Future of Work / Digital Transformation

KEIL HUBERT All the easy digital gains have already been realised

FOOTBALL CRAZY How soccer schedules led to a rethink of ITN’s digital strategy

WORKING NINETY-FIVE? Author Lynda Gratton on how our increased lifespans will affect the workplace of the future

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AWARD-WINNING BUSINESS JOURNALISM • SEPTEMBER 2016

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Transforming the way we work Exclusive interview Joanne Frearson talks to Joseph Valente about how winning The Apprentice helped him bring his workforce into the 21st century

INSIDE: Inspector Dogberry discovers the benefits of a sharing economy for our four-legged friends…

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Deploy new technologies deliberately, and with careful planning, if you want to avoid a catastrophic collapse OPENING SHOTS KEIL HUBERT

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OU CAN call it “Internet Revolution,” or “Digital Transformation,’ or any other hip marketing slogan, but it’s all the same thing. Businesses fling obscene piles of cash at consultants in order to secure massive and swift competitive advantages, only to wind up burdened with tech support quagmires… and no compelling competitive advantage. I don’t mean to come across a curmudgeon, but we technologists have been at this for thirty years. All of the easy gains have already been realised. There aren’t any more magic leaps forward to be had, espec ia l ly not for businesses which have kept up with t he i ndust r y standards.

I understand the appeal, though. I recall when email was new. Getting to instantly correspond across

oceans was exhilarating when everyone else had to wait a week for a mailed letter. Getting to edit complicated forms on a PC instead of retyping them from scratch after every noticed error massively reduced workplace stress. Being able to search enormous regulations for keywords cut research time from days or weeks down to minutes and saved jobs. Heck, even getting students to laser print their essays made grading papers an order of magnitude less exhausting (if no less insipid). Technology transformations have given us stunning improvements in office quality of life. I’m a diehard fan of new tech.

The thing is, we’re well past the days of Huge Leaps Forward.

Everyone has email and web forms now. To corrupt cyberpunk science fiction writer William Gibson, the future has arrived, and much of it has been commoditised. Pretty much anyone with a white-collar job can do most of their work with a Wi-Fi hotspot, a smartphone and a £100 laptop. We have “work from home,” 24/7 access, and virtual everything. The

“All of the easy gains have already been realised.

There aren’t any more magic leaps forward”

KEIL HUBERT IS A RETIRED US AIR FORCE CYBERSPACE OPERATIONS OFFICER, WITH MORE THAN TEN YEARS OF MILITARY COMMAND EXPERIENCE. HE CURRENTLY CONSULTS ON BUSINESS, SECURITY AND TECHNOLOGY ISSUES IN TEXAS

“digital future” has long since been and gone.

That being said, the marketplace won’t stop making grandiose prom ises of “revolut ions”.

Electronic bookkeeping isn’t enough – now you need Enterprise Resource Planning! Email is so last year – now you need Enterprise Collaboration! Whatever you already have working, there’s always a much larger, more expensive, and staggeringly more complex new version of it that your business absolutely must have if you want to stay relevant. Just ask your favourite consultant: they’ve got slides aplenty explaining why your business is completely doomed if you don’t upgrade, iterate, federate, move to “ t he c loud ” a nd TRANSFORM! TRANSFORM! TRANSFORM! It’s exhausting.

Yes, there are new capabilities to be won from adding new arrows to your allegorical quiver. Just remember that every new system you deploy brings with it a new and inescapable tech support burden.

Further, most of these “transformative solutions” force you to trade simplicity for capability. That’s

often a losing proposition. The “huge” gains in productivity that the consultants promise can’t be realised without also introducing momentum-sapping drag.

Is it worth it? It can be if you’re realistic about it. Massive tech transformations can add value and can secure you a competitive advantage. They’re never quick, though. They’re also never cheap, and they’re never, ever simple.

Modern businesses are already saturated with technology, most of which is huge pain to support and secure before you go and overcomplicate it. Everything that’s added to the pile makes the whole mess harder to sustain, thereby increasing the total support burden.

If you want to avoid a catastrophic collapse, deploy new technologies deliberately, with careful planning and meticulous testing.

As for your favourite consultants – the ones who promised you overnight success – shoo the lot of them out of the building. If you can’t secure the “grand transformation” they promised with your own IT staff, you’ll never be rid of your cheerful £300/hour “partners”.

People – not just machines – will power digital “Rigid approaches to management are giving way to something much more fluid”

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VERYWHERE YOU look, leaders in old and new companies are using technology in a wave of supercharged innovation that is creating incredible opportunities. Scanning a bar code at a cash register generates a rich stream of data for a retailer about their customers and what they might like to buy next. The rapid rotations made by a jet engine means Rolls-Royce can radically change its business model, selling aircraft thrust by the hour rather than requiring its customers to make a huge upfront capital expenditure.

Thriving in this era full of promise and uncertainty means increasing the speed at which companies innovate inside, outside and across their organisations. We believe stodgy innovation cycles and an unwillingness to experiment will kill digital. But the main engine for experimenting, collaborating and boosting innovation is not some magical technology – it’s people.

Cognizant’s Center for the Future of Work, with help from the Economist Intelligence Unit, surveyed over 420 business decision makers in the US and Europe to understand the dynamics surrounding the workforce of the future. In our study, People – Not Just Machines – Will Power Digital Innovation, we found that attracting and managing the talent needed to make the digital shift is critical.

Key findings from our study Digital investments are catalysing innovation. Our survey shows that there is an imperative for companies to invest in digital tools, technologies and skills to counter the stodgy innovation cycles that can jeopardise survival. Worryingly, Cognizant found that the vast majority of executives who answered our survey (94 per cent) cite a “moderate” or “severe” digital skills gap.

Talent shortfalls are starting to drive the digital “gig” economy. There is a shortfall in digital talent and its driving tasks and activities outside the organisation. This is

no temporary fix: When done right, externalising digital work can create a more flexible, distributed and transient workforce that can adapt to rapid cycles of business reinvention and experimentation that digital demands.

Companies are reconfiguring themselves into smaller spaces as market opportunities and emerging digital niches grow. In fact, smaller multidimensional teams are beginning to emerge with sales, marketing, service, product development, production, and technology staff co-locating together and focusing on serving a single customer segment or functional need. Fascinatingly, these smaller, nimble clusters on the client side mirror what’s happening in many major cities around the world.

The study charts the explosion of “talent clusters” across Europe and the world. These talent clusters are collections of entrepreneurial activity coalescing in one location or another – offering “hot” digital technologies and capabilities that can accelerate innovation or uncork an experimental business process. This global start-up movement is quickly accelerating into London’s Silicon Roundabout, Dundee’s Silicon Glen and Berlin’s Silicon Allee, to name a few.

Our findings reveal that the rigid approaches to organisational management typified as the 1980s value chain mania are

giving way to something much more fluid, connected and nuanced. Silos are being broken in the first steps to improve knowledge flows and redraw organisational power structures. Leaders are rethinking the dynamics of power and decision making in their organisations.

The workforce of the future will evolve amid a digital revolution that’s spearheading new business models, upending revenue flows and creating radical new cost structures. More back-office work will be handed over to software tools but new people-plusmachine workflows will become the business norm.

The digital era will rely on machines, but winning will require – perhaps more than ever – talent pools that can thrive in an increasingly digitised economy.

Navigating this shift will be one of the defining success criteria for leaders.

It’s time to get hyper-serious about how your organisation’s most important asset – its people – will work in this exciting digital age.

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Euan Davis (inset, far left) is associate vice president at Cognizant www.linkedin.com/in/euandavis www.cognizant.com/ digital-workforce-of-the-future

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ODI: data “as important as water or energy”

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As AI gets smarter, we need stronger ways of protecting data, says ethical hacker Jason Hart

In the post-AI era, protection must mean more than passwords JOANNE FREARSON

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sing an undisclosed London restaurant’s public Wi-Fi system, ethical hacker and CTO of digital security firm Gemalto Jason Hart does a quick Google search to see if we can find the usernames and passwords of companies’ private files.

Within seconds we are in, and before us is the sensitive information of nearly 300,000 companies.

“What I am showing you is a small insight into the hacker world,” he says. “These companies have all been hacked and their usernames and passwords are there for the bad guys to potentially gain administration access. This is not technical. You can do some very basic stuff to compromise an organisation.”

