novative solutions to real-world problems
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novative solutions to real-world problems
DECEMBER 2019
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INLOOP
Payment solution provider InLoop’s central concept is that “technology lets you solve problems that were previously impossible to solve,” as CTO, Zubin Appoo, explains
M
aking the complex simple for businesses, clients, schools, parents, healthcare provid-
ers and patients, InLoop provides simple, effective
and secure payment solutions across three brands: Flexischools, LanternPay and Nuonic. Zubin Appoo joined InLoop in 2018, following a 04
15-year tenure as Innovation Manager at WiseTech Global. With an enthusiasm for the power of education and the potential for technology to deliver better educational outcomes, he was particularly interested in the work that Flexischools does to revolutionise and simplify payment strategies for educational peripherals, such as school lunches, events and uniforms. Currently focusing primarily on Flexischools as his area of expertise, Appoo explains that InLoop uses technology to “deliver solutions to the education and healthcare industries that others have not been able to do”. In cutting through the bureaucracy and identifying a problem that needs to be genuinely solved, InLoop’s platforms achieve the vital objective of helping real people with real, everyday issues. For example, says Appoo, DECEMBER 2019
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INLOOP
“ With more focus on AI, machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing, more problems that were previously thought of as impossible can now be solved” 06
— Zubin Appoo CTO, InLoop
DECEMBER 2019
Flexischools works to address the fact that parents are busy, and thus do not always have the time to prepare nutritious lunches for their children or purchase bespoke school uniforms when required. “In this sense,” he adds, “it was really born out of making busy parents’ lives easier, and busy kids’ lives easier to manage.” Flexischools allows parents to store funds, order and purchase from a broad range of suppliers across each specific school campus, provisioning services such as school
CLICK TO WATCH : ‘LANTERNPAY FIXES THE PAIN IN TAC PAYMENTS’ 07 lunches, uniforms, events and ticketing,
and healthy eating content), and much
fundraising and stationery amongst
more. Using the trust already in the
other things. For the last decade, the
brand, Flexischools will be able to
platform has grown to support more
integrate these products and provide
than a million registered users across
parents with access to a much wider,
Australia and is now turning its atten-
and carefully chosen, selection of valu-
tion to enrolling a broader range of
able products and content relevant to
off-campus services to its base.
them via their existing accounts.
Currently in pilot, but rolling out from
With regards to LanternPay, Appoo
the beginning of 2020, Flexischools
explains that it is a solution built around
will allow parents to purchase part-
addressing problems around patients
nered maths and literacy products,
having easy access to the government
e-learning such as coding lessons,
healthcare funding that they are enti-
school holiday programmes, wellbeing
tled to. In Australia, many patients find
programmes (such as anti-bullying
it difficult to use their state-provided w w w.i nl o o p. com . a u
Global Research Survey Results: Leveraging Digital Transformation to Enhance the Customer Experience A
s digital technologies dramatically reshape in industry after industry, most organizations are pursuing large-scale changes to capture the benefits of these trends or keep up with competitors. New Relic, in partnership with Vanson Bourne, led a survey of 750 global senior IT leaders at enterprises with 500 to 5,000 employees in the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, and the United States. The study found that enterprises are making progress despite obstacles. IT leaders within these companies are finding that their digital transformations lead to significant challenges, such as increased pressure to prove the business value of said transformations. Interestingly, almost 50% of the global respondents admit that problems in their software are more likely to be discovered by their customers than by their own teams.
Drivers of digital transformation From banks to retailers, donut shops to automotive manufacturers, even traditional business-to-business industries such as suppliers of construction materials are transforming the buyer’s journey along a digital path. Our survey revealed that, overall, business leadership and the C-suite understand and support digital transformations (47%). Satisfaction levels are increasingly high, with 90.7% of respondents saying that the results of their transformations either met or exceeded their expectations. These findings are promising and show that executives are willing to embrace new technology; in fact, on the journey to digital transformation, more than half believe that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML)
will make their roles easier. While the general sentiment on AI and ML is still up for debate across various industries, nearly 88% of our respondents agree that artificial intelligence and machine learning are essential to how they run their digital systems. Additionally, according to nearly 75% of the business leaders surveyed, migration to the public cloud is at the core of any digital transformation. Almost half of the respondents (46%) agree that cloud migration provides necessary benefits, but 54% believe that cloud computing does not offer the efficient resource usage it promises. So, many are harnessing the power of the cloud and AI to fuel digital transformations despite implementation obstacles, but they still recognize that those challenges must be addressed.
Ease the burden of digital transformation and customer experience Global organizations are indeed making significant digital leaps, but undertaking a full-scale digital transformation isn’t easy—especially for long-established companies not traditionally associated with software innovation. Our survey found that such organizations all face similar challenges.
Disjointed teams During transformation, not all parts of the organization move at the same speed. When teams and employees are stuck between using legacy systems and new technology, collective progress is held back and interoperability issues arise. Overall, 37% of global respondents identified disjointed teams as one of their top challenges.
A shortage of skilled employees According to 35% of respondents, one of the biggest challenges they face is finding the right employees with the right skills to drive their digital transformations. Additionally, if employees feel that a new technology makes their work harder, not easier, they resist its implementation. Training workers to understand how a new technology will ease their workload is of utmost importance for leaders who want to reduce the stress of their teams.
Restricted budgets 47% of technology leaders in our survey said their No. 1 obstacle is restricted IT budgets, followedby resistance to shut down or sideline legacy systems. More than a third report that they do not receive adequate support from non-tech leadership. Lead the next phase of digital transformation.
