Interface Magazine – June 2019

T E C H / T E L C O / F I N T E C H / D I G I TA L I S AT I O N / A I / M A C H I N E L E A R N I N G

Issue 3 / June 2019 / www.theinterface.net

5 DISRUPTIVE AI PLATFORMS in fintech and insuretech

A mature start-up

EXCLUSIVE

CSI: TAKING CUSTOMERS TO THE PERPETUAL EDGE OF THE CLOUD

We catch up with TalkTalk’s Gary Steen regarding the telco's commitment to thinking, and acting, differently in a highly competitive marketplace…

EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS

A procurement transformation

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Welcome to the June issue of Interface magazine!

This month’s cover features Gary Steen, TalkTalk’s Managing Director of Technology, Change, and Security, regarding the telcos’s commitment to thinking, and acting, differently in a highly competitive marketplace…

TalkTalk is an established telecommunications company that fosters a youthful, pioneering spirit. “I like to think of TalkTalk as a mature start-up,” says Managing Director of Technology, Change and Security, Gary Steen. “We are mature in terms of being in the FTSE 250, with over four million customers, relying on our services every day through our essential, critical national infrastructure. But that said, I definitely think we start our day thinking as a start-up would.

What can we do differently? How do we beat the competition?

How do we attract great talent? We’ve got to come at this in a different way if we are going to succeed in the marketplace. We are mature, but we think like a start-up.”

Elsewhere we speak to Natalia Graves, VP Head of Procurement at Veeam Software who reveals the secrets to a successful procurement transformation. Graves was tasked with looking at the automating, simplifying, and accelerating of Veeam’s procurement and travel processes and systems around them, including evaluating and rolling out a companywide source-to-pay platform. “It has been an incredible journey,” she tells us from her office in Boston, Massachusetts.

We also feature exclusive interviews with PTI Consulting and cloud specialists CSI. Plus, we reveal 5 of the biggest AI companies in fintech and list the best events and conferences around.

I hope you enjoy the issue!

EDITOR IN CHIEF Kevin Davies CREATIVE LEAD Mitchell Park SNR. PROJECT DIRECTORS Andy Lloyd Heykel Ouni PRESIDENT & CEO Kiron Chavda

– K evin Davies, Editor in chief Content@b2e-media.com

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CONTENTS

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CONTENTS

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PTI CONSULTING: DRIVING TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION IN THE FOOTBALL STADIUM EXPERIENCE

49 VEEAM SOFTWARE

83

5 DISRUPTIVE AI PLATFORMS IN FINTECH AND INSURETECH

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CSI: TAKING CUSTOMERS TO THE PERPETUAL EDGE OF THE CLOUD

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EVENTS

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Frank Vorrath, Executive Partner: Supply Chain for Chief Supply Chain Officers and Chief Operating Officers, Gartner

Rache and M at clo ford G

LIST LAT

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH SAM ACHAMPONG REGIONAL HEAD & GENERAL MANAGER, MENA A

el McElroy, Sales Marketing Director oud specialists CranGroup

Dr. Marcell Vollmer, Procurement Influencer and SAP Ariba’s Chief Digital Officer

Mike Dargan, Group CIO, UBS

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A mature

start-up

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We travelled to Salford, Greater Manchester, to catch up with TalkTalk’s Managing Director of Technology, Change, and Security, Gary Steen regarding its commitment to thinking, and acting, differently in a highly competitive marketplace…

alkTalk is an established telecommunications company that fosters a youthful, pioneering spirit. “I like to think of TalkTalk as a mature start-up,” says Managing Director of Technology, Change and Security, Gary Steen. “We are mature in terms of being in the FTSE 250, with over four million customers relying on our services every day through our essential, critical national infrastructure.

But that said, I definitely think we start our day thinking as a start-up would.

What can we do differently? How do we beat the competition? How do we attract great talent? We’ve got to

T

10

TA L K TA L K

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11

One team building the future together.

12

TA L K TA L K

CGI and TalkTalk are working together to transform TalkTalk’s IT capability by implementing a mature operational model across both systems and processes. Fifteen months into a five-year partnership, the One IT Operations programme is well underway, already delivering operational efficiency to underpin further growth for TalkTalk.

Like TalkTalk, CGI operates with

expensive data centre. This migra-

delivered in the first year. Extract-

the innovation, flexibility and

tion is underpinning the business’s

ing maximum value from the joint

energy of a start-up, combining

ability to respond in an agile way

investment in tools is ensuring Talk-

industry and technical experience

to market pressures and regula-

Talk delivers maximum value for its

with local knowledge. The collab-

tory changes through confidence

customers. Automation is enabling

oration and ethos of operating

in the IT estate. CGI, motivated

a responsive, proactive approach

as one team is further enabled

by the knowledge that consum-

to resolving issues, directly reduc-

by CGI’s global capability and its

ers and businesses depend on

ing costs, increasing accuracy and

opening of an office in the same

TalkTalk’s products and service,

improving customer service. This

building as TalkTalk’s headquar-

recognises that what it does has a

secures revenue by retaining ex-

ters at Soapworks, Salford Quays

big part to play in delivering Talk-

isting customers and fulfilling more

in Manchester, allowing the two

Talk’s commitments. As TalkTalk’s

new customer orders.

teams to learn, adapt and suc-

estate is transformed, rationalised

ceed together.

and simplified, security is baked

tions enables TalkTalk to deliver a

into the design, rooting out tech-

high-quality service to its custom-

parency and honesty, a plan was

nical vulnerabilities and protecting

ers. As CGI creates a strong op-

agreed to jointly power through

TalkTalk’s services from disruption.

erating base that is ready to meet

Operating from a base of trans-

the inevitable bumps in the road

Fundamentally, One IT Opera-

the demands of TalkTalk’s future

This transformation is pro-

and deliver the One IT Operations

ducing savings that TalkTalk will

business, the identification of

transition programme on time and

reinvest in delivering market-lead-

opportunities to function more ef-

to budget. Consolidating services

ing products and services. It is

ficiently is proving addictive. When

from multiple incumbent suppliers

simplifying the infrastructure and

problems arise, they are fixed

into a single end-to-end service

shrinking support, maintenance,

faster than ever before, boosting

is transforming TalkTalk’s opera-

licence and third-party managed

TalkTalk’s business effectiveness

tional model and providing a robust

service costs leading to the re-

through increased system uptime.

support capability for its services; a

duction of electricity and rent bills.

foundation to build on for the future.

This shift delivers an equilibrium

TalkTalk with a determination to

across IT management, core busi-

work as one, to deliver operational

ness and customer needs.

and business transformation. The

At the same time, One IT Operations is migrating services to private cloud capabilities that are

At the core of CGI’s delivery is

CGI began the partnership with

One IT Operations’ engagement

future-fit and bring cost savings;

continuous service improvement,

has proved that, by working to-

like the planned closure of an

with over 400 improvements

gether, we succeed.

w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t 13 www.cgi-group.co.uk

EXECUTIVE INSIGHT: AN INTERVIEW WITH TA L K TA L K ’ S G A RY ST E E N

come at this in a different way if we are going to succeed in the marketplace. We are mature, but we think like a start-up.”

The telco market is growing both in terms of complexity and demand, which requires TalkTalk to outthink and outsmart its competition through products that offer great prices and value. “To deliver those products we need really smart talent,” Steen explains, from the company’s impressive Soapworks base in the burgeoning Salford Quays area of Greater 14

TA L K TA L K

Manchester. “So, we’ve been obsessing over how we make the switch to a great team.”

TalkTalk works with numerous partners on its day-to-day operations, but Steen is dedicated to refreshing its internal talent to complement the outsourcing. “This year, we brought in over 50 graduates to build some very smart teams in this building.

We’re training them up and getting them onboard. Being agile is really important to creating that capability and we’ll always use partners, but

I think there’s got to be a real balance between external and internal skills.”