What he is showing me is no more than a routine exercise for

SEPTEMBER 2016 Publisher Bradley Scheffer Editor Joanne Frearson Production editor Dan Geary Client manager Michele Taylor: production@business-reporter.co.uk Project manager Ben Ruffell Contact us: info@lyonsdown.co.uk

him. It is something a 10-year-old could do. It is also scary, given the huge volume of sensitive information his search pulls up.

Hart tells me hackers are using data like this to break into websites, gain admin access and take online credits and online payments. “Most breaches start with a password being compromised, obviously. If they weren’t using passwords we are already solving the problem.”

One of the reasons Hart believes some companies are becoming increasingly vulnerable to this type of hacking is because while they are upgrading systems to digitally transform themselves they are not putting the right security in place.

Statistics from Gemalto show that 707,509,815 data records were lost or stolen in 2015, the equivalent of 22 every second.

“About 12 years ago we were starting to do things right,” he

says. “We all had laptop computers, we all had a virtual private network (VPN) and we thought, let’s protect the laptop, let’s control access to the network, and then this kind of digital disruption happened.

“At the end of the week the server would be backed up on a backup tape and that backup tape would be stored in a safe.

We were applying a physical control. But now, because of digital disruption, we don’t use backup tapes – we back up into the cloud. That physical control we were once using is gone. You have digital disruption, cloud transformation and it is removing some of the basic simple things that we were doing as it just happened. The backup tape and the safe is a good example of how some of these basic controls are being lost.”

The attacks, which Hart believes will become the most

THE INNER GEEK

prominent from criminals using this data, will be integrity attacks, where a hacker gets into a company’s administration system and uses it to make orders and compromise the way it does business.

He says: “Integrity attacks will bring huge impact because it is too late. It is irreversible. If the output has been manufactured you can’t reverse it.”

Hart says we are only at the beginning – as companies start using artificial intelligence, the internet of things and machine learning more, their data footprints will increase, and so will the attacks. “We are in a world now where businesses own or use other people’s data,” he says. “[But they also need to] respect that it is someone else’s property, so the appropriate security controls should be given.”

His advice is for businesses is to replace permanent

MOZ & BRADDERS

passwords with a one-time random password. “If you are storing data or anything in the cloud you should encrypt it,” he says. “Then you need to protect the key which secures the encryption. This stuff does not need to be expensive – if it is done from day one it is part of the overall cost.”

PEN DATA is transforming companies digitally a nd boost i ng t he economy. The Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and its network of start-ups, franchises and partners have generated £50million of value to the economy since December 2012.

This has included data infrastructure projects in sectors such as finance, agriculture and transport, which underpin the digital economy and improve public services, business operations and gover nment accountability. The ODI has helped more than 60 start-ups build services using open data from across the public and private sectors.

Gavin Starks, CEO of the ODI, says: “We are helping build the data infrastructure for the UK and beyond. As our economy and society continue to become data-driven, we need to address the fact that data is as important as roads, water and energy.

“The network growing around the ODI includes startups, SMEs, enterprises and individuals in the public and private sectors. Working with partners and diverse communities, we will continue to support and convene data pioneers.”

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Improving management, staff and customer retention with technology – a case study

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Millennials are still seen by some bosses as “being from a completely different planet”, says career coach Alice Stapleton

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N TODAY’S business landscape, a classic problem for companies is how to provide the same level of response and customer service to a geographically and chronologically diverse customer base. And how to manage, monitor and ensure efficient communication between all offices, staff and customers – no matter where they are in the world.

Using traditional telecoms, this setup would be costly and unmanageable. VoIP platforms can offer dynamically routed calls from customers to any available agent – on any device, anywhere in the world. Add local numbers (yes, VoIP allows you to have local numbers anywhere in the world), integration with CRM and email systems and customers always get the same experience, always get through to someone and always feel like they are being listened to. Closer relationships with customers through a better communications platform – customer retention 101.

Customers are happy, with local numbers to call and a service provider they can always reach.

And customers are not the only ones. Staff can be offered more flexible working solutions which increases staff retention.

Management are also happy as they can monitor and manage the entire company from a single point, and there’s no juggling multiple providers, contracts and hiring specialist staff in every office.

Disaster recovery and compliance are built in and, as technology and business needs progress, so does their communications platform at no extra cost. The result is happier customers, happier staff, happier management, more cost effective, flexible and robust communication solutions.

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0333 344 2802 www.voipcloudsolutions.co.uk

Catching the millennial bug To benefit from the unique skills of the millennial generation, firms must become open to their equally unique ways of working…

“What seems to motivate millennials is an environment where there’s a lot of trust in the employee to go ahead and get the work done in the best way they think is possible” – Alice Stapleton, career coach

MATT SMITH

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EPENDING ON who you speak to, millennials – those born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s – are either the innovative, digital-native saviours of modern business or a lazy, entitled generation that expects huge reward for minimum effort.

With so much conflicting analysis, it can be difficult for businesses to know how to adapt to the working styles of their young hires and make the most of their unique talents.

According to career and workplace coach Alice Stapleton, to some managers millennials can “seem to be from a completely different planet in some respects” when it comes to their expectations and what they look for from their jobs.

But in reality, she says they can show themselves to be “incredibly ambitious” employees if businesses make some key changes to fit their way of working. Specifically, they need flexibility in how they do their jobs and the opportunity to develop and progress.

“What does seem to motivate them is an environment where it’s quite flexible, and there’s a lot of trust put into the employee to go ahead and get that work done in the best way they think is possible,” Stapleton says, warning against micromanagement. “If the manager is quite dictatorial and quite restrictive, that seems to be quite a big frustration.”

She advises managers to take a “coaching approach, rather than that directive, dictatorial management style” to allow millennials to complete the work in a way that fits their style.

“I think the other key frustration is where they feel that their role has reached a bit of a plateau,” Stapleton says. “There’s a real keenness for a sense of continued challenge and progression. There is a lot of frustration where perhaps they are doing the same thing every day and there is not a clear route to progress their role or develop it.

“Something that can help is where the company is quite innovative in terms of what progression looks like, whether that’s upwards or sideways.”

To attract and retain millennial talent, Stapleton says it is also important that companies realise that rigid, one-size-fits-all reward systems will not suit every employee.

“I think there needs to be evidence that the company is adapting those in a bespoke way to their employees; to suggest that it is an ongoing process,” she says. By being more flexible, she says businesses can show they are more in touch with their workers.

Stapleton says that despite the negative stereotypes that often appear in the media, the millennials that she works with show “a real

desire to work hard and perform well”. She believes that when clashes do occur, it is often because different generations grew up in “very different societal environments” and therefore think differently about work and their careers.

But are businesses open to adapting to the expectations of millennials? Ultimately, Stapleton says, they will lose top talent to their competitors if they do not, so although there is resistance from some managers, many firms are making an effort.

“People are having training on the differences between the generations, but I do think there is a bit of a long way to go, just because as humans we like to repeat the same patterns,” she explains. “But there is definitely change happening and organisations are taking an interest.

“At the end of the day, what happens is that you lose that talent and it goes elsewhere… and you lose all that money you invested in training that person. They are aware of the consequences and are keen to do something about it, but it can be a bit of a slow process.”

Digital transformation making the workforce more efficient Four in ten companies believe digital tranformation increases customer satisfaction

Digital transformation: what IT decision makers believe…

A survey by Sungard Availability Services has found companies are looking to digitally transform themselves to improve productivity and staff loyalty and increase revenue. Around 60 per cent of IT decision makers believed their organisation was committed to digital transformation, with 85 per cent saying it would help develop new skills and 78 per cent saying it was making their job more exciting.

60

85

78

For end-users, 60 per cent said it improved staff productivity, 58 per cent believed it enhanced employee satisfaction and 52 per cent said it helped increase staff mobility.

Their organisation was committed to it

It will help develop new skills

It is making their job more exciting

As well as the business 4 in 10 believed it increased customer satisfaction, overall revenue and working agility.

%

%

%

SOURCE: SUNGARD AVAILABILITY SERVICES

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How instant football highlights sparked a technological revolution at ITN studios Joanne Frearson talks to the broadcasting company about how outsourcing to a data centre saved time and money across the board

“Digital transformation is about stopping thinking about vertically integrated silo technology to move towards horizontal systems that can provide multiple purposes for a business” – Michael Winterson, Equinix

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IGITAL TRANSFORMATION is changing the way football fans watch the Championship. ITN, which packages together content for the Football League, is using new digital technologies to provide this footage for the fans in real time, as well as giving them highlights not long after the game finishes.

