooling without consuming a lot of energy. “This technique optimizes the cooling of hardware and results in better cooling efficiency,” says Mann. “Compared to traditional air, liquid immersion cooling, is the best method to remove heat but as with any new or emerging technology, there are support

TAS ENERGY

1999

Year founded

Engineering Industry

233

Number of employees

TAS ENERGY

“TAS IS WELL PLACED TO ANSWER THAT CALL WITH ITS TAS EDGE DATA CENTER OFFERING” RON MANN

VICE PRESIDENT ENGINEERING, TAS ENERGY

a data center is in, modularity lends itself to a repeatable approach that can be deployed as standard, reducing waste and saving both time and money.”

Meanwhile, in the short-term, when companies run out of capacity, they’re looking for a fast turnaround. “Companies are asking: How can I modularise and get something in place today?” reveals Mann. “TAS is well placed to answer that call with its TAS Edge Data Center offering. You don't have to build a megawatt data center and only use half of it initially; modularity allows you to deploy and pay as you need it. We also have some customers who are treating these modular DCs as an expense versus capital because they’re considering the lifecycle of just a few years and then replacing it with another IT solution incorporating the latest IT technologies.”

With Edge evolution sparking a connectivity revolution, Mann is excited about the opportunities TAS has to help its customers realise new and cost-effective ways to deploy their applications. “This industry is ready for change to meet the demands of new IT and edge applications… The TAS Edge Data Center is the right modular product for the right time.

Our goal is to not only have products that fit the environment today, but that can also adapt and grow as the environment changes tomorrow.”

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APTIM

APTIM REVAMPS ITS WAY TO BETTER PROCUREMENT WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

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ADJUSTING TO INDUSTRY AND COMPANY CHANGES, APTIM LEVERAGES TECHNOLOGY AND REVAMPS ITS WAY TO BETTER PROCUREMENT AND SUPPLY CHAIN

P

eople. Process. Tools. Sometimes referred to as the golden triangle, it's an old concept that optimises the relationships between people, processes and the tools required to get the job done.

APTIM is using this age-old strategy to propel its supply chain and procurement transformation journey.

By ensuring the right people, with the right mindsets are given the right tools, APTIM is working to fix what's broken, and leveraging technology to optimise where it makes sense, and getting to better procurement in the process.

Punit Shah, VP of supply chain and procurement officer at APTIM, walks us through.

Digital Transformation; Setting the Pace and Challenging Mindsets "Private equity ownership has a very unique and a much faster-paced ask and requirement as compared to a traditional oil and gas firm whose structure and identity had a few iterations in recent times, owing to changes in ownership. In terms of establishing a base to grow from, the two backgrounds present quite a stark contrast.

"It took a lot for the company to bring those two together, but right now, our approach is to bite off as much as we can chew. We want to take small steps but make sure that they are: a) consistent with the strategy, b) they're relevant to the business in size, scale and scope and c) we can continue to build on that. We don't want to do something we have to backtrack from or restart because we didn't think of something further downstream. And so it's a very cautious and slow but deliberate approach.

"We started by ensuring we had the right people with the relevant backgrounds and

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APTIM’s Supply Chain & Procurement Transformation

skillsets to execute in the areas that are our responsibility. In order to do that, we needed to define what that breadth and depth of the supply chain realm and scope would be.

Once we got there and got the right people in the right structure, the next step was going through documenting our processes and making sure that we were rigorous about it. This ensured everybody was working off of the same framework. Then we looked at bringing in tools where it would increase efficiencies by making it easier for people to execute on those processes."

People First Redesigning better ways of doing things requires a diverse group of people, a wealth of experience, and most importantly, it requires flexible mindsets. "One really unique thing about APTIM is that we are very diverse in the sense that we are both diverse in the industries we serve and in multiple geographies. I've been in larger 366

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companies that don't have as wide a breadth of scope as APTIM does. We are in a lot of different areas, and so management, in general, is very accommodating and are very in tune with diversity and inclusion. They're very encouraging and employee-focused because, at the end of the day, our product is our service, and so the company really does value their people," says Shah.

He continues, "That flexibility supports people to be able to perform and stay focused on work and their function more than the traditional thought processes, where it was believed you have to have an office and a set work schedule. Having flexibility around all of those things has made us a lot more successful."

"This industry has been traditionally very resistant to change. It's in our DNA. They're known to be entrenched in the way that they've done work. One of the things I found is working well is that we're trying to foster the thought process with our teams that

APTIM

“ EXPERIENCE IS FANTASTIC, BUT IT DOESN'T MEAN THAT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT WE NEED HERE. I WANT YOU TO USE IT TO ASSESS OUR SITUATION AND THEN TELL ME WHAT'S RELEVANT AND HOW WE CAN MAKE THIS BUSINESS BETTER”

PUNIT SHAH TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN AND PROCUREMENT OFFICE INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION LOCATION: UNITED STATES Operations leader and executive achiever with broad experience in Energy, Construction, and Manufacturing industries, driving supply chain strategy and sustainability in cost-savings, profitability, and productivity.

Innovative and strategic decisionmaker with a focus on total cost of ownership, reducing costs, and optimizing efficiencies. Harness engineering background to deliver rigorous solutions to business problems.

Relationship builder and motivational manager able to adapt to skillfully maneuver through challenging circumstances and drive collaboration in delivery of organisational goals. Strong problemsolving talent.

PUNIT SHAH

your experiences are great and they make you what you are, and we value what you've learned, but you need to understand that not only are you allowed to, but you're expected to take those learnings and translate them into something that's more relatable to this business.

"Experience is fantastic, but its true value lies in being able to scale it and applying it to your circumstances. I want you to use your experience and knowledge to assess our situation and then tell me what's relevant and how we can make this business better. I think that's what really sets our supply chain team apart."

"Personally, I think a healthy company needs to be looking at growing and promoting talented employees. These days, people have multiple options, and a company owes it to an employee to support their growth and inversely, as they grow, the company does too. We are also one of the industries that are experiencing a talent gap and are very much exposed to the ageing workforce phenomenon. And so, one of the first things that I established when I came in was an

EXECUTIVE BIO

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN AND PROCUREMENT OFFICER, APTIM

The right materials. At the right place. At the right time.