With an ever-increasing complexity in the telco market, Steen and his team are working hard to make sure the company has sufficient IT skills within its team, bearing in mind the skills gap in tech right now. “It is a challenge and one of the reasons we’ve begun to grow our own talent is because we are using some next generation capabilities: new tools, platforms and packages,” he explains. “There is definitely a skills gap, so we are doing a mix. We are cross-training people who have been in other careers over to being technologists. We get some good w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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TA L K TA L K

KNOWLEDGE WORKER

Responsible stewardship and

the technological leaps

tion stack with infrastructure

trust have been hallmarks of

they require.

we have 100% confidence in, but also now know our cus-

IBM’s culture, from our labs to the boardroom, for more than a

IBM’s data journey with Talk-

tomers can access their data

century. Data Responsibility is a

Talk is a great example of how

whenever they need to at any

perfect illustration of this culture.

enterprises are modernizing

point in the day”

At IBM, we’ve always followed

and maturing in terms of man-

Another key Programme under-

straightforward principles to act

agement, governance, under-

way that speaks to responsible

responsibly and earn trust. Today,

standing and use of data in a

stewardship of data is the Data

our principles include:-

responsible way; doing so with

Governance Programme.

the confidence that the data

“Data Governance is of para-

is accurate, secure and helping

mount importance to TalkTalk

improve customer experience.

and is at the heart of everything

TalkTalk has modernised its

we do”, says Sarah Corlett, TalkTalk’s

• The purpose of new technologies is to augment - not replace - human intelligence.

• Data and insights belong to

numerous legacy storage envi-

Data Governance Manager.

ronments, consolidating onto

“Keeping our data accurate,

• New technology, including AI

the latest IBM Spectrum soft-

compliant and secure is critical

(Artificial Intelligence), must

ware defined storage: “Using

to the success of our business

be transparent and explainable.

IBM for both our strategic storage

and builds customer trust. We

platforms - Spectrum Virtualise

are therefore building a data

Recent initiatives that demonstrate

(block) and Spectrum Scale (file)

governance function in Man-

IBM’s principles at work include:

with added data protection suite

chester and recruiting a team

Spectrum Protect – means we

of experienced Enterprise Data

have a scalable platform for all of

Specialists to manage data gov-

an open source software

TalkTalk’s future data and appli-

ernance across the entire estate.

toolkit to help developers

cation needs”, comments Daniel

We have also invested in the IBM

actively detect and reduce

Riley, Storage & Backup Manag-

Infosphere toolset, one of the

bias in datasets and AI.

er at TalkTalk. “Designing and

leading governance tools on the

building a multi-site ‘active-ac-

market, to enable TalkTalk to

Blockchain to capture call

tive’ platform with IBM and SCC

govern our data in one central

data in real time and save

has helped drive business goals

location. The tool will support

it in a format that’s trusted,

of a truly 24-hour system serving

growth and revenue initiatives

traceable and accessible

our customers’ needs first with

through the improvement, man-

to network providers and

a fully resilient infrastructure

agement and transformation

carriers worldwide, making

platform underpinning the

of our data to improve data

international phone calls feel

application layer. We can now

insight and fulfil the require-

seamless despite all

consolidate our legacy applica-

ments of our customers.”

their owner.

• Launching “AI Fairness 360”,

• Telefónica turned to IBM

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talent from that capability.”

TalkTalk’s graduate program has recruited 60-70 people this year already and that will only increase, according to Steen. “They’re really hungry to work on new projects and ideas, so we’re really obsessing about putting them into cohort. What we do around the development of the careers is key, as well as what we do for our people who cross-train. So, we break them into cohorts to make sure we’ve got the right talent approach to each of those segments.”

TalkTalk has grown massively as a result of some major acquisitions and that has amassed many varieties of staff, partners and legacy systems leading to a fine balancing act between internal and outsourced staff.

“We’ve grown as a business, really, really quickly,” Steen explains. “And we’ve probably got a little bit too wide, not only in terms of complexity and of our systems and capability, but also in terms of the number of partners we are using. In the last couple of years, we’ve been working on slimming that down and consolidating.”

In 2018, the company had five different partners and operator models for its IT operations prompting a massive 18

TA L K TA L K

Gary Steen Managing Director of Technology, Change, and Security TalkTalk Gary Steen has over 25 years’ experience working in the UK and internationally as an innovator in technology and business transformation leader featuring spells with Vodafone, BT, O2, Carphone Warehouse, Sprint, Aircell and Telstra.

Gary is currently building and leading a worldclass capability across the TalkTalk Technology group which spans: • 3,038 Network Points of Presence across the UK • Software and IT delivery across our 700 applications and 4,500 servers • A colleague experience across 8,000+ Staff and Partners.

• and the delivery of major transformations and programme change across the group During his career, Gary has worked on a wide array of projects delivering connectivity solutions in the consumer and B2B markets covering mobile, fixed line, data and air-to-ground broadband.

Gary is also a board member of Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise partnership ensuring regional development in skills and technology with the objective of making the area a £50 billion economy by 2040.

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How IT partnership got TalkTalk talking In a digital world that is evolving

For businesses to obtain true

nology to deliver world-class

rapidly and where data is growing

value in their IT investments,

solutions. SCC helps people

exponentially, businesses have to

th ey n e e d a n a m a l g a m of

to do business through plan-

be incredibly aware of the impor-

expertise from organisations

ning, supplying, integrating and

tance of their IT infrastructure.

w i t h c o m p l i m e nt a r y s k i l l s .

managing their IT. Its portfolio

By investing and keeping up-to-

By choosing to work with a

of solutions spans from sup-

date with the latest solutions

provider that prides itself on

ply through to fully managed

and innovations, businesses can

offering the best solutions

services, infrastructure opti-

remain competitive and relevant

through valued partnerships,

misation, unified communica-

in the markets that they serve.

a bespoke and truly beneficial

tions and datacentre services.

Through SCC and IBM’s partner-

solution can be gained.

Together with IBM – one of the

ship, TalkTalk has been able to realise those benefits.

20

TA L K TA L K

SCC and IBM have worked

world’s largest IT companies,

together for more than 40 years.

they were able to consolidate

Together they bridge the gap be-

and refresh TalkTalk’s legacy

tween business need and tech-

server and storage estate.

w w w.scc.com • 0121 766 7000 TalkTalk

Transformational results

los, standardised components and

TalkTalk Group faced a number

SCC worked with TalkTalk, IT

a full leverage of the on-command

of challenges, primarily as a

partners, and vendors to select

management and provisioning tool.

result of growth through ac-

a refreshed server and storage

This, however, was just phase

quisition. IT infrastructure had

estate. This was based upon IBM

become costly, difficult to man-

Power and storage technology for

age and was not supporting the

the core “priority one” systems.

one of an ongoing engagement.

SCC is working with IBM, Public Cloud providers and other vendors

SCC successfully led the solution

to continuously refresh and mod-

design, delivery and implementation

ernise TalkTalk’s IT estate. This will

data centres required discovering,

of this mission-critical project. By

always include some workloads

identifying, consolidating and re-

consolidating and refreshing the

running on the cloud, some “on

freshing. An ageing storage estate

legacy server and storage estate,

premise” and some as a hybrid

that was originally sourced from

SCC and IBM helped TalkTalk to:

between the two; a typical modern

business as it should.

More than 2,500 hosts across 11

approximately 13 different stor-

• Reduce costs

age vendors with varying levels of

• Improve system performance

support required modernising and

• Increase storage capacity

at the core of this approach and

simplifying as a matter of urgency.

• Enhance business agility by refin-

SCC continues to propose inno-

ing IT service level agreements

vative “cloud like” consumption

The desired outcome was a modern, centralised, simplified and agile

hybrid cloud architecture.

IBM’s Power technology remains

models for IBM Power technology

IT infrastructure that was easier to

TalkTalk can now easily manage

to meet the business outcomes

manage, had a much lower opera-

their estate with reduced data si-

that TalkTalk demands.

tional cost and was flexible enough to become the core of a hybrid infrastructure platform that could facilitate future growth.