“Technology used by broadcasters is continually advancing,” says Bevan Gibson, CTO of ITN. “We had a project to provide live recording as well as editing for the Championship and Leagues 1 and 2. We had to make 10-minute highlight packages of each game, which needed to be delivered very shortly after the final whistle.”

Up until this point, goals highlights from League football matches were traditionally shown later on a Saturday or Sunday night on programmes such as The Football League Show. ITN needed to find a way that could provide them right after the game ended.

Historically the broadcast equipment at ITN has been very near to where the production company is based, at Gray’s Inn Road in London. But in order to bring the football footage out quickly, ITN needed to upgrade its existing in-house infrastructure or use a different system.

“We looked at how we could provide this service and one of the options was to increase the size of the infrastructure we have at Gray’s Inn Road,” he says. “We traditionally built infrastructure to support peak events. But the cost of having all these locations connected live, and having the highlights edited shortly after the game, was just not possible because the cost associated with doing so did not make commercial sense and no one was willing to pay for that.

“The second option was to look at putting some equipment in a shared location not available at Gray’s Inn Road, where the costs per square foot were more effective than doing it in more central London.”

ITN eventually decided that the best way to deliver content for the 1,813 Football League games it was to produce each year was to use a data centre or colocation ser vice. In 2015 it approached data centre provider

Producing fast turnaround highlights for football games led ITN to consider outsourcing other pieces of key infrastructure

Equinix and rented some rack space to house its equipment so it could deliver content quickly to football fans.

Using the Equinix data centre, production footage can be transferred between media outlets in a faster-than-real-time process, through fibre networks. ITN now plans to use this type of service to deliver content for its other services. The company has a range of production businesses and makes news for ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.

Gibson says: “Our approach going forward is to put a base level of our infrastructure into a co-location such as Equinix and bursts into public cloud providers like Amazon, Google and Microsoft Azure to pick up that load when you have big events that come up.

“We need to better utilise the equipment that we have and build a system for that peak load day. That might be for a massive news story. That might be for an election.

It might be for a big sporting day. Strategically, what we are doing with Equinix fits into our roadmap really well.

“You think about it from a news perspective – you build a system for a one-in-five-year event, and most of the time when you are doing runof-the-mill daily news it uses a

1,813 The number of Football League games ITN produces each year

s m a l l p e r c e nt a g e of t h at infrastructure.”

The goal for ITN is to eventually have no equipment at its central London location, moving it instead to a co-location environment or public cloud.

“We are going to have to have a very good reason,” he says.

“Why would you install in Gray’s Inn Road over a co-location env ironment? We don’t want anything there because it is not cost-effective. That means all other parts of all business, including news and 60-minute factual documentaries and the other series we create.

“We will look at increasing any investment of any sides of those businesses in the future and we will look at alternate off-premises locations for that equipment. It will be everything we do in the next couple of years.

“That is the key in transforming the business. That may mean it is more cost-effective for us to get into other markets that may have been less accessible in the past. It means customers that are requesting those services from us can get a better product for a cheaper rate essentially, and that is where we see the transformation.”

According to Michael Winterson, managing director of Equinix

Services, “in the past you typically built a digital system as a discreet application and you put all the infrastructure behind it and it was usually living in a silo. Data didn’t transition quickly between the divisions.

“Digital transformation is about stopping thinking about vertically integrated silo technology to move towards horizontal systems that can provide multiple purposes for a business.”

A co-location also has the advantage of having other media outlets such as Sky, Channel 5 and the BBC in the building, which means ITN can distribute its material to them quickly, creating a business ecosystem.

Gibson says: “That is one of the benefits we found and the reason why, with the Football League, we went down the Equinix route because a number of other media organisations we need to deliver content to are also Equinix customers.

“We can interconnect with their infrastructure and they can interconnect with ours within that same facility, in a far more economical fashion than by running a full-time connection from ourselves to their facility. It is a media meeting point.”

Renting rack space from data centres now enables media companies to provide their customers with material at a far more agile pace – and just as importantly, at considerably less cost.

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Quickening the pace Why keeping your data in the cloud is more secure than you might think…

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HEN QUICKEN, the personal finance software company, was sold by its parent company Intuit, the newly independent operation needed to get its own systems in place quickly. One item on the list was a cost-effective contact centre solution to better service its customers.

Ian Roberts, Quicken operations leader, said the company needed something “that was simple to deploy, manage and use. We also needed it to scale to accommodate future growth, both in terms of size and functionality.”

A cloud service seemed to fit the bill because of the benefits offered in terms of speed of deployment and flexibility. Even then, Roberts says he was surprised by the speed of deployment from the product they chose, Interactive Intelligence’s PureCloud Engage. “We’ve spent up to a year deploying previous enterprise systems,” Roberts says. “We deployed PureCloud Engage within two months, which was even faster than we expected.”

The situation will sound familiar to many CIOs and IT directors. Though in some ways, Quicken found itself in an enviable position. Forced to start from scratch, the company didn’t have to wrestle with the problem of untangling an existing legacy system in order to move to the cloud.

The inflexibility of legacy systems is both an obstacle to cloud migration and a reason why many IT professionals are considering a move to the cloud, if they haven’t already begun one. Managing systems internally means either living with wasteful excess capacity in case you need it, or trying to rapidly scale up in times of unexpected growth or when your needs change.

Cloud services have no such problems, Roberts points out. “We have super flexibility. We only pay for what we use now, and we can add users and innovation functionality immediately when we need it.”

Customer service in an omnichannel world can be an unpredictable business. Your customers might be perfectly happy to contact you via phone or email today, but tomorrow they might expect web chat or video chat or to be able to get an answer from your corporate Twitter account.

If your customers suddenly decide they want answers via Snapchat, that might come as a surprise to you but it’s less likely to be unexpected for a cloud company that specialises in customer engagement and works with thousands of businesses worldwide.

There’s a “wisdom of crowds” element to cloud services that allows you to benefit from best practices in other industries and turn that into a competitive advantage over your rivals. That’s something that appeals to Quicken, says Roberts: “In today’s digitally disruptive world where customer service expectations are changing at lightning speed, this gives us a serious competitive advantage.”

Still, the concern for many companies, particularly from the boardroom, is security. Significant data breaches hit the headlines several times a week and those often come with hefty financial consequences. The data breach at telecommunications firm Talk Talk in October 2015 saw its pre-tax profits halve and the company share price collapse. Almost a year later, the share price is yet to return to pre-breach levels.

Those aren’t the only financial risks, either. Regulators across the world have the power to fine companies if they consider that they were negligent or irresponsible and that that behaviour led to a breach affecting customers or employees. Starting in 2018, the European Commission

“In outsourcing to the cloud, a business has the option to seek out the highest level of security – almost certainly better than the security they would provide for themselves”

ruled that organisations in breach can be liable for fines of up to 4 per cent of global annual turnover or €20million – whichever is greater.

That kind of risk can make anyone cautious but, as David Paulding of Interactive Intelligence puts it, cloud services can often be more secure than on-premises solutions.

Paulding (inset, below left) says that most companies cannot guarantee that their servers are physically secure, day and night, or that information would be easily recoverable in the event of vandalism or a natural disaster. By comparison, the data centres used by cloud companies are incredibly secure and the data is backed up in various locations worldwide. Plus, typically, these companies have far greater resources devoted to security.

Similarly, many businesses do not realise that their system has fallen victim to a breach until well after the event, often many months later. In some cases, companies have found malicious software that has been on their systems for years.

Security is a particular challenge for businesses, because the threat to an individual business is relatively small but the potential attack vectors are enormous and ever-changing.

Those responsible for security in such situations often end up falling victim to a new style of attack or simply getting complacent.

Again, cloud firms have the advantage of scale here.

Since they are bigger targets, they have to take a much more active role in security, monitoring and staying up to date with the latest threats. A cloud provider’s business depends on being available 24/7, therefore providing

strong security for its customers is paramount. Interactive Intelligence hires third-party penetration-testing firms to look for holes in its security system, and then publishes the results on its website.

Finally, says Paulding, too few companies pay attention to properly encrypting their data. “If your data, e-communications and voice communications were intercepted,” he asks, “what could an attacker learn about you and your customers?”

As you might imagine, cloud providers habitually encrypt customer data, as well as ensuring that a rogue employee from one client can’t access data stored by another client.

In outsourcing to the cloud, a business has the option to seek out the highest level of security – almost certainly better than the security they would provide for themselves.

