BC-EMEA-June-2021

June 2021 | businesschief.eu

EMEA EDITION

British Army: Embracing digital transformation with THEIA Santander UK: Creating a digital version of corporate and commercial banking BKN301: San Marino’s first neo bank leveraged by blockchain

Deloitte’s Abdi Goodarzi on the Kinetic Enterprise

Why we need more female CFOs

Ready For The Future.

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The Business Chief Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

SCOTT BIRCH

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANIČKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH

PRODUCTION EDITOR

JANET BRICE CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE MARKETING MANAGERS

ANDREW STUBBINGS SAJANA SAMARASINGHE

PROJECT DIRECTORS

KARL GREEN THOMAS LIVERMORE JAMES RICHARDSON MICHAEL BANYARD JOE PALLISER JAKE MEGEARY KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR RYAN HALL BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO STUART IRVING CRAIG KILLINGBACK JAMES BERRY JORDAN HUBBARD

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JAMES WHITE RICHARD TURNER MARK CAWSTON

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITOR'S LETTER

BEING SUSTAINABLE If digital transformation was the business buzzword of 2020, fuelled by the COVID-19 pandemic, then 2021 is fast shaping up to be The Year of Sustainability.

Look around you. Everyone from governments to multinational organisations that previously would have been viewed as enemies of the environment are flashing their sustainability credentials.

“These are exciting times with the promise of opportunity.

And that’s as good a reason as any for Business Chief to undergo its own digital transformation”

Even more are wearing those as badges of honour, but it’s essential to understand that even the term sustainability has undergone its own transformation in the last two years – in no small part instigated by social issues from Black Lives Matter to the Me Too movement.

Diversity & Inclusion are top of the corporate agenda, and how you run your business is now under more scrutiny than ever. That extends far beyond the four walls of the boardroom, putting executives directly responsible for every business in their supply chain.

These are exciting times with the promise of opportunity. And that’s as good a reason as any for Business Chief to undergo its own digital transformation. Following this latest June issue, we will be back in September with a fresh look, new editions, and updated agenda as we better reflect the audiences we serve and represent.

Consider it our own sustainability initiative – making the Business Chief brand stronger for a brighter, exciting, fairer future.

SCOTT BIRCH BUSINESS CHIEF MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

scott.birch@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

businesschief.eu

5

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 14 Big Picture 16 The Brief 18 Global News 20 People Moves 22 Timeline:

From Seed to Speed 24 Legend:

Paul Polman 26 Five Mins With:

Janthana Kaenprakhamroy

52

Leadership & Strategy

Lessons From a Crisis: Leadership With Heart and Humanity

30

62

Abdi Goodarzi on the Future of Enterprise Performance

Embracing Digital Transformation with THEIA

Deloitte

British Army

110

Santander UK

Creating a Digital Version of Corporate and Commercial Banking

96

Corporate Finance

Why We Need More Female CFOs (and how to reach that goal)

136

Digital Strategy

Digital Selling: Reinventing B2B Sales For a Hybrid Future

148

166

Expertise Across the Data Centre Life Cycle

The Biggest Cyber Security Threat to Your Organisation Could Be You

Mercury

Technology

Top 100 Leaders in Technology September 2021 To be announced at the Technology & AI LIVE Event NOMINATE NOW

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

a

176

Macmillan

Reimagining the Publishing Supply Chain landscape

194

Human Capital

How Tech is Transforming HR in a Hybrid Workforce

202

Banque Saudi Fransi

Local Banking Done Differently

216 Telia

Shaping the Future of HR

232

BCA Marketplace

Driving a Digital Journey for Smooth CX

CONTENTS

248 atNorth

Foregrounding Sustainability in Modern Colocation Data Centres

262

BKN301

San Marino’s First Neo Bank Leveraged by Blockchain

274

9Mobile

Working to Ensure Nigeria Stays Connected

286

300

Managing Disruption on a Digital Transformation Journey

Solutions Driven by Edge Connectivity

GfK

Edzcom

316

Virgin Mobile MEA Making Mobile Better

328

Vodafone Ghana

Digital Journey Key to Employee Connectivity

348 BetKing

Bringing a Data-Centric Perspective to Gaming

360

Excel Redstone At the Forefront of IT Infrastructure

376 GBG

Building Trust in a Digital World

CONTENTS

390 Unit4

404

Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority

Enabling Practices of the Future

Data-driven Management to Curb COVID-19

418

432

Enabling Cyber-Resilience in the Era of Emerging Technology

France Gets Uptime-Certified Tier IV Colo Data Centre

BSI Cyber

Future Facilities

446

460

Powering Data Democratisation with Modern Decision Platforms

Leverage the Power of Data with Infosys Consulting

Cognizant

478

Tuenti Ecuador

Growth Through Market Disruption

Infosys Consulting

490 BCG

Dr Stefan Gstettner Talks Supply Chain

BIG PICTURE

14

June 2021

Africa’s social scene Africa

I love this song!

Nocola Katie

Twitter is set to enter Africa for the first time, opening an office in the growing tech hub of Ghana, as it looks to one of the world’s fastestgrowing markets. Not a bad call considering half of Africa’s population is under 19 years old, mobile technology is booming, and the digital economy has near limitless potential in a country that is clearly untapped terrain for tech firms. Just 11% of the population use Twitter, as of April 2021. Facebook, which debuted in Africa in 2015 with HQ in Johannesburg has grown its users there to 54% and has recently announced plans to open a second office – in Lagos, Nigeria, the continent’s biggest tech hub and dubbed Africa’s Silicon Valley. Not to be outdone, TikTok continues to grow its share in Africa via local partners including its African influencer platform partnership with South Africa’s Webfluential in 2020 and more recently the launch of TikTok For Business in South Africa. businesschief.eu

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THE BRIEF “I believe that the reliance on remote working has brought an extra layer of humanity to the way we experience our professional lives” Max Morielli

President for Europe, Accenture Interactive  READ MORE

“AI empowers leaders to make far more informed decisions about a candidate, unearthing their true potential and eliminating the risk of hiring based upon relationship” Andrew Duncan UK CEO, Infosys Consulting  READ MORE

“Ransomware will continue to rise but crypto-jacking will explode” Jean-Michel Azzopardi

Founder and CEO, Kralanx Cyber Security, Malta  READ MORE

16

June 2021

BY THE NUMBERS

The IT investments organisations in the Middle East and Africa will make this year and next. Gartner forecasts IT spending across MENA to total US$171bn in 2021 and US$178bn in 2022

$237,827 Communications Up 6% on 2020

$55,717

$28,378

Devices Up 9.9% on 2020

IT services Up 16.5% on 2020

$16,662

$10,697

Enterprise software Up 24.7% on 2020

Datacentre systems Up 9.6% on 2020

Beware the risk of risk blindness The pandemic has exposed the failure of many boards to predict risk, says John Harte, Integrity Governance. So, what are the pitfalls and how can organisations effectively prepare for risk?

Why shareholder value matters CEOs should put more focus on shareholder value, argues Andy Clayton, founder of Scale. So, how can businesses improve value without losing purpose?

Everyone’s talking about…

GORILLAS

That’s because it’s Europe’s fastest-growing unicorn, from startup to unicorn in just 10 months.

How did that happen?

Well, it’s a speedy grocery delivery company launched during the pandemic, and so has attracted decent investment, and fast.

How decent?

Following a seed round just a few months into launch (May 2020) which secured €1.2m, Gorillas raised a phenomenal US$53.1m in Series A funding seven months later (December) and then 10 months on, in March 2021, a further US$290m in Series B funding, leading to a US$1bn valuation and unicorn status. Both A and B rounds were led by hedge fund Coatue, with Tencent getting in on the action in Series B. Aren’t there lots of these grocery startups out there?

There are, but Gorillas is a bit different. Firstly, it started in Germany, Berlin, where the space hadn’t yet been cornered, though Gorillas has now expanded to 12 cities Europe-wide.

Secondly, it taps into the fact that people’s lives are increasingly spontaneous, and no longer limited to a weekly grocery run. Clever, right?!

Oh, and it’s super-fast, guaranteeing delivery by riders in just 10 minutes.

I hope they’re paying their riders the going rate?!

Gorillas is a bit different to gig economy models like Deliveroo as they pay riders directly. But, in light of recent criticisms laid against Deliveroo, Gorillas announced it would reward its rider crew and warehouse staff with US$1m in bonuses.

 MONZO ON MENTAL HEALTH Digital bank Monzo becomes just one of two UK organisations to recognise the emotional impact of miscarriage, introducing a policy that allows employees two weeks’ paid leave following a pregnancy loss.  HSBC PROFITS UP HSBC has reported US$5.8bn in first-quarter profits, a nearly 80% jump, with the bank releasing US$435m of the US$8.8bn it put aside to cover bad debts during 2020.

 GOOGLE FINED IN ITALY Italy’s antitrust authority slapped a US$124.86m fine on Google for the competition law charge of ‘abuse of dominant position’, specifically for Google refusing to allow Enel X Italia to develop a version of its JuicePass app compatible with Android Auto.  KPMG LEADERSHIP The first woman to lead a Big Four accountant in the UK, KPMG’s Mary O’Connor has exited the consulting firm after being passed over for appointment as the company’s permanent CEO.

W I N N E R S Jun21

L O S E R S businesschief.eu

17

GLOBAL NEWS

1

UNITED STATES

M&A activity hits record high Global M&A activity hit a record high in the first quarter of 2021, with North America reaching its highest market share in 14 years netting 54.4% of global deal value and accounting for more than two-thirds of the US$200.9bn in global IPOs with SPACS playing a large part in US dealmaking.

18

June 2021

2

UNITED KINGDOM

Tech game-changer for Premier League The Premier League kicks off a new era of football with the adoption of Oracle Cloud to give its fans worldwide a gamechanging experience. Using Oracle’s data and analytics and machine learning technologies, the League will deliver groundbreaking statistics, insight and data-rich stories to fans on TV during matches and across social media channels.

3

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

Food Tech Valley to debut Harnessing emerging technologies and modern farming techniques, the UAE government’s newly announced R&D-focused Food Tech Valley is set to not just fast-track selfsufficiency in food production for the country, while ensuring sustainability and waste reduction, but also spearhead ground-breaking food tech innovation globally.

4

INDIA

Big business ups the ante on aid to India With India’s death toll from COVID-19 surging, big business is putting its money where so much of its business is. US and Chinese tech titans Google, Microsoft, Salesforce, Facebook, Xiaomi and Vivo commit millions towards recovery efforts; Amazon partners with Temasek to airlift oxygen concentrators; Wall Street giants Goldman Sachs and Blackstone together pledge US$58m; and Indian startups LogiNext and Zomato roll out innovative delivery features.

5

SINGAPORE

Reimagining global payments Three investment giants, JP Morgan, DBS and Temasek join forces to bring the existing infrastructure of global payments into the digital era. Under new tech company Partior, they are developing a first-of-its-kind industry platform that will utilise blockchain to fast-track value movements for payments, trade and foreign exchange settlement.

businesschief.eu

19

PEOPLE MOVES LISA MCGEOUGH FROM: WELLS FARGO TO: HSBC WAS: HEAD OF INTERNATIONAL, EVP NOW: HEAD OF GLOBAL BANKING EUROPE Currently one of Wells Fargo’s highest-ranking female leaders, Lisa McGeough will relocate to London from New York in July to take the top job at HSBC Europe. With a 30-year career in financial services, that’s taken her from the trading floors of Wall Street as a 21-yearold in the 80s to executive boardrooms worldwide, McGeough has secured industry honours as well as inclusion into the prestigious Committee of 200.

Starting out in markets finance roles, McGeough had eight years in leveraged finance at Morgan Stanley, before moving to Wells Fargo where she’s spent the last 15 years in more than a handful of leadership roles, including co-heading corporate and investment banking, heading up securities EMEA, leading the industrials group and the financial institutions group, and recently as head of international overseeing banking governance and cross-border activity. At HSBC, McGeough will spearhead client coverage across Europe, oversee regional product teams, and tackle risk management.

20

June 2021

"I talk a lot about the need to treat your career like a company, and in doing so you have to become the CEO of your career"

NICK ATHANASI FROM: DELOITTE MIDDLE EAST TO: FTI CONSULTING WAS: PARTNER, MIDDLE EAST FORENSICS TECHNOLOGY PRACTICE NOW: HEAD OF MENA TECHNOLOGY DIVISION

GUILLAUME MOTTE FROM: SEPHORA TO: LVMH FASHION GROUP WAS: PRESIDENT OF EUROPE AND MIDDLE EAST NOW: DEPUTY CEO With a Master’s in Economics from Cambridge and an MBA from Insead, Motte could have done pretty much anything, and he did, moving from finance (BNP Paribas) to consultancy (McKinsey) to fashion retail (LVMH), most recently fashioning a 22-year career focused on the development of brands, in retail and digital.

Known for his strong knowledge of markets and customers across Europe and the Middle East, Motte has several CEO roles at fashion retailers under his stylish belt, including at French retailers Celio and Jennyfer and Al Tayer Trends in Dubai. Joining LVMH in 2018, as President at Sephora, he will now lead the growth of LVMH’s Fashion Group, including brands Celine and Givenchy.

One of the foremost experts in digital forensic technology, Nick Athanasi has been involved in it since the earliest days of 3-discovery and digital investigations. Kicking off his career with Marsh & McLennan in the 80s, he then co-founded litigation support specialist G3 Consulting, subsequently acquired by FTI in 2006, and where Athanasi was MD for eight years. He then moved to Deloitte, UK and Middle East, where he most recently spent several years heading up its Middle East forensics tech practice. He now re-joins FTI, but this time in Dubai, bringing with him continued innovation, deep experience in both regulatory and data-related matters, and more than 30 years in technology and financial services consulting.

businesschief.eu

21

TIMELINE FROM

SEED TO SPEED Investment boomed in the first quarter of 2021 with well over US$4bn raised, marking the fifth straight quarter that Europe has recorded an increase in venture capital invested. We chart the 10 largest European financings of Q1 2021, from January 1 to March 31, with half of the firms fintechs, and the majority London-based.

Rapyd

Wolt

API-based fintech-as-aservice platform Rapyd raised $300m in a Series D financing round led by Coatue, giving the startup a $2.5bn valuation, which it has since doubled to $5bn.

Starting in 2014 as a food delivery app with 10 restaurants in Helsinki, five years on Wolt has expanded to 23 countries and 120 cities, and into groceries and retail with an aim to take on Amazon.

JANUARY

22

Checkout.com

LendInvest

New year, new funds for these two Londonbased fintechs. Payment solutions provider Checkout.com tripled its valuation to $15bn following a $450m Series C round led by Tiger Global, becoming EMEA’s most valuable venture-backed business. Checkout has since opened a NYC office, invested in Saudi fintech Tamara, and founder Guillaume Pousaz listed on Forbes 2021 Billionaire’s list.

While the UK’s leading platform for property finance, LendInvest, secured $603.7m investment from JP Morgan to finance its buy-to-let product, having previously landed $241m from HSBC, food delivery firm Wolt closed its $530m Series G funding round led by Iconiq Growth, giving the Helsinki-based unicorn a total of $856m funds raised.

June 2021

Klarna

Starling Bank

Getir

Buy now, pay later platform Klarna secured a massive US$1.29bn in a late-stage funding round backed

by Sequoia Capital, which it claims was four times oversubscribed, and which follows its last $650m round six months. The Swedish firm is now valued at $31bn, continuing its reign as the highestvalued private fintech in Europe and second highest worldwide.

Leading UK digital bank Starling secured $376m in a round led by Fidelity, which has since been bolstered by $70m from Goldman Sachs, taking total Series D funding to $448m. This delivers a valuation of $1.9bn, just as the challenger bank expands Europe-wide and eyes M&A. AI patent intelligence platform

Turkish ultra-fast grocery delivery firm Getir raised $300m in Series C funding co-led by Sequoia Capital and Tiger, tripling its valuation to $2.6bn in less than two months, and making it the most valuable startup in MENA. This follows a $128m Series B round in January, with funds helping Getir expand to London, Germany, France and the Netherlands.

MARCH Hopin

PatSnap

Blockchain.com

London-based Zoom rival Hopin raised $400m in Series C funding, tripling its valuation in just one year of launch to $5.65bn with investors including Andreessen Horowitz and Salesforce Ventures. The virtual events platform scaled at speed, from 16,000 events in March 2020 to 175,000 three months later.

PatSnap snapped up $300m in Series E funding led by SoftBank and Tencent, leading to a raised total of $450m. The platform now provides the world’s largest organisations, from Dyson to Spotify, with the patent insights and intelligence needed to take products to market.

The cryptocurrency wallet provider secured $300 million in Series C funding led by DST Global, Lightspeed VP and VY Capital, following its $120m round a month back led by Google Ventures.

Valued at $5.2bn, the Londonbased startup claims a market share of 28% of all bitcoin transactions. businesschief.eu

23

LEGEND

PAUL POLMAN If ever there was a businessman who practices what he preaches, it’s Paul Polman, former CEO of Unilever and one of the loudest sustainability voices in the corporate world

A

nyone worth their sustainability salt knows the impact Paul Polman made at Unilever. CEO of the consumer goods giant for a decade (20092019) and the first outsider to lead the Dutch-Anglo company since its founding in 1929, Polman developed an ambitious plan, to separate the company’s growth from its overall environmental footprint, and to increase its positive social impact. It was a risk, but one that ultimately paid off.

Unilever’s pioneering and nowfamed 10-year Sustainable Living Plan not only helped the company reach 1.3bn people through its health and hygiene programmes, but also delivered consistent top and bottom-line growth, both positioning Unilever as a sustainability leader and demonstrating that a longterm, multi-stakeholder model can exist alongside excellent financial performance.

In fact, under Polman’s decade-long leadership, Unilever was one of the best performing companies in its sector.

This delivery of – and commitment to – long-term, sustainable capitalism isn’t something Polman left at Unilever’s door, however.

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June 2021

13

The number of honorary degrees Polman has under his oh-so-green belt

Polman not only pulled off Unilever’s pioneering plan, proving ‘corporate can be clean’ to the wider business world, but he played a significant role in developing the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, and established the Business and Sustainable Development Commission, whose flagship report mapped the economic prize for firms that align with the goals.

And such significant ‘responsible business’ achievements have resulted in a significant number of awards, not least France’s prestigious Chevalier de la Legion d’Honneur for his role in the historic 2015 Paris Agreement, a British Knighthood, and 13 honorary degrees.

Since his retirement from Unilever in 2019, Polman has dedicated himself to advocating the Goals he helped develop with the co-founding of Imagine – a social venture that aims at galvanising industry leaders around the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals.

So, when he’s not working with organisations to help them realise business as a force for good or rallying business leaders into purposeful action, he’s actively mentoring young leaders and putting his money where his mouth is, both as an active philanthropist and a charity founder (Kilimanjaro Blind Trust).

And with the pandemic having “put us back probably 20-30 years on the sustainable development goals” as Polman recently told CNBC, with whom he co-founded the ESG Council in April, Polman is even more fired up in convincing business leaders to accelerate their corporate responsibility efforts. Kudos to that.

“WE CANNOT CHOOSE BETWEEN GROWTH AND SUSTAINABILITY – WE MUST HAVE BOTH”

5 MINUTES WITH...

JANTHANA

KAENPRAKHAMROY Founder and CEO of awardwinning insurtech firm Tapoly, Janthana Kaenprakhamroy, moved to London from Sweden as a teenager with just a suitcase and £300. Now, she’s heading up Europe’s first on-demand insurance platform for the gig economy, innovating and leading with inclusivity Q. WHAT DO YOU DO?

» Tapoly provides a full stack

of commercial lines insurance specifically for SMEs and freelancers, as well as a SaaS solution to connect insurers with their distribution partners. We build bespoke, end-to-end platforms encompassing the whole customer journey, but can also integrate our APIs within existing systems.

Q. HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

» I try to be as inclusive a leader as

possible. I’m committed to creating space for everyone to shine. Many of the roles at Tapoly are performed by women and I speak at industry events to encourage more people to get involved in insurance/ insurtech. I think it’s important to retain values to support learning and development, like reliability, working hard and punctuality.

Q. WHAT’S THE BEST LEADERSHIP ADVICE YOU’VE RECEIVED?

» Build your network and seek

advice. As a leader, you need smart people around you to help you grow your business. It’s not about personally being the best, but being able to find resources and get help where needed.

“ THE PAST YEAR HAS BEEN CHALLENGING, BUT IT HAS ALSO PROVEN THE IMPORTANCE OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN INSURANCE” 26

June 2021

“ THE PANDEMIC HAS PROVEN THE IMPORTANCE OF INCLUSIVE AND FLEXIBLE LEADERSHIP” Q. HOW DO YOU SEE LEADERSHIP CHANGING?

» I think the pandemic has proven

the importance of inclusive leadership so that everyone feels supported and valued. It’s also shown the importance of being flexible. This flexibility has also been important when supporting employees and leaders should continue to embed this within their organisations.

required, it was much harder for insurers to adjust who had not embedded technology within their operating processes. This demonstrates the importance of what we are trying to achieve at Tapoly in driving digitalisation in insurance and making communication between insurers and distribution partners seamless.

Q. THEY SAY ‘FROM EVERY CRISIS COMES OPPORTUNITY’, WHAT OPPORTUNITIES DO YOU SEE?

Q. WHAT ADVICE WOULD YOU GIVE TO YOUR YOUNGER SELF JUST STARTING OUT IN THE INDUSTRY?

but it has also proven the importance of digital transformation in insurance.

When working from home was

take (calculated) risks and make sure you raise enough money to get you through the initial seed stage.

» The past year has been challenging,

» Start sooner, don’t be afraid to

businesschief.eu

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THE FUTURE

OF TRAVEL

eDreams ODIGEO is one of the world’s largest online travel companies and one of the largest e-commerce businesses in Europe. We spoke to the business’ CEO, Dana Dunne, to get his view on the future of travel and the importance of tech innovation.

WHAT SETS EDREAMS ODIGEO APART FROM ITS COMPETITORS? Tech expertise and AI sit at the heart of our business, and our constant innovation in this area has enabled us to become a market leader offering unparalleled content to travelers across the world. We provide access to the entire travel market, including over 274,000 flight routes and 2.1 million hotels worldwide; this gives customers access to the largest combination of bookable options on a single platform. This scale of choice is not available elsewhere in the market and is a true distinction from other companies in the travel sector. Our ability to anticipate customer demand, be mobile first and develop new unique products, such as our subscription programme Prime, alongside the choice and convenience we offer has seen us become number two for flights in the global travel market.

WHY IS TECH INNOVATION AND AI SO IMPORTANT TO THE BUSINESS? Tech and AI are absolutely vital to cater to traveler needs and remain relevant within the travel sector. At eDreams ODIGEO we are proud to be continuously innovating and leveraging our tech capabilities to bring new products to market. We use AI to compare and combine billions of data points from the entire travel ecosystem to build our customers the ideal travel experience tailored to them. We are able to make up to eight billion pricing calculations per hour and compare millions of options in a matter of seconds. This all enables us to anticipate demands and offer personalised travel plans to consumers. eDreams ODIGEO has consistently been at the forefront of tech innovation, this has enabled us to provide customers with new products and provide a seamless end to end experience.

The travel journey starts for customers from the time they begin searching for their trip, this feeling will be heightened in the months ahead as people begin to make plans to reconnect with family and friends.

One product we are extremely proud of is Prime. It was the first travel related subscription program to be launched and we recently reached the

one million subscriber milestone. Prime gives consumers access to flights and hotels at highly competitive prices, presents travelers with the most relevant travel combinations and ultimately encourages loyalty.

WHAT IS EDREAMS ODIGEO’S CORE FOCUS IN THE YEAR AHEAD AS WE EMERGE FROM THE PANDEMIC? As a business we will continue to focus on the areas which took priority over the last 12 months: our team, our customers and our business. It has been absolutely critical that we have got all three correct as the travel industry dealt with an unprecedented global situation. We are immensely proud of how our team adapted to remote working.

As a company operating in the travel industry there were significant challenges and pressures, everyone in the team was incredibly engaged and committed to working together to the benefit of our customers.

At the beginning of the pandemic, we launched a weekly presentation and Q&A with me and other members of the management team, this is an initiative we will keep in place as it’s been a fantastic forum to give business updates and for our team to ask questions. The most effective way of bringing our creative brain power together has been through ‘online festivals’. Each ‘festival’ has a different theme and employees can dropin to different sessions to share ideas and feedback on concepts. We try hard to make sure eDreams ODIGEO is a positive and motivating place for people to work. It is so important that our teams find their roles enjoyable and are with a company that inspires them.

Our customers have faced incredible disruption throughout the pandemic, with over two million canceled flights and refunds needing to be managed. Over the last 12 months we have worked incredibly hard on behalf of our customers, often working with airlines that have made it difficult to authorize and process refunds, causing significant delays for our customers.

Our self-service platform was enhanced to provide customers with a self-service online tool that enables them to autonomously manage their bookings, including changes and cancelations.

We will continue to focus on using our tech expertise to give customers the ability to seamlessly plan their end-to-end journey on one platform, from flights, to hotels, car hire, train and other ancillaries – our OTA model is well-placed to capture the consumer preference for convenience.

Our business has retained high levels of liquidity and a strong balance sheet throughout the pandemic. We have spent the last 12 months ensuring we are well-positioned to cater to post-pandemic traveler priorities. We have done this through product development and innovation, and this will continue to be our core focus in the months ahead.

WHAT DO YOU THINK IS GOING TO BE THE BIGGEST SHIFT IN TRAVEL OVER THE NEXT FIVE YEARS? We are optimistic about the future and expect travel to rebound to pre-Covid levels.

The rollout of vaccination programs around the world is incredibly promising, and we have already seen how responsive travelers are to announcements and progress, with an uptick in search enquiries being seen as a result. We also saw last summer how willing people were to travel when restrictions allowed. Consumers quickly came back into the market and almost 50% of our bookings returned within two months. This year with vaccination programs underway across the world we expect a stronger bounce back.

The shift from offline to online has been accelerated due to the pandemic and this has translated into how our customers are accessing our products. Mobile bookings make up 58% of total bookings, up from 18% in 2015. The use of mobile also reflects changing booking habits brought about by the pandemic, with last minute bookings for travel on the rise.

The other big shift we will see is the increased shift to automation, as health and hygiene will continue to be a big factor in travelers’ decision-making. With health and hygiene front and centre people will be keen to complete journeys through airports autonomously via mobile and computer enabled security checks.

www.edreamsodigeo.com

DELOITTE

30

June 2021

Deloitte's Abdi Goodarzi on the Future of Enterprise Performance Deloitte’s Abdi Goodarzi discusses the Kinetic Enterprise, Business Agility, the Rise of Connectivity, Ecosystem Co-Innovation, and the Evolving Role of the CXO WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

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DELOITTE Abdi Goodarzi

32

June 2021

DELOITTE

An Early Start It’s 6 a.m. Pacific Time when Deloitte Consulting Enterprise Performance (EP) leader Abdi Goodarzi steps into his Costa Mesa, California office to start the day.

Immediately, in conversation, one can feel the optimism – and there’s no shortage of reasons why.

Within Deloitte Consulting, Abdi leads an integrated portfolio of offerings with a robust set of digital transformation capabilities that enable enterprises to solve strategic and tactical business challenges and evolve into industry-leading competitors. The EP portfolio, which includes ERP platforms, supply chain and finance solutions, and IT optimisation services – provides an enterprise-wide lens, addressing the rapid, cross-business function change occurring at the heart of the modern enterprise. With COVID-19 response and recovery at the forefront of enterprise planning, the necessity of business resiliency and adaptability is more resonant than ever.

The impact his teams have on clients is represented in an expanding list of annual accolades. EP’s SAP practice recently won four SAP Pinnacle Awards, including Partner of the Year. The Oracle practice was named the Global Cloud Transformation Partner of the Year; the Emerging ERP practice was named the Infor Global Integrator of the Year; the Workday practice won two Partner Innovation Industry Awards; and the Government and Public Sector practice won the SAP Innovation Award for Business Transformation. And that’s just looking back over the past year.

Before delving further into the world of EP, we ask Abdi how his background shaped his path to the leader he is today. Born in the Middle East, Abdi shares his experiences living in Turkey, Canada, and Boston, before settling in southern California.

“Early on, I was surrounded by very strong women who were instrumental in making me who I am,” he says. “I learned a lot about being strong, being able to face challenges in life, being straight ahead, resilient, passionate and authentic.”

Abdi continues, “I consider myself a global citizen. Exposure to many cultures has helped me shape my views about life, my clients, the work that I do.”

“You recognise that each language and every culture has its own sophistications and benefits. Similarly, when you bring a collection of individuals from diverse backgrounds with the right set of capabilities and knowledge together to solve complex problems, you quickly realise that you have to think globally in order to bring minds together, leveraging the uniqueness of each point of view.”

As the conversation continues, the significance of this statement permeates across Abdi’s leadership principles and EP initiatives, during a time when organisations and their people had to come together to navigate a way through one of the most significant disruptions ever experienced.

With introductions completed, Abdi’s boundless sense of energy continues with a tour of six unique themes across the landscape of EP – why EP matters and agility lessons from the COVID-19 crisis, the rise of the Kinetic Enterprise™, co-innovation across ecosystems, the changing roles of CXOs, embracing the power of diversity and inclusion, and the power of teams. “ I consider myself a global citizen. Exposure to many cultures has helped me shape my views about life, my clients, the work that I do” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER businesschief.eu

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Alex: A Life in a Digital World

Why EP Matters, Lessons from the COVID-19 Crisis The first of Abdi’s themes ties the shocks of the pandemic to new understandings of enterprise resiliency and agility.

The battle against COVID-19 was in its early stages when EP jumped into the front lines.

The practice helped a syringe manufacturer enable their operations to deliver COVID vaccines by conducting a detailed capacity andand smart factory analysis on multiple manufacturing lines. The team delivered its rapid assessment virtually, using remote collaboration tools, and leveraging rich manufacturing data to identify near-term capacity improvements of as much as 20 percent to help increase supplies of this critical COVID-related medical device.

EP assisted another client in coordinating an ecosystem strategy across labs, universities, and businesses to support regional testing, including development of a new supply chain 34

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model for testing supplies. The end result of the project was the client’s ability to rapidly and safely address critical risk groups.

“With COVID-19, it was about crisis management,” says Abdi. “We saw that organisations that had invested in more advanced technologies earlier had better success dealing with this disruption. It took a lot of technical capabilities in the background to go overnight into 100 percent virtual operations.”

“A magnifying factor on enterprise disruption requires a look back. For the majority of the transformations completed in the ‘90s and early 2000s, it was about integration, consolidation and tech adoptions.

They did not consider or adopt the key elements needed to thrive or survive in a rapidly changing environment. The nonstandardisation of data, and resulting complex processes and systems, did not translate well to sudden changes in working methods.”

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“ For the post-COVID world, it will be all about speed, scale and insights,” Abdi says. “Some organisations are in a much better position today because they had the agility to adjust, modify and manage disruptions”

ABDI GOODARZI TITLE: DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER LOCATION: CALIFORNIA, USA Abdi Goodarzi leads Deloitte Consulting’s Enterprise Performance practice. He has more than 25 years of diverse experience in large-scale global ERP enabled business transformations, Cloud, Data Management, UX, AI and Automation.

ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

Since joining Deloitte in 1998, he has successfully served many Fortune 500 companies with their large-scale transformations. He was pivotal in establishing and growing Deloitte’s SAP global delivery centers in India.

Abdi serves several high-profile Deloitte client CxOs as a trusted advisor. In his previous role as the Leader of the US SAP practice, he was instrumental in growing Deloitte’s SAP practice, earning many accolades with SAP.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“For the post-COVID world, it will be all about speed, scale and insights,” Abdi says.

“Some organisations are in a much better position today because they had the agility to adjust, modify and manage disruptions.

We have a new understanding of business resiliency today. Assisting enterprises ‘immunise’ from disruptions – creating agility for organisations to deal with unforeseeable events at a much faster pace in the future – is not just what we deliver, but where we walk the walk.”

“The investments we’ve made in technology over the years kept us ahead of trends and able to convert to 100 percent virtual operations overnight. Software, operations, and our people moved rapidly over foundational infrastructures that were pre-designed for a remote-collaboration model. Single-sources for data, accessible from anywhere, ensured our teams remained connected. In effect, we had vaccinated our business to become immune to certain kinds of disruption, which minimised the impact of the pandemic on our client projects. Now it’s clear to everyone that investments in business continuity and disaster recovery take on a whole new significance. Going forward, organisations will need to continue to find ways to vaccinate their businesses to stay immune to future disruptions. We are doing this work with our

Abdi has presented at many business and technology conferences and authored several articles, including the “You Got Cloud?” article in the WSJ CIO Journal in 2014.

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“ Many of our client conversations used to focus on cost reduction and making operations more manageable; today, the urgent discussion is about the acceleration of connectivity and automation between data, systems, processes, capabilities and the workforce. Autonomous businesses and processes are the must-haves for competitive relevancy today and tomorrow” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

The Kinetic Enterprise: Built to Evolve

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clients today, and continue to invest in the forefront of innovation and technology, demonstrated by our Smart Factory capabilities and the Kinetic Enterprise framework.”

A Smarter World and the Rise of the Kinetic Enterprise “Let’s talk about future-state capabilities that are transforming the foundations of businesses today,” Abdi says. “Smart stores, connected patients, drones, smart factories, autonomous vehicles, and intelligent farms – these are all part of our smarter world vision, and they all have two elements in common: They all need to connect to enterprise systems to process and analyse data, and they demand integration of cloud and AI into every aspect of the business.”

“There will be a race for AI and automation over the next five to 10 years,” Abdi continues. “Whoever wins that race will be

the ones that will thrive in their respective industries. Many of our client conversations used to focus on cost reduction and making operations more manageable; today, the urgent discussion is about the acceleration of connectivity and automation between data, systems, processes, capabilities and the workforce. Autonomous businesses and processes are the must-haves for competitive relevancy today and tomorrow.”

Underscoring EP’s commitment to connected devices and automation is the launch of an operating Smart Factory demo site in conjunction with Wichita State University. The Factory’s end-to-end smart production line demonstrates the art of the possible through advanced manufacturing methods and technologies. The functioning factory site makes digital transformations real by facilitating conversations with clients on how to merge leading technologies with operations. Clients are encouraged to

Supply Chain: We are Connected

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Business and technology services providers are no exception to the accelerating change in business models. In a world before the pandemic, EP had already leveraged the Kinetic pillars as the driver of innovations and investments in the shift to digital delivery capabilities and platforms. Within EP’s competitive landscape, the flexibility in these platforms and assets to provide value and insight as client’s business needs evolve, became a leading differentiator. One of EP’s

KINETIC CASE STUDY: USING THE CLOUD TO EVOLVE CLEAN

DID YOU KNOW...

explore the art of the possible, leaving with new perspectives on solving challenges, and a viable pathway to implementing change.

Tinged with excitement, Abdi summarises the significance of the Smart Factory with one question: “How do you create an entire end-to-end smart operation around your factory that is enabled by cloud and AI, and dramatically changes your positioning against your competitors? Let us show you.”

For EP, smart factories are just one example of the power of connectivity to transform an industry. Abdi highlights that technological disruption is a constant, and addressing continuous evolution in the frame of capability discussions is key for the success of the modern enterprise. Where once enterprise systems were “built to last,” the rapid acceleration of technological change required a new way forward – toward enterprises that are “built to evolve.” In conjunction with its ecosystem partners, Deloitte has defined the new “North Stars” of the enterprise – Clean, Intelligent, Inclusive, and Responsive. These are the four pillars of the Kinetic Enterprise, an enterprise perpetually in motion.

“With the Kinetic Enterprise framework,” Abdi states, “we ask – how do you build intelligent enterprise business platforms, inclusive of an ecosystem of applications and microservices, that can responsively scale on demand?”

Referencing recent business adaptability challenges, Abdi highlights, “Historically, the Clean pillar was one of the biggest challenges in technology adoption and transformation programs. The technology was customised to meet individualised and siloed business expectations – which led to sub-optimisation of the overall business. The ‘clean’ core is a big factor in creating fungibility and agility – nimble platforms that allow you to scale as your business changes.”

Technical debt from excessive customisation can inhibit the fastmoving enterprise. In addition, business customisation from ineffective business alignment only serves to slow the enterprise down. Clean requires resolving legacy issues and standardising capabilities; an enterprise better adapted to future disruption and continuous innovation.

A Fortune 30 Oil and Gas client engaged Deloitte to create a single source of financial truth for enterprise leadership, in advance of a larger transformation journey. The implementation of SAP’s S/4HANA Central Finance solution enabled the enterprise to have an end-toend view of Financials across the globe.

The solution was built using the Kinetic Clean approach, as the client wished to move to Cloud in the near future.

Deloitte’s delivery included a cloudcapable reporting strategy on top of the platform, and a transformation structure that enabled automated migration of applications across business landscapes, ensuring minimal customisations and process consistency.

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Reduce tech and operational debt and the need for customization.

Use the best possible combinations of data with tech and talent to make insight-driven business decisions.

Use the power of new platforms to enable frictionless scalability and speed to win in the market.

Alignment with industry and cross-industry business capabilities enables a framework for target states and comparable business outcomes.

Measures of business outcome in standardised form via the Enterprise Value Methodology enables outcome benchmarking.

Leveraging best-of-breed solutions to achieve optimal alignment with business objectives.

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Awards and Recognition: 2020-2021

Partner of the Year - Customer Experience (Large Enterprise) Partner of the Year - Delivery Excellence Partner of the Year - SAP S/4HANA (Large Enterprise) Partner of the Year - SAP SuccessFactors Solutions (Large Enterprise)

OPN Global Cloud Transformation Partner of the Year

Financial Services Industry Innovation Award Retail & Hospitality Industry Innovation Award

INFOR PARTNER EXCELLENCE AWARDS - GLOBAL SYSTEM INTEGRATOR OF THE YEAR

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early investments was the integrated Deloitte Ascend™ platform. Blending leading industry insight with digital platforms and automation, Ascend today delivers leading practices, benchmarking data, and solution frameworks across nearly 35 industries.

“Knowledge of each industry and the way an individual process is expected to operate or drive value in any given industry is a differentiator,” he says. “Ascend provides a digital platform to access that information, which accelerates and enriches our clients’ insights, enabling us to collaborate closely to define the best fit technology solution.”

For EP, the Kinetic framework has become a unifying beacon across both clients and ecosystem partners. Its unifying language, centred on value-driven capability delivery, is written in jargon-free terms that allow the business and technology to speak on the same plane.

Ecosystem Integration and the Importance of Innovation Abdi’s third theme is the necessity of coordination and innovation across the solution ecosystem. Crossing technology platforms, manufacturers and academia, Abdi views EP’s role as the ecosystem integrator, creating a universal language that creates enterprise-level alignment.

Expanding on EP’s ecosystem approach, Abdi highlights a familiar principle.

“As individuals have differing perspectives, so do each of our ecosystem partners – a software company can think about planning in a different way from someone who does in-house manufacturing at a factory,” he says.

“As long as you can understand and connect those perspectives, you can solve their problems in a much faster way.

“We bring our industry knowledge of what our clients will need today and in the future.

EP 101: Ecosystem Orchestrator

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“ We bring our industry knowledge of what our clients will need today and in the future. Our alliance partners bring the technical platform.

We then work with our ecosystem partners to help define foundational and enhanced expectations of the software. For us, the co-innovation approach is key” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

Our alliance partners bring the technical platform. We then work with our ecosystem partners to help define foundational and enhanced expectations of the software.

For us, the co-innovation approach is key,” he states.

“What we want to deliver to our clients is an implemented solution of the ideal version of the software – one that they can continuously evolve and operate as their business and processes transform, rather than replace, every few years.”