As part of the broader SCC and TalkTalk Partnership, SCC also helped with: • Relocation of TalkTalk business to new headquarters • Design and fit-out of headquarters with full Audio Visual, meeting room management and conference facilities • Transformation to Microsoft Windows 10 and O365 • Refresh of all end user devices • Inception of new cost-effective Managed Print Services

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shift. “We chose a company to do a single operated capability, in our ninth transition of moving the waves over and it’s going well. In effect, that will give us a single team with a single operating plan. We’ve been working hard on that alongside building some capability on our side of the fence. So, it’s a balance working around our partner strategy, and what we do internally.”

THE TRANSFORMATION OF A TELCO TalkTalk is currently undergoing a digital transformation too and Steen has a track record of delivering transformations, working with companies such as Vodafone, BT, O2, Carphone Warehouse, Sprint, Aircell and Telstra. Back in 2015, TalkTalk worked very closely with partners such as Tech Mahindra and CapGemini on its transformation. Tech Mahindra has been a long-serving partner of TalkTalk in the Operational Support System space. “They have a huge heritage having spun off from BT and they’ve really provided us a backbone to our OSS capability over a number of years. Capgemini is another partner we’ve used for a long time, and 22

TA L K TA L K

they have also provided capability around our Salesforce developments and around our business systems. We’re also using companies like TCS who provide us with great capability from a business support systems perspective.”

With regards to TalkTalk’s transformation conundrum, Steen points to an old analogy of trying to change an engine while you are driving on the motorway at 100 miles an hour. “The appetite for change in this business is quite extraordinary, and in a good way,” he explains. “We’re working on w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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TA L K TA L K

“ I can safely say, we have created genuine disruption in the marketplace” Gary Steen M a n a g i n g D i re cto r o f Te c h n o l o g y, Change, and Security

a huge range of projects, and a lot of transformations fail because they are over here trying to build something new, while the business is going in another direction. Getting the transformation and the business activities aligned on a day-to-day level is one of the key things we have done to ensure that the transformation sticks.”

The telco sector is a fast-paced industry, whether it be regulatory

change, market change because of competition or due to core service growth. “Consumption wise, we are growing 30% year on year,” Steen explains. “How do you put 30% more pipes in the ground each year just to keep up with the demand of your customers? That drives a huge amount of change into the business from an IT and a network perspective,” he explains.

“Like many telecoms providers, we’ve got a big old IT estate with over 7,000 servers, which is expensive to manage. w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

25

SCC provided a range of services and hardware and a whole plethora of resources around this, in terms of how we consolidated that down. We decided to build a hybrid IT model and SCC both procured and installed the hardware.”

IBM is also a key partner to TalkTalk from a technology perspective on consumer and scale systems as well as with data warehouse platforms.

IBM provides the strategic storage platforms for TalkTalk’s hybrid cloud and has helped the success and growth of the telco over the years.

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TA L K TA L K

Another key partner is Infosys, which provides all of TalkTalk’s digital channel capability and online presence, development and testing of applications in that space. “We try to use a range of partners who provide that best capability,” Steen explains. “We find that they all come with different skill sets even though they are all predominantly of a similar mould.

They all have slightly unique capabilities that bring them to life.”

Last year TalkTalk decided, from an operations perspective, to slim things down from five different operator

models, five different partners and five ways of monitoring and reporting to a single system. “We decided to launch a program called One IT Ops and we chose CGI in that respect.

We chose them to take our existing model and improve the operating model and take complexity and cost out. CGI helped in our transformation of moving it to one provider but also changed the processes behind this and worked on the technology consolidation.”

Transformation in place, TalkTalk then worked to drive some of the cost

out, simplify the model, and improve the service. “We are into wave nine of a transformation. We do very short waves, with short deliverables. And I think that’s one of the keys that makes it deliverable because it’s not a big, long-ended, open program for years and years and it’s basically cut up into short sprints of deliverables. So, we are very keen, when it goes off track, to get back on track.”

DATA USEAGE/CAPABILITY Data usage is going up year-on-year and capability has to respond in kind.

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AI-Driven Quality of Experience Optimization “ The ASSIA solution gives us the additional data and visibility we need to understand the various patterns that can affect in-home Wi-Fi performance—and the management and optimization tools to deliver the best experience for our customers.”

Phil Haslam, Chief Network Officer TalkTalk, Plc

sales@assia-inc.com

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TA L K TA L K

www.assia-inc.com

TA L K TA L K : T H E I M P O RTA N C E O F PA RT N E R S

How does TalkTalk deliver more bandwidth to its customers for less? “That’s what creates that sort of dynamic, mature start-up way of thinking.

Because you go, ‘Hey, we can’t just do this. We can’t just continue to throw money at this. We need to come up with different engineering capabilities of doing that.’ I think what customers can see going forward is that exponential growth of bandwidth is going to continue. I’ve got no idea what customers are going to do with that bandwidth in five, 10 years’ time, but

I can absolutely predict with 100% confidence it will be more. So, whether that’s 4K Facebook or more videos, Netflix etc., it’s just going to continue to grow.”

TalkTalk was recently recognised with the SamKnows Industry Invention Award. “SamKnows is awarded by Ofcom as a way of looking at performance across all the providers in the UK. A good example of improving service performance is around the work the TalkTalk team has performed on DNS performance. w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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Ofcom (via SamKnows) measures a series of performance indicators and there is a whole range of metrics about speed, congestion, how are we using the service, but we have been obsessing, particularly in technology recently, around red and green monitoring. So, if you look at our operation here, we can tell if things are on or off.

We can tell what is broken and we can push our suppliers to say, ‘Can you fix this?’ We get 13 billion requests a day to our DNS (domain name service) and 13 billion requests to point traffic in the right direction and we were fourth or 30

TA L K TA L K

fifth place in the marketplace. We were behind some of our competition. Our DNS servers were working, they were green, but the performance on that from a customer’s perspective was way down the pack.”

The answer, as with much these days, lay in the data – something TalkTalk has an awful lot of. “We did some smart stuff. We did a transformation to move that DNS capability closer to the customer, just like me moving closer to you. As we moved that DNS closer to the customer, the performance of what you see increases exponentially.

“ We really want to be the most recommended broadband provider” Gary Steen M a n a g i n g D i re cto r o f Te c h n o l o g y, Change, and Security

And we’ve gone from fourth, fifth place in the rankings on SamKnows to being first. So that’s great. It’s only milliseconds, but in this world milliseconds count when you consider that every DNS lookup takes say six, seven milliseconds. You get that down to three, then that is going to transform your customer experience.”

When you’ve got the second largest network in the UK outside of BT, many things can go wrong. “My team is looking across 3,000 sites in the UK as there are always things breaking on a network. That can be diggers

going through the road, it can be floods impacting service in York, there’s always things happening. It’s a case of keeping an eye on that network, rerouting traffic, dispatching engineers, making sure you’re offering that great customer service.”

TalkTalk is currently working with Juniper to roll out a new technology.

“North Star sits on the network, looking at all the traffic flows across the network,” Steen explains. “As it sees outages, it basically dynamically reroutes all that traffic. It knows all the paths across the network and looks w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

31

at how much traffic is flowing across it and can dynamically reroute that real-time, in what would take an engineer maybe five or 10 minutes to do.

Now, when you’ve got 3,000 sites and 5,000 circuits, and four million customers, the ability to knock minutes off that and improve is phenomenal. We’ve got that deployed on our network, so it’s running side by side with our engineers. We’ve not completely let the machines take over yet, however. We’re testing it, looking at the recommendations it makes and then, this year, as we go into half-year, we’ll deploy it onto the network where it will be autonomous.”

On the customer side, TalkTalk has been partnering with ASSIA to enable data-driving decisions with capability

“ We get 13 billion requests a day to our DNS (domain name service) and 13 billion requests to point traffic in the right direction” Gary Steen M a n a g i n g D i re cto r o f Te c h n o l o g y, Change, and Security

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TA L K TA L K

called CloudCheck. CloudCheck is a piece of software that sits on the router in the home and it scans your environment “in a good way” to collect data in terms of the WIFI signal strength, what WIFI your neighbours use and how you can optimise that in-home environment.