That, for many cloud providers, is a competitive advantage.

“Our PureCloud solution sets the gold standard for cloud security, because we built security into its design rather than securing a designed system,” says Paulding.

In summary, a cloud service can offer a flexibility that legacy systems can’t match, allows you to draw on unparalleled expertise from a provider that sees countless examples of innovation and best practice and – with the right provider – can provide far greater security than you can deliver in-house.

It’s a calculation so simple that you’re unlikely to need Quicken’s software to tell you that it makes sense.

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david.paulding@inin.com www.inin.com/uk

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A shift in the working age Joanne Frearson talks to The 100-Year-Life author Lynda Gratton about how people living – and working – for longer will radically change the employment landscape

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S THE UK’s workforce becomes ever more grey-of-hair, the government has outlined plans to raise the compulsory retirement age to 67 by the year 2028 – with some controversy. Yet according to The 100-Year Life, a new book by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, people will eventually be working well beyond that age anyway – at least into their 70s and 80s – and continually changing career paths, while technology is also set to redefine the way we do things.

Shortlisted for the FT and McKinsey 2016 Business Book of the Year Award, the study examines how the notion of a three-stage approach to life – education followed by work and then retirement – is rapidly becoming outdated. And as lifespans gradually approach a third digit, people will have to start rethinking the way they live their lives.

Gratton, who is professor of Management Practice at the London Business School and is also ranked as one of the top business thinker in the world by Thinkers50, says there will be three main trends that will affect the way we work in the future. “Firstly, technology will have a profound impact on structure of organisations and structure of the labour market,” says Gratton. “The second trend is demographic – many people will be working into their 70s and 80s, and at the moment organisations are not prepared for that. The third is resources. Increasingly organisations would have to face up to resource constraints that they are operating in with regard to carbon and water.

“Technology is already having a couple of impacts. Artificial intelligence and robotics are creating a phenomena we call the ‘hollowing out of work’, where lots of middleschooled jobs disappear. At the same time, highly skilled jobs are being augmented through artificial intelligence.

“We are seeing a really fundamental change in the labour market – with job losses but also job creation, because technology is a platform and creates an opportunity for people to build a business. It also creates platforms like Uber and Deliveroo which provide employment.”

There will also be a growth in platforms which small companies can sell into a larger market, Gratton adds. “There are going to be more independent producers selling into a much bigger market than they ever could have had before the development of these platforms, like Not On The High Street.”

According to Gratton, the employees most at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence are office, clerical and factory workers.

A study by Deloitte and Oxford University in late 2015 found that 35 per cent of UK jobs have a high chance of being automated. The jobs at most risk were the wholesale and retail sector, within which the report found 2,168,000 jobs at risk. Transport and storage and human health and social were next, with

Lynda Gratton is predicting a seismic shift in the labour market as people live, and work, for longer

“We are predicting what we call a multi-stage life, where people will do different types of jobs and also have a lot more transition between them” – Lynda Gratton

Storing your data the energyefficient way

T

1,524,000 jobs and 1,351,000 jobs at risk respectively.

The other big shift Gratton talks about is that people will be working longer, into their 70s and 80s. “Clearly no one will be able to do the same job from the age of 20 to the age of 70,” she clarifies. “My co-author and I are predicting what we call a multi-stage life, where people will do different types of jobs and also have a lot more transition between them.”

Gratton believes longevity will be the biggest shock to the system going forward. She says: “Companies are not realising that people

Employment sectors at risk from AI replacement Human health & social

1,351,000

Total UK workforce

31,770,000

Transport & storage

1,524,000

Wholesale & retail

2,168,000

SOURCE: DELOITTE/OXFORD UNIVERSITY, OFFICE OF NATIONAL STATISTICS

are going to be working until they are in their 70s and 80s – organisations are still very focused on getting people out in their 60s.

“It puts a big emphasis on realising we have to engage in lifetime learning. It is not going to be a one-off. We have got to engage learning across the whole lifetime. We all have to be prepared for transitions. We are going to be moving jobs.

“Individuals need to keep on re-skilling and realise they have to make transitions in their life and that means they have to save for transitions. Corporations will have to pretty rapidly change their practices and policies – governments will have to do the same and realise that education is not a one-off. People will have to be educated throughout their lives. There will be a question: Who will pay for that? We are in for some really exciting questions about that.”

On the resource side, more and more companies will be focused on providing a work environment that reduces their carbon footprint. According to Gratton this could mean working at home more and travelling less and working in more of a virtual environment. She says: “Virtual reality could well change the way that people worked. It has not yet, but I could imagine in a couple of years it will.”

HE INCREASING data traffic and demand for storing, and protection of data in general, recently created a need for extending Net-Bui ld’s Data Cent re capacity.

Managing a visionary and environmentally conscious compa ny, Pat r ic k B oh n was looking out for new and energy-efficient solutions when he decided to build a new state-of-the-art data centre.

In the planning phase, Net-Build partnered with the local contractor, E-TEC Power Management GmbH, that supplies turnkey data centre solutions with the highest attention to safety and energy efficiency.

Together with Munters, E-TEC worked out an energyefficient cooling solution, based on Munters’ indirect evaporative cooling system, Oasis™.

To cope with the heat load generated by the servers, installation of efficient cooling was crucial. With an IT load in the data centre of up to 2MW when fully loaded, E-TEC and Munters specified 8 pcs Oasis™ 200 units for the facility. The units were designed to be installed on the roof, directly above the hot aisles, whereby expensive duct work and loss of static pressure could be avoided.

“Our data centre stands out by being extremely energy efficient, with a calculated PUE below 1.2,” said Bohn. “At the same time the safety is in top, and since the Munters cooling system is running without or chilled water, the operational reliability is very high.”

INDUSTRY VIEW

datacentres@munters.com Read the full article on www.munters.com/net-build

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Plumbing the and heights – transformati After winning The Apprentice, Joseph Valente invested in technology to bring his plumbing business into the 21st century. Joanne Frearson reports

N

Joseph Valente with Lord Sugar after winning last year’s The Apprentice

EARLY A year after winning The Apprentice, Joseph Valente’s plumbing business ImpraGas, thanks to a £250,000 investment from Lord Sugar, has grown from a small firm in Peterborough to a nationwide company – largely thanks to digital transformation.

After leaving school at 15 to work as a plumber, then a gas engineer, London-born Valente read Sugar’s autobiography – and felt ever since that one day that he would work with him. Appearing on the show in 2015, Valente beat 60,000 applicants to the prize, and Sugar is now his business partner.

ImpraGas has grown substantially since Sugar’s £250,000 investment, and Valente tells me that the most effective way to e x p a n d t h e c omp a ny h a s b e e n through technology. “We made the decision to rid the company of manual processes and paper-based systems that created inefficiencies and limited our potential,” he says. “It has been revolutionary over the last five months. It is improving the efficiency because we are able to log and track all of the details.

“Instead of having to do stuff manually, like emailing quotes and writing them up, it auto-links everything together. You put the information in once and it populates itself in a number of different areas.

“What it means from an engineer’s perspective is that when they are on site in a customer’s property, they are able to streamline their paperwork activity because everything is done on the tablet rather than having to use a number of different notepads, potentially making mistakes and having to rewrite everything.

“It allows you to capture all of the information – from pictures to customer satisfaction forms to safety legislation forms – all in one area. It basically means it

improves the time the engineers spend on a job.”

The system ImpraGas decided to use to undergo this digital transformation was by using an app called JobWatch, which helps planning, managing, scheduling and tracking mobile workforces. “If we hadn’t implemented these changes into our business model, this would have impeded on our growth potential due to the inefficiencies and inaccuracies of traditional procedures,” Valente says.

The JobWatch system developed by BigChange allows customers to be able to book jobs as well as receive live updates confirming the estimated time of arrival for the engineers, and electronic job cards, including certificates related to the job performance.

Introducing the new technology has allowed Valente and Lord Sugar to concentrate on growing the company as quickly as possible, from a team of just seven engineers to a nationwide firm.

Valente says: “Streamlining areas of the business gives us time to focus on improving

“We’re trying to get away from the send-in-a-guy-with-a-notepad-and-a-dirty-van type thing and bring the business realistically into the 21st century” – Joseph Valente

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e depths – – of digital ion other areas of the business. It means that while competitors are still using manual processes and paper-based systems, we are a step ahead of them – booking jobs on the go and instantly receiving feedback for our service so we are able resolve issues quickly.”