Industry Measured Results SiteSense® Materials and Inventory Management helps customers keep track of the materials throughout their project lifecycle more efficiently.

40%

REDUCES BULK MATERIAL SUPPLIES

23%

IMPROVES CASH FLOW SAVINGS

16%

IMPROVES CRAFT LABOR PRODUCTIVITY

* CII Best Practices Guide: Improving Project Performance

Intelliwave SiteSense boosts APTIM material tracking and predictive analysis

Barry Peyton, Business Development and Strategic Partnership Manager at Intelliwave Technologies, outlines how it provides data and visibility benefits for APTIM We’ve been engaged with the APTIM team since early 2019 providing SiteSense, our mobile construction SaaS solution, for their maintenance and construction projects, allowing them to track materials and equipment, and manage inventory.

We have been working with the APTIM team to standardize material tracking processes and procedures, ultimately with the goal of reducing the amount of time spent looking for materials. Industry studies show that better management of materials can lead to a 16% increase in craft labour productivity.

With APTIM, we’re looking at early risk detection, through predictive analysis and forecasting of material constraints, integrating with the ecosystem of software platforms and reporting on real-time data with a ‘field-first’ focus – through initiatives like the Digital Foreman. The APTIM team has seen great wins in the field, utilising bar-code technology, to check in thousands of material items quickly compared to manual methods.

As things start to stabilise, APTIM continues to utilize SiteSense to boost efficiencies and solve productivity issues proactively.

Integrating with 3D/4D modelling is just the precipice of what we can do. Access to data can help you firm up bids to win work, to make better cost estimates, and AI and ML are the next phase, providing an eco-system of tools.

A key focus for Intelliwave and APTIM is to increase the availability of data, whether it’s creating a data warehouse for visualisations or increasing integrations to provide additional value. We want to move to a more of an enterprise usage phase – up to now it’s been project based – so more people can access data in real time.

There are three key areas when it comes to successful Materials Management in the software sector – culture, technology, and vendor engagement.

Solving problems comes down to better visibility, and proactively solving issues with vendors and enabling construction teams to execute their work.

Learn more Learn more here

APTIM

“ WHEN WE ARE EFFICIENT AND PUT IN PROPER CHECKS AND BALANCES IN PLACE AND SET CONTROL MECHANISMS AND STANDARDISATION OF PROCESSES, THIS ALLOWS US TO REDUCE WASTE AND EXECUTE MORE EFFECTIVELY ON OUR WORK FOR OUR CLIENT” PUNIT SHAH

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN AND PROCUREMENT OFFICER, APTIM

effective mentorship and succession plan, as it relates to a career ladder and a path that ensures room for growth and career advancement. It's a mutually beneficial event and one that is strategically important to us."

Process: Revamping Policies and Procedures Shah then looked at reviewing, refining and tweaking procedures and policies, ensuring all functions are designed to best support the varied industries APTIM services.

As Shah tells it, "In an ideal world, I would have liked the change management approach to be top-down, bottom-up. You want to approach it from both sides if you really want long term change to take effect.

We've gone through significant gyrations at our top level, and there's been a lot of changes in leadership. So we're still waiting for the long term vision to settle down. But in the meantime, the business can't stop or wait. So, for now, our approach is to work from the bottom-up.”

"Our strategy is to take a look at what processes we have or need to have in place in order to execute our function and what portions of that present an opportunity for 370

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$500m+ Revenue

1971

Year founded

10,000+ Number of employees

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automation or enhancement to where we can take that piece and make it a little bit better and then build on it.”

"When we are efficient and put in proper checks and balances in place and set control mechanisms and standardisation, of processes, this allows us to reduce waste and execute more effectively on our work for our clients."

"As a significant portion of what we do is project-based and often works on a costplus structure, our improved efficiencies get passed on to our clients. In the last 12 months, we've seen multiple instances 372

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“ WE'RE NOT HERE JUST TO BILL YOU AND LEAVE. WE ARE HERE TO PARTNER WITH YOU. WE’RE INVESTED IN YOUR BUSINESS” PUNIT SHAH

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN AND PROCUREMENT OFFICER, APTIM

APTIM

where we improved what we were doing, and we showed it to the client, and in the end, it brought more business because we were able to show that we're not here just to bill you and leave, we are here to partner with you, we're invested in your business."

Tools: Leveraging Tech with a Common Sense Approach "We're now using Microsoft's existing ecosystem of tools to manage more of our workflows. Microsoft is one of the bigger, leading-edge companies when it comes to innovation, and they’ve seen over the years the focus on supply chain and ERP systems, and they’ve really made significant strides and putting in investments and growing that out,” says Shah.

“We’re really just at the beginning of our relationship. We’ve picked up a few projects that are small in scale but very critical to

our work process, like automating the requisitioning process. If we can do it from a tool that exists with consistency, which has a stable platform, we won’t need to integrate other systems, which is a huge win. So that presents a very attractive option, and we’re very actively exploring that.

“It amazes me that a company the size of Microsoft gives us the preference and the treatment that they do. The relationship is mutually beneficial. They’ve been willing to listen to our issues, and they’re willing to invest in where we are as a company. They’re investing time and effort in understanding what our priorities are. And they’re not forcing solutions onto us. They’re allowing us to take the lead and supporting us in our path forward, and I have a lot of respect for that.”

Intelliwave Technologies provides new solutions to the construction industry to help increase “Time on Tools” for craft labour

APTIM | Making A Difference

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and improve site safety and have been an integral partner in APTIM’s success in finding better ways of doing things.

Shah expands, “As we were previously almost a hundred per cent manual when it comes to material management, Intelliwave Technologies is really bringing in a whole different dimension into the way we execute jobs. They bring a very niche and specific offering and have developed a tool specifically for material management, everything from managing your inventory and warehousing to receiving and allocating material to your job site, which on a construction site, depending on your scope of construction, can be extremely complex. We 374

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can have thousands or even millions of parts, and all of this ultimately is dollars. So if you're not watching it, you could risk losing it.”