For Abdi, a successful ecosystem integration results in “maximum value for our clients by blending the ideal solution

of business needs, ecosystem capabilities, innovation and scalability, with a common understanding of how the solution assists the enterprise in becoming Kinetic.”

Abdi adds, “I keep mentioning this word ‘innovation’ – it has to be part of any organisation's ecosystem strategy.

Otherwise, you will not see a rise and decline is the only direction.”

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THE SMART FACTORY

DID YOU KNOW...

The Smart Factory Advantage A smart factory is a highly digitized and connected production facility that uses technologies such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things and robotics to manufacture products. Smart factory investments can boost productivity and efficiency while simultaneously driving costs down.

The Smart Factory @ Wichita Deloitte has convened a world-renowned ecosystem of solution providers, technology innovators, academic researchers, and futurists to launch The Smart Factory @ Wichita, an Industry 4.0 immersive experience center that will demonstrate how smart factory technologies are reshaping business today and offer hands-on learning opportunities on how to best partner human and technological capabilities on the shop floor. It’s an immersive experience for shop floor managers, CXOs, ecosystem partners, and students, providing tangible guidance on transforming manufacturing

processes for the next normal, integration into business operations, and building believers out of smart factory skeptics.

Deloitte and Wichita State University are constructing the brand-new facility on Wichita State’s Innovation Campus, which will include a full-scale production line, dedicated space for select ecosystem sponsors and experiential labs exploring smart factory capabilities. The facility will be a net-zero impact smart building on a smart grid featuring 60,000 square feet of sustainable space.

The Smart Factory @ Wichita will make digital transformations real by demonstrating how to merge existing technologies with new innovations, sparking a dialogue about how companies can accelerate their journey towards scalable and sustainable capabilities.

For more information on The Smart Factory, visit TheSmartFactory.io

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Evolution of the CXO, AI / Cloud as Value Multipliers For innovation to become core to an organisation’s strategy, CXO understanding and support of enterprise capabilities and platforms is critical. For his fourth theme, Abdi reflects on recent CXO conversations as he discusses the evolution of enterprise executive roles.

“First, the role of CXOs for every organisation has completely changed,” he begins. “Understanding the technology footprint is a part of every business transformation. CXOs today face the 46

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“ The only way that enterprises can reach these value multipliers is by taking advantage of more innovation and technology, such as cloud and AI, while establishing future-proof businesses and processes” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

necessity to understand the accelerating and mission-critical infusion of technology and innovation in everyday business processes.

DELOITTE

Culture, and Diversity and Inclusion In conversation, Abdi has addressed the critical elements for the enterprise of today and tomorrow, so far discussing the Kinetic Pillars, the necessity of innovation, a common language across expanding ecosystem choices, and value assessment.

For Abdi, there is another factor for executives to consider that will define long-term success for their organizations – their people. Abdi begins: “People should not be a siloed or a second-tier factor in any organization. People are at the heart of everything.”

INNOVATION ROUNDTABLE FOR ALLIANCES AND CLIENTS: EP’S ANNUAL CLIENT SUMMIT EP’s Client Summit is an exclusive annual event that brings together 200+ attendees comprised of C-level executives from selected enterprises, Deloitte leaders and EP alliance partners to discuss and share success stories and innovations across industries. Featuring industry and thought leader luminaries, the forum encourages ideation from shared understanding of successes and lessons learned as enterprises navigate change.

DID YOU KNOW

Every company will need to think of itself as a technology company – the traditional boundaries of the CIO now encompass other CXO roles.”

“Second, the days of focus on cost management as the sole factor are over.

Today, defined value generation is equal to cost-related outcomes. Many of our clients are asking for more investments from us and skin-in-the-game concepts to make sure those outcomes are generated at the end of complex investments.”

“We completely agree and support our clients’ perspectives. Why would you do a finance or supply chain transformation if it is not impacting your shareholder value, if it is not creating efficiencies and productivity for your people, and it is not improving and advancing your culture? You have to create those mappings and ties before you can invest in anything.”

“Third, technology itself has become a lot simpler to adopt and implement. We've gone from an age when it was important to have the right technology to where you can have many choices. As a result, CXOs’ mindsets about what they were expecting out of their investments are also changing – the amplification of outcomes and value that are driven out of these investments – those expectations are increasing by considerable multipliers.”

Abdi addresses the new CXO expectation, stating: “The only way enterprises can reach these value multipliers is by taking advantage of more innovation and technology, such as cloud and AI, which are dramatically changing the ways an enterprise can advance their business.

The more you invest in these concepts as enablers of innovation, the better you empower your business against disruptions and align your future enterprise goals.”

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The Future of Enterprise Resiliency

“In the context of transformations, investments in people have not been on par with investments in systems and processes.”

Abdi continues, “There's no point in having all the technology if you don't have the responsive culture and programs in which people can adapt to new ways of doing things, where the technology becomes a part of the company working alongside the people.”

“There has to be an appropriate level of investment in your most valuable asset to take advantage of the full spectrum of capabilities. This is not an afterthought for us – the people side is of such significance that we have underscored our AI practice with the theme ‘Age of With’ – humans with machines. We bring our Human Capital teams to the table to help us with the change management brought about 48

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by industrial and societal changes, with our Future of Work solutions.”

Abdi shifts to a wider angle, and discusses his own organization’s culture: “In addition to the investment in skills, as a leader of any group of people today, you have to understand what is happening in society – the differing points of view, expectations and passions of individuals working in your organisations, including their social views.

You have to have that clarity and that openness. Here at Deloitte, we consider diversity, equality, and inclusiveness a vital part of our cultural fabric.”

Abdi reflects, “That culture was what initially attracted me to Deloitte – our ability to provide the diversity, opportunities and performance expectations that get the best out of me and every person who is here.”

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“ In addition to the investment in skills, as a leader of any group of people today, you have to understand what is happening in society – the differing points of view, expectations and passions of individuals working in your organisations, including their social views. You have to have that clarity and that openness. Here at Deloitte, we consider diversity, equality, and inclusiveness a vital part of our cultural fabric” ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER

As part of Deloitte’s culture, Abdi and his team share how internal learnings go beyond keeping up to date on the latest platform updates and emerging technologies. The initiatives include open internal dialogue wherein individuals can share experiences of bias, inclusion principles and the changes that everyone needs to bring to the table to have a comprehensive set of values.

“I consider myself a ‘people person,’” he says. “You can learn a lot from everyone around you. Inclusivity includes understanding various cultures in different parts of the world. We want to make sure we have a good understanding of what those cultures are, how individuals in those cultures operate, and how we can honour our unique values. This is how we include the individuals and groups that constitute a global firm – we want them to feel like they belong to the organisation and have the best

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talent experience, regardless of where they live, what they believe, and what they do.”

The Power of Teams and Authenticity in Leadership As the sun begins to rise above California’s Santa Ana Mountains, Abdi discusses his final theme on the power of teams. He frames his approach referencing his passion for soccer and professional sports.

“First, what we do in the world of consulting isn’t a tennis match,” he says. “It’s a team sport.

It requires you to depend on others while they depend on you. It doesn’t matter who’s the captain and who’s the player – you have to trust the team, you have to respect the team and you have to empower the team. That’s been my mantra: Operate a team format.”

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“Second, every leader brings a different approach. Maintaining that authenticity to your perspective is important. The power of differentiated perspective is what turns a group of people into a powerful squad uniquely qualified to deliver exceptional outcomes.”

“Third, when a team is invested in the same cause, you must take the time to understand, respect and support what each party brings to the table. Creating a common language that is inclusive of all parties is integral to success.”

Abdi summarizes, “Then - collectively between our teams, our clients and ecosystem partners, we can solve any challenge ahead.”

The conversation ends as it began – a highenergy view into the world of tomorrow,

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Looking Forward: An Integrated World

“ When a team is invested in the same cause, you must take the time to understand, respect and support what each party brings to the table. Creating a common language that is inclusive of all parties is integral to success.

Then - collectively between our teams, our clients and ecosystem partners, we can solve any challenge ahead”

leveraging decades of experience and a people-centred mindset.

The ever-evolving path of enterprise evolution will require a big thinker, an innovator, a tactical mindset, and someone that can communicate across organisational borders, boundaries, and languages. For Abdi, the road ahead seems a natural fit.

“This is what I love about my role – the ability to leverage who I am,” Abdi concludes. “I love problem solving, dealing with complex challenges, and collaborating with people. For me, the glass isn’t half full.

It’s full – every day.”

ABDI GOODARZI

DELOITTE CONSULTING ENTERPRISE PERFORMANCE LEADER businesschief.eu

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

LESSONS FROM A CRISIS:

LEADERSHIP WITH HEART AND HUMANITY

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Sally Helgesen Sally Helgesen

Max Morielli Amy Lui Abel Francine Katsoudas Accenture Interactive The Conference Board Cisco

When it comes to holding onto leadership gains made during the pandemic, prioritising people is a must.

Business Chief gains insight into leadership lessons learned from a crisis WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

W

hen talking with a leadership expert recently, she recalled a conversation she’d had back in May last year with the CHRO of a large American energy producer. The CHRO had explained how the company’s rigid prohibitions on working from home had made it tough for the company to attract and retain talented women. But now, forced by the pandemic to open up to remote working, the company’s executive team had witnessed no fall-off in productivity and decided that those rules were ‘going to change’.

Welcome to ‘leadership lessons learned from a crisis’ number one. Because while the COVID-19 crisis has given rise to more than a handful of headaches and hurdles, it has also inadvertently delivered on more than a handful of positive leadership gains.

Satish Shankar Bain & Company

Leadership lesson 1: Flexibility equals greater diversity The leadership expert in question, Sally Helgesen – cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership (and author of How Women Rise) – told Business Chief that this acute observation by the energy company suggests that “while the pandemic has had a well-publicised negative impact on working women, the aftermath may prove a boon”. It may also prove helpful to skilled workers whose careers have depended upon access to scarce visas, thereby “making the workforce more global as well as more diverse”.

It’s been a similar story for Fortune 500 firm Accenture Interactive, with remote working having forced the company to change both how it hires and how it enables its people to realise their full potential.

“There are ways in which the remote working revolution has been positive for diversity”, Max Morielli, President for Europe at Accenture Interactive tells Business Chief. For example, where some individuals may not have been able to attend a daily 9-5 office role, leaders are now able to draw on talent no matter where it is in the world.

“At Accenture Interaction, we aim to work with empathy and celebrate our differences as our greatest strength and the changes brought about by the pandemic have allowed us to create a more diverse, vibrant working experience for our talent,” Morielli says. businesschief.eu

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When Not If: Responding When Your OT Network Suffers a Ransomware Attack Thursday - June 24th REGISTER NOW

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Do Good to Lead Well Through Crisis

Sally Helgesen TITLE: WOMEN’S LEADERSHIP EXPERT COMPANY: SALLY HELGESEN INDUSTRY: INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER LOCATION: NEW YORK

But this is not the only leadership lesson learnt. According to Cisco’s Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Francine Katsoudas, the challenges of the past year have resulted in people looking for support more than ever, and this has led them to the unlikeliest source of guidance – their company.

“In learnings from 2020, global industry analyst Josh Bersin noted that ‘communication, listening, providing authentic feedback, and taking action on employee issues’ are perhaps the most important leadership and HR practices of all,” Katsoudas says.

Leadership lesson 2: Bring your humanity to work During a year where people have lost family members, jobs, and felt more isolated than ever before, leaders have been forced to be flexible, show compassion and give employees leeway and support. It’s also given leaders a chance to connect more deeply, to show they care, to be both vulnerable and authentic, ultimately, to be human in their leadership.

Sally Helgesen is a women’s leadership expert, speaker, consultant, and bestselling author, including of The Female Advantage: Women’s Way of Leadership and How Women Rise. cited in Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership Helgesen delivers leadership programs and keynotes in corporations, universities and associations worldwide.

“ While the pandemic has had well-publicised negative impact on working women, the aftermath may prove a boon. It may also prove helpful to skilled workers whose careers have depended upon access to scarce visas, making the workforce more global as well as more diverse” SALLY HELGESEN

INTERNATIONAL SPEAKER, SALLY HELGESEN businesschief.eu

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Max Morielli TITLE: PRESIDENT FOR EUROPE COMPANY: ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE INDUSTRY: CONSULTING LOCATION: ITALY Max Morielli is president for Europe at Accenture Interactive and as such ais responsible for defining the strategy and vision, overseeing business growth and building practice and team across the region. Based in Italy, Max has a wealth of experience and passion in helping clients transform their business through digital technologies.

For Satish Shankar, Regional Managing Partner of Bain & Company for AsiaPacific, the COVID-19 crisis has “reminded us of the power of authentic human engagement with our employees”, something Shankar believes is acutely needed in times of turbulence, but that is often quickly forgotten when things go back to normal.

“The best leader will maintain that proximity, transparency, vulnerability and personal storytelling to stay deeply connected with their teams post pandemic,” Shankar tells Business Chief.

Vikram Bhalla, Senior Partner at BCG Henderson Institute (BCG’s think tank) says that moving forward leaders should 56

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leave behind such leadership stereotypes as what he calls the “confident decision maker” and the “leader from the front” and instead bring their humanity to work.

What employees and others are looking for, he explains, is an authentic and fully accessible human being and “this means sharing much more of yourself, and not just your successes, with many more people”.

Bhalla asserts that leaders must engage with their teams and act with compassion and understanding and must make themselves more visible, available, and accessible through demo days with teams, joint working efforts, and live brainstorming sessions.

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

“ I believe that the reliance on remote working has brought an extra layer of humanity to the way we experience our professional lives. There is an opportunity here for leaders to leverage that in order to instil an open, positive, and freeing professional culture within their organisations” MAX MORIELLI

PRESIDENT FOR EUROPE, ACCENTURE INTERACTIVE

Leadership lesson 3: Prioritise employee wellbeing Acknowledging that one of the main challenges for leaders moving forward is that of workplace mental health, Amy Lui Abel, VP of Human Capital at research think tank The Conference Board, tells Business Chief that in a post-pandemic world, “leaders will need to know how to communicate with and lead their teams while demonstrating greater levels of empathy, compassion, and self-awareness”.

She adds: “The mental health challenges in our workforce will continue for a long time and will require support. Leaders can help their build resilience to thrive and create an environment of psychological safety and trust.” businesschief.eu

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It’s time to get selfish and put your people first A global company with 70,000+ employees across almost 100 countries, Cisco prides itself on being an employeecentric culture with a purpose of powering an inclusive future for all, and the crisis has further amplified the need for this. Here, Francine Katsoudas, EVP and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, discusses the power of empathy in leadership.

Empathy is a superpower. We know that progress happens when we see the world through others' eyes. Proximity is a way of being. When we get proximate to someone else’s experience, especially those different than our own, we grow, develop new perspectives, and engage more effectively with others. In our work, then, we need to navigate how to listen, not tell; how to make space for things we may not agree with; and how to expand the space we make for our people.

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Empathy will change the way in which we engage with each other.

Today, trust in leadership is table stakes, and building this culture of trust has to start at the top. At this moment, CEOs and CHROs have the incredible opportunity to institutionalise inclusive leadership, marked by empathetic teams and leaders, and align to a broader societal purpose to compete for and retain top talent. Doing so is good for your employees, good for your company, and ultimately, good for the world.

Francine Katsoudas EVP and Chief People, Policy & Purpose Officer, Cisco

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Amy Lui Abel TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN CAPITAL OF RESEARCH COMPANY: THE CONFERENCE BOARD LOCATION: NEW YORK Amy Lui Abel is Vice President of Human Capital of research think tank The Conference Board. She leads research efforts focusing on an organisation’s human capital strategy, capabilities, needs, and performance that supports broader business objectives.

“ In the post-pandemic world, leaders will need to know how to communicate with and lead their teams while demonstrating greater levels of empathy, compassion, and self-awareness” AMY LUI ABEL

VICE PRESIDENT OF HUMAN CAPITAL OF RESEARCH, THE CONFERENCE BOARD

And many companies are already planning to do so, with 77% of outperforming company CEOs recently reporting plans to prioritise employee wellbeing even it if affects nearterm profitability, according to IBM research; and 50% of firms planning to increase their HR resources to help manage employee wellbeing and mental health, according to research by KPMG. Other organisations (and leaders) are already leading the charge in this. Take Cisco.

Katsoudas explains that when Cisco started its conversation with employees around mental health a few years ago, the leadership team had hoped it would contribute to breaking down the associated stigma. “In return, our employees started telling us about their families and their own struggles. This set the groundwork for us to expand these offerings during the pandemic, giving our people the businesschief.eu

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LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

Purpose, people, planet Satish Shankar, Regional Managing Partner of Bain & Company for AsiaPacific, shares with Business Chief three positive changes that he feels the COVID-19 crisis has brought about and urges business leaders to consider carefully how they lead the recovery in a post-pandemic world.

1. Strong sense of corporate purpose COVID-19 confirmed what years of Bain & Company research has told us – that a strong sense of corporate purpose is critical to a company’s ability to navigate change.

Purpose is the anchor that provides context and focus, and the glue that holds the organisation together through flux. Being able to define, articulate and renew that purpose was a differentiator through the crisis and will continue to be critical in the leadership toolkit going forward.

2. Much greater agility In a Bain study conducted at the height of the crisis last year, 50% of respondents said their corporate teams had become more

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agile, with better prioritisation of project objectives and scope. Leaders were also reported as being more willing to take bold risks, and more tolerant of failures. Leaders should reflect on what enable this agile approach and embed that more deeply into their BAU organisation.

3. A focus on ESG Finally, COVID-19 has provided tailwinds to the sustainability/ ESG agenda in many companies, creating more urgency around employee wellness, sustainable supply chains and the general need to identify and navigate environmental risks. Leaders should seize the moment to propel their sustainability agendas forward coming out of the crisis.

Satish Shankar, Regional Managing Partner of Bain & Company for Asia-Pacific

LEADERSHIP & STRATEGY

support they need. This focus on the whole person is something that is now a core belief, and we will continue to care for our employees in all aspects of their lives.”

To help achieve this, especially within a hybrid working environment, organisations are increasingly looking to how digital tools can be used to improve communications and aid collaboration, with 78% of CEOs saying they will continue to build on their current use of digital collaboration and communication tools.

And while many people don’t believe ‘digital’ and ‘humanise’ belong in the same sentence, Katsoudas argues that they can. “When we leverage digital correctly, we can create a more human experience where we see our people better, understand gaps, inequities, and needs, and drive fresh insights.”

Leadership lesson 4: Empower and engage employees Working remotely has automatically meant that leaders are less hands-on, and that can be a good thing, explains Morielli, noting that “people work best when they feel that trust and belief”.

He adds: “The reliance on remote working has brought an extra layer of humanity to the way we experience our professional lives and there is an opportunity here for leaders to leverage that in order to instil an open, positive, and freeing professional culture within their organisations. At Accenture Interactive, we’ve learned that everyone does their best work when our talent has the freedom to experiment, to fail, and are afforded space for their ideas to flourish.”

Shankar concurs, explaining how in a Bain & Company study conducted at the height of the crisis last year, leaders reported to be more willing to take bold risks, and also more tolerant of failures, an agile leadership approach that ultimately gives employees more freedom to innovate. businesschief.eu

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BRITISH ARMY

THE I A :

THE BRITISH ARMY’S

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

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PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

BRITISH ARMY

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BRITISH ARMY

Senior staff from the British Army discuss THEIA – the Army’s digital transformation programme preparing the Army for the future of warfare

I

n March, the UK Government announced the findings of its Integrated Review of defence, security and foreign policy, ushering in a new era for a high-tech British Army. While popular media focused on the fact that Army personnel numbers would be cut by 10,000 to 72,500 by 2025 – making it the smallest it has been for 200 years – it was also clear that the world, and warfare, has changed.

While ‘boots on the ground’ still has a place and vital role to play, there is an increasing need to develop and utilise leading-edge technology to wage 21st-century warfare – from cyber space to outer space.

The Integrated Review saw conventional hardware spending cut, some ‘heavy metal’ programmes scrapped, and a distinct pivot towards high-tech capabilities including cyber, artificial intelligence, unmanned vehicles, and space.

Announced towards the end of 2020, THEIA (pronounced THAY-A) is the name of the Army’s ambitious Digital Transformation programme, which aims to make use of digitised information and digital technologies to improve operational and business decision making across all Army functions.

THEIA has got three headline outputs – to out-compete the adversary, to partner better and integrate with partners, and to improve efficiency. Or, to put it another way, it’s transforming the Army’s capabilities to make it faster, leaner and more efficient from the base to the bayonet. It is both

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BRITISH ARMY

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BRITISH ARMY

The British Army's digital transformation project, THEIA

“THEIA is what I would describe as an ambitious but critical transformation programme for the Army”

ambitious and exciting, an ambitious but and signals a genuine critical transformation change of direction that programme for the Army, is being embraced from which will take us from the top down. a relatively analogue Lieutenant General approach to our activity Chris Tickell is Deputy at the moment, into the Chief of the General Staff digital space,” says Lt (DCGS) of the British Gen Tickell.

Army, a role he was Much talk following promoted to in August the Integrated Review 2019 and which involves focused on those representing the Army reduced troop numbers, CHRIS TICKELL Top Level Budget (TLB), but isn’t a reduced LT GEN, BRITISH ARMY direction on personnel ‘workforce’ inevitable policy, and oversight of across most industries the future development of the Army. these days, as technology and automation So how does Lt Gen Tickell believe THEIA help humans become more efficient? will change how the Army operates?

“The Integrated Review reduced some of “THEIA is what I would describe as our numbers within the Army based on what 68

June 2021

BRITISH ARMY

CHRIS TICKELL TITLE: LIEUTENANT GENERAL, DEPUTY CHIEF OF THE GENERAL STAFF (DCGS) OF THE BRITISH ARMY

technology offers us now and in the future,” admits Lt Gen Tickell. “At the moment, we are focused on the future – linking the man and the machine.

“So manned and unmanned teaming, artificial intelligence and machine learning – which will allow us to make decisions faster than our enemy or our adversary. We're therefore able to act faster than them as well, which confers an advantage. And when you're doing that, and you're integrating across the domains – across the land environment, maritime, air, cyber, and space – then that really does start to become a battlewinning idea.”

The changing role of the soldier It is inevitable given technological advancements that some aspects of soldiering will change, and modern warfare in the next

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Lieutenant General Chris Tickell was commissioned into the Royal Engineers in 1983. He commanded 9 Parachute Squadron RE and then 23 Engineer Regiment (Air Assault) as it deployed to Kuwait/ Iraq for the Second Gulf War in January 2003. He was promoted to Brigadier in 2007 and commanded 8 Force Engineer Brigade for 2 years; deploying with his Headquarters to Afghanistan for the final 6 months.

He was promoted in 2013 and commanded the Army Recruiting and Training Division and was then the Army’s Director of Capability.

He was promoted to Lieutenant General and became Deputy Chief of the General Staff in August 2019. He was appointed MBE in 2000, OBE in 2003 and CBE in 2010.

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Pure Storage’s Modern Data Experience™ is enabling competitive advantage through data-centricity.

Pure Storage® delivers a modern data experience that empowers organisations to run their operations as a true, automated, storage as-a-service model seamlessly across multiple clouds.

Pure helps customers put data to use while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it.

Pure Storage: Supporting the digital transformation journey

Driving competitive advantage by enabling data to deliver positive business outcomes Pure Storage helps clients drive their competitive advantage by enabling data to deliver positive business outcomes such as ‘evidence-based decision making’ using real-time analytics. “Working with the British Army, as part of an ecosystem of best in class solutions suppliers, Pure is providing private cloud services onpremise but also has offerings via AWS and Azure, and at container level,” explains Colin Atkinson Pure’s UK Public Sector Account Director.

Digitalisation “Pure Storage is supporting the digitalisation of the army as part of Programme THEIA,” reveals Colonel Mark Cornell, Assistant Head of Army Digital Services. “THEIA is how we change our ways of working to adopt more efficient digital processes.

Technology is actually the easy piece of the puzzle; the challenge is cultural and behavioural change”. The army is a conservative organisation by nature, so how do we get its people – civilian, military, and contractors – to adopt the appropriate ways of working we want to deploy?

“We move away from labour intensive processes, and move further up the value chain to get the human adding value where they should be in the decisionmaking process.”

Data Revolution We’re in the midst of a data revolution highlights Atkinson. “We’re seeing an exponential growth in data analytics, which can either create huge headaches for large organisations, or massive opportunities. Data will be the oil that fuels this revolution….”

It’s a revolution that’s been gathering pace; each year, since 2016 where 90% of the world’s data has been created in the previous two years. Atkinson also points out that 99.5% of historical data goes largely unanalysed: “The corollary for large organisations is that if you don’t have a data strategy, you could end up with very large, very cold data silos and miss the opportunity to create that competitive advantage.

By partnering with Pure we can help clients develop a data-enabling strategy.”

Learn more

BRITISH ARMY

“Conflict is frightening, it is visceral, and it is bloody – and nothing that technology brings to bear will ultimately take that away” CHRIS TICKELL LT GEN, BRITISH ARMY

10 years may look very different from even a decade ago, but some fundamentals remain.

If you look at conflict through two prisms, one is the character of conflict and one is the nature of conflict. The nature of conflict is constant, whether you are a soldier in the 21st century or the 18th.

“Conflict is frightening, it is visceral, and it is bloody – and nothing that technology brings to bear will ultimately take that away,” says Lt Gen Tickell. “But what is changing is the character of conflict. In the land environment specifically, it

is no longer an issue about tank versus tank. It is absolutely about bringing capabilities to bear at a single point in time and need whereby the soldier will be able and will be required to integrate those different effects at the same 72

June 2021

time. And when I say those different effects, I'm talking about electronic warfare, I'm talking about offensive cyber, I'm talking about longrange fires. And of course, I'm then also talking about close combat.”

One popular conception of the changing face of conflict, and threat, is the increasing impact of cyber attacks – and these are usually not openly linked to state actors, but to shadowy groups and individuals that are harder to track, trace, and ultimately beat.

We often hear of state or non-state actors, but in reality is the situation actually that clear cut? The lines are usually blurred, certainly if we are to take media reports into consideration. The recent ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline in the US was the latest by a group called DarkSide, believed to be from Eastern Europe, according to the FBI. Whether that gang had any state backing or political agenda is impossible to know.

The SolarWinds attack which also caused data breaches at several branches of the US federal government, including the Department of Homeland Security, has since been blamed by the FBI and the NSA as being perpetrated by Russia.

There are no easy, or clear answers, so how does the British Army prepare for such attacks?

“When one looks at the threats that we face, there is a temptation to put them in boxes whereby they describe state actors as

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Pure Storage’s Modern Data Experience™ is enabling competitive advantage through data-centricity.

Pure Storage® delivers a modern data experience that empowers organisations to run their operations as a true, automated, storage as-a-service model seamlessly across multiple clouds.

Pure helps customers put data to use while reducing the complexity and expense of managing the infrastructure behind it.

BRITISH ARMY

Grupo Espinosa: 70 years of constant evolution

Copy to go here once approved A proudly Mexican company servicing the publishing industry with best-in-class printing, storage and distribution facilities in the heart of Latin America later on by Pure Storage Founded in 1952, Grupo Espinosa has been relentlessly supporting the publishing industry with producing more than 100 million copies every year. No project is big or small for Grupo Espinosa, as the facility can scale up on demand and their turnaround times are highly competitive. Grupo Espinosa works with on-demand digital press or offset press, in paperback with glued softcover binding, PUR softcover binding, stitched paperback binding, binder’s board, hardcover, saddle stitched, Spiral or Wire-O. Equipped with the experience needed for a product to leave the plant ready for distribution, Grupo Espinosa delivers anywhere inside or outside Mexico.

Rorit eum diae nam ex ex et ut asi quaecte erae rem atquo et exerrum reperib With parum nearly 70 years behind them, and located usdandam, qui comnita qui consed milit in Mexico City, Grupo Espinosa has two major illocations ma perum fuga.

Nihicatque corum hit that they operate out of. Both earum estis earum que nihici ducid quis locations are controlled by a single ERP excerit laturitiae sum faccate mperia vol(Enterprise Resource Planning) system ensuring speed, andfacernatiquality oritium eum numconsistency ut quassitiam of work.

Tirado says this their only bus ratem latumque sumisn’t volorepelit alit ut competitive He addspre “Our volupti nihilisadvantage. dolorum quiaeria endel ipsantem et labo. Ommolor si dolupti ssitas molore ipsantem verit adi ut fugitis mo dolupta ectatet quatem es aut evelest doloria ndessincte perit volest quistores dollis mo omni di optatius inullac catiaec tiscium quisti con reici occumqui omniet lat.

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Harum aut ant Watch et dis rerunt endist es esxxxx tionseni vitatempora et accae. Onsequa turepero tectur aut aut quate prationsequi

competitive advantage is the relationship we have with customers and the trust they put in us with their intellectual property”.

Speaking of trust, global publishing giant Macmillan Education exclusively partners with Grupo Espinosa for their Latin America operations, as part of Macmillan’s decentralized hub strategy. Having a facility that offered the full spectrum of service – from storing digital content to printing and distributing – was one of the major requirements for Macmillan, and Grupo Espinosa was recognized as the leading printing hub for providing this 360 infrastructure. Another factor that has led to success for Grupo Espinosa is the absolute focus on quality qui as rem am liquis andblabo. time. Nam Sustainability is aalicius huge factor sam faccusam sandignam, optaspel playing into Grupo quias Espinosa’s operations, molento voluptati tecab in custiossunt and they’ve created a healthy environment ullitium eum doluptaspis with the sustainable use ofidunt paperlaciatius and est, none ipsant vollatquos sed mi, volore energy resources as well as keeping their prepratur– most ad est, dolectemped que employees oftem them associated with thepedipsuntur organisationas foridesequ over 10iatio. yearsTius – happy. voloristo cum dollore volorem. Et lab il idest, volupta turestiusae commod quis quas simus, to blab imodipis eturibus et as ut fuga. Oluptis eum voluptatur, qui omniendi dolore volupit eos magnis eat ut aut minimaximped quae voluptatus re voluptatia volorer iossimin re sam hil et ut ut quasit ius ditatur aperae nonsequis ent, sed unt ipis eos dit qui nes pos simendi audiatur?

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Learn more Learn more

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BRITISH ARMY

the preeminent threat or non-state actors. Of course, the reality is there is a blurring of the two,” says Lt Gen Tickell.

“Therefore what we see is a movement of technology and capability that arguably may have been developed by state actors and the movement of that technology into non-state actors, or indeed proxies. So you can see some terrorist organisations or non-state actors being able to apply and use technology that one would imagine has come from a state actor’s R&D focus. But you could also see groups

STEFAN CROSSFIELD TITLE: BRIGADIER, HEAD OF INFORMATION EXPLOITATION, DEPUTY CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, AND THE CHIEF DATA OFFICER (CDO) FOR THE BRITISH ARMY

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Brigadier Stefan Crossfield is the British Army’s Chief Data Officer and Programme Director of the Army’s Digital Transformation. He was part of the Army 2020 strategic planning team and responsible as a colonel for maximising personnel talent planning.

He commanded 6 Battalion REME on Operation Herrick 18.

He is a Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, holds an MSc in Information Systems and an MBA, and is an Associate Lecturer at the University of Exeter Business School.

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across the MOD

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SAS: IMPROVING THE BRITISH ARMY’S DECISION MAKING WITH DATA Roderick Crawford, VP and Country GM, explains the important role that SAS is playing in the British Army’s digital transformation Roderick Crawford, VP and Country GM for SAS UKI, states that the company’s thorough grasp of the defence sector makes it an ideal partner for the Army as it undergoes its own digital transformation. “Major General Jon Cole told us that he wanted to enable better, faster decision-making in order to improve operational efficiency,” he explains.

Therefore, SAS’ task was to help the British Army realise the “significant potential” of data through the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to automate tasks and conduct complex analysis.

In 2020, the Army invested in the SAS ‘Viya platform’.

The goal was to deliver a new way of working that enabled agility, flexibility, faster deployment at reduced risk and cost.

Doing so facilitated “connect[ing] the unconnected.”

This means structuring data in a simultaneously secure and accessible manner for all skill levels, from business analysts to data engineers and military commanders. The result is analytics and

decision-making that drives innovation and increases collaboration.

“As warfare moves into what we might call ‘the grey-zone’, the need to understand, decide, and act on complex information streams and diverse sources has never been more important. AI, computer vision and natural language processing are technologies that we hope to exploit over the next three to five years in conjunction with the Army.”

Fundamentally, data analytics is a tool for gaining valuable insights and expediting the delivery of outcomes. The goal of the two parties’ partnership, concludes Crawford, will be to reach the point where both access to data and decision-making can be performed qualitatively and in real-time.

“SAS is absolutely delighted to have this relationship with the British Army, and with defence in general.

It’s a great privilege to be part of the armed forces covenant.”

BRITISH ARMY

JONATHAN COLE TITLE: MAJOR GENERAL, THE ARMY’S CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER (CIO) Major General Jon Cole is the British Army's Chief Information Officer and the member of the Army Board who leads on information matters in all aspects of the Army's business – from barracks to the battlefield. Before this, he was seconded to BT as the inaugural Head of Employee Services IT, transforming the digital workplace for over 100,000 staff. Beforehand, he was the Army's Head of Information Services, the Chief Technology Officer.

He was commissioned into the Royal Signals in 1987. He commanded 2 Signal Regiment and subsequently 11 Signal Brigade. On operations he has led soldiers in Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan, and served on the staff again in both Iraq and Afghanistan, plus Non Combatant Evacuation Operations of Ivory Coast and Lebanon. A Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Engineering and Technology, he has a BEng(Hons) in Electronics, an MSc in Defence Technology, and an MA in International Security and Strategy.

He is Colonel of the Regiment, Queen's Gurkha Signals, a Trustee of the Gurkha Welfare Trust, and a Colonel Commandant of Royal Signals. He is also Chairman of Army Ice Sports, a Vice President of Royal Signals rugby, and President of Royal Signals cycling and triathlon.

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that are sponsored by a state. I would use the Wagner Group as a good example, whereby we're pretty clear that there is a strong link to Russia. So it is a blend of both.”

The innovation opportunity The military has always worked closely with carefully selected private companies, with close links between such British heavyweight businesses. However, that vital link between the public and private sector will see those strategic partnerships shift, as smaller businesses are invited to bring innovation to the table.

From nuclear power to satnav, microwave ovens to duct tape – innovations born out of the military environment have found

BRITISH ARMY

their usages in everyday life, but now there is an opportunity for SMEs to reverse that dynamic and help shape the Army’s technological future.

“The phrase ‘prototype warfare’ is something that we're using more and more, whereby we are willing to take risks with technology and capability to put it in the hands of the user so that we can start to exploit those opportunities faster, thereby accelerating the procurement and acquisition process that we have used for many years,” says Lt Gen Tickell.

“So later this year we're launching the Land Industrial Strategy, which is designed to be one of the mechanisms to get after that closer relationship. I think there is a real thirst in the

“We have the ability and willingness to test ideas with soldiers in demanding and arduous conditions” CHRIS TICKELL LT GEN, BRITISH ARMY

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Digital Transformation and the Defence Strategy Salesforce and the MOD are working together to help accelerate the digital transformation of Defence The National Security Strategy and supporting Defence strategies have provided a clear sense of priorities for MOD over the next 5-10 years

Working with the MOD Salesforce has grouped these strategies into 4 themes to best align with Defence in their Efforts. These four themes are People, Asset Tracking, Sustainability and Knowledge Assets.

The Integrated Review ‘Global Britain’ with its nested strategies covering all aspects of defence provide a clear sense of priorities for the transformation of the MOD over the next 5-10 years.

‘They’re huge challenges, says Mike Dooley, Salesforce’s Vice President of Strategy for National Security, who enjoyed a 31-year career

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including tours in Joint Operations, Defence Digital and latterly leading the charge for Army digital Transformation as its Chief Data Officer.

The most important commodity in Defence is its People, says Dooley.

Salesforce puts them at the centre of everything it does and views the Whole Workforce end to end as it seeks to support Defence transformation. Salesforce looks to challenge the way Defence attracts and retains cadets. Also how to improve the selection of the best career path for those joining the services dependent on their psychological and emotional strengths. Once in Service assist with talent management throughout their career and then finally guidance and training into valued employment in the private sector or re-imagined into a different part of the public sector as they leave the Armed Forces. Salesforce calls this End to End People.

Sustainability is crucial if Defence is to play a meaningful role in the Government’s commitment to be Net Zero by 2050. Dooley explains, “the MOD has to embrace solutions that are less carbon intensive. This seems counterintuitive when you think of heavy armour, fast Air and of course Space. However, Defence currently accounts for 50% of UK government emissions.”

From Dooley’s perspective, access to data to inform better decision-making is key. “The complexity of MOD operations and the size of the supplier ecosystem require sustainability data being given equivalence to operational and financial data. This is where platforms like Salesforce’s Sustainability Cloud can help inform enterprise Decision-making”.

The Defence Support area is an enormous transformational challenge, says Dooley. It starts with its people, but then rapidly spins out to take its vast legacy in service data sets and incoherent view of the Support Truth. End to End asset management is a real strength of Salesforce.

It is no coincidence that much of the Defence Industrial base uses its software and one of Salesforce biggest customers – Unilever relies on its software to complete its 2 billion transactions per day to its global customers.

Finally – we must do more with the tracking of our Research and Development funds – matched to Key Performance Indicators and then the sale of these Knowledge Assets globally. Defence is currently falling short in both these areas at present and there is much that can be done to bring it up to the standards enjoyed by the best of the Private Sector.

The transformation of Defence brings with it many challenges and opportunities, which, Dooley says, will only be tackled through long-term partnerships based on trust, innovation and mutual success. “Defence has made great progress, but there is a long way to go,” he points out. “Support transformation, Multi-Domain Integration, new technologies like zero trust networks; the list of opportunities for Defence to embed gamechanging digital transformation is endless.”

He concludes: in my experience there are lots of pieces that need to come together to deliver enduring digital transformation. Partnerships that bring to Defence ‘best-of-breed’ capabilities, innovation and new ways of thinking will help keep Britain’s Defence ahead of its adversaries.

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“ We're in a fourth industrial revolution.

It's very emergent, there's an agility to it. THEIA in terms of delivering transformation is about getting to a tipping point” STEFAN CROSSFIELD

BRIGADIER, HEAD OF INFORMATION EXPLOITATION, DEPUTY CIO, CDO, BRITISH ARMY

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private industry to work closer together. SMEs hold fantastic opportunities for us, and often they don't realise the opportunities they offer because they've developed capabilities that they don't realise have military applicability.

“We have the ability and willingness to test ideas with soldiers in demanding and arduous conditions. We've learned that one SME may have a great idea to do X, but when you combine them with Y that we know about, we will more than double the opportunity that those capabilities offer.”

Developing the digital opportunity Brigadier Stefan Crossfield is Head of Information Exploitation, Deputy Chief Information Officer, and the Chief Data Officer (CDO) for the British Army. For him, THEIA is all about orchestrating digital transformation and

BRITISH ARMY

how the Army can use data to its advantage, while also working with key international partners, commercial organisations, as well as the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force.

“It's a massive challenge. And I don't underestimate how big it is. I think we've got a long way to go, but we are on the road, which is a really good start,” says Brig Crossfield.

“We're in a fourth industrial revolution. It's very emergent, there's an agility to it. THEIA in terms of delivering transformation is about getting to a tipping point. So THEIA’s not about getting to the end of the road, it's about getting to the tipping point – maybe that is a better way to look at it.”

Digital transformation was forced upon the world during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Army was no exception. Brig Crossfield outlines how they were able to drive admin

activity online to improve processes for “our people. And that means they can get back to doing the job they want to do – the reason they joined the Army.”

THEIA is of course much more than removing friction from admin tasks like claiming expenses – it is about artificial intelligence, machine learning and autonomy.

