Digital Bulletin - Issue 37

DIGITAL BULLETIN Issue 37

GAMESMANSHIP Three experts look at Microsoft’s deal for Activision Blizzard

GENERATION NOW Nokia’s Phil Siveter on the company’s 5G ambitions

DIGITAL-FIRST

ENERGY

We uncover how Centrica is combining new technologies and operating models to break from legacy and revitalise its British Gas residential energy business

JAMES HENDERSON Content Director

H

ello and welcome to another edition of Digital Bulletin what an issue we have for you dear reader!

As you’ll have no doubt already seen, the star of the show this month is Centrica, the largest of the UK’s Big Six energy companies and provider of gas and electricity to millions of consumers across the country.

As has been the case with just about every industry sector, the energy market has been shaken up in recent years through digitisation. And, as has been the case in banking, a new generation of digital-first players have stepped up to take on the status quo.

Expertly told by Ben Mouncer, the piece takes a deep dive into a culture shift at Centrica, the embrace of digital

and how it has impacted every corner of its business.

Elsewhere, we have an exclusive interview with Nokia’s UK&I’s CEO Phil Siveter, who tells us how the company is spearheading the UK’s 5G deployment plans.

“I feel, passionately, that 5G is going to change the world,” he says.

“Because of the way it’s built and because of things like its latency and its capacity, it’s going to be able to support mission-critical industries and allow them to transform in a way that perhaps hasn’t been possible before.”

We’ve also got our regular debate feature, where the subject is Microsoft’s blockbuster deal for Activision Blizzard, as well as plenty of other interviews and insights from some of enterprise technology’s leading lights.

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TALK TO US editorial@digitalbulletin.com business@digitalbulletin.com

Contents 06

Funding

12

Opinion

16

Case Study

34

Connectivity

In conversation with BlueVoyant’s James Tamblin

The financial demands of the digital age

How Centrica is building a new British Gas

16

Tracking the future of 5G with Nokia

06

34

+

44

4 60

64 44

50 50

+

Debate Three experts look at Microsoft’s blockbuster deal for Activision Blizzard

Future Brands need to shape a metaverse strategy

60

A Life in Tech

64

Closing Bulletin

Eve Maler, CTO of ForgeRock, reflects on her career

Mendix CEO Tim Srock writes for Digital Bulletin

MONTH IN REVIEW

SECURING ECOSYSTEMS Digital Bulletin speaks to James Tamblin, President of BlueVoyant UK, to find out how the company’s $250 million funding round will supercharge the cybersecurity business

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FUNDING

C

ongratulations on the Series D funding round, what are your initial thoughts on the raise?

I am pleased that investors see the value and competitive advantage BlueVoyant brings to customers to help them defend against cybercriminals, one of the most significant risks businesses and governments face. As a former military officer and an advisor to some of the UK’s most high risk organisations, I have seen first hand how businesses struggle to stay one step ahead of cyber attackers.

Could you tell us a bit about BlueVoyant and its ambitions?

BlueVoyant is a pioneering cybersecurity company with a vision of giving cyber defenders the advantage over attackers by delivering the technology, telemetry, and expertise required to defend against sophisticated cyber attacks. Despite an exhaustive array of cybersecurity tools available on the market, I have seen firsthand that cyber defenders continue struggling to stop adversaries from stealing their intellectual property and customer data, prevent ransomware attacks, and keep their networks and business systems operational.

BlueVoyant can defend customers’ ecosystems from internal and external threats. As organisations’ internal security becomes better defended,

Our technology is principally focussed on continuously monitoring a client’s third-party ecosystem, or supply chain, and swiftly mitigating any issues that may come up”

James Tamblin, President of BlueVoyant UK

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MONTH IN REVIEW

sophisticated attackers look for the weak link in. That weak link is sometimes a vendor or supplier in what is known as an organisation’s supply chain. Our technology is principally focussed on continuously monitoring a client’s third-party ecosystem, or supply chain, and swiftly mitigating any issues that may come up.

On top of that technology, comes a team of some of the world’s leading cybersecurity experts. Our team comes from some of the most advanced cyber defence environments in the world, including government agencies, like

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GCHQ, the UK Ministry of Defence and mission-critical enterprises.

We want to continue to deepen our advanced technology and proprietary data to continue to help UK organisations, and those around the globe, have best-in-class cyber defence.

How is the $250m going to allow BlueVoyant to accelerate what it is doing?

We plan to use the additional funding to continue to advance our technology, and to expand our global market penetration. We recently announced a new

FUNDING

four years, we have grown to more than 600 employees, and have earned the trust of more than 700 customers.

In addition to funding, Liberty Strategic Capital brings deep expertise in cybersecurity and new perspectives to help our continued rapid growth.

Security Operations Center (SOC) in Budapest, and our Asia Pacific and Japan expansion, with a new regional headquarters in Singapore.

Here in the UK and across Europe, we are growing our local presence to support clients by adding new talented individuals to our already strong teams.

How important was it to have new and existing investors participate in this round?

We appreciate the continued support from our existing investors, many of whom have supported us for years. In just over

Could you speak to us about some of the company’s highlights in 2021 and 2022 to-date?

We had a record-setting 2021, that included triple-digit growth momentum, key acquisitions, and an 80% increase in customer count. In addition, in 2021, the company increased its existing global footprint by expanding into more than 10 countries. Since 2018, BlueVoyant has grown annual recurring revenues at 117% on average.

One highlight I can’t forget is what led me to join BlueVoyant. In July 2021, BlueVoyant acquired Marclay Associates, which I founded with Jake Hockley, to form BlueVoyant UK. Jake and I agreed to the acquisition when we realised we could combine our extensive experience in working with high-risk government and private sector clients, and our leading digital forensics and incident response team, plus governance, risk and compliance practice, with BlueVoyant’s internal and external cyber defence. The combination brings an industry-leading platform to help organisations stay ahead ISSUE 37

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MONTH IN REVIEW

We had a recordsetting 2021, that included triple-digit growth momentum, key acquisitions, and an 80% increase in customer count”

of cyber attacks unlike any others in the UK or around the globe.

global expansion. We may also do acquisitions to enhance our product offerings.

BlueVoyant is growing quickly, what are your ambitions over the next 12 months?

We plan to continue to grow and keep up our growth momentum. Some specific milestones include enhancing our advanced technology, expanding our footprint in the UK, and continuing our

Longer-term, what do you think BlueVoyant can achieve?

We expect all our key business lines and divisions to continue to deepen their market penetration in the UK, and around the world, whilst continuing to bring coordinated internal and external cyber defence to our clients.

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FUNDING

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Something I want to include is that we recently were the headline sponsor of the White Hat Ball, a gathering of top UK cybersecurity officials to raise funds to support Childline and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), the UK’s leading children’s charity. I can’t think of an organisation that is more

aligned to my personal values and the values of my team, than the NSPCC. I believe protecting children is an essential role of society. I grew up in an era that technology wasn’t in our hands like it is now. I see the additional challenges young people have these days and I want to help them navigate this complex landscape. I am pleased through our sponsorship of the White Hat Ball we were able to do that.

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OPINION

What are the financial demands of the digital age?

Three key takeaways Michael D’Onofrio, CEO at Orbus Software, outlines the financial demands of the digital age and why trends are being accelerated

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MICHAEL D’ONOFRIO

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he pandemic can be blamed for many things - some good, some bad. On the one hand, research shows that it has played an important role in accelerating digital transformation for many businesses by a global average of six years.

Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadell said: “We’ve seen two years’ worth of digital transformation in two months.”

Pandemic-driven change also contributed to spiralling IT costs and complexity. This was apparent in the findings from our recent research, where we surveyed 1,000 IT decision-makers across the UK and the US. The research revealed that companies are experiencing an increas-

According to our findings, technology spend has increased by an average of 43% since the pandemic began” ing amount of technical debt. However, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Here are three key takeaways that reveal the financial demands of the digital age.

1. Tech spend has increased, but not just because of the pandemic

Michael D’Onofrio

According to our findings, technology spend has increased by an average of 43% since the pandemic began. The most common reasons for increased spending were revealed as onboarding new technology to support working from home and hybrid working (71%), rising technology costs (69%), and the introduction of new IT regulations (56%).

This increased spending left businesses with a different kind of problem: how to resolve the growing technical debt incurred by the adoption of these new technologies.

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OPINION

Technical debt is when a company borrows against a future effort by opting for a convenient - but perhaps not fully ideal - solution in the short term. This is an approach some businesses took during the pandemic. They adopted new tools to adapt to unforeseen circumstances quickly, focusing on benefits for an immediate relief and foregoing long term outlook.

For example, governments recognised the need to provide services for citizens online rather than face-to-face and so implemented solutions for the short term rather than considering longer term sustainability of the technology.

Interestingly, our survey showed that 45% of IT decision makers expressed interest in wanting to fix both short and

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long-term issues with new technologies.

In fact, 95% of them have a technology roadmap in place to help make informed technology purchases. These most commonly last for the next six (26%) or twelve months (37%). Meanwhile, 14% have an 18-month roadmap in place and 19% have one for two years or even longer.

However, not everything is to be blamed on the pandemic. Our survey uncovered that the majority (79%) say that all or most of the technology purchases over the past 24 months have been pre-planned, compared to 13% who say they have been last minute.

And if we want to drill down into geographical differences, the study showed that the UK is more prone to last minute investments than the US (17% vs 9%).

MICHAEL D’ONOFRIO

It seems that the pandemic caused a panic-buy of new technologies with a short-sighted view of their application, resulting in spiralling IT costs” 2. Here comes the technology drift Last year Gartner estimated global IT spend to reach $4trn in 2021. The question here is whether this investment in technology has brought tangible value to businesses. According to our survey, only 30% say that all new onboarded technology has done so.

What this shows is a technology drift – a growing gap between what companies are trying to do and what they actually achieve. Worryingly, 62% of IT decision makers surveyed said they are experiencing technology drift in their company.

As such, if you’re not taking an active role in refactoring your infrastructure, chances are you’re experiencing tech-

nical drift. This failure to recognise and adapt to change has a huge impact on growth. The solution? Frequent alignment between business and IT teams to ensure continued alignment to business goals.

3. The future is bright It seems that the pandemic caused a panic-buy of new technologies with a short-sighted view of their application, resulting in spiralling IT costs. To help solve these issues and better plan for long term tech purchases, 80% of respondents said their company has either onboarded (34%) or have plans to onboard (46%) an enterprise architecture tool. Almost half (47%) said they onboarded Enterprise Architecture because of rising technology costs.

Because of the critical role it plays in providing a strategic view change, EA helps align business and IT operation: 46% of our respondents said they wanted EA to help them reduce the gap between IT and business stakeholders.

As firms return to business-as-usual, CIOs need to look at the number of applications they actually use and the number of new technologies they have introduced and take a leaf out of the Japanese organising consultant KonMari’s book, to declutter and re-organise their infrastructure. As businesses look to become operationally resilient, this will be crucial in the years ahead.

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CASE STUDY

BUILDING

A NEW

BRITISH GAS In order to face the challenges of the residential energy market head on, Centrica embraced a bold new technological approach to rejuvenate its British Gas business. The architects of the New Energy Platform share their story, and reveal how this industry giant went back to the drawing board to create a nimbler, digitalfirst service for its customers

AUTHOR: Ben Mouncer PROJECT DIRECTOR: Richard Durrant VIDEOGRAPHY: Joe Clarke-Blomfield and Wendy MacKinnon PHOTOGRAPHY: Krystian Data

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CENTRICA

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CASE STUDY

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entrica’s leaders are accustomed to thinking big. British Gas Centrica’s energy supply business - is the largest of the UK’s “Big Six” energy companies, providing gas, electricity and services to millions of residential customers up and down the country.

But to fix an emerging problem, three years ago Centrica’s core technology team for residential energy decided to start small. Even though it was the established market leader, British Gas was slowly but steadily losing customers to a new generation of digital-first energy suppliers. The systems which supported British Gas’s residential energy business in 2018 were outdated, affecting its ability to respond to user needs. It was time to take action.

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“We thought ‘we’ve really got to do something quite radical or the energy part of our business is in deep trouble’,” says Kerrie Lacey, Head of Design and Delivery for what Centrica calls its “New Energy Platform”, or NEP. “There was a small group of individuals who sought to think outside of the box, and with a number of suppliers, said ‘how about we try something really different?’

Technically, and from a working and cultural perspective.”

The team adopted a “startup” mindset from the beginning of a brand new platform implementation. Alongside technology partners including ENSEK and Salesforce, Centrica started plotting out what the NEP might look like. In just 12 weeks, it built a “demonstrator” to

CENTRICA

put in front of Centrica’s board - this was approved, and the project began in earnest.

Technologically, Centrica’s approach has been to deploy best-in-class, off-theshelf cloud solutions, at the same time as investing heavily in its own team of engineers to build the systems which can deliver the most value directly to customers. Andrew Thompson, Head of Core Platform, explains more.

“I think of our architecture as having four different layers,” he says. “We have our customer channels - such as our customer portal, web chat, voice - and we have invested heavily in deep engineering in that space. Then we have our customer-centric layer, which is where Salesforce sits and

where it’s all about customer service. Next is our energy fulfilment layer, where ENSEK essentially delivers our utility service. And then the fourth layer is data, and collecting and analysing data from those systems.”

Only three months after NEP was demoed to the board, Centrica acquired its first residential energy customer through the platform. Lacey, who had been leading a small project cluster in Centrica’s Leicester office, described this moment as “absolutely momentous”. But then came the much more complicated part - the scaling of its technology and teams, and taking the first steps towards migrating millions of users from the existing platform.

“We entered into a new phase which was proving that this productionised stack

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CASE STUDY

Without the people, this is nothing, what we’re trying to do is impossible to do. And when everybody shares the same vision, which is the customer - they are the most important thing in all of this - then you can really achieve something amazing” Kerrie Lacey

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CENTRICA

could scale and potentially be the home for all of our seven million customers,” says Lacey. “It certainly started to get a bit serious, because there was a lot more interest in BGX [the original name Centrica had given to the platform]. We gave ourselves more of an identity at that point.

And we became what we call the New Energy Platform.”

Richard Morgan, as Technology Director, has been Centrica’s main sponsor for the NEP. Morgan has spent all of his career at the organisation - coming up to 25 years but believes this is one of the most exciting transformation programmes he has been involved in.