“It will tune your environment to get the best out of it. But also, as a customer, it provides you with the data.”

So, with numerous changes all occurring at once, how does Steen view the company’s progress? “Well, we’ve still got a lot to do. We really want to be the most recommended broadband provider and acknowledge that we’ve had our hiccups along the way in terms of growing the business, but I personally believe that if TalkTalk hadn’t originated, then people would be paying far more for their broadband services than they do today. I can safely say, we have created genuine disruption in the marketplace.”

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EXCLUSIVE

CSI: TAKING CUSTOMERS TO THE PERPETUAL EDGE OF THE CLOUD

WRITTEN BY J a m e s H u tc h i n s 34

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NEILL HART Head Of Productivity And Programs, CSI

NEILL HART, HEAD OF PRODUCTIVITY AND PROGRAMS AT COMPUTER SYSTEMS INTEGRATION (CSI), SPEAKS EXCLUSIVELY TO THE INTERFACE ABOUT HOW THE COMPANY HAS MOVED BEYOND SIMPLE SYSTEMS INTEGRATION AND HELPS CUSTOMERS FIND AND EXPLOIT A ‘PERPETUAL EDGE’ IN TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AND DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION NEI L L , TEL L US A BIT ABOUT YOU R RO L E WITHIN CSI? As Head of Productivity and Programs at CSI and the head of enablement, I am the middle ground between strategy and execution. We take the company strategy, which is very much centred on digital transformation, and using utility or cloud computing, and take it to the market in a way that makes sense for our client base.

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W H AT D R I V E S C LI E N TS TO N AV IGATE TH E I R D I GI TA L J O U R N EYS, PA RTI C U LA R LY MI GR ATI N G TO TH E C LO U D ?

Companies will have three or four desired outcomes: grow the business, save money, innovate faster and to protect (data, reputation etc.). Traditionally it’s to save money. On-premise data centres require capex investment; you have

C S I : TA K I N G C U S T O M E R S T O T H E P E R P E T U A L E D G E O F T H E C L O U D

to buy equipment, run it in a data centre and pay for electricity and power, operations etc. The offer of cloud or utility computing is that you use what you need and only pay for what you use. You don’t pay a lot to the water company if you don’t turn the taps on. That’s the dream of utility computing or cloud computing in that you break away from the capex investment. It’s

inflexible. If you run out of capacity with an on-premise data centre, you have to buy some more equipment and that takes weeks or months to arrive. With cloud, if you need some more you pay for more.

W H AT D O E S A C LO U D J O U R N EY LO O K LI K E A N D H OW D O E S C SI WO R K W I TH C LI E N TS ?

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have a journey to the cloud. Each application they run has a separate journey. We would start by looking at the inventory of all the applications that a company’s running and look at which applications would be quickest and easiest to move, or which applications would have the biggest benefit from moving.

It’s a well-known way of looking at spinning applications, what they call systems of record and systems of engagement. Systems of record tend to

be financial systems, inventory, the core of an organisation. Systems of engagement are a website or online ordering systems etc. You find two distinct families of applications. Systems of engagement tend to be a bit easier to move, whereas systems of record are ingrained into the company and are often seen as being risky to move.

Email is one of the very first things that people can move. Nobody’s really buying their own copies of the Office365 software, loading it

“ T HE OFFER OF CLOUD OR UTILITY COMPUTING IS THAT YOU USE WHAT YOU NEED AND ONLY PAY FOR WHAT YOU USE. YOU DON’T PAY A LOT TO THE WATER COMPANY IF YOU DON’T TURN THE TAPS ON” NEILL HART Head Of Productivity And Programs, CSI

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on servers in their own data centre, running all their email in house. It’s easy because most people will have a Gmail account, a Hotmail or similar. People can associate quite easily with something like that running in the cloud, compared to say taking your financial records and putting them in the cloud.

SO IT SOUNDS LIKE IT CAN BE AN EXTENSIVE PROCESS? In terms of the journey it’s not just a

case of saying, “Lets pick a cloud and just dump the application in there and the job’s finished.” Imagine going on a holiday, you pack all your stuff at home, you go and check in and have pre-flight checks, you board, then you’re inflight. There are certain things you can do when you’ve moved and then when you’re on your journey. At all those points there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure it is done well.

When moving to the cloud,

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assume it’s going to be cheaper.

This is true if you optimise your costs.

It could become more expensive if you don’t put in the groundwork early on. This pertains to issues of governance and policy, being able to prove compliance when you’re in the cloud might be different than the way you do it on premise.

There’s a lot of pre-work to be done around strategy and policy, making sure your software par 2 licenses are able to be ported into the cloud. You have to make sure that when you’re in the cloud you’ve got a compliant system that’s secure, optimised and performing for the application that your company wants.

W HAT OTHE R CHALLE NGE S ARE YOU S E E ING IN DIGITAL T RANSFORMAT ION? An interesting issue with cloud computing is that it’s too simple to access. This creates ‘Shadow IT’, a non-IT controlled spend that is very easy to lose control of. Individual parts of the company could sign up and start buying some computer power, with relative ease. The next thing is that the company as a 40

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SIMPLIFIED SECURITY WITH CSI

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whole is spending quite a lot of money. Individually it looks like small amounts of money, but if the company can gather all those costs together and look at what they’re doing then it can be more expensive.

Simply because it’s easier to access.

When everybody had to go through the IT department, the control was very tight but it wasn’t very flexible for the business. Now the pendulum’s swung the other way where the business has almost too much control for the IT department and the costs can get out of control.

HOW WOULD CSI HELP TO MITIGATE THESE CHALLENGES? In the first instance we would create an inventory of infrastructure and assets. Quite often it is an issue of the application and the platform in place may not be easily ‘cloudified’.

The code is so old you’re not able to upgrade the server as it cannot cope with the new operating system. This creates a reluctance where people feel it is too much and too difficult.

CSI looks at the infrastructure, being able to take the code and make sure it works on upgraded, high performance equipment.

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WHAT OTHER ISSUES CREATE THIS ‘RELUCTANCE’ TO MOVE TO THE CLOUD? Security is a concern for first time users of the cloud. Simply because it’s a new world. It’s becoming less of an issue as people use it more and there are more case studies and use cases. But it’s definitely a bit of the unknown in terms of security. Another issue is what cloud to go to and is it all going to the cloud or at least some of it going to the cloud? Public clouds such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, Google Cloud are three of the big ones. There’s even multi cloud. Quite often a company’s IT department decides that the Microsoft Azure or IBM Cloud is where they want to go, but individual divisions start using bits of AWS and Google Cloud because it’s easier. With private, hybrid, public, multiple public cloud there’s a range of choices and if you make the wrong choice earlier on, it can have ramifications later.

People think the migration is the first step, it’s probably the third or fourth step once you’ve got your governance sorted out, your costing models, what are you going to do about data protection in the cloud, how are you going to do your backups and disaster

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“ I N TERMS OF THE JOURNEY IT’S NOT JUST A CASE OF SAYING, “LETS PICK A CLOUD AND JUST DUMP THE APPLICATION IN THERE AND THE JOBS FINISHED” NEILL HART Head Of Productivity And Programs, CSI

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recovery and so on. Only then would you actually make the migration itself.

D O S O M E P EO P L E R E J EC T T H E I D E A O F C LO U D M I G R AT I O N ?

There are reasons for wanting to keep certain applications or data on premise. A recent study showed that around 30% of organisations surveyed had taken applications that they’d migrated to the cloud back on premise again. A process called application repatriation. This could be cost issues, security, availability of skill, or even location of data.

Something that makes the journey complex is that there’s no right answer, per application, per organisation there’s going to be a different answer to should you go cloud.

W H AT L E V E L O F C L I E N TS D O E S C S I WO R K W I T H ?