It’s about quantum computing, cyber insecurity, synthetic environments, but also augmented reality. And lastly, analytics.

“We've got a lot of data out there to play with,” says Brig Crossfield. “If you begin to put it on a pedestal or in some way, treat it differently, I think we missed the point. Yes, it's the new oil, yes it's the new black gold. In an operational sense, helping commanders make the right decisions at the right time with the right amount of information is the way to win.” businesschief.eu

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BRITISH ARMY

That is no easy task. As well as vast amounts of data to handle, the orchestration and connections required mean that Brig Crossfield has to delve deeper into organisations to reach the innovators who can match the Army’s ambition and then connecting X with Y, as Lt Gen Tickell outlined.

Little wonder Brig Crossfield refers to himself as “digital matchmaker” and making sure the Army joins the dots to reach the best outcomes.

“That's really hard,” he admits. “You know, it's just hard yards of constantly scanning, constantly connecting people up, bringing people back into lane where they've strayed out – and they don't do that through malice, it’s just complicated.

“So what we really want to do is through the Digital Foundry, which is the Defence Digital initiative, we want to start giving [innovative companies] the opportunity to

“Through the Digital Foundry, which is the Defence Digital initiative, we want to start giving [innovative companies] the opportunity to show what they can do” CHRIS TICKELL LT GEN, BRITISH ARMY

show what they can do, but also us to bring our problems to that environment.

“I am much more connected now with bigger organisations away from their business development teams, into their innovation teams. I've been hugely impressed with how genuinely engaged they are in helping us move forward here. They're on the journey, and we've got some great pilots running.” businesschief.eu

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“ If in the business space, we can be much more efficient about when and how we fix our equipment, we'll get much more uptime from that equipment, and it will be cheaper to run as a result” STEFAN CROSSFIELD

BRIGADIER, HEAD OF INFORMATION EXPLOITATION, DEPUTY CIO, CDO, BRITISH ARMY

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BRITISH ARMY

Keeping cyber safe The Army is being transparent in the Integrated Review that it will continue to examine in an operational sense where cyber has utility, both in terms of the need to protect from it but also use it. It can be weaponised where appropriate against particular adversaries.

Defence Digital works closely with British Telecom (BT) and other key partners to deliver a resilient and secure network which really showed its mettle during the lockdown when the workforce had to adapt to work from home.

Defence Digital is also leading the way when it comes to the Digital Backbone – the data highway that runs right from the individual soldier all the way back to HQ, or base to bayonet.

“We're going to produce a backbone and we're going to tell you how to plug into it. Here's the architecture, here's how you plug in, off you go. I think that's a fundamental difference in how we do this and probably the thing that will make this work,” says Brig Crossfield.

“Why is it important? Well, if in the business space, we can be much more efficient about when and how we fix our equipment, we'll get much more uptime from that equipment, and it will be cheaper to run as a result.

“Take that to the battlespace – now more uptime on that platform means more war fighting capability. It means out-competing our adversary. So when we talk about outcompeting them, it's not just about in the decision action cycle. It's not just about how quickly we do it. It's about using the data in every way we can to be in a better place to fight.

“Ultimately, warfare will remain the bloody visceral, dangerous business that it is. And if you've got your platforms live and someone else hasn't, I know you’re going to win nine times out of 10.” businesschief.eu

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Speed is essential That sentiment is echoed by Major General Jonathan Cole, the Army’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) who says in the military environment, speed is so essential.

“You just have to look at examples like the way that the Russians fought in Ukraine when they were using unmanned aerial systems networked into their artillery systems.

And they were able to provide targeting information so quickly that the Ukrainians were unable to respond fast enough,” says Maj Gen Cole.

“It's often a linkage between what we call the sensor to the effector and the faster you can deliver that cycle of intelligence to delivery of effects then the more likely you are of being able to out-compete and beat your adversary.”

Speed is of the essence, and that is true of the rapid digital transformation the Army is undergoing, while also recognising that a lot of its capital equipment is legacy equipment

– some of which has been in service for decades. That is why the open architecture is so important.

A good example is the Land Environment Tactical Communications and Information Systems (LE TacCIS) programme, where the Army has taken legacy radios, computers, data terminals, and is gradually swapping those out.

“We are building an open architecture, which enables us to inject new digital technologies, predominantly applications, artificial intelligence tools,” says Maj Gen Cole. “We are paving the way for those in the future, but we have to do the hard yards of the backend work, which is about open architectures. businesschief.eu

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“ We are building an open architecture, which enables us to inject new digital technologies, predominantly applications, artificial intelligence tools” JONATHAN COLE MAJ GEN, BRITISH ARMY

“It's about really good control of your data. And it's about having an infrastructure, including a hosting environment, which enables the power of those digital services.

So we have to do so much of that underthe-bonnet activity in order to deliver the top end.”

That under-the-bonnet activity is essential, and it’s often tempting to become distracted by digital transformation’s dazzling user interfaces and functionality, but there is no room for complacency. There is no point having a dazzling digital solution if it is not built on rock-solid foundations – especially when it comes to cyber security.

Maj Gen Cole says that while the threat of cyber attacks is undoubtedly on the increase, physical attacks are just as much a threat as they always have been. If anything, those physical attacks are more dangerous as they are often coupled with a cyber element.

“Often physical threats and cyber threats come together,” says Maj Gen Cole. “The most sophisticated adversary will seek to use physical and virtual means to attack us, and they will do that in a complimentary way.

“So I think it's fair to say that cyber threats and physical threats between them present a very serious risk. And we have to deal with both together.”

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businesschief.eu

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04/05/2021 09:49:12

BRITISH ARMY

“THEIA in particular is demonstrating that we don't necessarily partner just with our big traditional defence prime contractors. We need to also partner with Silicon Valley-type tech companies to get the best of breed of all of the technologies available” JONATHAN COLE MAJ GEN, BRITISH ARMY

Putting people first Of course, cyber threats have to be anticipated on a daily basis, even when operating on a day-to-day level “below the threshold of warfare”. Maj Gen Cole says that in many ways COVID-19 and the remote ways of working have been a good opportunity to shift the Army’s culture – and something that should be embraced.

However, remote working does have some downsides.

“There is inevitably a security risk that we need to address through the use of increased commercial technologies,” says Maj Gen Cole. “We also have to look at what that does for behavioural activities.

“The Army is used to working in close proximity to other people. So we have to find a way to get the best out of all the technology, but at the same time, recognise the fundamental human nature of an army.

“For an army where you might ask teams of people to go into war together, where they're putting their lives on the line, where they're fighting for each other's lives, it is very important for them to be able to operate and function as a team. And that is ultimately a very human endeavor. As much as technology enables people to work remotely, to be able to explore the power of data, we must never forget the human nature of warfare.”

The human element is often something that comes secondary when considering any digital transformation, but even the most sophisticated systems and deepest data would be rendered near useless without the skilled people that make up the British Army. With transformation comes the need to retrain and upskill, as well as seek out private sector innovators to partner with.

“I think THEIA, in particular, is demonstrating that we don't necessarily partner just with our big traditional defence prime contractors. We need to also partner with Silicon Valley-type tech companies to get the best of breed of all of the technologies available,” says Maj Gen Cole.

“And the trick for us really is to be able to work with an ecosystem of technology providers across those sorts of communities and being able to work with them in a collegiate way.

“I couldn't imagine a more exciting time to be the Army's CIO and Director of Information – every day for me is different.

I learn something new every day, and I know that I have the support of the Chief of the General Staff as he wants to deliver an asymmetric army for the digital age.”

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CORPORATE FINANCE

WHY WE NEED MORE

FEMALE CFOs (AND HOW TO REACH THAT GOAL) Four female global financial experts weigh in on why there are so few female CFOs, and what organisations can do to redress the executive gender imbalance WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

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June 2021

T

he number of women in CFO positions in Fortune 500 companies reached a record high late last year, hitting 90, up from 65 just a few years ago. It’s not surprising given the increased focus in recent years on C-suite and board parity by investors such as Blackrock, as well as other institutions including the Nasdaq, which recently stated that companies listed on its US exchange will need to have a minimum of two non-white or female Board members.

And if they do not, they must publicise the reasons as to why.

The picture is similar in the UK. According to Julia van den Bosch Wazen, CFO Practice consultant at Odgers Berndtson, The Financial Conduct Authority in the UK is now looking to the London Stock Exchange listings framework as to whether similar measures ought to be implemented, while for City firms, “there are already ongoing discussions about potentially using wider FCA powers, such as denying regulatory approves to drive diversity on Boards”.

CORPORATE FINANCE

ROUNDTAB LE

CORPORATE FINANCE

HANADY KHALIFE,

MAGGIE XU,

SENIOR DIRECTOR, MEA & INDIA OPERATIONS, INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTANTS

PRINCIPAL, GREATER CHINA FINANCIAL SERVICES PRACTICE, OLIVER WYMAN

With financial and consultancy positions at the Central Bank of Lebanon and Nakheel under her belt, and deep knowledge of the MEA region having worked in the UAE, Lebanon and Saudi, Khalife has over the past 11 years led efforts to establish and grow IMA’s operations successfully designing programs and initiatives to engage industry stakeholders and help organisations execute business strategies.

Based in Shanghai, Maggie has more than 12 years of experience in serving financial institutions. She has a deep understanding of finance and risk management, interbank market business, governance and transformation of banks as well as other non-banking financial institutions in China.

JULIA VAN DEN BOSCH WAZEN, UK CONSULTANT, ODGERS BERNDTSON’S CFO PRACTICE At Odgers Berndtson, the largest executive search firm in the UK, Julia is a consultant in the CFO Practice, leading searches to place CFOs and their direct reports, working with clients, from the FTSE 100 to small-cap businesses, private equity to not-for-profit. She also spearheads the diversity agenda, which includes the bi-annual women’s networking lunches she founded in 2017, drawing together female leaders within financial management and giving them the opportunity to gain career advice from a Chairwoman or CFO keynote speaker.

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June 2021

CRISTINA CATANIA, EUROPE, PARTNER, MCKINSEY & COMPANY Based in Milan, Cristina is the leader of McKinsey’s work in wealth and asset management in Europe and the head of the sustainability work in the banking sector. She is also a core leader of the Strategy & Corporate Finance Practice in EMEA. Cristina focuses on serving financial institutions throughout Europe across a broad range of services with an emphasis on large transformations in banking and a spike in asset and wealth management. She also has a passion for ESG transformation.

CORPORATE FINANCE

But while there’s certainly been improvement, the under-representation of women in executive finance positions remains less than rosy, with van den Bosch Wazen admitting that “whilst much has been done, we are still of the view that progress is too slow”.

Still too few women make CFO According to the government-backed Hampton-Alexander Review, of which Odgers Berndtson are active contributors, while women now make up one third of all board positions in the UK’s FTSE 100 companies, up from 12.5% less than a decade ago, there remains a concerning lack of female representation in senior leadership and key executive roles in FTSE companies, with just 15% of finance directors bring women.

“One of the Big Four partners informed me that their annual graduate intake split is around 52% women, 48% men. By the time this age group reaches their early thirties, The research suggests that as women the number goes down to 34% women,” advance through their careers, they steadily explains van den Bosch Wazen. “Since many lose ground to their male peers at every stage, CFOs of listed businesses in the UK take the suggesting the pathway to the CFOs office is audit route, before moving not as clearly illuminated into industry, the disparity for female candidates.

Women CFOs by of diverse talent coming into the market starts early Why women annual revenue and is not able to catch make good CFOs up later.”

According to Willard And yet the evidence Recent McKinsey Powell’s 2020 Breaking the suggests that when women research for its Women in CFO Glass Ceiling report, do make it to CFO, the the Workplace report for Women are taking on more payoff for organisations is North America backs this up.

CFO roles at larger firms. positive. Companies with While research shows that female CFOs and CEOs women and men in financial prove more profitable services begin their careers making up roughly than those led by men, with women-led firms equal portions of entry-level staff, once you get generating US$1.8 trillion more in gross profit higher up the ladder, women account for only than the sector average, according to a report 19% (one in five) of positions in the C-suite.

by S&P Global. businesschief.eu

40

CORPORATE FINANCE

“ For finance there is a clear need to create multiple role model examples that can inspire young women to join this career path, which is more and more at the centre of key company decision making” CRISTINA CATANIA

PARTNER, MCKINSEY & COMPANY

Furthermore, as van den Bosch Wazen points out, according to McKinsey’s latest Diversity Wins report, companies with more than 30% of women executives are more likely to outperform companies where this percentage ranged from 10-30%.

“The benefits speak for themselves and I’m thrilled that investors are pushing harder for this,” states van den Bosch Wazen. “The more diverse your management team, the more engaged your workforce, and the better your customers are looked after. You are better informed of the world, you tend not to miss trends, making your balance sheet strong and your organisation run more efficiently.”

Cristina Catania, Partner at McKinsey & Company agrees that gender diversity “enriches decision-making and so has a positive impact on companies’ performance and sustainability”, however more specifically, and in the context of the finance function, she points out that studies have found that “women have higher risk aversion than men and that can be a good thing”.

Maggie Xu, Principal of Greater China Financial Services Practice at Oliver Wyman, agrees suggesting research shows that female CFOs are more risk averse and tend to adopt more conservative accounting 41

June 2021

policies. And for “those companies/ industries with higher litigation risk, default risk, systematic risk, or management turnover risk, who are more focused on accounting conservatism, female CFOs may well do a better job”.

Arguing that women are “equally qualified to effectively address current and future challenges and disruptions”, Hanady Khalife, Senior Director of MEA & India for the Institute of Management Accountants further points out that beyond operations,

CORPORATE FINANCE

3%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue greater than $100 billion

7%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue between $50 billion and $99 billion

28%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue between $10 billion and $49 billion

62%

Women CFOs at firms with annual revenue less than $9 billion

inclusive working cultures where women leaders exist have been known to attract and retain top talent.

“No matter how you look at it, women leaders are good for business and for building more sustainable, self-sufficient and increasingly shockproof businesses, even economies,” asserts Khalife.

In our roundtable, we talk to these four female financial leaders to identify the barriers facing women and discover how organisations and leaders can facilitate their advancement. businesschief.eu

42

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CORPORATE FINANCE

Why are women under-represented in senior financial positions, and the CFO role specifically?

Julia van den Bosch Wazen Women in key financial management roles tend to have a shared set of challenges, such as balancing home/work life, which is overcome by having the right support and an engaged sponsor at work. Sponsors are often men in senior management positions. Men are essential in furthering the development of all strands of diversity in the workplace, and the more informed diversity and inclusion allies there are, the better the company performs.

COVID has forced the majority of companies to work from home and highlighted to many employers the dual nature of a working woman’s careers. That said, pre-pandemic, many female CFOs said to me that their life was a constant balancing act of whom to disappoint more – their partners, kids, or friends. Senior women rarely disappoint their employers, just like their male peers.

During the executive search processes we run, Boards will actively seek diversity,

though in a risk adverse hiring market, like the one that we are in, many end up choosing proven Board experience over and above stepping up talent. It is widely publicised that there are more men in those roles than there are women, and so the balance is again not restored, further facilitating the lack of Board experienced women.

Cristina Catania Unfortunately, this underrepresentation of women in senior roles isn’t exclusive to finance – it’s a similar picture in business management and strategy. But, prior to COVID, concentrated efforts were making some gains. Across all industries, we’ve seen women’s representation in the C-suite increase by 24% since 2015, including some notable appointments in the financial sector, like Jane Fraser at Citi. There is, however, a broken rung at the very bottom of the corporate ladder that is stalling progress.

Our annual Women in the Workplace study of women in North America shows that for every 100 men, just 72 women are promoted and hired to manager. Women get stuck at the entry level and fewer become managers. Not businesschief.eu

44

CORPORATE FINANCE

“ The more diverse your management team, the more engaged your workforce, and the better your customers are being looked after – in short. You are better informed of the world, you tend not to miss trends, making your balance sheet stronger and your organisation run more efficiently” JULIA VAN DEN BOSCH WAZEN

CONSULTANT, ODGERS BERNDTSON’S CFO PRACTICE

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June 2021

surprisingly, men then end up holding 62% of manager-level positions, while women hold just 38%. The number of women decreases at every subsequent level, so despite improved hiring and promotion rates for women at senior levels, they aren’t able to catch up.

Hanady Khalife One would assume this is a problem most prevalent in the Middle East but it is global. A National Bureau of Economic Research study from Denmark found that even at the height of their careers, women tend to spend more time raising children, and so work fewer hours, take longer breaks from full-time employment, and are more likely to move into less demanding jobs with lower growth and less pay.

Other reasons include the pay gap, lack of mentorship and coaching, and aggressive

CORPORATE FINANCE

competition by male colleagues, as well as lack of female C-suite role models. When women don’t see role models or potential paths towards executive-level leadership, they are more likely to deselect themselves out of such roles.

Maggie Xu In research, we identified four critical barriers for women seeking leadership. Firstly, men and women define effective leadership differently, while women leadership candidates tend to be evaluated by men. This misalignment in key leadership traits between the genders creates obstacles to women rising to leadership roles. In China, although significant increase in the ratio of companies with female executives has been observed during the decade, extensive research indicates that the rate for female

CEO remains very low, and CEOs are critical in assessing the performance of CFO candidates.

Secondly, women’s focus or predisposition toward results, along with a dislike of ‘networking for networking’s sake,’ may cause them to miss an important dimension of what ultimately impacts leadership promotion decisions. We also discovered that qualified women are unintentionally left on the sidelines, partly because women are simply not top of mind, and so are less likely to self-advocate and must battle inaccurate assumptions related to their willingness to take on more intense roles.

Also, men and women perceive their readiness for the next role very differently, and most companies do not actively mitigate that bias at play. A woman often won’t apply to a job unless she feels she meets 100% of the described qualifications, while for men, it’s more like 60% and as we all know, raising one’s hand does not necessarily equate with capability.

Finally, research shows women are more likely to have ideas mis-attributed to others, be talked over in meetings, receive vague or unconstructive feedback, and be viewed negatively for visibly demonstrating the same confidence that is valued in male leaders.

Many high potential women, weary of bias, exit the talent pipeline, either opting out of the workforce or choosing a different career.

How can organisations and leaders motivate, empower and facilitate women in reaching CFO status?

Julia van den Bosch Wazen Mentorship from senior colleagues is vital in helping women to navigate the mid-point of their career. Our philosophy in the CFO Practice facilitates that same ethos: we want to help advise women early on to help build careers toward the three-stage interview businesschief.eu

46

CORPORATE FINANCE

process they will face when stepping up to their first Main Board role. A financial management career for a listed CFO role needs to be built to answer the questions a CEO will pose (do you have commercial and operational P&L experience to be my partner in setting strategic goals); the Audit Chair (will you give me comfort in your technical financial management skills to assure that the business will not have to restate its numbers); and the Chair (do you keep my CEO ‘in check’, and will you let my Audit Chair rest easy at night).

There are a number of roles within the finance function I strongly encourage women to take en route to Board, to gather experience against the above criteria. I also urge women to do more external networking.

I’ve set up bi-annual women’s networking lunches giving senior female talent the opportunity to hear how experienced finance leaders have successfully developed their careers. These have been well-received and have now broadened out to both our Regional CFO and Financial Services Practices to help deepen the advice shared.

When selecting a headhunting firm, I would urge that you ask what they are doing to support the D&I agenda during the pitch process. Your candidate list might well be diverse, but if you see that those who are looking likely to be shortlisted are all nondiverse, check why, and what can be actioned based on feedback.

Cristina Catania Talent attraction is the first step to sustaining a pipeline to fill CFO roles long term. For finance, there is a need to create multiple role model examples to inspire young women to join this career path, which is increasingly at the centre of key company decision-making. We know from our study that when employees believe that their company offers both fairness and 47

June 2021

CORPORATE FINANCE

“In China, although significant increase in the ratio of companies with female executives has been observed during the decade, extensive research indicates that the rate for female CEO remains very low, and CEOs are critical in assessing the performance of CFO candidates” MAGGIE XU

PRINCIPAL, GREATER CHINA FINANCIAL SERVICES PRACTICE, OLIVER WYMAN

opportunity, they are three times more likely to remain at the company, be fully engaged and recommend the company to a peer. What we know about the experiences of women at entry levels in financial services indicates that a perceived lack of fairness and opportunity could be contributing to the steep drop-off in female representation between entry-level and middle management roles.

Specifically, women early in their careers are less likely to aspire to top positions.

This could be due to a lack of female role models, but women also report less interest in executive roles due to concerns about balancing work and family and the perceived pressure that accompanies top jobs. Even when women do aspire to the top positions, they typically do not receive the sponsorship support that would enable them to succeed.

Our 2017 Women in the Workplace research shows that women who receive advice from senior leaders on career advancement are more likely to be promoted, and yet earlier-tenure women receive less encouragement and support from senior leaders than do their male counterparts.

The programmes that are showing impact in creating a sustainable pipeline of women start with the creation of a more ‘inclusive’ workplace, created through HR parental businesschief.eu

48

CORPORATE FINANCE

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June 2021

CORPORATE FINANCE

policies (applicable also to fathers, which in turn allows for shared parental responsibilities) and doubling-down on additional welfare services like in-office daycare.

Other measures include removing gender biases in assessing criteria for being eligible for a promotion, flexibility arrangements, leveraging maternity as an upskilling moment, the introduction of sponsorship programmes, and measuring and publishing target setting.

And all steps need to be truly sponsored and promoted by the CEO and cascaded throughout the whole organisation.

Hanady Khalife Increasing opportunities for women to advance to leadership roles in the organisation begins with understanding the internal pipeline to identify barriers and obstacles to advancement and in turn, establishing measurable goals for building equity.

Organisations need to develop corporate cultures that support women who wish to achieve a healthy work/life balance, rather than breed cultures that penalises them for attempting to balance priorities. But while firms need to focus on more affirmative action to ensure gender equality, whether through quotas or recruitment programmes, they also need to pay more attention to how women can be mentored better to keep pace with new and emerging industry requirements.

Maggie Xu Organisations can be more purposeful in levelling the playing field for women, and by changing the emphasis from fixing things bottom up to top-down, effects will take place faster. We believe there are three core elements in this effort: inclusive leadership starts at the top, so educate your existing leadership and motivate them to be change agents; target D&I like a business to get more results; and double down on sponsorship, improving the effectiveness of senior leaders’ sponsorship of the women. businesschief.eu

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SANTANDER UK

Creating a Digital Version of Corporate and Commercial Banking WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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June 2021

SANTANDER UK

businesschief.eu

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SANTANDER UK

Jonathan Holman Head of Digital, Santander Corporate & Commercial Banking

SANTANDER UK

Santander UK

harnesses the power of technology partners to drive their digital transformation – allowing them to focus on banking

B

ank of Choice Santander UK has a simple aim: to simplify and digitise the business for improved efficiency and returns for its people and businesses.

During the past five years the bank has turned to technology partners to achieve this goal in its corporate and commercial business in the UK – leaving them to focus on what they do best – the customer experience of banking.

Driving the digital transformation at Santander UK is Jonathan Holman, Head of Digital – Santander Corporate & Commercial Banking, who is taking relationship management to the next level for their banking customers as they look to the future following the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We are creating a new architecture that allows us to move much faster,” said Holman.

“We're buying into the roadmaps of our partners – they're improving the technology that enables us to improve our business.

We haven't sought to be a technology company, we've let tech companies be great tech companies and we are concentrating on being a great bank,” he said.

Santander UK’s corporate and commercial banking teams offer financial services products to corporates and SMEs from £250k to £500 million turnover. businesschief.eu

54

Customers don’t want to be treated as a number. They demand more. With Salesforce, you can unify lines of business, connect every channel, and create transparency that builds relationships. That’s trust, well earned.

Learn more at https://sfdc.co/uki-finserv . We bring companies and customers together.

Frictionless banking, the Salesforce way The head of financial services at Salesforce talks Santander partnerships and digital engagement with customers

Watch: Alan Donnelly talks about Customer Engagement at Salesforce

Alan Donnelly has enjoyed a long and successful career in the IT and financial services industry. He has worked with banks, insurers, payments companies, fintechs and more in support of business transformation programmes for some of the biggest names in the business for the past 27 years.

"Technology is definitely much more connectable and effective than it was before" Alan Donnelly, Head of Financial Services, Salesforce UK

Today, he’s head of financial services for Salesforce UK, the leading global, cloudbased CRM platform that integrates customers and companies. Donnelly is also currently leading the Salesforce operation that is digitally transforming the UK arm of the Madrid-based Santander Group.

“I have had the pleasure of working with many financial institutions over many years,” he says. “Typically, it was involved in helping customers build big banking systems and banking platforms that ran what we would call systems of record. But now, as I've

moved into Salesforce and we're building our financial services business, we are really now helping our customers engage with their customers.”

The partnership withSantander is a multi channel operation that sees Salesforce helping the bank to engage better with corporate clients and retail customers via their branches and the internet, says Donnelly.

“We're also helping them with customers, who maybe wish to acquire mortgages and mortgages for the life events. I guess it's a multi connectivity environment. But in every case, Santander needs to understand the customer's requirements and better serve those customers in the right time and the right fashion,” Donnelly explains He adds, “I also think the ability to contact customers whenever they need help and support, as we've seen in the recent pandemic, has proven critical - so I think technology is definitely much more connectable and effective than it was before.”

Learn more today

SANTANDER UK

Digital transformation utilising the Digital Eco-system to enable a digital future

As Santander UK accelerates its digital journey it has invested £332 million for the transformation of services to make life easier for its 14.3 million active customers which includes 6.3 million digital customers and 1,600 new active mobile users per day.

Digitising the bank ‘Digitise the bank for improved efficiency and returns’ is identified as one of Santander’s four strategic priorities for its Corporate and Commercial business which include: • Continue simplifying, digitising and automating the bank • Radically improve technology and operations through innovation and optimisation • Ensure capital discipline and RiskWeighted Asset management • Maintain prudent approach to risk 57

June 2021

Holman outlined the first part of the digital transformation which has included digitising the building blocks for all of their products and services such as, onboarding customers, assessing credit risk and focusing on financial crime. This has enabled teams to become more agile by removing duplication and increasing automation.

One example of how the digital transformation is working for customers is the fact it used to take an average of 12 days to open a new corporate banking account – now it can take just two days. The process is 100 per cent digital, facing the customer, as they have gone from using 39 different pdf forms to one dynamic online form.

“We've been working on this process for four years and it helped to shape the principles in the corporate commercial bank that we’ve used as guidelines with which to execute our digital transformation, and

SANTANDER UK

“ Sometimes, transformation is that radical – people can't even imagine it if they don't know what's possible with technology or how something could be re-imagined”

JONATHAN HOLMAN TITLE: HEAD OF DIGITAL COMPANY: SANTANDER UK LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Jonathan Holman is a technologist and banker who runs Digital for Santander in SME, Commercial and Corporate Banking in the UK. He is a mechanical engineer by undergraduate degree and has a masters' degree in banking management and practice. He has held roles in coverage (relationship banking), credit risk, operations, strategy, change and leadership. He researched and wrote his masters' degree dissertation, using scale social data in credit risk modelling, using ML / AI, which was a global first.

Jonathan's team and he have won 8 global industry awards in recent years for their work in banking technology.

Jonathan is a visiting scholar at the LIBF university college, amongst other academic institutions, advising and teaching on Fintech and Regtech.

JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

Laying the digital foundations Reflecting on the first phase Holman said they had prioritised what technology to invest in and in what order those major horizontal processes of the bank should be digitised as he believes it’s about ‘improving individual use cases whilst laying the right foundations and moving away from a difficult to manipulate stack’.

Santander’s principles of digital strategy includes: • Cloud hosted platforms • SaaS solutions which are configurable • APIs to create continuity of data “Crucially, whenever we bought a piece of SaaS, we've made sure that it's configurable and we've done that to put technology as

EXECUTIVE BIO

that's coincided with the advent of new technological possibilities,” said Holman.

“We have almost completed the first phase of digitising all core processes and we are now looking at how we can leverage data and digital technologies to better anticipate customer needs,” he said.

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REPORTING & ANALYTICS Smarter Decisions with ACTICO

ACTICO, A LEADING INTERNATIONAL SOFTWARE PROVIDER FOR CREDIT RISK ASSESSMENT AND DECISIONING, HAS BEEN AT THE FOREFRONT OF DECISION AUTOMATION FOR MORE THAN 20 YEARS. ACTICO transforms financial firms’ credit risk management with powerful, scalable technology. ACTICO’s solutions enable financial institutions to combine human knowledge and machine learning with automation technology to make faster, more-informed credit decisions in retail and corporate lending.

SCENARIO

KEY CAPABILITIES

Santander UK has recently completed an impressive

With powerful modules for financial spreading,

multi-year digital transformation program to

risk rating, credit origination and risk monitoring,

implement an end-to-end customer onboarding,

the Credit Risk Management Platform provides

credit risk and fulfillment solution. Keeping customer

banks with the following capabilities:

experience at the core, the bank needed a robust

→ Fully graphical drag-and-drop editor to flexibly

and centralized platform to manage its internal

create and maintain business rules for risk

rating models.

assessment and credit rating – giving control over models to risk methodology teams

CHALLENGE To deliver an effective end-to-end digital user experience, it was critical, that the rating models were closely integrated with the new cloud-based bank operating system. In addition, both the platform and the models it hosted had to be flexible enough so the bank’s risk methodology teams could easily adapt them as required. Crucially, regulatory compliance

→ Modern APIs to seamlessly integrate with onpremise and cloud-based core banking platforms → Centralized and audit proof data storage for portfolio-level reporting and risk model validation → Simulation of updated rating models against historic data sets → Full regulatory compliance using built-in features for documentation generation and audit trail

also had to be ensured at any point in the process.

SOLUTION Ultimately, Santander UK selected ACTICO’s Credit Risk Management Platform as its centralized solution to host and execute the internal credit rating models. The Platform was closely integrated with the bank’s credit origination workflows to deliver a seamless end-user-experience.

→ www.actico.com

We are extremely excited to work with one of UK’s largest banks, and support the implementation of an innovative digital platform for commercial lending. Going live with the new integrated platform, Santander UK is able to digitalize its key processes and deliver excellent customer experience.

Christine Moosherr, General Manager, ACTICO

SANTANDER UK

KEY DIFFERENTIALS OF SANTANDER UK Relationship bankers are just one of the key differentials which sets Santander UK apart from other banks.

“Our relationship bankers continue to achieve very high scores in various surveys that the industry conducts about the quality and the experience which customers have from that relationship management.

“We're here, in digital, to augment that relationship team by improving their experience, which enables them to serve the customers more efficiently as well as direct customer touch points that we can improve.”

Holman pointed out their international proposition is also a key factor which gives them the competitive edge “We support high growth and international businesses and we can help businesses manage interest rate risks or foreign exchange risks.

“We've tried to create the idea that the digital and the customer experience can also be a differentiator. In the short term, we can create better experiences as a result of digitalisation and in the longer term the technologies and partners we have chosen will allow us a more nuances and targeted approach. Digitisation unlocks all those opportunities, which maybe wasn't previously possible in processes and systems.”

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close to the business as possible. My team is a hybrid mix of business subject-matter experts and those with technical expertise – configurers / developers on each respective platform that supports a particular activity in what we call domains in the team.”

“Those domains support the main, big ticket operational items and the horizontal processes of the bank. These are processes that apply across all products and services, we always have to do things like onboarding, financial crime, credit risk, legal and contracting, fulfillment activities, servicing and sales.

Holman pointed out the digital workflow of these universal activities is supported by an ecosystem of configurable SaaS solutions which include the following technology partners:

SANTANDER UK

“We've let tech companies be great tech companies and we are concentrating on being a great bank” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

DocuSign – used in fulfillment and legal contracting

nCino – as workflow for onboarding and for credit risk

Salesforce – in sales activity, pipeline management and servicing activity

Tamr – for data continuity and a single customer view

By leveraging the nCino Bank Operating System, which is built on Salesforce and enabled to utilise the Salesforce AppExchange, Santander can now ensure data continuity at every stage of the lending approval cycle – from the opportunity being logged in Sales Cloud through to the loan facility letter being digitally signed by the customer.

Holman said this ecosystem will be critical to delivering the next stage in the bank’s digital roadmap. “It has also helped us to streamline and scale up our corporate and commercial lending processes.”

“We've got tools that are doing specialist activities plugged into tools like nCino, which are broad workflows,” said Holman who pointed out all those component parts are now integratable and able to be run businesschief.eu

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Santander reduced onboarding time by up to 80% using ComplyAdvantage.

Santander UK discusses their implementation of ComplyAdvantage’s Adverse Media Data into their onboarding processes for commercial banking.

Awarded LIBF Best Innovation for Corporate Onboarding with Santander, ComplyAdvantage uses cutting edge AI and a unique technical architecture to support financial institutions in the fight against financial crime.

Utilising Machine Learning, a rapidly improving subset of artificial intelligence (AI), that enables the ability to identify news articles at a rate, depth, breadth and accuracy which is unmatched by regular consumer search engines or professional media search tools.

Santander spoke about their experience using ComplyAdvantage’s Anti-Money Laundering (AML) software and financial crime data, in an effort to better manage financial crime.

In an interview with ComplyAdvantage, Jonathan Holman, Head of Digital Transformation, Santander Corporate and Commercial Banking, explained the main benefits for the bank when processing SME applications:

Benefits •

Configurability - enabling effortless changes and adjustments in response to financial crime, risk management or regulations.

•

Focused results - The solution covers a large number of categories with results summarised in one single profile

•

Efficiency - the use of context rather than keywords enables the solution to uniquely identify only true Adverse Media articles

•

Result - Customer onboarding time reduced by 80%.

•

A reduction in process time - around 60% reduction for customers, and almost an 80% reduction for staff.

•

A greater volume of applications can be processed, and customers receive a better quality service.

•

A higher level of accuracy when analysing customer applications.

“ComplyAdvantage has become a partner in the financial crime space. Someone that we see in multiple parts of the business has got a product right now that meets our requirements, but also that has a roadmap that means they can be a partner for years to come”, says Holman.

Watch: Santander reduced onboarding time by up to 80% using ComplyAdvantage

Find out more

>

SANTANDER UK

TECHNOLOGY CAN UNDERPIN FIRST PRINCIPLES IN BANKING First Principles Thinking is an idea recently popularised by entrepreneur Elon Musk – although it dates back to the philosopher Aristotle who defined it as ‘the first basis from which a thing is known’.

DID YOU KNOW...

Musk describes First Principles Thinking as “you kind of boil things down to the most fundamental truths… then reason up from there.” This is what inspired his quest to send the first rocket to Mars – an idea that would become the aerospace company SpaceX.

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Holman says it is important to think about the First Principles of banking when it comes to applying new technology.

“The basic banking system and intermediate takes those in the economy who have got money and lends it to someone who needs money. For example if someone is selling produce at a market they can get a loan to buy a bike and then they

June 2021

can carry and sell more produce, pay off their loan, and buy a car. The intermediation that enabled that lending, helps them to scale very quickly.”

“I don’t think we should forget how fundamental and important banking is to our economies and our job is to do that task as well as we possibly can. Creating the money supply is a powerful and significant responsibility. Technology can make that task possible in a way that's better than it's ever been performed.”

“If we choose to stick to the First Principles of effective banking, understand them and then choose the right technology to help us do them efficiently and quickly, with customer understanding, with context, with the right risk appetite and the right level of profit that is sustainable for our industry and the economy, I believe banking can do some powerful and amazing things and technology can help underpin that.”

SANTANDER UK

simultaneously with their specialists in any one particular activity.

“APIs and cloud mean that we can move more flexibly with those integrations, creating that continuity of data and natural efficiency. We’ve then got that historic data, a single view of a customer and processes to enable the customer all of which exist in one large system on the Salesforce ecosystem. That's how it manifests itself to our colleagues.”

“As a result of that duplication, some automation and continuity of data that's achieved by those technological components, we're able to offer a better service to the customer,” he said.

“That's really what the first phase of our digitisation journey has been about. It's been about creating efficiencies. It's been about doing what we do already. I don't think bankers have got the first principles of banking wrong. We do commercial and corporate banking well, and we've done it

broadly right as an industry for a long time.

“I wrote my master's dissertation on credit risk management techniques using scale social data and Machine Learning to improve them. But the main ratios we still analyse are the same ones identified in 1906 in the first ever article written about credit risk analysis – the basic techniques haven't changed – but how we do it has changed.”

“The technology we employ has just changed expectations in the business about what's possible. It's brought technology closer to the businesses, involving all departments far more in the configuration of that technology,” he said.

Digital strategy Holman commented that legacy core banking systems, with their dependencies and integrations makes change potentially more expensive and slower and involves

“ In digital you have to marry a banker with someone who is aware of and understands the capability of technology. It's only when you bring those two together that you can truly make change” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING businesschief.eu

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COMPANY NAME

Faster.

Smarter.

Safer.

Enabling digital journeys and personalized offers are key strategic capabilities for every bank. The Earnix analytical platform enables banks to offer the RIGHT PRODUCT at the RIGHT PRICE based on data and analytics while fitting natively into your technology stack.

LEARN MORE

SANTANDER UK

Santander statistics for 2020:

14.3m

active customers

£169.9bn UK mortgage loans

£27.5bn

UK corporate loans

6.3m

digital customers

huge amounts of regression testing.

“Banks are subject to change freezes when there are other priorities in the business that people are using these platforms for – such as big events like Christmas and Black Friday – where one doesn’t want to compromise your core systems, but we were able to extract ourselves from such dynamics by moving to the cloud and to SaaS.” “We took analysis of our customer experiences, as well as our relationship managers, director and our main sales staff. We were able to look at where they were spending most time and what would have the biggest impact to the customer and colleagues and what tech would lay the right foundations to support our progression,” said Holman.

He commented that progression started with Salesforce and digitising sales and servicing and then moved into onboarding

1,600

new active mobile users per day

and subsequently moved into credit risk and fulfillment.

“It’s really important to see the biggest impacts on customer and colleague experience first, as well as laying the right foundations to build upon so we can create a new architecture that allows us to move so much faster. We had to balance this with disruption and change capacity” he said.

Power of tech to re-imagine the future Holman reinforced the message that Santander UK’s technology partners provide them the time and focus to enhance the customer experience.

“Steve Jobs is famous for quoting that when a business moves from the period where a product-minded person is in businesschief.eu

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SANTANDER UK

charge to where a sales-minded person in charge, that is when they've stopped innovating and only want to sell as much as possible in an established market” “I think he speaks to the idea in that quote that businesses should serve a purpose and the purpose is manifesting the product and via their products is how they deliver the business's purpose for its customers.

“Practitioners in technical areas have to bring that sort of experience of how to 69

June 2021

execute something well in a domain. In digital, you need to have that technical understanding of what's possible with technology and which platforms suit which use case, particularly banking is now moving into data and data science. I think first-hand experience can't be beaten.”

“However, the digitalisation of any one industry vertical is more difficult in its idiosyncrasies than perhaps the digitalisation of a generic task. So if you take a platform

SANTANDER UK

“ Digitisation unlocks all those opportunities, which maybe wasn't possible in processes and systems” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

like Salesforce which digitises CRM in servicing and marketing activities as a configurable tool helps every company complete those tasks.”

“But then it takes an nCino or a financial services cloud from Salesforce itself to begin to build that vertical specific capability. That concept, existing in technology, is that it has to get verticalised in order to continue to have traction and continue to improve how an industry functions; that speaks to the idea businesschief.eu

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COMPANY NAME

SANTANDER UK

“ I believe banking and financial intermediation as a first principle can do some powerful and amazing things and technology can facilitate that” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

that industry knowledge is crucial.”

“In digital we have to marry someone who is a banker with someone who is aware and capable within technology. It's only when you bring those two together that you can truly make change rather than saying, ‘we've got some systems now let's try and solve the problems of those systems.”