"Ballooning inventory erodes margins, so we took it another step further and looked at how we could improve the planning on our jobs—for instance, leveraging smart technology for better inventory management. We can now see how much material we have and where. We can plan ahead and see if we have an upcoming shortage, and then we can take actions to prevent that shortage. We can also report and track where there is product damage, which allows us to then go back to a vendor and recover some of those costs.

APTIM

“ INTELLIWAVE TECHNOLOGIES IS REALLY BRINGING IN A WHOLE DIFFERENT DIMENSION INTO THE WAY WE EXECUTE JOBS” PUNIT SHAH

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN AND PROCUREMENT OFFICER, APTIM

"We've also taken the approach of developing work processes with Intelliwave and bringing them in to understand our business and have them give us suggestions and provide their expert view on what can and cannot be done. Intelliwave Technologies have been with us at multiple job sites, and they've been alongside us through all of our challenges, and they've earned our trust along the way. We share values, and we have a shared vision of where we want to get to. So it's a really healthy relationship based on a mutual understanding."

Indirect Procurement Savings Shah tells us how APTIM has managed to take control over indirect spend and capture

cost savings. "Indirect in the traditional sense is indirect spend that's not going into your end product. Well, our end product is our project. And so indirect for us really is more of our corporate and overhead and it includes everything from your travel to your office buys, your benefits providers, insurance companies and so on. In the APTIM world, in broad terms, Supply Chain has the responsibility for managing the outward dollars as they're being spent, but we share a responsibility with multiple functions to define what that is and who you want to spend it with.

"We don't want to dictate things, but we want to look at how we can make more strategic decisions. So we work with the functional group to determine the appropriate vendor base, and then we help manage the spend. In general, the approach has been to better define some of these categories and apply some supply chain disciplines to them, such as going through a rigorous RFP and taking a category management approach and applying the seven steps strategic sourcing process. We were typically very focused on and used to operating within that Gulf coast Baton Rouge area, so the value was in getting players to the table that were outside our usual geography.

"Prior to the transformation, everything was done in pockets with no aggregate view on spend. We've now established programs and have signed some contracts with key companies. We've also put in structure to protect us from liabilities and risk. And we've locked in pricing. So now we have a very clear reference for capturing savings from where we were to where we are. We've come a long way, and now we can rinse and repeat."

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POWER OF DIGITALIZATION WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE

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Michael Wells Vice President Supply Chain

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Michael Wells, VP Supply Chain, leverages digitalization to achieve quality, delivery and cost goals and to create time to focus on ESG objectives

D

ril-Quip, a leading manufacturer of drilling and production equipment for some of the planet’s most challenging hydrocarbon development projects, is using technology as a differentiator. With multiple, innovative, award-winning products to its credit, the company has broadened its technology focus with advanced software and data science to digitalise supply chain operations.

To Michael Wells, Vice President Supply Chain, the willingness to embrace technology and march to its own tune are what separates Dril-Quip from its competitors and allows the company to forge new paths into an increasingly digital future.

“We're very proud of our past and extremely excited about our future,” he says. “Historically, we have differentiated ourselves from others in the market by focusing on developing game-changing technology and enhanced products that significantly improve well economics, decrease environmental and safety risks and reduce carbon footprint. Now, we are applying advanced technologies to supply chain digitalization to move further down the path to sustainability.” businesschief.com

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Dril-Quip: one of the world's leading manufacturers of offshore drilling and production equipment

Dril-Quip is built on a history of R&D and engineering exceptional products, but to remain relevant and competitive in today’s global market, action towards Environmental Social Governance (ESG) concerns and delivering an experience beyond the linear vendor mindset is key. These goals are central to Wells’ digitalization initiatives.

Wells joined Dril-Quip in November 2018 as its first supply chain vice president. Previously, he worked across every major industry apart from food and beverage, medical devices and healthcare, and he is bringing that multiindustry experience to bear upon Dril-Quip’s sophisticated but, until now, fragmented supply chain.

“I was brought in to help centralise everything from category management and sales and operations planning, to demand planning and traditional procurement,” Wells explains. “And what was interesting is that, what started off as a disadvantage, being a little bit behind our market in terms of centralising 380

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“ We don't look at our suppliers as vendors.

We buy hot dogs from vendors” MICHAEL WELLS

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN, DRIL-QUIP

supply chain, became a massive advantage.

That’s because of two things. First, we didn't have an entrenched culture that we had to fight against from a supply chain standpoint.

Second, we didn't have the disadvantage of being the first mover in supply chain when it came to digitalization, so we were able to learn from a lot of other people's mistakes.”

The three ‘legs’ of digitalisation Dril-Quip manufactures a broad range of highly engineered products, including subsea

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MICHAEL WELLS TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN INDUSTRY: OIL AND GAS

and surface wellheads, subsea and surface production trees, mudline suspension systems, specialty connectors, liner hangers, drilling and production riser systems, tieback and blow-out preventor connectors and more — a comprehensive list that would fill dozens of column inches. Its primary customers are the major operators, integrated large independent, and foreign national oil and gas companies throughout the world. Ensuring these customers’ equipment needs are met involves an enormously complex network of vendors and other partners.

Digitalisation of the supply chain has been key to ensuring this network not only runs smoothly but adapts and evolves over time. Wells depicts digitalisation as a table supported by three legs, the first of which is data engineering. He draws a parallel here to Dril-Quip’s manufacturing and inventory processes: taking raw steel, transforming it through work centres and routing, and producing a finished product for the end user. “It’s the same thing with master data and data engineering,” he says. “We have

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: USA Vice President of Supply Chain for Dril-Quip, an oilfield services, and equipment manufacturing company.

Michael has over 20 years of leadership in supply chain and manufacturing in the Oilfield Services and Products, Automotive, Specialty Materials, Consumer Goods, Power Generation and Transportation Industries. At DrilQuip, created and designed the first corporate supply chain, functional team, integrating with manufacturing to execute an outsource model. Implemented global category management team, who led all domestic and international sourcing activities.

Developed logistics, sales & operations planning (SIOP), and warehousing leaders supporting 18 countries and four manufacturing centers in the United States, Singapore, Scotland, and Brazil.

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a master data process where we have this raw data and the metadata tied to it, and we put it through a series of processes in our system to get to the point where it becomes useable. It’s the exact same process that we would use for raw material.”

