Digital Bulletin - Issue 2 | March 2019

Issue 2 | Mar ‘19

AI, ROBOT

Cambridge Consultants and the era of smart industrial robotics

MIND THE GAP

Infosys’ Satish H.C. on why data analytics is facing a skills shortage

BLUETOOTH GOES BIG The changing face of wireless communication

AI

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Accenture and Microsoft launch new business group

Accenture and Microsoft have formed a new business group in conjunction with Avanade, their joint venture. The group will unite 45,000 Microsoft solution experts around the world to harness the company’s technology across the enterprise. Its aim is to ‘empower’ companies in the era of ‘digital disruption’.

Accenture senior managing director Emma McGuigan will lead the group.

(05/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

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A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

DIGITAL BULLETIN

With CES 2019 and MWC19 in the books, the technology world has been given two sizeable indicators as to the technology that will set the agenda over the next 12 months.

Both AI and 5G have featured heavily, with the world’s leading technology brands investing billions of dollars into new products in what are rapidly evolving areas.

As you’d expect, 5G took centre stage at MWC, with telcos, mobile marketers and carriers all looking to get a jump on the competition.

In an area that has been criticised for mere incremental improvements in recent times, the combination of hyper-speed connections and foldable phones does feel like a real step change.

But away from the future and emerging markets, we shouldn’t forget about the enterprise technologies that have stood the test of time, consistently evolving to remain relevant.

One such technology takes centre stage in this month’s issue, as Digital Bulletin talks exclusively with Bluetooth Special Interest Group’s (SIG) Martin Woolley.

In a wide-ranging interview, Woolley explains how, liberated from market forces, the SIG works proactively with member companies to explore and develop innovative ways to license the technology we all take for granted.

Of the group’s 35,000 members, he says: “They become part of the community. They have access to information earlier than would normally be the case, and if they’re the right sort of member they can get involved at a tangible level by becoming part of our working groups.”

Elsewhere, we’ve got insight from the likes of Cambridge Consultants, Infosys and Priority Software.

Enjoy the issue.

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PU B LI S H I N G

M E D I A PRO D U CT I O N

D I G I TA L M A R K E T I N G

Barcelona, Spain

Chang-Gyu Hwang, Chairman and CEO of KT Corporation, during his keynote on the first day of MWC19 in Barcelona

INSIDE VIEW

IGITAL BULLETIN

IMAGINEA

Issue

08 Networks

Bluetooth

CONTENTS

26 AI

Cambridge Consultants

A smart future for industrial robotics

50 Future

Mindtree

Helping companies digitally transform their operations 54

Bringing mesh networks to industry

18 People

Infosys

34 Services

Priority Software ERP, the unsung hero in enterprise software

58 Events

The biggest and best technology events on the horizon

Finding solutions to fill the data analytics skills gap

42 Data & Security

Freespee

Innovating through data-powered conversations

66 The Closing Bulletin

Edenhouse Solutions CTO Andy Bell on effective change management

NETWORKS

BLUETOOTH

GOES

BIG With its mesh networking capabilities growing apace, Bluetooth is leading in a new era of large-scale wireless communication AUTHOR: BEN MOUNCER

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DIGITAL BULLETIN

BLUETOOTH

T

echnology companies are forever striving for universal recognition.

Having their products used by as many people as possible is not only the truest validation of their work, but also their most effective means of advertising.

The very nature of a market economy, alas, puts pay to the domination they long for. Even the most successful enterprises are continually jostling for position with a number of rivals, revenue machines engaged in a neverending nip-and-tuck contest.

They would all crave the ubiquity of Bluetooth. You would be hard-pressed to find an individual anywhere who has engaged with electronic devices and not utilised Bluetooth technology. It’s an instantly recognisable name for a massive chunk of the world’s population.

Not an entity in its own right, Bluetooth is a standard for short-range wireless communication. That standard, detailed in a document some 3,000

pages long, is managed by the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), a non-profit that acts as Bluetooth’s guardian. Liberated from market forces, the SIG works proactively with member companies to explore and develop innovative ways to license the technology we all take for granted.

Connectivity is sharply on the rise in our homes, offices and cities, and the Bluetooth SIG is reacting positively to the challenge. Radio communication isn’t restricted to the device-to-device communication consumers are accustomed too; Bluetooth technology is now being adopted on a larger scale, as the SIG’s Martin Woolley outlines.

“The original Bluetooth is a cable replacement technology that means you can communicate between two devices. Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) then lets you do that, but it can also broadcast. Then there is Bluetooth mesh networking, which is about any-to-any communication, meaning that any device can talk to any other device in a network.”

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NETWORKS

It is with mesh networking where Bluetooth has seen perhaps its biggest step forward. In fact, the SIG itself describes the addition of mesh networking in 2017 as a ‘paradigm shift’ with it introducing Bluetooth technology to a host of new sectors, particularly in the ‘smart’ and Internet of Things (IoT) markets.

As Woolley, who is Developer Relations Manager EMEA for the SIG, explains, mesh networking is a topology enabling the creation of large-scale networks that could conceivably contain thousands of devices.

“Bluetooth mesh can handle up to 32,767 things, or nodes, in its network,” he continues. “But communication between devices is not limited to those devices that are in direct radio range, which is normally the issue with radio communications.

“Devices send messages to communicate, and messages bounce across the network from device to device - it’s called relaying - until they reach their destination. A mesh is like a spider’s web that can cover very large areas; entire airports, office blocks, collections of buildings.

“The number of hops you can do across the network is 127, and Bluetooth LE, which powers the communication beneath Bluetooth mesh, has a range of hundreds of metres. If you do 127 x 50-100 metres, you have quite a lot of range and you can cover large areas.

10 DIGITAL BULLETIN

That’s what ‘large-scale’ means in the context of Bluetooth mesh.”

By lifting the hood on this ‘managed flooding’ approach to message communication, a simple yet clever system is revealed. Devices are first provisioned onto the network using a series of security keys, a process undertaken via an application on smartphone or tablet.

To communicate across the mesh network, a group address sends a message - an act known as ‘publishing’ - to select nodes, which then process, or ‘subscribe’, that message. In almost every example, it’s about one node talking to a collection of other nodes on a publish and subscribe basis.

Messages reach their destination via multiple paths on the mesh, creating an extremely reliable communication mechanism.

Initial use cases for Bluetooth’s mesh networks have seen them utilised to deliver automated systems in smart buildings, such as temperature or lighting control. It has also been deployed as a catalyst for wireless sensor networks, venturing here into

Introducing Bluetooth Mesh Networking

BLUETOOTH

Bluetooth mesh can handle up to 32,767 things, or nodes, in its network �

11 Issue 2

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Nokia brings 5G and AI to the fore with new collaboration hubs

Nokia has opened its network of Cognitive Collaboration Hubs. Operators will be able to tap into data science expertise and support to develop 5G and artificial intelligence use cases. Nokia says the hubs will reduce operators’ time to market and increase their return on investments in data analytics.

The scheme follows Nokia’s success with its Cloud Collaboration Hubs.

(15/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

BLUETOOTH

A mesh is like a spider’s web that that can cover very large areas; entire airports, office blocks, collections of buildings”

Martin Woolley is an industry veteran with over 30 years’ experience working with computers large, small and… getting smaller. He still has a Sinclair ZX81 somewhere. A Bluetooth technical specialist with additional skills and experience in areas such as smartphone app development, Internet of Things (IoT), wearable technology, mobile messaging and message-oriented middleware, Woolley is currently the Bluetooth SIG’s Developer Relations Manager for the EMEA region. He is a regular speaker at international technical and industry events.

the manufacturing sector. It is the lighting example that Woolley uses to demonstrate how mesh networking works on the ground.