“Henry Ford classified that with the faster horse quote, ‘If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses,’ but, it's far more important if you're going to reinvent something to say like businesschief.eu

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SANTANDER UK

HOW SANTANDER UK HAS BECOME THE ‘BANK OF CHOICE’ Since its entry into the UK market in November 2004, Santander UK has transformed from its heritage of three former building societies to a full-service retail and commercial bank with focus on its digital future.

Santander UK is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the major global bank Banco Santander.

Milestone moments include: • • • •

•

•

• •

•

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2004 – Acquisition of Abbey National 2008 – Acquisition of Bradford & Bingley 2009 – Acquisition of Alliance & Leicester 2011 – Breakthrough programme launched bringing funding, expertise and business support to high-growth SMEs reinforcing its commitment as the ‘Bank of Choice’ 2012 -1|2|3 World suite of products was launched – embodying our vision of Simple, Personal and Fair banking for all 2014 – Santander UK Group Holdings plc established to create a 'single point of entry' in case of resolution 2015 – Launch of the kitti and spendlytics apps 2016 – Launch of investment Hub, a digital end-to-end mortgage application process, the kabbage online loan platform 2017 – Roll out NeoCRM a customer relationship management tool June 2021

Steve Jobs did, you didn't know you want an iPad, until I showed you one. Sometimes, transformation is that radical – people can't even imagine it if they don't know what's possible with technology or how something could be re-imagined from a first principle.”

Operational excellence Looking ahead, Holman said he is excited about the next digital phase which is focused on listening to feedback from colleagues, customers and creating operational elegance.

“We have to continue to listen to stakeholders like every major business does from Netflix and Apple or Amazon.

They're constantly iterating their software,

SANTANDER UK

listening to feedback and adding new features,” he said.

You can always seek to do better, do things faster and make things easier.

We try to listen to our customers and colleagues and make sure that we continue to use the power of the new platforms to get that right.”

“Our pipeline is very busy so we've got to make sure we prioritise in this next phase and pick off the smaller processes in the right order. But we've also got more complicated things going on as we move into the realm of Artificial Intelligence or thinking about tokenisation of loans and securitising them on the blockchain. These are concepts that are less intuitive than

“ The technology we employ has just changed expectations about what's possible. It's brought technology closer to the businesses, involving the business far more in the configuration of that technology” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL, SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING businesschief.eu

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SANTANDER UK

“ You can always seek to do better, do things faster and make things easier.

We try to listen to our customers and colleagues and make sure that we continue to use the power of the new platforms to get that right” JONATHAN HOLMAN

HEAD OF DIGITAL SANTANDER CORPORATE & COMMERCIAL BANKING

SANTANDER UK

making a document e-sign and they take more explanation.”

Education in open banking Holman said the speed of digitalisation within open banking both in the UK and around the world calls for education within the sector to smooth the transition for their consumers.

“We are undergoing the biggest ever change via open banking, so I think the banking sector and even the government have an education responsibility. It was launched by the industry three years ago, powered by technology and APIs, but there was no collective mass communication.”

“Despite this, a huge number of people have adopted it because it creates an interesting and more competitive banking environment and lots of technical possibilities,” said Holman.

Santander UK is going to launch a number of open banking propositions that will include helping customers permission data to them, as well as helping businesses collect payments from their customers by a smart invoice or via QR code payments.

“Those are the big innovations that we've seen take off in other markets, particularly China, but also increasingly in Europe, so we're hoping to bring those benefits to the UK. Finally, we're looking at AI and more end-to-end automation with our digital platforms and will continue to shape every customer experience to be the best version of itself that it can be,” he said.

businesschief.eu

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DIGITAL STRATEGY FEATURE HEADER

DIGITAL SELLING:

REINVENTING

B2B SALES FOR

A HYBRID FUTURE

Conventional wisdom says big-ticket sales requires in-person contact, but digital selling is working. Business Chief talks to McKinsey and Mediafly

WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH 136

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DIGITAL STRATEGY

T

he onset of the pandemic has brought new ways of working, namely remote, and in turn has forced businesses to accelerate their digital transformation.

The sales function is no exception. With in-person selling restricted, B2B businesses have been forced to shift to an omnichannel selling model, utilising a blend of in-person, remote and digital self-serve.

According to Dennis Spillecke, Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, research shows that in the first 90 days of the pandemic, digital penetration vaulted forward 10 years in terms of ecommerce, and this experience has created confidence that has fed through into B2B sales.

And that confidence in digital selling is riding high a year on. McKinsey’s most recent research, surveying 3,496 B2B decision-makers across America, APAC and Europe from February 19-26 2021, shows the omnichannel model of B2B sales is working, with eight in ten B2B leaders saying it’s as, or more effective, than traditional sales methods, and 83% finding it a more successful way to prospect and secure new business than traditional face-toface-only sales approaches.

What’s even more interesting is the size of purchases that companies are happy to undertake via digital. “Despite the conventional wisdom that says big-ticket sales requires in-person contact, one in five businesschief.eu

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DIGITAL STRATEGY

B2B buyers are willing to spend more than US$500,000 in a fully remote/digital sales model and 11% would spend more than US$1 million,” Spillecke reports. And in China, the inclination to spend more than US$500,000 on a remote sale jumps to 40%.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been bumps along the way to increased digital selling, particularly with the speed of acceleration. According to McKinsey, pain points experienced by organisations include finding the most effective way for field reps to work from home, making remote interactions feel as intimate as in-person experiences, and providing proofs of concept and digital demos that give buyers an equivalent level of insight to physical walk-throughs. Two-thirds say their sales teams have encountered channel conflicts, while others are worried about the ......transactions are a zero-sum game or a catalyst for expanded sales.

However, while no standard playbook has yet emerged for handling these challenges, one common theme holds true, says McKinsey, that companies continue to innovate their sales approaches and pivot resources at speeds not previously experienced in B2B sales. And increased digital selling is here to stay.

“ Sales teams that recognise changing buying behaviours and the importance of improving the buying enablement and experience, and evolve to meet these changes, will be the winners” TOM PISELLO

CHIEF EVANGELIST, MEDIAFLY

That’s because the benefits are increasingly clear. McKinsey research shows a huge increase in the adoption of digital selling since last summer. Research in February 2021 reveals that 70% of Brazilian, 68% of Chinese, and 59% of American B2B decision-makers report the hybrid model of B2B selling to be ‘more effective’ than the traditional model, and this is up significantly from how they felt about it in August 2020 – up 62%, 68% and 43%, respectively.

“Those companies that have embraced the change and driven it forward in their own organisations find the new sales methods more effective and confidence in the effectiveness of the new selling model has grown sharply throughout the past year, rising globally from 54% at the start of the pandemic to 83% in February 2021,” says Spillecke. businesschief.eu

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DIGITAL STRATEGY

Smart sellers recognise evolved buyer expectations Facilitating this digital transformation in B2B selling and marketing are digital sales enablement and content management platforms, which have become increasingly popular over years, but since the pandemic, have become strategic imperatives. Mediafly has seen a dramatic increase in the level of adoption and depth of its own digital solutions with existing customers and in the number of customers they now work with across CPG, manufacturing and technology solution providers.

“Sales teams realised they needed to instantly digitally transform their sellers to meet virtual selling requirements, meet changing buyer content preferences and address economic-focused decisionmaking,” Mediafly’s Chief Evangelist Tom Pisello tells Business Chief.

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According to Pisello, smart marketers and sellers have recognised, and continue to recognise, “the evolved and elevated expectations of buyers post-crisis” and are subsequently stepping up to provide buyers with digital content that they can access and share with others on the buying team 24/7; personalising content to the buyers’ industry, location and role; leveraging interactive content in a variety of ways; and arranging content into collections for prospect buying teams, organising and populating in one portal all of the content the buyers needs to make a more informed facilitated decision.

And the results speak for themselves.

For example, research firm Forrester found that B2B firms using Mediafly’s platform experienced greater efficiency (25% increase in selling time), a massive 300% increase in the use of content that’s most effective at inspiring deals and driving revenue, and ultimately a 66% lift in revenue.

DIGITAL STRATEGY

Dennis Spillecke TITLE: SENIOR PARTNER COMPANY: MCKINSEY & COMPANY Based in Cologne, Germany, Spillecke co-leads the Marketing and Sales Practice in Western Europe and helps clients to run customer-centric transformations, build marketing analytics capabilities, and set up the marketing function in the digital age.

Recognising the benefits of digital selling Spurred on by the pandemic, B2B sales and marketing teams are recognising the opportunities that increased digitisation brings, from better sales efficiency and transparency to being more insightled, says Spillecke, and this is leading to greater agility, with companies responding to the insights gained and being more flexible about how sales resources are deployed, which together improves “the efficiency and success of the sales team”.

Such an approach, adds Spillecke, “requires systems to be connected to share information, which is not only beneficial to the salesperson but also to the wider sales team, marketing and other functions, creating an ecosystem that is focused on understanding customers and their needs and not just improving the processes for salespeople”.

Tom Pisello TITLE: CHIEF EVANGELIST COMPANY: MEDIAFLY Tom ‘The ROI Guy’ Pisello is an entrepreneur, speaker and author of the book Evolved Selling: Optimising Sales Enablement in the Age of Frugalnomics. He joined the Mediafly team in 2018 through the acquisition of the company he founded and led, Alinean Inc. and as Chief Evangelist, he is responsible for developing new practices for sellers and marketers to communicate and quantify business value to increasingly frugal buyers.

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And it’s the use of AI and ML in particular helping to both automate tasks and identify patterns in data that would otherwise go undetected. “For those companies able to ensure data is joined up across systems and channels, AI can be a goldmine of insights and business advantage,” Spillecke explains, and can also be used to automate decisionmaking and present personalised offers to customers, both on digital channels and in supporting face-to-face sales interactions.

Similarly, he says, by leveraging analytics, sales teams can get a much better understanding of customers and use it for more accurately targeted offers, and “those insights can be used to prevent customer churn and predict the likelihood to convert sales”.

As a leading sales enablement and content management platform, Mediafly combines AI-powered automation, seamless CRM integration, and in-depth content analytics to both reduce the manual burden of logging meetings and content used into Salesforce/CRM, and to recommend related pieces of content.

“Importantly, the right content at the right time,” says Pisello, “to help inspire buyer engagement and next-step action, and to track which content actually moves the needle in given selling situations and providing even more intelligent recommendations”.

He adds: “Insights as to what content is being used, consumed and most importantly moving the needle is vital to know which content to invest more in, and which content to defocus on and perhaps retire. This includes making sure you are monitoring not just official, but also ‘shadow content’ created by sellers and other groups, not from marketing officially, 142

June 2021

so you know what is being leveraged to good effect, to capture and drive more usage and best practices by capturing into official programs or gaining visibility and managing the rogue content that doesn’t lead to success.”

Pisello points to the fact that a sales enablement platform like Mediafly can guide the seller to exactly the right proof of concept and digital demo content they need to match the buyer’s industry, role and challenges, essential in sales as “too much content can cause information overload and freeze a deal at ‘do nothing’, so presenting the right and relevant content and demos is essential”.

It can also help sellers share content better with the team and further track the

DIGITAL STRATEGY

Sales enablement technology now business critical With remote working and limited travel, sales enablement has emerged as a strategic imperative with growth of sales enablement platforms during the pandemic proving phenomenal with the global market estimated at US$1.3bn in 2020 and projected to reach a revised size of US$4.5bn by 2027, growing at a CAGR of 19.5 per cent from 2020-2027.

Leading sales enablement and content management platform Mediafly says that since the onset of the pandemic, it has seen a dramatic increase in the level of adoption and depth of its solutions with existing customers, and the number of new customers. Fast-growing platform Highspot has experienced back-to-back record

quarters of new customer wins and annual recurring revenue growth for the fiscal year 2021, while content management solution Showpad witnessed a 300 per cent YOY increase in 2020 in the use of Shared Spaces, its branded buyer portal technology, where sellers can collaborate with colleagues and customers without the need for arduous email threads.

Such growth confirms that “sales enablement has become a business-critical function, and equipping teams with the right tools, training and structure can lead to incredible top-line results and more focused buyer engagement”, says Pieterjan Bouten, CEO of Showpad.

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DIGITAL STRATEGY

interaction of the buyer with the shared content, understanding exactly when the buyer reviews the content, who the content is shared with on the buying team, and exactly how much time each buying team member spends on each piece of content.

Blip or long-term shift?

But while a digitised approach to B2B sales has increased and thrived throughout the pandemic, is it a model likely to dominate once vaccines have been rolled out? Much like the predicted long-term shift to hybrid working, the shift to hybrid has now “become the predominant path for B2B sales”, Spillecke says.

While most organisations do intend to return to in-person selling this year, with 90% of B2B sellers expecting to hold some in-person meetings by the fourth quarter of 2021, only 15% expect in-person sales to represent more than 73% of their sales interactions.

The rise of the hybrid seller This drive to omnichannel commerce has triggered a restructuring in the sales team, with many moving with admirable speed, adapting processes on the fly in order to respond and adapt alongside their customer base, says Dennis Spillecke, McKinsey.

E-commerce has been the most popular route to market for B2B companies as of February 2021, marginally outpacing in-person, and 41% of leaders say it is their most effective sales route, outperforming in-person by 37% and video by 31%.

And moving forward, 85% of B2B organisations expect the hybrid rep to be the most common sales role in their organisation in the next three years, compared to just 28% that have hybrid sales roles today.

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Hybrid sellers represent a combined team of field and inside sellers that sell mostly via video conference, phone and apps and only occasionally visit customers in-person.

“Traditionally, B2B companies would have two types of salespeople: the in-house team selling from their desks and working to create and manage the sales funnel, and salespeople out on the road, meeting potential customers, building relationships and closing deals,” explains Spillecke. But in the hybrid model, “every salesperson will be trained with both skillsets and share their time between selling on digital channels, without losing sight of the need for face-toface engagements”.

DIGITAL STRATEGY

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“ With an omnichannel model, the sales team can also become more agile, responding to the insights gained as well as being more flexible about how sales resources are deployed, and together this can all improve the efficiency and success of the sales team” DENNIS SPILLECKE

SENIOR PARTNER, MCKINSEY & COMPANY

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DIGITAL STRATEGY

“Companies need to realise that the evolution that has taken place across the pandemic in these areas is not a temporary blip. Omnichannel B2B sales models are here to stay,” says Spillecke, acknowledging that there are some industry and cultural variances as some products and services are much easier to sell in this way and many tech firms, for example, use self-service platforms for B2B sales.

And recent B2B budget projections indicate a willingness by organisations to spend and transform their sales models, with intent to invest by B2B leaders more prominent in India, China and the US, and with investments in hardware (42%), software (42%) and marketing (35%) outpacing other spend categories in the top increasing budget areas.

“As the rate of digitisation picks up across industries, companies may find that they need to upgrade their infrastructure and tool sets to keep pace,” says Spillecke. “The realisation that digital channels can play a much bigger role in the B2B sales cycle is creating business confidence about the future. A growing number of businesses want to capitalise on the new opportunities that are now in front of them and made possible by digitised and hybrid ways of selling.”

Mediafly’s Pisello concurs and explains that sales teams who recognise changing buying behaviours and the importance of improving the buying enablement and experience, and evolve to meet these changes, will be the winners.

“The best organisations will leverage self-service digital content, interactive content, and tech-enabled sellers to provide buyers with just the right information they need to stay engaged, inspire and justify change, and facilitate team consensus and buying decisions.” businesschief.eu

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MERCURY

EXPERTISE ACROSS THE DATA CENTRE LIFE CYCLE WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Mercury’s Alan Clinton, Operations Director, Data Centres and Building Services, on the company’s data centre offering and its COVID-19 response

A

lan Clinton is the Operations Director for Data Centres and Building Services at construction firm Mercury, a company he first joined in 2007. He now leads a fast growing department providing for the ongoing data centre construction boom. “I lead the delivery of data centre and building services projects across Europe,” says Clinton. “That covers every aspect of our day-to-day operations, including people management, supply-chain management, client relationship management and more.”

Having been founded in 1972, Mercury has developed a reputation as an experienced hand, and that’s no different for its offering in the mission critical sector. “Mercury is one of Europe’s most experienced hyperscale and enterprise data centre service providers,” says Clinton. “We provide highly complex engineering services to our clients, with very high levels of safety, quality, 150

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Experts in electrical compliance, inspection, testing, documentation, commissioning and safety throughout Europe With unrivalled expertise in the field of electrical inspection and testing, our team has a collective wealth of technical and practical experience. We believe we are the market leader, operating pragmatic and initiative systems which set us apart from competitors.

Superior compliance in construction Group Management’s Steve Cressey on a uniquely collaborative partnership with Mercury Engineering and almost 15 years of compliant construction projects Group Management Electrical Surveys is a long-standing and vital partner to Mercury Engineering. The company offers an innovative suite of electrical inspection, test and documentation services to ensure compliance in complex major construction projects for many of the UK and EU’s leading companies.

No project can achieve handover without the correct documentation and safety critical electrical certification in place,” says Managing Director Steve Cressey. “Our services ensure that project critical documentation and certification can be correctly produced in an efficient, cost effective manner, which makes Group Management an important part of any construction project.”

Cressey joined the business in 2009, bringing strong and incisive leadership to Group Management, with decades of industry experience giving him a unique understanding of the design through to handover construction process. He has stewarded the business’ partnership with Mercury since its inception and describes it as uniquely collaborative.

“The partnership is longstanding, and we’ve built an incredibly strong working relationship,” Cressey says. “Partnering with Mercury, who are an innovative, cutting-edge technology

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provider, means we must constantly improve our services offering. We strive to be the best in what we do, and Mercury can trust we will be efficient in delivering on time, on budget, to achieve a successful handover that meets both Mercury’s and the end clients’ future needs.”

Group Management has since completed more than 30 Data Centre projects throughout the EU as Mercury’s preferred electrical compliance partner, as well as pharmaceutical projects, and new hospitals in the UK & Ireland.

“To ensure the continued success and growth of Group Management we always discuss projects with key clients and their teams, take feedback on the performance of both our business and our individuals, and in turn use that to improve our services,” Cressey says. “We now offer four more services to Mercury than when the partnership began, which has helped spur Group Management’s growth and success within the wider market.”

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MERCURY

innovation and value engineering.”

Mercury’s expertise covers the full data centre life cycle. “We look after every stage of the project, from design & build, planning and construction right through to commissioning, ongoing facilities management and ICT services.”

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has become apparent. It's with this in mind that Mercury has set concrete goals for its sustainability efforts. “At Mercury, we believe that it’s everyone’s duty to play their part to improve the quality of life on our planet,” says Clinton. “This year, we launched ‘Our Planet, Our Duty’, a 50-page document which sets out our sustainability plan. One of the

MERCURY

ALAN CLINTON TITLE: OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES COMPANY: MERCURY INDUSTRY: CONSTRUCTION

most important goals we have set is to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emission intensity by 50% by 2030.”

As with all companies globally, Mercury has not been unaffected by COVID-19, but it has been successful in minimising disruption to clients. “We’ve been very fortunate in that we’ve been able to continue to work very successfully during

EXECUTIVE BIO

Alan is the Operations Director for Mercury’s Data Centres & Building Services business unit, which delivers projects across Ireland, the UK & Europe. Alan has overall responsibility for the business unit and the most important aspect of this to ensure we exceed our clients’ expectations. This is achieved through leadership ensuring success. Alan has been working in the construction industry for over 24 years with experience in sectors such as Data Centres, Healthcare, Retail, Office & Commercial, Manufacturing and Residential and has spent the last 12 years mainly focused on the data centre industry.

GLOBAL POWER DISTRIBUTION SOLUTIONS Unique power solutions designed to maximise uptime, agility and safety in mission critical environments.

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MERCURY

“ At Mercury, we believe that it’s everyone’s duty to play their part to improve the quality of life on our planet”

the COVID-19 pandemic, with very little impact to our clients,” says Clinton. “Our main success has been without a doubt down to the efforts of our teams. The impact of COVID-19 on the ability of staff to travel has of course been a challenge, but because we have invested so much in technology and our digital transformation over the last several years, we have largely

ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY

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EXPERTS IN OUR FIELD We understand the importance of delivering projects to a high standard, on time and on budget.

Our outstanding expertise and commendable 18 year track record set PMI apart from our market competitors.

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been able to continue without major impacts to our business.” The company’s digital capabilities have also been crucial, as Clinton explains: “We have been able to conduct quality audits, factory acceptance tests and more virtually. Our use of BIM, Virtual Realty, Mixed Realty and more have been of huge benefit to us. Our flexible supply chain and multinational staff have also helped us to continue working across all of our different geographic locations.”

DID YOU KNOW...

ROBUST GLOBAL SUPPLY-CHAIN Being ready for that and other unprecedented events which have in recent times rocked the sector requires a strong partner network.

“Having a robust global supply-chain is very important to us. We have supply-chain partners specialising in every aspect of our business strategically located across the globe.

Particularly with concerns such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Brexit, it’s important that we are able to deliver to anywhere, from anywhere.”

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Supporting data centre construction throughout Europe

Tel

+44 01375 892464

Web

manchett.com

Email jim.mccarthy@manchett.com

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“ Whether it’s with our colleagues on site, our clients, our supply-chain partners or other Mercury staff across the globe, we all can learn from each other and benefit” ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY

Clinton credits the company’s culture as having been critical to its response to the pandemic. “Collaboration and communication are some of the most important things to us at Mercury.

Whether it’s with our colleagues on site, our clients, our supply-chain partners or other Mercury staff across the globe, we all can learn from each other and benefit. During this pandemic it was even more important for us to make sure we're communicating with everybody – particularly our staff to ensure their mental health and wellbeing.” It’s thanks to that mindset that the business has been able to weather the storm and be stronger for it. “Obviously it was a challenging year, and circumstances continue to be

Steve Cressey shines a light on Group Management and what they Offer Customers

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MERCURY Experts in fire protection

Fire Protection Ensures High Data Availability  Fire detection  Gas-based extinguishing systems  Sprinkler systems (FM approved)  Low pressure water mist system

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www.abec.co.uk enquiries@abec.co.uk

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challenging. But our clients and our supply chain and our team have all combined to help us to continue our business with very little impact. We really have great people working in this industry to keep things going in the ways they have.”

The pandemic has, however, had the effect of accelerating pre-existing trends going forwards. “A major trend now that Mercury is looking more and more at is the delivery of data centres using modern methods of construction such as offsite manufacturing,” says Clinton. “There are major benefits to the client for delivering

“ A major trend now that Mercury is looking more and more at is the delivery of data centres using modern methods of construction such as offsite manufacturing” ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY businesschief.eu

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1972

Year Founded

2,600+

Number of Employees.

€1bn Revenue

MERCURY

“We are continuing to refine our service offering, playing to our strengths, while putting our clients’ changing needs at the heart of our innovation in how we deliver” ALAN CLINTON

OPERATIONS DIRECTOR, DATA CENTRES AND BUILDING SERVICES MERCURY

project elements offsite, such as cost and programme certainty, higher levels of safety, quality, efficiency, and reduced impact to the environment. Our focus on digital transformation over the last number of years is enabling us to deliver more this way – and obviously benefiting our clients.”

The company now stands ready to thrive as it heads into the future. “Last year, Mercury released our latest strategy, Beyond50, a five year plan that aims to take our company beyond its 50th anniversary next year. We are continuing to refine our service offering, playing to our strengths, while putting our clients’ changing needs at the heart of our innovation in how we deliver,” says Clinton.

That strategy is as comprehensive and holistic as the company’s ambition. “Our strategy covers everything from further strategically developing our service and market offering to continuously ensuring that we remain leaders in safety, people, digital transformation, the use of offsite manufacturing, quality, corporate social responsibility and sustainability, while continuing to develop our winning culture.”

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THE

BIGGEST

CYBER SECURITY THREAT TO YOUR ORGANISATION COULD BE YOU

Cybersecurity is a major source of anxiety to CEOs, but they still aren’t spending to tackle it. Business Chief discusses cyber urgency and complacency WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

C

ybersecurity has fast become a major source of anxiety to businesses worldwide and is now second only to the chaos caused by the pandemic.

That’s according to the most recent PwC Global CEO Survey, in which nearly half of CEOs cited cyber as the biggest anxiety in 2021, up from just 33% last year. And among CEOs in North America and Western Europe, it is the top business threat, and therefore the number-one priority for CEOs in North America (69%), Western Europe (44%), the Middle East (41%) and Asia (40%).

And there’s good reason for such concern, given the increase in high-visibility cyberattacks that have occurred since the onset of the pandemic, including 2020’s most significant – SolarWinds, with hacking of the US IT firm leaving its clients including the US government and Microsoft vulnerable for nine months.

There were many others though in 2020.

In March, a major security breach with 166

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Marriott International led to the data of more than 5.2 million guests being compromised.

In May, healthcare insurance giant Magellan suffered a ransomware attack with up to 365,000 patients impacted. And in July, someone took control of 130 high-profile Twitter accounts (Apple, Elon Musk, Barack Obama) and conned people into sending Bitcoin to an account.

Even as this is being written, “Acer, ironically a tech company, has just been hit by ransomware with the criminals demanding US$50 million”, Ira Winkler, CISO of Skyline Technology Solutions, and one of the world’s most influential security professionals, tells me.

Cyberattacks happen all the time, and more frequently, and they cause tremendous damage, says Winkler, pointing to the Wannacry virus where organisations around the world suffered crippling outages.

Many incidents have been serious enough to lead “to the firing of CEOs”, he adds.

TECHNOLOGY

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And while organisations “which are completely IT-based, like banks, have more dependence on cybersecurity”, all types and sizes of organisations can be at risk. “If you’re a small business and you cannot service your clients without computers, which these days includes everyone from restaurants to retail stores, you need to be concerned,” warns Winkler.

The statistics are scarier still. Since the onset of the pandemic, the FBI has reported that the number of complaints about cyberattacks to its Cyber Division is up as many as 4,000 a day, a 400% increase since the COVID-19 outbreak; Interpol is seeing an “alarming rate of cyberattacks aimed at major corporations, governments, and critical infrastructure”; and according to VMware Carbon Black’s latest Modern Bank Heists report, there has been a 118% surge in cyberattacks against banks since 2020.

It’s the sort of numbers that keep banking CEOs awake at night. Like Uday Kotak, CEO of India-based Kotak Mahindra Bank, who cites cybersecurity as the company’s greatest business threat. Having “witnessed increased fraud in the banking system” during the pandemic, Kotak explains that it is the threat

Ira Winkler TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER COMPANY: SKYLINE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Dubbed a ‘Modern Day James Bond’ by the media, a title he earned by performing espionage simulations where he physical and technically ‘broke into’ some of the largest companies in the world, investigating crimes against them, and telling them how to cost effectively protect their information and computer infrastructure, Winkler is considered one of the world’s most influential security professionals.

Starting out at the National Security Agency, Winkler has since designed and implemented support security awareness programs at organisations of all sizes, industry-wide and worldwide.

Jean-Michel Azzopardi TITLE: FOUNDER AND CEO COMPANY: KRALANX CYBER SECURITY Founder of Kralanx, a one-stop-shop for advanced cyber security services and consulting located in Malta, Azzopardi has worked with IBM, SAP and Acunetix and has negotiated cyber security deals with companies and governments across Asia including Apple, Huawei and some of the largest Fortune 500 companies worldwide.

Having been involved in a number of start-ups, he prides himself in striking a balance between corporate standards and SME efficiency.

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3 cybersecurity trends for 2021 These techniques, tools and approaches were revealed by analysts at Gartner’s Security & Risk Management Summit APAC in March. The summit is further planned globally: London and Florida, in September, and Tokyo in October.

Breach and Attack Simulation Breach and Attack Simulation (BAS) tools are emerging to provide continuous defensive posture assessments. When CISOs include BAS as a part of their regular security assessments, they can help their teams identify gaps in their security posture more effectively and prioritise security initiatives more efficiently.

Privacy-Enhancing Computation These techniques protect data while it’s being used, rather than while it’s at rest or in motion, enabling secure data processing, sharing,

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cross-border transfers and analytics, even in untrusted environments. Implantations of this are on the rise in fraud analysis, intelligence, data sharing, financial services, pharma and healthcare, and Gartner predicts that by 2025, 50% of large organisations will adopt privacyenhancing computation for processing data.

Cybersecurity Mesh This is a modern security approach that consists of deploying controls where they are most needed. Rather than every security tool running in a silo, a cybersecurity mesh enables tools to interoperate by providing foundational security services and centralised policy management and orchestration. With many IT assets now outside traditional enterprise perimeters, a mesh architecture allows firms to extend security controls to distributed assets.

TECHNOLOGY

In her first speech since taking the helm of the UK cybersecurity agency, the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in March 2021, CEO Lindy Cameron warned against company complacency, saying that as “our reliance on technology grows, it sadly also presents opportunities for those who want to do us harm online”.

of a cyberattack and “the thought of losing my customers’ money to theft that keeps me up at night”.

Because as Kotak explains, “while COVID has brought about a significant increase in digital adoption and transactions, it has also increased the risk associated with digital”.

And with the shift to remote/hybrid working, the risks have been greater still, with many remote workers using insecure data transmission channels to transmit organisational data and organisations lacking in effective enterprise-grade firewalls, antivirus solutions and network security solutions.

Kralanx Cyber Security CEO, JeanMichel Azzopardi, explains that “information security has broached the frontline” due to the majority of employees now working remotely and this has therefore heavily increased “an enterprise’s risk and reliability on information security as a whole”.

Businesses not taking cybersecurity seriously And while our reliance on digital has become much greater, and companies are forging ahead with speedy digital transformations, according to Cameron, cybersecurity is still not taken as seriously as it should be.

And PwC’s research backs this up. While nearly half of CEOs are planning increases of 10% or more in their long-term investment in digital transformation, little is being put into cybersecurity technology. So, despite the level of concerns CEOs registered about cyberattacks, just under half of those planning for heightened digital investment are also planning to boost their spending on cybersecurity and data privacy by 10% or more.

This is not a surprise for Azzopardi, who says that cyber security generally falls quite low on most businesses’ priority list due to the fact that there’s “no quantifiable value generation from direct investment”. And despite the very real urgency, that priority is lower still now due to competing business priorities. “Unfortunately, with many companies cannibalising marketing budgets in order to retain employees, InfoSec has taken a back seat for the most part.”

Winkler says he is currently seeing businesses tactically implement security. “They are doing what is obviously required, such as work from home security, but for many companies, they need a strategic rearchitecting of their security, which just isn’t happening as much.” businesschief.eu

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Cybersecurity, says Cameron, should be viewed with the same importance to CEOs as finance and legal and “our CEOs should be as close to their CISO as their finance director and general counsel”.

Though the stats suggest this simply isn’t happening. In the financial sector, for example, the majority (75%) of CISOs still report to the CIO rather than the CEO, according to VMWare’s Bank Heist report.

Azzopardi agrees, telling Business Chief that while the CISO has certainly become more important than it was previously, it’s still not as important as it should be. “Most CISOs spend their time touting the importance of what it is they do, and the reality is that most advice offered by CISOs falls on deaf ears until there is actually a breach. They are the most underappreciated, and probably the most stressed of the C-suite.”

That’s assuming of course an organisation can find a CISO. According to Gartner’s Research VP Peter Firstbrook, “80% of organisations tell us they have a hard time finding and hiring security professionals, and 71% say it’s impacting their ability to deliver security projects within their organisations”.

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“ MOST CISOS SPEND THEIR TIME TOUTING THE IMPORTANCE OF WHAT IT IS THEY DO, AND THE REALITY IS THAT MOST ADVICE OFFERED BY CISOS FALLS ON DEAF EARS UNTIL THERE IS ACTUALLY A BREACH. THEY ARE THE MOST UNDER-APPRECIATED, AND PROBABLY THE MOST STRESSED OF THE C-SUITE” JEAN-MICHEL AZZOPARDI CEO, KRALANX CYBER SECURITY

TECHNOLOGY

Most common mistakes businesses make Not prioritising the CISO role is just one of many mistakes that businesses are making today. According to Winkler, businesses generally don’t focus enough on the basics and often focus too much on the obvious when what is actually needed is for firms “to focus on the underlying architecture”.

He points not to a specific cyberattack, like ransomware or phishing, as major threats to businesses in the security landscape, but “enterprise ignorance”, along with a company’s lack of applying basic security protection. And this, Winkler explains, can lead to big incidents.

“The reality is that the basics matter, we call it cyber hygiene, so while everyone loves to talk about the hype of advanced attacks, it’s the simple things that are usually exploited to create the major incidents.

Small businesses are dealing more with end user related issues and have to work

From ransomware to doxware Ransomware attacks, where cybercriminals hold your computer data or network hostage until a ransom is paid, is a serious and growing threat for businesses, both in scale and severity, and isn’t just about fraud and theft of money or data, but also “the loss of key services and unenviable choices for unprepared businesses”, says Lindy Cameron, CEO of NCSC. And ransomware has upped its game during the pandemic, with attacks up 800%, according to cybersecurity firm MonsterCloud, with founder Zohar Pinhasi suggesting that criminals have now converted ransomware to something called doxware. "If you're not going to pay us, we will sell your data and, in addition to that, notify your customers that you were hacked and that their data was compromised,” says Pinhasi. “This is a game-changer since the coronavirus started – we've seen it in the past, but not to this degree." businesschief.eu

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Threats facing financial institutions in 2021 According to VMWare’s fourth annual Modern Bank Heists report (2021), while the financial services sector is probably one of the most secure, they are dealing with the “most sophisticated cybercrime cartels”, says VMware’s Head of Cybersecurity Strategy Tom Kellerman. Here are some of the increased risks for banks in the past year.

• Time stamp manipulation Criminals now know how to evade detection by manipulating time stamps, so financial institutions need to pay greater attention to securing the integrity of these stamps to ensure this method isn’t used to alter the value of capital or trades.

• Island hopping This increased 13% (excluding SolarWinds) in 2020 and

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happens when a hacker attacks an organisation within the large bank’s information supply chain and uses a third-party to ‘island hop’ onto the bank’s network. They are not limited to supplychain vendors or tech firms and once they are inside your infrastructure, will use that to get into your customers and partners’ systems too.

• Targeting Market Strategies Increase in attacks that target a bank’s non-public information and market strategies, suggesting says Kellerman, that cybercrime cartels have become more knowledgeable about the financial sector and know a banks’ non-public information is its most valuable asset.

TECHNOLOGY

“WHILE EVERYONE LOVES TO TALK ABOUT THE HYPE OF ADVANCED ATTACKS, IT’S THE SIMPLE THINGS THAT ARE USUALLY EXPLOITED TO CREATE THE MAJOR INCIDENTS.” IRA WINKLER

CISO, SKYLINE TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS

on PC security and good passwords, while large companies have to worry about infrastructure concerns.”

According to Azzopardi, one of the key mistakes that businesses make is believing that a hack can be detected instantly. The reality is that most companies take on average of six months to detect a data breach, even a major one, as the SolarWinds incident proved. Information such as passwords, credit card details and social security numbers may already be compromised by the time a company is notified.

Azzopardi also explains how businesses, big and small, simply don’t attribute enough importance to the human element. That’s despite the fact that 95% of cybersecurity breaches are caused by human error.

“The main point of attack is, and will probably always be, the human element.

It’s way easier to fool a human than it is to

brute force login credentials,” explains Azzopardi. “The main issue with phishing is that it’s almost impossible to use technology in order to prevent it, instead security awareness training is perhaps our best tool and since we rely on humans to execute such a task, we must assume a significant rate of failure. It is our imperfection after all that makes us human.”

So, what should businesses prioritise in 2021 and beyond? Azzopardi points to the basics such as antivirus, antimalware, password managers and revoking of admin rights as organisational musts. “Throw in mandatory VPN access, regular training and exercises such as BCP testing and your organisation would already be much better prepared than most,” he says.

He also says that API security is right up there with companies forced to make certain APIs public. As such, a priority for security teams is to “design a robust and effective API testing strategy that doesn’t impede development too much while balancing security”.

Finally, he predicts that ransomware will continue to rise, and that cryptojacking will explode. “This is basically the process of creating a bot-net which unknowingly mines crypto for a single wallet. This can be delivered via phishing quite effectively and you will never know it's even there.” businesschief.eu

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REIMAGINING THE PUBLISHING SUPPLY CHAIN L ANDSCAPE

WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE

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MACMILLAN EDUCATION

Shaun Plunkett, VP of Global Supply Chain, provides an exclusive insight into Macmillan Education’s global supply chain transformation

1843

Year Macmillan was founded

2000+ Number of Employees

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I

t isn’t every day that you come across an organisation that was founded in the 1800s and is still running to this day. With a 175-year history, Macmillan Education is one of the world’s oldest and most renowned publishing houses, providing books, digital tools and educational content to pupils and teachers all over the world. With a local presence in over 120 countries, Macmillan Education works with a global community of teachers and educators whose aim is to leave the world better than they found it by sharing knowledge and advancing learning. It is a company with responsibility at its heart and – along with its parent company Springer Nature – measures and manages its environmental and social impact. In 2019, Macmillan Education reduced the use of plastic in teaching materials and donated over 97,000 textbooks to schools and universities in lower income countries.

So how does an organisation with such a long history function in the hyper-advanced world of today? The simple answer – a transformed supply chain. Providing a bit more depth into Macmillan Education’s operations is Shaun Plunkett, Vice President Global Supply Chain. Plunkett, who joined Macmillan Education in 2016 immediately identified the weaknesses the legacy operating practices presented. He spent the next year or so defining a supply chain

MACMILLAN EDUCATION

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Grupo Espinosa: 70 years of constant evolution A proudly Mexican company servicing the publishing industry with best-in-class printing, storage and distribution facilities in the heart of Latin America Founded in 1952, Grupo Espinosa has been relentlessly supporting the publishing industry with producing more than 100 million copies every year. No project is big or small for Grupo Espinosa, as the facility can scale up on demand and their turnaround times are highly competitive. Grupo Espinosa works with on-demand digital press or offset press, in paperback with glued softcover binding, PUR softcover binding, stitched paperback binding, binder’s board, hardcover, saddle stitched, Spiral or Wire-O. Equipped with the experience needed for a product to leave the plant ready for distribution, Grupo Espinosa delivers anywhere inside or outside Mexico.

With nearly 70 years behind them, and located in Mexico City, Grupo Espinosa has two major locations that they operate out of. Both locations are controlled by a single ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) system ensuring speed, consistency and quality of work. Tirado says this isn’t their only competitive advantage. He adds “Our

competitive advantage is the relationship we have with customers and the trust they put in us with their intellectual property”.

Speaking of trust, global publishing giant Macmillan Education exclusively partners with Grupo Espinosa for their Latin America operations, as part of Macmillan’s decentralized hub strategy. Having a facility that offered the full spectrum of service – from storing digital content to printing and distributing – was one of the major requirements for Macmillan, and Grupo Espinosa was recognized as the leading printing hub for providing this 360 infrastructure. Another factor that has led to success for Grupo Espinosa is the absolute focus on quality and time. Sustainability is a huge factor playing into Grupo Espinosa’s operations, and they’ve created a healthy environment with the sustainable use of paper and energy resources as well as keeping their employees – most of them associated with the organisation for over 10 years – happy.

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Partnership makes us stronger

Find out more about our Printing and Logistics services Vertical integration Warehousing and Distribution solutions Personalised attention Trustworthy

supplychain@edelvives.es

www.edelvives.com

MACMILLAN EDUCATION

“ The operation I inherited was Far East focused, where a team of about 30 would report into me, source and bring books to our single warehouse in the UK, and then ship a lot of books out again back to Asia. So you can imagine there were some inefficiencies there.”