We have clients that are ‘born in the cloud’. If you think of the financial sector, it’s one of the more conservative in terms of governance and risk and compliance. A client of ours, Redwood Bank, was completely born in the cloud, it’s never been on premise. We have other clients where the applications have been running on 44

very stable IBM systems and all they want is just some flexibility in terms of capacity. Retail customers will typically have online retail peaks and they need extra capacity for that peak and give it back again. That’s more of a hybrid situation where they don’t want to do a complete move to the cloud. We’ve got others who are using cloud as R&D capacity.

With technology like artificial intelligence and machine learning using capacity in the cloud, you’re training machine-learning models that require huge amounts of power, but once the model has settled and you just need to use it; you don’t need the

C S I : TA K I N G C U S T O M E R S T O T H E P E R P E T U A L E D G E O F T H E C L O U D

“ I T’S GOING TO BE SAID A LOT, BUT IF YOU’RE NOT A DISRUPTOR, SOMEONE ELSE WILL DISRUPT YOU” NEILL HART Head Of Productivity And Programs, CSI

same power anymore. So the idea of using high performance compute on a pay-as-you-go basis as a way into machine learning is also something we’re looking at. There’s a whole range across sectors and across uses.

W H AT M A K E S C S I T H E PA RT N E R OF CHOICE? CSI’s been around for 35 years, it’s got a long history of working with complex application systems, and a very strong relationship with IBM. Those are the systems of record where people are comfortable and CSI’s got a long history with that.

Moving into cyber security and more

of the public cloud applications is a skill that we have. That combination is what we’re looking for and we have CSI’s own cloud riding IBM-I and AIX systems in the Power Cloud. We found that the IBM clients who are running those systems of record on premise feel they’re getting shut out of getting those cloud benefits. The CSI Power Cloud is a way of allowing them access to the cloud world, but without sacrificing that stability that they have with those IBM systems for their systems of record.

W H AT A DV I C E WO U L D YO U G I V E TO S O M EO N E E M B A R K I N G O N A C LO U D J O U R N E Y ?

The key to any journey is understanding what you’re trying to achieve and what the outcome is going to be. If you’re looking for the wrong answer, or if you’re asking the wrong question you’re likely to get the wrong answer. That goes right across the board, even to things like machine learning where typically it’s not a case of, “Here’s my data, what can I do with it?”

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I think that would be the starting point. Growing, saving, innovating and protecting. Understanding that the journey is a per-application journey, not a per-company journey and that it’s cyclical.

The question might be: then what? You’ve taken everything and put it into the cloud, then what are you doing? It opens up into things like the internet of things (IoT) so everything is going to start providing data. There are sensors in cars, anything electronic, mobiles etc. That’s huge amounts of data coming through and data is the

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fuel for machine learning. The more data entering an artificial intelligence model the better it becomes.

AI is suited to cloud flexibility. If you look at the compute power you need to properly train a machine-learning model it’s immense. It’s very expensive, but you don’t need it forever. This has closed that technology off from certain organisations, anything other than an enterprise or a government couldn’t afford that kind of compute for a short period of time. Cloud can allow you to do that in a way that you probably couldn’t have done in the past.

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W H AT I S TH E KE Y TO SUCCE S S FO R A DI G I TAL , CLOUD-BAS E D J O URNEY? Start off with a very open mind, have a real look at the inventory of applications and what are you trying to achieve, choose the right cloud and manage the journey all the way through out to the other side. In this world of digital disruption it means you’re going to get competition from non-traditional competitors. It’s going to be said a lot, but if you’re not a disruptor, someone else will disrupt you.

By embracing cloud and all of its

facets, it provides you with the flexibility needed to be open and move quickly. You can’t shut things down and you can’t guarantee that you aren’t going to be disrupted by a competitor, but the flexibility that you have to react fast is a big advantage. We look at digital acceleration, digital disruption and digital threat as almost three forces that are combining to push companies forward and with CSI, our service portfolio and the Power Cloud itself and our partnerships, we are able to help companies to respond to those three digital

L IST E N TO T H IS P O D C A ST on any of our output c h a n n e l s b e l ow

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A procurement transformation WRITTEN BY Kev i n D av i e s PRODUCED BY A n d y L l oyd

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Interface interviews Natalia Graves VP, Head of Procurement at Veeam Software to discuss the company’s procurement transformation atalia Graves is the first Vice President of Procurement at Veeam Software and when she joined in January 2018, she was asked to further evaluate already existing best practices at the software company, broadening those practices across the organisation, as well as introducing new ones “where it made sense”.

Veeam Software is a privately held information technology company and the leader in Cloud Data Management for organisations, ranging from SMB to enterprise. As Veeam Software grows so does its spend and Graves soon recognised the need to have a more systematic, pointed focus on procurement as a discipline. Graves was tasked with looking at the automating, simplifying, and accelerating of Veeam’s procurement and travel processes and systems around them, including evaluating and rolling out a company-wide source-to-pay platform. “It has been an incredible journey,” she tells us from her office in Boston, Massachusetts.

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The KPMG name and logo are registered trademarks.

“We looked at simplifying our processes and putting systems into place that allow Veeam teams across the globe to move even faster.”

Veeam had many stakeholders participating in the transformation: finance, technology teams, operations and business stakeholders (the largest spenders) all participated in the enterprise-wide RFP, going through the process to contribute, making sure Veeam picked the right company. “We’ve looked at all the leaders out there and through the process, selected Coupa as our Spend Management Platform and KPMG

as our implementation partner,” she explains. “We looked to the likes of Gartner and Forrester, etc. to really understand what they are seeing happening in the industry, and who the leaders are, and how they evaluate them. We took that into our internal decision-making process and then selected what was right for Veeam.”

Veeam took the approach of going with industry best practice and changing the processes only when there was a true business case to do w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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so. “We’ve done it through workshops that were enabled and conducted by our implementer – KPMG - and really, I think that spending the time to do that was what took the longest and was probably the most difficult stage.

First and foremost, the most important step was really to observe what was happening, because people were extremely overloaded, and procurement was viewed as a black hole where things would enter only to come out months later. We absolutely had to look at automation.”

First Graves looked at the operating model. “It was clear that we couldn’t sustain the volume of transactions that we had in the operating model that we had, so that had to be changed. We had manual processes and the end-to-end operating model and proper organisational structure had to be designed to effectively and efficiently support our fast-moving and demanding business stakeholders.”

The second part of the transformation was to identify the critical roles that were missing and had to be filled immediately. “We brought in a Director of Procurement Operations and a Director of Global Contracts 54

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Natalia Graves VP, Procurement Veeam Software Natalia is the first Vice President, Procurement at Veeam Software, responsible for building and leading Veeam Procurement organization. Prior to joining Veeam Natalia was VP, Sourcing and Procurement at Cengage Learning. Earlier in her career she held a number of leadership roles in Fortune 100 companies. Natalia was responsible for procurement engineering for HealthSuitDigitalPlatform Business Unit at Philips Electronics. She was the top-level leader for IT Global Supplier Management Office at one of world’ largest oil field services companies - Baker Hughes (now part GE Oil and Gas). Prior to Baker Hughes Natalia dedicated 14 years to Hewlett-Packard in a variety of roles, from Procurement, Corporate Functions, Product Management, Sales Support to Business development. A female visionary leader, a builder, Natalia paved a path through various business cycles: be it during high growth or downturns or mergers and acquisitions. Throughout her career Natalia always relentlessly strived to make things better, easier, more profitable, and always emphasized to engage people work closer together and be more unified 55

WE ELEVATE YOUR PROCUREMENT Consus Provides Source To Pay Solutions & Services

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that allowed us to move more freely, quickly, and begin to measure what needs to be done, and bring in the automation,” adds Graves.

The third point of the transformation occurred once the process blocks were laid out on paper, as a part of an end-to-end, cradle-to-grave cycle.

“The candidates for automation and simplification just jumped out at you,” she says. “Existing processes were so painful and manual, and the teams were in such a large backlog, that transformation was inevitable. And so

we went on a journey.”