“Imagine you’ve got a dozen lights in a meeting room,” he explains. “You do some configuration, where you say to the lights as you install them, ‘By the way, I want you to subscribe to ‘meeting room A lights’’. That’s the name of the group address. You’re telling these devices to pay attention to any message that’s addressed to ‘meeting room A lights’. They pay attention and if they see a message sent, they will respond.

“The light switches in the room, or the dimmers, are also Bluetooth mesh nodes. You configure them to publish their messages to ‘meeting room A lights’, the same group address. If you then twist the dimmer switch or press the button, it’s going to transmit a message address to ‘meeting room A lights’. The lights in that room have been told to pay attention to messages addressed to that group, so they will respond.

“The important point here is that while we have this concept of groups, the groups are not defined in terms of their membership. The light switch doesn’t know which lights are members of that group. The lights themselves don’t know what switches are controlling them.

This is very advantageous because it means you can make changes and

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NETWORKS

It’s been growing and growing and part of that is because developers love it, we keep evolving and we do our best to make sure developers are supported and well informed about new things” you don’t have to reconfigure tables of information or all the switches. That’s publish and subscribe.”

Bluetooth mesh networking has proven itself as a facilitator for wireless communication in the smart space.

Work is continually being done to boost its presence in this area with, for instance, a group of high-profile companies including Alibaba recently joining forces with the SIG to advance the technology in the smart home market.

The next challenge is to bring largescale networking to industry, with specific potential in industrial IoT and advanced manufacturing. Other benefits to the specification - including its multihop delivery mechanism to hugely expand coverage and its universal functionality - leave it ideally placed to make its mark.

“We haven’t really pushed hard in terms of bringing Bluetooth mesh into industry yet, but we’ve done work in talking to some of the household names that make equipment and systems for industry. You can guess

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the types of companies we’re talking about,” adds Woolley. “I’ve had face-toface meetings with a number of these manufacturers and they see two areas of potential.

“One, of course, is to do with operational efficiency and cost reduction through greater automation.

Automation is dependent on communication between machines, end of story. The other one is mass personalisation. The connected, automated systems that you can bring to bear on the production process actually allow you to personalise products on an individual basis for customers in a way that you could never do before.

“It’s not an area where we’ve been focusing on as a priority yet but I think that will come. When it does happen, it has the potential to be a really substantial area for Bluetooth.”

The unique framework of the Bluetooth SIG makes it ripe for innovation. With no commercial imperative, it is able to work freely in collaboration with technology leaders.

BLUETOOTH

Martin Woolley at GOTO Berlin 2018

Over 35,000 companies are members of the SIG, a large proportion of which rely on Bluetooth technology at the core of their business.

“By becoming members, they become part of the community,” Woolley states. “They have access to information earlier than would normally be the case, and if they’re the right sort of member they can get involved at a tangible level by becoming part of our working groups. Most of what we do comes from the membership saying: ‘we should do this’.”

Representatives from its membership even reach as high as the SIG’s board of directors, with high-profile organisations bringing sector expertise to the decision-making process.

Any fresh innovations for Bluetooth technology are proposed before passing through working and study groups. The final hurdle is meeting the stringent technical specifications.

“The thinking when Bluetooth was first conceived was that it should be governed by technical standards and quality assurance procedures,”

expands Woolley. “So instead of two manufacturers having a big share in a tiny market, we make it as a standard to all manufacturers. You then have the potential of an enormous market with a larger number of competitors getting a share of it. That’s what’s been achieved.”

There’s little doubt that the Bluetooth name remains as relevant as ever.

Over 10 million Bluetooth-enabled devices are shipped every day, compared to the 800,000 that were made in its first year of existence at the turn of the century.

On top of its defining work on mesh networking, the SIG is also making strides, with the help of its membership, in the location services segment. What does Woolley view as the secret to Bluetooth’s longevity?

“One of the reasons Bluetooth has succeeded in the way that it has, and the reason why it will still be around in five years time, is because it doesn’t stand still, it’s never stagnant,” he concludes.

“It’s been growing and growing and part of that is because developers love it, we keep evolving and we do our best to make sure developers are supported and well informed about new things.”

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PEOPLE

SKILLING A CHANGING There are myriad possibilities for businesses to leverage the power of data analytics, but the industry is facing a familiar problem – a skills gap

18 DIGITAL BULLETIN

INFOSYS

A RAPIDLY G MARKET AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

19 Issue 2

T PEOPLE

he proliferation of data is changing the world at pace.

Some 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are being created every day, superseding oil as the pre-eminent resource on the planet, particularly for enterprise.

Data is creating new possibilities for businesses, from delivering ever improving customer experiences to devising fresh revenue generators.

The consultancy leader Infosys recently published global research on data analytics. The survey, ‘Endless possibilities with data: Navigate from now to your next’, revealed that a majority of organisations are deploying analytics to enhance customer experiences and mitigate risk.

Unsurprisingly, the research found that companies are finding a number of barriers making it difficult to fully implement their data initiatives, including finding the correct analytics tools and technologies, and setting out a clear roadmap to execute strategy.

Another blockage to successfully getting these potentially defining projects off the ground is deploying the right people with the right competencies – a real challenge in an industry that is dealing with an acute skills gap.

Satish H.C., Infosys’ Executive Vice President, Data & Analytics, says an increasing number of businesses are

20 DIGITAL BULLETIN

approaching the company to help bridge a troubling gap. “Almost every business is looking to drive their own initiatives and outcomes using data, but there is a very real recognition that there is a big shortage of skills in this area,” he tells Digital Bulletin.

“Enterprises are coming to us for advice about how to navigate this challenge, they are no longer just looking for our services, many companies don’t feel like they can take on this issue alone. They want us to walk them through their digital initiatives all the way to execution and to help plug those skills gaps. We are becoming far more proactive as an organisation in that sense.”

Part of that effort has come in the form of what it calls ‘democratising data’ - using automation so that scientists can spend less time sifting through and making sense of large tranches of data. Infosys has also moved to an approach of data model building and deployment that can derive more outcomes for clients.

“The sheer pace of digital transformation is impacting all of us,” says Satish. “Every organisation is making so much change in their business by adopting these technologies, making themselves more nimble, flexible and agile. But these changes are generating a new level of data – there is almost too much information. The challenge is to make sense of all the data to thrive in what is a

INFOSYS

Almost every business is looking to drive their own initiatives and outcomes using data�

21 Issue 2

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Cognizant names Brian Humphries as new CEO

Cognizant has named Brian Humphries, currently the CEO of Vodafone Business, as its CEO and a member of the Board of Directors. Humphries’ appointments will be effective April 1. Francisco D’Souza, who co-founded Cognizant and has been CEO since 2007, will serve as full-time Executive Vice Chairman to facilitate the transition through June 30, 2019. He will remain on the Board as Vice Chairman. (06/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

INFOSYS

The challenge is to make sense of all the data to thrive in what is a very competitive environment” very competitive environment.

“That rapid change means there has been a significant shift in the skills companies require, and there is a divide of sorts where organisations have either been born as digital natives or they are catching up with those that have. The non-Ubers of the world are having to catch up to become an Uber.”

Satish cites the example of a major European services business that he says has traditionally been “uncomfortable with change” but that recently worked with Infosys to launch a new ‘Uberised’ business model which allows it to hire tech staff on a digital platform.

“We were able to launch that business model in 24 weeks flat, and they now have a new business model up and running that us completely digital born. One percent of its revenues is running through the platform, which may not sound like much until you consider that its overall revenues are 25 billion euros.