The system has also enabled ImpraGas to deliver faster response times and better quality of service to customers, as well as improved fleet management, helping to reduce mileage and CO2 emissions. Bookings using the system have increased to more than 3,000 in the last six months.

JobWatch is not the only system ImpraGas is using to transform the business digitally.

Valente is also using Skype and FaceTime to give quotations and surveys in a person’s home, without the engineer having to be physically present. He says: “It is working very well for the new-age customer, who is time-poor and does not have time to book an appointment. We can get the same amount of information from that survey.

Also, we are using video animation to get points across social media – from pitching our products, to understanding customer benefit and which products are used.

“Rather than having a person pitching a product, we are putting together the key information into a short animated video. That allows the customer to [be aware of] the benefits of using ImpraGas in their home before they have one of our surveyors come around.

“We are trying to get away from the old send-in-a-guy-with-a-notepad-anddirty-van-type thing and try to streamline the business and bring it realistically into the 21st century. We are looking all of these ways to innovate and to grow using technology.”

It’s certainly a way to ensure that customers have an understanding of the products and have done all their research before someone comes to their home. “It’s basically all about reducing the amount of time it takes to get the installation booked in,” says Valente. “It is also something that our competition isn’t doing.”

Valente and Lord Sugar are also looking at introducing video customer feedback.

Instead of a customer writing something

The ImpraGas team react to their boss’s triumph; inset left: Valente with ImpraGas’s game-changing booking software

up online, Valente wants to see video reviews which show customers sitting next to the finished product from ImpraGas and talking about the installation process to try and bring it alive a bit more.

“Technology is very important, and we incorporate it into our business in as many ways as possible,” Valente says. “Gone are the days of going around to a customer’s house with a notepad, then sending them a quotation two weeks down the line from some old scrappy plumber. That is not what we are about.”

Plumbing might not be seen as a typically glamourous, tech-savvy industry, and Valente is taking steps to ensure it does not get left behind by the technology revolution.

“There are a lot of clever little ways that we can bring in technology to support us and help us grow quite quickly, without having to put a lot of money into resources,” he says. “We have seen the business grow substantially. It has been taken on board by our customers very well. They like the fact that they have that option.

“They do not have to go the traditional route of having a person around to quote.

It has streamlined our whole operation – it is probably the most important thing to be able to give you a quote as a whole.”

Valente believes technology is the future when it comes to keeping our houses nice and warm. The digital transformation taking place at ImpraGas is not just about improving the company’s paperwork management and logistics – it is also about keeping customers up to date with the latest technology. “We are doing a lot of smart technology too,” he says. “A lot of different techniques from a control perspective. It is allowing customers to have smart technology installed so they can control their central heating system and hot water from a distance. They do not actually have to be at home – they can use their iPhones.”

Valente’s business has certainly gone from strength to strength since the investment from Lord Sugar. The show is about to return to screens again in October, at which point another group of candidates will vie to become Lord Sugar’s next apprentice.

So Ray founded Behind Every Cloud, and developed a data capture engine, Clover, that constantly learns about MSP/cloud providers with each new interaction, RFP and market development. Six years on, the Clover index quantitatively analyses more than 60 vendors against 150 commercial, regulatory, operational and technical

metrics to report detailed comparative scores – making it the UK’s number one independent cloud vendor ratings index.

A ‘TripAdvisor’ for your cloud journey…

170+ The number of cloud and MSP providers analysed

by Clover to date

O

UTSOURCING IT properly for an FCA-regulated firm requires an extremely high level of specialised expertise. There are so many factors to consider it can make your head spin.

The FCA Handbook mandates that every conceivable operational risk must be assessed, mitigated, audited and monitored. FCA Cloud Guideline 16-5 conveys more specific considerations.

C-level and potential investors expect best practice, high availability, high performance, flexibility, cost reductions and excellent service levels.

Combined with an incredibly noisy, jargon-filled, constantly evolving and confusing cloud vendor landscape, the

size of the challenge facing your average chief operating officer in a mid-sized firm begins to become apparent. And getting such a critical decision wrong is undoubtedly career limiting.

Clover: the UK’s number one independent cloud vendor ratings index In 2010, with the “clouds” building on the horizon, Ray Bricknell was CTO of a $7billion hedge fund. After 30 years building and buying global IT, and five years in alternatives, his COO pointed out that he was uniquely qualified to advise mid-sized London firms who typically don’t have such in-house experience.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Ray Bricknell is managing director of Behind Every Cloud +44 7740 624 710 www.behindeverycloud.co.uk

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Improving sales to and purchases from Africa

O Automation will play a significant role in public sector transformation

F

ROM DRIVERLESS Uber taxis on the streets of Pittsburgh, to the launch of Amelia – IPsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) customer service agent – disruptive, autonomous technology is no longer a question of horizon-gazing, it’s the here and now.

The fact is, cognitive technology is going to become more accessible for UK organisations very quickly. That has wide-ranging ramifications for the UK workforce and its productivity, and it would be naïve to think that the public sector should not be a part of this.

Often unfairly maligned when it comes to embracing digital technology, much has already been achieved in the public sector.

Local government has run with the digital by default agenda, making government services accessible via digital channels. From introducing big data analytics to identify and make use of empty homes, to integrating social media with traditional customer services, Arvato’s own experience in bringing disruptive technology to our local authority partnerships has been a positive one.

If there is a criticism to be made, it’s that the thinking in the sector hasn’t been big enough. A recent study by Brunel University argues that government digital transformation initiatives have been mainly “cosmetic”, failing to deliver in terms of outcomes or return on investment. Indeed, the scale of the financial challenges facing local authorities means there are few efficiencies still to be found in doing the same things faster, better, and cheaper. Instead genuine, radical transformation is required.

Automation will be part of that change. The high volume of repetitive tasks processed in council back offices – which neither make best use of employees’ skills and time, nor offer job satisfaction – means there is huge potential for it to make a difference in the sector.

Recognising this, we’ve implemented leading-edge automation software from Blue Prism at Sefton Council in Merseyside.

Our project successfully replicated a range of core transactional processes with 100 per cent accuracy and major gains in speed. The time required to input council tax direct debit payments, for example, has been reduced by 80 per cent, with cost per transaction cut from £1 to 20 pence.

In addition, the software has allowed the council to redirect employees to focus on more complex tasks or much-needed front-line citizen services. Employee satisfaction has also increased as a result of removing the mundane tasks from staff members’ day-today routine.

Our research suggests that more publicsector organisations are beginning to consider this approach. In a survey of 134 local and central government decision makers, carried out on our behalf by iGov Survey this summer, more than half of respondents said their organisations have explored the use of automation, and 21 per cent expect the technology to be trialled within their department or authority over the next year.

The findings show that 70 per cent had experienced rising work volumes in their departments over the last 12 months, with 60 per cent reporting a reduction in the size of their team.

With the right approach to sharing learnings and pooling experience, the UK public sector can benefit from a technology that is only going to become more prolific in coming years.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Debra Maxwell (left) is CEO, CRM Solutions UK & Ireland, Arvato Visit www.arvato.com/businessreporter to download Arvato’s White Paper, Driving Transformation Through Automation In The Public Sector

NLINE SHOPPERS in Europe, North America, China or Dubai can easily buy from e-commerce sites outside their respective countries and have the goods delivered to them. Though Africa holds a good number of the world’s developing markets, most shoppers living in the aforementioned countries are unable to point to reliable African sites through which they can shop – most players in the developing e-commerce industry in Africa operate in country-specific silos and deliver goods only to the respective countries they operate in. Additionally, buying from Africa is usually greeted with suspicion and a lack of willingness to let go of credit card details – the spate of online and email scams emanating from Africa in recent years explains this paranoia for shopping from the continent.

This has resulted in a Western perception that buyers from Africa might be using fraudulent credit/debit cards. The fact that retail-level postal and logistics services to Africa are not well developed, and the reality that valuable goods sent by regular post to most African countries have a high chance of being lost in transit, contribute to the discouragement.

The realities • Africa is home to several products that westerners can buy at competitive prices.

• Production costs in Africa are low when compared to the West.

• Many Africans are thirsty for western products – evidenced by the large amount of luggage African travellers return home with.

• The successful expansion of MasterCard and Visa to Africa proves plenty of Africans can buy online with their bank cards.

• McKinsey Global institute predicts that consumer spending in Africa will reach $1trillion by 2020.