SHAUN PLUNKETT TITLE: VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN COMPANY: COMPANY NAME INDUSTRY: PUBLISHING LOCATION: LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM Shaun Plunkett VP Global Supply Chain for Macmillan Education has over 30 years of supply chain leadership experience in FMCG, entertainment and media sectors supporting multi-billion euro businesses including Universal Music, EMI, Sony Music, Harper Collins and Associated British Foods. He has a track record of successfully delivering transformational change coupled with, award winning operating models and developing and coaching global teams. Challenging the status quo is at the heart of what drives Shaun on a daily basis and encouraging others to continuously push the boundaries.

SHAUN PLUNKETT

transformation strategy to deliver an operating model that would deliver improved cost, service and support growth opportunities.

Shaun is an experienced supply chain leader, with experience of over thirty years. A naturally charismatic and motivated leader, Shaun has a leadership style that is one of engagement and open conversation. In a preCOVID world, Shaun spent most of his time traveling and meeting people in local offices across the globe in order to better understand their market dynamics, customer needs and to understand what they were expecting of a future supply chain. He also made it a point to meet other internal stakeholders and key supplier partners so he could get the full picture of end-to-end operational practices and measure existing service levels.

As an extension to his leadership strategy, Shaun prides himself on being a change agent, someone who is invested in improving

EXECUTIVE BIO

VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MACMILLAN EDUCATION

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In bound Freight costs reduced by

90%

Service level consistently rose to

99%

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processes by challenging the status quo, and raising the bar for service in whatever capacity he can. Shaun has been responsible for delivering a resilient and agile model based on

“I could sense the pain, and that level of service was just not going to be acceptable and sustainable, to avoid losing business to our competitors ultimately” SHAUN PLUNKETT

VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MACMILLAN EDUCATION

regional supply/ printing hubs with strategic partners in each continent. The strategy has delivered multi-million euro savings across freight, packaging, inventory and production.

Speaking further about his strategy for Macmillan Education, Shaun says that the need for reform was imperative, adding “The operation I inherited was Far East-focused, where a team of about 30 would report into me, source and brings books to our single warehouse in the UK, and then ship books in some cases out again back to Asia. So you can imagine there were some inefficiencies there.” Soon after he presented his findings to Springer Nature, Shaun was tasked with the job of creating a supply chain system that cut time, costs and dependencies on this single-region sourcing model. Since the manufacturing was Asia-focused, lead times were significant and this created a non-traversable obstacle for Macmillan Education’s operations. Shaun remembers one of the early conversations with executives at the company about the frustrations that some of the legacy system was bringing on. He says “I could sense the businesschief.eu

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At CLOC we specialise in working with large organisations in helping to improve print efficiency, and reducing print spend in the following ways: •

Flat pricing model – Supports auto-stock replenishment of small batch quantities and encourages production teams to only order what is needed. This keeps the long tail of products commercially viable even down to 1 book whilst avoiding any waste.

•

On demand low volume printing – As little as one copy. Zero stock; what you order is what you need – no waste or storage costs – great for the environment.

•

Stock management – Triggered stock replacement and fulfillment services.

•

Simplified bespoke ordering platforms and reporting; provides managed print spend through budget code automation, as well as many other budgeting methods.

•

Our digital state of the art printing technology delivers class leading quality, efficient and automated production processes with reduced manufacturing costs.

•

Our combined print technologies – Mixing digital printing with large press printing, delivers cost savings and increased production speeds for larger production volumes.

•

Targeted print – Variable data printing from template driven files via a bespoke ordering platform.

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•

High volume copying services through our large digital printers, deliver lower costs against onsite copiers.

•

Our security printing – We are a trusted and accredited security printer, delivering court bundles for many organisations as well as exam printing for 10 key Universities.

•

Our combined processes can deliver the fastest production speeds, same day is commonly available.

CLOC play a key role with Macmillan Education, by delivering on demand printed books within a flat pricing model.

For further information please email: info@clocltd.co.uk or call 020 8801 6983

Click here to learn more

MACMILLAN EDUCATION

Macmillan Education Insights Index

pain, and that level of service was just not going to be acceptable or sustainable, if we were to avoid losing business to our competitors.”

So what do you do when you have an operation that functions out of the UK, sources content from the Far East and distributes around the rest of the world? You organise. And that’s exactly what Shaun did.

He established that the forecasting, on which demand was estimated, was not sufficiently accurate - resulting in unnecessary additional costs. He undertook detailed planning and scenario modelling to establish a radical alternative. The new decentralisation strategy he devised helped to cut inbound freight costs almost entirely. He adds “The existing model also didn’t meet our sustainability goals as the carbon footprint was way too high.”

So he recommended building an integrated supply chain based around local printing and supply. This hub solution – as Shaun calls it –

would mean that all the printing, storage and supply could be done from a hub located in each operating country or region around the world, immediately eliminating the long lead

“One of the main challenges was sustainability, and this model was clearly not meeting our sustainability goals as the carbon footprint was way too high” SHAUN PLUNKETT

VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MACMILLAN EDUCATION businesschief.eu

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“ What I recommended was building an integrated supply chain based around local print and supply” SHAUN PLUNKETT

VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MACMILLAN EDUCATION

times and poor service levels that some clients were facing. After implementation, Macmillan Education’s service levels rose from under 90% to consistently above 99%.

Another factor that contributed to the transformation of the supply chain was the issue of legacy content storage. Files were previously stored traditionally, often sitting with printers or local offices, which led to a significant waste of time and higher risk of version errors. To counter this, Shaun implemented a new digital archive system, meaning all content files were now held up to date and easily distributed to printing partners. He adds, “We’re seeing improvements in quality and a lack of mistakes because we've cleaned up all that businesschief.eu

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MACMILLAN EDUCATION

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legacy content. We now know when we want to print something it's the right book, it has all the right content. And we also know we can print it anywhere anytime on demand, so we have a lot of confidence in that digital supply chain now.”

Over the course of the past year during the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers around the world have had to rapidly adapt to online teaching and learning, and many classrooms have operated remotely for periods at a time. Macmillan Education was adapting to new digital offers already and the pandemic has led to a further focus on a robust digital-only offering, although printed components remain a key ingredient of their blended offer. The pandemic has also brought about barriers on transport, country-wide shutdowns and reduced-

capacity workplaces, making the need for decentralised hubs essential for operations to keep running.

Elaborating further on how these hubs work, Shaun mentions that partnerships played a key role in bringing his strategy to life. Notable partners include Grupo Espinosa based in Mexico, Edelvives in Spain, Arab

“We’re seeing improvements in quality and a lack of mistakes because we've cleaned up all that legacy content” SHAUN PLUNKETT

VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MACMILLAN EDUCATION businesschief.eu

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MACMILLAN EDUCATION

“We now know when we want to print something, it's the right book, it has all the right content. And we also know we can print it anywhere, anytime on-demand, so we have a lot of confidence in that digital supply chain now.”

SHAUN PLUNKETT

VP GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN, MACMILLAN EDUCATION

Printing Press in Lebanon and Cloc in the UK. One of Shaun’s first experiences with the hub system took place in Singapore, where he observed an entire production, warehousing and fulfilment operation under one roof. This was the catalyst for Shaun’s decentralised model, and he soon met with other partners in order to convince them to make investments and transform their infrastructure. To his surprise, he wasn’t met with resistance, as the partner companies soon realized that transforming their own operations could mean a higher volume of production and the potential to sell on the model to other clients.

These partners recognized the mutual benefit, with Grupo Espinosa – for example - currently printing and delivering nearly 1.5 million books per year for the company.

In the summer of 2020, when Lebanon experienced a catastrophic explosion at their port, one warehouse partner lost their entire facility. Incredibly Arab Printing Press was able to remanufacture all local requirements in two weeks the our third party logistics vendor found an alternate warehouse within days.

Edelvives, a long term partner based in Spain, has been transforming its operations in line with the hub model by acquiring a new warehouse and installing print on demand equipment. Cloc, based in London, is the local

partner in the UK and has introduced a fast track digital printing service in order to support print on demand services and eliminate unnecessary waste.

When it comes to sustainability, Macmillan Education has made notable strides in ensuring they use sustainably sourced paper for all publications. They have also reduced the use of plastic globally, eliminating shrinkwrapping and packaging wherever possible – amounting to millions fewer items of plastic in use each year. As a business, Springer Nature has committed to supporting delivery of the UN’s sustainable development goals, and so as a part of the larger organisation, Macmillan Education follows suit.

As a closing statement, Shaun is once again reminded of the challenges that lie ahead, but is confident that with the right kind of transformation in place, the future looks bright. He concludes “Macmillan Education is an old organisation, I would say, and needed to consider emerging potential risks as the world is moving on. Actually you can't just stay still. People will overtake you and you need to change, and so this has been a roller coaster and fun journey, but there is more to come.”

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HOW TECH IS TRANSFORMING HR

IN A HYBRID WORKFORCE With hybrid working the next normal, how can the HR function use technology as an enabler for better employee experiences?

Business Chief talks to Andrew Duncan, Infosys Consulting and Brian Kropp, Gartner WRITTEN BY: KATE BIRCH

F

or most of its history, the HR technology function has been more comfortable as an implementation partner than an innovator, handling technology enquiries from various stakeholders, collecting data and analytics, and dealing with system maintenance.

But this is starting to change, as HR technology budgets and expectations grow, says Gartner’s Group Vice President Brian Kropp, a man known for providing cutting-edge insights to the most progressive HR execs.

“With the widespread shift to remote work, HR technology leaders quickly had to address how to move a wide array of employee processes, such as performance management, onboarding and learning into a virtual space, sharply illustrating the increasing need to include HR technology input into workforce planning,” Kropp told Business Chief.

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programmes, according to Andrew Duncan, UK CEO at Infosys Consulting, with a phased approach over a number of years, and often held up by the involvement of too many stakeholders, lack of immediate ROI, and overcoming legacy systems and tech stacks.

“However, over 12 months into the pandemic, we have certainly seen organisations accelerate their HR digital transformation, as a necessity rather than a ‘nice-to-have’,” says Duncan, pointing in particular to the cloud, which, in an effort to maintain operations during the pandemic, has been “a winner of 2020 across all facets of business, including HR”.

And with hybrid expected to become the next working norm (Gartner projects that 48% of employees will keep working remotely at least some of the time postpandemic) digital transformation of the HR function utilising the cloud, AI, big data, analytics and VR, is expected to accelerate.

And fast.

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40%

Businesses investing in AI to develop their HR function for whom the primary driver is to maximise cost savings, according to Gartner research.

80%

The number of organisations that have cancelled or are planning to cancel in-person Learning and Development training, with L&D instead pivoting its learning offerings to a virtual framework with the adoption of remote and hybrid work, according to Gartner research.

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Gartner says that around half of the organisations the firm has talked to are already investing in AI or planning to do so in the next three years. “AI has already proven it delivers against cost-saving expectations and is now evolving into more refined uses such as enhanced decision making, for example, not just by screening more CVs, but also by providing recommendations on which CVs to shortlist and why,” says Kropp.

And while there are those who argue that digitisation of the HR function will lead to loss of human touch, the opposite can in fact be true.

Using technology to support and engage people Duncan believes that in the future we will see AI being used as an ‘intelligent co-pilot’, complementing and enhancing the existing skills of HR teams rather than replacing them.

“AI provides HR departments with an opportunity to improve the candidate

and employee experience by automating repetitive, low-value tasks and freeing up time to focus on more strategic work,” says Duncan. He argues that with so many businesses looking at creating more flexible hybrid models of co-located and distributed work for the future, the focus long-term must shift from “how businesses can use technology to improve their bottom line to how can they use technology to support and engage their people”.

HR leaders should concentrate on using technology as an enabler for better employee experiences, working in the background to support greater workforce productivity and issue resolution.

For example, as a tool for augmented experiences, Duncan argues that technology can be a powerful enabler for connecting employees and teams who may not traditionally have face-toface interaction in an office. He points to new videoconferencing platforms based

“ Long-term, the focus must shift from how businesses can use technology to improve their bottom line to how can they can use technology to support and engage their people” ANDREW DUNCAN

CEO UK, INFOSYS CONSULTING

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on VR and AR which create simulated environments for users from around the world to meet, communicate and interact in a more natural setting.

“Similarly, virtual connection-building tools, or internal talent marketplaces, can encourage contacts between individuals and teams, make personalised recommendations to link employees with like-minded colleagues or mentors, and support onboarding processes by connecting new hires with their team,” states Duncan.

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Developing employees Since COVID-19, more organisations are employing learning experience platforms (LEPs) to facilitate continuous education and help foster employee feedback and transparency, says Kropp. “LEPs look to deliver personalised learning paths, channels and collections that enable learners to easily organise, access and share relevant resources.”

When it comes to employee training, Duncan also points to personalisation, and mobile. “I’m particularly interested in the use of AI to both virtualise and personalise

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L&D initiatives, moving away from onesize-fits-all programmes and I anticipate increased development and investment in training platforms that learn your strengths, weaknesses, learning style and working preferences,” he says. “These insights can be used to automatically suggest suitable training courses and modules to match your role, as well as adapting the way your training is delivered.”

Duncan believes VR also has extensive applications for remotely upskilling employees. “Developing presentation skills can now be achieved using virtual meeting rooms, populated with realistic elements like lighting distractions and background audience noise. Solutions like these can give feedback on interpersonal elements like pace of voice, number of hesitation words and even eye-contact.”

Empowering and engaging employees Listening to employees and the ways in which employers respond has never been more crucial, says Kropp, and this has given rise increasingly to tools like voice of the employee (VoE) solutions, which help foster employee feedback and transparency. “VoE solutions deliver insights with actionable guidance to help improve employee engagement, experience, productivity and performance,” explains Kropp. “The immediate, urgent and forced transition to remote work environments during the first half of 2020 has become an equally compelling driver of end-user demand.

Organisations now want to use VoE to communicate care, listen to employee concerns, prioritise investments and quickly take action where necessary.”

Duncan says that in a hybrid workplace, without regular face-to-face meetings or the spontaneous interactions of an office

setting, managers may find it harder to spot employees who are at risk for low productivity or thinking of looking elsewhere.

However, “new AI-driven technologies based on workplace data offer employers the ability to identify employees who are struggling with motivation”, he says.

“Digital feedback platforms and collaboration tools make it possible to gain unprecedented insights into what matters

AI can eliminate bias in hiring process According to Duncan, the processes used to find, recruit and retain talent are filled with human cognitive bias, where a person’s background, experiences, social stereotypes and cultural context will unconsciously impact their decisions and actions. The use of AI, however, can help HR leaders overcome human-bias in decision making, creating inclusive job descriptions and reviewing them for gender-coded language.

Additionally, says Duncan, “AI empowers leaders to make far more informed decisions about a candidate, unearthing their true potential and eliminating the risk of hiring based upon relationship”. businesschief.com

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HR Technologies Rising Andrew Duncan, UK CEO, Infosys Consulting, outlines the trends and technologies coming into play in the HR space.

• Chatbots These will make waves in employee experience in 2021 and beyond, solving many simple HR issues, like updating personal information. We will inevitably see a rise in voice biometrics and natural language speech recognition that improves employees’ ability to self-service, and aside from internal use, chatbots also show promise in streamlining the candidate experience, handling initial applicant screening and scheduling interviews.

• Digital Twins As we emerge from the pandemic, more organisations will turn to digital twins to better prepare for unexpected shocks and to build an intelligent and resilient employee ecosystem. A digital twin with layers of workplace insights provides a shared picture for key leadership, letting HR leaders experiment with a number of key variables, testing different scenarios and contingencies across space management, employee utilisation and facilities. With a digital twin, HR can also pair staffing forecasts with real estate costs and uncover innovative ways to maximise operational expenses.

• Health Tech Employee happiness is now a corporate responsibility, and one with a significant impact on productivity. The pandemic has shone a light on the vital role employees play in business success, and talent is more confident in expressing their needs to employers. Consequently, we will see the concept of Health Tech making its way into HR, supporting and monitoring physical fitness and the emotional and mental health of employees, from virtual meditation classes to AI-powered therapists.

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to employees, whether via surveys, chatbots or virtual feedback groups and by engaging people in a two-way dialogue, leaders have the ability to deliver personalised experiences that support their individual goals and needs and improve the employee experience.”

Monitoring employee performance Since the onset of the pandemic, according to Gartner, more than one out of four companies have purchased new technology, for the first time, to passively track and monitor their employees. However, says Kropp, “many of these same companies haven’t determined how to balance employee privacy with the technology, and employees are frustrated”.

“ AI has already proven it delivers against cost-saving expectations and is now evolving into more refined uses such as enhanced decision making, for example, not just by screening more CVs, but also by providing recommendations on which CVs to shortlist and why.”

BRIAN KROPP

GROUP VICE PRESIDENT, GARTNER

Duncan asserts that all HR leaders should make it a priority to balance such monitoring technology with employee privacy, and that when implementing such tools, leaders should build trust with a governance framework around the metrics they want to use, the data they want to collect, and how they will safeguard sensitive information.

Both Duncan and Kropp predict that new regulations will emerge this year, and these will start to put limits on what employers can track about their employees.

That’s not to say that monitoring performance can’t be beneficial. “By understanding data and behaviours that most closely correlate with workplace

success and failure, managers can identify team members suffering from emotional stress and fatigue and proactively intervene to address issues like poor engagement and feelings of low inclusivity,” explains Duncan.

“Simultaneously, they stand to improve work processes and create personalised employee experiences that create better engagement and outcomes.”

In the end, digital transformation will not be a cure-all for anything, says Duncan, but instead a platform for leadership to build their organisations of the future, “leading from the front and engaging all of their employees in the journey ahead, to shape that future ambition”. businesschief.com

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

LOCAL BANKING DONE DIFFERENTLY WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

PRODUCED BY: JOE PALLISER

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

Mike Cunningham, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, elaborates on the importance of culture and a local approach in Banque Saudi Fransi’s transformation

A

Mike Cunningham, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer

s practically everyone in the banking sector continues to invest in digital technology, the extent to which a company chooses to focus on culture can often be an important differentiator from the crowd. Better yet, understanding how the latter informs the former’s development can lead to breakthrough innovations. Only the most visionary organisations are capable of producing such results, and Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF) is positioning itself among this distinctive group.

Established by royal decree in 1977, BSF was once an affiliate of Crédit Agricole CIB, one of France’s largest banks. Since that time it has become Saudi Arabia’s secondlargest corporate bank and founded an extensive network that includes four primary offices (Riyadh [HQ], Jeddah, Al-Riyadh, and Al-Khobar), 84 branches, 563 ATMs, and over 3,000 employees. Emphasising a teambased structure that maintains a simple and customer-centric outlook, the bank prides itself on an agile ability to create big ideas and execute them effectively.

It was this exciting culture that drew Mike Cunningham, Chief Strategy & Digital Officer, to BSF in 2018. “The opportunity captivated me,” he explains. “Being given the chance to be an agent of genuine change and to be a true intrapreneur was too good to miss.”

Responsible for five divisions within the bank - Strategy, Strategy Delivery, Marketing businesschief.eu

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Proudly working with BSF AVA to embrace digital transformation and realise future potential and opportunity WWW

LEBANON

KSA

CYPRUS

Dbayeh Highway Marina Bay Building Dbayeh Lebanon

Al Akaria Plaza Al Ulaya Street Riyadh Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

T. +961-4-417-796 T. +1 (408) 618-6278

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A modern, innovative bank has to think differently to defend its competitive advantage, in a world where new market entrants are challenging the traditional financial services model, emboldened by technology innovation and a regulatory environment which is shifting to accommodate new ways of serving customers.

Banque Saudi Fransi has proved that agile thinking and a willingness to adapt are key to success for a bank whose account holders might be tempted by the fully digital experience offered by challenger banks and payment service providers. BSF has opted to address the threat by working with technology partner eMcREY on a key project to help deliver digital transformation. This is part of a new generation of customer-centric banking solutions linked to the rapidly developing external digital financial services ecosystem in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and beyond.

What BSF has demonstrated is that true digital transformation goes far beyond adding new digital services in response to market opportunities or immediate threats. Transformation involves a visionary approach to reassessing the scope and ambition of the core business, implementing a digital-first culture and re-imagining the value proposition to proactively anticipate customer needs. Technology is integral to this way of thinking, says eMcREY CEO, Mona Yahchouchi. The future is about embracing collaboration and partnerships, as well as adopting a mindset that is open to learning from those who are making waves in the industry. eMcREY has significant expertise in developing digital solutions for the financial services domain, with projects at many of the leading banks in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Middle East region. The company has worked closely with BSF on its digitization journey, as a partner on the bank’s AVA project, which will see BSF launch its own challenger bank on a separate platform and under the new brand.

Designed as a mobile-led service and targeting digital native millennials, the new bank is a significant milestone for banking in Saudi Arabia, clearly signalling the Kingdom’s intention to lead rather than follow in the field of digital financial services and compete with best-in-class fully digital providers. AVA includes innovative features that will certainly make it attractive internationally, not only to customers within the Kingdom.

This includes a digital wallet which will be integrated with global payment schemes for worldwide acceptance. eMcREY was chosen to partner with BSF thanks to the speed to market achievable using its Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription-based licensing and delivery model. The company has considerable expertise in delivering a range of business-critical digital implementations in the Kingdom, linking financial institutions to national, regional and global payments

infrastructure. An integrated end-to-end platform for virtual payments, the SaaS solution creates a proven foundation for growth and unlimited scalability across a complete range of payment services.

Mona Yahchouchi says that the speed with which financial institutions in the Kingdom are innovating is impressive. Banks have recognised the need to define agile strategies to enable rapid and seamless delivery, focused on building strong relationships with customers and increasing revenue by introducing new services.

Going forward, reputations will be established on the ability to innovate and willingness to embrace the next generation of new technologies. Security of transactions and customer data will be key to success, along with a focus on omnichannel payments strategies as the differences between payment types and markets become increasingly blurred. In technology terms, this means handling real-time account-to-account transactions and rapidly growing volumes of contactless and mobile payments. It calls for robust back-office solutions for customer acquisition and authentication, alongside scalable acquiring and reconciliation capabilities. There are new possibilities presented by blockchain and cloudbased, on-demand payment services; but there are also challenges associated with compliance and customer demands in an increasingly global payments market.

Since 2006, eMcREY has been using state-of-the-art technology as a powerful force for creativity in KSA. A Saudi company with offices in Riyadh, Dubai, Canada, Cyprus and Lebanon, eMcREY delivers dedicated solutions for financial services, government and fastgrowing market segments such as smart energy and smart transport to help achieve Vision 2030 goals. Its 200+ specialists in the Kingdom have built a reputation for strong technical expertise, commitment to customer service, quick-to-market solutions and excellent support for ambitious, future-focused businesses.

“Our collaboration with BSF has been exciting and fruitful,” concludes Mona Yahchouchi. “It is one of a number of key projects that are really beginning to show the results of Vision 2030 investment in the financial services digital ecosystem. We look forward very much to extending our work with BSF and helping them to fulfil their own dynamic, customer-centric vision.”

For more information about eMcREY products and services please visit www.emcrey.com or email info@emcrey.com

“ BSF is known as the ‘relationship bank’ because we’re more inclusive: we’ve stopped thinking like a big bank and now everyone has a voice” MIKE CUNNINGHAM

CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER, BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

& Corporate Communications, Customer Experience, and Digital - Cunningham calls BSF’s employee value proposition “captivating” and a natural incubator of entrepreneurial vitality. An experienced leader in the EMEA banking sector as both an executive and mentor, he speaks with authority about the company’s superior cultural offering, “In my 25-plus years of work, I’ve never been made to feel so welcomed, so appreciated, or so integral to an organisation; it's like my home away from home.”

For BSF, success is dependent on establishing a clear vision and then assembling the right team to carry it out. Taking a ‘servantleadership’ role in managing its employees, which includes giving them the space to try out new ideas, the company has a “no BS [big shots]” policy when it comes to teamwork: each member is critical to generating a positive outcome. According to Cunningham, the challenges of modern banking make this highly collaborative philosophy indispensable, “Regulation, fragmented value chains and digital; when you add these three together, you can not only see how the cost of compliance has hit banking’s cost base but also how our 208

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entire business model is being commoditised.”

Recognising the writing on the wall, BSF has subsequently begun moving with the changes, fast.

When it comes to digital transformation, however, Cunningham is quick to point out that this alone doesn’t give BSF an advantage, “Having real differentiation in that regard is very difficult; most banks just look at what competitors are doing and copy them.”

However, BSF is determined to go one step beyond by actively listening to customers and implementing the changes that they actually need. BSF’s approach to developing products and services is much more akin to the agility seen in startups than legacy bank brands, yet this cultivated unconventionality is exactly why it prioritises the customer experience (CX) above all else. This is also where the bank’s storied reputation within its national community becomes invaluable, “we're part of the fabric of the Kingdom’s society, which we've achieved by staying close to our customers. BSF is known as the ‘relationship bank’ because we’re more inclusive: we’ve stopped thinking like a big bank and now everyone has a voice,” he explains.

BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

BSF’s Digital Transformation Journey & Digital Banking Futures

MIKE CUNNINGHAM TITLE: CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: BANKING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: SAUDI ARABIA Mike is a thought leader and digital practitioner of innovation within financial services and has an unmatched global network with the world’s leading VCs, FinTechs, Accelerators and the established corporates.

He mentors new FinTech start-ups at two of the region’s leading accelerators in Saudi and Lebanon. Before joining Banque Saudi Fransi, Mike attempted to build the UAE’s first ‘standalone’ digital challenger bank. With no appropriate licensing framework, it was three years too early and Mike had to concede round one. Prior, Mike was Executive Vice President at Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank where he led Group Strategy and Innovation. Before that he

worked for Barclays in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East where he led the de-novo market entry and establishment of Barclays in India, Pakistan and Namibia.

With his 25+ years of financial services experience, Mike has a deep understanding of building and innovating digital financial services in emerging markets and coupled with his track record in customer experience transformation and his global network, is ideally placed to create the region’s preeminent digital first bank.

Mike has lived and worked all over the world and now resides between Saudi Arabia and the UK with his young family.

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Mambu and the UAE’s digital banking journey Miljan Stamenkovic, Mambu’s General Manager for MENA, talks technology and digital transformation In his current role as Mambu’s General Manager for MENA, Miljan Stamenkovic sees opportunity in abundance.

providers and cloud adoption. But this past year has been a wave of progress.”

“When I joined Mambu with my team in 2019, we came with the fintech, entrepreneurial mindset and DNA to build and grow Mambu’s business in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region. Before 2019, the region used to remind me of a desert, at least in terms of cloud service

He explains, “There are data protection laws. There are cybersecurity regulations and most importantly, a variety of major tier one cloud service providers that are available. But what particularly excites me here at Mambu is the opportunity to rethink business models together with our clients and really bring them to life.”

"Banks used to be built to last, but today they need to be built to change. And that's what we're enabling here."

—

Creating a neobank and challenger bank ecosystem has been his ultimate goal.

“In my opinion, this actually creates a unique opportunity to partner with some of the best fintechs in the region and build the region’s first and true challenger and neobanks.”

Miljan Stamenkovic, Mambu’s General Manager for MENA

Stamenkovic credits Mambu’s partnership with Banque Saudi Fransi (BSF) for the success that has driven the bank forward in the region. “When I think about all the challenger and neobanks that have grown massively over the past decade, there is one common denominator for all these new initiatives. I would say they really operate like a tech company rather than a bank – BSF is leading this approach in Saudi Arabia.”

He adds that Mambu is helping BSF deliver an entire new banking experience while providing soft core banking services. “Mambu enables banking like a modern tech company. Banks used to be built to last, but today they need to be built to change. And that's what we're enabling here.”

Watch Mambu in the Middle East

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EMcREY: MORE THAN A MATCH FOR BSF

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DID YOU KNOW...

From all of BSF’s hardworking and valuable partners, Cunningham singles out tech solutions expert eMcREY as being particularly important to the company’s ongoing digital transformation.

Calling it a “fabulous partner,” he endorses eMcREY as being the epitome of expertise in its field: “There's no payment company anywhere on the face of the planet that understands Saudi Arabia better than eMcREY. “It powers all of our payments infrastructure and is even taking care of BSF’s new digital ventures’ processing. eMcREY behaves like a startup, possesses the venture spirit for which we were looking, and it’s also helped stop the bank from making the mistakes that others have made. It's been great to have eMcREY on board.”

The primary challenge for BSF as it develops further digital capabilities, Cunningham continues, is one experienced everywhere: a shortage of experienced talent. Despite the scarcity being magnified in Saudi Arabia, he insists that the bank has overcome this in two ways: 1) Importing the world’s brightest and best and winning them over with BSF’s culture; and 2) Launching its own digital engineering apprenticeship.

No longer seeing the utility of maintaining large data centres, BSF favours migrating its infrastructure to the cloud and adopting software as a service (SaaS) platforms.

However, Cunningham states there is still an element of waiting for big tech and global cloud players to arrive in Saudi Arabia, allowing it to catch up with BSF’s ambition, “cloud options within the Kingdom are

BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

“BSF captures the voice of the customer, looks across all of our different customer journeys, and tries to find ways of removing friction” MIKE CUNNINGHAM

CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER, BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

limited at this time. I think that hinders our ability to innovate at the pace that we want.

The Saudi Central Bank has been amazing in opening the doors for digital banking.

It’s got a great sandbox, not necessarily just for testing new products but also in terms of challenging and testing current and new regulations.”

It’s safe to say that BSF’s ultimate goal is to be nothing short of Saudi Arabia’s digital finance nexus, but Cunningham clarifies that there’s still some way to go. 2020, by dint of the COVID-19 pandemic, was an important test of its digital integrity and values, both of which passed with flying colours. “We were already set up to operate remotely. BSF’s first response was to look after our people, be there for them personally, and make sure that they received the support needed. What

the pandemic has done is accelerate our digital plan and placed a renewed emphasis on digital and mobile channels.” Therefore, 2021 and beyond will serve to realise the fulfillment of that new vision, including the development of ‘Project AVA’ - BSF’s own digital challenger bank. With details still kept tightly under wraps for now, Cunningham calls the project an effort “by Saudis, for Saudis” that will go beyond being a mere replication of successful brands elsewhere.

The bank will accomplish this by leveraging its close connections with the community and a campaign of ‘hyper localisation.’

Indeed, BSF understands its customer demographic well enough to know that “just lifting something up from one country and dropping in the other” won’t work. Different markets have different needs, and BSF, whether considering new product launches or technologies in which to invest, always has the end-user in the mind. “Mobile technology could fundamentally create a shift in not only the products, services and features that we have, but also our business and operating model,” states Cunningham. “Those benefits could be in terms of improved risk management for the institution, a better employee and customer experience, or better economics.” businesschief.eu

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“ We're part of the fabric of the Kingdom’s society, which we've achieved by staying close to our customers” MIKE CUNNINGHAM

CHIEF STRATEGY & DIGITAL OFFICER, BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

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BANQUE SAUDI FRANSI

1977

YEAR FOUNDED

Banking INDUSTRY

3,000+

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEESS

USD 1.9bn REVENUE

As the availability of Saudi Arabia’s cloud infrastructure continues to develop, BSF is poised to take a prominent position in the country’s new banking industry. Calling the organisation a “universal bank” that attends to SMEs, large corporations, retail, private and underbanked individuals with equal drive and determination, Cunningham remains highly positive about the BSF brand’s future growth potential. “Culture and talent represent 80% of the digital iceberg,” he concludes. “BSF believes in finding people that think and work differently in order to create a culture that sets up the business for success. No one should settle for ‘second best’ in talent; I'm a big believer that the best talent attracts the best talent, period.”

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Shaping the Future of HR WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

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Telia Inmics-Nebula’s HR Director, Kirsi Kantele discusses how HR has a pivotal and very active leading role within Telia Inmics-Nebula

T

he past year has been a challenging one for companies globally. Not many enterprises could say the experience has been positive, as massive upheavals have seen numerous businesses struggle to ride the tidal wave of change.

However, managing the digital transition, new technology and creating a culture of learning and transparency, is something that Kirsi Kantele, HR Director of Telia InmicsNebula, embraces.

Despite the challenges due to COVID19, she believes the digital transformation of Telia Inmics-Nebula was not only, in her words, ‘surprisingly straightforward’ but has also brought benefits to staff, customers and the working environment.

Kantele, who’s strong background in employment law and management has provided her with essential tools for her profession, explains, “I think that many lawyers are quite analytical and structured in their approach and I guess that applies to me as well. I have a strong background in legal HR which is how I started my career in Telia as an employment counsel - so I’m very familiar with the legal issues in the HR field.”

It is this pragmatic and clear-headed stance that has contributed to the company’s digital transition being such a success, although Kantele points out that prior to the pandemic, Telia Inmics-Nebula Kirsi Kantele, was already well developed in terms of a HR Director, flexible working environment.

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50%/50%

gender balance in top management is Telia Company’s aim by

2025

in terms of inclusion and diversity

She says, “In the new normal of working, innovation, social connections and communication can be viewed as a challenge, but I see that there is constant development in technology to help with these issues (for example Microsoft break out rooms) and changes in ways of working.”

Technology, Kantele points out, has been massively instrumental in paving the way for remote and virtual working experiences.

“Many of the things that we might have thought were not possible to do in a virtual setting, went surprisingly well this past year,” she says.

“For example, the collaborative workshops and onboarding of employees (the kinds of things you usually do face-to-face) were handled very successfully virtually.”

The day-to-day connections have been a tougher challenge, as innovation and 220

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creativity are often the result of dynamic working relationships in a socially connected setting. Though Kantele points out that these issues are far from insurmountable.

“Of course, there are complications when you think about the social connections, innovations and collaborations. You really need to work harder to support them,” she says.

“We adopted a practical hands-on approach by starting wellbeing breaks for employees. These are essentially 15 minute breaks so staff can get their exercise in the afternoons, and also teams can have social coffee breaks. These small changes enable the social connections with others to be maintained. Encouraging a sense of belonging and connection is very important but I also think technological developments are continually addressing these issues.”

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

KIRSI KANTELE TITLE: HR DIRECTOR COMPANY: TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Direction and leadership The importance of having the right people and partner assets in place to meet the future demands, but also to shape the future, are aspects that are essential to Kantele in her position as HR Director.

Human capital, she says, is part of the value chain - and critical to customer satisfaction.

“People function as part of the value chain in delivering the services or products to the customer, and even if we don’t usually have direct contact points with the customer, it's important that we envision that result in all our procedures. We must appreciate that added value to different stakeholders – the customer, as also to our people, owners and society.”

She continues, “I try to be as open and transparent as possible in my leadership.

It's essential to have openness and trust.

Kirsi Kantele leads the HR function in Telia Inmics-Nebula.

Telia Inmics-Nebula employs over 500 people. Kirsi has over 10 years of experience in HR with a focus on change management as well as employment law and industrial relations. Kirsi’s passion is to help the business succeed through people agenda as well as to coach and empower people to succeed in their work and careers. Kirsi has been with Telia for ten years. Before joining Telia, Kirsi worked in the legal services sector and as a judge in a district court. Kirsi holds a Master’s degree in law from the University of Helsinki and an Executive Master’s in Management degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Introducing Surface Duo

https://www.martinrobertcook.com/

Microsoft: inspiring women in tech Microsoft in Finland’s CMO Janina Backlund understands the value of diverse teams that represent the customers served and reflect audience needs Microsoft is partnering with Telia in Finland to deliver an evolving customer experience; one made up of rich H2H (human-to-human) interactions. “We need to stay relevant with our customers with the right message on the right channel and at the right moment,” says Microsoft Finland’s CMO Janina Backlund.

“We need to stay relevant with our customers with the right message on the right channel and at the right moment” —— Janina Backlund,CMO, Microsoft Finland

Value-Based Marketing How our values are communicated is key, says Backlund: “You can’t simply copy/paste value messages; they need to be authentic so you go to market in a way that matters to the audience you want to engage with.”

Surface the Women Microsoft has been running its #SurfaceTheWomen campaign for three years now; in tune with Telia’s aim to have 40% of its leadership roles allocated to women by 2023. “Gender equality is a conversation that needs to progress. Diversity and inclusion are written into our DNA at Microsoft,” explains Backlund. “These are core values grounding the way we develop our technology which needs to be accessible for everybody. Microsoft’s offering needs to represent the diverse audiences we aim to serve.

This extends all the way to the teams we recruit; which must represent those same customers. It’s difficult to create innovations that are actually meaningful for our end users if we don’t make sure the teams developing them are diverse and value inclusion.”

Watch: #SurfaceTheWomen 2021

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

This is possibly an overhang from my legal background in that I like to keep an eye on the small details - and make sure there is always good consistency as much in leadership as there is in operations.”

Kantele believes management roles have been challenged by the new work from home mandates, because hovering in the background is no longer an option.

“In many ways working from home is more efficient because it allows for a better balance between work and social life. I think working remotely puts a positive pressure on leaders too. It means they must have good and efficient processes in place and it encourages transparency in terms of targets.

It puts focus on leadership issues. That should be seen as a positive thing.”

On digital transformation Kantele is a firm advocate of technology, and says in order to adopt digital practices successfully, companies must start with an open mind from the top level. “It's important to have the kind of culture that embraces digitalisation and different types of technologies,” she says.

“And to create that kind of culture, it's essential that the top level management lead by example and be curious of the different possibilities technology can offer us. For example, HR can smooth the transition with training and capabilities. But the next stage is how digitalisation changes the way we work. That’s a big thing that really needs support and focus for teams.”

She continues, “For example in Telia InmicsNebula, we have a process in terms of planning ahead - we ask what kinds of changes are we facing in the future through technology? When we move into a more digital world. In that way, we have planned well so we know what we will need and support required.”

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Shaping the future with HR

“Often, it's not only a technology change but a whole set of processes and ways of working that are changing” KIRSI KANTELE,

HR DIRECTOR | TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Paljon tehoa töihin. Kaikenkattavaa tietoturvaa.

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Kaikki mitä yrityksesi tarvitsee Laite ja palvelut täydellisesti paketoituna – valmiina käyttöönotettavaksi suoraan paketista.

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Tutkitusti¹ tietoturvallisimmaksi arvosteltu mobiilialusta Helpot ja nopeat asennukset, yrityksen tarpeiden mukaisesti räätälöityinä Kokonaisvaltainen laitehallinta

Enterprise edition -laitteita on saatavana kahden (2) vuoden ajan² •

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Liitä puhelin tietokoneeseen langattomasti Käytä puhelimen sovelluksia tietokoneen näytöltä Siirrä tiedostoja laitteiden välillä helposti ja nopeasti

¹ Lähde: Gartner, Inc. A Comparison of Security Controls for Mobile Devices, tammikuu 2019. Tutkimuksessa oli käytössä Samsung Knox ja Knox Platform for Enterprise. ² Tuotteen elinkaari alkaa tuotteen maailmanlaajuisesta lanseerauksesta. ³ DeX toimii valikoiduissa PC-tietokoneissa ja käyttöjärjestelmän on oltava Windows 7, 10 tai Mac OS 10.13 tai uudempi. Microsoft-lisenssiä saatetaan vaatia.

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Communication, groundwork and teamwork are the keys to success, Kantele says. “Enquiries into how ways of working have changed and how we can plan ahead are critical. Often, it's not only a technology change but a whole set of processes and ways of working that are changing and of course competencies need to be gained, as well as other competencies where time is freed up by technology - so we need to plan ahead and decide where those changes happen.”

Strategic partnerships Telia Inmics-Nebula is strategically partnered with both Microsoft and Samsung. Kantele describes both relationships as essential particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They [Microsoft and Samsung] are very important to us. Microsoft and Samsung offer us a strong foundation for digital services and modern, digital workplace solutions and to our customers.”

She says the level of support offered to both Telia Inmics-Nebula and its customers by its partners, has been critical to the company’s successes over the past year particularly.

DID YOU KNOW...

WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY

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Telia Inmics-Nebula is a company with a strong ethic when it comes to diversity and inclusion.