“The platform enables the business to be extremely agile when it comes to their staffing needs, they can plug in changes to supply can demand as it happens, the types of skills that are needed, while invoicing, background check and payments are all highly automated. Processes that were previously taking weeks to complete

23 Issue 2

PEOPLE

INFOSYS AND GOOGLE CLOUD Infosys is working with Google Cloud

include Analytics Workbench, which

and migration services. Through this

end-to-end self-service capabilities,

to develop cloud transformation

partnership that enhances Infosys’ existing capabilities, the company will offer solutions and services on

Google Cloud Platform (GCP), creating a scalable, on-demand cloud model that will enable enterprises to easily transition and adopt a cloud-first strategy.

As part of this partnership, Infosys has

built artificial intelligence and machine learning-driven industry-specific

solutions on GCP that are foundational

to digitising the data supply chain. They

24 DIGITAL BULLETIN

augments data platforms to deliver Information Grid, which provides a

data pipeline for seamless movement

of data to GCP, and Customer Genome, which helps enterprises build a selfservice driven and entity-centric

foundation for explorative, predictive and prescriptive analytics.

Infosys says these solutions will

enable enterprises to modernise their IT and use the power of insights to

monetise and digitise their businesses

as they navigate the next stages in their transformation journey.

INFOSYS

We’ve seen a significant demand for skills in cloud over the last couple of years” are now taking just days.”

Satish says such examples are proof positive of Infosys commitment to being a net creator of talent for the technology industry, and it has a proven track record of nurturing skilled young talent from its development facilities in its global delivery centres in India and China.

“We have taken that a step further by rolling out that same system in North America and the UK, so we’ll be creating that local talent. We are also tied up with academia and working with the AI Council within the UK government. We want to leverage those partnerships to create talent in newer areas like AI” When Satish speaks about the company’s various initiatives and projects to become a talent creator, he is not just paying lip service. The company recently broke ground on its $35 million U.S. Education Centre in Indianapolis. The training campus and residential centre for its employees — and the employees of select clients — will prepare the American workforce for the technology jobs of the future, according to Infosys.

And just last month Infosys inaugurated its Digital Innovation

and Design Centre in Providence and announced a partnership with the Community College of Rhode Island to build and launch the Digital Economy Aspirations Lab to enable and develop students for the digital jobs of the future. The centre offers early-career designers and design graduates unique training opportunities with in-demand skills—including exposure to systems, platforms, strategy and organisation domains—to make them more employable in today’s digital world.

Elaborating on the specific areas where companies will need to skillup, Satish considers the wider market trends, commenting: “We’ve seen a significant demand for skills in cloud over the last couple of years.

The cloud is going to be extremely important for the leverage of data and analytics for the future, and we believe inseparable from AI because you will not be able to bring the firepower that a AI technology needs without cloud computing.

“The Internet of Things is also extremely important as there is going to be a great deal of insight generation at the edges. Everything is becoming smarter.”

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AI

Robotics MEETINGS rebooted MADE

MAGNIFICENT

Industrial robots are getting smarter.

Chris Roberts, Head of Industrial Robotics at Cambridge Consultants, shines light on the future of machine autonomy

AUTHOR: BEN MOUNCER

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CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS

T

hink industrial robotics and the mind turns to bulky, limbed machines speeding up production lines in soulless manufacturing plants.

You probably wouldn’t think of apples, or more precisely apple picking.

Up to now, fruit picking has been a human-led enterprise, a task too delicate and unpredictable for heavyhanded automatons.

But this is the era of smart robotics.

And as a product development firm with a thirst for technology innovation, Cambridge Consultants includes an apple-picking robot in its portfolio of solutions that have repeatedly disrupted their clients’ markets.

Chris Roberts, Head of Industrial Robotics, leads such projects and is predicting further advancements in the robotics space.

“Surprisingly, these days, most robotics in the real world are pretty dull,” he tells Digital Bulletin. “Robots move objects really quickly from one place to another but there’s very little intelligence in a lot of robotics. In the last five to 10 years though, it has got interesting again.

People are doing more and more around smart robotics, and that’s the thing we’re interested in.

“Picking apples is the sort of task that

couldn’t be automated five or 10 years ago, because you couldn’t come up with a product that was capable of sensing where the apples were on the tree and then handling them softly enough not to bruise them. But we’ve worked on projects that involve fruit picking now, and robotics that can meet those requirements.”

Smart robotics refers to the application of advanced technologies which enable a robot to adapt to and learn from its environment. This could involve the use of sensor technologies such as Lidar, infrared radiation or ultrasonic waves, or more complex solutions such as machine vision and neural networking.

Roberts’ division of Cambridge Consultants is particularly invested in this strand. As a high-end consultancy, part of its remit is to take robotics to industries where automation hadn’t been previously considered an option.

In order to meet this objective, it has explored some compelling use cases.

“We’ve had examples recently where we’re looking into how to do VSLAM (visual, simultaneous localisation and mapping), for example, which is a product that can be dropped into an unknown area to map that area and navigate its way around without colliding with things,” says Roberts.

“Another one is integrating neural Issue 2

27

AI EVOKO’S MINTO

CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS HAS PROJECTS IN OVER 20 COUNTRIES

network-type approaches with physical objects. You often see neural networks detecting objects in a scene and drawing boxes around them. We had a project recently where we had to not only do that, but then manipulate those objects.

“You need to know when to go for a classical approach or when to go for an artificial intelligence approach.

AI is very good at solving one class of problems, another class of problems

is best solved with a more typical designed algorithm approach.”

These technologies have the potential to create real-world change in sectors like agriculture, healthcare and industrial manufacturing, where robots will work alongside humans to complete tasks in better, faster and more efficient ways. But most organisations don’t have the knowledge-base to successfully integrate robotics on their own.

Chris Roberts is Head of Industrial Robotics at Cambridge Consultants. A physicist by training, he has over twenty years experience in engineering projects, beginning with digital design in the space industry and now providing technical leadership for Cambridge Consultants. His current focus is on innovative robotics, finding ways to apply technology to never-before-automated tasks using advanced sensing, mechatronics and machine learning, with an emphasis on making sure they actually deliver a benefit in the real world.

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CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS

People are doing more and more around smart robotics, and that’s the thing we’re interested in”

THIS FRUIT-PICKING ROBOT MEETS A COMPLEX AUTOMATION CHALLENGE

This is the gap that companies like Cambridge Consultants fill. As both a product development business and a consultancy, Roberts emphasises the dual-focus it has on its teams of engineers delivering cutting-edge technology solutions which are also commercially viable.

“The types of engagements we get with our clients really span pretty much the whole range of development and delivery,” he explains. “Generally, people are trying to push the boundaries of what can and can’t be done but we’re very good at quickly working out whether an idea has got legs or not.

“There’s no point looking at an exciting aspect in robotics if it’s not commercially relevant. We need to make sure that with the people who are making these big decisions, we’re not just throwing technology at them but saying that if they choose to go with this technology, then this is the return on investment that you get.

“If our clients make something that is successful, then they get to gain all of

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The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Johnson & Johnson to buy medical robotics company Auris for $3.4 billion

Johnson & Johnson is to buy privately held surgical robotics firm Auris Health for $3.4 billion. An extra $2.35 billion may have to be paid upon reaching certain milestones. Auris is a developer of robotic technologies, initially focused in lung cancer. This acquisition will accelerate Johnson & Johnson’s entry into robotics with potential for expansion into other interventional applications. (13/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS

With our systems, you get data and analytics to

show you how you’re using your meeting space”

ROBOTICS IS TRANSFORMING SURGICAL TECHNIQUES

the profits from that. We get paid for our time, whatever we do. That’s how the business case works.”

