OUR FOCUS IS ABSOLUTELY ON VALUE CREATION" "
Join Nottingham University Business School’s Championing Digital Transformation programme today
● Creating your digital strategy – 2-day course
● Implementing digital change – 3-day course
● Delivered by an experienced and influential team of academic and industry experts from KPMG, SAP and UBS
● Develop the skills to deliver successful digital change
“With this programme, not only will you learn the foundations of how to redesign your business to embrace digital disruption, you'll learn from industry experts who've done it before in leading companies.”
Lee Fulmer, Chief Data Officer, UBS (Championing
Digital Transformation Course Leader)
nott.ac.uk/digital-transformation
Our focus is absolutely on value creation”. Has there ever been a more accurate description of the role of the modern data leader and the diverse, capable teams they put together to deliver results? Certainly not in the case of our cover star Gary Barr who, since the start of 2021, has been at the forefront of a data and technology transformation that’s driving Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) forwards. Or for any of our other contributors, for that matter.
We met Barr at LGIM’s London HQ to discuss this work, as well as gain valuable insight into the evolution of data in the financial services industry. He tells us: “there’s never been a more opportune time for the industry to create and share greater wealth from the huge amounts of data we both collect and create”. In just over two years at LGIM, Barr has focused on building, promoting and advancing a data-first operating environment that contributes to
enhanced client value and aligns with a wider, strategic transformation that’s ongoing at the business. Read how on page 12.
We’ve packed this issue with similarly themed content. We catch up with Penguin Random House’s Pete Williams, who we first spoke with in 2021. Since, Williams has advanced his data strategy work further and tells us more about moving through the data maturity curve. We hear from Pets at Home’s Robert Kent on all things data transformation, and The Digital Line’s George Vaughan who talks us through implementing tech transformation with purpose – the work he’s doing to bring greater independence to those in care homes is both fascinating and inspiring. We also have interviews with State Street, DXC, Western Shipyard Group, and CIBT.
Enjoy the issue.
Content Director Matt High Creative Director Steve Shipley
Marketing Director
Jack Pascall
Project Directors
Henry Allton-Jones
Will Tottie
Alex Neagu
Managing Directors
Charlotte Clarke
James Pepper
06 | INSIGHT
EXEC SUMMARY
News, views and tech insight
12 | INTERVIEW
LGIM
On the data and tech transformation driving the business forwards
32 | PORTFOLIO
TECH YOU NEED
Innovations for work, leisure and the environmentally conscious
42 | INTERVIEW
PENGUIN RANDOM HOUSE
On riding the data maturity curve, people and data literacy
56 | PERSPECTIVE
AI EDGE
Ed Fowler discusses AI edge, 5G and handset wars
62 | INTERVIEW
DXC
On data and analytics unleashing transformative power
78 | INNOVATOR PIPEBOTS
Tiny, friendly-faced, and saving our infrastructure
80 | INTERVIEW
PETS AT HOME
On ‘ground-up’ data transformations
12
42 56
62 78
80
94 | INTERVIEW
STATE STREET
On leading a people-first digital journey
104 | DISRUPTOR
QURE.AI
It’s AI, saving lives
106 | INTERVIEW
THE DIGITAL LINE
On transforming venue experiences through innovation
122 | INTERVIEW
CIBT
On reimagining the travel and mobility industry
132 | ENTEPRENEUR
LACEY KAELANI
Innovation in the HR space
134 | INTERVIEW
WESTERN SHIPYARD GROUP
On transformation, culture and innovation
146 | CITY GUIDE
48 HRS: MALTA
Business and pleasure in the Mediterranean
154 | CALENDAR EVENTS
The best events for 2023
Nature is powerful. So is technology. Combine them and the possibilities are endless. Like driving positive change or fighting air pollution, for example. This is what Neoplants, a team of scientists, engineers and – of course – plant lovers hopes to achieve with Neo P1, a superplant that’s been bioengineered using innovative technology to capture and recycle dangerous indoor pollutants.
Neo P1 is created to target the four main Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) in the average home: formaldehyde, benzene, toluene, and xylene and, according to Neoplants, is up to 30 times more powerful in doing so than most ‘regular’ houseplants.
www.neoplants.com
Apple is developing an AI-powered health coaching service, codenamed ‘Quartz’, according to a report by Bloomberg. It said the health coach, which is part of a broader health push at Apple, will keep users motivated to exercise, help them to sleep better and improve eating habits – Bloomberg said AI and data from an Apple Watch will be used to create tailored health coaching programmes and make relevant suggestions. The report also said Apple is working on new technology to track emotions.
www.bloomberg.com
Researchers at the University of Texas, Austin have developed an AI system capable of decoding brain activity into a continuous stream of text, allowing a person’s thoughts to be read non-invasively for the first time. The work, led by Dr. Alex Huth and Jerry Tang, relies in part on a transformer model, similar to those that power ChatGPT, but requires no implants. The decoder translates brain activity as the person listens to a story or watches a video and could be used for patients, such as stroke victims, who are incapable of speech.
www.guardian.com
Forget the steering wheel – what century are you living in? You need Hypersquare, a ‘device’ for driving. It’s just one of many digital, innovative new features of INCEPTION, a concept car courtesy of Peugeot representing the next generation of battery-electric-vehicle (BEV) by design vehicles. Beneath its ‘cat-like power, sensual curves, and latent dynamism’ [says Peugeot] is the i-Cockpit, an immersive digital experience for drivers featuring hand gestured tablet controls, autodrive and electronic steering technology, digital dash with line-of-sight driving info, HD screens, and smart storage. It’s also environmentally friendly, using raw material finishes, superfast charging and full electric power.
www.peugeot.co.uk
“PEUGEOT’s transformation will not just be electric – it will be visionary”
Linda Jackson, CEO
The problem with a ‘top secret startup’ is there’s not much to tell. Until recently, when Humane, a tech firm founded by ex-Apple employees Imram Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno, teased the first demo of its projector-based wearable in a TED talk. The device is built entirely from the ground up for AI, is completely standalone and doesn’t need a smartphone or other device to pair with it. Reported features include supported gesture commands, a camera capable of identifying objects around the wearer, translation technology, and a projected screen [Chaudhri is seen projecting an incoming call onto his hand in the demonstration].
www.inverse.com
In light of ongoing disruption and evolving work models, businesses face 10 significant organisational shifts, says McKinsey. They are:
• Increasing speed and strengthening resilience
• The new balance of in-person and remote work
• Understanding and adopting applied AI
• Employee attraction, retention and attrition
• Building institutional capabilities
• Walking the talent tightrope
• Building self-aware and inspiring leadership
• Making progress on diversity, equity and inclusion
• Investing in wellbeing and mental health
• Driving greater organisational efficiency
www.mckinsey.com
Accenture, IBM and Mandiant have joined the Elite Cyber Defenders Program, a collaborative new initiative set up by cybersecurity firm Nozomi Networks. It will pair Nozomi’s industry-leading OT/IoT security platform with access to incident response expertise, unique threat intelligence sharing and security research to customers around the globe.
www.nozominetworks.com
Mark Zuckerberg tells investors during an earnings call that Meta sees “an opportunity to introduce AI agents to billions of people in ways that will be useful and meaningful”.
Amazon announces it is shutting down its line of Halo health and fitness devices, first unveiled in 2020 as part of a move into the healthcare space.
Microsoft announces the end of all support for Windows 10, the world’s most popular operating system, will occur on October 14, 2025.
OpenAI announces it is working on ChatGPT Business ‘for professionals who need more control over their data’, saying it will be available in the coming months.
T-Mobile reports it has experienced a second data breach in 2023, revealing in a letter to customers that a total of 836 customers were affected by the breach.
Legal & General Investment Management’s Gary Barr discusses the data and technology transformation that’s driving the business forwards
Data leaders and air traffic controllers. As analogies go, it’s a good one – and Gary Barr should know. He is a vastly experienced data professional and senior executive, a 30-year veteran of delivering successful and value-driven data and technology change in the financial services sector, the man currently at the helm of building, promoting and executing a data-first operating environment as part of a broader and ongoing transformation at Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM), and – he concedes – a sucker for a good analogy. We recently spent time with Barr discussing data in financial services and the extensive programme of work he and his colleagues have delivered over the last two years at LGIM. But first, those air traffic controllers…
“Imagine the chaos if they didn’t exist,” says Barr, exploring the complex, challenging and ever-evolving role he and his data leader peers occupy. “That analogy is the modern reality for any company seeking data and digital relevance, and for data leaders. They’re fundamental to the operation of the organisation: they help optimise and ensure the safe handling of data assets as they traverse the business, are responsible for driving and embedding new technologies and data standards, and for coordinating activities across many different functions from sales and distribution through to operations, technology, reporting and compliance.
“In particular,” Barr adds, “building those cross-organisational partnerships is crucial for creating value for stakeholders. We have to help them understand why and how data can become a competitive advantage to them and the organisation, then link the data operation to nearly everything that happens on the field of play – it’s the backbone of success as a data leader and it’s built on collaboration, people leadership, successful execution, and the ability to drive alignment across an executive team.”
&
(LGIM)
Barr Global Chief Data Officer, Legal
General Investment Management
“Our focus is absolutely on value creation”
Over 300,000 of our people work to amplify human potential and create the next opportunity for people, businesses and communities. With over four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer clients, in more than 50 countries, as they navigate their digital transformation powered by the cloud. We enable them with an AI-powered core, empower the business with agile digital at scale and drive continuous improvement with always-on learning through the transfer of digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem. We are deeply committed to being a well-governed, environmentally sustainable organization where diverse talent thrives in an inclusive workplace.
Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM) a leading financial services group in the UK managing over £1.2 trillion in assets, aimed to transform its data operations. LGIM partnered with Infosys BPM, a leading end-to-end transformative business process management (BPM) services provider, to create new enterprise capabilities that were scalable to reduce operational costs associated with managing large volumes of data, whilst improving value delivery, user experience, and data quality.
Infosys BPM leveraged its centre of excellence (COE) expertise in Investment Management, Data Operations and ServiceNow to establish new processes for LGIM including a data helpdesk, data classification, access restriction as well as a number of data masters to support the rollout.
Using an agile approach, Infosys resourced the program with skilled candidates, identified automation opportunities, and focused on continuous improvements. Infosys will also
service critical business requirements for data modelling, data analysis, and data risk.
Throughout the greenfield project, Infosys BPM remained aligned with LGIM’s business needs, being flexible to accommodate specific skill-based hiring needs and providing additional managerial oversight for the ongoing changes along the way.
The collaboration has delivered manual effort savings through tactical automation. LGIM now has a clear way-forward roadmap and a healthy pipeline of identified improvement opportunities. The successful collaboration between Infosys BPM and LGIM has allowed LGIM to fully utilize its existing tools including reporting and management information functionalities, while avoiding risks due to reduced manual interventions.
Barr has witnessed this evolution firsthand. Over 30 years of working for leading financial services firms, he has seen the role of data, analytics and other technologies change and the value derived from their adoption increase significantly in response to growing market volatility. “Certainly over the last decade or so, a greater emphasis in my roles has been on data and analytics,” he explains. “That’s provided great insight on the volatility and change across the data landscape in the industry, where investments in the advancement of data and data technology have afforded us an opportunity to improve transparency, expedite process execution, extrapolate deeper insights for our clients and, ultimately, drive far greater value for our investors and shareholders.
“The rate of volatility has been significant,” continues Barr, “and I think it’s been typified by three fundamental stages of development over the last three decades. The first was technology driven, with a real focus on tooling and data warehousing; there was a strong sense that data was a technology ‘problem’. The second stage was driven by the regulatory environment, in which new standards and policies related to data led to a pretty significant shift in focus to everything you’d encompass under the data governance banner – knowing your customers, regulatory reporting, money laundering and security, information privacy, and more. More recently, the evolution has been far more culture driven and centred around people, skills, data fluency, and a much greater interest in how data becomes a part of everyone’s work.
“At each of those stages, maturity and awareness has improved, but the opportunity to optimise the value in data in this sector continues to be both vast and complex, and therein lies the challenge,” says Barr. “It requires us to harness the learnings of those key stages of data evolution and execute on how we deeply connect them to the interests of our clients and shareholders, while also focusing on the value we crave. There’s never been a more opportune time for the industry to create and share greater wealth from the huge amounts of data we both collect and create, and that’s where we’re at with LGIM –our focus is absolutely on value creation.”
“There’s never been a more opportune time for the industry to create and share greater wealth from the huge amounts of data we both collect and create”
Barr joined LGIM at the start of 2021. The business is the global asset management business of Legal & General Group, managing £1.2tn in assets on behalf of savers, retirees and institutions worldwide through investment strategies that cover a broad array of asset classes and styles, including equities, bonds, property and alternatives, and multi-asset funds. LGIM is dedicated to creating a better future through responsible investing. It does so through strong partnerships with clients, collaborating closely to achieve positive and long-term outcomes, and by conducting business in a way that allows it to meet the challenges of a rapidly changing world. Continuous innovation and industry expertise are crucial to this approach.
As Chief Data Officer, Barr works closely alongside Chief Technology Officer Derrick Hastie, as a core part of Chief Operating Officer Brenda Sklar’s LGIM Global Chief Operating Office. This is responsible for the technology, data, client servicing, operations, and managing of the organisation’s strategic operating agenda, including the delivery of a largescale transformation for its Strategic Target Operating Model (STOM). STOM is a change programme designed to modernise LGIM, enable growth, and introduce more scalable and seamless services. A core aspect is centred around introducing common tools and processes, and enhancing the available technology,
tools and data to empower employees to use their expertise and creativity in a more innovative way.
“My role is building, promoting and advancing the creation of a data-first operating environment,” Barr explains.
“That means collaborating closely with teams across the business, technology, data and operations to create, fund and execute the deployment of a cohesive data vision for LGIM that places data at the heart of how we operate and, ultimately,
brings enhanced value to our clients. When I joined, the business was already well on its strategic transformation path, including a deeper understanding of the importance of data to that strategy. However, there was a lack of a cohesive vision for what success looks like from a data perspective and so, very early on, Derrick and I began collaborating closely on creating a shared vision and mission, and articulating it to the business.
“The steps needed were pretty clear from the outset,” he adds. “We needed a comprehensive rebuild and a modern data platform that we could architect our data success off of; we needed to create an enterprise-wide data operating model, which didn’t exist at that point; we also needed a strong vision for how to execute and launch those capabilities in parallel with the existing strategic transformation that was underway. I’m a firm believer in the raw power of data, and empowering users to get directly into the information and insights available is core to our vision. It requires a fundamental rethink of what that experience looks like to every stakeholder and an ability to embed yourself in the business to understand how you’re going to change the thinking about the outcome, and what the outcome looks like – that’s when you achieve data fluency. We focused on quickly evidencing the value of what we were doing then, in alignment with the strategic transformation, started helping the business understand the art of the possible.”