The second leg is the data analysis that turns finished data from the data engineering team into information, insights, and descriptive data that can be used to make decisions.

“ We have to have time to be able to go out and positively change the direction of where we're going” MICHAEL WELLS

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN, DRIL-QUIP

Wells’ third leg — predictive and prescriptive analytics — closes the loop. “We use insight from analytics to predict a lot of things, not only for the customer, but for the supplier. And we are able to use that insight to help influence how we work with our customers and how we work with our suppliers.”

So, what was the aim of this significant investment in data science? “We saw digitalisation as a way for us to use the exact same processes with fewer resources more effectively and more efficiently than our competitors and to deliver products to our customers in a more consistent manner,” Wells says.

Time was also an important factor in the digitalisation equation – a form of currency that Wells wants to spend developing the more intangible, though no less important, facets of the business: ESG goals for environmental stewardship and diversity and inclusion. businesschief.com

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“In supply chain, your day is usually split into two types of things: your goals and 'the storm’, which are the day-to-day tasks and challenges that come up. Now, to reach your goals, you must act upon those challenges effectively. Unfortunately, the storm often acts upon you if you don’t have the tools in place to rapidly resolve issues. With the proper processes, programs, and protocols in place, it is possible to make consistent progress instead of wasting valuable time dealing with the storm of the day. Two of the massive goals of our organisation focus on ESG — environmental sustainability and diversity and inclusion — but these are goals that are not typically achieved organically; we must take action to accomplish them.

“When we create time, like we are doing through digitalization, we gain a valuable resource that enables us to invest in, and act upon, our commitment to the critical practices and procedures and reasonable controls required throughout the supply chain, including contracts, processes, people, and suppliers at our worksite, to promote environmental sustainability. It is essential that we allow our folks to find and exploit those opportunities when it comes to reducing the carbon footprint of our operations, as well as help our customers reach their carbon reduction targets.”

Diversity and inclusion (D&I) is another ESG goal that is close to the heart of both Wells and the company at large.

Dril-Quip is working to increase the number of its employees that come from underrepresented groups and has developed outreach programmes with universities and nonprofits to support a more diverse pool of talent.

“By streamlining operations, we have time to positively change direction. Digitalization is an enabler because it provides the time 384

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YEAR FOUNDED

1,400

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Oil & Gas INDUSTRY

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necessary to advance these principles that we are 100 per cent committed to. We are convinced that our D&I initiatives will not only make us a better and more profitable company, but will improve our impact on society, culture, and the environment.”

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Profiting through partnerships According to Wells, Dril-Quip sees tremendous value in working with other like-minded companies to pursue mutually important objectives. Partnerships play a critical role, not just in fulfilling supply or services to support Dril-Quip’s day-to-day business functions, but also in shaping the company’s future.

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“ We saw digitalisation as a way for us to use the exact same processes with fewer resources, more effectively and more efficiently than our competitors” MICHAEL WELLS

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN, DRIL-QUIP

“We don't look at our suppliers as vendors.

We buy hot dogs from vendors,” Wells jokes.

“We don’t just say to them, ‘Just give us what we ordered, and we’ll pay for it’. We want something more from our suppliers and vendors; we want partners that truly connect with us. Traditionally, what you see is that a partnership is very ‘give and take’. It goes, ‘We want this, we want this, we want that’.

What we're trying to do is move towards an achievement-orientated relationship with our suppliers where we are working together toward the same goals.”

Würth, a leading supplier of everything from chemicals and components to tools, screws, and fasteners, is one such strategic partner that illustrates how this process of defining and working towards shared goals is working well. “With Würth, it's not them telling us what they're doing and how they're going to do it. It's not us telling them what we're doing, how we're going to do it. It's a shared sense of improving things for both companies by asking, ‘Why are we doing this?’.”

Collaboration between aligned partners is nothing new in business, but Wells explains that sharing values is not enough. In a healthy relationship, participants do not simply go with the flow. Wells is not only comfortable with constructive criticism, he encourages it.

“The most important question we ask is not, ‘Who is right?’, but ‘What is right?’,” he says. “Würth feels comfortable telling us where we're missing the mark because we've developed that relationship, and we're comfortable enough to listen to them because we value their opinion, and that’s powerful. That's a powerful way of looking at a partnership: to be able to say, ‘You supply us, and we're the customer, but your opinion businesschief.com

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“ We default on curious, and we want to encourage our partners to continue to share their ideas and insights” MICHAEL WELLS

VICE PRESIDENT SUPPLY CHAIN, DRIL-QUIP

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is respected so much that if you think we are wrong, we're going to listen’. We default on curious, and we want to encourage our partners to continue to share their ideas and insights.”

Wells believes these goals will pay dividends financially and in the way they impact stakeholders, even though the goals are not explicitly tied to cost-savings or revenue generation.

Digitalization evens the playing field In Wells’ estimation, digitalization has become an “equalizer”, lowering the barrier of entry for smaller, minority-owned, and local suppliers to engage in the oil and gas industry, where once the high level of required capital cut them off. “With the focus of digitalization, these suppliers are on an even playing field, whether they are a $5m company or a several billiondollar company.”

In the coming 18 months, Wells hopes to lean further on digitalization to anticipate customer demands and help shape their futures. Like an athlete, he says that “when a customer thinks they want something, we start warming up.” That means taking stock of the playing field and assessing the assets of the team to identify strengths and shortcomings to make the best start. “It doesn't mean we're jumping into the game.

It doesn't mean we know what action we’ll take, and it doesn't mean we're committed to doing anything just yet. It does mean that when the customer calls on us, we can move quickly. We can get in the game right away, without any hesitation. Digitalization is the underlying strength that allows us to do that.”

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WRITTEN BY: JOHN O'HANLON PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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Lumen addresses the dynamic data and

application needs of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR): Shawn Draper explains its evolution from telecom to technology

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he name is new; the enterprise is not.