“There are two things I see as different,” he says. “The first is the technology we use makes it easy for us to focus on the things that add real value, like designing great customer experiences, and not have to worry about the underlying infrastructure that we have historically spent a lot of time working on. I think the other thing that’s great here is that this is a brilliant example of a single team working on something.”

Lacey admits that there has been some growing pains as that team has scaled.

Centrica has built distributed squads to oversee specific technical changes - it now has 13 such squads - and individuals have been recruited as much for cultural fit as for their skills. The team has steered clear of a hierarchical structure, with each squad empowered to make its own decisions.

The thinking behind this has been to preserve the agility of the team as it has had to scale. It’s a structure that has also allowed Lacey and the leadership group to retain visibility on all aspects of the project as its scope has expanded.

“We were really lucky because when you’re starting from scratch, you can pick any change methodology you like.

We chose agile,” she says. “Having a distributed number of squads is just great, because they are like little autonomous groups on their own.

“Without the people, this is nothing, what we’re trying to do is impossible to do. And when everybody shares the same vision, which is the customer - they are the most important thing in all of this - then you can really achieve something amazing.”

Customer-centricity has underpinned Centrica’s plans from the very beginning. Competition in the industry has grown intensely over recent years; in

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Follow the path of customer focus Right now it’s easy to get distracted, to lose sight of what’s important for your business.

Salesforce Customer 360 helps you stay on the path that focuses on your customers.

By connecting all your customer data across the whole of your business, it gives you one unified view of every customer and a clear path to keep customers happy.

Find out more: https://sfdc.co/utilities

CASE STUDY

September 2021 there were 44 active suppliers competing for residential energy customers according to Ofgem, though there has been some consolidation since given market conditions over the last 12 months. Regardless, British Gas has been redesigning its offering with user experience at the core in order to attract and retain customers.

Technologies and approaches have been chosen based on how well they can deliver measurement and feedback on customer activity. The team now has

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a wealth of insights on how users are interacting with the platform and how the platform itself is operating.

“Our technology really underpins that, and enables us to do that in a way we could never have done before,” says Thompson. “For me, the most exciting part is seeing the feedback from the customers and having that real-time operational insight. I get a real thrill out of seeing people use things for real. It’s not just a design on a page - we have real people interacting with our real systems.

CENTRICA

In Partnership: Centrica and Salesforce Salesforce’s industry-leading software stack, which unifies marketing, sales, service, commerce, and IT, enables Centrica to deliver personalised customer journeys

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CASE STUDY

“There are so many things that come up that you would never have thought of, things that we think we’ve done well on and people just don’t use, or we change something and it has a huge impact on how people interact with us. Seeing that feedback in real time is really fascinating to me and I think it’s a bit of a game changer in our New Energy Platform.”

A fresh approach to data has made these outcomes possible for British Gas. The company has plugged multiple historic data sources into a single data lake, meaning the data can be used to inform the technology team as it continues to grow out the New Energy Platform.

Emma Kissock, Head of Data Platforms, has led the mission to democratise data during the scaling of NEP. This has involved the launch of new tools for data visualisation and cataloguing, and giving accessibility to data science and analytics teams working right at the cutting edge.

“It’s very rare that you get an opportunity in a business like Centrica, which is so big, to start again,” says Kissock. “I’ve got a really great team around me, and we can just test-andlearn different things, according to the

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CENTRICA

For me, the most exciting part is seeing the feedback from the customers and having that real-time operational insight.

I get a real thrill out of seeing people use things for real” Andrew Thompson

customers’ needs. We want to put customers at the centre of everything that we do and that’s particularly important in data.

“There really wasn’t any concept of data being available for the whole organisation before. We just wanted a place to centralise it - so bringing all of our data sources in, Salesforce data, ENSEK data, all stored in one place. I think it’s so important that we’ve got a data lake which works for everybody.”

Salesforce and ENSEK have been critical partners to Centrica throughout the journey. They each formed a part of the cross-functional team at the concept stage and have adapted their industry-leading solutions to meet Centrica’s requirements for the NEP. In the case of Salesforce, Centrica has tapped into many components of its Customer 360 offering including its specific cloud for energy and utilities, its Marketing Cloud, Tableau CRM, and MuleSoft to connect different systems, applications and data sources. The partnership has enabled Centrica to understand its NEP customers faster and in more detail.

“Salesforce has been really critical in that digital-first journey for us, it has been a real accelerator,” says Thompson. “Salesforce, to me, always comes across as less of a team and more like a philosophy and a lifestyle. It has a very strong culture which it’s bringing to us. And it’s really proved itself ISSUE 37

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Energy is at a turning point Energy suppliers need to undergo a radical digital transformation in order to stay relevant. This means using the right technology to maximise time spent on innovation and the customer.

In order to be successful as energy transitions over time, energy suppliers need to dedicate their focus to 3 key areas to remain flexible and support customers: Transformation, Innovation, and Acceleration.

ion at m

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Transform: Unlock the greatest possible value, using technology and expertise

Ac

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Innovate: Enable the mass adoption of clean tech so cutomers can make effortless, ethical choices

Accelerate: Create feedback loops and operating principles that increase agility & reduce time to value

ENSEK provides technology that manages the full customer lifecycle of an energy consumer. We support energy suppliers on their digital transformation journeys by removing complexity and allowing them to focus on what matters - their customers.

Find out more at: www.ENSEK.com

“ENSEK is the core of our technology solution.

As a tool it does so much of what we need to do, thanks to the flexibility of the platform and technical underpinnings.”

Richard Morgan, Technical Director, New Energy Platform - Centrica

CASE STUDY

nobody gets upset. We’re all driving for throughout the journey that we’re taking the same thing, which is to migrate these it continues to bring out new products, it seven million customers.” continues to be best-in-class.”

The scale of the migration is unprecENSEK provides its SaaS platform edented in the UK’s energy industry. At enabling British Gas to quote, sign-up, the time of writing, Centrica had moved bill, collect and service in real time. Built in the cloud, the platform delivers flexibility, approximately 200,000 of its customers onto the platform. Its technology resilience and scalability for energy leadership team spent the early companies in an increasingly-digital part of 2022 mapping out its and highly-regulated environment. plan to accelerate The two companies and complete the solidified their migration, and the long-standing continual addition collaboration of new capabilities by agreeing an will support enhanced strategic that process. partnership for Morgan admits the the NEP in August team feels a great last year. sense of respon“ENSEK has sibility to provide a some wonderful digital service which individuals who are delivers affordable hugely talented in the renewable energy technology space,” and a simplified experisays Lacey. “This means its Kerrie Lacey ence for its customers. technology is always going to “We’re implementing a solution for be leading-edge, which is one of the things such an important service for so many that really attracted us to the platform. customers in the UK,” he says. “I think “What I love about the relationship with the last few months have highlighted to ENSEK is that it’s very open. I’m happy us all just how important energy supply is to be challenged and I can have a similar to everybody, and we’re very, very aware conversation with them. I think that shows of the challenges around energy prices the maturity of the relationship, that we right now. can have those open conversations and

We were really lucky because when you’re starting from scratch, you can pick any change methodology you like. We chose agile”

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CENTRICA

In Partnership: Centrica and ENSEK ENSEK’s SaaS platform allows Centrica’s NEP customers to take more control of their account, and to understand, manage, and control energy consumption and bills

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It’s very rare that you get an opportunity in a business like Centrica, which is so big, to start again” Emma Kissock

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CENTRICA

“As well as scale, I think some of the complexity of what we do is really interesting. Our ability to deal with that number of customers and our ability to deal with the amount of contact you get from that is really going to prove the effectiveness of these technology solutions.”