“I’m a firm believer in the raw power of data, and empowering users to get directly into the information and insights available is core to our vision”
You know that data is critical. Data drives innovation, productivity, and the bottom line. Domino Data Lab helps you deliver value faster with security or governance—the only platform you need to manage the model lifecycle.
Domino works with all your data platforms. Whether you have a relational or NoSQL database, a SQL engine, cloud storage, or enterprise applications, Domino can handle them all. Using Domino, data scientists and domain experts can develop, test, deploy, and monitor models using the most innovative tools. Domino breaks down barriers: handoffs, silos, audits, and isolated infrastructure. The platform drives collaboration and automates repetitive tasks.
Domino runs workloads on any infrastructure. It runs on your on-premises data center, any cloud, or all of these – from a single control center. Your team can run interactive or batch workloads based on your requirements: cost, data location and transfer fees, privacy and sovereignty regulations, and hardware availability. Domino accelerates scaling up models and monitors their accuracy. Your IT organization retains control, tracks costs, and controls data access.
You are ready to scale data science to a proven enterprise-grade MLOps platform. It’s time for Domino.
www.dominodatalab.com
As part of the ongoing STOM transformation LGIM partnered with State Street, one of the largest financial institutions, to expand its front office technology, manage middle office operations, and improve operational scalability.
“It’s about moving off our legacy estate and leveraging the capabilities of State Street’s Alpha platform,” says Barr. “As part of that strategic transformation we’re effectively outsourcing some data management functions to State Street. We have to determine how the information they provide to us can be made accessible to the right people at the right time, and in the right manner, which is where alignment with the broader strategy is so important. We’ve got to build a data fabric that ensures all the data we receive from State Street (and our other partners in the data ecosystem) can be managed properly within our estate. We then need to connect that to our vision for client reporting and performance analytics, our fiduciary responsibilities around regulatory reporting and compliance, how we scale data science and our broader digital ambitions and so forth, all the while evolving and improving the user experience for our clients.”
That user experience is key. Through STOM, LGIM is enabling and empowering its employees to be more innovative and use their expertise more creatively to give clients the highest quality of service. Technology and data are critical to this process. For the latter, Barr and team have focused on democratising data across the organisation, an approach he believes crucial to building business value. “The fundamental problem with centralisation – which is certainly easier – is that you’re effectively keeping all the skills and knowledge that’s relevant to the business in one place. But data is an amorphous asset that’s owned by the business, so our focus from the very beginning has been on considering how we infuse the management of data across the organisation in a controlled way, and with the appropriate governance.
“There’s never been a time where data has been more prevalent as a topic”
“My role is to to create, fund and execute the deployment of a cohesive data vision for LGIM that places data at the heart of how we operate and, ultimately, brings enhanced value to our clients”
“A big part of our vision is the creation of a platform and operating model that embeds democratisation at the core,” Barr notes. “We’ve made great progress in the platform aspect already in terms of making sure that we’re able to provide the right data to the right people and machines at the right time, and in a manner that empowers them to use the insights and information in new and meaningful ways; the operating model component is about ensuring that the process runs smoothly and efficiently. True value creation comes from infusing the skills and talents within the business so that they’re rethinking how they work with the data available to them. That’s when you reach nirvana: data becomes a frictionless asset
that flows down to those that need it and know how to use it, whether they’re data scientists, fund managers, sales executives or anyone else in the organisation.”
As with any significant change programme, technology is only one factor. In this instance, achieving effective democratisation of data and driving business-wide value creation relies equally on people, collaboration, and steering the right organisational culture. Barr highlights several initiatives that have driven this aspect, including a ‘lead from the centre’ approach that showcases new and innovative ways to use data, building communities of practice to spread change momentum through the business, and the creation of digital user groups and advisory boards.
Continuing the theme of impactful collaboration, working closely with partner organisations is central to strategy delivery, says Barr. “We are privileged to be working with several partner organisations. In addition to State Street Alpha, we are working with Cloudera to deploy CDP to help us unlock the value of data
“True value creation comes from infusing the skills and talents within the business so that they’re rethinking how they work with the data available to them”
Y o u r d a t a n e e d s a r e c o m p l e x M o r e t h a n e v e r , y o u ’ r e f a c e d w i t h t h e i n t r o d u c t i o n o f n e w d a t a p o i n t s , r e p o r t i n g s t a n d a r d s a n d r e g u l a t o r y d e m a n d s . L e g a c y s y s t e m s , a s q u e e z e i n b u d g e t s , a n d m o r e c o m p e t i t i o n i s m a k i n g i t d i f f i c u l t t o k e e p u p l e t a l o n e g e t a h e a d
A t F u n d i p e d i a , w e ’ v e r e i n v e n t e d m a s t e r d a t a m a n a g e m e n t f o r t h e m o d e r n n e e d s o f a s s e t m a n a g e r s O u r p l a t f o r m p r o v i d e s a s i n g l e s o u r c e o f t r u t h f o r a l l y o u r p r o d u c t d a t a a c r o s s y o u r o r g a n i s a t i o n I t ’ s a f l e x i b l e , s c a l a b l e a n d m o d u l a r s o l u t i o n d e s i g n e d t o s u p p o r t m a n y u s e c a s e s , f r o m c o n s u m i n g d a t a t h r o u g h t o r e c o n c i l i n g i t a c r o s s t h e m a r k e t B e n e f i t f r o m a c l o u d - n a t i v e , n o - c o d e p l a t f o r m , e n r i c h e d w i t h A I c a p a b i l i t i e s w h e r e v e r y o u a r e o n y o u r j o u r n e y t o d a t a m a t u r i t y
B o o k a d e m o t o s e e F u n d i p e d i a i n a c t i o n a n d d i s c o v e r a f a s t e r , s m a r t e r w a y t o m a n a g e y o u r d a t a . w w w f u n d i p e d i a c o m
Helping asset managers like LGIM make the complexities of managing product data a thing of the past.
anywhere and help our user communities understand how to build value from Cloudera’s data visualisation and machine learning capabilities; with Domino Data Lab to use its best of breed platform to help us build and promote faster model generation in investments; with Infosys, a global leader in BPO, that is helping us build a modern, scalable and sustainable data operating architecture; and with Fundipedia, with which we are deploying master data management tooling. We also work with a host of other third parties, whose collective expertise and commitment to the project is empowering that democratised ecosystem – it’s a true team effort, both internally and externally.”
“When we talk about ESG, our credentials, our net-zero targets or any other commitments we make, they’re absolutely supported by the data we collect and leverage”
This kind of collaborative approach is one that Barr says is an essential ingredient to long-term success, in particular the relationship between data, technology and the business. “My approach to that has always been pretty pragmatic and practical,” he explains. “Technology choice is the purview and role of the CTO but, at the same time, those decisions need to be based on a clear set of requirements that include data design elements: what do we need success to look like, how does that operate in the business, and how will we manage the data service encompassed as part of that? The partnership I have with my peers/colleagues helps to ensure that our technology partners are empowered to make the right choices for those
requirements to become reality. Once we start executing, the ability of the data and tech teams to come together and collaborate as one entity is fundamental.
“Collaboration with the business is different,” he says. “When you’re engaging with stakeholders, it’s all about storytelling, advocating for why they should be excited about data, and getting out of the subject matter itself by connecting it to tangible outcomes they care about. As a data leader, that kind of effective storytelling is being able to take your area of expertise and translate it into a practical and pragmatic vision for the senior stakeholders in the business – without their support, any data programme will struggle.”
To get the most value from its own data, and that in the industry, Barr explains that LGIM has created a data marketplace that allows both producers and consumers of information to exchange relevant data in a frictionless, governed manner. “We source a lot of data from the market, and we create/ curate a large volume of our own information assets,” he elaborates, “all of which we make available on our marketplace in its native and normalised form – we refer to the latter as our business information model (assets/views curated for repeatable use e.g. Fund Look Through). The exchange is effectively a one-stop-shop for consumers that allows them to quickly find, explore, and extract the information they need so they can concentrate on value generation.
“The data marketplace approach brings a huge range of efficiency benefits to us,” Barr explains. “We only build one architecture and one operating model around which we can create one set of standards. We are working to remove as much legacy friction in the operating model as possible to ensure all data flows from the producer right through to the consumer without delay.”
In just two years the data transformation work of Barr and his team, and the broader STOM transformation that’s ongoing at LGIM have brought significant change and many benefits. In particular, says Barr, the greater availability and use of
data provides significant opportunity across the entire business, including in areas as diverse as LGIM’s economic, social and governance (ESG) strategy and its approach to responsible investing. As part of Legal & General, LGIM’s core mission is based around inclusive capitalism – a concept centred around purposeful investment and business activities that build a better society, improve the lives of customers, and share the benefits of economic growth among as many people as possible.
“Our data journey
“The relationship between the integrity and availability of data and the integrity of investment decisioning is absolutely pivotal,” says Barr.
is about getting to the very core of why we invest in the way we do, and our approach to ESG is fundamentally about ensuring we’re investing responsibly for our collective futures. Strong, comprehensive and high quality information about the companies and products we invest in is crucial to that, and it’s a really great example of why data matters to organisations. For LGIM, when we talk about ESG, our credentials, our net-zero targets or any other commitments we make, they’re absolutely supported by the data we collect and leverage.”
Transformation on this scale is continuous, particularly as the pace of change and volatility in the financial services market carries on unabated. For Barr and team, flexibility and an ability to remain focused to the evolving objectives of the broader business remain key. “We’ve made tremendous progress,” he states, “much of which has only been possible because of the partnerships and collaborations we’ve made with key partners, stakeholders, our executive teams, and colleagues right across the business. But the speed of transformation will continue to accelerate, meaning opportunities to explore new technologies like AI and machine learning
to provide even greater insights into the ways markets are operating and improve efficiency across the business.
“In this role you’ve got to be comfortable with ambiguity,” adds Barr. “I’m often asked ‘what’s the typical mandate of a CDO?’, and the honest answer is there isn’t one. You have to be aligned with the business strategy, with how the culture of the firm develops and the changing marketplace. With that in mind, we have a huge amount of opportunity ahead of us, but there’s also a lot of risk in what we do, so our work has to balance between delivering both short-term value and investing in key future opportunities. The forces transforming the industry are greater than ever, and I’m privileged to help share and steer our journey through a data lens. There’s never been a time where data has been more prevalent as a topic, and long may that continue.”
www.lgim.com
“Building cross-organisational partnerships is crucial for creating value for stakeholders”
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND SUSTAINA b LE LIVING
‘Yeah, well my bike has the same technology as NASA’s Mars Rover’. It’s quite the conversation stopper, right? And it comes courtesy of Swiss high-tech bike design shop Thömus and its next-gen, fully integrated electric Swissrider Road road bike. It features ultra-lightweight [just under 2kg] Maxon drive technology, total battery capacity of up to 80 miles assisted range, integrated lights in handlebars and rear chainstays, built-in phone mount and controls, and an accompanying smartphone app. It’s light too – the full carbon frame giving an all-in weight of just 11.5kg.
www.thoemus.ch
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND SUSTAINA b LE LIVING
Remember hovercrafts? Big, noisy, inefficient, complex to operate and, as a result, left by the wayside. Forget that, and meet VonMercier’s Arosa, a supercar-styled, highperformance hovercraft packed with technology, luxury styling and all-electric power. Arosa has a 400V battery and three 240hp motors that give a top speed of 50 mph; the electric powertrain reduces noise, pollution and maintenance, and can be plugged into any standard EV charger. It features a lightweight carbon fiber body and hull that borrows construction techniques from the automotive industry, and it can carry up to three passengers.
www.vonmercier.co
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND SUSTAINA b LE LIVING
How do you stop losing the remote control? There’s plenty of hacks online. There’s also Displace TV, the world’s first wireless television that does away with remote controls for something far more modern: hand gestures. Displace TV has no wires or ports, just hot-swappable batteries that last a month on a single charge. Its gesture control system lets you browse and play content using just hand gestures from anywhere in the room. And, because it weighs less than 20 lbs, it needs no wall mounting – instead using proprietary activeloop vacuum technology to simply stick to the wall.
displace.tv
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND SUSTAINA b LE LIVING
The problem with diamonds [cost aside] is their environmental impact. Not so for those used in Brietling’s first fully traceable watch, whose owners can watch the entire supply chain journey from material to fully finished product thanks to a blockchain-backed NFT digital passport that details responsible measures taken during its creation. And it’s pretty responsible, too. The Super Chronomat Automatic 38 uses lab-grown diamonds and features a case constructed of artisanal gold that’s sourced from accredited suppliers. Blockchain also allows Brietling to manage the product lifecycle of the watch more effectively.
www.brietling.com
I NNOVATIVE AND INSPIRED ITEMS FOR WOR k, LEISURE AND SUSTAINA b LE LIVING
Urban transport of the future has to be simple, environmentally friendly, functional and, most importantly, personalised to the needs of those moving about our cities. In fact, it has to be just like the BMW CE 04 Vagabund Moto Concept, an e-scooter from custom bike specialist Vagabund Moto and BMW Motorrad Austria. It’s a stylish, multifunctional scooter for urban use that draws on the synergies between functionality and aesthetics. It boasts impressive eco-friendly credentials too: all-electric, 31 kW maximum output, a range of 130 km, and a charging time of just 65 minutes from 0% to 80%.
www.press.bmwgroup.com
P ENGUIN R ANDOM H OUSE ’ S P ETE W ILLIAMS ON RIDING THE DATA MATURITY CURVE , PEOPLE AND DATA LITERACY, AND READINESS TO E NA b LE AND E XPLOIT
How do you manage chaos? In the context of organisation-wide data and culture transformation, more than likely a perfectly relevant and fair question. It’s one that Pete Williams remembers well and, somewhat fortuitously given his subsequent experience in leading complex transformational journeys for major organisations, he had the right answer for, even when asked at interview early in his career.
“I was moving from the technology side of the organisation to the business side as part of a finance transformation project,” Williams recalls of the encounter. “And, very simply, my answer was ‘I don’t think I can’. Even at that stage I realised that, if you’re a confident project manager or leader, chaos will happen and this type of work is never as you planned. All projects have a momentum of their own. What you can do is focus on the objectives and the moment you see an opportunity to nudge forward you go for it.That was around 20 years ago, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson. It’s exactly how data strategy work still goes.
“Think of it like a giant game of pinball,” he laughs. “My job, then and today, is to make sure momentum and the focus is in the direction that me, my team and the organisation needs it to be, that we don’t bleed out of that direction too far – even though there will be valuable and necessary detours – and keep focused on the end game. I now know from experience that any data strategy evolves in this way; the one I wrote when I joined Penguin Random House in 2019 is still about 85% accurate now. It’s going in the right direction. Do I have everything I want? No. But we’ve already taken the organisation to a fundamentally different place.”
Without a strategy, data becomes aimless. Experts in data, AI, government and business say it’s vital for organisations to develop a data strategy in order to optimise their businesses, meet new regulatory demands, deal with economic challenges and benefit from AI. Recently at Big Data and AI World 2023 in London, practitioners across sectors discussed this in more detail.