Lumen’s origins go back to well before WWII as a local telecoms provider in Louisiana, still the location of its HQ. It was to grow into one of the USA's largest and most successful providers of telecommunications infrastructure and services, making a large number of acquisitions along the way. One huge competitive advantage it holds lies in its extensive fiber network. A name change to Lumen Technologies from CenturyLink in September 2020 reflected the way the company itself had already successfully integrated the technologies and capabilities it had accrued and developed as a telecoms leader with the ability to serve the needs of large corporations. Another new brand under the Lumen umbrella, Quantum Fiber, is a fully digital platform for delivering fiber-based products and services to residents and small businesses. Lumen continues to extend its existing 450,000-mile fiber network. This is the company's outstanding asset, with which few can compete.

Few know more about Lumen's subsequent journey from being a primarily rural telecoms provider to being a technology company with the ability to deliver network service and network capability at the pace of compute than Shawn Draper. Now VP of Enterprise Platform Engineering, he has evolved and

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Welcome to Lumen Technologies!

carried this vision forward to drive much of Lumen's network automation and standardization strategy, which is the basis for Lumen’s transformation from telco to technology platform.

Network at the pace of compute In its shift from telco to technology platform, Lumen changed its approach and determined the company would no longer continue to simply accrue capacity, managing discrete systems and running different products over the top, but neither would it seek the traditional solution of migrating the siloed systems inherited with multiple expansions and acquisitions to a common platform.

Instead, it embraced the concept of federated inventory that gives a holistic overview of all its assets and enables the company to view, consume, plan, manage 394

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and assure its network as a common asset irrespective of legacy systems and processes. As Shawn Draper explains: “We decided that our historical patterns couldn’t scale. As such, we sourced data from each of our systems creating a composite view that gave us a full topological look at our network, irrespective of systems and processes. We call this ‘colorless network’.”

Full horizontal and vertical visibility of the entire network inventory became essential, he says. Whichever way you look at a network, whether as a physical system, or a geographical information system (GIS) or indeed from the end-users viewpoint because they depend on human interaction, they will have holes like Swiss cheese. But if these data sets are overlaid, its appearance will be close to solid, and automated decision making will be much more reliable — and of course much faster.

LUMEN

“ Humanity's greatest achievements arise from their epic failures.

Make sure you learn from them, evolve, and teach others to do the same thing” SHAWN DRAPER

VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING, LUMEN

That's what gives Lumen the ability to tell a customer, within seconds, where they should be spending their dollars to optimize that investment. “When you have a data set giving you this level of visibility, you have the ability to drive the delivery of network at the pace of compute.” For customers, this means that provisioning and activation of network capabilities are taken out of the critical path. For logical changes, same or next day delivery is a reality. New service installation opportunities can be measured in days rather than the weeks to months that

used to be the industry norm. Automating standardized configurations is at the heart of this transformation, enabled by leveraging partnerships with leading innovators such as the OTDR network automation specialists Itential, and EXFO, which provided a centralized test orchestration system and strategically deployed verifiers across the network.

The benefit to Lumen customers goes beyond the speed of access — it goes straight to EBITDA. Customers today experience a level of flexibility in the network offering, thanks to technology, never before available.

They used to be limited by the network reach of the carriers; however, with the growth of carrier partnerships this has changed, says Draper: “Now we're able to move into a more dynamic service level that allows customers the flexibility to be able to utilize different network capabilities at different sites and pair it all together as an overall solution.” Lumen’s combination of its expansive fiber network, 180K+ lit buildings, and its Adaptive Network offerings of Dedicated Internet Access, traditional Virtual Private Networking and its SD-WAN based offerings, Lumen can provide a solution that meets the needs of its customer base.

SHAWN DRAPER TITLE: VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING LOCATION: KANSAS Shawn Draper is VP of Enterprise Platform Engineering at Lumen. He has held senior roles at Lumen and CenturyLink for eleven years.

Prior to this he worked at Sprint, and at Embarq.

He studied business administration at Kansas State University, graduating in 1999.

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How customers view Lumen's business is ultimately defined by how the business sees itself. The evolution of technology has been applied to everything Lumen does, from provisioning and activation through the ability to scan across the entire network topology, assess any layer 2 or 3 services that are impacted and tie it into the network visualization dashboard so customers can run their NOC (network operations center) from toolsets provided

by Lumen, in the user interface (UI) or API formats. “We are no longer talking about a telco or network company: this is a true technology company.”

The 4th industrial revolution (4IR) Our customer conversations are no longer limited by network products. “Today we are talking to our customers about applicationlevel services that permit them to meet their business needs without having to worry about the things that are not within their core competency. We have the ability to deliver low latency-based solutions and are creating the platform for businesses that they can build upon to create brand spanking new industries that have never even existed before.”

It’s this level of flexibility that offers our customers the ability to leverage our API enabled network to extend the reach of the public cloud to the metro and premise edge. It’s at this point that a company’s applications lose their historical limitations and new applications begin to bud. This combination of compute and network will drive change across all industries and create or fuel new ones. For example, self-driving cars, industrial robotics or the medical and pharmaceutical industries where it has made possible the rapid development, manufacturing and distribution of vaccines 396

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during the current pandemic, not to mention the analysis of data relating to their efficacy in controlling infection. “The ability to provide five millisecond latency to applications allows high-speed transaction capability over the top of the secure network, thereby extending your platform capabilities and not requiring you to invest in data center capacity.”

4IR leverages the power of data to drive automated transactions. Software development should no longer be driven by requests from operations.

LUMEN

“ When you have a data set giving you this level of visibility you have the ability to drive the delivery of network at the pace of compute” SHAWN DRAPER

VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING, LUMEN

In the 4th Industrial Revolution, speed matters. Businesses that are nimble enough to act on data faster than their peers are well-positioned to become market leaders.

They are able to spot new trends, identify potential process improvements, speed innovation and drive bottom-line growth.

The physical and virtual edge Customers will be increasingly looking for edge-based solutions to give them better performance of existing capabilities that they would currently be running on private businesschief.com

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or public cloud and bringing them closer to their users' location. Five-millisecond latency is essential, enabling faster, deeper and more actionable business intelligence through a rethought concept of network architecture that extends cloud computing resources right out to the edge of the mobile network, using 5G and the edge ecosystem.