Bridging the Gap An upcoming company has found a way of breaking the barriers associated with buying from and selling to Africa. An e-commerce site being launched will perhaps be the first to truly open the African ecommerce marketplace to western shoppers. www.ofidy.com lists a number of products made or sold in Africa. The service ensures that a Western seller who buys a product has their money kept for some days in a UK or USA bank account until the goods/ items have been received in Ofidy’s countryspecific distribution centre in Africa. Sellers are then paid after the goods have been delivered. www.ofidy.com also lists hundreds of Western stores from which Africans can buy.

The Ofidy app offers an easy way to place orders for goods. Order payments received by Ofidy are security-checked while the goods are in transit from sellers to Ofidy’s sorting centre in the USA (for North America), the UK (for Europe), Hong Kong (for China) and Dubai (for the UAE). Orders that pass the security checks with funds cleared will be completed and goods shipped to the African recipients. Orders that either fail the security checks or funds clearance are cancelled. A bespoke logistics framework is also employed.

The service is due to launch first in Nigeria (in October 2016), and both Western and African sellers are able to register now on www.ofidy.com to list their products freely on the portal.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Fiyinfolu Awotoye is a business executive for Ofidy.com +44 (0)1908 592363 +144 3 759 3279

Africa’s online shopping statistics and projections Now

2025 projections

Number of online shopping users

175 million

600 million

Internet penetration rate

16%

50%

Number of users with smartphones

57 million

360 million

E-commerce as a percentage of all retail sales

< 1%

10% $75billion

Value of online sales Business opportunities in Africa

$4trillion

$5.6trillion

Household consumption

$1.4trillion

$2.1trillion

B2B spending

$2.6trillion

$3.5trillion

SOURCE: WORLD RETAIL CONGRESS/MCKINSEY GLOBAL INSTITUTE

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Inspector DogBuddy is using digital disruption to revamp the dogsitting “industry”

The sharing economy has certainly played a huge role in digital disruption, with companies like Airbnb and Uber having shaken their respective markets by the collars. And now one has emerged that makes Dogberry, being a dog, feel right at home: DogBuddy.

DogBuddy started in 2012, when entrepreneurs Richard Setterwall and Enrico Sargiacomo struggled to find a sitter for their own dogs. Both had to travel frequently for work and didn’t want to leave their mutts in (shudder!) a traditional caged boarding kennel. With more than 75 million dogs in Europe, roughly one in every four households, the pair saw a gap in the market, setting up a service which could connect owners with reliable dogsitters.

There are currently 20,000

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approved DogBuddy dogsitters across Europe.

The Inspector was particularly impressed by the tips and tricks for owners and their dogs on the DogBuddy website, such as how to ease your canine back into a daily routine after the summer holidays.

A report by Hooyu has revealed that the sharing economy is suffering from a lack of trust, as consumers are wary of sites offering online peer-to-peer transactions without ID checks.

BY MATT SMITH, WEB EDITOR

Dogberry It revealed that despite rapid growth from millions of users sharing, swapping and renting, more than two thirds (68 per cent) of British people have not yet conducted an online peer-to-peer transaction, such as buying something from an online marketplace or renting a holiday property.

The survey showed, however, that participation was markedly higher in the US, where nearly seven out of ten people (69 per cent) have conducted such peer-to-peer online transactions. The difference was particularly stark in the proportion of consumers who have bought or sold an item via an online marketplace such as Craigslist, with 39 per cent having done so in the US compared to just 11 per cent in the UK. Eight in ten (79 per cent) respondents stated they would be much more likely to trust a stranger online if they were sent an in-depth ID confirmation report about the person they were dealing with.

executives on the initiatives their organisations were undertaking to capitalise on the convergence of social, cloud, mobility, data analytics, internet of things (IoT) and security to drive new business models and engage, enable and support an increasingly tech-savvy workforce and customer base.

Nearly three quarters (72 per cent) of the respondents agreed that it was critical or very important for an organisation to modify IT processes and resources to support a digital business model. That represents an increase of 7 per cent (up from 65 per cent) from the response to a similar question in a Unisys-IDG study conducted in October 2015.

The respondents clearly saw the value of the cloud as the linchpin in an IT infrastructure that enables digital business.

They reported that more than half (55 per cent) of their organisations’ applications were already deployed in a cloud environment.

A survey by Unisys Corporation and IDG Research has showed that companies are making a strong commitment to adopting digital business models, with the cloud as the key enabler, although cyber-security was a concern when transforming.

The research polled US and European IT and business

The Future of Work – Jacob Morgan

thefutureorganization.com

Jacob Morgan is a bestselling author and futurist who specialises in looking at the ways in which workplaces are changing. His blog examines everything from the shift towards freelance work to the value that analytics can provide to HR departments.

Sprint Business blog

business.sprint.com/blog

American mobile provider Sprint’s business blog explores the ways in which technology

is transforming the workplace.

Recent posts take a look at the wearable revolution, what attracts millennials to firms, and security threats IT staff need to be aware of.

Upwork Blog

www.upwork.com/blog

How can your business find the best freelance talent? How can busy business owners make time for content marketing?

And how can the cloud help you to scale your business? Find the answers to these questions and more on the Upwork blog.

Cisco Digital Transformation Blog

blogs.cisco.com/digital

Kaspersky Antivirus & Security (Free – Android, iOS) Keep your mobile and tablet devices secured against viruses and other threats with Kaspersky Lab’s security app.

xxxxxExpenses Daily (xxxx – iOS, 3 (Free Android) – Android) xxxxxxxxxx Manage your income and expenses with this finance app, which allows you to easily keep track of your money.

Browse through the cutting edge of digital technology on the Cisco blog. Some of the site’s most recent posts take a look at new trends transforming business, including subscription buying and selling, the expanding internet of things and digitallyenabled buildings.

Getting to grips with the on-the-go economy “We now expect more of our own time, and that of others”

W

ITH THE growing amount of responsibility that finance teams have, there is still a need to be able to drive more value out of your data.

However, many are still being hampered by the very processes they undertake.

Complex, paper-based processes are a significant burden, and provide a stumbling block to gaining insight from the data available.

In modern business, those in finance (and other departments) need to be strategic; adding value to their company and increasing the importance of their role within the company’s success. Digital transformation is an important element of this and moving to a digital solution is an easy way to begin that strategic transformation.

At Concur we have carried out a review of this ongoing transformation and the impact it’s having on the world – we call it the on-the-go economy (OTGE).

What exactly is the on-the-go economy?

The idea of the OTGE stems from the rise of internet and mobile connectivity, and the impact that this has had on both our working and social lives. The outcome of this has meant we now expect more of both our own time and that of others. This has created a fascinating set of societal, cultural and business challenges which all come together to create a form of “virtual instanity” – we need to do everything, and we need to do it straight away.

In OTGE, time has a real value, both economically and psychologically. It now makes sense that people want to maximise every moment of that time, from shopping on the go to messaging and even watching TV programmes while commuting in the morning. And therefore it follows on from

there that businesses are expecting their employees to be able to manage matters in the moment, wherever they may be.

INDUSTRY VIEW

enquiries@concur.com www.concur.co.uk

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Four pages of analysis and expert comment

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Technology alone won’t help you to manage the data chaos W HAT IS digital transformation? For businesses, this often means a shift in technology and the processes surrounding it. But technology itself is a handmaiden to the fundamental shift – the shift towards using data to underpin decisions, substantiate claims, or reveal hidden insights.

In the digital economy, competitive advantage has become less about physical goods. It’s about networks of data and how organisations control and use that data as an asset for competitive advantage. But as data is at the heart of digital transformation, so is chaos. The enormous volume and velocity of data created every day creates data chaos.

What data is the “right” data to use? Where did the data come from? Failing to control the data chaos leads to fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There’s plenty of data, but none to be trusted.

Think back to to the days of IT transformation. This transformation also created a state of chaos. IT solutions were brought into many parts of the organisations. IT was the Wild West, with little process, control, or governance. We learned that organisations seizing control of the IT chaos and putting a governance structure in place were the ones gaining competitive advantage. They didn’t solve the problem by adding more technology. Rather, they instituted a business process – IT governance – to manage the chaos.

This is where data transformation stands today. Technology helps you manage your data, but technology alone doesn’t help you manage the data chaos. Nor will throwing an IT solution at a business problem help you control the data chaos. Instead, you need a business process platform that enables you to govern the data in a way that helps you use it to drive innovation and gain competitive advantage. This is data governance.