The procurement teams had been working out of mailboxes, and these were promptly removed before the team migrated to a centrally automated portal for the tracking of all the procurement activities. “We also, in parallel, with the help from IT and the CIO, launched a new procurement portal on the corporate Veeam intranet, that all Veeam employees could then access,” says Graves.

Another area for concern lay in the processing of contracts, as Veeam was 100% manual. “In a company of our size and complexity it became

“ W HILE WE HAVE ACCOMPLISHED A LOT, EVOLUTION AND CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT NEVER STOPS” Natalia Graves VP Head of Procurement at Veeam Software w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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simply unsustainable, we outgrew our manual processes and so we launched the electronic signature initiative. We saw a stunning 72% improvement in obtaining digital vendor agreement approvals and signatures by implementing DocuSign. Just think about that for a moment. We’ve then taken it even further. As 100% of our contracts get adopted from a procurement side, we’re now starting to move this to sales contracts as well, so that’s a huge enabler.”

SECOND PHASE With the “low hanging fruit and no brainers” taken care of in the initial phase of the transformation, Veeam turned its focus to a bigger transformation. “Where do we go from here and how do we clean up and prepare for the growth that is happening at Veeam?” asks Graves. “What tools do we need, what platforms do we require? The conclusion we came to is that the company needed to invest in a full source-to-pay system. As I’ve mentioned we’ve gone through an extensive RFP, with many future users’ and stakeholders’ organisations participating in the RFP, and eventually 58

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we landed on Coupa, our spend management platform of choice.�

Veeam required an easy and mobile experience aligned for the corporate strategy to enable employees to buy goods and services quickly, safely, mobile, and cost effectively, while maintaining the overall visibility and control. “Coupa was definitely best-of-breed on the P2P side and as we were going through the RFP it just clicked with us. We launched in December 2018 for Souring and CLM modules and then January 2019 we launched with onboarding our pilot w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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“THE ROLE OF A CPO IS THE RO L E O F A B U S I NE SS PA RT N E R WHO DESIGNS A PROCUREMENT ORGANISATION THAT SUPPORTS BUSINESS PRIORITIES AND NEEDS” Natalia Graves VP Head of Procurement at Veeam Software

stakeholders’ groups.

Graves describes the digital transformation as a ‘three-way dance’.

“We kept a close eye on the parties involved with KPMG acting as implementer for the source-to-pay solution. “We have gone through a thorough RFP selecting Coupa, but it’s not all about the platform, it’s all also about the implementer, who we also selected through a RFP process.

We were also truly saved by Consus; another technology implementer who used their own AI tool to quickly clean up our large supplier database, suppliers and supply records

in the ERP, saving months of manual work.” Transformations don’t happen overnight. Just because the system is launched, it does not mean the transformation journey is complete.

Saurabh Mehta, President and GM, Consus Global, explains, “Veeam needed to quickly clean, deduplicate and group their supplier master in order to meet tight project deadlines.

Because Veeam’s procurement operations depended on it, we appreciated the high level of accuracy required from the output of this exercise. Using w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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our AI engine we were able to deliver clean and highly reliable data to Veeam within 2 weeks.”

An automated system allows companies to perform some basic things, quicker and better, but more than that, there is less of human error so resources can be utilised on tasks that matter more, the strategic tasks. “Then your resources can better align with the business stakeholders, to make sure you listen and hear where each stakeholder is going, so you can design your commodity strategies, and your procurement strategies around that. A procurement understanding of the business strategy is absolutely key. You need to understand that strategy and incorporate it into your ways of procuring. You have a successful procurement organisation when you’re able to listen and translate what you’ve heard into sourcing and procurement strategies.”

And so what is Veeam’s procurement strategy? “What’s important to us is not only the price – price is very important – but we are also driven by the overall quality of what we buy, the overall value,” she says. “We don’t

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Simpler.

Smarter.

Faster.

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Business Spend Management in the Cloud.

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Value. Delivered.

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always buy the cheapest, but we do expect the best price for what we buy, that’s for sure. We want to invest the right time to negotiate that. Best value procurement is a concept that some companies use heavier than others, but I think the elements of it should be present in just about any organisation. In my opinion, the procurement organisation is only successful when it is guided by at least some element of best value, coming from understanding the current business needs, combined with the ability to predict

what the future needs might be during said project implementation.”

Graves notes: “The first year our procurement evolution and transformation was focused on getting ourselves organised and setting the foundation”. Veeam procurement cleared the huge backlogs and put in the automation and undertook the sourcing and understanding of what its spend management needs looked like going forward. “Our transformation was possible because of our best-in-class people. While we didn’t always agree, teamwork across our large implementation

“ A S WE GO DOWN THE ROAD THIS YEAR, WE VIEW BEST IN CLASS NEGOTIATION PRACTICES AND AGILE PROCUREMENT PROCESSES BECOMING MORE AND MORE A PART OF VEEAM DNA” Natalia Graves VP Head of Procurement at Veeam Software w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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teams representing the enterprise was a must. Together we selected a platform, found an implementer, partnered with them, launched the system, and embedded into the company on a day-to-day. We’ve established some things from the category perspective, which didn’t exist before. We have category managers and specialists looking at each particular area, be it technology, be it marketing. This year is a year of completing the implementations, and further operationalising 66

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what we’re doing, as we turn into an improvement cycle of continuous improvement. While we have accomplished a lot, evolution and continuous improvement never stops. As we go down the road this year, we view best in class negotiation practices and agile procurement processes becoming more and more a part of Veeam DNA.” Graves believes that often times CPOs are still viewed as very transactionally focused and an internal administrative hurdle to overcome.

“ C LO U D STO R A G E I N R E A L L I F E ” W I T H T H E # 1 C LO U D D ATA MANAGEMENT PROVIDER, VEEAM

“CPOs are sometimes viewed as someone whose organisation will only make sure contracts are done with the proper terms, someone who runs controls and enforces policy around the buy-in process and someone who only cares about saving or cost. However, I think these so-called ‘administrative musts’ are just the foundation to the services the CPOs must offer to their companies. The role of a modern CPO implies taking the time to understand the business, and only then, design and run the

best possible practices relevant for that particular company. The role of a CPO is the role of a business partner who designs a procurement organisation that supports business priorities and needs, and that can adapt to the ever-changing landscape.”

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PTI Consulting driving technology transformation in the football stadium experience WRITTEN BY N a t h a n B e l l 68

MIKE BOHNDIEK, M A N AG I N G D I R E C TO R O F P T I C O N S U LT I N G A N D ERIC SOLEM, HEAD OF B U S I N E S S A P P L I C AT I O N S S P E A K E XC L U S I V E LY TO T H E I N T E R FAC E O N H O W T H E C O M PA N Y H E L P S S P O R T I N G O R G A N I S AT I O N S U N LO C K T H E I R S TA D I U M T E C H N O LO G Y T R A N S F O R M AT I O N S TO E N H A N C E T H E FA N A N D C U S TO M E R E X P E R I E N C E

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WHEN WE LOOK AT THE CURRENT STADIUM TECHNOLOGY TRANSFORMATION LANDSCAPE, WHAT ARE SOME OF THE CULTURAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE APPROACHES IN THE UK AND THOSE IN ITALY? Eric Solem, Head of Business Applications and Commercial at PTI: The fundamental difference concerns the ownership of the grounds. Here in the UK the rights holders (the teams) actually own the grounds or have 70

some major sort of participation in ownership whereas most grounds in Italy, except for a few cases, are owned by the local councils. And so, therefore, they’re fundamentally rented facilities. They’re not necessarily facilities that have had the experiential strategy piece built around it, and that’s a real struggle most Italian clubs have. AS Roma is a great example where they play out of a shared Stadia (Olympic Stadium) between arch-rivals (Lazio) and on match

D R I V I N G T E C H N O LO GY T R A N S F O R M AT I O N I N T H E F O OT B A L L S TA D I U M E X P E R I E N C E

day everything has to be quickly loaded in and then taken out (pre and post-match). Along with this you don’t have the added benefits of stadium tours, etc. This all adds up to the stadium not being designed the exact way you want them to be designed and you lose that sense of home, of it being the ‘Club Stadium’.