Kirsi Kantele, who has worked in technology for the past decade, says many improvements have been made in the field of diversity, but that more work needs to be done.

She says, “Diversity and inclusion are very important values for us. From Telia’s perspective, Telia Company has an ambition to have a 50/50 gender balance in top management by 2025 at the moment it is 40%.

June 2021

“When it comes to numbers, Telia Company has at the moment 40% women in leadership positions but there is still work to be done to promote equal opportunities for women in the fields of technology.

When it comes to gender balance, we are going forward in a good way. But like I said, it’s important to continue to make these things visible. We must keep it on the agenda and make sure the opportunities continue to move forwards.”

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“ People function as part of the value chain in delivering the services or products to the customer” KIRSI KANTELE,

HR DIRECTOR, TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

“Customer expectations in this kind of environment is one that supports employee productivity, employee satisfaction and has a focus on security. We are very focussed on data security and our IT assets. Microsoft workplace solutions combined with our services enables us to offer customers services that help them improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

“The technology creates seamless communication across all locations and maintains better security of the data and the assets too.”

The teleco’s strategy is to grow as a managed service provider, explains Kantele.

“We are an enabler for modern work, with a strong focus also on end user support. The core of our strategy is valuing our people. Our aim is to be the home of experts in IT services.

“It’s a very important part of how we provide the IT services to our customers – such as the end user support,” she says.

“It is important to make things always a little bit smarter, simpler and key to this is digitalisation. I could use our HR change journey as an example because for us, becoming one company and being part of the Telia family has created a lot of possibilities.

“We changed our HR systems to a common system used in Telia – this change contained a lot of synergies, possibilities to analyse data. We laid the groundwork for even better data-driven decision making.

This enabled us to focus even more on transformational leadership issues such as performance management, leadership and competence development.”

Customer-centric approach It is this strategy that has driven the Telia Inmics-Nebula customer journey. “This is something we aim to do for our customers also,” points out Kantele. businesschief.eu

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“Enabling them through technology is what matters for each business or function.

I think that is the core of what we want to make possible for our customers.

“The pandemic caused a huge change for us and for many of our customers. It meant working from home in order to keep safe. We were able to support our own employees as well as employees of our customers to make this transition. Our End User Support made great strides in supporting our customers, and our own employees. That was evident when they won the Service Desk of the year award in Finland for the second time. Our partners also played a key role in this success.”

The question of security for customers as well as within Telia Inmics-Nebula is a priority for the company, which has created innovative solutions that monitor security.

Kantele says, “Cyber security is part of our everyday life and the services we offer to our customers. Cyber security threats are rapidly growing due to Covid-19- related work changes. Company employees are working mostly remotely and devices and systems used are not always optimised for that purpose. The use of cloud systems has increased, but quite often these solutions are being used on basic settings. This opens up different kinds of security threats too.

“We have developed a new offering to check customers' environments with several different kinds of health checks. This enables us to understand what must be fixed and also fix security related issues there may arise. We have also strong managed services offering to maintain and continuously develop our customers cloud systems.

Working practices and COVID-19 The past 12 months has led to what are now seen as irreversible working practices globally.

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“ I think working remotely puts a positive pressure on leaders too. It means they must have good and efficient processes in place and it encourages transparency in terms of targets” KIRSI KANTELE,

HR DIRECTOR, TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

Kantele believes the working from home mandate won’t change dramatically as the pandemic passes.

“I think it's highly likely that we will resort to a hybrid way of working,” she says. “Part of our work will be carried out remotely, because it's efficient and preferred by many people. But there will also be occasions where face to face processes will occur. A combination of both these working realities will be very positive.”

She adds that the pandemic will have lasting reverberations on the mindset of

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

employees too, in their independence when it comes to work.

“Self leadership has developed. And this will continue to increase. Working remotely has meant that people have had to find their own ways of being productive.

They have had to create a balance between working from home and getting their job done.

“I think that a big leap in digitalisation has occurred. We see a lot of possibilities regarding how we can run everyday activities

remotely. Sometimes these revelations can be quite small.

“For me personally, I noticed how efficient and collaborative workshops can be when everyone attends via Microsoft teams. Or, in personal life how well yoga classes can be organised virtually. A sense of community can be achieved virtually as well.”

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DRIVING A DIGITAL JOURNEY FOR SMOOTH CX WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

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The digital transformation at BCA will put the customer in the driving seat from virtual auctions to online buying

F

or most people buying a car is an aesthetic experience, from the colour to the smell of the leather interior and purr of a finely tuned engine. Zeroemission and safety may also be practical considerations, but there is no denying the power of the look and feel of a car for consumers who place the purchase of a vehicle just below buying a house.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic which put pay to the traditional buying of an automobile from a showroom or auction - Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners, predicts a bright future for the used car industry as he works to sync up the physical and digital world to provide a smooth customer experience.

BCA, formerly British Car Auctions, now has to balance how they accelerate forward with their digital transformation without losing that aesthetic experience for the customer. The company specialises in multi-channel auctions of second hand cars, vans and trucks from leading European vehicle vendors.

From dock to defleet - BCA touches more than 3.5 million vehicles a year working with OEMs, fleet operators and dealers to provide the backbone of the UK's automotive supply chain. Founded in 1946, BCA sits alongside WeBuyAnyCar.com and cinch - all within the Constellation Automotive Group.

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Teagle outlines how the company will move forward offering its customers a seamless online experience while harnessing the power of new technology to provide those personal touches which makes buying a vehicle so important.

“We will be doing everything we can to sync the physical and digital world to provide the ultimate customer experience,” said Teagle speaking from his office in Farnham.

He is optimistic about the car industry as we move out of the pandemic. “Car sales will start to rise as people seek the safety and convenience of a vehicle to avoid the crowds on public transport.”

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Technology creates the physical experience Teagle, who hit the ground running when he joined BCA, just prior to the start of the pandemic in November 2019, comments on how the company’s digital journey will focus on a post-pandemic future with face-toface video, the expansion of omni-channel technologies along with robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

“If we look a few years ahead we will be able to experience being inside a vehicle without physically being in there,” predicts Teagle. “A customer will also be able to get that feeling of driving a vehicle without actually doing it and this experience is not far off.

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ROBERT TEAGLE TITLE: GROUP CIO COMPANY: CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP INDUSTRY: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

“When you think about the fact that so many people are looking online for purchasing more products, there is no reason why vehicle sales can't continue to grow and we will continue to do as much as we can to sync up the physical digital world.

“People like to touch, they like to get in a car and consciously take it for a test drive. So what we are trying to do is offer as much of that as we can, through the digital experience which will come in the shape of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and imaging technology,” said Teagle who pointed out they have not quite arrived at this end state but this will

Robert has 25 years’ experience in Technology roles across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and North America. He specialises in industries with a heavy focus on delivering an enhanced Customer Experience through the use of Digital Technology. He has worked across Retail, FMCG, Education and Automotive sectors. Robert is currently Group CIO, Constellation Automotive Group, prior to this he was Group CIO/CDO for Americana, based in Dubai, UAE, and previously held senior Technology roles at Pearson, Starbucks and started his career at Accenture.

Robert holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration, he lives in Oxfordshire, UK.

Why a leading UK automotive group turned to AI to safeguard their business As cyber-criminals ramp up the speed and scale of their campaigns, human defenders – and the signature-based tools they rely on – cannot keep up. A leading UK automotive reseller has adopted a new approach to security that leverages self-learning AI to detect and respond to threats Handling over 11 million vehicles a year, Constellation Automotive Group operates businesses across almost every area of the automotive industry in the UK, including British Car Auctions (BCA), cinch, and WeBuyAnyCar, a well-known vehicle buying service in the UK operating from over 350 branches nationwide.

With the sudden and unforeseen transition to remote working last year, the cyber-threat landscape changed overnight. Critical operations and data previously handled on the premises now traversed home environments and an ever-growing number of virtual collaboration tools and cloud environments. Attackers were quick to step up their game, and it became clear that traditional security solutions reliant on static rules and signatures could no longer keep up.

Recognizing the shortfalls of legacy tools, the group’s businesses had already taken a

new approach to cyber defense. The security teams implemented AI technology from cyber security company Darktrace across critical parts of their digital estate. The AI acts as a digital immune system, learning ‘self’ for everyone and everything in the business, and identifying subtle deviations from normal behavior that indicate a cyberthreat. “Darktrace added another level of sophistication to our defenses with AI and machine learning,” explains Robert Teagle, CIO at BCA. It offered the security team not only accurate, real-time detection of the full range of cyber-threats – from spear phishing and SaaS account takeover to ransomware and data loss – but autonomous response, which contains threats at machine speed, before damage can be done.

As organizations start planning their return to offices, the threat landscape continues to evolve. With 97% of cyber security professionals concerned about AI-augmented cyber-attacks, it is clear we are entering a new era of threat. As cyber-criminals look to take their attacks to the next level, the onus is on defenders to stay ahead of the game with adaptive, autonomous cyber defense.

Learn More

BCA MARKETPLACE

BCA Marketplace - Seating customers in the driving seat from virtual auctions to online buying

“ When you think about a digital transformation it's almost like a snowball rolling down the hill.

Once you start, you can't stop it halfway down, you have to keep that level of change going.”

ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

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evolve as the platform continues to mature over time.

Cars under the virtual hammer One online experience which has taken off during the pandemic is BCA’s auction platform which pre-COVID did 70 per cent of sales physically.

“One of the best examples of platform modernisation is our buyer platform that underpins our UK remarketing auction business. When the pandemic began, we obviously had to shift a 100 per cent of those sales digitally as the physical auction centres were closed.

“What we're trying to do is mirror that physical experience from arriving at an auction centre, collecting your catalogue, looking around those vehicles, the process of bidding on a vehicle, paying for a vehicle and to then collecting it. “Pre-COVID the digital technology we had in place

BCA MARKETPLACE

supported some of these activities, but not all. So we needed to change that to support the post-COVID world and took our cues from other B2C industries and looked at ways of enhancing the user journeys.

“Although the changes have been brought about by the pandemic it is also partially because of the digital experiences customers receive in retail, travel or healthcare as they are raising the bar.

“From an auto industry perspective, I think we have to kind of meet the customers as well in that same way. It’s important we continue to adapt but we're not going to be 100 per cent digital as the physical side is going to continue and dealers will continue to exist.

“I think people will still want that physical presence, but we have to work out how the digital world can sit side-by-side and then what digital experiences and opportunities exist in the auto world that can enhance the customer experience,” he said.

SUSTAINABLE MOTORING

DID YOU KNOW...

This includes the following: • Improvement of online images of each vehicle • Making it easier to find vehicles with a better search engine

As we enter the dawn of a new era of motoring with the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, BCA is putting sustainability at the top of their agenda.

The UK government’s pledge to ban the sale of all new non-electric cars, including gasoline, diesel and hybrid vehicles from 2035, highlights the drive to end the nation’s contribution to Climate Change by 2050.The Road to Zero strategy will see the evolution in all vehicles from using ultra-fast wireless charging to the repurposing of car batteries. With the electrification industry estimated to be worth over £6bn (US$7.8bn) by 2025, the next decade presents a massive opportunity.“The future of sustainable motoring is at the top of our mind at present,” said Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners. “We're already working on servicing the needs of our customers with the right charging infrastructure to support hybrid and electrical vehicles and investigating the use of alternative fuels for larger vehicles in the B2B space. “There's no doubt with the government targets that have been set, alternative fuels will be just one facet of that, as we’re also looking at areas such as different ownership models and car sharing.

Working with our partners across the automotive space will be front and centre of looking at how the move to sustainable monitoring is going to go and helping our customers make that move,” he said.

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“ People like to touch, they like to get in a car and consciously take it for a test drive. So what we are trying to do is offer as much of that as we can, through the digital experience which will come in the shape of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and imaging technology.”

ECOSYSTEM WHICH DRIVES CHANGE The digital transformation of BCA is not a journey they have embarked on alone. A tapestry of partners include: • Darktrace • Softcat • Salesforce

ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

“Although we talk about our business being a B2B business, what we're now looking at offering is a much more B2C experience as the comparative experience for our buyers will be retail e-commerce platforms. Then behind that, you need to have the right infrastructure in place to ensure you can adapt quickly, scale as needed and deliver what the business needs - moving into a private or public cloud infrastructure enables us to do that,” he said.

The Constellation Automotive Group is made up of a number of different divisions: • Consumer-to-business - WeBuyAnyCar • Business-to-business: • BCA UK offering an auction service, refurbishment and stores

DID YOU KNOW...

• Improve the bidding process which now allows proxy bidding • Simple online payment process • Click and collect which helps book transport and delivery tracking

“Our partners across software and hardware services are critical for us enabling us to meet our objectives,” said Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners. “We look for partners that have the same ambition as us to drive that digital transformation and we think about our partners as an extension of our IT team.”Darktrace is BCA’s key security partner to provide cyber defence within their estate.

Softcat works with them as a key IT service partner by helping across both the end-user and enterprise technologies. “Salesforce also plays a critical role in our CRM contact centres and our customer service functions and MuleSoft with our integration platforms. BT, is our telecoms and network partner, supporting all of the infrastructure across our sites in the UK and then Cloudshift helps us to be the Salesforce implementation partner and help to drive forward our Salesforce transformation project. “There's no way we could be as successful as we have been without having these key partners,” said Teagle.

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“The future of sustainable motoring is at the top of our mind at present.”

ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

• BCA Automotive which is the vehicle transporter fleet • BCA Logistics which is the single-plated vehicle movements using plated drivers • BCA Europe which is the remarketing and transportation services within 13 countries • Business-to-consumer - which provides used cars to the consumer market, cinch

DID YOU KNOW...

WHAT IS CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP?

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Constellation Automotive Group encompasses some of the UK and Europe’s most successful automotive companies, WeBuyAnyCar, BCA and cinch. Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners, explains the relationship.“The rebrand from BCA Marketplace to Constellation Automotive Group, is recognition that although we have a strong brand in BCA the make-up of the group is such that we needed a different brand to signify all the different group activities, such as the divisions and brands mentioned previously. It’s to make a clear recognition that the group is made up of a number of market leading brands beneath it, as well as allowing for our future growth.”

June 2021

“All of the divisions that we have in the group are focused on the automotive value chain which offer a wide range of services to consumers and businesses,” commented Teagle.

Competitive advantage BCA is uniquely positioned to help their customers right through the automated value chain from factory door to vehicle end of life. “We've got the solutions and services to support all parts of that journey. We offer best in class products to help with those, whether that's an OEM or manufacturer fleet company, dealers and finance companies,” pointed out Teagle.

“We make sure that the automotive market is moving and the value chain is well supported so we can continue to leverage the different parts of the group and sync everything together,” commented Teagle.

Pandemic jump starts digital journey Teagle joined BCA a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, giving him a short amount of time to do his initial assessment and put an action plan into place. He is responsible for all the technology across the group and when the country went into lockdown he had to ensure all employees had the right digital capabilities from laptops, tablets, mobile phones and access to collaboration platforms to do their jobs.

“Firstly we had to accelerate the rollout of that technology to ensure everyone was

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digitally enabled and could continue to do their role, he said. “A lot of this was already in place but not for everybody if they were going into the office or workshop every day.

“Secondly, it was to look at the areas of the business and technology that were being impacted or needed to change as part of the response to COVID-19. As part of the action plan we had a number of areas that we were looking to address as part of our transformation such as CRM and adapting our products. But we quickly had to establish how we needed to accelerate them to fit in with the requirements from a pandemic perspective.

“For example, we knew we had to transform our CRM processes and technology. We knew that they had to be accelerated because that would be a key enabler for us as part of the pandemic timeframe. It forced us to look at areas we hadn’t identified as part of our action plan, but we knew we would have to rethink as the pandemic was so disruptive.

Examples include, moving our payment processes online, looking at areas like

open banking, which we didn't have on our roadmap, that could significantly impact the customer experience.

“Thirdly, it is looking at all the pressures and demands that a digital transformation plan has on the underlying infrastructure and architecture as transactions and activities move online. Having a robust, resilient, scalable infrastructure is key to success. Doing that complete assessment in light of COVID was critical.

“At the beginning of the year we created our three-year strategy which takes into account our original action plan, coupled with all the lessons we've learned from COVID and the subsequent changes and additions we need to support digital transformation.”

Teagle pointed out what has amazed him during the past year is the speed of change which he says has been “unpredictable and challenging”.

“The amount of change and the speed that we've had to deliver in such a short space of time has really been a game changer. It's a team effort to be able to do that but it busineesschief.eu

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“ People like to touch, they like to get in a car and consciously take it for a test drive. So what we are trying to do is offer as much of that as we can, through the digital experience which will come in the shape of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and imaging technology.”

ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

BCA MARKETPLACE

goes to show what we can deliver and what we're capable of delivering to meet the business goals.”

Snowball effect of digitisation Teagle reinforced the fact that BCA is focused on digitising as much of the journey as possible for the benefit of vendors, buyers and employees but admits the industry is going through a radical change.

“When you start to digitise a process, like the buyer example, you realise there are many connected processes that also must be digitised. For example, if you've transacted fully online, then your customer service function needs access to that transaction, the related transactions and your account details, to ensure that any questions that the buyer might have they can answer, again digitally or via selfservice. It's not only the digital transactions that you have to look at but all these related processes.

“When you think about a digital transformation it's almost like a snowball rolling down the hill, once you start, you can't stop it halfway down, you have to keep that level of change going. It's going to be always constant particularly as technology changes and customer demands change.

“It’s going to be a continual evolution of all the different parts of our business with probably no stone unturned as we make this journey over the next 12 to 24 months.

I think that gives us a great opportunity to move the business forward, move technology forward and drive the transformation and empower the business to be more successful,” he said.

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Foregrounding Sustainability in Modern Colocation Data Centres WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

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atNorth CEO Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson expands on the data centre company’s support for high-density computing with 100% renewable energy

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celandic high-density computing firm atNorth is leading the charge for carbonneutral colocation data centres. CEO Eyjólfur Magnús Kristinsson, previously Managing Director at Advania, which acquired the company as a smaller side project in 2011, has been CEO since that point, but devoted himself full-time to the role in 2018 as the company rapidly picked up the pace. “The reason for that is the exponential growth of data,” he explains. “And with that comes the need for computational work to crunch that data.

That’s why we’re seeing the data centre industry growing by around 16% annually at the moment, which I expect to continue for at least the next five years.”

Within the data centre industry, atNorth focuses on a specific part of the market particularly suited to the infrastructure it provides across its facilities in Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and the UK. “We specialise in energy-hungry workloads that require a lot of cooling - typically these workloads include things like high-performance computing, artificial intelligence, deep learning, big data and so on. We take care of everything within the high-performance computing arena with on-demand computational resources.”

A key part of atNorth’s offering is its commitment to using 100% sustainable energy in its operations, and reducing energy use in general with initiatives such as using the naturally colder air of its

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Eyjólfur Magnús, Chief Executive Officer

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“ We’re seeing the data centre industry growing by around 16% annually at the moment” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

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northerly locations for cooling purposes.

“Sustainability is a fundamental strategy and the company's mission is providing sustainable and energy-efficient solutions to its customers. As we provide a home for energy-intensive workloads, it’s important to use energy from renewable resources, but we've also designed our data centres from the ground up so we can use less energy in general. We offer customers flexible solutions to minimise their carbon footprint - not only in terms of energy but also in terms of space and infrastructure needed.”

That focus on sustainability is not only to the benefit of its customers. “For our newest project in Sweden, we are working with the

ATNORTH

EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

local district heating company, and using the excess of heat from the data centres to warm local residents.”

That new data centre is located in Kista, Stockholm, and complements atNorth’s existing offering. “We are catering to both the local market in Stockholm, which is extremely rich in high-tech companies working within our focus area of highintensity workloads, but also the wider European market of similar companies that are looking for international colocation,” says Kristinsson. The location also represents another rich resource of renewable energy access, though the company goes further with its own innovative techniques. “For

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: ATNORTH Chief Executive Officer of atNorth December 2017, Eyjólfur Magnús, most often called Magnus is a data centre veteran. Magnus’s data centre journey did not start by taking over as CEO of atNorth in 2017 as his previous role as the managing director of infrastructure, hosting and core services at Advania since 2010 and was responsible for the Advania acquisition of Thor Data Center in 2011. Advania’s data centre business thrived well under Magnus’s leadership as a division of Advania until its demerger from the Advania Group in 2017, then named Advania Data Centers the company grew to become among the fastest-growing data centre companies in Europe. Advania Data Centers became atNorth in 2021. Prior to joining Advania, Magnus has served in leadership roles at technology companies such as Vodafone. Magnus studied engineering at the University of Iceland and did his master’s in engineering at DTU, the Technical University of Denmark.

Sustainability Performance

Customized Turnkey Infrastructure Containment Solutions Through a Single Provider Providing Quick Installation and Full Support Across EMEA

Visit www.subzeroeng.com

Subzero Engineering: Sustainable solutions for data centres Consultancy and customised containment - which complement the dynamic data centres they work with - is the global calling card of Subzero Engineering Subzero Engineering recognises data centres are dynamic environments, so they have created customised containment solutions which make energy-efficient savings for their customers.

Subzero Engineering is the industry leader in bespoke containment solutions using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to show measurable results for their customers which includes the following savings; $300 million in energy costs, 1.5 billion gallons of water, and three million tonnes in the reduction of carbon dioxide since 2015.

“We believe that a data-driven approach is essential to drive data centre performance and efficiency,” commented Andy Connor, Director EMEA Channel, who points out they offer CFD checks for free.

“We help our customers do this with our customised, streamlined and energy efficient containment solutions which result in a lower total cost of ownership and reduced carbon emissions.”

Subzero Engineering has manufacturing facilities in Salt Lake City, US, where they were founded in 2005 (starting out as a data centre airflow consulting company), and in Dublin, Ireland.

They are now partnering with atNorth in Iceland to provide their hot and cold aisle containment solutions.

“We have a large team of leading industry experts that help us operate globally, and at speed, and we work with customers ranging from the hyperscalers and colocation communities through to well-known brands in sports, retail, HPC, and AI,” said Connor.

Balance performance and efficiency “We started life back in 2005 as a CFD consultancy when data centres were using raised floors and experiencing issues with leakages. Our software solution showed customers how they could analyse the infrastructure and improve efficiency.

“Fast forward 16 years and that approach has stayed with us. We’re an engineeringled solutions provider who helps businesses reduce their carbon footprint and operating costs - but it all starts with the data we produce from our CFD reports.”

Video Screenshot Here

WATCH the Informative VIDEO

ATNORTH

“ The company's mission is providing sustainable and energy efficient solutions to its customers” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

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ATNORTH

instance, we will reuse the heat generated in the data centre and transfer it to a different facility approximately 100 meters away.

This obviously provides our environmentally conscious customers with best of class running on real renewables only, high energy efficiency and we are also contributing to Stockholm's goal of full carbon neutrality before 2040.”

The company’s operations are supported by the work of a number of key partners.

“Our partner ecosystem is critical,” says Kristinsson. “HPE and Intel, for instance, have been working with us on the customer end, supporting us in various cases to provide on-demand solutions. We have had access to their newest technology, and support them in turn with testing. They have certainly become very valuable and strategic partners for us.” atNorth also works with valued partners on the infrastructure end of the equation. “Subzero and Systemair provide

“ I'm sure that the pandemic has imposed irreversible changes on our business - both in terms of customer service but also how we approach our customers” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

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“ We are specifically catering to this fastest-growing segment within the tech sector” EYJÓLFUR MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

us with cooling technologies. We've tried several solutions in cooling, and when it comes to natural airflow cooling, Systemair and Subzero have proven to be the most reliable providers.”

Like all companies worldwide, atNorth has had to reckon with the ongoing COVID19 pandemic. “Last year we needed to adapt to a new reality and we will continue to do so. For us, this has meant finding new ways of providing the services we do.

Strict travel restrictions meant that we needed to find new ways of meeting with our potential and existing customers, who rely on us to service the equipment they 260

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host with us.” Kristinsson expects some of the changes the pandemic has wrought to become permanent fixtures. “I think it’s strengthened the relationship that we have with our customers. I doubt that many will revert to the old mode of flying in their own technicians. I'm sure that the pandemic has imposed irreversible changes on our business - both in terms of customer service but also how we approach our customers.”

Partly to thank for its resistance to the pandemic is the culture present at the organisation. “I like to empower my employees and listen very carefully to everyone's ideas and thoughts,” says

ATNORTH

2009

Year Founded

50+

Number of Employees

$38m

Revenue in USD

Kristinsson. “We have incredible talent in our company among our employees, and I basically see my role as being to nurture that talent. It’s a very Nordic leadership style, which works particularly well in a small company like atNorth. It's very important to enhance the dynamics of a flat structure with openness and transparency, so everyone can know how important they are to executing our strategy.”

Looking to the future, Kristinsson expects high-density workloads to continue to play a vital role in powering the rapid growth of the data centre sector. “It’s all derived from emerging technologies such as 5G,

IoT, AI, deep learning and more. We are specifically catering to this fastest-growing segment within the tech sector.” He’s clear that atNorth will continue to ensure that sustainability remains at the heart of the conversation through its sector-leading solutions. “We want to provide the best service to our customers in this space, while obviously using renewable energy only to do, and give them higher energy efficiency than competitors.”

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BNK301

SAN MARINO’S FIRST NEO BANK LEVERAGED BY BLOCKCHAIN

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BKN301

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: MICHAEL BANYARD

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Chief Executive Officer of BKN301, Stiven Muccioli, named his FinTech start-up to reflect its European location - 301 marks the year San Marino was founded - and BKN - draws on the word blockchain which is a critical component of the digital platform.

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Stiven Muccioli, Chief Executive Officer at BKN301, reveals how blockchain technology is driving FinTech in the emerging market of San Marino

B

anking-as-a-Service startup couple of years we can improve a lot on BKN301 will reach a value of transactions and customers and we dream €1 billion within three years, to reach a value of €1 billion in the next is the bold prediction from three years. the Founder and CEO of the “I sold my company Ventis at the end of Republic of San Marino’s 2020 for a very good deal and decided to first neo bank which was launched in come back to my country where I can now March 2021. bring my experience and skills to drive this Chief Executive Officer of BKN301, new startup FinTech business,” said Muccioli Stiven Muccioli, named his FinTech who launched the bank with Federico start-up to reflect its European location; Zambelli Hosmer and Luca Bertozzi. Hosmer 301 marks the year San Marino was was former CEO of PayPal in Italy and founded and BKN draws on the word Bertozzi was former CFO of Ventis (Iccrea blockchain - which is a critical component Banca Group). of the digital platform.

Muccioli was also inspired to return to San Marino-born Muccioli has returned the emerging market of San Marino - which to his home country after 10 years is landlocked on all sides by Italy - due to following a successful career as an investor the fact that although it is not a European and tech entrepreneur to launch the neo member state it is permitted to use the bank which provides embedded financial euro by arrangement with the Council of services and token issuing services with the European Union. Another bonus is that a B2B model. He sees this as the first of it’s granted the right to use its own designs many as his aim is to open on the national side of the FinTech banks outside the euro coins. constraints of the European Muccioli is using Union and in emerging blockchain technology to markets from central Asia drive the FinTech bank but to North Africa. faces challenges converting Despite the challenges the traditional population faced by the COVID-19 of San Marino, one of the pandemic, Muccioli aims world’s smallest countries to reach a fast growth with a population of 33,860, for BKN301. “We want to to convert them from STIVEN MUCCIOLI double our revenue during brick-and-mortar style of CHIEF EXECUTIVE this year and in the next banking to a neo bank.

OFFICER, BKN301

“BLOCKCHAIN IS A HUGE NEW OPPORTUNITY AND A NEW SCHEME OF IT ARCHITECTURE”

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DID YOU KNOW...

BANKING IN THE SPOTLIGHT:

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Could you summarize the major changes that increased digitization will bring to banking?

Could you summarize the major changes that increased digitization will bring to banking?

“I think digitalization will bring about the closure of a lot of branches which will mean a lot of employees could lose their jobs. It’s a huge political and a social problem for the entire financial ecosystem - not only for banks. We need to rethink the future of finance and the future of payments because we need more technology and innovative systems plus we have to think about the people who work in this business,” said Muccioli.

“We would work with other FinTech companies and telcos. If I am thinking of our customers, the best could be telecommunication operators, banks in other countries and software companies with a huge amount of customers with payment needs. This is because we can help increase the revenue and have more frictionless transactions. The best for us is to have customers, clients and business clients with a lot of customers and a lot of payments.”

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BKN301

He cites the use of blockchain and bankas-a-service as two of the most disruptive innovations in banking during the past year.

“Bank-as-a-service allows corporates, that are not banks, to work in the bank business.

It is a very new thing but it is possible to share banking services and mobile banking services without having the physical branches.

Blockchain is a huge new opportunity and a new scheme of IT architecture. I think these two trends are the biggest in the banking business during the past 12 months,” he said.

Muccioli outlined the three key strategy points of BKN301 which includes the following:

STIVEN MUCCIOLI TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER COMPANY: BKN301 INDUSTRY: NEO BANKING LOCATION: SAN MARINO

1 | Payments improvement Firstly filling the gap vs the market standard, secondly leading innovation, addressing cross-border customers though tha BaaS. 2 | Product customisation and new business model Enabling new services and integrating new technologies in order to create a high quality customised product.

€740mn Transaction volume

€1bn

predicted value within the next three years

EXECUTIVE BIO

3 | Incremental revenues streams Improving financial services and being able to generate new revenue streams, thanks to a broader and international approach to open banking APIs and blockchain.

Tech Entrepreneur and investor.

The Financial Technology Report awarded him as one of the Top 25 CTOs of the world in the FinTech industry and he was selected as one of the Top 150 FinTech Leaders and Influencers in Italy. Founder and CEO of the Bankingas-a-Service startup BKN301 and the Venture Capital firm SM Capital.

Founder of Ventis, Fintech company sold to Iccrea Banca Group and co-founder of the multi-awarded SportTech startup Golee and the sustainable fashion startup KNIIT Milano. He founded Libertas, the first widely used news App in the Republic of San Marino and founded and later sold the e-commerce company Tippest. Early investor in SpaceX and Palantir (NYSE: PLTR) and Angel Investor of the Founder Institute of San Francisco, the world's largest pre-seed startup accelerator, based in Silicon Valley, through which he invested in startups like Realty Mogul, Andalin and MallIQ.

BNK301

TOP FIVE SOLUTIONS OFFERED BY BKN301 BKN301 offers white-label and API-based payment solutions including:

M-WALLETS LOYALTY PROGRAMS REMITTANCE SERVICES

“ I THINK THE PANDEMIC COULD BE AN OPPORTUNITY FOR US DUE TO THE CHANGE IN BEHAVIOR OF PEOPLE AS THEY MOVE TOWARDS DIGITAL PAYMENTS, AS CASH IS NOT THE FUTURE FOR THE BANKING SYSTEM”

PEER TO PEER PREPAID AND CREDIT CARD PROGRAMS

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STIVEN MUCCIOLI CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BKN301

BKN301

2021

BKN301 was founded in 2021

San Marino

has a population of 33,860 and is one of the world’s smallest countries

301

the year the Republic of San Marino was founded

Balance of innovation and tradition and know-how inside of our company Muccioli admitted it is not always easy from other countries and also from our to introduce white label and API-based country. Our main challenge is to grow as payment solutions into an emerging a team inside a small country and inside economy - especially the financial ecosystem when you will be the first which is very traditional FinTech bank operating in and not so dynamic and TARGETS San Marino. not so innovative as a FOR BKN301 “It's very challenging platform,” he said. because the banking Local banks BKN301 will offer system of our country is Telcos white-label and APIvery traditional and not Utilities based payment solutions digital. Our main challenge Transportation from M-wallets (a will be to connect our companies virtual wallet that systems to the traditional Retailers and and stores payment card banking systems of our players that needs information on a mobile country. We then want financial services device), loyalty programs, to bring great innovation, to feed their remittance services, peer to bring people with customer's needs to peer and prepaid and the huge experience credit card programs. businesschief.eu

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DID YOU KNOW...

WHAT IS BLOCKCHAIN?

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Blockchain technology is being used to drive the service platform - based on international payment schemes.

Formally, blockchain is a digital mechanism to create a distributed digital ledger where two or more participants in a peer-to-peer network can exchange information and assets directly without the need for a trusted intermediary.

Records are unchangeable, timestamped, encrypted and linked to each other in blocks; each block is a cluster of about two thousand transaction records grouped together. The ledger grows as participants transact.

But informally, what does that definition mean? According to a report by Gartner it can theoretically do business with an unknown partner located anywhere on the planet and trade any asset at any transaction size and not need a lawyer, a bank, an insurance company.

Blockchain combines existing technologies and techniques into a novel architecture composed of five elements which include:

June 2021

1 | DISTRIBUTION Blockchain participants are located at a physical remove from each other and are connected on a network. Each participant operating a full node maintains a complete copy of the ledger, which updates with new transactions as they occur.

Nodes are the machines owned or used by participants and equipped to run the consensus algorithm. Any participant can review the ledger but cannot change it except under prescribed circumstances.

Created by Hamed from the Noun Project

2 | ENCRYPTION

Blockchain uses technologies to record the data in the blocks securely and semiCreated by Pascil Bom anonymously as participants from the Noun Project have pseudonyms. The participants can control their personal identity and other information and share only what they need to in a transaction.

BNK301 BKN301

3 | IMMUTABILITY Completed transactions are cryptographically signed, time- stamped, and sequentially added to the ledger. Records cannot be corrupted or otherwise changed unless the participants agree on the need to do so. Such an agreement is known as a fork.

Created by priyanka from the Noun Project

4 | TOKENIZATION Transactions and other interactions on a blockchain involve the secure exchange of value.

The value comes in the form of tokens.

Created by Philipp Petzka from the Noun Project

5 | DECENTRALIZATION Blockchain network information and rules for how it operates are maintained by computers, or nodes, on the distributed network. In practice, decentralisation

means that no single entity controls all the computers or the information or dictates the rules.

Muccioli said: “Blockchain is super secure because when you send information or a transaction from one point to another point everyone can see it and it is not possible to hack or stall the data - it is super clear and it's open.

“It will bring about a huge change in behavior and infrastructure because with blockchain you don’t need third party infrastructure. You don't need Visa or MasterCard. It's possible to send cash or money from one point to another point without any other player in the middle. It's very strong for efficiency and for safe transactions,” he said.

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Disrupting traditional schemes of payments with Blockchain | Stiven Muccioli | BKN301

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“BLOCKCHAIN IS SUPER SECURE BECAUSE WHEN YOU SEND INFORMATION OR A TRANSACTION FROM ONE POINT TO ANOTHER POINT EVERYONE CAN SEE IT AND IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO HACK OR STALL THE DATA - IT IS SUPER CLEAR AND IT'S OPEN” STIVEN MUCCIOLI CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, BKN301

Post-pandemic opportunity in long-term The COVID-19 pandemic has been responsible for the migration of more people to digital banking services which could benefit the launch of BKN301 as it moves forward.

“I think the pandemic could be an opportunity for us due to the change in behaviour of people as they move towards digital payments as cash is not the future for the banking system. I think in the long term, it could be a good thing for the business but in the short-term, it's not so easy for us because there are not a lot of digital transactions as people spend less money. It's not a super strong moment for the business but I think in the long term we'll be fine.

Focus on emerging markets “Our key message is that we want to grant access to financial services to emerging markets and to people that are not allowed to enter into the financial system right now.

“San Marino is one of these emerging markets because we don't have payment systems, we don't have Apple pay, we don't have Google pay and we need to grant access to these kinds of services and mobile payments and digital finance,” said Muccioli who pointed out BKN301 is looking to extend into Eastern Europe, central Asia and North Africa.

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WORKING TO ENSURE NIGERIA STAYS CONNECTED WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

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9mobile is redefining the telco industry in this frontier market as its evolves as a solution provider and overcomes the challenges of the pandemic.

O

ne year after Mobile Magazine featured the digital transformation of 9mobile in Nigeria we hear from Ibikunle Jimo, Chief Information Officer, about how the telco provider is overcoming the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic in this frontier market.

The five-year plan of 9mobile is to drive major fibre deployments throughout this geographically and politically diverse country which is four times the size of the UK - serving a population of 206 million people.

“We are now focused on a massive network modernisation, having more reach across the country and focusing on the customer experience,” said Jimo from his office in Lagos who pointed out they had successfully operated through the pandemic as they had been ‘prepared’ so their service had not been disrupted.

My role as CIO means I am responsible for technology and positioning the organisation to deliver on BSS and ESS applications that we use in supporting our customers,” said Jimo who has worked in telco for 17 years.

Currently, the country’s telecom market only has a mobile broadband data penetration rate of around 45 per cent, but 9mobile already has an operational network consisting of close to 6,000km of fibre and aims to nurture an ecosystem of Nigerian companies in order to build a sustainable home-grown MNO.

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“We are currently in a transition with a lot of modernisation on our network to spread across the nation so we can continue to provide an excellent customer experience” IBIKUNLE JIMO,

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, 9MOBILE

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“ 9mobile ties into the authentic Nigerian heritage of ‘9ja-centricity’, and the remarkable journey of keeping true to the promise to always be 9mobile which is ‘here for you, here for 9ja.”

IBIKUNLE JIMO,

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, 9MOBILE

Following the fallout of the pandemic it is now more important than ever that Nigerians are connected in order to work remotely and, according to Jimo, 9mobile was well prepared to serve their customers when COVID-19 hit the West African country.

“We were more or less prepared for an event like the pandemic where we experienced lockdown and shops closed across Nigeria. Our customers were able to access our digital channels to buy our products and top up their lines. We were prepared to defend the platform that we have, but in terms of our rollout plans the 278

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actual implementation is now on course again so watch this space,” he said.

‘9ja-centricity’ is the spirit of Nigeria Formerly trading as Etisalat Nigeria, the official first call on 9mobile was made in March 2008. The brand commenced commercial operations in October 2008, with an innovative offering – '0809uchoose'.

The offer allowed Nigerians to choose and own their preferred unique mobile phone numbers for the first time.

In July 2017, the company transitioned to the current brand identity – 9mobile, to reflect the dynamic and creative attributes

9MOBILE

IBIKUNLE JIMO TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER COMPANY: 9MOBILE INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

that it shares with the people of Nigeria especially the vibrant youth segment.

“9mobile ties into the authentic Nigerian heritage of ‘9ja-centricity’, and the remarkable journey of keeping true to the promise to always be 9mobile which is ‘here for you, here for 9ja,’ commented Jimo.

9mobile is in the process of acting on their five-year digital journey to be a leading competitor in the Nigerian telecom market. In order to realise the company’s full potential, Jimo explains how new technologies are playing a key role in serving its customers and its internal operations.

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: NIGERIA Ibikunle has 20+ years of experience as a technology and business leader. Working for various companies across IT Services, Consulting, and Telecommunications sectors. He joined 9Mobile (formerly Etisalat Nigeria) in 2015 as Director in charge of IT Demand Management & Planning. Prior to that he held various leadership roles, working for two other big operators within the telecoms industry. Ibikunle has a degree in engineering and a Masters in Business Administration.

He is a husband to a lovely wife, father to two beautiful daughters, a son, brother and an uncle. In his current role as Chief Information Officer, Ibikunle is responsible for leading technology decisions and transformations in line with current trends and strategic vision.

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9MOBILE

Title of the video

“ With technology at home there is no me-time as we had people working around the clock to provide the service” IBIKUNLE JIMO,

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, 9MOBILE

“We are currently in a transition with a lot of modernisation on our network to spread across the nation so we can continue to provide an excellent customer experience. We are leveraging our big data platform to improve our customercentricity via analytics. We are modernising our contact center solution with the adoption of the Avaya One X subscription, while we are also creating an omni-channel for customer interactions.”