Long gone are the days when a communications service provider (CSP) aspired to own its clients' stack, Draper believes. “No single industry can span all these functions. The companies that are most successful know how to create a platform that encourages others to build on top. There are millions of companies out there bubbling with great ideas: developing a platform-based solution is a form of crowdsourcing when you think about it! When you're crowdsourcing the consumption of your edge base capability,

“ Technology teams are delivering capability in anticipation of operational requirements, shifting from custom software development on a common platform” SHAWN DRAPER

VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING, LUMEN

you bring your core network along with it.”

Low latency fiber is Lumen's core offering (it has one of the biggest interconnected optical fiber networks in the world), and by adding an edge-based capability, it delivers platform capability that few competitors can

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“ If you want to lead people, you must make them believe in you because you believe in yourself” SHAWN DRAPER

VP OF ENTERPRISE PLATFORM ENGINEERING, LUMEN

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equal because either they don't have the network, or the hosting ability, or the public cloud edge, metro edge and deep edge capabilities that stem from Lumen's ability to deliver network at the pace of compute.

Changing the face of an industry If any one thing differentiates Lumen from its competitors it is its combination of network strength, data center footprint and extensive managed services experience in operating and integrating hybrid environments. It's able to bridge clouds, IT infrastructure and the edge for low-latency, high-capacity, secure workloads and applications. Lumen's ability to deliver compute on customer premises with near-zero latency, or within its deep metro facilities designed for 5 milliseconds of latency or better, provides customers with the capability they need to acquire data, analyze patterns in near real-time and derive value from digital interactions.

For a technology-driven enterprise, software development should no longer be driven by requests from operations, Shawn Draper summarizes: “Technology teams are moving too fast for that, delivering capability in anticipation of operational requirements, and shifting from custom software development to development on a common platform.

As 2025 approaches the network is increasingly dependent on network function virtualization (NFV): right now we have a hardware-enabled network, at our edge and at our core, but we are moving to high-density compute with virtual network infrastructure over the top.”

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LEVERAGING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IN THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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CNA’s VP of Transformation Carol Castelloni shares her insights on an approach that optimises workflow processes for the more than 120 year old organisation

C

Carol Castelloni VP Transformation, CNA Insurance

NA is one of the largest U.S. commercial property and casualty insurance companies. Founded in 1897, it is backed by more than 120 years of experience. Carol Castelloni, who leads the Transformation Office for CNA, talks about her role at the organization where she first started her career before rejoining them in 2019. “My career started with CNA, so it has been exciting to come back to where my insurance journey began.” In this role, Carol is responsible for driving enterprise-wide strategic initiatives. Her team delivers value through collaborative execution with crossfunctional stakeholders to optimize business performance, enhance operating models and lead CNA through modernization.

Carol has served the P&C insurance industry in a variety of leadership and advisory roles for more than 20 years. At CNA, she is tasked with overseeing a wide range of initiatives, and no two days are alike, much to her preference. With driving the continuous evolution of CNA as her top objective, Carol operates as a multidimensional thought partner for senior businesschief.com

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CNA Overview

“My career started with CNA, so it has been exciting to come back to where my insurance journey began” CAROL CASTELLONI

VP OF TRANSFORMATION, CNA INSURANCE

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business leaders across core functions like underwriting, operations and distribution.

Describing herself as a collaborative, accountable and empowering leader, she says “My team and I function as a nucleus for shaping and driving large-scale programs that are focused on maximizing efficiency, modernization, and growth.” In collaboration with CNA’s business stakeholders, Carol and her team analyze opportunities for improvement to design solutions and shape future roadmaps that deliver measurable value.

CNA’s strategic priorities influence transformations taking place across the organization. These include their commitment to deliver top quartile underwriting performance through industry specialization, technical excellence, optimized distribution, operational efficiency, and talent development. Carol and her team are constantly challenging the status quo by re-examining current ways of doing work across the spectrum of process, people, and technology to drive valuable impacts. Interestingly, transformation at CNA is not always a technology-first approach.

Instead, it starts by looking through the lens of the customers and distributors to assess opportunities for optimizing efficiency and effectiveness. Since joining CNA, Carol and her team introduced a new ‘learn-bydoing’ approach to quickly pilot ideas and opportunities, referred to as the Model Office. When asked about this method of innovating and executing, she says “We start small and adjust based on insights from people, and supporting metrics, doing the work in a new way. Then, we scale fast to achieve a broad impact.”

The Model Office framework applies business resources to new workflows while gathering qualitative and quantitative businesschief.com

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AAcccceelleerraattee YYoouurr DDiiggiittaall EEnntteerrpprriissee w wiitthhtthhee BBeesstt AAuuttoom maattiioonn PPrroodduuccttss M Maaddee ttoo W Woorrkk SSm maarrtteerr Avo AvoAutomation Automationis isthe thegold goldstandard standardfor for quality-first quality-first and and humanhumancentered centeredautomation automationproducts productsthat thatare aresimple simple to to use, use, extremely extremely intelligent, intelligent,and andcontinually continuallyresilient. resilient.The The Avo Avo Automation Automation platform platformdelivers deliversthe thebest bestcapabilities capabilitiesfor for process process discovery, discovery, test test automation, automation,and androbotic roboticprocess processautomation automation (RPA).

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CNA INSURANCE

impacts, such as service, time and quality.

Subsequently, Carol works with CNA’s Technology team to identify ways that digital enablers can expand and/or accelerate the desired outcomes. This has led CNA to embark on a digital transformation using artificial intelligence and machine learning to collect, organize, and analyze inbound documentations, such as submissions, loss runs, and supplemental forms, from agents and brokers. This significantly reduces timeconsuming manual workflows and improves the speed and accuracy of CNA’s processes.

Looking downstream, the digitized data can be leveraged for analytics and modeling 410

June 2021

purposes. The Model Office has been successfully embraced at CNA as an accelerator to process design and execution for Underwriting, Operations, and Analytics.