H OW D O E S T H AT I M PAC T T H E WAY T H AT T H E C LU B M A K E S T H E I R D EC I S I O N S O N W H E R E

T H E Y I N V E ST I N T H E T EC H N O L O GY I N F R A ST R U C T U R E AC RO S S T H E STA D I U M ?

Eric: Well, the majority of the clubs across Italian football are considered to be well behind the rest of Europe’s top leagues, mostly due to the lack of investment in stadia. I think that’s mainly due to the difficulty of just getting things done in Italy, especially the financing laws of certain criteria.

There’s a long history around why this hasn’t happened, but in the case of Juventus, they managed to rebuild a new modern stadium within their old stadium. Now, they’ve won the title eight years running and are one of the most successful teams in Europe and have new revenue streams from having their own stadium.

Most of the clubs want to follow this model and AS Roma are looking at the approval of a big project.

There are other examples of clubs like Sassuolo and Udinese who’ve done smaller redevelopment projects. There are a lot of other ones that are in the rendering phase, but I think it’s a wellknown and documented issue that Italian football revenues have been in decline since the late 90s when it was considered the Premier League across w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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Europe.

In the UK, you can look at Arsenal as a great example in 2006 with their new stadium and then there have been a lot of other redevelopments after that...all leading up to Arsenal’s friends across north London with Tottenham Hotspur’s state of the art brand-new stadium.

Mike Bhondiek, Managing Director, PTI: The challenge is about who owns the customer journey and that fan experience. It’s the hot buzz phrase right now and we need to look at what are clubs doing to drag people back off the sofa, back out of the bars and back out of watching broadcast TV into having the real stadium experience.

The real challenge across the last six/seven years is that broadcast packages have become cheaper and more accessible, whilst ticket prices have gone in the opposite direction!

Consumers now have the ‘game’ choice between the stadium experience or whether they prefer the experience at home! Which takes us to the connectivity with your device/technology. At home, the fans have more configurability of their surroundings 72

and are connected to quality Wi-Fi. They can look across the statistics, they can be on their device orchestrating what they want, something they’ll struggle to do across almost every stadium.

On the opposite end of that scale is the American-style whole day experience that some clubs have started to move towards in the UK. In nearly all cases the stadiums are owned outright by the club, therefore you’ve got full control of everything that goes on around the stadium (the very opposite of the Italian model of leaseholds of the ground) and with the charge of the digital agenda and social media,

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you’re able to drive awareness and engagement with what you’re doing around the stadium.

However, it doesn’t always flow through into reality and most people just take that digital experience in isolation. Clubs are looking to take more control of that end-to-end immersive experience, and that starts with the ticket purchase and runs through to the post-match survey, providing a real competitive advantage for those clubs who are doing this well!

Eric: I think that’s a very good point.

For a lot of fans, it doesn’t feel like going to your home ground, much more of a temporary rented stadia experience. All of which makes the competition of getting people off the couch, back into this connected area a big challenge for Italian clubs. If a fan doesn’t feel like they’re coming to a place where they belong (and part of the club experience) that whole journey sort of breaks down.

F R O M A T E C H N O LO GY PERSPECTIVE, ARE THERE ANY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE AV E R AG E R O M A FA N A N D T H E

“ At home, the fans have more configurability of their surroundings and are connected to quality Wi-Fi” MIKE BOHNDIEK Managing Director of PTI Consulting

A R S E N A L FA N . . .O R A R E T H E Y B OT H LO O K I N G F O R V E RY MUCH THE SAME THING? Eric: No, I don’t think there is any difference at all. The passion of fans is the same, they want to know everything about the club, so who trained on that day, who’s injured, what are the prospective new players coming into the club, etc. They want as much access as possible and with digital media broadcasting (YouTube) that is here together with social media, that has allowed that to happen. I think fans feel a lot closer to the club from that aspect, but you need that stadium piece to complete the circle.

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ARE THERE ANY DIFFERENCES I N H OW FA N S I N T E R AC T W I T H T H E STA D I U M ? D O T H E Y A R R I V E EARLIER, AND DO THEY SPEND D I F F E R E N T LY AC RO S S F O O D/ B E V E R AG E A N D M E RC H A N D I S E ?

Eric: Again, it comes back to the challenge of not owning your ground. For example, in Rome, we were restricted by security as to how we could operate the building and there wasn’t much possibility of a pop-up fan zone on match day to engage with the fans. I think you’ll find at some clubs like Juventus and Sassuolo there is more of an improved fan experience, but it’s still way behind the UK and the US model.

England is very much seasonal.

Typically, 85% of the top English football clubs tickets ever sold is on a seasonal basis. West Ham sold 47k season tickets in a 52k capacity stadium and Arsenal sold 47k out the 60k Stadium when they moved into Emirates. The model is built around banking money up front and then creating engagement on a different model.

A lot of clubs have evolved over the years, which has bred a match day routine that has now become a challenge for the club to change. People tend to do the same things they’ve always done, regardless of whether you change the experience for them

Mike: The fundamental difference when we talk about culture is more interesting when we compare the US versus UK/European models. The PTI Consulting trip to the US was interesting to compare the ticketing model, especially in baseball where there’s little scarcity and it’s a far greater number of matches than there are in football. Casual transient supporters who might come only a handful of times a year can get a ticket when they want, whereas the model in 74

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because it’s their habit/superstition and has become part of what makes match day for them.

So, you’ve really got to be focused to not only match the experience that those people have always had, but beat it, make it such a draw them to leave their usual pubs/restaurants and come back to the stadium. The US model is different because it’s built for around 30% being seasonal with the rest being more transient.

That new fan comes for the first time, they’re arriving at the ground early and they won’t have a preset routine. They want to engage with the fan part. They tend to spend across secondary revenue through

retail, through food and beverage and create that big experiential day.

Some fans want to lap up every last moment of this match day. How early could I get there? And how late can I leave?

People coming to have a great experience is one thing, but how do you create value to that season ticket holder that’s been going for many years and ensure they’re still getting the most value out of their match day? That includes the operational experience, so I can go to the pub until 14:55 and still be in my seat by kick-off. Then you wonder, can you make access control a seamless experience?

W H AT C A N T H E U K A N D E U RO P E A N C LU B S LO O K TO T H E U S F O R I N T E R M S O F W H AT T H E Y ’ R E D O I N G F RO M A T EC H N O LO GY P O I N T O F V I E W ?

Eric: In the US there’s a pretty constant rate of a refresh and that is actual physical experiential refresh.

You see big arenas and stadiums in the US now moving away from suites and putting lounge seats in.

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gone through this complete refurbishment of the club spaces to the lounge model.

I know that Roma/Italian/French fans, they want that new modern stadium experience. They want those experiential pieces to add to the match day excitement. But after that first season of the new stadium, how do you keep those same fans engaged? And how do you keep them coming back for more and not falling into the old habits of showing up half an hour before kick-off and leaving immediately after the game? The solution for this is through the creative use of technology.

Some of the experiential pieces can have the ability to plug-n-play different types of experiences when you have a new building, as it has the infrastructure built in to allow you to do that. So, you’re not ripping down walls and pulling out cables every time you want to do a new experiential piece. I think part of it is how clubs and the stadia usage evolve over time and refresh constantly maybe every three to five years or even at a greater rate of change.

You need to provide something new to compete with the wide variety 76

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“If a fan doesn’t feel like they’re coming to a place where they belong (and part of the club experience) that whole journey breaks down” ERIC SOLEM Head of Business Applications, PTI Consulting

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of entertainment choices that the casual fan has. So, the rate of technology change is going to continue to increase.

Mike: The UK in many ways has this technology challenge. In the US they tend to build the stadium within a greenfield site. It will generally be an out-of-town building, with the infrastructure designed to do this well from the ground up.