74% of firms say they want to be datadriven, but only 29 per cent say they are good at connecting analytics to action Source: Forrester

True data governance gives every business user – every data citizen – the ability to find, understand and trust the data. It changes the game by empowering them with a structured, integrated and orderly way to derive value out of the data chaos. Now, all data citizens can use data to uncover hidden insight, spark innovation, and drive competitive advantage.

For many organisations, adopting a data governance practice doesn’t happen overnight. Often, data governance starts as a side project. A group of motivated data citizens experiments with data governance and gains initial success. The challenge then becomes moving data governance from an experimental initiative to the “new normal” for the business.

To make data governance business as usual, many organisations must identify an executive sponsor, build a business case,

and secure funding. For organisations that build their business on data – disruptors such as Uber, Amazon, and Airbnb – data governance is not an initiative that requires sponsorship, business cases, and funding.

Rather, it’s part of the fabric of what they do.

It’s second nature.

Data governance needs to become second nature for your business, too. It’s what helps your organisation thrive with digital transformation. It sets you apart from your competitors by empowering you to treat data as a business asset. Without it, data chaos will reign.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Felix Van de Maele is co-founder and chief executive officer of Collibra info@collibra.com www.collibra.com

The power of the global team

T

HE NINE-TO-FIVE working day is dying out as organisations become increasingly globalised. It is rare today that employees shut off their emails, calls, and ideas at five sharp, because it’s still a working day in at least one country.

The rise in teams spanning time zones mean we have developed an “always on” approach to work. The danger for employers is that teams misunderstand this to mean they must be available anytime, anywhere. The benefit of an international team is that there is always

Polycom® RealPresence Centro™

someone, somewhere within their working day. It’s about harnessing collective power, not overworking individuals.

Organisations should build teams that “follow the sun”,

with members spread across time zones. This allows them to take advantage of collective intelligence and make sure someone is always driving projects forward, without exhausting any single employee.

It’s the future of work and it’s possible today with the advent of technologies that make us productive from anywhere. You can join an important conference call while waiting for a flight, a video collaboration from home or a “huddle space” in the office. Collaboration technologies

bring the whole team into a virtual meeting room, in a way that makes it as natural as face-to-face meetings.

This is because of the rise in technologies built around people and their preferences, such as Polycom® RealPresence Centro™, that lets you sit “in the round”, facing each other in a circle instead of staring down a “bowling alley” at a screen on the far wall of a meeting room. Or, Polycom® RealPresence Trio™, specifically designed for smaller meeting or “huddle rooms”. And there’s

no waiting for everyone to walk into a meeting. If everyone is used to a team scattered across the world, there is no holdup – a meeting starts at a click of a button.

We have the people power and products to make us productive, we just need to get the processes right: prioritising a truly flexible working culture will bring these benefits to the business.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Marco Landi (inset) is president, EMEA, Polycom 0800 015 2882 www.polycom.co.uk/centro

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If you don’t get your digital strategy right, you’ll get everything wrong

T

HE POSTER children of the digital revolution are making it all look so easy. Uber, Airbnb, Netflix: they are the trail blazers in a brave new technological landscape.

A world where connectivity, mobility, cloud computing, social networking and the use of so-called big data are the potent collaborators in a dramatic reboot of the way we live our lives.

You need look no further than Microsoft’s recent purchase of LinkedIn to tune in to the low hum of the strategic – and seismic – shift in emphasis on digital working that continues to gather pace.

To understand, you have to think social networking in a business context. Imagine a vast database of interconnected people and their skill sets, swapping monetised expertise with just a few taps to a smartphone screen.

Oh, and all done from your favourite coffee shop, thanks to secure, superfast “always on” connectivity.

Battling into the office every day to fight with outdated, underinvested IT? Madness, surely.

How long before there is a choice between HD augmented-reality videoconferencing, beaming your colleagues into your study at home; versus a driverless car commute.

Do you ride the Microsoft Hololens or the Tesla today?

But there’s more to the future of work than simply turbo-charging the status quo. The relentlessness of change is driving a ferocious appetite for an altered attitude to the entire way the world does its business – not so much the practicality, more the philosophy.

Neil Muller, CEO of the Daisy Group – the UK’s largest independent provider of converged B2B communications and IT – puts it starkly: if a business doesn’t get its digital strategy right, it risks getting everything wrong.

“Technological convergence is rapidly changing everything,” he says. “In order to serve their customers and their investors in the best possible way, businesses of every kind have to gear up. They have to have sight of the near future in order to grasp where they have to go, and how quickly. Businesses – big or small – must understand the demands of the digital world

PORTRAIT: NEIL ATKINSON

and, more importantly, use them to deliver a brilliant experience for them and their customers.”

So what exactly is a digital business? And to what extent will the future change what we do and how we do it? Daisy Group’s chief digital officer Nathan Marke (main image) eats, sleeps and breathes the issues – and believes in planning for the unimaginable, in order to be prepared for the inevitable.

“In 10 years, business and the way we all work will be unrecognisable,” he predicts. “There is a real waking up to digital. It is no longer viewed simply as a system of engagement such as online shopping.

It’s now about the whole of the economy becoming robotised and digitised. The emergence of microsensors that can be embedded into everything will make the supply chain so much more efficient that to not make use of them will be the death of your business.

“Imagine these sensors sending streams of data telling you where everything is and how it is being used. And then grabbing this big data, and robots using it to recommend your next business move.

This is the so-called internet of things. But it’s also about using our smartphones and devices to enable teams to collaborate easily and to

“In 20 years businesses won’t need an office, although as humans I very much hope we will want them” – Nathan Marke, Daisy

deliver to customers a fast, realtime knowledge pool. In 20 years, businesses won’t need an office, although as humans I very much hope we will want them. All of their processes will reside in the cloud. As well as being builders of things, they – like Daisy – will be curators of experiences, delivered through a better understanding of all that data than their competition.

Uber is a brilliant example: it’s a taxi app, but it is so much more. It’s a platform with the potential to transform all kinds of businesses, leveraging the digital forces of cloud, mobile, social, data and sensors.

“Of course, ultimately, change is always about the bottom line.

But digitisation has that covered too. It reduces operating costs and enables everyone to access the skills and information they need to deliver leaner and more effective outputs. Businesses have to get strategic around the issue; create a user experience that is far more than just fit for purpose.”

So how will this workplace revolution manifest itself? Global technology leader Cisco – one of Daisy’s key partners in the journey – is at the centre of everything. It too is an architect of the world’s future. It too is shaping all our lives.

From its enterprise networks to its unified communications; its security services to its cloud-based storage products, Cisco provides the hardware and the technological integrity that will underpin this momentous revolution.

Rob Price (inset, below left), CTO of Cisco’s partner team in the UK, shares Marke’s visionary understanding of what is coming. And, as one of the world’s leading providers of digital infrastructure services, Cisco is perfectly positioned to deliver conf idence and capability.

“Digitisation, and the internet of things has the potential to profoundly affect all future aspects of our lives,” he says. “Digitisation can be used to achieve a variety of outcomes, including the improvement of customer experience, workforce optimisation, workplace transformation, and improved process and operational efficiency.

It can also be applied to virtually any industry. A key step in the process is to connect t he unconnected.”

Cisco estimates that by 2020 the internet of things will comprise over 50 billion “things” connected to the internet. By the same year, a million new devices will go online every hour.

“An increasing number of those new devices will be mobile,” adds Price. “The ability to utilise a variety of mobile connectivity mechanisms, such as 3G, 4G, LTE, and BLE, as well as Wi-Fi, will therefore be important in realising the full benefits of digitisation. As more things become connected, companies will need to manage multiple aspects of the connected device.

“Management of connectivity, billing, support and software upgrades will drive more and more companies to become services companies. One inevitable consequence of this is the massive increase in data that will be captured.

“The so-called “big data” phenomenon means that these vast amounts of data can be quickly analysed, with meaningful conclusions drawn. In short, the digital revolution will change everything.”

Positive change, as they say, should not be feared or resisted.

The future is bright… the future is now.

INDUSTRY VIEW

www.linkedin.com/company/ daisy-group www.daisygroup.com

September 2016

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Business Reporter UK

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T

HE TRANSFORMATION of industry into digitally connected factories of the future is already upon us as manufacturers look for new ways to operate more collaboratively with their supply chains to identify and improve customer value, increase productivity and ultimately yield higher revenues.