Organisations are analysing data as they think that is what they should be doing, but they are analysing without purpose. The data strategy has to be aligned with the business and its goals. Without a data strategy in place, organisations face increased risks, ranging from data project failure to an inability to respond to changes in the marketplace.
“Too many people think if I get more data, it will become clear,” explained Eliza Manningham Buller, former Director General of MI5, the UK security service. In her conference keynote speech, the counter-terrorism expert added that organisations need a strategic approach to data to deal with major challenges, such as “the need to move to Net Zero carbon emissions, the War in Ukraine, pressure on the NHS, and future wars about water and food security”.
Shell’s Chief Data Architect Carol Parillon agreed with Manningham Buller on the risks of too much and poorly considered data, saying: “Organisations have not thought about the data in terms of cleaning it and the data sources. Architect up front, and you will have a lot more success in your project delivery.” As part of that architecting of the data strategy, Andrew Brown of IBM added: “Governance is often talked about as a process that might slow you down, but governance is a way to accelerate, as you are bringing together groups of capabilities that can create and drive change.” Brown said good governance and strategic planning would prepare the business for the risks of AI and also enable the adoption of this important technology.
I would add that organisations must make sure they include as many departments as possible in the process. In addition, businesses often have a lack of well-defined success criteria. The data team and all of its partners will agree on the outcomes if the data strategy is created collaboratively.
Solution Sara Seylani, Solution Architect at Fivetran, reflects on the data, technology and espionage expert insights from this year’s eventsFor Williams and Penguin Random House, that strategy and focus has been on the creation of a data literate ecosystem that uses the data available to the organisation to generate business outcomes, enable better and faster decision making, and add value. His strategy model is centred around the concept of the three ‘Es’ of data maturity: Establish, Enable, and Exploit.
We spoke with Williams in late-2021, discussing in detail the data-driven change and behaviours behind the data journey, the building of the data literate ecosystem and how it is underpinned by data, tools, and analysts, the importance of data being ‘owned’ by the business, and how to encourage the ideas, questions and leadership that fosters an enabling culture. He was very much in the Establish phase of his strategy model, in which the focus is on building a strong, secure and trusted foundation to support the company’s data ambition. Of course, a lot can change in little over a year.
“The pace of change has increased,” he reflects. “But, as you progress along that maturity curve and through the three ‘Es’ that’s natural. You’re moving from a position where you’re creating and selling your story and ambition to the organisation to put it in a place where it has the structure and capability to achieve the objectives, to then pushing into the second Enable phase. The people you’re working with, the style of work and the focus changes and the pace picks up, so it’s now about keeping the momentum, making what we’ve done relevant to more people, and driving the curiosity, digital processes and skills to ultimately move into the third, Exploit phase.”
Williams points out that, like many maturity models, there is no seamless transition from one stage to the next. Nevertheless, he explains that – loosely – the Establish phase of the strategy was largely complete around half way through 2022, with he and his colleagues now focusing on Enable. And, in the spirit of his approach to managing chaos, the transformation to date has required a level of flexibility and agile methodologies.
“Your constant strive is to be relevant,” he says of maintaining focus while pushing the organisation forward. “Our role is to add value to the business and to solve problems where appropriate. If a great use case comes up – say the CEO has a particular problem to solve – I have to put time and resources into a) solving it, and b) ensuring everyone knows the outcome
“THE ACADEMY IS WELL STRUCTURED, COVERS ALL THE NECESSARY S k ILLS AND TOOLS AVAILA b LE, AND LEADS TO AN ACCREDITED EDUCATIONAL ACHIEVEMENT”
was only possible because of the wider work we’re doing with data. It’s never just a detour. It’s an opportunity to generate collateral, engage with stakeholders, and bring further momentum to parts of the business that are going to contribute to the journey.
“There’s been some challenges in Establish,” adds Williams. “It’s taken longer than I anticipated to have some of the technical innovations, including our ML ops platform, in place. It’s also proved difficult to fill the translator role effectively, a position that’s a crucial join between the data function and the division in the organisation that’s becoming data dependent and influenced.
“I fundamentally believe that in every business function there should be someone that broadly understands the world I’m trying to bring to life, recognises the concepts of data science, and sees the opportunities for data to be influential in the decision-making processes of their department,” he continues.”Without that
person in place, members of my data team have to go further towards the business function. That’s an impossible task and we should be more ‘business literate’ too, but it’s challenging when we’re already focused on leading on innovation and producing robust, high quality and fast platforms.”
According to Williams’ model, the Establish phase is foundational. In the case of Penguin it centred on several steps around breaking down silos to remove confusion and reduce work duplication, embedding data governance to bring greater trust and confidence, and providing flexible and accessible analytics solutions that solve problems and can adapt to evolving needs.
“In this phase the initiation use case and expected outcome, for us, was around sales reporting, view of the market and opportunities to drive revenues,” explains Williams. “We tried to make our work much more sustainable and adaptable to the world around us and, as a result, our platform has become more efficient to load data in, produces more visible data outcomes, and the observability of what’s moving where is better than ever. Because of that high quality foundation, we’ve also been able to move sideways and to ingest more data.
“One of the big projects since we last spoke, that really helped establish the credibility of my team, was building a central digital media measurement platform,” he adds.
“I FUNDAMENTALLY b ELIEVE THAT IN EVERY b USINESS FUNCTION THERE SHOULD b E SOMEONE THAT b ROADLY UNDERSTANDS THE WORLD I’M TRYING TO b RING TO LIFE”
“It was essentially a way to track the commercial impact of our digital marketing spend, providing real visibility of the return on ad spend from digital marketing channels for the UK organisation, and properly understanding whether it was impacting sales and adding to the bottom line. This kind of marketing capability, which simply hadn’t been possible before, only happened because of our new people, their understanding of how we work and our capabilities, and the use of tools like Fivetran, DBT through Snowflake and Power BI. To have such great success as a result of the first ‘E’ really enabled us to push into the second phase.”
Enable, says Williams, is centred around people, skills and capabilities, and improving data literacy within the organisation through various innovative methods. Data use evolves through diagnostic to predictive, while key areas of focus include reviewing organisational structures and roles, finding the previously mentioned translators, working with leadership to set data use cases, and a greater focus on value creation.
“There comes a point when you’ve done your first use case, and then what? In the past I’ve built the all-singing, all-dancing data platforms, and everyone has ignored them because they don’t need to use it, there wasn’t that curiosity or understanding there,” explains Williams. “You have to make yourself relevant to the organisation and create demand. Really, Enable is about trying to build on the technology capability and foundation I’ve created with a biological foundation of latent talent in the organisation that’s determined to use what you’ve created in the technology platform.
“They’re determined to use it because you’ve made it absolutely clear to them the relevance of data in their everyday lives, the things they do at work, the way they monitor performance, capture metadata around a book we put out, even how they record their holiday requests,” he states.
“My role is to set the fire underneath their synapses, make them realise that this isn’t some arcane ritual that happens off-grid
that they don’t need to worry about, and have them think ‘if they can give me the right information, the tools and the data I can understand the market better, we can charge the right price, ensure stock availability, and hit markets we haven’t before’. It’s a deliberate focus on creating demand, curiosity and changing the conversation; one of the key points of a data-driven culture is moving from statements to questions.”
To set those fires, Williams has overseen several initiatives including the creation of a Data Academy in the organisation that provides three courses: Data Literacy for commercial colleagues, Data Fellowship for teaching technical skills to analysts, and Advanced Data Fellowship, a 36-month data science degree. The Academy, which has been created in partnership with EdTech startup partner Multiverse, recognises that data literacy is different for everyone in the organisation but is also comprehensive enough to give all employees an understanding and appreciation of how data is relevant to their roles.
“I’ve basically three tiers of data literacy happening,” Williams elaborates. “I’ve also had interest from the c-suite, which is really encouraging, and for which I’m currently working on a dedicated exec data literacy programme. Overall the Academy is well structured, covers all the necessary skills and tools available, and leads to an accredited educational achievement that’s officially recognised. One of the key things about it is that people have to demonstrate
they’re applying what they’re learning on a regular basis and they’re constantly assessed against that.
“We’re now at the stage where people taking the courses are transferring the skills into operational products that my team is helping bring to life,” he continues. “They’ve the ideas, they’ve sourced the data, and they’ve worked through what I call the lab-to-factory operation, which is another key aspect of the Enable phase. It’s essentially where we encourage people to create their own innovations, prove they have worth and then we’ll work on it together. You feel the change. There’s a point where people across departments are doing this, they’re accessing your data more than your dashboards and not just consuming from you, and you start seeing data guided decisions, more advanced use cases, and the whole organisation driving value from data. Then you’re eyeing the Exploit phase.”
“IT’S A DELI b ERATE FOCUS ON CREATING DEMAND, CURIOSITY AND CHANGING THE CONVERSATION; ONE OF THE k EY POINTS OF A DATA-DRIVEN CULTURE IS MOVING STATEMENTS TO QUESTIONS”
Close critical data skills gaps and build diverse talent pipelines with apprenticeship programmes that combine personalised coaching, applied learning, and community.
Find out more at multiverse.io
For any transformation to be successful, data literacy and the accompanying change in mindset and culture must happen across the organisation, from top to bottom. “You join any organisation, there’s always that one person that everyone goes to when they need help with Excel,” jokes Williams. “They’re the first people I want to meet, because they’re typically the sticks you rub together to get the data strategy bonfire going. Find them, ask them about the data quality, what sort of questions they’re asked, how the servicing requests come through to them, if they have access to all the data they need, and so on. Those people are great at creating a sense of opportunity, and that lets you get
the fire going from the bottom up. The problem is that the top of the organisation is often away from the flames.”
To engage with the senior leadership within the business, Williams has created the Data Value Group as a vehicle for their regular engagement on driving data agenda, opportunities, priorities and culture. On leaving the Establish phase, he says, ownership of where data is going should rest with the top end of the organisation. With this in mind, the Data Value Group hosts regular meetings between Williams and all senior leaders in which priorities are discussed, updates are given on existing work, and future opportunities are highlighted.
“Then I ask them what they want me to work on,” continues Williams. “Collectively they work through a process of setting out what they want to achieve with data and what it drives from an organisational perspective, then my team makes an assessment of how to implement the work. It means that senior leadership is engaged with the work we’re delivering, they’re bought into the value that my team can provide, and it connects data work right across the organisation.
“The most value I’m seeing isn’t necessarily that we’re setting out priorities, but rather that we’re encouraging senior leaders to have the types of conversations that they rarely have without this kind of forum. As you work through the Enable phase to Exploit, this kind of increasing
sponsorship and engagement is crucial for ensuring that the agenda is being steered from the top of the organisation.”
Williams predicts a transition to the Exploit phase during 2024. This last of his three Es is defined as an organisation that is efficient, agile, informed, and uses data as a competitive advantage. Operating in Exploit, Penguin Random House will have digital skills and data literacy as a default, an optimised organisational structure that highlights data and innovation, be able to exploit real-time intelligence and data that’s freed from operational systems, and use AI, machine learning and automated decision making.
“You listen to every consultant that knocks on your door and they’ll be selling you Exploit straight out of the box,” says Williams. “That’s not the reality. You need to get your data in order, ensure that your data governance programme is operational, have your ingest running and your data stored, consistent and conformed. Only when you’ve worked through Establish and moved to Enable, where your people are competent, capable and curious about using the foundations you’ve given them can you do Exploit with any level of success. And you won’t fall back,” he adds. “Your foundations become a way of life and your enabled organisation has competencies and processes hardwired. At that point, Exploit just becomes business as usual.”
www.penguin.co.uk
“YOUR FOUNDATIONS
b ECOME A WAY OF LIFE AND YOUR ENA b LED ORGANISATION HAS COMPETENCIES AND PROCESSES HARDWIRED. AT THAT POINT, EXPLOIT JUST b ECOMES b USINESS AS USUAL”
The current model of centralised AI processing is both undesirable and unsustainable. Customer facing AI applications will require more immediacy, reduced latency and improved efficiency to deliver benefits and attract new users. Waiting 30 seconds for your AI powered experience to render is not good enough for consumers. More edge processing on the consumer device is required to meet customer expectations, and that could finally fulfil the promise of 5G and restart the handset arms race.
As artificial intelligence rockets through the hype cycle and heralds the next phase of business transformation, its growing influence will reshape the mobile landscape. In this rapidly evolving environment, one aspect of AI adoption is increasingly important: edge processing. This critical development is driving competition in the mobile industry, and its impact promises to ignite a new era of handset wars.
The growing number of AI applications and their resource requirements have made edge processing an essential component of AI deployment. By processing data closer to the user, edge processing offers several advantages for AI workloads. First, it reduces latency, enabling real-time decision-making, swift execution of AI algorithms and rapid rendering of AI powered experiences. Second, it enhances privacy and security by minimising data transmission and exposure to potential breaches. Thirdly, edge processing allows for greater computational energy efficiency, an important consideration as
AI-enabled devices become more powerful and widespread, and the power demands of centralised AI capabilities are subject to wider scrutiny. Finally, AI edge will also allow for much greater manufacturing process control, allowing process autonomy and predictive behaviour to create new value for businesses.
A recent demonstration by Qualcomm showcases the potential of edge processing in AI-enabled devices. Qualcomm optimised a Stable Diffusion AI model, enabling it to run on its Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 chipset, which powers many of today’s flagship Android
“HANDSET MANUFACTURERS MUST FOCUS ON PRODUCING HIGH-PERFORMANCE, ENERGY-EFFICIENT DEVICES WITH OPTIMISED AI PROCESSING CAPABILITIES”
devices. This demonstration highlights the increasing capabilities of mobile chipsets and the expanding possibilities for AI processing at the edge. This provides strong evidence that complex AI compute workloads can be reliably moved to the edge. The relationship between edge processing and increased bandwidth availability is crucial for the AI-driven future of mobile technology. The wide perception that 5G has failed to deliver on its promise and potential should now be reassessed as AI edge applications drive the need for increased, and assured, connectivity. New customer expectations
for ‘always on’ experiences and proactive functionality will drive demand for connectivity and bandwidth like never before.
To meet these demands, handset manufacturers must focus on producing high-performance, energy-efficient devices with optimised AI processing capabilities. This requires collaboration with chip manufacturers and software developers, who will need to collaborate to create powerful integrated solutions that balance processing power and system architecture with energy consumption. Enhanced privacy and security
features are also essential, as consumers and organisations are becoming increasingly concerned about data protection in the age of AI and that may change the dynamic between Mobile Network Operators (MNO) and handset manufacturers yet again.
MNO will have to support AI’s edge processing demands by investing in infrastructure that facilitates lower-latency communication via expanding network coverage, deploying advanced networks like 5G, and ensuring that bandwidth availability meets the growing needs of AI applications. Mobile providers can leverage AI centrally to optimise this expansion through new AI models which optimise network resources and infrastructure, making mobile networks more efficient and capable of dynamically handling increased data traffic. To capitalise on these developments, mobile network providers need to explore new business models and revenue generating AI services, such as offering specialised AI capabilities to support new industrial requirements or pre-trained models to consumers, businesses, and developers.