The bigger picture for Centrica, Salesforce and ENSEK is supporting customers amidst a shift in the very fundamentals of the energy industry. The transition to net-zero, electrification and the roll out of electric vehicles, and the growth of the smart home are just some of the transformational changes directing organisations in the sector.

Morgan sees the team’s investment as an investment in the future of Centrica and the UK’s energy infrastructure.

“I think our ability to help the country move to net-zero is right now constrained by the fact that our existing systems are complicated,” he says. “By having the NEP, we can implement really interesting tariffs, interesting ways for customers to engage with their energy, and we can be better able to implement products that will encourage customers to micro-generate and for that micro-generation, if necessary, to be brought back into the grid.

“That makes a big difference, I think, for the whole country. What this programme does is it gives us the ability to develop in that area at the speed that we’re going to need to develop.”

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THE 5G FUTURE The Huawei ban has pushed Nokia to the forefront of the UK’s 5G deployment plans. Phil Siveter, CEO of Nokia UK&I, talks to Digital Bulletin about why this technology has been predicted to forever change the future of telecommunications

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

W

hat does it take to head a major company during a time of crisis?

A year ago, in the midst of the COVID pandemic and while the UK was still working through the changes brought forth by Brexit, Phil Siveter took on the role of CEO of Nokia UK and Ireland.

He has been in the telecoms sector since before the dot-com bust, through the rise of broadband, smartphones, 3G, 4G and everything else in between.

Now, he wants to bring his 20 years of experience in telecoms to lead Nokia’s 34

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deployment of the technology of the future: 5G. Speaking in a calm voice that doesn’t reveal the weight of his responsibilities, Siveter talks to Digital Bulletin about the importance of 5G technologies to transform the UK - and the world at large - and discusses his main concerns upon becoming the head of Nokia in the country.

“It’s a relatively easy answer: people were the absolute priority, first and foremost,” he says. “I have the absolute privilege of looking after all of our

NOKIA

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There’s definitely a pride regarding the work we’ve done over the last year or two, and rightly so, I think” Phil Siveter

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customers and all of our people here in the UK and Ireland and I wanted to ensure we continued the good work.

“Nokia was very vocal about taking advantage of the hybrid work model.

And it was about ensuring we continue to develop the environment that allowed our people to still be successful in their roles as well as safe and secure.”

However, companies like Nokia have not only transitioned to hybrid work models - they have been key to making them possible in the first place.

During the COVID crisis - and ever since - the demand for broadband communication services has soared, with some operators experiencing as much as a 60% increase in internet traffic compared to before the pandemic, according to OECD. And this trend is not expected to change.

Industry sources estimate that data traffic will surge throughout the region, quadrupling overall by 2026.

The telecommunications ecosystem has become a vital pillar of society. While the rest of the world was waking up to a new way of working that required a reliance on connectivity, industry partners took on the responsibility of ensuring that the networks could withstand the surge in traffic. While the streets were silent, they kept the world turning.

“I think the pandemic was less of a wake-up call for the telecoms industry,

NOKIA

and more of a wake-up call for the countries around the world who realised the importance of telecoms very quickly,” Siveter says.

“Almost overnight, we moved from a situation where we were in offices, industrial parks, campuses and factories doing our day-to-day work to trying to operate over the telecoms infrastructure.

And it became very clear very quickly that telecoms were absolutely critical for people to be able to operate at home.

“Here in the UK and Ireland, what was fantastic was how agile and flexible the telecoms industry was able to respond to that massive change in consumption of services.”

During this time, Nokia stepped up to the challenge of supporting its customers, who were seeing a huge

increase in demand as well as a change in the usage times of the network. In the week between March 12 and March 19, 2020, Verizon’s total web traffic increased by 22%. Since then, BT has reported a 35% to 60% increase in daytime weekday fixed broadband usage, and similar data was found from Korea, Japan and Spain. Specifically, telcos saw a rise in demand for streaming and video conference services, notably the most bandwidth-intensive applications on the internet.

Despite the challenges, the networks held up, and Siveter is determined to continue this work, which is still far from over.

“There’s definitely a pride regarding the work we’ve done over the last year or two, and rightly so I think,” he says.

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CONNECTIVITY

Now, with a view towards levelling up the country in the post-COVID world, the UK and Ireland are making huge investments in CapEx, and particularly in the technology that has been predicted to determine the years to come: 5G. In 2021 alone, over 170 commercial 5G networks were launched by operators globally, with more than 75 of those in Europe. This trend is expected to continue into 2022 and beyond, with the increase 38

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in demand for 5G stand-alone networks and the UK government’s call for nationwide 4G coverage and 5G coverage for the majority of the population by 2030, where Nokia has a key role to play.

The UK’s 2020 decision to ban all of its mobile providers from buying new Huawei 5G equipment, ended a long relationship between BT and the Chinese technology giant. However, shortly after, Nokia struck a deal with the

NOKIA

I feel, passionately, that 5G is going to change the world” British telco to replace Huawei in its 2G and 4G networks and provide 5G equipment and services at 11,600 BT radio sites across the UK, becoming its largest equipment provider and one of the drivers of 5G technology in the country.

“Nokia is one of the world’s leading providers of 5G technology,” Siveter says. “We’ve won 5G cases across the world because we have really, really great technology. That’s no different

here in the UK, where we are very proud of our strategic partnership with BT. “I feel, passionately, that 5G is going to change the world. Because of the way it’s built and because of things like its latency and its capacity, it’s going to be able to support mission-critical industries and allow them to transform in a way that perhaps hasn’t been possible before.”

The past decade has witnessed a significant transformation of the digital industries. Sectors like banking and shopping have largely transitioned their services to the online world and moved their infrastructures to the cloud.

However, this has not been the case in the physical industries - yet.

These industries are characterised by inflexible legacy systems unable to accommodate modern digital solutions.

A 2020 report by IDC and Seagate found that the manufacturing sector has one of the lowest rates of data growth while a Deloitte survey stated that only a quarter of manufacturing companies could be considered “digital transformation frontrunners’’ The continued use of antiqued technology and network infrastructure has kept these industries from realising their full potential.

But it is never too late to change and 5G might just be the holy grail that the industry is waiting for - or so Siveter believes.

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Nokia campus in Espoo, Finland “5G is going to be a differentiator, there’s absolutely no question about that,” he says. “Those businesses that can take early advantage of 5G will be able to differentiate themselves, whether that be in terms of their cost or the quality of services, such as the flexibility and agility they provide to their customers.

“We’ve certainly seen here in the UK a real demand for private 4G and 5G networks, as the physical industries try to understand what this means in terms of transforming their businesses. It’s an exciting time here in the UK. And this is why Nokia is so focused on building up technology to address those markets.”

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growing steadily over the past few years as the company helped these industries transition to the digital era. So far, Nokia has set up 20 private 4G and 5G networks, and its CEO is convinced the demand for them will continue to accelerate in the months to come.

One of the places in which the benefits of 5G networks can be clearly seen is with Nokia’s work with Highways England.