Robotics investments aren’t decisions to be taken lightly though, according to Roberts. Implementation can be lengthy and expensive, with time and money savings reaped further down the line. “The best robotics projects are ones where a company decides to transform its business, and that doesn’t happen very often. It can be a once-ina-lifetime decision,” he adds.

In spite of the challenge, industrial robotics integration is very much on the rise. The most recent World Robotics Report, published by the International Federation of Robotics (IFR) in October last year, showed that a record 381,000 units were shipped globally in 2017.

This figure was a notable 30% increase on the previous year’s number, with current projections forecasting 630,000 units for roll-out in 2021.

The best robotics projects are ones where a company decides to transform its business” A wider look at the data also shows a 114% increase in volume over the five years between 2013 and 2017 - but Roberts takes a dim view of headlinegrabbing predictions that robots will usurp humans in the workplace. From his own experience, clients have turned to automation when they’re struggling to find employees that fit the bill.

“You hear a lot in the press about robots and automation stealing people’s jobs,” he says. “That’s not actually what we’re seeing when clients

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AI

CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS WORKED WITH OCADO ON WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION

come to us. It’s a slightly different driver; it’s more often ‘I want people to do this job, but I can’t get them’. People either aren’t interested or for whatever reason, the workforce is not available.

“For robotics to be commercially viable, generally they don’t replace anyone. There’s an 80/20 rule that applies. Maybe there’s an area that you can automate that you couldn’t before, but you can only automate 80 or 90% of the task. If you wanted to automate the next 10%, you have to spend exponentially more money. You end up with the same number of people but they’re more productive because the machines are doing the repetitive part of the task.

“While I can certainly see some disruption, I can’t see a life of leisure for humans where all the jobs will be done by robots. It will change and evolve, but there won’t be a massive

32 DIGITAL BULLETIN

We have to make sure we retain our worldclass reputation and ability to implement cutting-edge technology” revolution where there’s mass unemployment or where people suddenly don’t have to work.”

The IFR’s report showed that industrial robots are still most widely deployed in the sectors you would expect: the automotive industry accounted for 33% of all units shipped in 2017, with the electrical/electronics and metal sectors making up the top three.

Agriculture is the industry where

CAMBRIDGE CONSULTANTS

robotics is most likely to have its biggest impact over the next decade, according to Roberts - and the figures support this view. The market for ‘agribots’ is set to be worth $12.8 billion by 2022 as farmers introduce technology as a harvesting aid.

“It’s already quite mechanised; combine harvesters replaced scythes a very long time ago! But it’s one of those industries where there’s a real benefit to being able to deal with things in a more adaptive way,” offers Roberts.

“It’s also an industry where there’s an economy of scale; farms are getting bigger and bigger and it’s an industry where there are labour shortages worldwide. It’s harder for farmers to get the workers to do the manual tasks.

More broadly than that, any industry where the work is boring or dangerous or it’s hard to find staff, I can see automation coming.”

For Cambridge Consultants, the future will be defined by how successful it is in building innovative products that make a real difference to its customers, not just in robotics but across its other verticals including telecoms, semiconductor and defence & security.

Its operations don’t just stretch across sectors but around the world.

At the end of January, it inaugurated an engineering hub in Singapore which will become its headquarters in Asia. This is a vital market for Cambridge Consultants, where it serves high-profile clients like Hitachi and Asahi in China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan as well as Singapore.

“We have to make sure we retain our world-class reputation and ability to implement cutting-edge technology,” concludes Roberts. “We’ll only get there if we continue to invest, continue to do interesting projects, but also if we continue to look at new technologies as they come along.

“In robotics, it’s things like artificial intelligence, and how that interacts with the real world. How can we get neural networks running on low-cost platforms? We need to think about machine learning and machine vision techniques that are available, making sure we’re on top of those and remain on top of those.

“The other strand is about the business focus. We need to speak the language of the C-suite; it’s not just about a technology push but we must also understand the pressures businesses are facing.”

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SERVICES

MAKING ERP A PRIORITY ERP is the unsung hero in enterprise software, and the “single source of truth” from which everything else follows, according to Andres Richter, CEO of Priority Software

AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON

“Perhaps ERP is not the sexiest technology in the world, but pretty much all businesses rely on theirs...”

It is hard to argue with Andres Richter, CEO of Priority Software; ERP - enterprise resource planning - is not spoken about in the same way as AI or VR, for example, but it is an invaluable part of businesses around the world, knitting together critical front and back-office functions such as accounting, HR and payroll in an efficient and functional way.

34 DIGITAL BULLETIN

PRIORITY SOFTWARE

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SERVICES

To speak to Richter is to speak to a man effusive in his belief in the value of ERP and how it shapes business. He remarks on more than one occasion that he considers it to be “the single source of truth”.

Elaborating on the importance of ERP for enterprise, he tells Digital Bulletin: “The role of ERP hasn’t changed a lot since it was introduced, which is why it is still the single source of truth, in my opinion. It allows businesses to run and grow, and to achieve their targets. That was true when ERP was introduced and is still true today.

“But if somewhere in the past it was a battle between functions and features within ERP, that it is somewhat different today. Businesses need flexible systems because of how rapidly their businesses are changing. Companies understand how they need to run day-to-day operations, and will know how that might evolve in the next months or even a year. But beyond that, businesses don’t have a clue what will be their competition, new processes, or the new technology that they’ll be implementing.

“So, a really important part of ERP is its ability to adapt and change quickly.

As a software it is very flexible, open to third parties, open to new technologies, and it is a platform a company can use to adapt to change.”

Enterprise technology is evolving at a rapid rate, and as it does companies

36 DIGITAL BULLETIN

will expect that their central ERP system will be able to cope with the integration of future technologies in their industries. But, says Richter, this is not a new expectation, noting that five years ago conversations raged about how ERP systems could be adapted to run alongside cloud applications.

“Now, everyone is thinking about AI, but at its core AI is about data. Data is

PRIORITY SOFTWARE

Perhaps ERP is not the sexiest technology in the world, but pretty much all businesses rely on theirs�

an area where ERP comes into its own because it is the platform that holds all of a company’s data from various departments in one place. The only way AI is going to be able to be of use is if that data from the ERP system is accurate. We are currently evaluating a few AI solutions and see it as a positive.

We want to help our customers find the right AI solution for them.

37 Issue 2

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Santander strikes $700m transformation deal with IBM

IBM will power Banco Santander’s digital transformation. The two have signed a five-year contract worth $700 million. Santander will tap IBM’s expertise in AI and blockchain, two disruptive forces in the financial sector. IBM will also assist with Santander’s transfer to a hybrid cloud environment which it will bolster with its latest security services. This was announced at IBM Think.

(13/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

PRIORITY SOFTWARE

“IoT is another interesting technology and one that is being spoken about a lot, but the controllers of production machines have been connected to Priority for decades. Again, the most important thing is that the data is accurate and can be analysed properly.”

In its domestic market of Israel, Priority has long been a heavyweight in the ERP arena with its client list including F1 team SportPesa Racing, formerly Force India, Motorola, Intel, Honeywell and

Richter. “When I came in, the business we had internationally was very minimal, but now more than a third is outside of Israel, which we’ve managed to achieve in a short amount of time for the world of business. We are happy to say that 2018 was the fourth year in a row that we achieved double digit growth, we’ve grown by almost 20% and attracted a lot of new business both at home and abroad.”

The business has made serious inroads into the United States, Canada,

The role of ERP hasn’t changed a lot since it was introduced, which is why it is still the single source of truth”

the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Five years ago, the company was acquired by a private equity business which had designs on growing into new territories.

Richter was the outstanding candidate to lead the drive, boasting more than two decades of experience in the IT arena, having started his career as an ERP project manager and implementer. The Chilean joined from IT and systems integrator Ness Technologies in 2014 and got straight on with the job of expanding Priority’s horizons.