CNA is also employing a number of digital solutions to transform their processes and workflow. To respond to common challenges with information veracity (trusting the data) and velocity (speed of data), CNA deployed ThoughtSpot. This tool provides socially-enabled search capabilities and recognizes patterns that can also plug into AI/ML models. CNA’s business leaders and underwriters leverage this tool so they can quickly ask and answer questions pertaining

CNA INSURANCE

“ At CNA, we are not afraid to take transformation to the heart of our business processes. We do not believe in innovation on the fringes, but the best way to achieve our outcomes is to go right to the core and make a difference”

CAROL CASTELLONI TITLE: VP TRANSFORMATION COMPANY: CNA INSURANCE LOCATION: CHICAGO Carol Castelloni leads the Transformation Office for CNA. In this role, she is responsible for driving enterprise-wide, strategic initiatives and change programs. Carol and her team deliver value through collaborative execution with crossfunctional stakeholders to optimize business performance, enhance operating models, and lead CNA into a modernized organization. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Master’s degree in Applied Technology from DePaul University. Carol is an active mentor in the Women Impacting Leadership (WIL) group at CNA and volunteers with the College & Career Center for Illinois School District 203.

MICHAEL COSTONIS

to revenue, profits, and quality of business.

Harnessing the power of the Cloud in realtime is a big advantage to support digital transformation at CNA, so they’ve selected Google Cloud as its primary platform.

When it comes to fostering the culture at CNA, Carol believes that people are CNA’s greatest asset and they should be empowered to think creatively and problem-solve. “I actively seek out perspectives from my team and our business stakeholders because I believe their holistic input drives better outcomes, performance, and energy.” Carol is a naturally charismatic and motivational leader, with a keen focus on collaborative accountability. To this point, she goes above and beyond to articulate shared goals, support action-oriented progress, and recognize accomplishments.

Given her industry and leadership acumen, Carol also invests time to coach her team and mentor other resources as a way to

EXECUTIVE BIO

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, CNA INSURANCE

CNA INSURANCE

continually cultivate talent at CNA. “For me, mentorship is a two-way learning opportunity because I gain so much from the wide range of lively conversations,” she says.

One of her biggest mantras for a positive culture within her team is to keep it fun, as Carol believes that it is important to laugh and learn through shared experiences.

CNA is actively involved in the industry, serving on the Board of The Institutes and as an active member of RiskStream Collaborative, which is an industry-led consortium collaborating to unlock the 412

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potential of blockchain across the insurance industry. The company also supports IICF, APCIA, ACORD, Big I and PLUS, to name a few. It is important for CNA to be involved in these associations, as they bring together leaders to discuss and help solve some of the challenges facing the insurance industry today as well as plan for the future.

CNA relies on a combination of its own thought leadership as well as the latest technology from industry experts to help solve its clients’ challenges. CNA values companies with a strong understanding

“My team and I function as a nucleus for shaping and driving large-scale programs that are focused on maximising efficiency, modernisation, and growth” MICHAEL COSTONIS

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, CNA INSURANCE

of the P&C insurance industry as it relates to the company’s overall strategic objectives and functional capabilities. This synergy is important because it provides an ‘outside-in’ perspective on how CNA thinks about leveraging innovation. These experts also need to pivot quickly based on evolving business priorities, which enables CNA to accelerate momentum, increase capacity, and deliver value faster. Lastly, joint accountability towards outcomes as well as working with a company to define what success looks like up front and track

progress over time are equally important.

CNA has a very successful connection with SLK to provide high-quality automation solutions that support technology and business objectives. Carol adds, “SLK’s Avo Discover tool accelerates how we can document workflow processes, measure impacts on enhancements, and identifies future automation opportunities.” This allows CNA resources more time to focus on creative problem-solving for future designs.

Accenture is a long-standing relationship with a multi-functional, deep understanding businesschief.com

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“ We start small and adjust based on insights from people, and supporting metrics, doing work in a new way. Then, we scale fast to achieve a broad impact” MICHAEL COSTONIS

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER, CNA INSURANCE

CNA INSURANCE

of CNA’s business and technology environment. They provide thought leadership to support the company’s strategic needs and drive execution for specific priorities. Accenture has a proven track record for helping CNA address complex problems with innovative solutions that drive change across the organization.

Carol keeps a close pulse on market news and trends as a seasoned leader and shares her thoughts on the insurance industry’s approach to transformation, saying “The insurance industry is undergoing remarkable demands to enhance digital capabilities required to support the changing nature of risk, new product lines, and different distribution channels. It’s a critical time for insurers to focus on foundational priorities and build a dynamic path that can flex to address emerging needs.” When asked if she has any words of advice for her peers, she said “Transformation does not need to be over-engineered and feel overwhelming.

It can start with rapid experimentation and scale over time with incremental learning.

When you run into challenges, embrace them as learning moments and continually get better over time. Harness the power of change management and communication strategies to navigate organizational impacts along the way.”

As a closing note, CNA's Chief Operations Officer Michael Costonis shares Carol’s enthusiasm, “At CNA we are not afraid to take transformation to the heart of our business processes. We do not believe in innovation on the fringes, but the best way to achieve our outcomes is to go right to the core and make a difference.”

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AGILITY,

INNOVATION AND DIVERSITY WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS 416

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PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

EMERGENT HOLDINGS

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Michael Hicks, CIO of Emergent Holdings, tells us about the importance of customer centricity, culture and innovation in delivering the best products and services to their customers.

E “ We embrace diversity, business agility, and collaboration to deliver the best products and services to the marketplace” MICHAEL HICKS

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, EMERGENT HOLDINGS

mergent Holdings is a remarkably diverse business, operating in multiple industry verticals, including property casualty and healthcare insurance, as well as software and services through its Advantasure arm.

Its healthcare vertical is focused on Medicare Advantage, aimed at the senior market and individuals who are moving into retirement and seeking supplemental healthcare benefits. Emergent Holdings manages one of the premier Medicare Advantage plans in the US. Despite the variety and size of Emergent Holdings, Senior Vice President and CIO Michael Hicks says they essentially have a startup culture, focused on profitable growth and diversification. "We're constantly looking at new product offerings and new business ventures" he says. "Our vision is to be the leading national provider of innovative solutions that improve health and safety outcomes. Everything we do is centered around improving the well-being of our members and insureds."

"We want to be the best at what we do through leveraging our collective strength, industry expertise and focused strategies.

Innovation, business agility, and customer centricity are differentiators that enable us to be very quick in adjusting to opportunities in the market" he adds. businesschief.com

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Data is at the core of all their operations, which is crucial to delivering personalized services and experiences for their customers.