From improved safety with advanced traffic management systems and real-time communications to reducing congestion with roadside services that utilise vehicleto-everything communications, 5G can greatly impact and change the face of motorways of the UK. “We provide the underpinning IP connectivity that supports the next gener-

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ation of the smart motorways,” Siveter says. “We’ve been supporting Highways England for many years, in various capacities, and we look forward to continuing developing relations with them.”

Another great example of the potential of private networks are ports. Because of the size and height of the container stacks, ports are not an easy place to get the connectivity needed to track containers or apply smart solutions.

However, the health and safety of their workers depend on it. If people and vehicles are not in the right place at the right time, terrible things can occur.

In collaboration with Verizon, Nokia is providing the networking infrastructure to supply the Port of Southampton with private 5G. The facility will be the first UK mainland port with a private 5G network.

From autonomous guided vehicles to predictive maintenance and safety monitoring, the port’s new network will open the door to endless opportunities.

“We are now deploying a 5G network across the entire port that provides seamless connectivity for all of those devices and services,” Siveter says.

“This will have a dramatic impact on the productivity of the port. And we’re replicating that across the world.”

In addition to improving cost-efficiency and productivity, digital tools can also be a key part in many companies’ transition to more sustainable ways of

working, particularly when it comes to the physical industries, which are still some of the world’s most polluting sectors. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, the transportation, energy and manufacturing industries account for 29%, 25% and 23% of global greenhouse emissions, respectively. Together, they make up more than two thirds of humancaused CO2 emissions. Only a digital transformation can change this.

“There’s no green without digital,” Siveter says. “The physical industries which haven’t yet gone through the

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digital transformation are where we need to focus if we’re going to address this global problem.”

During COP26, Nokia expressed its view of technology as a fundamental enabler of the digital transformation needed for fighting climate change and pledged to achieve 100% purchased electricity from renewable sources by 2025 to power its offices, R&D labs, and factories.

But sustainability is not just about the environment. A key part of making a company sustainable is ensuring its preparedness to take on whatever the future might hold. Over the coming years, Siveter predicts an acceleration in the uptake of 5G technologies to ensure that companies are both flexible and robust. However, for this transformation to make a lasting impact, the people must learn to understand the technology, and change accordingly.

“We, as technologists, understand how this works,” Siveter says. “But translating that into the specific vertical needs and making sure that these industries really understand what it means for their business and how it can deliver is a really important focus.

This is why in Nokia, we’ve set up vertical industry expertise - in manufacturing, in logistics, in the public sector and others - so that we can help these industries understand what this technology can do for them.”

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Beyond 2022, 5G has been hailed as a game-changer. Its deployment is expected to lead to $13.2 trillion in global economic value and generate 22.3 million jobs in the world’s value chain alone by 2035, according to PwC. The technology will realise Industry 4.0 use cases that include ultra-secure networks, asset-tracking, and in-service management and optimisation tools. Moreover, according to O2, the introduction of 5G to manufacturing processes could take up to 40 Mega-

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Those businesses that can take early advantage of 5G will be able to differentiate themselves, whether that be in terms of their cost or the quality of services”

tonnes of carbon out of the economy within the next decade.

Nonetheless, more exciting than the use cases we know 5G will power are precisely the ones we have yet to discover.

“Nokia has the new vision that we will create the technology to help the world act together,” Siveter says. “That summarises brilliantly where Nokia is going to focus over the coming years. It is all around us creating a technology that’s going to provide more inclusive access across the globe to healthcare, to work to

education, to help in climate change, and so on. I’m pretty motivated about that.”

After years of suspense, a pandemic and a climate emergency, 5G technologies have made their way into the mainstream and are now changing the face of the UK, and the industry at large. As Nokia’s new national leader, Siveter is determined to ensure the company plays a key player in this transformation. But will he - and 5G live up to the heightened expectations?

Only the future can tell.

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GAMING INTO THE FUTURE In this month’s debate, we ask three experts: What does Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard mean for the future of the gaming industry?

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Consolidation Michael Metzger,

Partner, Media & Tech Investment Banking, Drake Star Partners

Gaming is a segment within entertainment larger than any other, so companies are spending a lot of time trying to get a share of that.

But consolidation didn’t happen in a year. In 2020, we saw a little over $30 billion worth of deals - that exploded in 2021 to $85 billion in overall deals. With the Microsoft Activision deal happening in January, we are predicting that in 2022, we’ll see an overall deal value of about $150 billion.

In this context, the Activision deal was not totally surprising. There have been discussions that Activision was going to be acquired for years, and Disney

was a hot candidate for a long time.

From Microsoft’s perspective, the value of Activision’s stock has dropped a lot compared to last year and there were rumoured to be internal problems within the company, so you can argue that they are actually buying Activision at a discount and capturing one of the best and most profitable IPs in the gaming space in the process.

Another key initiative within Microsoft is to build up the subscription base for the Xbox Game Pass service.

They currently have about 250 million subscribers. And with Activision coming in with 400 million monthly

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active users, they must have thought that, with a portion of that being put on Game Pass, that could probably help build up the subscription service significantly and make sure it’s not going on any other platforms, maybe what Sony or some other entities are doing.

Over time, the importance of the hardware component - whether that’s an Xbox or Play Station - will get smaller.

In 10 years’ time, we might not have any gaming hardware anymore. And, from that point of view, building up a subscription service that could really be consumed in almost any device, was one of the drivers on the Microsoft side.

There has been a tremendous amount of money flowing into the gaming industry in startups. In Q4 last year, there were over 200 financing rounds announced for raising about a little bit more than $4 billion.These large investments are creating a whole new ecosystem of future unicorns. It’s not always easy to predict which one of those 200 companies is going to have an amazing hit, but a certain number of them will.

With all this money flowing into the industry, we’re building the next major gaming companies of the future. And to me, personally, that’s super exciting.

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Technology is key Eva Rez,

Investment Manager, Edge Investments

Gaming is a very exciting industry. It’s currently a $180 billion market, but it’s still just a fourth of the value of the video market, which is around $650 billion.

There’s a lot of headroom there and that’s why big tech companies are so excited about the space.

Looking forward, there will be a “de-risking” of the gaming industry.

Currently, only 5% of games make money, so the monetisation aspect is still not solved. The making of smaller studios profitable and reducing the risks in the industry; that’s the real challenge.

Currently, there’s a lot of competition around content. The gaming sector gives you the opportunity to either create new IPs or to create content around existing IPs, and many companies are going down that path to achieve a better position in the market.

Moreover, it allows you to create very valuable franchises. If you think about Netflix, they are creating content with 12,000 employees, and an investment of $20 billion per year, while Fortnight orig-

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As an investor, I would put my bet mainly on the underlying technology that can facilitate the future of gaming and the future of the metaverse”

inally created content with 2025 developers and now has $4 billion in revenue, and 70 million monthly active users.

However, gaming has a lot of potential beyond content acquisition. It allows you to create whole ecosystems, where you can collect data on your players, create events, merchandising, etc. We now live in the era of subscriptions with Apple having subscriptions for movies, games, fitness, and music, and other players doing the same. So I see that there are a lot of very attractive points in the gaming sector.

Content is really important. But right now, as an investor, I would put my bet mainly on the underlying technology that can facilitate the future of gaming and the future of the metaverse. That’s where we can get the multiplayer aspect and reach global audiences.