I’ve reviewed a lot of UK stadiums and for the most part, they have a pre-existing technology legacy that is way out of date. There was a wave that was built in the 1970s, another in the 1990s and the last wave the early 2000s. Today they’re all starting to get to that point where they simply don’t meet the technological needs of the modern fan. So, we’ve seen some clubs decide to do that refresh by rebuilding a stand, some do it by moving the whole stadium, others do it just by overlaying new technology services, all in an attempt to try and improve that fan experience.

So, yes “I’d like to use that fancy new club app” but you’re letting me down with the 1993 technology infrastructure unable to cope with the new app 78

sitting on top of it. Whereas, if you’re getting the US model, and you’re building from the greenfield, you’re building the infrastructure up from the base. So, starting with a really strong pyramid base and you’re on the way to better understand the full journey. You’re also building in some headroom for the next ten years and future proofing fan behaviour and expectation.

We see a lot of clients attempt to unpick their technology to try to get to that same position. However, if you’re in a stadium that was built in

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the early 1900’s it becomes more difficult to fully understand how technology can fit into this environment and as such creates a real challenge.

W H AT I S T H E K E Y T H I N G T H AT C LU B S N E E D TO LO O K AT TO C R E AT E E N GAG E M E N T TO D R I V E C O M M E RC I A L G ROW T H T H R O U G H FA N E N GAG E M E N T ?

Eric: We talk about the pyramid of technology, data, applications and connectivity. So, everyone feels the need to have a robust fan app. Yes,

everyone falls in love with these apps, but I think clubs need to step back and understand how this application works within your building, by looking at the infrastructure and looking at your connectivity.

Those three things need to be looked at holistically because at the end of that journey they’re going to produce the data that provides commercial growth or operational efficiency, which is what all stadia and all clubs should be looking for when they’re investing in technology

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Mike: My number one piece of advice is to look at your connectivity. The rate of change is increasing and services from the cloud are the type models your fans want from your infrastructure. Also, the ticketing platform and access control systems are the sorts of key items that surround your customer touch-point, so it’s fundamental that these systems work every single time!

Over the next two years, 5G will slot into view with a chance to commercialise this across Europe. New stadium projects will need to factor that future piece ahead because you need to decide whether it is Wi-Fi handing off to mobile data or create a spot for mobile data.

You also need to factor the connectivity needs of your match day experience for the back-of-house operations (such as scanning stock, retail warehousing, store replenishment) so the customer experience is amazing at half time and at the end of the match.

Fans expect the food & beverage tills to be built on cloud platforms and use contactless payment solutions.

The fan experience is always changing, and we will see mobile with augmented reality very soon, so how will you deliver that without connectivity? w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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5 DISRUPTIVE A I P L AT F O R M S IN FINTECH AND INSURETECH W R I T T E N B Y Kev i n D av i e s 82

NOWHERE, IS AI SHOWING MORE POTENTIAL THAN IN FINANCE AND INSURANCE. THE ABILITY TO PREDICT CUSTOMER B E H AV I O U R , STREAMLINE PROCESSES AND UNCOVER FRAUD, IS SEEING A BOON OF AI PROVIDERS WORKING I N T H I S S PA C E . H E R E A R E F I V E O F T H E M O S T DISRUPTIVE… 83

01 BioCatch

With data being the most valuable and sensitive of banking assets, its security is beyond integral. BioCatch is the industry leader for behavioural biometrics that analyse human-device interactions to protect users and data. Founded in 2011 by experts in neural science research, machine learning and cybersecurity, BioCatch is used by banks and other enterprises to reduce online fraud and protect against cyber threats, without compromising user experience, covering tens of millions of users to date.

The BioCatch platform analyses more than 2,000 behavioural parameters of user-device interactions to generate real-time risk scores based on a wide range of human and non-human cybersecurity threats. www

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02 AppZen

AppZen uses AI to audit 100% of expense reports, invoices and contracts in seconds by emulating human intelligence. AppZen to understand and audit every line on every expense report, receipt, invoice, contract, and travel document. The platform can also identify high-risk items from expense reports and invoices. A major plus, is its ability to work seamlessly with ERP, invoicing, and expense automation. AppZen was founded in 2012 and today works with more than 25 Fortune 1000 companies.

www

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03 HyperScience HyperScience processes structured and semi-structured documents, automating up to 80%+ of manual document sorting, data entry and rekeying out of the box. HyperScience offers a comprehensive overview and visualisations of system, workflow, and data keyer performance metrics at the document submission, form, page, and field levels. Document processing owners gain new insights into their teams and operations. www

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B E H A V OX S PA N I S H V O I C E C A PA B I L I T I E S

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04 Behavox

“We’re on a mission to help companies in the financial industry and beyond discover what’s really happening at the deepest levels of their organization.” Billed as ‘the world’s first behavioural operating system’ powered

by AI to discover hidden patterns across teams, departments and business activities, Behavox’s AI grasps the data’s context, understands its meaning, and reconstructs its source behaviour to reveal patterns across the entire organisation. www

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05

4Paradigm Paradigm is an AI technology and service provider from China – founded by former R&D employees of Baidu – which has completed thousands of AI landing cases in more than 20 industries including finance, internet, medical, government, energy, retail, and media.

4Paradigm has a machine learning technology that can accurately predict and mine data, help enterprises improve efficiency, reduce risks, and obtain greater commercial value. One of its particular strengths is in detecting fraudulent insurance claims. The “migration learning” initiated by the fourth paradigm founding team is considered by the industry to be “The next generation of artificial intelligence technology”. www

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EVENTS OF 2019

WRITTEN BY Kev i n D av i e s The technology industry can easily be described as the most mercurial and transformative. New ideas and innovations are fundamentally shifting the benchmarks of business performance, skills development and employment, among many other things. These technology conferences provide experts and industry professionals with a much-needed bird’s eye view of what’s happening now and what they can expect tomorrow…

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11.10.19

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HACKCONF HackConf is Bulgaria’s premier

08.09.19

software development conference, happening in Sofia. Organised “by developers, for developers”,

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IFA SUMMIT

it covers a wide range of software development topics, regardless of the tech stack. HackConf 2019 will

The IFA Summit is IFA´s think tank

include a full day of workshops on

dedicated to the digital future. Each

11th of October, and two parallel

year the event gathers leading think-

tracks of talks during both confer-

ers, global trendsetters and crea-

ence days - 12th and 13th of October.

tive visionaries who draw inspiration for the next exponential technologies and share their thoughts on the upcoming decade. The IFA⁺ Summit 2019 stands for new visions, disruptive ideas and inspiring entertainment for a data-scripted world.

The event is host to more than 550 international experts and leading professionals. Spend two exciting days at the convention and meet scientists, artists, developers, researchers and digital pioneers within your field. Join one of the most valuable conferences of the year at IFA in Berlin.

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25.10.19

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VEGAS BLOCKCHAIN WEEK The Second annual Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Technology event, World Crypto Conference (WCC), embrace major partnerships with other notable event organisers and work together to deliver Vegas Blockchain Week, from October 25th to October 31st, 2019.

Executives, enthusiasts, and professionals from global enterprise companies, financial service providers, investment firms, traders, advisory & auditing institutions, blockchain focused startups, academic institutions, government policy advisors, and application developers will descend on Las Vegas to discuss the most pressing topics facing our emerging industry.

WCC 2019 will afford 3 days of intense discussions, product demos, expert keynote addresses, panel discussions with industry thought leaders, and announcements from the best and brightest in the industry showcasing new products, ideas, and commercially viable applications of blockchain technology. w w w.th e in te r fa ce . n e t

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13.11.19

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BIG DATA LDN Big Data LDN (London) is a free to attend conference and exhibition, hosting leading data and analytics experts, ready to arm you with the tools to deliver your most effective data-driven strategy.

Discuss your business requirements with 130 leading technology vendors and consultants. Hear from 150 expert speakers in 9 technical and business-led conference theatres, with realworld use-cases and panel debates.

Network with your peers and view the latest product launches & demos.

Big Data LDN attendees have access to free on-site data consultancy and interactive evening community meetups.

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