“From that point in time we have grown the business three-fold,” says

UK and central Europe, areas Richter says it continues to have “dramatic” growth plans in over the next 12-24 months. Key to growth, says Richter, will be its ability to offer the same ERP functionality both in the cloud and on-prem.

“Our ability to offer that is very important because the adoption rate is markedly different between territories.

In the US, 90% of customers choose cloud, but in the UK maybe just 30% choose cloud. But the most important thing is that the same functionality is offered for both choices because later down the line customers will want to

39 Issue 2

SERVICES

have that cloud option and will expect the same service they get from on-prem.”

With the company having targeted the United States as a market of real promise and potential, Priority signed a partnership agreement last year with Quatrro Business Support Services to integrate and support Priority ERP installations in the US. “We found the Quatrro offering very interesting; they don’t just simply offer implementation, which is often what we partner with companies for.

It is a business process outsourcing business that helps companies in the States and India. We’ve found this cooperation a unique offering, so that as well as being a partner it can provide customers complementary business services. We are in the beginning of our journey together but we recently signed our first deal with them and we are very positive about it,” says Richter.

Its sights also set on growth in Europe, with Priority busy ensuring its ERP systems can help its clients ensure they are compliant with GDPR. Because ERP systems centralise data, companies will be able to easily locate the trail of communication if they need evidence that a customer consented to being contacted for sales and marketing purposes.

Companies are now also required to delete customer data as part of GDPR’s ruling that people have the

40 DIGITAL BULLETIN

The only way AI is going to be able to be of use is if that data from the ERP system is accurate”

“right to be forgotten”.

“We’ve produced a module for it that does all of this for companies in one click,” says Richter. “With that click of a button we can find all of the information a person will have inputted about themselves and we can delete all of it. We were one of the first companies to develop a solution specifically for GDPR. One of the main reasons for that was because we have customers in Europe, but also because of the flexibility and agility of our systems. We were able to go from idea to execution very quickly.”

The business was recently boosted

PRIORITY SOFTWARE

by recognition from Gartner. It was named as a Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Postmodern ERP, 2018. Priority was marked out for its Cloud ERP for Manufacturing solutions.

The Gartner report evaluates ERPrelated solutions in terms of their business impact, adoption rate and maturity, to help IT leaders decide where and when to invest. Priority’s cloud ERP was judged to have “moved beyond hype”, with its ability to generate significant improvement.

Reflecting on what such accolades mean for Priority, Richter concludes: “We believe we have the perfect

solution and that is based on the feedback we get from our customers.

But because we are trying to grow outside of our domestic market, we need some brand recognition, so in that sense it is very valuable. If you are in Israel and you ask about Priority, people will know what we can do.

“That’s not always the case internationally, so it is a great thing and of course flattering to be recognised by an organisation like Gartner. It can only be positive that customers see us being recognised in this way and supports their decision to work with us.”

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DATA & SECURITY

DATA-POWERED CONVERSATIONS Anne de Kerckhove has led technology innovation and growth at companies Europe-wide. She tells Digital Bulletin about her latest venture with Freespee

AUTHOR: BEN MOUNCER

42 DIGITAL BULLETIN

FREESPEE

43 Issue 2

W DATA & SECURITY

hen identifying and discussing the technological forces delivering huge change throughout the enterprise, Anne de Kerckhove is certainly somebody worth talking to.

A prominent angel investor in Europe’s high-tech sector, de Kerckhove has witnessed the growth and impact of different technologies first-hand. An expert in digital transformation, she has committed her expertise to over 25 companies and proven a valuable mentor to high-potential individuals on the startup scene.

Yet at the beginning of her journey, de Kerckhove - when working as a consultant for the Boston Consulting Group - received an unusual piece of advice from her own mentor during an annual review.

“He came to me and said ‘you know, you should really leave us’. That’s a great motivational speech, I thought!”

But it was this moment that triggered a sequence of events which would go on to define de Kerchove’s career.

“Then he expanded of course,” she

44 DIGITAL BULLETIN

continues. “He said ‘you’re super actionorientated, you finish projects but you don’t want to finish them, you want to go to the client and help them to implement. You’re the most actionorientated consultant we’ve ever had’.

It was just at the time when the startup scene was exploding in London, and he said that he thought I was going to get a call from a company and he wanted me to accept it.

“He must have been a futurist or something because the call literally came that week. It was a bunch of German guys who said that they had this idea in the mobile space and they’d like me to set up their London

FREESPEE

The technology itself has a huge impact on brands and on consumers, and that’s what I look for in a proposition”

business. And that was the beginning of my startup career. Frankly, it’s what I love doing and I’ve never really left that phase, just moved on to bigger ventures.”

De Kerckhove’s newest project is with Freespee, which has built a cloud communication platform that allows its clients to better engage and convert its online customers. Its range of features are designed to improve the performance of sales teams and greatly enhance the customer experience through contextualised conversations on any platform.

Freespee was founded a decade ago

by Carl Holmquist and Tobias Lindgren

and its solutions are now deployed in a number of industries, with particular effectiveness in automotive and e-commerce. De Kerckhove is approaching her first anniversary as CEO having joined in March last year. She says the all-round potential of Freespee’s offering is what convinced her to make it the next step in her career.

“The technology itself has a huge impact on brands and on consumers, and that’s what I look for in a proposition; something that helps both the consumer and the brand and creates that customer impact. I’m really passionate about that,” de

45 Issue 2

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Crowdstrike to protect Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport from cyber attacks

The endpoint security company CrowdStrike has announced a global partnership with Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport to protect the team from cyber attacks throughout the coming seasons. Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport will use CrowdStrike’s technology platform and services at their facility in Brackley in Northamptonshire, UK and onsite at race and testing days around the world. (07/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

FREESPEE

Kerckhove explains.

“Another thing is that the two founders are awesome. They’re great guys with a deep passion for product and real engineering quality and belief. When they say that they will do something, they will actually do it.

There’s no element of fake in what they do and that’s really important to me.

Fundamentally too, the metrics of the business were good. I love companies that are already great and who I can turn into mega superstars.”

Freespee has advanced its platform beyond basic software to

customer interaction further.

De Kerckhove says Freespee’s platform serves the growing expectations of consumers. “One of the big trends that is happening right now is, as consumers, we are all going online first. We go and gather information, we hunt across sites, we create comparisons, we look at other people’s opinions - we do hours of research.

“But for complex purchases, there is a still a point where you want to speak to a human being. The challenge these days is that the human being who picks up the phone often knows actually less

It’s all fuelled by data. Every decision is taken by big data, and it learns and gets more sophisticated over time” a sophisticated ‘Communications Platform-as-a-Service’ (CPaaS) stack that, in real-time, intelligently gathers rich data about callers. It is then able segment users, deliver predictive, automated routing and feed an analytics and insights system which is powered by machine learning. This can all be integrated using Freespee’s API, a major selling point for companies looking to build their own workflows.

In November, Freespee went one step further with the public launch of its Talk application, which it claims to be the first contact centre app powered entirely by data. By presenting its wealth of information to agents via a simple interface, it says it smoothens the

about the product than you. By tracking what the consumer has done online, the agent then has that profile and an understanding of what you were looking for. But more importantly than that, we actually direct your call to the right person.

“The app integrates everything. It’s got the whole data analytics piece too; it allows you to track everything, like from a campaign attribution from Google, and it will flow through whatever systems you have, all the way to closing the sale.

“It’s all fuelled by data. Every decision is taken by big data, and it learns and gets more sophisticated over time. We’re not tracking things like the fact that you’re

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DATA & SECURITY

We’re at a point where we have more power than we should, so we have to discipline ourselves not to use all of the power that our technologies bring”

male, you live in London and that you might like cars - we are literally tracking what you’re doing and saying ‘this is what you need today’.”