Lockdown launch of service platform Commenting on how 9mobile has moved forward during the past year, Jimo said: “We recently launched a new digital platform called ‘ig9ite’, which gives our customers access to not just network subscription services, but access to a whole new world of digital lifestyle services. We actually launched this during the lockdown,” said Jimo who pointed out he was very proud of this development as it was achieved during the challenging times of the pandemic.

Addressing how 9mobile is redefining the telco industry in Nigeria as a solution provider, Jimo said the company was evolving beyond the traditional telco.

“We are in a digital age right now so we are trying to evolve and provide more services as we are playing in the digital space. We have a strategic collaboration with some partners to extend our footprints in the B2B and businesschief.eu

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mobile Transforming Customer Experience With Avaya

Suite of Avaya OneCloud CCaaS solutions being adopted by mobile will enable the leading telecom operator to meet the increasingly digital demands of its customer base.

“With Avaya, we are shaping a new Total Experience strategy that will make our interactions with customers effortless ‒ regardless of the touchpoint they choose to contact us through. And as our customer demands evolve, we are confident we have the right technology partner to meet their high expectations.” - Ibikunle Jimo, Chief Information Officer, mobile

mobile, a leading telecom operator in Nigeria, has embarked on a multi-year customer experience transformation journey with Avaya as it seeks to embrace a Total Experience approach that strengthens its market differentiation through effortless customer and employee experiences.

Consumed th through Avaya OneCloud Subscription, the suite of contact center solutions being adopted by mobile enable the telecom operator to meet the increasingly digital demands of its customer base by providing brilliant experiences across touchpoint.

Avaya OneCloud Subscription removes the barriers to getting and staying current with communications software, enabling mobile to achieve more through the latest technology consumed on a monthly subscription basis. It also helps mobile maintain software on its premises and maintain management control.

The ttransformation project will see mobile invest in its digital capabilities to compose experiences that provide exceptional engagement across all touchpoints throughout the customer journey while maintaining the highest standards of privacy and security.

Built on open platforms, the solution underpins mobile’s Total Experience strategy by empowering both customers and employees with contextual information, easy access to subject matter experts, and the ability to transition seamlessly between touchpoints.

s to improve agent The solution is also set productivity and wellbeing by integrating Avaya Spaces, a modern workstream collaboration solution for the hybrid work-from-anywhere world, which delivers AI-enhanced meetings and more. With Avaya Spaces, mobile’s agents are connected with all their people and tools—and can meet, call, chat, share files, and mana manage tasks though a single app, addressing the “fatigue” many users face with video-only solutions.

Finally, mobile is set to bring these same capabilities to businesses across Nigeria, having signed a new partnership with Avaya under which mobile will provide the Avaya OneCloud portfolio of solutions to its business customers.

Talk to us and start your Total Experience strategy today

DID YOU KNOW...

9MOBILE - INTELLIGENT PORTAL FOR INSTANT NIN VERIFICATION 9mobile launched its intelligent portal for instant verification to help its customers link their SIM cards with their National Identification Number (NIN). The Online SelfService NIN update portal enables subscribers to verify and update their NINs instantly. This unique platform provides 9mobile subscribers an opportunity to submit and verify their NIN without physically visiting any of the experience centers in Nigeria.This step is one of the several proactive initiatives taken by 9mobile to make the NIN linking exercise directed by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) seamless and stress-free for its subscribers Commenting on the exercise, the Chief Information Officer, 9mobile, Ibikunle Jimo, said that, as a customercentric telecoms company, 9mobile always

looks out for the convenience of its subscribers by leveraging innovation.“Immediately, we received the NCC directive to link all SIMs with the respective subscribers’ NIN, we challenged our IT and network teams to develop a seamless and stress-free solution for our customers. Here is the result. This solution is the differentiator for us since our customers do not need to wait endlessly for the NIN to link up with their SIM cards. This is what it means to use innovation to solve societal challenges for our customers. This solution is the power of the innovation etched in our DNA.We urge our customers to enjoy what we are known for by riding on the back of our innovative solution to verify their NIN without any stress whatsoever,” Jimo said

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“ We were more or less prepared for an event like the pandemic where we experienced lock down and shops closed across Nigeria.

Our customers were able to access our digital channels to buy our products and top up their lines.”

IBIKUNLE JIMO,

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, 9MOBILE

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B2B2C market. Without divulging too much, some of these strategic alliances will help position 9mobile beyond traditional telco services provider into a full-fledged digital services provider,” he said.

4G and 5G rollout Jimo said the focus is to continue to expand 9mobile’s 4G/LTE footprint across the country to satisfy the ever growing demand

9MOBILE

for data coverage from their customers. “We are lining up trials of 5G in Nigeria,” he said.

Ambassadors of 9mobile At the heart of every digital transformation, is the passion of the people within a company and 9mobile is no exception.

Jimo praised his ‘passionate workforce’ who worked seamlessly through the pandemic. “With technology at home there

is no me-time as we had people working around the clock to provide the service for our customers.”

Reflecting on the fact Nigeria has a population of 206 million, Jimo admitted the future business opportunity for 9mobile was “huge as we serve a big market”.

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MANAGING DISRUPTION

ON A

DIGITAL

TRANSFORMATION JOURNEY 286

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WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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Joerg Hesselink, Global Head of IT Infrastructure at GfK, on coping with disruption, transitioning to WFH, and digital transformation with hybrid multi-cloud

T

hink data analytics is new? Think again.

GfK has been a global leader in data and analytics for more than 85 years, conducting its first studies in 1934 – long before computers, the internet, and Super Mario Kart (more on that later).

The German company continues to innovate and serves some of the world’s leading brands as a trusted partner by providing world-class analytics that promise to not only deliver descriptive data but also actionable recommendations.

However, even with such insight, it would have been near impossible for GfK to predict the COVID-19 pandemic and its swift and severe implications. Companies had to act fast, accelerating their digital transformations. GfK was no exception, but perhaps better prepared than most.

Joerg Hesselink is Global Head of IT Infrastructure and has end-to-end responsibilities for the company's network and related services – including data centres, servers, backup storage databases, and cloud infrastructure services.

“I've been in this industry now for 29 years, and I have to say that during the pandemic was the toughest, but also the most rewarding year,” says Hesselink.

“When you look at IT infrastructure, it is typically a backend job. Consumers of your service don't realise what you're doing unless something gets broken. But this time,

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GFK

GFK

GfK’s Hybrid Multi Cloud Approach

everybody from the CEO down counted on you and your teams with the highest expectation to simply stay connected and stay in business.”

GfK has operations in Asia Pacific so realised early on how serious COVID19 was going to be. Almost overnight, Hesselink and his team assembled a global task force.

“We made further investments in mobilising our workforce, replacing desktops with laptops,” he recalls. “We stress-tested our network entry points into the company. We proactively monitored any critical infrastructure. We adopted our support model from heavy onsite to anywhere, anytime. And within six weeks we introduced Microsoft Teams for enhanced communication and collaboration.

“IT teams became the company superheroes of 2020. Nobody thought we could send more than 8,000 employees home and still be in business.”

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Turning to hybrid cloud GfK’s digital transformation started in 2017 when the IT group realised the need to update the company's infrastructure and applications.

GfK’s leaders at the time were looking for a solution that could provide flexibility and scalability and the IT group knew that cloud services would play a vital role in the company's future.

GfK already used some cloud services to supplement its on-premises, data centre environment, but high costs became a challenge. Therefore, the IT group decided to capitalise on multiple clouds while controlling costs and managing complexity.

Hesselink says they are now “in the last mile” to becoming a truly hybrid, multicloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider for GfK. “Personally, I believe the hybrid model with more flexible working options for employees is the way to go,” he says. “We

GFK

should follow the good examples from the tech industry who have been practicing this for some time. Now, I think companies will have to relook at their real estate strategy and office occupancy rates, have a mobile-first mindset when equipping their workforce, and this will ultimately help to attract and retain top talents. On the flip side, I do believe information security will become even more important. Security at the edge and zero-trust technologies needs to be seriously considered.”

One of GfK’s value propositions is to be an independent and trusted partner of the industry. That is one of the reasons why having a hybrid cloud-based IaaS (rather than focusing on a single vendor or a single technology) approach empowers GfK to respond to new and future projects with astonishing agility and speed.

“Resources can be shifted quickly and easily from private to the public clouds without modifying the nature of the interaction within the environment,” says Hesselink.

JOERG HESSELINK

GLOBAL HEAD OF INFRASTRUCTURE, GFK

TITLE: GLOBAL HEAD OF IT INFRASTRUCTURE INDUSTRY: DATA & ANALYTICS LOCATION: GERMANY

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ I think the company is very well positioned for the future, with a great senior leadership team, fantastic customer base and strong support from our shareholders”

JOERG HESSELINK

“I started my career in the early 1990s with Honeywell as an infrastructure engineer. Initially I was looking after centralised, then distributed computing. Back then I was really a hardcore techie. From there I moved into project and program management initially in Germany, then Europe, then global.

“In the early early 2000s. I left my comfort zone and I got deeply into digital transformation and business process optimisation as well as into e-commerce, spending 10 years with the same company. During the dot-com bubble, I left Honeywell for an artificial intelligence startup company, but after a short period, I decided that the market was actually not ready for this AI solution. So I went back to my engineering roots, back to Honeywell, and I got into infrastructure management. I spent another 15 years at Honeywell in various leadership positions before finally joining GfK in 2019.”

Build, Run, Manage, Connect, and Protect Any App on Any Cloud.

Unlock the value of any cloud and accelerate modernization of any app to deliver more innovation to your customers, faster.

GfK and VMware: Innovating together on hybrid cloud In its capacity as a strategic and technical partner, VMware has been walking GfK along its path through digital transformation to the cloud for over a decade.

“VMware is the market leader for on-premises virtualisation and hybrid-cloud solutions, so it was only logical to tackle the next project for the future together,” says Hesselink.

GfK has been the global leader in data and analytics for more than 85 years, supplying its clients with optimised decision inputs.

“We are modernising, protecting and scaling our applications with the world’s leading hybrid cloud solution: VMware CloudTM on AWS, following VMware on Google Cloud Platform.”

In its capacity as a strategic and technical partner, VMware has been walking GfK along its digital transformation path for over a decade.

“We are a demanding and singularly dynamic customer, which is why a close partnership with VMware is integral to the success of everyone involved,” said Joerg Hesselink, Global Head of Infrastructure, GfK IT Services.

By expanding on the basis of VMware CloudTM on AWS and VMware Cloud FoundationTM with vRealize® Cloud ManagementTM, GfK has given itself a secure infrastructure and reliable operations by efficiently operating processes, policies, people and tools in both private and public cloud environments.

One important step for GfK involved migrating from multiple cloud providers to just a single one. The team chose VMware.

One very important factor for the GfK was that VMware CloudTM on AWS constituted an investment in future-proof technology that will stay relevant.

“The new cloud-based infrastructure comprising VMware CloudTM on AWS and VMware Cloud FoundationTM forges a successful link between on-premises and cloud-based solutions,” says Hesselink.

“We transform data and information into actionable knowledge that serves as a sustainable driver of business growth.

VMware CloudTM on AWS is an investment in a platform that helps us be well prepared for whatever the future may hold.”

“We are modernising, protecting and scaling our applications with the world’s leading hybrid cloud solution.”

—— Joerg Hesselink, Global Head of Infrastructure, GfK IT Services.

LEARN MORE

GFK

1934

YEAR FOUNDED

8,000

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

Data & Analytics INDUSTRY

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GFK

“The process to truly move to a hybrid multi-cloud environment is very experimental. I would say that first you need to upskill your workforce because either they come with an infrastructure engineering background with little to no cloud skills and capabilities or they are natively born in the cloud. So, you have to unlearn to relearn new techniques to get into this hybrid world – into this hybrid model.

“Cloud is a very dynamic industry, so you need to constantly adapt. It's really about go fast, fail fast, learn fast, and then come back stronger. It is not straightforward; it's experimental and it requires a special skill set from your workforce.”

“I've been in this industry now for 29 years, and I have to say that during the pandemic was the toughest, but also the most rewarding year” JOERG HESSELINK

GLOBAL HEAD OF INFRASTRUCTURE, GFK

Working with trusted partners When it comes to cloud partners, GfK works with many and continues to adapt whenever the need arises. This is due to the value proposition of the company, which is to be independent and to be trusted. That said, they do have a long history working with VMware.

“VMware is a strategic technology partner for IT services to offer consistent operations and management across on-premises and cloud-hosted environments. We are currently adopting a hybrid cloud model implementing VMware cloud foundation by businesschief.eu

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extending our data centre into the cloud and integrating our on-premises infrastructure,” says Hesselink. “We do that today with VMware Cloud on Amazon AWS also so-called BMC. And very soon we will also explore VMware on Google GCP.” GfK claims that it is revolutionising realtime access to critical knowledge. How exactly do they do that, and what are the benefits? Well, it’s about markets, providing data analytics and recommendations at clients’ fingertips – anytime, anywhere.

A good example of that is GfK’s latest product, called gfknewron – an AI engine providing actionable insights and recommendations to some of the world’s 296

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“ IT teams became the company superheroes of 2020. Nobody thought we could send more than 8,000 employees home and still be in business” JOERG HESSELINK

GLOBAL HEAD OF INFRASTRUCTURE, GFK

GFK

biggest brands. That’s some achievement for a product built on native public cloud technologies that only officially went to market in 2020. So why is that proving successful?

“I would say, especially during COVID-19, we found that the market needs to react quickly, faster than before. We have seen a huge shift from brick-and-mortar business into online business. So, it is instrumental to get the data when you need it, in order to take action to not lose market share – and that is the promise of gfknewron.”

Getting through the pandemic Every company has had to adjust, pivot and accelerate digital transformation in order to

survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Those that did it best, and those that innovate, are the companies more likely to emerge the strongest. So how does Hesselink rate GfK’s efforts and their current position as we emerge from the worst?

“I would say overall, we are managing the situation very well, and this is thanks to the trust of our customers and shareholders,” says Hesselink. “Our company's vision and priorities have not really changed. Social interaction has clearly changed and while we are embracing our collaboration tools and have a video always-on mindset in the business, we are missing time together in person.” businesschief.eu

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“Cloud is a very dynamic industry, so you need to constantly adapt.

It's really about go fast, fail fast, learn fast, and then come back stronger” JOERG HESSELINK

GLOBAL HEAD OF INFRASTRUCTURE, GFK

Keeping up morale, wellbeing and mental health has become a number-one priority for many firms during lockdown, and GfK has also been keen to support remote socialising. The company is currently running a ‘health competition’ between departments, recording physical activity each day. It also introduced gaming – with players competing in Super Mario Kart.

Hesselink is the first to admit that he required “a week of training” from his children to achieve mid-table respectability in the fun contest, but he feels more confident driving his company forward as it reaches the last mile of its digital transformation.

“I think the company is very well positioned for the future, with a great senior leadership team, fantastic customer base and strong support from our shareholders,” he says.

“I think what's paying off is our innovative approach. I definitely think that in the next 12 to 18 months, we will have realised our true hybrid multi-cloud offering to a point that we can work closer with the developers and be part of the DevSecOps cycle.”

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Mikko Uusitalo, CEO, EDZCOM

EDZCOM

Seamless connectivity is the cornerstone to driving digitalisation and building smart industries of the future, says Mikko Uusitalo CEO of Edzcom

E

dzcom is a pioneer in edge connectivity, offering solutions for the enterprise sector and is now entering an exciting new era following its acquisition by Cellnex Telecom.

Seven years after Edzcom was founded

by CEO Mikko Uusitalo, the European-based company, which designs, builds and operates private 4G and 5G networks for local coverage, looks set to accelerate its expansion.

According to Uusitalo edge connectivity is forecast to be a multi-billion dollar market which Edzcom can now leverage with Cellnex on board and their decision to only work with the best-in-breed technology partners which include Intel, Athonet, Nokia, Streamwide and Signify.

“We have the experience and real references, which is very important for customers in this emerging multi-billion

“ We help enterprises do things in a smarter way and provide technology solutions to drive innovation” MIKKO UUSITALO CEO, EDZCOM

dollar market,” said Uusitalo speaking from his office in Barcelona. “Seamless connectivity is the cornerstone to driving digitalisation and building smart industries of the future.”

Uusitalo pointed out this is the ideal moment to accelerate towards Industry 4.0 as telcoms are again in the ‘S-curve’ which is forcing mobile operators to address change particularly in the areas of safety, improved efficiency and enable new revenue streams.

“We have the competitive edge in this market as we have picked the best partners to be part of our ecosystem and we are now part of Cellnex which is considered a sustainable, viable partner in the global telecoms business and will be here for the long term,” he said.

“We currently employ around 30-40 people at the moment but this is growing very rapidly because we are investing for growth in 13 different countries in Europe – mostly in France, UK, Spain, Netherlands and Northern Europe where we built the business.

“We are building the sales capabilities across the different countries where Cellnex is present as we are now part of this leading telecom infrastructure company in Europe with a market cap of more than €30 billion,” said Uusitalo who pointed out being part of Cellnex allows him to focus on growing the business through flexible and as a service business models. businesschief.eu

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Providing edge connectivity solutions to enterprise and public sector | Mikko Uusitalo | Edzcom

Solutions from edge connectivity Since its launch in 2014 Edzcom’s Edge Connectivity solutions offer highperformance wireless connectivity for enterprise resource planning, automation, robotics and real-time remote monitoring.

Edzcom brings a single point of contact to designing, building and operating a tailored private network, deploying best practices and technologies to become the long-term partner of each enterprise and help them achieve their digitalisation goals.​ According to Uusitalo, edge connectivity helps industries from manufacturing to mining, utilities and logistics and energy generation to unlock productivity and growth, by offering continuity and security for business-critical operations. Network performance is monitored by the customer via Edzcom dashboard, ensuring 100 per cent customer control.

Some of their high profile customers are Konecranes and KymiRing.

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It was announced in April that Edzcom will deploy a 5G SA private wireless network to support Konecranes’ advanced R&D work.

The 5G network will enable Konecranes to research and develop digitalised factory and port solutions that leverage 5G’s high bandwidth and low latency for increased productivity, improved efficiency, and enhanced safety.

“ We have the experience and real references, which is very important for customers in this emerging multi-billion dollar market” MIKKO UUSITALO CEO, EDZCOM

EDZCOM

MIKKO UUSITALO

For Kymiring motorsports and events venue, private wireless network will enable motorsport audiences around the world to get to enjoy an entirely new kind of spectator experience with KymiRing’s first-class network services. The capacity and speed of the network will enable unprecedented televising techniques for motorsport.

TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: BARCELONA Mikko Uusitalo, CEO of Edzcom, is a highly progressive, dynamic, and results oriented leader with strong track record of increasing revenues, profits and market share through generating customer focused solutions, marketing, turnarounds and increased organisational performance.

Excellent networking and crossorganizational collaboration skills.

Capable of resolving multiple and complex (leadership, management, strategy, sales and business development, marketing, operational, financial, and legal) challenges, and motivating teams to achieve peak performance through collaboration.

Edzcom is focused on building solutions for enterprises which include: • Logistics (ports and airports) Enabling higher productivity, improved situational awareness and safety while creating new revenue streams.

• Manufacturing Connecting an unprecedented volume of machines, IoT sensors and data to drive cost-efficiency and improve quality.

• Mining Connecting assets in open-pit and underground mines to enable automation and accelerate productivity.

2014 Year founded

40

Number of employees

EXECUTIVE BIO

• Utilities and Energy Providing connectivity to boost situational awareness and predictive maintenance for safer and efficient operations.

EDZCOM

Athonet Private 5G Wi-Fi-like Simplicity. Wire-like Reliability.

Is your Private 5G technology vendor trusted by the world’s major governments, utilities, ports and airports?

With over 10 years of experience and over 500K private SIMs deployed, Athonet is the established market leader in Private LTE &5G Core Network technology.

For Private 5G as simple as Wi-Fi Open5G@athonet.com

EDZCOM

“ Not technology first, but business and customers first” MIKKO UUSITALO

He gives an example that if connectivity goes down at a mine for more than 20 minutes work has to stop – costing the enterprise millions of dollars per day. “We can avoid this by designing, building and operating the network to provide as much uptime as customer requires.

CEO, EDZCOM

Uusitalo points out there are three advantages to an enterprise investing in a private network closer to the site, including: • Improving safety Ensuring 24/7 communications and enabling automatisation of hazardous operations • Accelerating efficiency Securing 24/7/365 continuity of business critical operations and increasing productivity

WHAT IS EDGE CONNECTIVITY? Edge connectivity is a private network solution, connecting assets, equipment and people in the field that is designed, built and operated at the edge – meaning the local coverage site.​ Network design ensures full autonomy and reliability for business-critical operations by ensuring all network components are at the edge:

“We help enterprises do things in a smarter way and provide technology solutions to drive innovation. We do that by providing a high-performance next generation wireless connectivity environment for enterprise customers to work smarter which drives growth and revenue streams,” he said.

Commenting on the benefits of a tailored private network compared to Wifi, Uusitalo said: “What we bring on board is the 4G and 5G radio components that ensure highperformance connectivity with very low latency and high uptime which is always available and designed for the customer use cases.”

DID YOU KNOW...

• New revenue streams Enabling micro-operator opportunities and enabling new revenue streams through innovative product development

• Private, geo-redundant network architecture • Dedicated spectrum • Interconnection to the existing architecture • Data stays on site • Network performance dashboard and control • Connection for all assets with seamless handover

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“ What we bring on board is the 4G and 5G radio components that ensure highperformance connectivity with very low latency and high uptime which is always available and designed for the customer use cases” MIKKO UUSITALO CEO, EDZCOM

We do this by duplicating the components, adding battery and backup generators which will make the network always available.”

Competitive edge Edzcom may be known for its edge connectivity but when it comes to their competitive edge, Uusitalo cites the following factors: • Provide leading network experience with superior connectivity and communications solutions • Unbeatable experience from 32 network deployments • World-class team to deploy your network “We are the market leader and have the most references in Europe for these kinds of solutions. We now have 32 live networks that we've designed, built and operate,” he said.

Customer solutions over technology “Our key message is it's not just about the technology but about how we can help the customer solve the challenges they have and how we can help them to make their calls. Not technology first, but business and customers first.

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32

private 4G/5G networks deployed

13

covered countries in Europe and expanding

7

years of experience and market leaders in Edge Connectivity

15

years of experience in mission critical communications

100%

owned by Cellnex Telecom

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EDZCOM

QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS...

What top 3 benefits will 5G bring your clients?

“The implementation of 5G will bring incredible benefits for our clients as it will enable a new set of use cases as you can operate in a different way when you have a connectivity that's always on, that's mobile and is low latency. That should improve your bottom line by saving and being more efficient or by actually constantly innovating. Another bonus is the increased safety of employees.”

What future technology trend are you most excited about?

“I'm very excited about the trend of everything moving towards edge – meaning that edge connectivity and computing are at the

customer side – at the edge. In the past years we've mainly focused on cloud, which is of course also a very important trend, but now the trend is moving back to the edge.

What message would you give an enterprise hesitant about moving to edge connectivity with Edzcom?

“My message to prospective customers is to look at our track record and talk to us as we can share use cases from other, or similar, industries which will inspire you to move to edge connectivity. Talk to us and we can figure out the best result. I can guarantee the outcome will be positive, I think our proposition should get any business person excited. We are able to do some very cool things with edge.”

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ADVERT SILVER

ADVERT SILVER

“ We believe the solutions we offer are valuable to our customers as edge connectivity close to a site is vital for a successful future” MIKKO UUSITALO CEO, EDZCOM

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EDZCOM

CELLNEX TELECOM

DID YOU KNOW...

Cellnex Telecom is Europe’s leading Title of the video operator of wireless telecommunications and broadcasting infrastructures with a portfolio of more than 128,000 sites.

The Company operates in Spain, Italy, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, the UK, Ireland, Portugal, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Poland.

“Cellnex is a very interesting growth story because they have transformed from a local Spanish company in a PanEuropean player in just six years mainly to M&A and long term as a service based business model,” commented CEO of Edzcom Mikko Uusitalo.

“From starting in Spain they are now present in 13 countries and they provide their main business to provide the telecom infrastructure which powers the mobile operators.

They have now diversified into the enterprise sector which Edzcom is now part of.”

Cellnex provides the infrastructure for voice and data in broadcasting serving more than 200 million people in Europe.

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INDUSTRY INSIGHTS

DID YOU KNOW...

Associations: At a corporate level Cellnex is a member of the EWIA (www.ewia.org) association. Tobias Martinez (Cellnex CEO) is currently the Chairman of the Association.

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Events: The most significant international event we participate in is the Mobile World Congress. There is also the Meetup Europe organised by TowerXchange.

In terms of Private Networks, we participate at several industry events like Private networks in a 5G world

by Informa, UPTIME by Athonet and the Critical Communications World by TCCA.

June 2021

“The world is constantly changing and in order to continue to be viable and sustainable one, has to look at the new base of doing things and new technologies. We believe the solutions we offer are valuable to our customers as edge connectivity close to a site is vital for a successful future.”

Best-of-breed technology partners Uusitalo highlights the importance of their best-of-breed technology partnerships with Intel, Athonet and Nokia to drive forward their growth.

“No-one can do this alone. If you want to be really valued by the customer – who are investing capital in you – then bring the best you can. Our philosophy and strategy is to work with the best companies in the industry where we don’t have the competence to do it ourselves.

“We work with leaders in the market like Athonet that provides critical components in

EDZCOM

Meet EDZCOM

the mobile cellular network which is kind of the brain of the network called core network. This is an Italian company which we believe is the market leader and innovator in this space. They deployed one of the the world’s first private LTE core networks over a decade ago and are a very affordable but reliable partner for the most critical component – the core network.”

Uusitalo also points out the importance of Edzom’s partnership with Intel which he describes as having “tremendous innovation capabilities”.

Focusing on Intel he said they work to ensure the hardware partners use that technology and more importantly are investing in innovation.

“For example, in the new use cases it means they just don’t have the connectivity part, but also the computing power on site close to the customer. This brings a lot of insight, innovation and technical competence for us to make sure we design our solutions that are innovative and state-of-the-art.”

Focus on the future Looking ahead, Uusitalo says the aim for the coming year will be to grow which means acquiring more customers. “It is a challenging environment, but what we have to do is find the customers who need the solutions offered by edge connectivity.

We are investing in marketing to become more well known and try to deploy our solutions to customers in areas where there might be a lockdown or restrictions in their country.

“But when we are able to travel and meet customers it's very rewarding to help them with new ideas and innovation that will help them to be more efficient or provide a safer environment in the future,” he said.

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VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

Making e l i b Mo

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

Better

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VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

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Three million Customers

Four

out of six GCC countries in which Virgin Mobile MEA is present

2006

Year founded

$20m Net revenue

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

Customer experience drives the digital journey for Virgin Mobile MEA as they move into Kuwait with a focus on FinTech apps

D

Erik Dudman Nielsen Founder and Chief Executive Officer

riving innovation to improve the customer experience across the Middle East from Saudi Arabia to Oman is the focus of Erik Dudman Nielsen, Founder & Group CEO of Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa.

Virgin Mobile MEA serves three million customers in the region, with operations in Saudi Arabia and Oman, as well as providing advisory services to Emirates Integrated Telecommunications Company (EITC) in the UAE. It is the only mobile virtual network provider in the GCC with multiple live operations and millions of active customers.

The Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) now looks set to extend its coverage with the announcement it will launch in Kuwait and that it has secured a banking licence in Saudia Arabia.

The news is welcomed by Dudman Nielsen who has led the innovation since the company was founded in 2006.

“Virgin Mobile MEA is focused on driving innovation and always improving CX (customer experience),” he said. “We’re happy that we are the first to get a MVNO licence in Kuwait and look forward to opening this new digital lifestyle for our customers.

“In 2020 we were awarded the very first banking agent licence in Saudi Arabia through our partner, Saudi Investment Bank, and we will now be able to offer money remittance for customers in this region.” businesschief.eu

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Dudman Nielsen from Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa talks about mobile financial services

Dudman Nielsen has been leading digital innovation since the beginning and launched the region's first digital proposition under the Virgin brand which is a digital MVNO where 100 per cent of customer engagement is done digitally through an app.

Driving the CX He is driving the CX at Virgin Mobile MEA which he says is achieved by the company’s “relentless focus on listening to the customers” through focus groups, studies, and work sessions. “Our core proposition is to make mobile better,” said Dudman Nielsen speaking from the company headquarters in Dubai Internet City.

“We do so in a digital manner utilising our digital capabilities and the benefit of doing this is that you end up getting a much higher net promoter score - which is a nice expression for how well the customers are willing to recommend you to friends 318

June 2021

and family. We're happy that we, in our partnership with EITC have managed to have the highest net promoter score in the region which is testament to the continuous work we do.”

Dudman Nielsen pointed out the company operates a dual brand strategy with its Virgin Mobile brand, which has a CX focus on the young Arab youth and people who are ‘young at heart’ and use lots of apps and data, and the FRiENDi mobile brand which targets Asian expats. The apps include a move to financial services with the e-wallet in Saudi Arabia.

Virgin Mobile Flexibility, choice and cool products for the consumer is what Virgin Mobile offers as its CX and according to Dudman Nielsen always has done since Sir Richard Branson started stirring up the telco market back in the 1990s.

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN TITLE: FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ We believe that this is just the beginning and the more you focus and invest into the digital space, the more successful you will be because this is the future”

Erik Dudman Nielsen founded Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa in 2006 and has more than 20 years of experience in both MNO and MVNO. Dudman Nielsen has a proven track record of building successful MVNOs in multiple markets, working with both frequency-based and MVNO-based greenfield mobile companies and traditional telecom companies offering both fixed and mobile services.

Prior to Virgin Mobile Middle East & Africa, Dudman was CEO of Realtime, a global VAS provider developing digital customer generated solutions, where he successfully managed a turnaround of the business and developed a strong growth strategy for the company in Europe, South America and the Middle East.

NetNumber: Time for a cloud-native transformation Matt Rosenberg, Chief Revenue Officer at NetNumber, discusses how cloud-native architecture is accelerating the transition to 5G for telcos NetNumber is accelerating the transition in the telecom industry to 5G as it shifts to cloudnative architecture to address the fast-paced demands of global subscribers and businesses NetNumber is offering the industry’s first cloudnative platform designed to ensure InterGENerational™ network performance addresses both the legacy and next-generation requirements of telecom networks.

“We have developed the industry’s most robust cloud-native, InterGENerational platform that addresses both the legacy and 5G requirements of telcos,” said Matt Rosenberg, Chief Revenue Officer of NetNumber.

“We’ve created our latest platform TITAN.IUM to allow customers to take any generation of applications, legacy services and protocols and move them into the new world of cloud-native architecture.

“This is a really important part for a carrier to harmonise their network, bring data services together, bring legacy with new together in order to make a more effective network and reduce their cost,” he said.

Established in 1999 and based outside of Boston with presence in over 20 countries, NetNumber delivers a range of products that address all generations (2G, 3G, 4G, 5G) of network functions in the core network, deep rooted security products and services, STIR/ SHAKEN and set of options around data services in more than 90 countries.

“We provide customers a strong ROI through platform-based solutions that reduce Capex and Opex,,” commented Rosenberg

NetNumber and Virgin Mobile MEA “We’re very proud of our partnership with Virgin Mobile MEA as they’ve taken the concept of the InterGENerational platform into their regional network strategy,” commented Rosenberg.

“We’ve had a long-term relationship with Virgin Mobile in Saudi Arabia, and recently signed an agreement with Virgin Mobile in Kuwait. We work with them to deliver multiple applications onto our platform which has enabled them to provide innovative services to their customers across The Middle East and Africa region.”

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

“The Virgin Mobile brand is targeted more for the Arab youth and tech-refined expats who are into their digital apps - and, last but not least, the people who are young at heart - which I claim to be,” said Dudman Nielsen.

FRiENDi mobile is the brand for those with a piece of their heart abroad, offering highly affordable international prepaid mobile and Internet services in Oman and Saudi Arabia.”

FRiENDi Mobile According to Dudman Nielsen, FRiENDi mobile brings outstanding value for money to customers in Oman and Saudi Arabia, empowering them to stay connected to family, friends and the world around them.

“FRiENDi mobile is the brand for those with a piece of their heart abroad, offering highly affordable international prepaid mobile and Internet services in Oman and 322

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Saudi Arabia,” comments Dudman Nielsen.

FRiENDi (which combines the English word friend and Arabic Habibi for my love or friend) mobile helps its customers enjoy international and local call quality at the best rates and provides the relevant data bundles for VoIP calls.

“The mobile service is built for expats living in the GCC from Pakistani Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan and India who would like to have services in their own languages. It is presented in a simple way to understand and very much focused on blue collar expat workers - which is a completely different segment than the high-end digital Virgin mobile segment.

“Whether they’re calling a friend across the globe, sending a text or surfing the web, we’re working hard to make sure they enjoy that experience.”

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

“ FRiENDi mobile is the brand for those with a piece of their heart abroad, offering highly affordable international prepaid mobile and Internet services in Oman and Saudi Arabia” ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

Virgin Mobile MEA apps Focusing on the smooth CX of the Virgin Mobile apps, Dudman Nielsen points out they are easy to understand and all built around the customers needs.

“For example if you want content services you can pay your Netflix account with the click of a button inside the app or if you’re in Saudi Arabia you might want free music streaming services, which you can get with a certain package. These kinds of offers are tailored around the customer's needs in a very easy to understand and very smooth experience. That's what we offer.

“We deem ourselves as payment gateway experts so we ensure your payments always succeed. We're also logistics experts in making sure that your home delivery succeeds. Those are the kinds of things that you make sure the app

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

“ Our core proposition is to make mobile better” ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

aid works and it's built around what you want as a customer in a modern day life,” he said.

Commenting on Virgin Mobile MEA’s competitive edge, Dudman Nielsen points out this is due to three important elements: • Customer focus • Digital platform capabilities • Great partnerships “Those three components allow us to deliver astounding results,” he said.

Virgin Mobile MEA move into FinTech E-wallets will enable the 170 million smartphones in use across the region to access banking services and this is the focus of Virgin Mobile MEA as they move into mobile financial services following the banking licence issued in Saudia Arabia.

“We have close to 70 per cent of the population in the MENA region being 324

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unbanked,” points out Dudman Nielsen. “If you combine this with the 170 million smartphones then you sense that e-wallets are the way for people to become banked.

“Finally if you combine that within Saudi Arabia, and particularly in the GCC, all salary payments going forward will be electronic.

Today, people are receiving salaries on ATM cash cards - so you have the recipe for success of e-wallets.”

Dudman Nielsen pointed e-wallets will help a typical blue collar expat worker in Saudi Arabia who will not have to go to the ATM on a Friday (Holy day for Islam) to collect his cash to send home but can transfer his money back home with the click of a button.

“He will be able to trade on live exchange rates and trust us because he knows us as a trusted brand already. We see the huge potential of e-wallets and later move this capability into domestic national payments, but the first step for us is the international money remit.”

Pandemic drives rise in digital services According to Dudman Nielsen the COVID-19 pandemic has driven more customers to digital especially with the constraints of lockdown and limited access to banks and shops.

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA

DID YOU KNOW...

VIRGIN MOBILE MEA LAUNCHES IN KUWAIT Virgin Mobile MEA has announced it will be launching in Kuwait.

The announcement follows the successful application for a business licence via a partnership with Kuwait Telecommunications Company (stc) to enable its operations, and secure debt and equity funding for the expansion.

The company will launch its fully digital app-based proposition in the country under the Virgin Mobile brand - becoming the fourth service provider. stc Kuwait will act as a host facilities-based provider with Virgin Mobile Kuwait to provide digital services to customers in the country. All of the new operations’ IT and app technology will be based on Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa’s digital operator platform.

“Our presence [in Kuwait], following other successful launches in the GCC, is part of our ongoing commitment to always provide more choices for consumers as well as to push the boundaries of traditional telco with our digital propositions,” commented Erik Dudman Nielsen, founder and chief executive officer of Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa.

Funding for the expansion into Kuwait has been provided by Wafra International Investment Company, Impulse International for Telecommunications and Virgin Mobile Middle East and Africa.

“Debt funding of $13m has been provided

by Wafra to allow expansion of the Virgin brand into the Kuwait market. This is the first investment of its kind, established to set up a virtual telecommunications network,” said Wafra International Investment Company CEO, Ghazi Al Hajeri.

The remainder of the funding is supplied as equity funding, with Impulse International leading the equity transaction with $7m which is a milestone for the telecom sector in Kuwait.

“This deal will allow Virgin Mobile Kuwait to provide the best technological services in its field, transferring technology and knowledge in the telecom sector while providing a more digital platform which reflects the global trend of service providers, while also providing new job opportunities,” said Izzat Abou-Amarah, CEO at Impulse International for Telecommunications.

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“If you combine this with the 170 million smartphones then you sense that e-wallets are the way for people to become banked” ERIK DUDMAN NIELSEN

FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, VIRGIN MOBILE MIDDLE EAST AND AFRICA

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“People have got used to using their credit cards to do home grocery shopping. I think we are experiencing a region where people have become much more comfortable with digital payments and online payments. We have seen this in both the Virgin mobile segment and in the FRiENDi mobile space.

We believe that this is just the beginning and the more you focus and invest into the digital space, the more successful you will be because this is the future.” eSIM - the way forward “In terms of new technology eSIMs are the way forward,” predicts Dudman Nielsen.

“More devices will come with what's called an embedded SIM so you will not have to go to a dealer although we have made it easy in the UAE as we launched with a one-hour home delivery service but that will soon be old school.

“The future is definitely with an eSIM. In Saudi Arabia, as an example, we have partnered with Absher which is a digital

ID and we have launched eSIM enabling this functionality. This effectively means when you have a new iPhone through your app share ID verification we can enable your eSIM from the comfort of your sofa at home.”

Great partnerships drive CX NetNumber is a strong partner of Virgin Mobile MEA along with Sinch and Workz.

“I always believe in strong partnerships the business needs to have strong, reliable long-term partnerships where there's mutual trust in that relationship because that opens up and gives opportunities for making strong development,” comments Dudman Nielsen.

“If we look at NetNumber, they are our vendor for HLR and HSS, which is the backend part of our systems, and they are also helping on the front end part – so we're very happy to have these vendors behind us.”

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VODAFONE GHANA:

DIGITAL JOURNEY KEY TO EMPLOYEE CONNECTIVITY

VODAFONE GHANA

COMPANY NAME

VODAFONE GHANA

Hannah Ashiokai Akrong, Vodafone Ghana’s HR

Director, provides an insight into the ‘Spirit of Vodafone’ and how she keeps employee engagement riding high

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

Hannah Ashiokai Akrong

T

he ‘Spirit of Vodafone’ shines brightly in Ghana for both its employees and customers who are both navigating the ‘new normal’ brought on by the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Hannah Ashiokai Akrong’s role as Human Resources Director of Vodafone Ghana finds her at the centre of keeping employees and clients connected as they all learn to work and live in a new landscape shaped by the pandemic and driven by digital technology.

Communication lies at the core of Vodafone Ghana which was launched 12 years ago and is the operating company of Vodafone Group Plc - one of the world’s leading technology communications companies.

Ashiokai said the digital transformation that Vodafone Ghana had been putting in place before the pandemic is now a ‘lifesaver’ for the company and its customers.

“When we started our transformation journey, it was about looking at our technology, our people, our systems, our processes so a lot of the things that we started putting in place have now been a lifesaver,” she said. businesschief.eu

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Vodafone Ghana talks about the power of Human Resources

Vodafone is the only total communications mobile financial services to both individuals solutions provider offering mobile, fixed lines, and business customers,” said Ashiokai from internet, voice and data and is currently the the company’s headquarters in Accra. telecom company of choice for Ghanaians. It “We're a very purpose-led, driven is the second-ranked operator organisation. Our business in terms of market share in the strategy includes a clear “THERE IS sector and acquired 70 per commitment to removing DEFINITELY cent shares in Ghana telecom the barriers SOMETHING with the government retaining to digital access across the TO BE SAID 30 per of the shares. country and leveraging the As a corporate body, power of technology through ABOUT FEMALE the company is constantly our networks and services to LEADERSHIP IN A building key relationships contribute to the achievement TIME OF CRISIS” with the private sector, such of the Sustainable as Glico Healthcare, and Development Goals (SDGs), as HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR government as it continues well as our strategic priorities.