The true metaverse is not going to be a bunch of franchises or separated universes. It should be a platform where you can, as a user, move between different universes, and take your identity or digital assets and your avatar, with you from one universe to another. That interoperability piece will be crucial to create a real metaverse and, even Microsoft is doing that with their Game Pass.

Right now, the first step is really to create the building blocks of the metaverse, which comes down to the underlying technology: cloud computing, hybrid solutions, computing power and network, etc. It’s fundamental to develop the technologies that create these immersive experiences where people can socialise and come together - that’s where I see value at the moment.

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Avoid the innovators’ dilemma Patrick McFadin,

VP of Developer Relations, DataStax

In Silicon Valley, we live and die on the small startup that turned big. When I see the large acquisition, I worry about the gaming industry in general and the risk of getting stuck in innovator’s dilemma if we’re not careful.

It’s easy for one, one, two, three people to create a blockbuster game like Wordle. That is the fun and innovative part of the gaming industry. I don’t want to see the gaming industry get

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into a place where they just don’t have any room for innovation, because that’s what’s going to make it grow.

Mobile has changed gaming. Casual gaming has exploded so much in the past few years, especially around the pandemic. There’s also a lot more accessible technology giving people the ability to do more with less. Cloud has brought a lot of equity to tech, and created better tech startups that don’t

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need a huge budget, so they can get going faster. I hope that keeps fueling into the future, especially as we start getting into really interesting things like VR and AR, which are emerging.

There’s a lot of excitement and delusion around the idea that “Facebook is gonna own everything”. But gaming comes and goes. Roblox was once the hot kid on the block and ow it’s completely burned down. So there’s a whole lot of companies out there like PlayStation like Sony, waiting for that moment.

Moreover, platforms like Steam are starting to steam around VR, making it its fastest-growing segment. But the cloud gaming and technology centralisation is still going to be mitigated by the companies that help deliver that last mile. Right now it’s to a device, like a

I don’t want to see the gaming industry get into a place where they just don’t have any room for innovation” gaming PC or a console, but eventually, it’ll be the metaverse. The space is ready for disruption.

If you look at what’s happening in that industry, there’s so much room for innovation. The pandemic broke us from this idea that you can do things virtually and technologies like the metaverse and AR and VR are just gonna ride on the coattails of that.

We let the genie out of the bottle, but we need to keep the accessibility.

We have to keep things moving in technology so that if someone wants to quit their day job to go create a gaming startup, they have the ability to do that.

We got some challenges ahead of us, but I think we’ll make it work and it’ll change the whole world again.

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THE MATRIX OF THE METAVERSE Hamza Khan, co-leader of McKinsey & Company’s Marketing and Sales Practice in the UK and Ireland, speaks to Digital Bulletin about how brands can begin to shape an effective metaverse strategy

AUTHOR: Beatriz Valero de Urquía

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ny science-fiction fan is familiar with the concept of the “metaverse”. Initially coined

by Neal Stephenson in his 1992 novel Snow Crash, the term refers to a fully realised digital world that multiple people can inhabit at the same time.

Think Ready Player One, Tron, or The Matrix. Now, 30 years after its conception, the metaverse might be ready to leave fiction forever.

Initially driven by video game platforms’ use of virtual and augmented reality technologies (AR/VR), Silicon Valley sees the transition to a real-time and completely interconnected digital experience as the next logical step in the evolution of the internet. Technology leaders such as Mark Zuckerberg envision a world where users move freely between online platforms, with their data automatically transferring from one to the other - a world where people pay with blockchain and buy non-fungible tokens.

But who will realise this virtual vision?

Recognised by Vault as the most prestigious consulting firm in the world, McKinsey & Company serves 90 of the 100 largest corporations globally, playing a key role in their decision-making processes. The firm has led the adoption of every significant business trend in the past century, including the rise of advertising, globali52

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We have been looking at trends that have emerged from or been accelerated by COVID-19 and the metaverse has been in the making for far longer” Hamza Khan

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sation, automation, corporate restructuring and, now, the metaverse. Hamza Khan, co-leader of McKinsey & Company’s Marketing and Sales Practice in the UK and Ireland, speaks to Digital Bulletin about how brands can successfully build their metaverse strategy.

“There has been this big resurgence in the notion of the metaverse, and it’s been faster than many of us have been able to keep up with,” he says.

Although many attribute this rise of interest to Facebook’s transition into Meta, the social media giant was not the first company to entertain the idea of expanding into a virtual interactive world.

In 2003 there was Second Life, designed as a gamified experience. However, it soon fell from the general consciousness and lost momentum. Until 2021.

In addition to Zuckerberg’s metaverse pledge, there has recently been a convergence of factors that have

contributed to driving the shift towards immersive experiences. These include technological advances such as the rise of AR and VR, as well as the increase in computer power and processing speeds. However, it is the social trends such the acceleration in e-commerce, the ubiquity of video games and the decentralisation of finance that have forever transformed consumer behaviour, turning the concept of the metaverse into a feasible future.

“We have been looking at trends that have emerged from or been accelerated

by COVID-19 and the metaverse has been in the making for far longer,” Khan says.

“Given the spotlight now, we anticipate an acceleration in that innovation, but it’s a bit too soon to say how much that innovation translates into widespread consumer adoption. We were having similar conversations a couple of decades ago about the penetration and prevalence of the internet ISSUE 37

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and we are now seeing what’s happened.

We’re in those stages now with the metaverse, but the trends seem to point towards an acceleration, which is not just COVID-driven, but it stretches further back and will stretch further forward.”

Following the footsteps of the internet, the metaverse offers many opportunities for those brands that are brave enough to delve into it, if they do it right.

From gaming to retail, arts and even healthcare, brands of all sectors are looking to adapt their marketing departments to the changing online landscape.

During his journey at McKinsey, Khan

has led many global organisations in delivering digital growth and innovation, including accelerating e-commerce, building digital ecosystems and new businesses, and deploying agile commercial models across several sectors and regions. Now, he is helping them design strategies to become metaverse-ready.

“For consumers, there has been this promise of a persistent, immersive experience and general interoperability to create one integrated metaverse,” he says. “That idea has been around for a long time, but what we’re seeing now is the ability to move closer in that direction.

We’re not at the point yet where thousands of people can persistently be in the metaverse at all times”

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“For brands, this is a fundamentally different way to connect with not just consumers but also - thinking longerterm - new segments of the population and younger generations. It’s a new way of engaging consumers. It’s a new way of understanding upcoming segments, and the trends that are very prevalent within those groups in order to, at some point, be able to get them to become consumers.”

The metaverse might still be years away, but we are already witnessing the development of its building blocks.

As one of Gartner’s top five emergent technologies for 2022, global spending

on the metaverse’s foundational features - VR and AR - is predicted to rise from $12 billion to $72.8 billion in the next two years. However, new technological developments are also needed to ensure the devices can track hand or eye movements and possess high-quality models that can achieve the retina display and pixel density required for a realistic virtual immersion. These devices also need to become lightweight, portable and affordable for the metaverse to witness wide-scale adoption.

So far, the earliest instances of what could eventually become the metaverse can be seen in the gaming industry, with companies like Epic Games’ Fortnite enabling entire interactive concerts where fans can interact with artists such as Ariana Grande, Travis Scott, and Marshmello. These filmed and animated concerts allow fans to navigate the game area, approach the artist’s avatar and even purchase digital merchandising.