As with any company that relies on third-party data to power its product, however, Freespee has to ensure its practices are above board and ethically indisputable. Throw in GDPR compliance following the regulation’s high-profile introduction in 2018, and it quickly becomes a strategic priority.

Even though De Kerckhove admits to having had awkward conversations in the past with clients distracted by the amount of customer information available, she says that Freespee’s mechanisms for managing its data are rock-solid.

“It’s hugely important and it was one of our biggest topics with GDPR. We had to review every single one of our systems,” she explains.

48 DIGITAL BULLETIN

“We don’t create personas and then keep them in our system. It’s a real-time, decision-making engine.

What we do is we clean out that data because we’re not trying to create this history of the person, we’re trying to get that person to the right agent. That’s really important.

“Our clients sometimes want it the other way but we don’t allow that, unless they prove to us that the customer said that they wanted to do that. It’s quite interesting - we’re at a point where we have more power than we should, so we have to discipline ourselves not to use all of the power that our technologies bring.”

Freespee hasn’t been bumped off course by the extra focus now applied to data-fuelled enterprises.

The business is growing at 70% yearon-year in terms of revenue and expects that figure to jump again. Last

FREESPEE

July, it received close to $10 million in investment from Verdane Capital IX and intends to use that finance to accelerate growth in Europe while ramping up research efforts in AI and product development.

Recent headline contracts with the likes of Fiat, Vauxhall, E-on and eBay have provided additional boosts but its CEO is wary of an increasing amount of competition in the industry.

“The market is moving very fast and we’ve got lots of companies popping up every day doing brilliant things in a similar space,” de Kerckhove adds.

“The clients are getting more and more sophisticated too, they’re getting a lot more accurate about what they want. I think we’re going to see the development of quite a few bespoke solutions for specific verticals and industries which are facing particular challenges. Also, it’s going to be much more about omnichannel. It’s not just going to be about calls; it’s going to be about chat, about email, about full integration of any form of communication.”

Another challenge facing de Kerckhove and Freespee is talent

acquisition. Skills shortages in techled sectors are well-documented, but for de Kerckhove this extends further into workplace equality and diversity: subjects she cares about passionately.

A notable mentor for women looking to reach the top of their industries, de Kerckhove has used her own experiences as a senior female within technology companies to become a proponent for such issues and to engage others in the debate. She runs workshops and one-to-one sessions for female executives in Paris and London while also guest lecturing on MBA programmes.

“For me, it goes way beyond the gender issue. It’s diversity in all its forms,” she asserts. “It’s about about bringing in different nationalities, different backgrounds. I want people to challenge me and if we’ve all got the same background, we don’t challenge each other.

“We’re getting better. Looking around the room, the younger generation have a much easier time with this. They don’t have the same perceptions that we have but there’s still a lot of work to do; just look at gender pay. We’re still not there with that and that’s just crazy.

I’m very optimistic but that doesn’t mean we have to stop working.”

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FUTURE

SETTING THE P DIGITAL TRAN

50 DIGITAL BULLETIN

MINDTREE

PATH TO NSFORMATION The route to digital transformation can be a treacherous one. Mindtree is helping enterprise find its way

E

AUTHOR: JAMES HENDERSON nterprise is investing

billions, even trillions, of dollars into digital

transformation initiatives.

The reasons for doing so are clear: cutting-edge

and connected technology, improved

customer experience, company-wide

efficiencies, better market penetration

and enhanced profitability, to name just a few.

But the unpalatable truth is that most

digital transformation projects fail, with a recent McKinsey report finding that 70%

of initiatives do not produce the expected results or return. It is a sobering statistic

that represents vast sums of expenditure.

Mindtree has made a name for

itself as one of the enablers of digital

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FUTURE

implementation and transformation

to properly execute the plan.”

Head of Digital for Europe, Anshuman

point at a time when technology is

leading FMGC (Fast Moving Consumer

a backdrop of a skills gap that must

services from ideation to execution. Its Singh, works with some of the world’s

Goods) companies, many of which are Fortune 500 organisations, and has a wealth of experience in delivering

That knowhow is proving a sticking

evolving at breakneck speed, against surely rank as one of business’ greatest challenges.

“The pace of change that technology

digital transformation initiatives across

has driven in the last four, five years

of customer experience, and data and

we’ve seen before, even compared

consulting, design and development analytics.

In short, he is uniquely placed to

discuss the roadblocks to successfully implementing digital strategy.

“Technology is seen as a cost centre

activity, something that you have to do to stay in the business, or that can be

leveraged to transform your business.

For many companies, money is an issue because their margins fluctuate, very

is dramatically different to anything with the late 90s and early 00s. If you

look at most of the senior management in any company, chances are that

the appreciation they have built for

technology was based on a version that existed many moons ago. If you don’t

understand what is possible to build with technology, chances are that you’re not able to harness it well,” says Singh.

Business has to also fundamentally

few are an Amazon that can continue to

rethink why it is implanting digital

Singh tells Digital Bulletin.

he believes many companies are

funnel funds into constantly innovating,” “Once the issue of money is resolved the

question then becomes how technology can truly transform the work you do

as a business? And that also requires a complete rethink of your business

model, as opposed to just running an

e-commerce exercise, or a cloud initiator in isolation. A company has to truly think

how technology can distort the industry

strategies, according to Singh, as

unwittingly positioning themselves

in a race to the bottom. He gives the

examples of hotel bookings, taxis and

travel agents as industry sectors that are “pulling the value out of their business

models”, with consumers laughing all the way to the bank. A huge recalibration is apparently in order.

“In order to counter this, you need to

they work in.

completely rethink how you will compete

shift in terms of how you implement and

about what is your digital business

“So, you need capital and an attitude

use the technology at your disposal, and then you need the smarts and knowhow

52 DIGITAL BULLETIN

in the digital area, really think through model, not necessarily the business

model itself. That is going to require a

completely different set of skills, because

MINDTREE

A company has to truly think how technology can distort the industry they work in�

53 Issue 2

The Bulletin

HIGHLIGHTS

Google investing $13bn in the United States

Google has announced significant expansion plans in the United States. $13 billion will be spent on data centres and offices, with major expansion in 14 states. It will hire ‘tens of thousands’ of employees and create 10,000 construction jobs. In total, Google will have bases in 24 states, with data centres in 13 communities. The news follows $9 billion of investment over the past year alone. (14/02/19) MORE ON THIS STORY The Bulletin is our stream of the most relevant enterprise technology news, aggregated from highly-respected sources and packaged in a short, digestible format, delivering a simple yet indispensable read.

A one-stop shop for all of the newest major developments of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, The Bulletin, available at digitalbullet.in, is a vital and dependable resource for technology professionals.

MINDTREE

The pace of change that technology has driven in the last four, five years is dramatically different to anything we’ve seen before”

it needs an appreciation of what is a new technology set.

“If you’re not able to do that, you

cannot then define a vision for the

company. And if you’re not able to do

that soon, your profit margin will keep

depleting to a point you won’t be able to come back from.”

Singh gives an example that he says

encapsulates the scale of the change of thinking that businesses need to undertake to truly transform their

businesses, leveraging the potential of emerging technology.

“At a recent AI conference a

gentleman was talking about how he is

over a time series, you can join the time series and you can figure out what volume of blood the human heart

is pumping, and figure out what the

volume is. One of the main reasons we

have such huge backlogs in healthcare is because, while you can speed up

everything else, the technician who

takes a scan has to interpret what they

are seeing and make a judgement. But

just by doing this, you have now reduced the level of skill required to interpret an MRI scan.