As AI and edge processing become key differentiators in the mobile market, handset manufacturers are gearing up for a fierce battle for market share. The race is on to out-innovate the competition in device design, battery technology, and AI capabilities, with each manufacturer striving to offer consumers killer functionality. Mobile AI capabilities will also alter the industrial v. consumer balance of MNO focus.
“MOBILE NETWORK PROVIDERS NEED TO EXPLORE NEW BUSINESS MODELS”
Enabling edge processing is the vital next step to accelerate mass adoption of AI, and it is already apparent that the mobile industry is starting to act. As AI-driven innovation, exemplified by Qualcomm’s recent demonstration of handset powered generative AI, continues to push the boundaries of what mobile devices can do, the impending handset wars promise to shape the future of the mobile industry in exciting ways.
From intelligent AR fitness trainers, autonomous environmental monitors, adaptive workforce safety management robotics, and true digital twins, AI edge processing will accelerate mobile innovation and product design in new ways, creating vast opportunities for MNO and handset manufacturers alike.
Ed is a vastly experienced engineer, consultant and business leader specialising in AI, green-ops, next-gen technology and digital engineering. He has almost 35 years of experience in the architecture and delivery of disruptive, technology lead transformation, focusing on data-driven experiences and agile engineering delivery.
Ed Fowler
Srijani Dey and Cheryl Soderstrom discuss why data and analytics are crucial to unleashing the transformative power of modern businesses
SRIJANI DEY, CHIEF DATA AND ANALYTICS OFFICER, FELLOW OF DXC TECHNOLOGY
“
We are at an inflection point,” says Srijani Dey, “where, unless we continuously embed actionable insight at every level of the organisation into ‘day in a life’ processes, we’ll only see organic growth. Without doing this, and empowering businesses to think differently, they won’t be able to embark on an exponential growth trajectory.” In the context of the modern enterprise environment, where change and disruption is omnipresent, and the pace of technological evolution is increasing exponentially, that kind of transformational growth is essential to remain competitive, modernise, add value and monetise the technologies available, and provide the best levels of customer service.
We joined Dey and her colleague Cheryl Soderstrom to discuss this evolution, understand in more detail why data and analytics are crucial to unleashing the transformative power of modern businesses, how and why to develop an effective data strategy that brings the greatest value, and how they and their colleagues at IT services and technology consulting firm DXC Technology are enabling global organisations to deliver outcome-based and data-driven transformations.
Both are experienced and respected senior technology professionals who have been with DXC Technology for more than six years. Dey holds the role of Chief Data and Analytics Officer, in which she leads business transformation initiatives, delivers strategic technology roadmaps, and heads a centre of excellence for analytics workload migration to accelerate customers’ modernisation journeys; her role focuses on definition and execution of client strategies and innovation charters, operationalising analytics to enable agile and optimised business processes, and accelerating data-driven culture. Soderstrom works for the company’s Strategy and Growth Team and has a wealth of IT and technology experience across multiple disciplines including systems engineering and advanced software development, management and business operations, strategy consulting, and business practice development. She has also previously served a long stint as a Chief Technologist.
The Quest® data empowerment platform includes solutions for data intelligence, data operations and data protection. These solutions provide a sustainable foundation that enables the agility, adaptability, and resilience to maximize the business impact of your most valuable asset, your organization’s data.
Together, over their respective careers Dey and Soderstrom have seen a rapid evolution in the adoption and use of technology, particularly data and analytics, in the enterprise. “In the past, business drove need and IT delivered,” says Dey. “Today, innovative technology solutions are driving growth and empowering businesses to think differently and unleash possibilities unimaginable before. This is the era every technologist wants to be in. There’s no boundaries for what the future can bring; we are in the era of Moore’s theory of exponentially accelerating technology, which says that any technology that doubles in power and capability, while dropping in price
on a regular basis needs to be a reality – in order to realise the value of the investments being made in the data and analytics space, we have to start seeing exponential returns.”
Soderstrom shares: “That means we need to think differently about data. It can be a strategic asset when trusted and applied intelligently. A lot of early analytics relied on looking at the data we happened to have to tell us something we might not have thought of. That’s a tactical view of data. To be more strategic, we need to look at the data mesh available to us – especially externally – and plan for its incorporation and use to deliver greater forms of product or service value.”
“For organisations to respond to the disruption we’re seeing with pace, they need to architect for change,” Dey adds. “There are multiple ways to bring synergies and harness the power of data and analytics if we create a carefully architected and effectively managed ecosystem. For example, a Metadata-based, service oriented design, with technical metadata (data asset and artefacts cataloguing), operational metadata (with execution transparency) and business metadata (business glossary cataloguing), will give greater resilience in our ever-changing technology, multi-cloud and hybrid-deployment environment. These technologies are expensive, meaning spend can only be justified when there is optimised usage as a result of inter- and intra-organisational collaboration, problem solving innovation, and avoiding technology for IT’s sake – that should be a KPI for every organisation.”
Through their work with DXC, both Dey and Soderstrom advocate for the importance and value of data and analytics to any successful organisation. Both understand the complexity and opportunity of the resulting transformation and change programmes necessary when harnessing the full potential of the technologies, and the importance of this being centred firmly around outcome-driven objectives and a strong understanding of, and alignment with, business goals and strategy in order to add value.
“Data is such an asset,” Dey explains, “but it diminishes in value exponentially if it’s not available at the right time. The challenge is to understand your business processes and have an appreciation of what specific insight in the data value chain would have an impact on a differentiated outcome. In every data strategy initiative I prioritise the ‘why’ before even considering the ‘what’ and the ‘how’. You have to define the ‘why’ for analytical initiatives and understand ROI before any conversation about the other two; more often than not, analytics initiatives end up impacting the bottom line, but we need to pivot to a top-line growth discussion that sees us drive high-value outcomes for organisations with analytics.”
Soderstrom elaborates: “At DXC, we’re one of the most data-driven companies in the world, but when we think about data for decision making, there’s both
“INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS ARE DRIVING GROWTH AND EMPOWERING BUSINESSES TO THINK DIFFERENTLY AND UNLEASH POSSIBILITIES UNIMAGINABLE BEFORE”
SRIJANI DEY, CHIEF DATA AND ANALYTICS OFFICER, FELLOW OF DXC TECHNOLOGY
danger and opportunity. There’s too much data to metabolise, so using AI provides data ‘sense-making’ through pattern and outlier observability. That enables us to make smarter decisions, faster – is this product good, does that partnership work, and so on. But we’re in a complex world and driving positive change is a complicated engineering challenge. As a result, we need analytics that doesn’t just show us the past, but also shows us the way – no human can ‘see’ the inner workings of fast-moving marketplaces, or even of a single global enterprise, to understand what’s really going on in detail in the guts. Data and its paths of travel help light up critical problems and emerging opportunities that we couldn’t ordinarily see in the opacity of shifting IT estates, partnerships, supply chains and ecosystems.”
DXC Technology helps global organisations unlock and maximise value from their data and create and deliver a successful data transformation. The business uses outcome-focused design to help customers accelerate time to value, harness and industrialise data insights and unlock new revenue opportunities through its best-in-class analytics and AI platform solutions, and digital strategy consulting. Crucial to driving monetisation with data and analytics, says Dey, is driving effective analytics adoption, which in turn requires reliability of data and analytical models.
“That’s easier said than done,” she elaborates. “Even after the years of analytics journeys we’ve seen organisations undertake, 80% of spend still lies in building the foundational data and stabilisation of the data ecosystem – most organisations haven’t been able to pivot to advanced analytics, where you would see action and outcome and start to realise the ROI for data and analytics spend. We’ve been building accelerators that can fast-track the journey for this foundational work, enable ‘design for operations’ for reliability engineering, and reduce spend on the foundational establishment.”
According to Dey, these accelerators are: data quality, which focuses on enabling trustworthy data aligned to the business need; operational lineage which redefines the quality of service metric for operation with quality, timelines and availability of service by line of service or grouping of business functions; data lineage that focuses on data transparency to give a mind map of different transformations in end-to-end data processing, and creating an ecosystem of data literacy; and self-service ingestion, which enables flexibility for data users to bring additional data to the ecosystem, accelerates the discovery of usage of data for the enterprise, and enables business agility when necessary.
In addition, DXC has invested in advanced analytics accelerators including a machine learning ops framework that manages continuous, scaled deployment of models and detects drift and bias so that model reliability is maintained, and a collaborative workbench for machine learning models. The latter is for organisations with more than 200 data scientists, and provides a common platform that gives greater collaborative efficiency on model building.
“After building a reliable and stable foundation, we should begin to pivot to a data estate modernisation and transformation,” Dey continues. “This can build a data value chain, enabling the harvesting of actionable insights to embed in business processes for optimisation at every node
of the data life cycle, and in the new way of working for those consuming the data. In this part of the journey, contextualising the enterprise assets by business executions is crucial. And therein comes the data product construct, which is a conglomeration of assets such as data sets, reports, machine learning models and so on, that are specifically built to optimise, provide insight and drive action in ‘a day in a life’ for a data consumer, mapped to business execution.
“Outcomes are aligned to the percentage of adoption of these data products and usage,” adds Dey. “This requires strong collaboration between IT and the business to have the ‘common definition of done’ for transformational engagement. In our experience, what has worked is a value stream definition, with the data product owners and acceptance testdriven development, which involves sprints that enable tangible products to be tested at the end of the sprint, instead of waiting for epics or end of projects.”
“Strategy is all about making hard choices in order to produce an effect with limited resources,” says Soderstrom, elaborating in more detail, “and this is what I love about Srijani’s work; she never forgets the end game in this. Amazon is the king in this regard. They’ve mastered their understanding and consumption of ecosystem data to such an extent that their systems manoeuvre themselves automatically and in real time. Amazon’s decision engines literally make the corporate decisions – on a corporate scale – which is why we can order something in the afternoon and have it delivered on the same night. Data tells them how to act to enable the desired customer outcome.”
In any data and analytics transformation, value realisation should be front and centre, Dey explains. While DXC has focused on building a sustainable foundation for analytics for its clients in a multi-cloud architecture, it has also pivoted to operationalising analytics in organisations. This process is built on several key principles: enabling a data literacy suite, including data lineage, operational lineage and data quality, to eliminate complexity; democratisation and citizen development; and co-designing and collaboration with those consuming the insights to bring greater accountability across the organisation for reaching the end objective. This model, she says, enables efficient collaboration and a move towards the monetisation journey.
“TRUST IS ALSO BORN OF UNDERSTANDING AND, ONCE YOU ‘GET’ DATA, YOU CAN THEN DECIDE HOW TO HANDLE IT ETHICALLY”
CHERYL SODERSTROM, STRATEGY AND GROWTH OFFICE, DXC TECHNOLOGY
“DXC is in a unique position,” Soderstrom explains. “We run from the bottom to the top of our clients’ IT estates and mission critical systems and our powerful observability of all layers of these platforms – network, compute, apps, data flows, and business processes running mission-critical operations – helps us to understand what’s working and what isn’t. Through our Platform X we can aggregate probebased insights at all layers of the value delivery machinery to connect and clarify value stream outcomes for clients and, through newer partnerships, we can go beyond just interrogating business processes to comparing them to industry
best practices and offering specific suggestions for both cost savings and faster time to monetisation.
“It’s a real bottom-up digital transformation, rather than top-down hoping for change,” adds Soderstrom. “I’ll give you an example: a client believed they had 12 possible flows for order-to-cash. When we analysed this, mapping their data flows on live systems of record, we showed them – with data-based proof – that they actually had 1,200. Fixing that business function is a great demonstration of the ‘discover, decide or defend’ value of data to an organisation.”
Organisations that want a smooth transition to becoming data driven need an effective plan for their transformation journey, and how to deliver on treating data as a corporate asset that can be used to gain a competitive advantage by being integrated into business operations. A data strategy should ensure that all data initiatives follow a common method and structure that is repeatable, so as to enable efficient communication throughout the organisation for rationalising and defining all solution designs that leverage data in any way.
“For any data strategy to be successful, it must manifest four things,” Dey explains. “There must be a platform-driven approach to embed data, analytics and
insights into applications and business processes to first mandate internal monetisation, then drive external monetisation. There needs to be an entrepreneurial mindset capable of fostering collaboration across different disciplines in the organisation and breaking down silos. It’s important to build a resilient foundation to optimally deploy solutions in a sustainable way, and a service for trustworthy data that instils confidence in the organisation. And lastly, we should encourage disruption – that’s the mantra you need to stay ahead in this market because differentiated growth comes from innovative thinking.”
Soderstrom elaborates, explaining how DXC has approached the strategic uses and life cycles of data. “Legacy data
architectures were built for transactional throughput, or to process something. We still need that but, today, data analytics can help us do three more things: discover something, decide something, or defend something. The goal is to hyper-automate this, so that the company can move as fast as the data flows; the data we collect must enable potentiality (discover), as well as action (decide, defend). The transformation journey requires all three things, so it’s important to consider whether you have the data you need for all three.”
Aside from strategy, data literacy, the correct governance and establishing organisation-wide trust in the data available are important for businesses to make the transition to being data and analytics driven. Indeed, the entire journey of analytics adoption begins with institutionalising trust in data, says Dey, offering several steps organisations can take to enable this.
“Align on ownership and of quality definition,” she says. “There should be designated published accountable individuals across the organisation who define what the ‘quality’ metrics/KPIs/ data assets represent, and this should be across the data value chain, not just specific to analytics. It’s important to build transparency through business and technical quality checks, and there should also be track and trace capabilities for evaluating the quality and timeliness of data at each processing point of the data
value chain. Lastly, organisations should continuously improve the visibility of the end-to-end data mind map of the data processing pattern as more business processes are onboarded. This will ensure that each data product asset has the reliability engineering intrinsically built.
“Once we harmonise on the definition of data across data products, and give the enterprise end-to-end lineage of data and indexing on data quality, then the data literacy grows organically in the organisation,” Dey continues. “The whole company pivots to pragmatic necessities that are harvested from a data-driven culture, which paves the way for better managing the risk of building an AIdriven business. CEOs and business leaders always look at returns and accelerated growth, but the returns are qualitative and quantitative for analytics – a data literate business is easily able to navigate through its data estate and respond to disruption much faster.”
“A DATA LITERATE BUSINESS IS EASILY ABLE TO NAVIGATE THROUGH ITS DATA ESTATE AND RESPOND TO DISRUPTION MUCH FASTE”
SRIJANI DEY, CHIEF DATA AND ANALYTICS OFFICER, FELLOW OF DXC TECHNOLOGY
Soderstrom agrees: “Things became simpler when we stopped looking at data mechanically, but rather, through the dual lenses of the natural and social sciences. They bring models that convey data phenomena like behaviours, properties, interactions and so on. We think about data masses, data genetics, adaptations, offspring, even data kinetics. There’s a lot to consider, and trust in data is a loaded topic. But trust is also born of understanding and, once you ‘get’ data, you can then decide how to handle it ethically. Our DXC Leading Edge, an independent think tank committed to helping clients embrace the opportunities created by disruption, has carried out some great research in this area. DXC Leading Edge works with a global ecosystem of industry-leading practitioners, disruptors and innovators to create progressive research that helps clients activate change and accelerate impact within their own organisation.”