"There's a big shift happening in healthcare with the transition to value-based care" Hicks says. "We're delivering care to individuals with chronic conditions in their homes and at their convenience, leveraging communities to deliver a comprehensive set of services such as transportation and providing wellness education to improve health outcomes. Our technology powered by data is crucial to delivering these services while providing the best member experience possible."

As a customer-centric organization, Hicks explains that their employees must have a customer-first mindset. "We embrace diversity, business agility, and collaboration to deliver the best products and services to the marketplace. That's at the core of what a great digital company is all about – embracing the voice of the customer and empowering your workforce to create innovative solutions with the least amount of friction possible."

Over the last few years Emergent Holdings has invested in modernizing their core operating platforms to increase speed and

“Technology is one of the tools in my toolbelt, but I really pride myself on having the ability to influence change and solve problems” MICHAEL HICKS

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, EMERGENT HOLDINGS

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MICHAEL HICKS TITLE: SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

agility. This includes a major focus in their property casualty business of completing a multi-year migration to the Guidewire platform. "Legacy technologies are a major challenge in insurance, but we have continued to invest in our core processing systems, reduce technical debt and transition our application hosting from on-premise data centers to the cloud. We're excited about the possibilities because as we emerge from COVID-19, our core platforms will enable us to deliver differentiating digital customer experiences and be much more responsive to the market."

Having a very strong partner ecosystem has been key to Emergent Holdings’ success.

"Our primary strategic sourcing partner, HCL, has played a major role in enabling us to scale our IT operations and helping us create the headroom for our employees to innovate." Emergent Holdings also has a close relationship with Microsoft, and in 2020 attained Microsoft Gold Partner status in Data Analytics.

Equally important is partnering with startups, and Emergent Holdings has acquired several startup ventures to expand their product offering. In 2019 they acquired Symphony, a Silicon Valley-developed cloudnative health management solution designed by physicians and care management experts to solve the complex issue of value-based care and plan/provider coordination. Following this, Emergent Holdings opened a small office in San Francisco. "It provides us with a presence in one of the epicenters of innovation in the United States" Hicks says.

More recently they acquired DecisionUR, a cloud-based solution that supports their workers' compensation vertical by accelerating the workers’ compensation claim review process which enables highly responsive care planning for those injured on the job.

Michael Hicks joined Emergent Holdings, Inc. in 2018 as Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer with responsibility for leading an innovative, robust, and secure information technology function in support of Emergent Holdings’ portfolio of businesses.

With 25 years of active leadership in the insurance industry, Mr. Hicks’ previous roles include Chief Information Officer for Retirement Solutions and Corporate Technology at Guardian Life, and seven years with MassMutual Financial Group as Vice President of Shared Delivery Services where he was responsible for leading enterprise IT shared services and solutions delivery for MassMutual’s corporate business units. Mr. Hicks has a bachelor’s degree from Boston University and an MBA from Northeastern University’s D'AmoreMcKim School of Business.

EMERGENT HOLDINGS

Cloud-enabled digital healthcare transformation A Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Specialized Insights Service Providers, Q2 2020 A Leader in the Forrester Wave™: Application Modernization & Migration Services, Q3 2019

A Leader in Gartner Magic Quadrant for Data Center Outsourcing and Hybrid Infrastructure Managed Services, North America (June 2020)#

A Leader in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Managed Cloud Services 2019 Vendor Assessment*

A Leader in Everest Group’s Talent Readiness for NextGen IT Services PEAK Matrix® Assessment 2020 A Leader in the Everest Group PEAK Matrix™ Assessment for Cloud Service Providers 2020

*Jul 2019 | Doc #US43251618

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#Disclaimer: GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner’s research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

EMERGENT HOLDINGS

Another forthcoming new product is an AI and machine learning-based platform leveraging behavioral science to influence customer actions. "It allows us to create influencing campaigns, leveraging digital channels such as social media to gently nudge a prospect into making better Medicare coverage choices. The opportunities for expanding the application of this data-driven platform to various parts of the healthcare continuum are endless.”

“This is our version of Amazon or Googlelevel personalization based on deep learning and behavioral science.” They're aiming to take the new product to market in 2021.

As well as developing new solutions, Emergent Holdings has been digitally transforming many of their existing services.

One example is the digital expansion of Advantasure’s provider engagement solution which has been enhanced to seamlessly integrate with electronic medical record (EMR) systems, using automation and actionable insights that are unique to each patient at the point of care. The outcome is better

“ I'm a major proponent of democratizing innovation as the best innovation happens closest to the customer” MICHAEL HICKS

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, EMERGENT HOLDINGS

management of risk through enhancing the quality of care for members and improving the quality of claims data. "We've created a comprehensive digital solution that leverages EMR data and has integrated our processes into the EMR desktop, which provides an improved and more efficient experience for the providers we work with.”

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“ Diversity and inclusion is such an important part of who we are as an organization. I am the executive sponsor of our LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Network” MICHAEL HICKS

Working remotely as a result of the pandemic has helped Emergent Holdings better understand their customers, Hicks says. "Working remotely during COVID19 has really given us a strong sense of empathy for our customers and how it feels to navigate complex systems and processes. That empathy powered by design thinking will allow us to develop better products and services in the future."

Their plans for the future are to continue to focus on profitable growth, diversification, and innovation through empowering employees and leveraging their partner ecosystem. "I'm a major proponent of democratizing innovation as the best innovation happens closest to the customer. We will continue to embrace customer centricity and not lose sight of our vision of improving health and safety outcomes."

Another major factor of Emergent Holdings’ success is incorporating diversity into their workforce. "Diversity and inclusion is such an important part of who we are as an organization. I am the executive sponsor of our LGBTQ+ Employee Resource Network and am a proponent of allowing all of our employees to bring their authentic selves to work every day.” Additionally, they have implemented a comprehensive early career development program and are investing in developing a strong pipeline of STEM talent through partnering with organizations such as Girls Who Code and Black Girls Code. “We are continually focused on building a stronger and more diverse team, as diversity is what drives innovation."

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, EMERGENT HOLDINGS businesschief.com

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