What business outcomes do we want to achieve for our customers? What skills do we need to keep up with a transformation, and with our competitors? While the challenges that attend a digital transformation vary, the survey indicates that teams who observe and act on insights from data collected throughout their systems will have a far better chance to truly scale and realize the benefits of modern technological advances. It’s inevitable that organizations need to adapt to changes in technology. But assessing why those changes are necessary, keeping the customer in mind, and preparing them selves for challenges along the way is the path to building the foundation they need for a successful digital transformation.
Learn more about the findings in the full press release: Global Survey Reveals Key Challenges and Technologies Expected to Drive the Next Phase of Digital Transformation.
INLOOP
“ We’re not trying to be a bank, or to simply solve banking-related problems, we’re working to eradicate real issues and challenges in education and health, the biggest social sectors in the world” 10
— Zubin Appoo CTO, InLoop
funding to pay for private services
“We’re not trying to be a bank, or to
such as physiotherapy, pharmacy or
simply solve banking-related problems,
psychiatry, due to existing payment
we’re working to eradicate real issues
systems that can often see funds
and challenges in education and health,
take several months to reach the ser-
the biggest social sectors in the world.”
vice provider. Through LanternPay,
Naturally, the nature of the issues
this process is streamlined. Service
that InLoop targets presents several
providers will receive the payment
challenges to the business. To be
within 24 hours, making them far
successful, Appoo maintains, a focus
more likely to accept the funding
on assembling the right team and
as a form of payment.
developing an appropriate manage-
“Our primary goal is to always help
ment strategy, whilst effectively
people manage their lives and deal
implementing the right technologies,
with real-world problems,” Appoo says.
are essential. To this end, he describes
DECEMBER 2019
E XE CU T I VE PRO FI LE
Zubin Appoo Zubin is Chief Technolog y Off ice at InLoop, where he has responsibilit y for delivering technical leadership across the Flexischools, LanternPay and Nuonic businesses. Zubin leads agile teams that are building innovative solutions to solve complex problems in the education and healthcare spaces. He prides himself on being ‘hands-on’ — and a leader by example, rather than a manager. he has over 20 years’ experience in the technology sector across a range of businesses — banking, supply chain and logistics, and now education and health. Whilst a technologist at heart, a key passion of his is also to build teams that love doing what they do. He does this by a constant focus on removing obstacles, focusing on their strengths and building an immense amount of trust between team members. Zubin is married to Rakhshandeh, has three kids — Zayden, Rylan and Aleera and lives in Sydney, Australia.
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INLOOP
2005
Year founded
HQ
Manly, Sydney Australia
110
12
Number of employees himself as a “hands-on CTO” and encourages close collaboration at all levels within his team. Hierarchies are less important than a good team structure, he believes, and an ethos of mutual respect, trust and leading by example are integral to his, and the company’s success. “The team at InLoop challenges ideas and brings personal experiences to the table – everyone is expected to bring ideas to the business, and those ideas are always listened to and explored,” he affirms. “Whatever the specific areas of focus, I always DECEMBER 2019
encourage our team members to think ‘what are the core problems we are trying to solve, and how can we solve them in the most streamlined, efficient, usable way?’.” Harnessing technologies and working with great tech partners has been an essential factor in growing InLoop’s innovative product portfolio. “Technology allows us to solve issues that people previously haven’t been able to solve or had taken a lot of time to solve, in a much more streamlined, efficient, accurate and high-quality way,” Appoo explains. “With a greater focus on AI, machine learning, deep learning and natural language processing, more problems that were previously thought of as impossible can now be solved.” InLoop uses several partners to achieve this goal, including cloudhosting by AWS to manage its servers. Using cloud-hosting negates the need for high-cost, high-maintenance physical servers and allows the team to put more time into the customer experience. The business is also heavily invested in Microsoft technologies. New Relic is a cloud monitoring and w w w.i nl o o p. com . a u
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INLOOP
analytics tool, which InLoop uses to monitor its systems and ensure that up-time is maintained, performance and order rates are high, and any anomalies are identified. An integral factor in delivering any InLoop service is cybersecurity. Both the health and education sectors are open to vulnerability and are dealing with vulnerable people, as Appoo explains: “There is an immense amount of focus on privacy regulation and ensuring data is not leaked, including 14
financial information.” In order to achieve that, InLoop partners with Braintree, a PayPal company, which focuses on providing secure
“ Whatever the specific areas of focus, I always encourage our team members to think ‘what are the core problems we are trying to solve, and how can we solve them in the most streamlined, efficient, usable way?’” — Zubin Appoo CTO, InLoop
DECEMBER 2019
payment solutions. For example, there is no need to store any credit card information, PayPal accounts, or other financial details within the Flexischools product, as this data is managed by the Braintree payment gateway. This is a seamless service, but ensures that financial information is entrusted with a third party whose expertise is in payment security. Other personal information stored by InLoop is kept secure in databases hosted inside
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AWS, with strong security protocols
young division that, according to
and reviews undertaken by a dedicated
Appoo, will focus on gaining further
security team.
traction in the market and encourag-
Looking ahead, Appoo continues
ing greater participation from new
to focus on driving InLoop’s service
providers and schemes. In continuing
portfolio forwards. In modernising the
to use technology to deliver solu-
Flexischools programme, for exam-
tions that change lives for the better,
ple, the team is looking to deliver an
InLoop will remain at the forefront of
improved user experience and to be
the provision of innovative answers to
responsive to the growing market
real-world problems.
by rapidly introducing new features. In contrast, LanternPay a relatively w w w.i nl o o p. com . a u
InLoop Ground Floor 5 Victoria Parade Manly NSW 2095 Australia T +61 1300 239 911 www.inloop.com.au