Cross-industry collaboration is essential for delivering greater value and enabling successful data and analytics change programmes. One such example is Microsoft, with which DXC has partnered for more than 30 years to advance the adoption and use of data in the enterprise. Specifically for the Data Fabric architecture, of a seamless enterprise interoperability with a Ontology on overlay, DXC and MSFT have jointly built accelerators and have POV for successful implementation.
“IT has always been considered the ‘longest pole in the tent’,” Dey states, of the collaboration. “Transformations have moved slowly and the increasing requirement for businesses to react to a need with insightful data has created tremendous upheaval on how to quickly get to value realisation. We have partnered with Microsoft to create a data fabric architecture, augmented with product-hardened accelerators, to drive faster time to market. These artefacts with the code base for accelerators come with DXC’s services and have resulted in a significant improvement in the KPI for acceleration among our client base. The PaaS services that Microsoft have been advancing for analytics are very much focused on optimal usage and aid workload modernisation at scale. We’ve completed multiple joint strategy and evolution projects of analytical journeys with our common client base, with outcomes including helping customers refine their roadmaps and more targeted data and analytics-led growth of their organisations.”
“WE SHOULD ENCOURAGE DISRUPTION – THAT’S THE MANTRA YOU NEED TO STAY AHEAD IN THIS MARKET, BECAUSE DIFFERENTIATED GROWTH COMES FROM INNOVATIVE THINKING”
SRIJANI DEY, CHIEF DATA AND ANALYTICS OFFICER, FELLOW OF DXC TECHNOLOGY
The pace of technological change continues unabated, making the adoption of data and analytics to drive business value crucial for competitive advantage and ongoing success. “We are in the evolution path set out by Ray Kurzweil’s ‘Law of Accelerating Returns’, where the rate of change in a wide range of systems continues exponentially, and in which technology accelerating in parallel creates the most potent innovation when it is merged together – think Quantum computing, 3D printing, AR/VR, nanotechnology and more,” Dey explains. “In this context we should consider a platform-driven approach that brings together an immersive experience that’s aided by a good interface, enabled by insight, optimised by automation, and ultimately has the same end goal of business process optimisation. Leveraging these technologies in a collaborative, crossorganisational way brings enormous growth, but it requires an agile manner and a very entrepreneurial mindset.”
“It’s about situational positioning,” continues Soderstrom. “I use the analogy of Boyd’s OODA loop [the cycle of observeorient-decide-act, developed by military strategist and US Air Force Colonel John Boyd]. The advantage comes when you go through the cycle and act faster than the competition – Boyd called it being ‘inside’ the adversary’s OODA Loop. Data makes that possible in the air and in the business world, too: discover, decide, defend at pace. Data helps with these three things in any order; did we decide to do something previously, and is more, or better, or time-lapsed data helping us discover a better tactical choice more quickly? That’s important to know.”
Looking ahead, businesses are preferring more data-driven than intuition-driven decision making – the data analytics market is growing at a compound annual rate of nearly 30% and both Dey and Soderstrom state that analytics will be embedded in all relevant business applications to help drive exponential growth and keep organisations relevant in the market. “I see three trends evolving,” states Dey. “Edge decision enablement or real-time automated decision making; decentralisation of data governance and the processes around data consumption with federated accountability; and the evolution of the organisational operating model to adopt data-driven changes with agility. With this in mind, DXC will focus with our customers on improving situational awareness by providing
“DXC IS HERE TO HELP OUR CUSTOMERS SOLVE THE COMPLEX ENGINEERING CHALLENGES THEY FACE AND PARTNER WITH THEM TO CAPITALISE ON OPPORTUNITIES THIS DYNAMIC MARKETPLACE PRESENTS”
CHERYL SODERSTROM, STRATEGY AND GROWTH OFFICE, DXC TECHNOLOGY
the right information at the right time, defining business-centric decision intelligence solutions and the contextualisation of information with next best action, and decision effectiveness with KPIs for business process improvement.”
Concludes Soderstrom: “I see the value of data and analytics remaining central, only more so, especially in the world of 5G where there’s so much more data at hand. A great early example of data controlling things goes back to industrial SCADA systems. Think about it: Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition systems. Remote sensors collecting real-time data working with actuators and managed by field controllers through programmable logic to assess and improve desired conditions. Data is the new SCADA.
“At DXC, we intend to continue our data-driven enterprise in service of our customers, our shareholders and ourselves. We will innovate and expand Platform X as a data-rich differentiator and, on top of that, will focus on our Global Business Services to drive growth and higher order value to our customers. Ultimately, DXC is here to help our customers solve the complex engineering challenges they face and partner with them to capitalise on opportunities this dynamic marketplace presents.”
www.dxc.com
“BETWEEN 2021-22 WATER COMPANIES IN ENGLAND AND WALES LOST AN AVERAGE OF NEARLY 3BN LITRES OF WATER A DAY DUE TO LEAKAGES AND AGEING INFRASTRUCTURE”
Looks may well only get you so far. But, compared to other robots, Pipebots look, well, fantastic. They’re an army of little [small enough to fit in your palm] people that we want to pick up, play with, follow around, and enjoy their ever-cheery little faces. But then, that would stop them from the critical task they’ve been created for.
Between 2021-22 water companies in England and Wales lost an average of nearly 3bn litres of water a day due to leakages and ageing infrastructure. Tackling the problem of water wastage is a global concern and part of the UN’s
Sustainable Development Goals, which is where our Pipebot friends come in.
The project, a collaboration between several UK universities, aims to revolutionise buried pipe infrastructure management with the development of micro-robots designed to work in underground pipe networks and dangerous sites. The bots explore underground systems autonomously, use onboard sensors and cameras to scan for faults and relay data wirelessly back to engineers, who then deploy specialist repair teams. pipebots.ac.uk
RO b ERT k ENT ON ‘ b LAN k SHEET OF PAPER’ TO DATA TRANSFORMATION, b RINGING CHANGE TO PETS AT HOME, AND THE EVOLUTION OF DATA
CHIEF DATA OFFICER
obert Kent knows transformation. Really knows it. He has, for the past 20 years or so, been the data leader responsible for presiding over countless ‘blank sheets of paper’. And from them he has built diverse teams, leading-class technology platforms, evolved the organisational adoption and use of data, AI and other innovations, supported business strategy and objectives, and delivered tangible results at organisations including Carphone Warehouse, Royal Mail and, more recently, Pets at Home.
Kent has recently left the latter after close to five years, during which his ‘blank sheet of paper’ spawned a significant data transformation that has built technology foundations to serve the business into the future, changed how everyone in the organisation approaches and uses the information and insights available to them, and brought large-scale benefits to customers and pets nationwide.
“It’s a bit of a common theme,” he laughs, referring to his penchant for ground-up transformation work. “Until very recently, I was Chief Data Officer (CDO) at Pets at Home – I was actually one of the few CDOs to sit on the exec team of a FTSE company. In simple terms, I owned all things data from data protection and governance, engineering, cloud and visualisation, through to data science, analytics, and CRM. I designed all of that and the overarching data strategy from scratch when I started with the then-CEO, who was also building out the exec team at the time.
“Prior to that I was the inaugural CDO at Royal Mail,” adds Kent. “It was the first time that role had been created, or any kind of data leadership role within the organisation, and again, it was transformational from the blank sheet of paper in terms of building capability in terms of both team and tech. Even if I look back further to my time at Carphone Warehouse, although I wasn’t a CDO I was in a senior technology role building and bringing in CRM, analytics capabilities and a focus on creating a single customer view. It’s been nearly two decades of taking organisations through transformation change around data and analytics, building capability from virtually zero, and injecting it with new, modern-day skills.”
Twenty years is a long time in technology. And while Kent’s career has been underpinned by several consistent themes and drivers, he has also witnessed significant evolution both in the capabilities of available technology and the rise of data, analytics and insight-driven decision making in the organisation.
“There’s been a real shift from using data and insight for ‘describing’ the past to predicting the future,” Kent states. “Organisations are spending less time on business intelligence management information and moving towards analytics and AI. One change that’s pretty close to my heart is the greater alignment between business and data strategies we’re seeing today. In the case of Pets at Home, they’re absolutely one and the same – a key part of the overall business strategy was to do more with the data available and treat it very much as a strategic asset. Hand in hand with this shift is data and analytics distinctly operating as its own function, rather than just ‘belonging’ to tech.”
This pace of change, together with the challenges and opportunities present in the modern enterprise environment, has made the kind of transformation that Kent has such a strong track record in, essential. And while he states that every change initiative is unique depending on expectation, delivery and business objectives, there are several fundamental areas that have been consistent in his work.
“Paramount is understanding why or what you’re transforming for, the outcomes you’re trying to drive, and the value associated with it – for me, it’s about understanding what the prize is and how you’re going to get there together,” says Kent. “It ensures you don’t get sucked into an amorphous change programme, and that you’re able to define ‘just good enough’, which is key to delivering enough value at each stage to keep progressing. It’s easy to become too focused on perfection at the expense of good when delivering transformation on this scale, whereas it’s more effective to deliver incremental value at each cycle of delivery while keeping your focus on the ultimate outcome you set out to achieve.
“Secondly, it’s essential to build the right team and capability,” he adds. “That requires an understanding and appreciation of the broad range of capabilities needed to deliver on transformation – you can’t do it with one skill set alone, and you need the same breadth and depth of capability in the organisation to ensure you have the correct balance between delivering transformation and delivering value.
“Lastly, you have to be able to take people on the journey with you. You’re moving an organisation’s mindset around how it uses insight, what an algorithm is, what’s the output, why data quality and governance are so important. It doesn’t happen overnight and, in the case of Pets at Home, I focused on show rather than tell,
education and making sure that data and the data team aren’t this ‘black box’ that pumps out information across the organisation. You have to constantly keep reiterating what good looks like.”
Kent joined Pets at Home in late 2018, at a time of transformation in the business and with the remit to bring change to its use of data, particularly around customer data and its VIP loyalty scheme. He explains: “At that point, I think everyone would accept that data capability was
relatively immature, aside from some activity around reporting and the management information space – it was one of the main drivers of why I was brought into the role.
“What we did have was our VIP [Very Important Pets] loyalty scheme, a rich data set of eight million pet owners across their shopping habits and the clinical data set for their pets,” Kent continues.
“At the time, that data was sitting in an outsourced space, driving a lot of CRM activity but not doing much more. That, combined with sponsorship from the
“A k EY PART OF THE OVERALL b USINESS STRATEGY WAS TO DO MORE WITH THE DATA AVAILA b LE AND TREAT IT VERY MUCH AS A STRATEGIC ASSET”
CEO at the time – which has continued with the current CEO – saw driving data growth and using data to better serve customers become a key element of the overall business strategy. The overarching objective was to create internal capability and bring the loyalty scheme in-house so it could be used as a platform for growth on everything we wanted to go on and do around data and analytics.”
From this baseline, Kent set out a data strategy based around three core strands: build an in-house team and the relevant capability, build a platform, and build a culture. Initial work focused largely on the former, assembling the right skill sets within Pets at Home to deliver on the transformation. This included, says Kent, building a team of skills around data scientists, data engineers, data protection, and CRM and insight analysts.
In terms of technology, the goal was to keep things relatively simple. “We went cloud native,” says Kent, “working with Google and GCP to build our cloud, a data warehouse/lake and using BigQuery for our insights and query engine. We used Salesforce as our CRM engine and Tableau as our visualisation engine. Most of our work was built around those three core components, which combined to build a single view of pet owners across the business then we started delivering on new products and some of the use cases we wanted to drive out in terms of CRM, insight and artificial intelligence.
“That was the first two years,” he notes. “Some of those steps happened in sequence; you have the traditional creation of a data analytics platform, through data ingestion, bringing the data into the right place, building a single customer view, then creating the CRM engine and campaign management on top of that. The work was built into quarterly deliverables and, once we reached critical mass in terms of our data all in one place and a team capable of leveraging it, we started to deliver on new value use cases.”
Gaining greater insight and information from VIP loyalty data and creating a single customer view was central to the overall data strategy. For Pets at Home, the overarching purpose is to make lives better for pets and the people who love them. This is enabled by a strategy to build a consumer-centric, omnichannel platform, says Kent.
“Pets at Home isn’t just a shop,” he adds, “it’s a range of products and services that contribute to the health, wellbeing and happiness of pets and their owners, and our work is about enabling pet owners through that journey – data is so strategically important in this respect because it’s the glue that joins all that together. You help owners through their pet ownership journey by knowing as much, compliantly, as you can about them and their animals to make sure you’re offering the best personalised opportunities, advice
b UILDING CAPA b ILITY FROM VIRTUALLY ZERO, AND INJECTING IT WITH NEW, MODERN-DAY S k ILLS”
and expertise you can across a lifetime. That can only be achieved with the smart use of data and analytics.
“We use data and analytics to make sure owners are getting the right offers at the right time, and encourage them to take as many products and services as they can through their journey – that was one of the areas we focused on,” explains Kent. “It’s a mix of deepening the relationship we have with existing pet owners and attracting new customers, by communicating, informing and educating on the
right basis. Our data is also useful for retention too, particularly around understanding when customers may be likely to leave us so we can offer the right incentives to stay in a preemptive way.”
The transformation has been significant internally too, in terms of culture and mindset, building the right team to carry initiatives forward, and providing colleagues with greater levels of information in order to service customers most effectively. Specifically in terms of bringing in the necessary skills and capabilities
“IT’S b EEN NEARLY TWO DECADES OF TA k ING ORGANISATIONS THROUGH TRANSFORMATION CHANGE AROUND DATA AND ANALYTICS,
Transform your data burden into your business’ biggest asset with cutting-edge cloud data + AI solutions.
Let's chat! Contact
to deliver the data transformation, Kent describes the process as similar to creating a nimble and agile startup operating within the wider Pets at Home business.
“The headstart we had is that Pets at Home has a great company culture, it’s second to none and it’s a longstanding culture and mindset,” he says. “It was a great springboard upon which to build. I wanted to attract people who can tell a story, understand the value of what we were trying to deliver and articulate that across the organisation effectively. The fact that people were coming to work for a base function and CDO that sat on the exec board was appealing – they knew it was a company that takes data seriously.
“We wanted to not be too rigid in our recruitment,” continues Kent. “We were geographically diverse and cast the net as broadly as we could. Not everyone would have specific skills like Google Cloud, or a background in retail data science, but we knew we could cross train and ended up with a wide range of talent from people with PhDs straight from university through to some with a lot of experience. We were effectively a startup and, from a leadership perspective, it was important to have complete trust in the management team I had in place. They themselves hadn’t been with the business for very long, but they absolutely demonstrated they understood the culture we had and what we were trying to achieve, overall it was very successful.”