But the metaverse is not only the realm of gaming. Nvidia, for example, has created Nvidia Omniverse, an open platform designed to connect 3D spaces into a shared universe to facilitate virtual collaboration between engineers, designers, and creators. It’s currently being used by organisations such as BMW, to reduce production time and improve product quality by smart manufacturing. Nonetheless, Fortnite and ISSUE 37

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Nvidia’s designs are separate tools, not the single interoperable virtual world envisioned by the prophets of the metaverse.

“The technology has come a long way, both in terms of the infrastructure as well as the software solutions being built on top, but there are a lot of challenges to overcome,” Khan says.

“The metaverse is a two-way interaction between two different users and, from that point of view, the largest number of people that you can simultaneously have in a single room in one specific game is currently between 150 to 200. So the millions of users that see when we talk about specific Fortnight concerts is only for a relatively single-directional experience. We’re not at the point yet where thousands of people can persistently be in the metaverse at all times.”

Identifying the underlying technological shifts that are happening in the metaverse design is a fundamental piece of the puzzle. At the moment, each organisation is developing separate

hardware and software to build their versions of the metaverse. While some developers are prioritising a VR-focused vision, others are looking at Ar or mixed realities instead. However, all of these would need to be interoperable if the metaverse is to have a wide scale adoption.

While this world is coming into its own, brands now have the space to experiment and decide which technologies are best suited for their ambitions and communication strategies, instead of rushing to jump in on the trend. In order for brands to succeed in this new universe, the technical capabilities will need to be accompanied by excellent high-level strategies.

“There are different platforms within the metaverse, and there is no interoperability at the moment,” Khan says.

“The ambition is that it will be there, but we’re not in that space yet. That’s why I think brands need to think through which of those platforms they see

The social implications of the metaverse and how it is evolving human interaction, both between humans, but also between people and brands, and between people and technology, that’s as much of a technological question, as a philosophical one”

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scaling and shifting and going in line with brand objectives.”

“There are a certain number of strategic questions that need to be answered. I think it would be prudent for executives to very clearly focus on those strategic questions, but also be aware of and mindful of the technology that is currently powering the metaverse and how that’s evolving.”

Alongside the technical challenge that Khan identifies, there is a second subset of concerns, related to how the people will behave in this new virtual environment. Risks related to user safety, data privacy and cybersecurity are expected to be front of mind as developers design the future digital landscape.

User behaviour will also have a knock-on effect on brand reputation.

When millions of people have access to a digital brand, how can an organisation ensure that their content is protected, and that preferred version of the brand is the one being communicated?

“The social implications of the metaverse and how it is evolving human interaction both between humans, but also between people and brands, and between people and technology, that’s as much of a technological question, as a philosophical one,” Khan says.

“Because then it has implications around, for example: What’s the code of conduct? Who enforces it? How do you enforce it? And so, there are all of those challenges to be addressed as well.”

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communities online. However, over 67% of its users are under 16 years old, so they might not be the preferred target audience for certain brands. It is therefore important for brands to assess what platforms provide the best fits with their brand identity and their strategy, and where they can find the audiences they want to engage with.

Therefore, brands have work to do in regards to figuring out the types of campaigns and experiences that they’re building in the metaverse, scoping out the right partners to work with and deciding which audiences they want to engage, and in which ways. Independently of whether brands decide to focus around virtual goods and NFTs, gaming, or new immersive experiences, they will need to design adequate campaigns and assess the public’s response to them.

“There’s a lot to be said for experimentation,” Khan says “I link it to identifying and starting to build the capabilities that brands will likely need in the future, essentially, planting the flag but doing so with a clear objective of learning by doing, instead of focusing on immediate sales numbers. And that is what many leading brands have started doing with their initial steps.

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The important thing for businesses and for executives to do is to closely monitor developments within the metaverse and look at what the risks are, and how to stay one step ahead”

as positive. And so, just being aware of the steps that brands are taking and how users are reacting, I would say is the first most important step. Because then, it allows executives in organisations where the metaverse would be a relevant topic in the coming years to start to shape the answers to the more strategic questions they need to answer before they jump into experimentation.”

It’s still early days for the metaverse and, although its potential is exciting, we still ignore how much of a mainstream phenomenon it will become in terms of consumer adoption, particularly when you take into account all sectors of the population.

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According to Khan, brands should be blinded by the metaverse’s promising possibilities. Instead, they should assess what purpose this new platform could serve their organisation and how it fits into their brand and communications strategy, as well as reflect the organisations’ core objectives. Only then, they will be ready to take on the task of targeting this new space.

“I’m reluctant to come up with a tone of ‘it’s now or never’, because I don’t think that tells the full story,” he says. “I think the important thing for businesses and for executives to do - especially in the marketing and sales space, but also much more broadly - is to closely monitor

developments within the metaverse, and look at what the risks are, and how to stay one step ahead of them.”

If there is one genre that has always been one step ahead of human development it is, undoubtedly, science fiction.

From Star Trek’s flip phones, to Star Wars’ holograms, and including Isaac Asimov’s autonomous cars, Ray Bradbury’s earbuds and Frank Herbert’s drones, countless technologies have made the transition from fiction to reality. With the support of Big Tech and the knowledge of consulting powers like McKinsey & Company, the rise of the metaverse seems not to be a matter of if it’ll happen, but of when, and who will lead it.

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A life in tech In this issue, Eve Maler, CTO at digital identity specialists ForgeRock, looks back on her career in tech and tells us about changing the security landscape

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EVE MALER

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he five words I would use to describe myself are: pioneer, geek, partner, musician, goofball.

I backed into tech accidentally, by joining the mid-80s ranks of software documentation professionals. I fell in love with having my very own terminal and learning the ways of VAX/VMS (an operating system introduced by DEC for its older minicomputers). It all snowballed from there.

Since then, I have been fortunate enough to have contributed to the design of several identity standards being used today. I am a bit of a protocol wonk.

My parents courageously became small business owners in hard times, and they each had so much to teach me. They were also cheerfully supportive of my sometimes weird life choices.

not understanding and acting to correct misaligned incentives.

Many knowledge workers are, in a sense, paid to click on links in email all day. And many managers are, in the same sense, paid to approve worker requests for access to systems.

This can lead to a culture and working environment which prioritises speed and business KPIs, over security. Fostering a culture and working environment that achieves both business and security goals is easier when the two goals aren’t fighting each other.

Education would be powerful if businesses could avoid needing so much security education in the first place.

Anything people do by rote is susceptible. Prompt bombing is the latest

The one piece of advice I would give to aspiring technologists would be: concepts are to know – facts are to look up. By that I mean, there’s more power in concentrating on understanding patterns and concepts, rather than memorisation of easily looked-up information.

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inattention-based attack, and there’s a pretty large supply of inattention.

less experiences even if there is a memorised secret buried deep in the mix.

Giving people choice and control over authentication methods and notifications makes them active stakeholders in the process and naturally more aware.

The experience of engaging online with many retailers is already a continuum, with an easy on-ramp. Contextual and adaptive authentication technology is already being leveraged in many places.

Can you imagine never logging in again?

We’re in a rapid growth period for passwordless, spurred by FIDO2 WebAuthn - a standard that has significantly improved both the ease and security of online authentication. And people already have a lot of password62

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The most important technology of the next decade may not have been invented yet. Wherever we are in 10 years, we are going to have to figure out how to

EVE MALER

make personal data sharing meaningfully user-controlled. Our current digital consent regime isn’t working well. “No data about you without you” should be the goal.