“Imagine you were running an MRI

interpretation centre in the NHS. You

can do it by hiring 200 MRI technicians,

using computer vision to boost readings highly skilled, who you will never find. Or to an MRI scan. There are four parts to

you can look at adapting the power of

is that they figure out which quadrant

people whose value is in the bulk of the

an MRI scan, and the first thing they do belonged to which part of the human

heart. Once that is done, you can colour code the scan to determine which part of the heart it is. Suddenly, from a black and white scan, it becomes a twocolour scan.

“Because all these scans are taken

technology like this and find lower skilled job. It’s same business, very different

models. It shows that if you don’t fully

comprehend the technology, you can never figure it out how it’ll disrupt your

business, and can never articulate what skills you might need.”

One way companies can engender

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FUTURE

this change management is to

successfully train and skill employees so that they are comfortable working on and with emerging technologies.

Singh says there is a three-pronged

approach that should pay dividends.

Firstly, companies should acknowledge and utilise early spotters who want to

work with new technologies; secondly, Anshuman Singh is General Manager & European Head of the Digital Business

& Consulting Group at

Mindtree. With over 18 years’

devise a career path for them or risk

losing them to more forward-thinking

businesses. Thirdly, they should ensure that the training staff are given can be used directly within the business.

“Companies should be thinking about

of industry experience,

how they are going to respond to the big

of skills in digital business

their training strategy to that. There is no

he brings a broad range strategy and execution, structured innovation,

practice development,

design thinking, programme management and user experience design for

programmers. In his current

challenge that digital will bring, and align point in sending employees on training courses in an area such as blockchain,

for example, if there is no applicable use for it in the company, it will just lead to

frustration. Skill your people in areas you have real use for.”

It is a case of practice what you preach

role he works across a

for Mindtree, says Singh, pointing out

industries, cross-pollinating

can themselves fall behind the curve.

variety of clients and

concepts to help business succeed in their digital

transformation initiatives.

Singh believes that digital is a great equaliser and

businesses can learn a lot

from each other to succeed in this digital age.

56 DIGITAL BULLETIN

that even technology companies

“Training and reskilling our own team is really high on our agenda, we have to ensure that our staff are comfortable

with and knowledgeable about the next set of important technologies.”

Staying with Mindtree, Singh says

that being born a “digital native” – the company was established in 2000 –

has given it an edge when it comes to

MINDTREE

It’s only a matter of time until the march towards mainstream picks up and I think 2019 could be the tipping point”

working with enterprises to implement effective digital strategies.

“We were born in the heyday of the

dot com boom,” he says. “Because of

that we have always wanted to deliver meaningful technology solutions or

strategies that help both business but

also society as a whole. The dot com era

laid the foundation for us as a technology

technology industries. And I’m not talking about technology services company, but companies that use technology services companies, so the likes of

Unilever, TomTom and international

banks. What this does is that it helps you

build a phenomenal knowledge pool and experience within the country.”

Looking to the next 12 months, Singh

business, and a lot of our strengths have

says that Mindtree will be heavily focused

We’re working with some really interesting

which he says is an area moving rapidly.

really come to the fore in recent years.

customers and deploying our expertise

on transforming customer experiences, “The customer experience

back into the industry.”

transformation is rooted in what is AI, so

established itself as one of the dominant

their customer experience management.

On a national level, India has

IT outsourcing locations in the world,

with all of the industry’s main players

maintaining a significant base within the country, forming an important component of ‘India Inc’.

“Companies that are considered

American-German companies actually host a huge amount of their technology here and vast workforces. What that

does is it helps almost every other large

company, especially those working in the

you will find AI embedded in all our sets of It is enabled by a number of factors, so we’re not just thinking about a website and a mobile app, but also about how we ensure the customer experience

is immersive. To rethink the customer

experience is going to involve artificial intelligence, whether it’s machine

learning, computer origin, or deep

learning. That’s an area that is going to really evolve in the next two to three years.”

57 Issue 2

EVENTS EVENTS

DIGITAL BULLETIN ROUNDS UP THE INDUSTRY EVENTS THAT ARE WORTH CLEARING YOUR DIARY FOR…

05-06 MAR

LOGISTICS CIO FORUM 05-06 MARCH, 2019 HOTEL NOVOTEL AMSTERDAM CITY, AMSTERDAM, NETHERLANDS

The Logistics CIO Forum: Europe brings together 200 senior IT executives and industry experts from Europe’s leading logistics providers to discuss the biggest challenges and opportunities that technology disruption is creating for the industry. Boasting what it says is an “unrivalled” line-up of speakers, the likes of Markus Sontheimer, CIO, DB Schneker, Marcus Würker, CIO of DHL Supply Chain and Mario Harik, CIO of XPO Logistics will also address delegates, giving their view on the technology subjects shaping the future of logistics.

EVENTS.EFT.COM/CIOEU 58 DIGITAL BULLETIN

MARCH-MAY

12-13 MAR CLOUDEXPO EUROPE 12-13 MARCH, 2019 EXCEL, LONDON Cloud Expo Europe, the UK’s biggest and best attended technology event, returns to London in March. Remaining agile in today’s fast-paced, ever-changing world has never been more demanding or important. Cloud Expo Europe a platform in the UK where the brightest minds come together to help businesses accelerate their digital transformation plans. Whether you are a business leader, technologist, market-leading solution or service provider, thought-leader or expert, if you are a part of the tech universe, Cloud Expo Europe is an event to attend.

WWW.CLOUDEXPOEUROPE.COM

59 Issue 2

EVENTS

12-13 MAR SMART IOT LONDON 12-13 MARCH, 2019 EXCEL, LONDON Smart IoT 2018 is an event that looks to make sense of the accelerating world of technology, and it comes to London in March, 2019. Wherever you are on your digital journey, and however large or small an organisation, all the answers, all the inspiration, all the ideas, are here, according to organisers. Whether you want to focus on internet security or machine learning integration. Whether it’s big data analytics, APIs or Blockchain. Or whether you’re looking to create more seamless transactions or reduce costs, this is most definitely the place.

It’s the one place where, quite literally, things come together.

WWW.SMARTIOTLONDON.COM

14-15 MAR DATA INNOVATION SUMMIT 14-15 MARCH, 2019 KISTAMÄSSAN, STOCKHOLM This year’s event will focus on practical case studies on Applied Innovation, Analytics and Visualisation, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Data Management, Data engineering, IOT insight and technology. With over 100 Nordic and international speakers on six stages, six workshop stages and plenty of learning and networking activities in the exhibition area, the 2019 summit is the place to be for all professionals and organisations working with utilisation of data for increasing profit, reinventing business models, develop data-driven products, and increasing customer satisfaction.

WWW.DATAINNOVATIONSUMMIT.COM

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MARCH-MAY

10-11 APR

09-11 APR GOOGLE CLOUD NEXT ‘19 09-11 APRIL, 2019 MOSCONE CONVENTION CENTER, SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA Google Cloud Next is where customers, partners, developers, influencers and the greater global cloud community come to get inspired and learn about Google Cloud Platform, G Suite, Maps, Devices and more great technology and solutions from across Google.

Learn from customers and partners, and dive deep through hundreds of breakout sessions, code labs, demos and hands-on training. Next ‘19 will offer more than 500 breakout sessions, led by more than 1,000 Google, customer, and partner speakers.

DUBLIN TECH SUMMIT 10-11 APRIL, 2019 DUBLIN, IRELAND In two short years the Dublin Tech Summit has emerged as one of Europe’s largest tech conferences, and has been labelled Europe’s fastest growing tech conference.