There’s no doubt that the role of technology, and cyber-physical systems, has never been more important to manufacturing, as the sector embraces the digital revolution known as Industry 4.0. But as business leaders are faced daily with new trends such as robotisation, servitisation, and the internet of things, it can be difficult to know where to start to understand the needs of the digital customer. The good news is that many manufacturers already have the tools at their disposal required to digitise operations, they just need to think about how these tools will help them achieve their individual goals.

The biggest challenge holding manufacturers back from their strive towards Industry 4.0 is integration.

The industry has been quick to adopt new technology and use systems to improve and automate business processes, but rarely are disparate systems joined up to give a single view of the supply chain. As the manufacturing sector continues to digitise, there is an overwhelming need to have one centralised business solution integrated with other applications and the shop floor, so that analysis can be done at any stage of the manufacturing process, and strategic goals can be measured. This makes it easier to deliver greater customer value from the start of the journey, encourage employees to interact with machines on the shop floor, and improve productivity and efficiency through a streamlined and connected supply chain.

Too many manufacturing businesses think that investing in robots and capital equipment alone will improve automation, but fail to notice that this intelligent machine is often being supplemented by an engineer manually entering machine data into the company’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution in order to monitor its performance and plan for downtime. Many businesses spend vast sums on improving their customer-facing websites, allowing them to place orders and configure their own products on demand. Yet too often, this front-of-house application does not communicate effectively with the backoffice ERP system, meaning that when customers do configure products online, there is a team of people behind the scenes furiously entering this information into the ERP system before realising, in many cases, that the required product cannot be configured in this way, or indeed, that there is not enough inventory held to produce the product in the timeframe required. Similarly, a lot of manufacturing businesses are looking to wrap services around their products to add value to customers, but often

Integration: the stumbling block to manufacturing digitisation “The idea that investing in technology and creating new business strategies will accelerate digital transformation is simply not enough”

struggle to keep track of which product is in which location, how these products are performing, and how warranty claims are affected, compromising any servitisation strategy.

The idea that investing in technology and creating new business strategies will accelerate digital transformation is simply not enough if the UK manufacturing sector is to reap the rewards of Industry 4.0. Instead, these technologies and business strategies need to be seamlessly integrated and held together by a centralised ERP system such as SYSPRO, which has open data connections to enable integration through tools such as K3 DataSwitch. If you have to supplement every investment in automation with a manual data-entry clerk, you’re never going to truly connect your manufacturing processes and integrate with the rest of the supply chain. So what can you do to ensure that your digitisation strategy is proving effective?

Firstly, you need to identify and review your existing technology infrastructure. Can it give you the integration you need and handle the masses of data you need to process through it? Look at what your competitors are doing and what your customers need from you both now and in the future and see how adjacent industries

are being successfully disrupted. Then decide upon the aims of your digitisation strategy: is your focus cost leadership or product differentiation? Where do your customers see value and how can digitisation improve this? Put together a digital transformation plan in line with that strategy and then find yourself the right technology partner who can integrate all your different systems alongside the existing skills of your own team.

When your front-of-house website communicates effectively with your ERP system, you can set up configurators so only viable choices are made when requesting a product online, freeing up sales staff to concentrate on selling rather than data entry. You can then automatically send these order details to a machine or robot on the shopfloor to schedule production and start to put the product together, sending instant information back to the customer on predicted despatch dates. In this case, customer value is improved by greater flexibility and shorter lead times, without compromising on overall delivery of products. And once the product is despatched, you can attach sensors to measure its performance, channelling this data back through your centralised ERP solution via the internet

of things. This enables you to pre-empt service requirements or downtime for your customers, and frees up the engineer who was previously entering machine data back into the ERP system to instead concentrate on analysing results of the wider manufacturing process and making changes to increase manufacturing productivity or decrease design defects.

The technologies associated with Industry 4.0 are nothing new. In fact, they’ve been adopted by manufacturers for many years. The difference is the integrated approach that is required to get the most out of these technologies and add even greater value to customers.

The idea of complete supply chain integration can be daunting, and may seem difficult and expensive, but by having a solid technological infrastructure such as SYSPRO ERP in place, you can begin to take small steps in automation that will lead to larger steps in productivity, customer value, business performance and ultimately, revenue.

In today’s digital age, can your business afford not to take this fully integrated approach to digitisation?

INDUSTRY VIEW

info@k3syspro.com www.k3syspro.com

September 2016

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The debate What does digital transformation really mean?

David Paulding

Felix Van de Maele

Neil Muller

Chris Baker

Philip Martin

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Regional director, EMEA Interactive Intelligence EFORE THE birth of digital technologies, we saw the industrialisation of IT. Technology was deployed extensively within the enterprise, largely to improve the efficiency of existing processes.

With the advent of cloud and mobile, we saw firms able to experiment with new ways of doing things, whether it was a small company using an app for sales staff to process expenses on the go, or a large retailer moving all of its customer data into the cloud.

In coming years, as the internet of things, big-data analytics, automation and machine learning start to mature, businesses have the opportunity to fundamentally reimagine not only how they do things, but what they do to generate value. With digital at the core, firms can reorient everything they do towards generating the best possible experience for their customers, from service and marketing to operations and supply.

Few firms are there yet, which means there is massive scope for differentiation through digital customer engagement.

Co-founder and CEO Collibra

IGITAL TRANSFORMATION is all about data. It’s the basis for the massive shift that we’re seeing in every industry. The companies leading this transformation are the ones that build their business on data and treat it as a true business asset. And they embrace the sharing of data as part of business as usual. Too often we see data users hoarding data when, in fact, the opposite needs to happen. Sharing increases the value of data in digital transformation.

At the heart of this shift to a sharing economy is trust. It’s expected and explicit. To foster trust, you need a business process that helps you govern data in a way that gives you the confidence to use it to drive innovation and gain competitive advantage. This is data governance. It gives everyone who uses data to do their job – the data citizens – the ability to find, understand, and trust the data.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Contact Steve Neat, VP Sales EMEA +44 203 695 6965 info@collibra.com

CEO Daisy Group

MD of UK enterprise Concur

USINESSES LARGE and small must equip their teams for the digital economy. Even in an age of amazing technological innovation, I remain a huge believer in teamwork making the difference. As we become increasingly mobile, and increasingly global, that sense of togetherness, enabling key business functions to collaborate together intuitively, will shape the future of work.

Businesses need to embrace IT innovation more wholly: the great digital businesses we see around us do not treat IT as an add-on – they place it right at the heart of the business and use it to enable a complete rethink of the products, processes and systems that underpin their organisation. I call it “joining the dots”.

The last few years’ seismic shift in technological advancement shows us that the future is nothing if not tantalising. I believe that we are only now at the start. It’s like the Industrial Revolution, but with brass knobs on. Helping shape how it changes our lives is an immensely exciting role.

INDUSTRY VIEW

INDUSTRY VIEW

david.paulding@inin.com www.inin.com/uk

www.linkedin.com/company/ daisy-group www.daisygroup.com

CEO Cora Systems

IGITAL TRANSFORMATION can mean different things to different people and also businesses. In essence, what the phrase means is the proliferation of digital technology across our personal and work lives – and it’s not going to slow down either. At Concur, we have seen this change continue at lightening pace in recent years. It effects everything we do and affects us all from a sociological, psychological and economic standpoint.

Businesses need to look at how their own digital transformation is impacting on its business practices and employees wellbeing. Being in an ‘always on’ culture means that businesses have evolved. For example we were promised that mobile would be accompanied by new highs in productivity. But instead, it seems that productivity growth has struggled to keep pace with the pace of technological change. Productivity is a problem for economies around the world, but this is especially pertinent in the UK. Mobile was supposed to solve this, but that’s yet to fully happen.

INDUSTRY VIEW

EOPLE NEED to change the way they work around a digital transformation. If it works, it saves employees getting bogged down doing mundane, process-driven, repetitive tasks.

A good example would be people who gather data for a project management office. They talk to people around all parts of the organisation and pull together, say, a weekly management report.

With a digital transformation solution, they can generate that report in a couple of seconds.

So instead of time spent making phone calls and emails gathering data, they can use their time to analyse data, to make recommendations and see where the organisation should make changes.

From a senior management’s perspective, you’re getting better bang for your buck because now staff are delivering value on data.

Also, senior managers are paid to make decisions. They will make decisions in the absence of good data. Those decisions will be either lucky or bad, but if they have good data they can make good decisions, and the organisation will thrive.

enquiries@concur.com www.concur.co.uk

INDUSTRY VIEW

info@corasystems.com www.corasystems.com

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