Beyond the team Kent created, the culture and mindset towards using data across the organisation has also evolved, with a focus on democratising the information and insight available as much as possible to benefit the business. Says Kent: “Our strategy was ‘pet care analytics for all’. That meant creating the pet care ecosystem and giving it to as many people in the business as we could. Our stores, of which there are about 450 employing around 6,000 people, are a great example. Our goal was to push as much insight to them as we could in a prescribed form
to enable better decision making. To do so, we provided access to Tableau dashboards that gave information on performance, KPIs and more to enable them to deliver the best customer experience possible.
“We also run our own data academy, which is open for everyone across the company and seeks to raise the education
level and capabilities of those that don’t sit directly in the data analytics function,” he continues. “Equally, and at the same time, we sought to raise the business awareness and understanding within the data community to create a true symbiotic relationship between data, analytics and the business, and support the ecosystem in the best way possible.”
“PETS AT HOME HAS A GREAT COMPANY CULTURE, IT’S SECOND TO NONE”
No transformation on this scale can happen without the use of key technology partners and collaborators, particularly when it comes to the adoption and use of new technologies. In this instance, Kent explains that choosing such partners relied as much on the alignment of goals, objectives and approach as it did quality of product.
“There has to be a level of pragmatism and flexibility around being on the
journey with us,” he adds. “That means finding parties who are aligned with our business objectives, driven by our outcomes and want to deliver them in the most agile and meaningful way. One example is Datatonic, which helped us with the GCP deliverables in terms of building our ingestion routes and query lakehouse. They understood what we wanted to achieve and brought the expertise and flexibility that was essential to deliver the outcomes we needed.”
“OUR STRATEGY WAS PET CARE ANALYTICS FOR ALL”
Though no longer with Pets at Home, the work of Kent and his colleagues has proved a strong foundation for the digital transformation that continues at the business. For example, the work around understanding and creating a 360-degree view of the customer provides a platform upon which to develop further data streams. “It can be augmented as and when,” explains Kent. “We can develop our understanding of online interaction and our e-commerce space, as an example, then bring that information to the supply chain to drive how products are moved efficiently between A and B. This can then be combined with colleague data to set more relevant KPIs and provide a better experience to those working for the business.
“The ongoing digital transformation will enrich the data sets even further from sources such as the Pets at Home app, campaign management and more,” he says. “The approach continues to be that, once data sets become available and it’s important to answer a specific business question or meet a desired outcome, the information comes into the cloud environment. Looking forward, irrespective of my position, the ambition and importance of data and analytics hasn’t diminished or marginalised at all. The current CEO and board absolutely want to leverage the assets available to the business and understand that data and technology is a core enabler of digitisation and the omnichannel, consumer–centric platform ecosystem they’re developing.
“I’m very pleased with what we’ve achieved in the four years from a blank sheet of paper to what is now a maturing team, leveraging the significant cloud and native cloud analytics platform,” concludes Kent. “Most importantly, you’re able to see the value and that’s being delivered to customers and shareholders; what we achieved is absolutely measurable, and I’m proud of the way in which the change has been so visible across the organisation.”
www.petsathome.com
Jet Lali on the ongoing digital transformation that is seeing State Street Global Advisors outperform rivals to the betterment of its customers and employees alike
WORDS: TOM WADLOW
When I think about digital transformation, technology is not the problem. Today, off the shelf solutions are immensely powerful and work. The crux of digital transformation, I believe, is changing how organisations operate – this is all about people, making technology the enablers for them and how they work, and ensuring they have the skills to extract value out of digital solutions,” says State Street Global Advisors’ (SSGA) Jetinder Lali. As the company’s first ever Chief Digital Officer, Lali went back to basics when he kickstarted the asset management firm’s digital journey in 2018.
In doing so, he asked himself a simple question: what does digital transformation actually mean? Lali’s interpretation of the term so often used in the enterprise environment soon evolved beyond the simple implementation of various new technologies and innovative tools into a process that is defined by people.
“Looking at it this way, there are three core benefits of digital transformation,” he explains. “First, it offers enormous opportunities that enable our people to reach a huge audience of potential customers. Second, it enables selfservice and automation of previously laborious tasks. And third, it allows transparency which means we can measure and share everything.”
“It was essential to get the messaging right around how incorporating digital capabilities can help people with their jobs and improve their working lives”
Four years into the role, and Lali’s task continues to be a huge one. SSGA is a large asset manager which has served the world’s governments, institutions and financial advisors since 1978 – today, it has around $4trn of assets under its scope at any one time. Migrating the organisation towards enhanced digital processes and infrastructure such as a brand-new network of websites, next generation chatbots and advanced analytics solutions has therefore required a wholesale operational shift.
For any company in business for this length of time, sweeping change is difficult to instil. Indeed, Lali likens the process so far to early 20th Century New York when it was acclimatising to the Ford Model T. The technology had been developed and the factory built, but how do you embed a motor car into a society that yesterday was journeying on the same road with horse and cart?
“Humans don’t like change, so a huge amount of energy was put into training and achieving buy-in across the organisation, both from my team and other departments,” he says. “It was essential to get the messaging right around how incorporating digital capabilities can help people with their jobs and improve their working lives.”
During 2019 to 2022, 9,000 hours of training was completed across all areas of the business. The systems themselves have also been designed to make them user-friendly and intuitive to enable self-service across a range of key functions, including data analysis and reporting. “We don’t want to turn people’s working routines upside down,” Lali adds. “We want people to use the tools in their own way. Ultimately, it is about using technology to enhance their working experience and get the best out of them.”
See where you stand with a free, personalized assessment.
The approach has paid dividends in numerous ways, perhaps most visibly in SSGA’s rise up the digital leader boards. Every year, Living Ratings benchmarks the brands and digital intelligence of the world’s leading asset managers. Having ranked 67th in 2018 when Lali took on the role of CDO, SSGA now ranks second out of 100, and first across the engagement metric, which recognises the potential of useful digital functionality backed by a client-focused channel strategy.
One of those channels is a new, digitally enhanced website platform which has been localised for markets around the world. Since the end of 2018, traffic across SSGA’s network has doubled to six million visitors per annum. The company is now also better able to analyse interactions due to the rollout of advanced analytics. Indeed, the new AI engine can pick up patterns of behaviour and identify trends.
“Ultimately, it is about using technology to enhance our team’s working experience and get the best out of them”
“Companies can no longer afford to be guessing,” Lali states. “Being data-driven provides us with predictive capabilities that help us to plan for future events. For instance, one pattern we tracked recently involved activity on a fund that saw millions of dollars traded without customers speaking to a human. They are serving themselves, using the website to find final pieces of information, and making their own decisions – this could potentially have big implications for how we position ourselves.”
The digital suite of tools is also helping sales agents to boost their KPIs. Lali refers to the development of a new two-way chatbot that intelligently traffics website users to the optimal sales representative. The system will notify an agent that one of their clients or prospects is online, offering them the opportunity to reach out with a personalised level of service. Not only has this enhanced the customer experience, but engagements made through this mechanism have yielded a 16% conversion rate, with more than half of those being entirely new accounts and individuals.
Key to the success of the chatbot development was the involvement of different stakeholders. The tool was built in collaboration with sales agents, a process which immediately secured greater buy-in and ensured it delivered benefits at the first time of asking.
On the other side of the conversation was Lali’s team. A key learning throughout the digital transformation journey to date has
“It makes me proud when I can say we are punching above our weight and outdoing the big players on many levels”
centred around the importance of hiring the right people. The process has involved a lot of moving and shaking. While headcount remains broadly similar, 60% of Lali’s cohort are new and 80% of the roles within the team today have been formed since he became CDO in 2018.
Another salient observation is that the team is extremely diverse. Women fill half of all positions at all levels of seniority, while more than 20% are from ethnic minority backgrounds. “This was not by design or because of any quota,” Lali adds. “My strategy all along has simply been to hire the best possible talent, and it is no coincidence that we are such a diverse group of people. High performing teams need diversity to thrive.”
To say SSGA has come a long way on its digital journey over four years is an understatement. And it has done so with comparatively smaller sets of resources compared to some of the wealth management giants it competes with, and which Lali has first-hand experience of working for. “Our approach is being vindicated by the results,” he concludes. “It makes me proud when I can say we are punching above our weight and outdoing the big players on many levels.”
www.statestreet.com
Technology is always better when applied with real and meaningful purpose. And few are more important than revolutionising healthcare and helping people survive serious and life-threatening illnesses like cancer.
That’s what Qure.ai does. The healthtech company was built on a mission to make healthcare more affordable and accessible through the application of powerful AI and machine learning technology to diagnose and treat cancer, tuberculosis and other conditions.
Its AI solutions enhance imaging accuracy and improve health outcomes with the assistance of machine-supported tools; Qure.ai uses deep learning technology to provide automated interpretation of radiology exams like X-rays, CTs and ultrasounds to enable faster diagnosis and routes to treatment. For lung cancer, for example, the company offers a suite of solutions including end-to-end disease management platforms, and AI for lung nodule detection and X-ray interpretation. To date, Qure.ai’s innovations have touched more than 10 millions lives. qure.ai
“HELPING MAKE HEALTHCARE MORE ACCESSIBLE AND AFFORDABLE TO PATIENTS WORLDWIDE”
GEORGE VAUGHAN ON THE POWER OF CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY, CHANGING LIVES THROUGH INNOVATION, AND TRANSFORMING VENUE EXPERIENCES
ROGER BROWN
“DO YOU PLAY THE GAME THAT OTHERS MAKE OR MAKE THE GAME THAT OTHERS PLAY?”
Ashopping mall? As inspiration for tech transformation of the famous Ascot Racecourse? Well, yes. With a little airport, hotel, and restaurant thrown in for good measure. That’s because technology doesn’t exist in silos but is cross functional and to ignore this leaves little room for finding something new or original. Not understanding the cross-value of innovative technologies from industry to industry or learning the importance of applying those same technologies with true purpose – whether at Ascot, transforming the Twickenham home of English rugby, or changing lives for those in care and education – is missing an opportunity. As George Vaughan says: “There’s two ways to look at life: you can play the game that others make, or make the game that others play.” We spoke to him about choosing the latter.
Vaughan concedes he isn’t a huge fan of horse racing, nor is he a big follower of rugby. But in most respects that proved to be a positive thing. His work to date, whether it’s the five years at Ascot transforming a legacy technology environment based on an innovative ‘smart city’ concept, leading on special technology projects and innovation in rugby, advising for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games,
or his ongoing role as CEO and Future Vision Strategist at The Digital Line, are really only the context for several broader themes that underpin his approach: tech for good, learning from one industry or project to improve another, helping businesses and organisations deploy technology in a more meaningful way, and the role of people, their behaviour, and engagement with technology.
“Much of my work has been focused on cross-sector technology – how certain systems work from industry to industry – because I believe that understanding what people use at home or in their everyday lives is key to any successful technology implementation you can make as a business,” says Vaughan, elaborating on the subject. “It’s wonderful if somebody can use the Amazon Alexa technology we adopted at Ascot to place an order in a corporate box for food and beverage or making a bet and it all works seamlessly, whilst simultaneously delivering operational benefits. But the real sense of worth comes from seeing the same technology repurposed into another space, given another identity because of that environment, and enabling somebody who’s 93 years old to rely on herself for the first time in a long time when she needs something.”
We are the architects of awe-inspiring digital display solutions, captivating audiences across the UK and around the globe. Our mission is unwavering – to amaze and inspire, delivering an unrivalled spectacle for every space.
From the famous Piccadilly Lights in London to Birmingham’s New Street station, Brighton & Hove Albion’s AMEX Stadium, Nottingham’s Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, Ascot racecourse and Westfield shopping centres, we consistently forge spectacular experiences that delight and astound.
Standing at the avant-garde of technical evolution ensures our clients have access to the most innovative digital display solutions. Our unwavering commitment to quality, ingenuity, and customer satisfaction has solidified our position as the premier partner for those seeking to elevate their digital displays into the realms of the extraordinary.
Our company culture is interwoven into the very essence of our business. Customers are immersed in our world of knowledge, market experience, dedication and comprehensive solutions that encompass every aspect of their projects.
Innovation fuels our every move. We artfully blend cutting-edge technology and creative content, empowering our clients to captivate their audiences and engage in real-time with unprecedented experiences.
Our approach is deeply collaborative. We build strong relationships with our clients, meticulously crafting personalised solutions that transcend expectations. From iconic outdoor displays to immersive installations and corporate headquarters, our team possesses the unrivalled expertise, knowledge, technology, and prowess to deliver ground-breaking solutions setting the industry standard and making the impossible possible.
Iconic display design and build through to content management, content production, real-time audience analysis and interaction, software integration, development and ongoing operational and support services our devotion to our to customer’s vision is integral to delivering true spectaculars. Unlock new possibilities. Embrace new horizons.
Vaughan co-founded The Digital Line (TDL) in 2017 to have this kind of impact. The business is a research, information and innovation consulting firm focused on venues, hospitality, healthcare, education and retail that partners with some of the world’s largest tech brands, including Amazon, Samsung, Bose, Withings, Elavon, Worldpay, Mastercard, Visa, and BPCS. It also works closely with the University of Surrey, recognised worldwide as a leading centre for travel, tourism, hospitality, and health.
“Back in 2017 I’d been using Alexa at home,” says Vaughan, discussing his work with the voice assistant technology that The Digital Line has used to transform the patient experience in care homes. “I saw how, in a very simple fashion, it could improve everyday experiences. My sister works in the care sector, and it struck me
that there was real potential to use voice activated technology in that environment to empower residents and provide them with greater independence. Usually in care homes you have a buzzer system, but that leaves a level of doubt as to what someone is buzzing for. This was about facilitating a better service, providing a greater experience for those in care and improving the environment for staff, too.”
The Alexa initiative, which uses Alexa Smart Properties, sees TDL partner with audico, a new hands-free, voice activated platform that works in conjunction with Alexa to keep residents informed, entertained and connected. Through simple voice commands those in care can ask for room service, housekeeping or assistance and control other smart devices or stay in touch with loved ones. It perfectly encapsulates both the company’s and Vaughan’s ‘Tech4Good’ approach to innovation.
“It’s where it came from,” he says. “We’ve put that solution, and other companion technologies like digital hubs and smart monitoring systems for those with dementia and Alzheimer’s, into care homes and other healthcare locations, and we’re really seeing it make a difference. We’ve done a lot in the health sector. We’re a digital partner for the Royal Air Forces Association, for example, which runs senior living homes for many of its retired ex-servicemen and women. We’ve put the audico solution into all its care homes, and are looking at creating digital hubs and experience spaces where, for example, through our relationship with tech giant, Samsung, we’re using digital
whiteboards on which residents now ‘paint’ and get creative. We have done the same in the education sector, working with special educational needs schools and it’s a great example of how a piece of tech created for one business vertical has been transformed in such a positive way to deliver value and enjoyment in another.