The event will showcase some of the world’s most influential tech leaders and brands to Dublin for two days of growth and development, knowledge sharing, and networking. Attending companies and participants will include Airbnb, Google, Cisco, Google, SAP and Dropbox.

WWW.DUBLINTECHSUMMIT.COM

WWW.CLOUD.WITHGOOGLE.COM/NEXT/SF

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EVENTS

25-26 APR IOT TECH EXPO GLOBAL 2019 25-26 APRIL 2019 OLYMPIA, LONDON The World’s Largest IoT Conference Series; the IoT Tech Expo Global event in London will bring together key industries from across the globe for two days of top level content and discussion. Exploring the latest innovations within the Internet of Things and covering the impact it has on many industries including Manufacturing, Transport, Supply Chain, Insurance, Logistics, Government, Energy and Automotive, this conference is not to be missed. Key topics examined include: smart building & facilities management, building the connected supply chain, intelligent city and transport management, smart grid data management and analytics, asset monitoring and management, delivering smart connected new products, and more.

WWW.IOTTECHEXPO.COM/GLOBAL

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MARCH-MAY

07-09 MAY .NEXT CONFERENCE 2019 07-09 MAY, 2019 ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA The only conference dedicated to the latest in data centre and enterprise cloud technologies heads to Anaheim, California in May. With 60+ unique sessions to inspire and inform you, there is no better place to get educated on hyperconverged infrastructure, hybrid cloud, cloud automation, IoT and more. Hosted by Nutanix, some new sessions include a focus on data centre modernisation that explores deploying scalable petabyte-scale storage solutions for unstructured data and how machine learning will transform IT Ops. Guest speakers at this year’s event include actor and The Honest Co founder Jessica Alba, The Simpsons writer Mike Reiss and renowned explorer, fundraiser and author Sir Ranulph Fiennes OBE.

WWW.NUTANIX.COM/NEXT

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EVENTS

15-16 MAY THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION CONFERENCE 15-16 MAY, 2019 LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM The 2019 Digital Transformation Conference will be tackling the challenges of successful transformation head on and will feature a diverse set of tracks and streams to cover the entire digital ecosystem. The agenda for the twoday event will be built around the defining topics of the digital era: people and culture and how people come first in transformation projects; the digital workplace; customer experience; emerging technology and trends; digital product innovation and digital delivery. Attendees at last year’s conference included the likes of Ocado, ASOS and Unilever, as well as tech behemoth IBM. Historically it has attracted delegates from across Europe, even stretching to the EMEA and APAC regions

WWW.DIGITALTRANSFORMATIONCONF.CO.UK 64 DIGITAL BULLETIN

MARCH-MAY

20-23 MAY INTEROP19 20-23 MAY, 2019 LAS VEGAS, NEVADA Interop’s goal is to provide a vendor-neutral educational environment that provides real insight into the best IT practices and strategies for your enterprise.

It has no products to pitch and no forced agenda to push - except to help you uncover the best solutions possible, regardless of platform or ecosystem. You’ll hear from industry thought leaders as well as peers experiencing the same challenges you are, making your takeaways practical and actionable. Hosted at The Mirage in Las Vegas, Interop will have summits, workshops and sessions covering every topic imaginable. It counts the likes of Apple, Dell EMC and Microsoft among the list of previous attendees.

WWW.INTEROP.COM

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THE CLOSING BULLETIN

THE CLOSING BULLETIN In a column exclusive to Digital Bulletin, Andy Bell, CTO of Edenhouse Solutions, explains why effective change management underpins a successful transformation

W

hen undertaking a transformation project, whether digital or otherwise, it can be an exciting time for organisations – you may be improving organisational efficiency and productivity, or providing employees with a better working experience.

Yet, it’s also likely to be a daunting one.

Fundamentally, you’ll be altering your

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current business model and disrupting the way people go about their work.

Inevitably, the transition will come with its fair share of challenges, including any number of practical or technical problems. But the biggest and most common will always be change in itself. As much as people may recognise this as an issue, the need to carefully manage this process is often overlooked.

The benefit of a change project can

ANDY BELL

be a difficult message to get across – especially when we are asking people to adopt new ways of behaving and even new ways of thinking. We shouldn’t ignore the need to get that message across, however, as fear of the unknown can weigh heavy on the minds of employees. Change management has to be an essential element intertwined within any transformation process. It’s not something that should be bolted-on later or outsourced to an outside agency.

THE CHALLENGES Before embarking on this journey though, it helps if an organisation first understands where potential problems might arise. Change management touches on multiple areas, and knowing where issues are likely to rear their head allows you to be proactive and deal with them before they have a chance to jeopardise the mission at hand.

One major factor many organisations will come across is the cultural shift. It’s inevitable that someone who has been working within the business for a long time, who has always been used to one particular system or technology, will be more resistant to change than newer

employees who are not yet so set in their ways.

Longer serving employees hold enormous value to organisations, due to their wealth of experience and the understanding of the business they possess. So, ensuring they embrace this transformation and don’t baulk at the change is crucial. It is extremely valuable to ensure these people are sought out and actively engaged within projects, as being seen to be able to turn sceptics into advocates sends a very powerful message to the organisation.

We also need to consider the IT department. They may have spent years, and vast amounts of money, customising the organisation’s core systems – and it can be very hard to just let that go. This tendency to hang on to legacy systems can be dangerous however, as businesses can become landlocked on old technology – meaning it’s almost impossible to update software.

These are just some of the practical issues which can occur during a transformation project. But these are not insurmountable obstacles – we can navigate our way around them.

The benefit of a change project can be a difficult message to get across – especially when we are asking people to adopt new ways of behaving and even new ways of thinking” 67 Issue 2

THE CLOSING BULLETIN

It can be immensely

helpful to have early exposure to a new

system. If you wait

until a new system is fully implemented it

will be harder to make

fundamental changes if

problems are discovered�

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MAKING IT A SUCCESS Business leaders will want to execute a change management strategy and apply three key principles: Clear communication - What steps are being taken to communicate with employees and ensure that they see the change in a positive light? Clear communication will play an important role in preparing employees for the change and removing any worrying uncertainty. Highlighting the practical benefits can also help employees focus on the positives – and limit the potential for negativity.

ANDY BELL

Early exposure - It can be immensely helpful to have early exposure to a new system. If you wait until a new system is fully implemented it will be harder to make fundamental changes if problems are discovered.

Early exposure will also allow you to introduce end users to new apps, for example, in a phased and easily-consumable fashion, which significantly aids end user engagement, buy-in, and adoption.

This avoids overwhelming them with huge amounts of new functionality all at once. It also makes it easier for the IT team to conduct tests as they can isolate and iron out issues.

Ongoing support - Although most modern tech is designed to be intuitive in use, it doesn’t mean training and support isn’t needed.

It’s important that end users fully understand the potential they have been given. Otherwise, fundamental

features and functions, designed to facilitate new ways of working, will be missed. This will result in employees resorting to their old behaviours and ignoring the advantages the new system provides to them.

This need to manage change is not going to disappear – if anything it’s going to become ever more important as the pace of change in business gets faster and faster.

After all, a digital transformation project is often just the start, the catalyst for further changes – enabling organisations to bring in even more technologies and ways of working, but the technology is only an enabler and is only as good as the people using it. It’s vital, therefore, that we embed change management strategies into every digital transformation project and we don’t just rely on others to come in later and solve the problem for us.

Andy Bell has over 20 years’ SAP experience across a wide range of roles covering analysis, development, architecture and management; within both enduser and consulting environments.

At Edenhouse, his role is to keep abreast of all the latest developments across the SAP portfolio and the wider technology market and use that to develop and maintain its products and services accordingly, ensuring its employees’ skills are kept up-to-date, as well as providing the best possible support, guidance and advice to its customers.

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