Most big movements start with toys and risk, and we’re still at the toys and risk stage with cryptocurrency. I think it will be big. And it will involve key pairs, the basis of all encryption and digital signing, so there you go.

I use tech to remind me when to switch off. And I use it to make meditative time

better. But honestly, I’m not all that good at switching off. Even my offline pursuits are filled with spreadsheets and tracking and such. Though I used to be part of band called ZZ Auth and the Love Tokens with other identity techies (even that involved spreadsheets!).

When I look at my career I still have to make “no data about you without you” a reality, at the very least.

If I wasn’t working in tech I’d be singing. Possibly playing pool.

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Writing exclusively for Digital Bulletin, new Mendix CEO Tim Srock reveals the secrets to delivering unparalleled customer experience in the digital era

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ime and again, superior customer experience has proven to create immense value for businesses. Improved customer satisfaction, retention, and increased customer loyalty, the main outcomes of enhanced customer experience, are the result of better end-to-end communication, faster response times, and making digital choices frictionless for customers. This transformation has been directly linked to improved revenue and profit for the organisation.

However, as the disruption caused by COVID-19 continues to put unprece-

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dented strain on multiple aspects of the economy, companies have been forced to improve their customer experience through digital transformation.

During the last two years, COVID-19 has substantially changed the way businesses operate and interact with both their customers and supply chain partners.

While uncertainty continues to loom, enterprises are now being encouraged to reevaluate their business goals to better suit the ever-changing demands of their target consumers. To remain competitive, organisations must now incorporate a continuous understanding of their

TIM SROCK

During the last two years, COVID-19 has substantially changed the way businesses operate and interact with both their customers and supply chain partners” end user and leverage this knowledge by investing in the right technology to improve their customer experience.

The low-code approach to digitalisation As the year unfolds, enterprises have no choice: they must elevate their digital customer experience. Depending on the success and sophistication of their experience, companies find themselves choosing between two options: sticking with their existing solutions and hoping the market doesn’t catch up, or completely overhauling their current experience and running the risk of service disruption or data loss as they transfer from one system to the next.

That’s forgetting the middle ground — incremental updates. This third

option relies on low-code application development platforms that make it easier to split the overall transformation into smaller deliverables, and upgrade each element separately. This allows the business to continue to run as usual while significant improvements to the employee or customer experience take place in the background. This approach enables businesses to stay agile, using a technology that is adaptable in nature.

As businesses across various sectors continue to focus on keeping up with the evolving needs of their savvy customers, more companies are now embracing low-code to optimise their business processes and to design the best customer experience.

Some of the ways that low-code is improving the customer experience include: Customer experience now equals experience management Businesses are now pressed to account for the multiple touchpoints that customers access via various digital channels. For example, a customer who finds out about a product or service on their phone may choose to place an order for it using a voice assistant and then later track its delivery and order status through the desktop website.

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By using a low-code, model-based software development platform, enterprises can greatly improve the agility of their work processes and operations”

another. Businesses need to keep up with these ever-changing preferences to remain competitive.

Changing customer preferences combined with ongoing technological advancements requires consistent investment from the organisation to create or maintain consistent engagement across all these touchpoints.

By adopting a modular approach to building out these capabilities, businesses can create components that can be used by developers across different applications, thereby cutting down on the development and maintenance time.

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Using a low-code development platform, which combines out-of-the-box integrations with the ability to customise applications as needed, enterprises can now iterate and install new versions of their software faster and also update their operations and processes to meet the changing needs of both the organisation and its customers.

Hyper-personalisation is the new norm Customer expectations continue to change as they become increasingly reliant on the digital world. With expectations rising, businesses are now being

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challenged to adopt practises and applications that can stay current with rapidly changing consumer behaviour and circumstances. Today, each individual expects a tailored experience across all channels of engagement — and businesses need to guarantee it. Tech has a critical role to play in simplifying the process of data gathering and management to create a hyper-personalised customer journey that spans all online and offline channels.

For instance, the global experience of pandemic-related lockdowns led many consumers to move away from in-store purchasing, while increasing feelings

of comfort and safety when shopping online. To respond to this behaviour shift, businesses not only had to expand their online presence but also to provide a unique shopping experience that strived to increase customer engagement with their brands.

Most businesses realise that generating a positive online shopping experience for customers starts from the moment a consumer searches for a product or service online.and finishes once the product is delivered to the consumer’s door. Throughout this process, brands need to ensure that they can provide an engaging experience that is hyper-personalised to suit each customer’s preference.

Although designing such an experience to increase your loyal customer base sounds like a dream, building one is still considered a complex job. After all, in order to adapt and react to customer expectations in real-time, businesses need to invest heavily in AI capabilities that analyse data and respond to it in an appropriate and timely fashion.

Luckily, AI-enabled applications can minimise a lot of the complexities associated with hyper-personalisation as they are equipped to sense patterns within large data sets and acknowledge each customer’s shopping preferences by understanding the context, which includes the consumer’s credentials, ISSUE 37

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their surroundings, as well as the device they use for making purchases.

Automating tasks to optimise work processes With continued global supply chain systems disruptions leading to shortages and delays, businesses need to adapt to the changing markets in real-time. By using a low-code, model-based software development platform, enterprises can greatly improve the agility of their work processes and operations to rapidly meet the changing demands of their employees as well as its customers.

Although work processes are designed to enhance and measure progress amongst employees within an organisation, these clunky processes often stand 68

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in the way of increasing productivity amongst the workforce. Overdependence on cumbersome work processes — that can restrain people from doing their jobs — are also known to inhibit innovative thinking amongst employees.

According to a study conducted

by Gartner in 2020, outdated work practises, which includes paper-driven processes, workflows dependent on email-chain approval and redundant meetings, were found to be highly frustrating to employees. It is therefore critical for companies to simplify and standardise work tasks throughout the organisation with the help of smart applications that are capable of digitalising or automating processes. For instance, smart applications that are

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built using development tools, which are more model-based and user-centric in nature, can enable businesses to streamline processes and automate many tasks for the user.

These apps can essentially integrate core systems and centralise data sources, thereby allowing users to significantly reduce time spent on mundane tasks including, recording, and analysing information across multiple spreadsheets or other file management tools. This in turn allows employees to spend more time on other important tasks that can help the organisation generate higher ROI. These smart applications can also optimise workflows to enhance the employee experience, which in turn leads to improved customer experience.

Through efficient management of their workload and with easier access to key information, employees are now better

equipped to deliver a hyper-personalised hybrid customer journey across multiple devices.

Digitalising or automating back-end processes will not only lower operational costs but could also improve alignment between various departments within an organisation that must work together to deliver products or services to the end-user. This is mostly achieved by working with a low-code development platform that integrates the core system of records with internal apps to prevent data from being trapped in application silos.

Although staying ahead of the game in this digital era is not easy, especially when you’re struggling to navigate through the various new complexities posed by the pandemic, by using low-code enabled tools, organisations can now optimise their workflows and accelerate their digital transformation to continue delivering exceptional customer experience.

Given that consumer expectations will continue this rapid pace of change and evolution over the next few years, businesses must now think big in terms of utilising technology for building better experiences for customers. In fact, the possibilities are endless when it comes to designing exciting customer experiences that are unique and personable in nature.

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