“Also, in care homes, Samsung has helped us provide large screens on which family members can connect with residents, upload photos, and communicate in a really smart way,” says Vaughan. “Other innovations include an emoji-based system that allows dementia sufferers to communicate non-verbally, on-screen devices to allow
“MY CHALLENGE WAS TO GET EVERYONE TO EMBRACE THE IDEA OF CHANGE AND TO BALANCE THAT TRADITION WITH INNOVATION”
testing for early-stage cognitive decline, and solutions that display exclusive content, change lighting to reflect mood and more. Outside the care and health space we’re busy too, particularly in the venue and hotel sectors, where we’re working on payment solutions with our partner Elavon and exploring the potential for using Alexa voice activation in hotels or for ticketing. Whatever it is, we always want to be at the forefront of pushing our understanding and use of these technologies and to be right at the leading edge. It’s one of the reasons I left my position at Ascot after almost five years working for a great organisation; all journeys have an end and I felt I’d done everything I could in that role.”
Vaughan was employed by Ascot
Racecourse in early 2018 as Head of Technology, with the remit of implementing a technology overhaul of the venue, including the implementation of a smart city vision. Prior to that, he had led on special projects and technology infrastructure at Twickenham Stadium, during which he helped the venue win seven industry awards between 2015-2018 and made Twickenham the first open-loop cashless rugby stadium in the world. Across these transformations, and his work on other areas, including as an advisor for the Tokyo Olympic Games in 2020, the same common themes around repurposing technology and understanding fan/ customer behaviour were present, he says.
“Before Ascot, looking back to my time at Twickenham, at the turn of the last decade – around 2011/12 – it was predominantly a cash-only venue,” Vaughan recalls. “I quickly recognised at the time that people were travelling to matches using contactless technology or Oyster payment cards, but then had to almost step back in time a little when they arrived at the stadium when they were forced to revert to using cash. Although the idea met with some initial resistance, the obvious answer was to adopt what was already familiar to our fans in other environments; they were using this kind of technology to travel and for their retail experiences, so it was essential for us to follow suit.
“With the sporting world in general, it’s clear that we need technology to deliver something credible for the industry in the future and, in this example, it was a case of dealing with the familiar technology that people already knew and making sure it worked seamlessly, which then allowed us to focus on the unique fan experiences we wanted to offer,” he adds.
“In fact, for this kind of transformation – and the later work at Ascot – I didn’t go to many other venues. I went to airports, shopping malls, restaurants, and hotels to get a sense of how people were interacting in those spaces and what businesses were giving customers in return.”
Ascot Racecourse is a different proposition. Early on, Vaughan recognised that, unlike Twickenham, the world-famous racing venue doesn’t have fans but customers, which requires a fresh approach to engagement and how to measure service expectation.
“We’re all customers every day,” he explains. “We pay for a service, whether that’s at Ascot Racecourse or a local supermarket, and we expect it to be delivered in a certain way at a certain level – although I think fans can be a little more forgiving in that respect. But it was an exciting proposition because the technology opportunities were far broader. People come to the venue for a full day but the amount of racing they see very rarely exceeds a total of 15 minutes, so the rest of the time is spent on other experiences, which meant there was just as much to learn from spaces outside of stadiums and sport in that regard.
“It was all about looking at what people do with technology,” Vaughan continues.
“It goes without saying, but the mobile phone has become an essential part of daily life, making it the best mechanism to deliver content to customers or fans. But aside from technology, you must understand the expectations: the live experience is unique and often thrilling but like anything, it can very quickly become stale when repeated regularly. So what can venues do to entice someone away from the comfort of their armchair on a wet Saturday morning, to travel to a racecourse for the sixth time that year through crowds and traffic as opposed to watching the event on TV where they’ve often got a high quality sound system, large, modern TV, the food and drink they want, the company they choose to enjoy it with – that’s the question we had to answer.
“WHEN YOU COME TO THE VENUE, EVERYTHING SHOULD BE THERE IN TERMS OF CONNECTIVITY, ACCESS TO THE OUTSIDE WORLD, AND HOW YOU ENGAGE WITH US AS A BRAND”
“It was a lot of change and it had to be embraced,” he states. “Tradition sits at the heart of Ascot – it’s been around for more than 300 years, but one of the first things I told the business when I started was that tradition was no longer a refuge. You only needed to look at the pace of change in the wider world to realise this fact. It was a venue that hadn’t seen many major technology upgrades since a rebuild of its stand in 2006, the TV screens were over 12 years old, so barely HD let alone 4K, and the audio also desperately in need of an overhaul; the POS was also legacy and though the corporate boxes were going through a refurbishment programme there wasn’t much thought given to new tech in these premium spaces. Within that, my challenge was to get everyone to embrace the idea of change and to balance that tradition with innovation. It started with looking at what people want, influenced by how they use technology: they’re mobile-dependent, they expect to not queue, they want to use cashless, and they demand high quality sound and visual experiences.”
Fans, says Vaughan, are to all intents and purposes a captive audience once in a traditional sporting stadium like Twickenham or a Premier League football club. With a few exceptions, they also generally behave in the same way – arriving close to kick off and leaving soon after the final whistle. On the contrary, at Ascot, customers usually visit for the day, providing the business with multiple opportunities to engage with them through different technologies.
To inform this direction and enable the ‘lifestyle brand’ aspirations of the racecourse, Vaughan and his team adopted a smart city approach driven by his belief in the need for venues to evolve to remain relevant and to reflect a world in which everything is centred around the delivery of services. He explains: “Netflix has changed the way we experience movies and TV, Spotify has reinvented the consumption and production of music, Uber has revolutionised the taxi service, Airbnb has completely transformed the travel market, Deliveroo has had an unquestionable impact on the restaurant industry. We’d be naïve to assume that sport will remain immune to this wave of change.
“I thought the venue needed to reinvent itself,” he says of the smart city approach, “and I also thought it would open the door to other potential technology partners, from A/V to NFC, through to POS and payments, and voice and 5G – we could essentially become a test bed for new innovation. When you come to the venue, everything should be there in terms of connectivity, access to the outside world, and how you engage with us. Think of an airport, which is a similar environment. You go with the objective of catching a flight, but as soon as you enter, there are multiple locations and activations that take place across food and beverage, entertainment, retail, charging, ticketing and so on.”
Following this concept, Vaughan oversaw several significant successes and transformational projects during his time at Ascot. Alongside things like a core infrastructure upgrade, complimentary tech in the racecourse’s 220 boxes, and a full POS upgrade with innovation partner, Kappture, he cites the rollout of Amazon Alexa/audico in corporate boxes to enable food and beverage ordering, as well as betting and merchandising, and the sitewide audio and visual project work with Bose Professional and Samsung as standout achievements.
“Audio is really important to racing because of how it enhances the overall experience,” says Vaughan of the work with Bose. “Commentary helps raise the levels of excitement, and clear audio is essential when you have 70,000 people in a venue elevated by what they are listening to across the loudspeakers. Bose also worked well for us as a brand because they shared a very similar lifestyle aspiration as Ascot and occupied the unique position of being both B2B and B2C. It was one of the smoothest installation projects I’ve been involved in and much of that goes down to the great work done by the installers at SSE/Solotech. Additionally, we collaborated with Samsung on a complete overhaul of the TV screens at the venue, replacing around 800 screens with Samsung’s 4K panels. When I started most of the TVs were from the 2006 venue upgrade, so over 12 years old and incapable of displaying high quality, 4K broadcasts.
“The big screen deployed at Ascot in 2022 was an idea that capitalised on the pillars at the venue and presented content in the form of a smart phone view, making it the largest screen of its kind for this aspect ratio deployed by Samsung to a venue in Europe,” he continues. “Of course, good hardware is nothing without the right software to run on it. Digital Media Technologies was introduced to us by Samsung and the quality of their work really made the big screen shine. Not only did they deploy the screen in record time, but they also supported it from go-live with some really innovative content. This partnership is the best example of a company who were able to bring their experience in other sectors – they manage all the content for the big screens at Piccadilly Circus – to great effect in the venue space.”
Elsewhere, Vaughan and his team explored the use of NFC e-ticketing solutions, an innovation that was repurposed for other uses during the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many venues, for a period of time Ascot essentially operated ‘behind closed doors’ in response to lockdowns and other restrictions. “I was sure there must be some way to still engage people,” Vaughan explains. “We decided to issue everyone on our database with an NFC ticket for each day of Royal Ascot and a very small number of those would turn gold randomly, meaning those in possession of the ‘Golden Ticket’ would win a prize. It was a powerful piece of technology repurposing – essentially taking what was a mechanism
for entry and tweaking it to become an interactive lottery. It worked well, helped us build our database and led to Ascot creating the Ascot Fan Pass. I’ve since been working with ProntoCX, the technology partner behind that initiative, outside of Ascot and for work with The Digital Line to explore opportunities around digital collectibles.”
And therein lies the secret to Vaughan’s ongoing success. His belief in the power of cross-functional technology and his passion for repurposing proven innovations to make a difference are central to his approach to his work. That, along with a rare
“WHATEVER IT IS, WE ALWAYS WANT TO BE AT THE FOREFRONT OF PUSHING OUR UNDERSTANDING AND USE OF THESE TECHNOLOGIES AND TO BE RIGHT AT THE LEADING EDGE”
willingness to embrace risk and potential failure. “People say a lot of things in tech,” he says, “but you scratch beneath the surface and you don’t always find the same level of substance. To make changes, whether it’s the kind at Ascot or Twickenham, or all the work we’re doing with The Digital Line, you must overcome the fear that you often find in business: you have to take ownership and responsibility.
“I don’t want to be chasing the pack, I want to be leading it,” he continues. “Not everything I’ve done in my career has succeeded, but without failure there is no mechanism to learn and you shouldn’t be
afraid to stumble every now and then. There are only two absolutes in life: birth and death, and when you fully embrace that reality, it puts everything else into perspective very quickly. It frees your thinking and makes you realise that much of what we tend to be afraid of or put off doing out of concern over risk is somewhat trivial in comparison.”
www.thedigitalline.co.uk
ARAVIND VENKATESWARAN DISCUSSES HOW HE AND HIS COLLEAGUES ARE REIMAGINING TECHNOLOGY TO BETTER SERVE CUSTOMERS IN THE TRAVEL AND MOBILITY INDUSTRY
WORDS TOM WADLOW
In today’s hyperconnected world, technology is the critical enabler that allows people to move from A to B in a seamless manner. Take the international travel market as an example. From airline tickets and visa applications to passport documents and travel insurance, tech platforms play a critical role in allowing both consumers and businesses to move freely with little friction.
Enter CIBT. With 30-plus years of experience in this field and more than 1,600 expert immigration, visa professionals and qualified migration consultants located in over 60 offices spanning 27 countries around the world, the organisation operates as the leading global provider of immigration and visa services for corporations and individuals. For example, it is the primary service provider to the majority of Fortune 500 companies, offering a comprehensive suite of services under two primary brands.
The first, CIBTvisas, is the market leader for business and other travel visa services for corporate and individual clients. The other, Newland Chase, is a wholly-owned subsidiary focused on global immigration strategy and advisory services for corporations worldwide.
Aravind Venkateswaran is CIBT’s Global CIO. His remit is vast and includes overseeing critical activities such as software development, cloud and network operations, IT infrastructure, and digitisation and information security, he is also responsible for all aspects of the company’s technology strategy. “The chance to join a market leader with 30 years’ track record, and with a global footprint does not come along very often, so I was extremely excited when the opportunity arose,” he recalls. “Over the years, through CIBT’s impressive growth, it has acquired a huge variety of technical capabilities with so much scope to transform in this sector.”
Venkateswaran, who joined the organisation in May 2021, wants to change the future of travel, mobility, visa, and immigration services through technology. He is well into that journey and is leading a technology transformation and modernisation exercise that encompasses the adoption of cloud, agile methodologies, modern architecture frameworks (microservices and APIs), and Robotic Process Automation(RPA). He has hired a pool of diverse top talent across the globe who are passionately creating customer-centric products and solutions with a mobile-first approach.
Innowise Group is an international full-cycle software development and IT consulting company. Our team of IT professionals can help your achieve your business goals with digital solutions and recent trend technologies.
Venkateswaran joined CIBT in the midst of unprecedented circumstances. With lockdowns and travel restrictions grinding the international travel sector to a halt, he inherited a situation far from what could be described as business as usual. However, the shutdown of the industry provided the ideal window for he and the team to reimagine CIBT’s technical capabilities, devise a new strategy and begin executing it.
“The sector more broadly needed to seize the opportunity to level-up tech platforms, remove friction for end users and create a more intuitive, real-time experience,” he explains. “CIBT has many lines of
business, and each had multiple tools and technology stacks which, combined, were difficult to maintain and were blockers for rapid innovation. We knew this had to change, and the COVID situation offered the perfect pause for us to do so.”
Venkateswaran and his team seized the moment. Having standardised tools and tech stacks across various parts of the business, and migrated customers and teams within the company along the way, the foundation has been laid to implement more ambitious change. “I set about this journey with three main goals,” the CIO adds. “First, we want to be fully operating in the cloud, utilising the rapid innovation capabilities it offers.
Second, we will become truly agile in our principles and ways of doing things to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers. And third, we will become a data-driven organisation that harnesses the power of information to provide a better customer experience.”
The latter is particularly important to CIBT’s ambitious plan to utilise Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) capabilities to provide enhanced
services for all of its customers in real-time, which will translate into ‘in-the-moment’ experiences for them. Although this is still in development, customers have already been benefiting from the transformative journey in numerous ways. For instance, the plug-and-play style API integrations with client systems have already made the onboarding process simpler and faster, giving clients better access to their data and the possibility to create a unified interface on their end.
“I ENVISAGE A WORLD WHERE TRAVELLERS CAN FOCUS ON WHAT THEY WANT TO ACHIEVE IN THEIR TRAVEL DESTINATIONS RATHER THAN WORRYING ABOUT VISAS, PERMITS, PASSPORTS, AND OTHER DOCUMENTATION”
“WE WILL BECOME A DATA-DRIVEN ORGANISATION THAT HARNESSES THE POWER OF INFORMATION TO PROVIDE A BETTER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE”
Additionally, the business is enhancing its current capabilities related to data analytics and visualisation by redesigning its user interfaces to be simple, self-serving, and responsive to the various devices and their form-factors.
In addition to providing the traditional visa and passport application services, Venkateswaran wants to grasp the opportunity to offer additional services related to travel experiences in the future to enrich CIBT’s clients’ lives. He explains: “I envisage a world where travellers can focus on what they want to achieve in their travel destinations rather than worrying about Visas, permits, passports, and other documentation”
CIBT’s transformation to date has been as much about people as it has been about innovative technologies. Where many firms had to scale back, coming out of the pandemic, CIBT doubled down on its technology investments
“WE ARE AN INCREDIBLY DIVERSE TEAM, WHICH HELPS TO CREATE AN OPEN AND INCLUSIVE CULTURE WHERE WE BENEFIT FROM PEOPLE’S DIFFERENT EXPERIENCES AND PERSPECTIVES”
and brought in top-talent both in the form of employees as well as vendor partners. Today, Venkateswaran’s technology team is more than double the size it was before he joined.
“We are also an incredibly diverse team,” he adds, “with people based here in North America, South America, Europe, and in Asia. This has helped to create an open and inclusive culture where we benefit from people’s different experiences and perspectives. Of all the changes we have made, our focus on talent has been the most significant and has paid the biggest dividends. Technology is, in my view, all about people.”
In terms of what will define the company’s future success, Venkateswaran believes the most important end goal is to continue removing friction for people travelling around the world. “People are leading busier and busier lives,” he says.
“Convenience is everything. CIBT’s core mission is to empower people to seamlessly live, work and travel around the globe. I want our technology to almost blend invisibly into the background to the point where it goes unnoticed and simply works.”
www.cibtvisas.com
contact@cibt.com
Metaintro is the second startup Lacey Kaelani has founded in the HR tech sector [she’s also been in the tech and crypto space for years and graced Forbes’ 30 under 30 list]. The company is a multichain custodial wallet that holds proof of employment, proof of skill and education. Or, to keep it simple, a professional resume wallet for web3 that does away with the stuffy old PDF or paper-based resume.
She and co-founder and CTO Brad Larson formed the business after the sale of their last startup, Casting Depot. Delving into web3 technology and how it could influence the future of work, they saw a gap
in the market for web3-based resume wallets. The rest – and the thousands of people they’ve assisted in securing their dreams jobs – is history.
Metaintro helps reduce the time to hire by moving pre-vetted candidates to the front of the line. Job seekers can access their wallet through a browser application, which can then be used to interact with web3 job applications. It is backed by NEAR Blockchain, Aave and web3 investors having raised $5.6m – the largest seed round led by a female founder in the web3 HR tech space.
www.metaintro.com
“ We’re proud to have assisted thousands of individuals in securing their dream web3 jobs”
LACEY KAELANI, FOUNDER, METAINTRO
LAURYNAS PRIKOCKIS ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION
STRATEGY AND HOW HE HAS DEPLOYED A ROADMAP
FOCUSED ON BUSINESS ALIGNMENT, STANDARDISATION, CULTURE, AND INNOVATION
WORDS: JONATHAN DYBLE
Memories of the 2008 financial crisis don’t seem so distant given the current economic challenges the world is seeing. With cheap credit and lax lending standards inflating a housing bubble, banks were left holding trillions of dollars of worthless investments in subprime mortgages when it burst, setting in motion a series of shockwaves as The Great Recession swept across the world. Lithuania was no exception to this, says Laurynas Prikockis, who clearly recollects how the economic challenges eventually caught up with the country and his employer, Western Shipyard Group.
“Joining the business in 2007 was a dream come true,” he recalls. “The group has a massive diversity of 20 companies driving varied strategic goals spanning shipbuilding, ship repair and conversion projects, complex ship design and engineering solutions, large and complex metal construction and equipment production, and stevedoring services. It is also the largest employer in Western Lithuania, with 2,000 people on its books. As someone who has always enjoyed working in dynamic environments, this was key for me. That year also marked the beginning of the company’s digitisation journey for which SAP, my area of expertise, became the foundation.”
For the next eight years after coming on board in 2007, Prikockis worked for the group in several capacities. Starting out as an IT Programmer and eventually being promoted to IT SAP Group Manager, he supported several projects including the implementation of a digitised invoicing system and project system alongside business intelligence, HR and contract management projects. However, eventual economic difficulties emerged which served to compound several longstanding IT-related challenges.
20+ YEARS OF EXPERTISE
14 OFFICES IN 10 COUNTRIES
1600+ EMPLOYEES
950+ PROJECTS
Founded in 2003 in the heart of Silicon Valley, LeverX is a global system integrator that provides SAP implementation services and custom software development to companies of all sizes. Knowledgeable experts support clients in North America, Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East through all stages of their digital transformation and business optimization. What sets LeverX apart is its strong expertise, effective organizational structure, and agile corporate culture. This allows maximum flexibility and responsiveness to be a reliable partner for its clients.
For more information, please visit www.leverx.com
“When I joined, the IT department didn’t have a declared and clear strategy, but a series of ideas which ultimately came to fruition in siloed projects,” Prikockis explains. “Because of the economic challenges it was difficult to justify investment into technologies and their potential benefits while resources were being diverted to other, more important priorities.”
A resulting strategic rethink saw the company consider abandoning SAP altogether – a prospect that had Prikockis looking at alternative employment opportunities abroad, eventually joining IBM as a Senior SAP Consultant.
“WHAT’S MOST PLEASING TO ME IS THE GROWTH IN CONFIDENCE AND EXPERIENCE OF THE TEAM”
Fast forward to December 2015, and Prikockis was offered the opportunity to return to Western Shipyard Group as its Chief Information Officer. “It was an enticing opportunity, but one that I would only accept under an important condition,” he explains. “I negotiated that the company would be open to any necessary innovation or adoption of innovative new solutions and technologies and that, in order to implement them in the most effective way, my hands wouldn’t be tied in this respect.”
Having successfully secured greater departmental autonomy and freedom, the newly appointed CIO set about developing a brand-new digitalisation roadmap, instilling a strategic IT overhaul from 2016 onwards. “I immediately found that the IT department was struggling, and from talks with management quickly understood that change and a fresh perspective was needed,” he affirms. “However, employees were scattered with many having recently left the company or retired, which made things difficult. I was working with fragments of a team from the outset.”
Despite operating in a challenging environment, Prikockis persevered, quickly implementing several key changes. He immediately worked to get the IT team up to speed on the business and its operations, ensuring that they were no longer tunnel visioned, but working in an aligned manner, noting that when you
know how the business is working, it’s far easier to select a product or solution that supports it.
Where employment and competency gaps had emerged, he also turned to outsourcing several key IT functions, ramping this up from 1% of operations in 2016 to approximately 20% today. This strategic switch has included a significant focus on becoming cloud agnostic, ensuring that any applications, tools, and services are designed to migrate seamlessly between multiple cloud platforms, or between on-premises and cloud in a hybrid model without disruption of service. “Going cloud agnostic helped us dramatically during the pandemic,” Prikockis explains. “We were able to continue operations seamlessly, which was a huge benefit.”
“OUR NEW DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM IS HELPING TO b ETTER CONNECT ALL OUR INDIVIDUAL ENTERPRISES THAN k S TO STANDARDISATION”
According to Prikockis, much of the new strategy has centred around better enabling the firm’s teams and aligning with the company’s core needs. Key to this has been empowering its manufacturing and engineering teams with software and solutions, something that has largely come to fruition through the development and implementation of manufacturing execution systems (MES). As software solutions designed to optimise manufacturing processes by monitoring, tracking, documenting, and controlling the entire production lifecycle, MES is helping to improve quality control and increase uptime while also reducing inventory and costs at Western Shipyard Group.
Elsewhere, Prikockis has been able to drive greater stabilisation and standardisation of processes and technology selection across the group, serving to break down silos and enable all internal functions to benefit from IT improvements. “This has been a critical aspect of our roadmap, ensuring all processes and technologies are modernised,” he affirms. “We’ve almost become paperless across all 20 companies, for example. Of course, we have some bits and pieces left over, but our way of working and document management system is helping to better connect all these individual enterprises thanks to standardisation.”
“GOING CLOUD AGNOSTIC HELPED US DRAMATICALLY DURING THE PANDEMIC. WE WERE A b LE TO CONTINUE OPERATIONS SEAMLESSLY, WHICH WAS A HUGE b ENEFIT”
With every success, the CIO’s digitalisation strategy has continued to gather momentum. Between 2016 and 2023, the company’s IT budget has increased 227%, while the team’s headcount has also expanded from eight to 15. Outsourcing has also become widely accepted as a means of embracing best practice, demonstrated by the fact that a fifth of all operations are now driven by external experts.
“Statistics are great, but what’s most pleasing to me is the growth in confidence and experience of the team,” Prikockis adds. “We do see that our projects are enormously complex. They are not siloed but are interconnected across all verticals. Industry 4.0 is an ideology we see value
“JOINING THE b USINESS IN 2007 WAS A DREAM COME TRUE”
in and are continuing to pursue. Being cloud agnostic has made it much easier for us to react to business requirements. If a department needs something, we can deliver quickly, saving money and effort.”
It hasn’t been easy to get to this point, nor will it continue to be moving forward. The company has several goals for the coming years, from focusing on improving its cyber resilience to creating the supporting infrastructure for a new project management organisation across the group’s 20 internal companies. However, Prikockis isn’t worried about the threat of potential failures, recognising them as a natural and beneficial part of the wider transformation process.
“The key is to learn the right lessons,” he concludes. “We’ve encountered many errors during 2015-2022. There were a lot of successful projects, but some bad ones too. But this has only served to help the company understand what works and what doesn’t and improve our direction today. If we continue to learn from our mistakes, we’ll only continue to be better placed to thrive moving forward.”
wsy.lt
You may be forgiven for thinking of Malta as a traditional sun, sand and sea destination, where people spend their days swimming, wining, dining, and cooling down at the beach, while working on their suntans. But there’s so much more to it that I don’t even know where to even begin. From a business perspective, not only has Malta developed a reputation for being an established financial services centre and one of the largest freeports in the Mediterranean, it has also proved to be a significant technology hub bridging the gap between Europe and North Africa. Tech business professionals won’t be disappointed to savour the experience that Malta has to offer. Here, as a technology business professional myself, I share some of my favourite places to go to make your experience worthwhile.
As a reputable international tourism destination, several large conferences are organised in Malta, attracting thousands of people from around the world. My favourites are:
AIBC (Artificial Intelligence Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Conference) is an annual event organised specifically around AI and Blockchain and characterised by world-class speakers in their corresponding areas. Networking is also integral, so much so that several peripheral events are organised for attendees to have time to connect, get to know each other, and exchange business. The event
also attracts numerous representatives from VCs and Angel Investors looking for their next potential Unicorn.
As a leading online gaming destination, Malta hosts one of the most sought-after conferences in the sector: Malta iGaming Conference . This is home to more than 160 speakers and exhibitors showcasing their best talent and innovations in the industry. Being a highly data-driven sector, I’ve always been fascinated by how exhibitors demonstrate new and evolving capabilities in AI and Big Data analytics to develop an enhanced user experience for the industry.
RADISSON BLU GOLDEN SANDS RESORT AIBCBusiness travellers are spoilt for choice when it comes to hotel accommodation in Malta, but there’s several I recommend. If you enjoy tranquil and peaceful surroundings with breathtaking sea views whilst tapping away on your laptop, then Radisson Blu Golden Sands Resort is the place for you. If you visit in summer, you can almost jump out of your balcony straight onto the surrounding golden sands for a quick dip in Malta’s clear blue seas. Rooms are really spacious, particularly the suites, which feel more like small apartments. The business lounge is also extraordinary. You can organise meetings in complete
privacy, while being served with the most delicious food.
If you subscribe to the proverbial ‘Work Hard, Play Hard’ maxim then I’d recommend a stay at the Hilton Malta It’s located at the heart of the entertainment centre in Malta, yet has been studiously built on top of a secluded creek that provides shelter from the surrounding mayhem if you wish for some quiet time. Its business centre is fully equipped and is only a stone’s throw away from a marina that’s home to the most exclusive yachts.
David is an innovative digital transformation professional with over 20 years of international advisory experience. David has worked for cuttingedge technology startups and developed new business models, leading high profile strategic and digital projects in Europe, the UK, and the Middle East. His extensive experience has enabled him to see beyond the complexity of technical frameworks and conceptual models to embrace a pragmatic and more humanistic approach that places people at the heart of everything he does.
Learn more at www.david-galea.com
No visit to Malta is complete without giving your palette a special treat. How can you say no to a succulent piece of Cerna (Grouper), Spnott (Sea Bass) or Pixxispat (Swordfish) made al Sale (salt), accompanied by roast potatoes and blended with an aroma of inviting herbs? It’s well worth that extra 10k run you’ll need to sweat out to knock off a couple pounds and get back in shape.
You can rarely go wrong with a fish restaurant in Malta. My favourite one is Preca Restaurant , my first choice for a winter visit to the island. Set in the historical surroundings of Valletta, you can almost imagine a knight tying his horse at the door and shuffling his way through with his heavy armour to a table located
in the traditional old building to be served by the owners themselves. It’s not just the vast selection of fresh fish available that makes this place special; you get several additions and surprises from the chef that add spice to the experience.
My obvious choice for summer would be a waterside restaurant like Ta’ XBiex Waterpolo Club. What more do you need than a good bottle of wine and fresh fish, served at a table where you can almost touch the water and feel the gentle breeze around your neck? What fascinates me most about this place is the reflection of the imposing Valletta bastions on top of the sea, partly distorted by the tiny ripples of waves that bump gently at the edge of the restaurant’s side.
Malta is big on entertainment of all types and for all tastes. If you’re an avid fan of bars and clubs, then Paceville is the place for you. The area is literally packed with young people having a great time, hopping from one establishment to another until the early hours of the morning. If you’re staying at the Hilton Malta, Paceville is literally a stone’s throw away.
For years, Malta has been hosting the Isle of MTV during the summer months. This week-long event brings together the most popular singers in the world to perform live in front of thousands of fans. If you wish to attend this event, be sure to book early not to be disappointed.
17-18 MAY 2023
Santa Clara Convention Center, USA
For the ambitious enterprise technology professional seeking to explore the latest innovations, implementations and strategies to drive businesses forward. www.ai-expo.net/northamerica
6-8 JUNE 2023
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Fintech’s boldest and brightest voices delve into the challenges of right now and collaboratively shape what comes next for the money ecosystem. europe.money2020.com
12-16 JUNE 2023
London, UK
London Tech Week is a global celebration of tech, uniting the most innovative thinkers and talent of tomorrow in a week-long festival.
londontechweek.com
14-17 JUNE 2023
Paris, France
VivaTech accelerates innovation by connecting startups, tech leaders, major corporations and investors responding to our world’s biggest challenges.
vivatechnology.com
26-27 SEPTEMBER 2023
Amsterdam, Netherlands
AI & Big Data Expo is the leading event for Enterprise AI, Machine Learning, Security, Ethical AI, Deep Learning, Data Ecosystems, and NLP. www.ai-expo.net/europe/
13-16 NOVEMBER 2023
Lisbon, Portugal
Web Summit offers incredible speakers, unparalleled networking opportunities, and proprietary software that will maximise your experience.
websummit.com
At Stroud & Clarke we believe in the power of storytelling to build brands, engage with audiences and inform the conversation. We produce creative content that provides insight, influences opinion and positions you at the forefront of your industry.
www.stroudandclarke.com