VODAFONE GHANA to build the kind of innovative “We have a very strong band and responsive service for for diversity and inclusion which the Vodafone Group is and celebrated International recognised worldwide.

Women’s Day with a week of celebrations.

“We're a fully fledged technology Vodafone Ghana is very inclusive, especially communications company that provides towards giving women opportunities. fixed lines, mobile voice, data, internet and “To encourage more women into the 332

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VODAFONE GHANA

“ I think it's very important that a leader is able to set the strategy and clearly outline the vision…”

HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR VODAFONE GHANA

and give them the opportunity to learn and grow in a really fast paced environment as innovation is a game changer.

“Employee engagement is extremely important for us. Our employee engagement scores continue to be above industry standards. That is because we take a very active interest in what our employees tell us.

We do employee engagement surveys often and we act on them.

“We have this program called #YouSaidWeDid. I think that helps a lot in getting employees constantly to voice their thoughts knowing that something is going to be done about it.

industry we have an initiative called the Female Engineering Students Sponsorship Program (FESSP). Every year we partner with various universities across Ghana and to support young girls studying science and engineering programs in their third year.

We pay the tuition and provide mentors within Vodafone Ghana and then give them an internship before they return for their final year.

“Through programs like that we're able to ensure that we have a healthy pipeline of female engineers who are coming into the organisation,” she said.

TITLE: HR DIRECTOR LOCATION: AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Employee engagement As an experienced HR Director, Ashiokai, who oversees a team of 28 and the welfare of more than 2,000 employees, recognises that your ‘employees are truly your greatest assets’.

“First of all, we hire the best in terms of fit and purpose and then we provide that enabling environment where they can develop their career and then thrive. We do that by providing a workplace where everyone can be themselves, a very inclusive culture. We constantly challenge our people

HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG

Hannah Ashiokai Akrong joined Vodafone in April 2016 as director of Human Resources. Ashiokai started her career with Multimedia Broadcasting Company, Ghana and went on to Ernst & Young, where she worked in a consulting capacity with the HR Advisory team.

She has also worked with Medtronic, a world leader in medical technology. Ashiokai has a BSc in Marketing from the University of Ghana and a Masters in Human Resources and Industrial Relations from Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota, USA and the IAG School of Business, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium.

VODAFONE GHANA

Quick fire-questions with Hannah Ashiokai Akrong How would you sum up life for an HR expert before and after the COVID-19 pandemic?

“I would say the opportunities and challenges that having the majority of your workforce working remotely bring. That's something we're dealing with now and need to address concretely as well post-COVID.” A company is only as good as its employees.

Could you sum this up from your experience at Vodafone Ghana?

“I believe it was Richard Branson, owner of Virgin, who said this. If employees are 100 per cent proud of the work they're doing, the developmental opportunities that you give them and if you give them the necessary tools to do their work, they will be proud of the brand which will ultimately impact revenue and growth.”

What advice would you give a prospective HR Director in the new normal?

“HR is at the centre of organisational change - so the agenda is led by us. Looking at the employee journey from hire to retire, we need to look at our systems and processes and make them more agile to improve the employee experience.

“We need to simplify a lot of our HR practices such as recruiting, onboarding, performance management and compensation and rewards and use the current digital tools that are available to bring a really rewarding employee and ultimately customer experience.”

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“We're a very purpose led, driven organisation with a vision to be the leading technology communications company” HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR VODAFONE GHANA

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We cushion you for life GLICO offers comprehensive health insurance, with value added options, in various forms; 1. The GLICO HealthPlan • Corporate Plan • Family & Individual Plan • Tourist Plan • Students Plan • Sunkwa Plan 2. Top-Up Scheme 3. GLICO TPA (Third – Party Administration)

GLICO Healthcare: Ghana’s private health insurer of choice

Watch: Tech and Healthcare at GLICO Group A one-stop-shop of affordable and quality healthcare and insurance services is offered to clients in Ghana by GLICO Healthcare and GLICO Group.

Affordable, quality healthcare with quick claim payments is what GLICO Healthcare has been offering the people of Ghana for over 16 years.

As a subsidiary company of GLICO Group, the health insurer offers a one-stop-shop of services for its corporate and private clients.

GLICO Healthcare offers a comprehensive scheme that provides cover through a network of over 700 service providers. The scheme provides a choice of flexible benefit packages from choice of clinic along with a top-up plan to address some of the areas not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme.

Commenting on what gives GLICO Healthcare its competitive edge, Edward Forkuo Kyei, Chief Executive Officer of GLICO Group, said it can capitalise on the synergies of being part of a bigger group. “The agenda is to become a one-stop-shop as clients can also access other services offered by other subsidiaries within the GLICO Group,” he said.

“GLICO Group started as a single company with a vision to become a world-class company, we now have six companies,” said Mr. Forkuo Kyei.

“We provide comprehensive healthcare services and only work with service providers that meet our quality standards,” said Maame Afriyie Boachie, Chief Executive Officer of GLICO Healthcare.

“We are number one when it comes to prompt claim payment and in instances where individuals also make claims for out-of-pocket payments, we deliver."

Maame Afriyie Boachie, Chief Executive Officer, of GLICO Healthcare.

“We are number one when it comes to prompt claim payment and in instances where individuals also make claims for out-of-pocket payments, we deliver. We also offer tailor-made packages, add-on services and our staff are committed.”

Vodafone Ghana has been one of GLICO Healthcare’s key clients since 2014. GLICO has served as their primary healthcare provider and partner to enhance the well-being of their stakeholders including Vodafone Healthline. “We also use Vodafone Cash services to pay our client claims,” commented Ms. Boachie.

“We offer Vodafone staff health insurance and life insurance and we patronise their services,” added Mr. Kyei.

Learn more today

VODAFONE GHANA

“When we started our transformation journey, it was about looking at our technology, our people, our systems, our processes so a lot of the things that we started putting in place have now been a lifesaver” HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR VODAFONE GHANA

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corporate social responsibility (CSR) arm of the company, and known for really worldclass programs such as Instant Schools and Healthline TV program.

“We have an initiative we call Kindred Month in which employees can bring a project from their communities that they want to support,” said Ashiokai who is sponsoring a maternity ward which has had the same beds for 33 years. “One of the employees was actually born on one of those beds,” she said.

“I truly believe this rallies our employees around our culture, spirit and provides a real sense of pride at belonging to the organisation.”

“We have some of the best employee benefits including a four months parental leave policy for both males and females.

This policy, which is first of its kind in the country, was rolled out in the past year.

We also have a domestic violence policy, which gives employees who are in domestic violence type situations the right to take up to two weeks paid leave to seek help or deal with the situation.”

Ashiokai also pointed out that they also have the Vodafone Foundation, which is the

Connecting with employees during COVID-19 Vodafone Ghana acted fast to ensure their employees worked remotely when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the country in February 2020. Staff were equipped with all the necessary tools to carry out their jobs and managers were trained in ‘deliberate check-ins’ to ensure the employees understood their weekly and monthly goals.

“We provided constant check-ins just to make sure that everybody was on track and stepped in when they needed help,” said Ashiokai.

“Mental wellbeing has become a key issue with employees working remotely. We put in place various webinars where a psychologist would talk to our employees and answer their questions.

“Our Employee Assistance Program (EAP) has been very important during this time, a confidential resource that employees can get the help they need.. To let our hair down, we have a virtual social hour where we enjoy comedy nights, virtual parties, cookery lessons or movie nights.” businesschief.eu

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Digital transformation According to Ashiokai the accelerated digital journey triggered by the pandemic created opportunities to use more innovative software.

“From an HR perspective, one of the transformations was the sourcing, interviewing and hiring of staff through HireVue which is a video hiring software tool which basically cuts down the process by about a half,” she said. We implemented that a few years back and it has been so useful during the pandemic.

“For me, it's all about making the employee experience and the candidates experience as smooth as possible, commented Ashiokai who has also used

“We constantly challenge our people and give them the opportunity to learn and grow in a really fast paced environment as innovation is a game changer” HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR VODAFONE GHANA

Microsoft Teams, Skype and Facebook Workplace as collaborative tools.

Another excellent platform is Vodafone University which is a virtual university offering courses for employees development on everything from HR to Supply Chain. “I think all the technology that we put in place initially has now come together and is helping our employees work seamlessly from home or remotely.

“Vodafone, I am very proud to say, is a multi-award-winning organisation. We picked 21 awards last year including the Telecoms Company of the Year, and Brand businesschief.eu

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2,000

employees at Vodafone Ghana

28

people in the HR team at Vodafone Ghana

50%

rise in Vodafone Ghana data during the pandemic

2009

the year Vodafone Ghana was founded

70

local and international awards - making it the most awarded telecoms company in Ghana

of the Year at the Ghana Business Awards (GBA). Our CEO also emerged the Telecom CEO of Year at the Ghana Information Technology and Telecommunications Awards (GITTA).

Support for the community Although Ashiokai mostly focuses on the internal HR side of Vodafone Ghana she is keen to highlight how the company has externally supported the community during the pandemic.

Vodafone was involved in the government contact tracing initiative and waived transfer charges for cashless payments through 342

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Vodafone cash at a time when people could not move due to lockdown.

“We haven't brought back those charges a lot of work has been industry first which I am very proud of,” she said.

“Very early on, we set about looking at how we could support the communities in which we operate. We've done a lot of expansion and future-proofing of our network infrastructure and increased the network capacity to support that as there was a 50 per cent rise in data with people working from home and children doing virtual school from home.

“We also accelerated support for e-education by providing lots of free learning platforms and zero rated a lot of access to educational sites to give opportunities for the less privileged. We also promoted a widespread digital adoption for small and medium scale businesses.”

Partnership with Glico Healthcare As employees faced the physical and mental challenges of working remotely during the pandemic, Ashiokai said the partnership

“ Our business strategy includes a clear commitment to removing the barriers to digital access across the country and leveraging the power of technology through our networks and services” HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR VODAFONE GHANA

with Glico Healthcare had become more important than ever.

“In the beginning everyone had so many questions about COVID-19 so Glico Healthcare sent their doctors to give a weekly talk including Q&A’s sessions to our employees which was really helpful and helped ease anxiety.

“We also sought their help in developing our corporate protocols and then when we had some employees who were affected

by COVID, they helped us navigate the healthcare system and national protocols that had been put into place.

“We still periodically call on them to provide their expertise for what we call our HR Learning Series. That's a quarterly session with our employees on various topics from dealing with stress to other mental health businesschief.eu

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“ We have this program called #YouSaidWeDid. I think that helps a lot in getting employees constantly to voice their thoughts, knowing that something is going to be done about it” HANNAH ASHIOKAI AKRONG HR DIRECTOR VODAFONE GHANA

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and physical wellbeing issues. We really couldn't have asked for better partners at this difficult time and we appreciate their tremendous support.”

Future of the physical workplace Vodafone Ghana is now focusing on the future of work and maneuvering the opportunities and challenges that it poses.

“It will be especially challenging for new employees who haven't had the opportunity to be in the office and see how employees interact and engage around our culture,” said Ashiokai.

“We see post-COVID as not fully going back to what we saw as normal, the majority of the time spent in the office. We are looking at the office more for collaboration, engagement activities and for new employees who need more supervision.

It will also be used for teams to innovate as being face-to-face helps us better bounce ideas off each other. For us the future will probably be a combination of working from the office and remotely.”

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BETKING

BRINGING

A DATA-CENTRIC PERSPECTIVE TO

GAMING WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

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BETKING

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BETKING

Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics, outlines the company’s digital transformation story, which is placing data and CX at the core of its roadmap

O

Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics

fficially entering the African gaming market in 2018, BetKing is a company where entertainment and the latest digital technology have been fused with a highly customercentric, data driven approach to produce an exceptional platform with its sights set firmly on the future. Now with operational bases in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia, BetKing offers its services on a variety of sports, both real and virtual, and continues to explore innovative new methods for achieving one of its primary objectives: bringing fans closer to the sports and games they love.

To find out how one aspect of its digital journey, data, is helping to push the company into exciting new territory, we spoke with Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics.

A graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Thomas’s formidable career includes 20 years’ experience working in data and analytics at some of the world’s largest tech companies. He joined BetKing in mid-2020 on the promise of a fresh challenge. “The company attracted me because it provides the opportunity to build a data and analytics function from scratch.

BetKing is a very rapidly growing company with a real thirst for data,” he explains. As a seasoned veteran of the industry, Thomas’s experience, particularly as a ‘DataIQ 100 2020’ listed data and analytics leader, has businesschief.eu

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Ian Thomas | BetKing

proven invaluable as BetKing prepares for its next phase of development. In particular, his aversion to “overburdening people with process” and planning for future scalability have been crucial to the company’s transformation strategy.

When Thomas talks about scalability he isn’t just referring to data volume, but rather thinking in more holistic terms: if a process relies on manual elements, how can it be automated? How can teams be built to optimise their capabilities? “Those kinds of issues are really important, as well as conscientiously thinking about our responsibility and place in society. BetKing is very mindful and respectful of the role that it plays in the markets and communities we operate in,” he adds. This places data management far beyond simply being a technological concern and elevates it to being a core enabler of cultural bestpractice. In keeping with this, the company is shifting from passive to proactive data 350

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management, which has resulted from an increased emphasis on compliance and legislative requirements, as well as the company’s growth.

BETKING

Thomas’s vision for data management at BetKing is to create a “common foundation for helping people to access and share data and insights.” This requires a flexible approach that many older and/or larger companies in the gaming industry could not achieve easily because of their legacy technology, processes and organisational structures. BetKing, an agile, digital native organisation, is unencumbered by similar restrictions. “Larger organisations can struggle with fragmentation in their data, with siloed teams often competing for who can provide the definitive view of business performance,” he says. “Instead of that, they need to build a common data foundation that democratises access to data while providing a level playing field for insights.” BetKing has taken stock of gaming’s transformation over the last two decades and opted not to follow the “preconceived notions” of how it operates. This impulse to break new ground is indicated by the company’s decision to target Africa, a historically under-served market. “The African territories in which we operate have some very significant differences to the UK and Europe in terms of player behaviour.

There aren't many established businesses that understand that.”

IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

TITLE: VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS INDUSTRY: BETTING & GAMING LOCATION: AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ BetKing is a very rapidly growing company with a real thirst for data”

IAN THOMAS

I help companies turn data into action and results, from day-to-day marketing decisions all the way up to senior leadership. I've enabled teams across Microsoft and Publicis Groupe to unlock product and marketing innovation through data, working with some of the largest, most complex datasets in the world.

My experience encompasses all parts of the data value chain: Data collection, data management and governance (including GDPR compliance), analytics and reporting, data visualisation, and automated decisioning and Machine Learning/AI. The effective multidisciplinary data teams I've built have drawn on the talents and energy of diverse individuals to deliver value with data, ensuring consistently high employee satisfaction and low turnover.

I'm passionate about using data to drive impactful, customer-centric Digital Marketing, CRM and Advertising. I've built a Machine Learning-based system for Microsoft to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time, in the right channel.

Azure.

Invent with purpose.

Microsoft Azure lays platform for BetKing’s gaming success Watch: Microsoft and BetKing partnership

Adrian Gatt, Microsoft’s iGaming Business Development Manager, and Eva Angelopoulou, Data and AI Specialist, explain how it supports the sport betting site’s growth Microsoft is not simply the supplier of BetKing’s tech infrastructure, but also provides guidance and support for important stages of its digital transformation, including migrating to the cloud, and utilising tools and services such as Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory.

The Microsoft account team’s relationship with BetKing and the team behind their platform began in Summer 2019, while before that time BetKing worked primarily with Microsoft partners, said Adrian Gatt, iGaming Business Development Manager.

Eva Angelopoulou, who is responsible for Azure and its Data and AI technologies, said: “Initially we migrated the whole infrastructure onto Azure, to ensure agility with minimum maintenance and administration, and they maintained their own on-premise data center as Disaster Recovery site. In the second phase, we moved that over as well.”

Microsoft provided BetKing with technical guidance, governance and best practices, and involved a team of Azure engineers

to ensure a smooth transition. “We have invested a lot of effort in streamlining the support experience and discussed their concerns with regards to regulation and potential hybrid approach to cover data sovereignty needs, as iGaming is a highly regulated industry,” she added.

Gatt said its primary focus is to support the organisation as it goes through its M&A cycle, and enhance the platform’s monitoring. “We are making sure the customer’s Azure platform is more resilient in view of expansion into new markets, helping modernise applications and infrastructure, develop and infuse AI into their platform, and enhance Azure skills of BetKing’s technical team through our skilling initiatives,” he said.

“BetKing now has a cloud-only Azure set up but this is an ongoing journey, with more cloud services and continuous modernisation of applications and infrastructure.”

Microsoft ensures that all capabilities that can bring value are recommended and adopted. Consultative services are also a part of Microsoft’s armoury.

Invent with purpose

BETKING

DATAIQ 100: TRACKING DATA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

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DID YOU KNOW...

Thomas calls his inclusion on the 2020 edition of the DataIQ 100 list “a great honour.”

While acknowledging the value he’s been able to create for businesses, Thomas still cites the positive impact he’s made in the lives of individuals, from customers to team members to stakeholders, as his proudest career achievement.

The biggest challenge in terms of digital transformation, he posits, is not necessarily the acquisition of technology so much as the cultural investment that gives it a foundation.

BetKing’s entrepreneurial spirit and collaboration with a strong network of registered agents combined with its large online user base makes for a unique customer landscape. Thomas states that this customer profile has been partially generated by using Google Analytics, an important component of BetKing’s digital transformation. “Our roadmap consists of continuing to build a horizontally scalable platform, both from a technology and from a data perspective. We really need to start expanding that concept to create a more heterogeneous data management environment.” Referring to an automated system that integrates disparate databases into a unified interface, ‘heterogeneous’ databases will be important as BetKing seeks to optimise its user experience (UX). “Data

BETKING

“ Larger organisations usually have one big team that manages all of their data and insights.

Instead of that, they should be taking a democratised approach” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

from the front-end of our application stack should be treated no differently from the data we get from our backend BI (business intelligence) environment. We want to be able to expose that information at high volume to our growing data science team and build a range of value-added models against it.” The resulting opportunities could include recommenders, predictive monetisation features, and enhanced fraud detection/problematic player recognition capabilities.

These new features will also fit into BetKing’s broader development plans, not least of which is a significant market expansion to new territories and product areas. Although exact details are currently being kept under wraps, Thomas indicates that entertainment broadcaster MultiChoice Group, one of Africa’s most prominent companies in the sector, will play a key role. “[MultiChoice has] broadcast rights for premiership and other top-league football in Africa,” an important asset for a continent whose primary consumer betting interest is focused on that sport. “BetKing’s goal is to deliver an integrated entertainment experience straddling the consumption of sports content and live games and placing bets on them,” he adds. “A lot of our product investment and expansion over the next 12 to 24 months will be focused on that area.”

BetKing’s growing maturity in leveraging data across all levels of the company affords one of its biggest opportunities for growth. Thomas reasons that unlocking this information will improve decision-making, help BetKing understand its customers better, price its products appropriately and create a better experience overall.

“Operating in Africa creates some unique challenges,” he says, “a lot of which has to do with the rapidly changing state of internet businesschief.eu

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access. Bandwidth is still a major challenge for many of our players, so we have to offer low bandwidth versions of our products to drive engagement.” BetKing’s ability to meet customers’ needs was put to the test at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the cancellation of major sporting events and put a strain on its business model.

Undeterred, the company quickly launched a range of virtual sports betting products, thus resolving the issue and diversifying its product portfolio simultaneously. “Since professional football has come back, our 356

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“ Our business has not just bounced back to where it was before COVID, it's actually grown significantly” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

BETKING

business has not just bounced back to where it was before COVID, it's grown significantly.”

In many ways, BetKing’s steady and assured COVID-19 response is emblematic of its business overall: it is secure in its market, its brand is popular with its customers, and knows the metrics by which it will measure future success. For Thomas, this ongoing journey of refinement will be dependent on a highly data-centric philosophy, which will not only solve the problems of today but anticipate the innovations of tomorrow. “BetKing is building

DID YOU KNOW...

MICROSOFT One of BetKing’s key partners for a long time has been Microsoft. Not simply the supplier of BetKing’s tech infrastructure, the software giant has provided guidance and support for important stages of its digital transformation, such as migrating to the cloud.

Thomas explains: “My team and I have been moving fast as we can towards more of a platform as a service (PaaS) approach to infrastructure. We're making use of things like Azure Synapse, Azure Databricks, and Azure Data Factory to create that kind of modern approach.

“More recently, we’ve been implementing a data lake so that we can start housing unstructured data on a large scale. Microsoft has been very supportive in providing advice and architectural consulting to help us make smart choices and build that infrastructure out in a scalable way.”

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“ Trying to evolve [the data team and platform] simultaneously is at the heart of the challenge we’re tackling right now” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

self-serve dashboards and reports to place insights directly into peoples’ hands on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. People need to understand how the questions they have can be answered with the data that's available, and the more we can do to help them become self-sufficient the more that data-driven decision-making will take hold across the organisation.”

This democratised approach – with a central team providing the data, tools and expertise to enable the day-to-day use of data to support decision-making across the business – is at the heart of Thomas’s plans to build out his team and the company’s data platform in 2021. “Trying to evolve those two things simultaneously is at the heart of the challenge we’re tackling right now. That opportunity is really exciting because we can act fast, the demand is there, and our CEO [Byron Petzer] is leading the commitment.”

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EXCELREDSTONE

at the forefront of

IT

WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

INFRASTRUCTURE 360

June 2021

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EXCELREDSTONE

ExcelRedstone’s Gavin Burger and John Smethurst discuss how the company’s smart building and data centre solutions are evolving to meet customer needs

S

ExcelRedstone Data Centre

mart building solutions and IT infrastructure provider ExcelRedstone has helped global tech firms, financial institutions and retailers adapt their IT infrastructure to cope with the pandemic.

From ensuring systems did not fall over in the first rapid move to remote working, to supporting staff and helping improve productivity, its 450-plus engineers have been busy across its operations in Europe, the USA and Asia to keep their customers IT systems running during uncertain times.

While the company has adapted impressively over the past year, the roots of its success date back to 1986, where they provided IT services to offices in the City.

Since then, the business has magnified to a global level, growing five-fold between 2008 and 2020 as CEO Barry Horgan led a series of acquisitions, including the IT infrastructure division of AIM-listed RedstoneConnect and Irish IT services firm Kedington.

ExcelRedstone retains the identity that has got it to where it is today, they are truly customer-centric, and customer experience is paramount to their continued success. “We've grown from a family business founded over 30 years ago, and there's still the same accommodating and focused approach in the business today,” says Gavin Burger, Chief Commercial Officer, who himself joined 17 years ago. He attributes much of the company’s success businesschief.eu

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EXCELREDSTONE

“ THE PAST YEAR HAS HIGHLIGHTED THE POSITIVE, FLEXIBLE ATTITUDE AND CULTURE THAT WE INSTIL” GAVIN BURGER

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, EXCELREDSTONE

to its culture, showcased in the longterm relationships with multiple global investment banks that it has worked with since the beginning. “The past year has highlighted the positive, flexible attitude and culture that we instil. The whole business revolves around its people – a lot of our staff have continued to work on-site supporting critical data centre infrastructure, which is a real testament to their hard work and commitment that helps underpin our entire business.”

The company has been well-positioned to weather the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, thanks in part to the increased demand for data centres. “Over the last few years, we’ve seen massive growth in the number of new data centres, but even more so during the past year where remote working has driven demands for data centre connectivity,” says businesschief.eu

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ExcelRedstone IBC

“OVER THE LAST FEW YEARS, WE’VE SEEN MASSIVE GROWTH IN TERMS OF THE NUMBER OF NEW DATA CENTRES” JOHN SMETHURST SALES DIRECTOR, EXCELREDSTONE

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JOHN SMETHURST TITLE: SALES DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: IT AND SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Smethurst. “The growth of these data centres is linked to the ever-increasing number of IP devices that are creating data - from your smart speaker to your smart meter, to your smart device, to the video calls we’re now on every day.”

“The large, hyper-scale data centre world hasn't stopped during the pandemic,” adds Burger. “In fact, it has had to press on at a greater rate than before – increased data consumption and changing consumer habits are driving the demand for IT infrastructure.

EXECUTIVE BIO

John Smethurst has worked in the IT industry for over 25-years, having started his career in 1996 at infrastructure specialist Cableship, which would ultimately become Redstone Converged Solutions. After nearly 15 years with the company, John progressed his career with senior sales roles at a number of leading Systems Integrators before joining Excel IT as Sales Manager in 2013 and assuming the role of Sales Director in 2014. Following significant sales growth at Excel IT the company acquired Redstone Converged Solutions in 2018 to form ExcelRedstone where John heads the sales team focusing on data centre solutions.

Committed to service Prism DCS specialise in the provision of hot & cold aisle containment and security caging. Leveraging in-house manufacture and installation capabilities to empower operators & end-users with strategic agility in the development of digital infrastructure.

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EXCELREDSTONE

We've had to respond accordingly to meet the needs of our customers.”

As the world emerges from the pandemic, ExcelRedstone stands ready to change with the times. “With the new normal, we've seen more of our customers going home-based and adopting remote working or flexible working,” says Smethurst. “But our fieldbased engineers and on-site teams will be there supporting users as they return to the office, making sure their office environment is safe with the toolsets that we have for workspace management. We’re always evolving to meet our customers’ needs, and we are already in advanced discussions with a number of the largest building contractors, landlords and tenants, as people start to return to work and how the office needs to adapt to the changing work styles and

requirements of people. Technology is going to play a significant part in this change, from security, wired and wireless connectivity, people wellbeing, AV to better workplace technologies, ExcelRedstone are leaders in designing, building and running SMART buildings.”

Internally as well, the pandemic has wrought changes, as Burger explains. “It's businesschief.eu

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GAVIN BURGER TITLE: CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: IT AND SERVICES LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM Gavin Burger is currently the Chief Commercial Officer for ExcelRedstone and has been a key component of the senior team for more than 16 years helping grow the business from £2.5mn in 2004 to its current £100mn+ level. Before becoming CCO and the acquisition of Redstone Converged Solutions, Gavin was Excel IT’s Chief Operating Officer and was responsible for the company’s global sales and operations. He firmly believes the success of the business is down to the customer-focused approach instilled to meet and exceed expectations. Prior to ExcelRedstone Gavin spent a number of years in senior Sales, Marketing and Operational roles within the Retail and Leisure sector.

EXECUTIVE BIO

opened our eyes in terms of understanding how organisations can operate effectively when they have the IT platforms to work from. That is critical for driving communication, and from that perspective, it's been really positive for us.”

International expansion will continue to be key to meeting these growth aspirations, and today the company’s footprint includes operations in the UK, Ireland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Luxembourg, Switzerland, Singapore and America. In January, it hired its first US general manager, based in Virginia, along with local delivery

EXCELREDSTONE

“ THE LARGE, HYPER-SCALE DATA CENTRE WORLD HASN'T STOPPED DURING THE PANDEMIC” GAVIN BURGER

CHIEF COMMERCIAL OFFICER, EXCELREDSTONE

and support teams. “Whether we're doing a data centre in the UK or delivering one in Japan, companies want global consistency and to streamline the number of vendors they deal with. You'll see more of that over the next year as we continue our expansion in the USA and expand into Asia to meet the demands and the evolving nature of our customers.”

That’s particularly true of hyper-scale customers, as Burger explains. “We're finding that the large hyperscalers are looking to replicate the complex end to end operational delivery jigsaw from one businesschief.eu

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Data centre solutions to meet your unique needs.

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EXCELREDSTONE

region to another to help drive efficiency and enhance project delivery in terms of quality, cost and timescale: ‘With a team of 450 engineers and over 40 project managers across the company, as well as a dedicated hyper-scale team specialising in compliance, design, and delivery, ExcelRedstone attracts some of the biggest players in the market.

“We can offer these clients end-to-end data centre solutions, from the initial design and installation of structured cabling systems, cable containment and hot or cold aisle containment solutions through to a full suite of IP services including networking, IP surveillance, access control, environmental monitoring etc.” adds Smethurst. Beyond that, ExcelRedstone also provides managed

“ WHETHER WE'RE DOING A DATA CENTRE IN THE UK OR DELIVERING ONE IN JAPAN, COMPANIES WANT GLOBAL CONSISTENCY AND TO STREAMLINE THE NUMBER OF VENDORS THEY DEAL WITH” JOHN SMETHURST SALES DIRECTOR, EXCELREDSTONE

services for the support, maintenance and optimisation of client data centres and computer rooms. “It’s one thing having the tools, but it’s really a question of how you use them. That's why a big part of our business is the managed services to support data centre environments.”

ExcelRedstone’s work wouldn’t be possible without support from their prestigious portfolio of partners, as Smethurst explains. “We are proud to work with many of the leading manufacturers and solutions providers of network infrastructure and associated technology.

This broad-based approach allows us to select the very best solutions for each and every client application, regardless of manufacturer or vendor.”

For example, ExcelRedstone has worked with Vertiv, Corning and Prism DCS on a number of large scale, high profile data centre projects over the years. “We’ve got a long-standing relationship with Vertiv, and we work really well together within the data centre space, particularly in terms of their businesschief.eu

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1986

YEAR FOUNDED

£100mn REVENUE

750+

NUMBER OF EMPLOYEES

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EXCELREDSTONE

UPS, PDU and Thermal Management solutions.

This helped us achieve Vertiv Diamond Partner of the year for Northern Europe in 2020, which we are extremely proud of.” As a Corning Pretium NPI (Network of Preferred Installers), ExcelRedstone holds the highest accreditation available and is one of the largest installers of Corning solutions in EMEA. ExcelRedstone also works closely with UK manufacturer Prism DCS. “When a particular customer wants something different, we’ve taken a number of our data centre clients to Prism DCS, where they’ve customised and built bespoke solutions for cabinets, security caging or hot and cold aisle containment solutions.”

Looking to the future, the company intends to keep up the rapid pace of growth it has been enjoying. “We've grown significantly over the past few years,” says Smethurst. “The ambition is to quadruple in size again over the next five to 10 years. We recently ranked number 1 in The Sunday Times’ 2020 league table of companies with the fastest-growing international sales, and obviously, the aim is to try and maintain that.”

Supporting that growth is the company’s laser focus on its customers. “We're a trusted partner for global providers, which is key to our long-term growth,” says Burger. “Giving our customers the consistency of what they're looking for across a number of different geographic locations underpins that, which is why we've opened up six new entities across the globe in the last two years.”

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GBG

BUILDING TRUST IN A DIGITAL WORLD WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY businesschief.eu

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GBG Mark Mamone Group CIO, GBG

GBG

CIO Mark Mamone discusses the impact of data intelligence in a post-pandemic world and what that means for the next normal

I

n 2020, the world experienced a digital acceleration which had a massive impact on technology consumption. Mobile adoption soared amongst consumers, as did the importance of verifying identities, transactions and interactions online. As digital ecommerce grew, a wealth of new online accounts and services appeared across a wealth of industry sectors with digital strategies needing to adapt and looking to specialists for data and technology support.

While the world continues to grapple with the pandemic and it's now-prominent longterm effects, organisations such as GBG are working hard to provide safer ways to operate in a digital world using data & technology.

It will also see us step in and support companies whose technology foundation isn’t fit for purpose and work to drive the new hybrid digital operating model we’ll all have to become accustomed to.

In a time when most transactions and interactions have moved online, businesses are looking for technology to offer secure transactions, manage compliance, and enhance the user experience.

Meet GBG’s chief technology geek With a career spanning over three decades, it is only fair to mention that GBG’s technology office is in the right hands. Speaking of the role of the CIO on a board level, Mamone says "Previously, technology often felt like the second class citizen, the silent operational business enabler, whereas now, and especially with the barriers to entry being lowered for our customers, my role has become a key boardroom strategy and talking point.” Mark’s position and that of his near 370 strong global technology department has taken centre stage – whether it's the CTO driving the technology strategies and businesschief.eu

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reviewing the next emerging trends, to the engineering teams who build the products and eventually the cyber security teams protecting systems and data. The team is focused on the customer to engage and make them feel safe, secure, and valued with their technology decisions. The conversation starts at the CIO level, where Mamone feels at home; he loved to code as a child, and still does as he is currently learning Rust and researching ‘mob programming’, so is happy to talk tech at any point. However, he also sees the bigger picture and the compliance accountability required to make decisions that affect the use and control of data mindfully.

A leader focused on collaboration and respectful challenge to drive tech change Mamone's leadership style is that of the 'Participative Leader', meaning he recognises 380

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the value in working together to reach decisions on solutions, ensuring he has the right team supporting him with the best collective capability. Mamone uses respectful challenge to encourage a sense of healthy and empowering debate within his team whenever he can. He is a firm believer that successful leadership comes from autonomy, and Mamone feels his role lies in effectively mentoring his team, providing the guide rails for them to make the right decisions, and becomes autocratic only when necessary.

A motivational leader and technical visionary, Mamone has spearheaded the strategic data and technology evolution at GBG, firstly to help cope with the pandemic and then over the long term, is setting the strategic focus for the delivery of a technology approach that keeps data at its core.

GBG

More power in data than ever before: The root of tech transformation COVID-19 saw global business fast forward ten years or more into the future which had a huge impact on technology transformation.

It required prioritisation on data access and securing it against a growing threat landscape, as well as reforming IT to ensure seamless access is available anywhere and at any time.

Mark feels this new digital platform is focused on two key drivers – the emergence of data alongside technology delivery that supersedes any human interference.

With data, Mamone and his team at GBG are clear on the responsibilities it has surrounding the use, care and availability of digital data , "When we think of data, we think of it from different perspectives. The first thing is making sure that we don't let

MARK MAMONE GROUP CIO, GBG

TITLE: GROUP CHIEF INFO OFFICER INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ When we think of data, we think of it from different perspectives.

The first thing is making sure that we don't let our customers down on the care we put around that use of data, but also the trust that our customers place upon us in terms of securing that data”

MARK MAMONE

With over three decades of experience, Mark Mamone is a seasoned and experienced Chief Technology & Information Officer, having started his career as a software engineer and worked his way through the ranks to become GBG’s CIO. Mark is now an internationally published author in the tech space, but still retains the same enthusiasm for technology that he had as a child; he still, to this day, follows his realisation that armed only with a computer and their own ability, technologists around the world can create anything.

In more recent years, having delivered global transformations, Mark enjoys delivering exciting, innovative new products in the field of Digital Identity, Location Intelligence and Fraud.

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GBG

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our customers down on the care we put around that use of it, but also the trust that our customers place upon us in terms of securing their data." To meet this demand GBG has built two key operational initiatives – privacy by design and security by design.

Privacy by design is orientated around the different rules and regulations, and remaining diligent about compliance so that customers understand what data is available and how GBG uses it and for customers legal rights surrounding that information are preserved.

Security by design is making sure that security

“During the pandemic, we tried to ensure that individuals have the flexibility and are empowered to drive their own agenda and schedule” MARK MAMONE GROUP CIO, GBG

is “shifted left” and thought about from the outset and designed into our products and our processes, meaning consumers can be assured of the security of the systems and data and that the right level of protection around it is applied.

When it comes to the technology Mamone points out that it’s the foundation to manage user data. The right technology works to ingest the data received and then enhance it in a way that is usable and beneficial to the user. GBG uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to take data and by using advanced algorithmic techniques, create intelligence insights and value that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, enabling a level of businesschief.eu

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“ Many years ago, technology often felt like a second class citizen, whereas nowadays, and especially with the barriers to entry being lowered for our customers, technology becomes the first conversation we have” MARK MAMONE GROUP CIO, GBG

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accuracy & quality that’s beneficial to its customers and their consumers. Speaking of GBG’s key differentiator and competitive advantage however, Mamone adds that there is a human element that sits atop the whole machine learning ecosystem.

He says “There are a variety of different techniques that we implement for human engagement; for example when you look at automation and the use of machine learning, we introduce human checks and balances into that process where it is sensible to do so, especially early on as we're proving out a new algorithm that we've built.” Human checks are integral in identifying and synthesising behavior signals, and oftentimes, these aberrations can be overlooked by machines. A common use case is for our products to highlight something as suspicious, for a human-inthe-loop to then check. However, humans can introduce disadvantages as well. At GBG, Mamone and his team understand that with human involvement comes a risk of introducing bias into the data pool, and this bias can unintentionally create havoc in how that data is then synthesised. It’s for this reason that we take special care in considering such impacts and explore solutions to avoid it.

Security remains key to trust in a digital world GBG continues to invest in security, offering to enable customers, to deliver frictionless digital experiences, whilst eliminating fraud and compliance risks online while safeguarding them from theft, and at the base of it all, keeping the cost of compliance to a minimum. As the operating environment shifts again to a more hybrid model GBG supports customers with a best of breed toolset and partners to

meet evolving customer demands. It’s that flexibility who can ensure users can transact online securely and with confidence serves us well and sees us build long-term partnerships with our customers.

Partnerships: An open source to technology Equally, with partnerships, the expectation is bi-directional, with Mamone adding that they let the experts be experts and this is the key to a successful strategic alliance.

Moreover, choosing a partner that fill a need for the organisation also frees up time for the organisation’s resources so they can focus on fulfilling their objectives

GBG at a glance: • Identity Verification & Validation (IDV); Verifying the person against who they say they are online. This can be used for claims-based validation, document-based validation, and biometric validation.

Through a combination of customerconfigured rules & thresholds, as well as algorithmic techniques • Location; providing high levels of fidelity & accuracy around location intelligence, being able to accurately help all customers in the world reach every customer in the world.

Allows users to free-type an address and find what they're looking for, anywhere in the world, in as little as 5 real-time key presses • Fraud; using data including metadata, behaviours and other methods of detecting whether a transaction is suspicious or not, and this can either offer more frictionless journey or request further verification.

GBG

and meeting their goals without worrying about the logistics involved in building an infrastructure from scratch. For example, using cloud partners, such as AWS, Azure, Google has given GBG presence across a number of markets, and that has helped it penetrate and serve locations that were previously not under its purview or jurisdiction. “Our ability to grow globally, and to satisfy more specific requirements like data sovereignty would have been much harder without the relationship with cloud partners.

They can and will always do better in all the geographies that we operate” adds Mamone.

The elastic nature of their scalability means GBG can save time, money and grow with their customers. Mamone says “The big cloud partners can accommodate considerable volumes that we see through our products – but it also means that when we don’t need an environment to be up and running, we can switch it off, reducing cost.” GBG’s focus lies on the application layer and building a great product, so we sit on top of that infrastructure and focus on the functional sides of the microservices that bring our products to life, helping GBG operate smoothly and seamlessly across borders.

In a way, GBG looks at strategic alliances as an open source to technology, where partners are brought on board to help GBG meet client needs that sit apart from their core offering. This ecosystem of partnerships helps GBG remain true to their customer’s needs while also providing the best version of their product without compromising on resources and time.

Fast to transition to remote working GBG is now supporting to do the same As many organisations are now adopting a workplace culture to meet the new normal, GBG has also introduced initiatives that look 388

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“ There are a variety of different techniques that we implement to include humans, we've introduced human checks and balances into automation and the use of machine learning, especially early on as we're proving out a new algorithm that we've built” MARK MAMONE GROUP CIO, GBG

GBG

at the overall wellbeing of employees at the current place of work – their homes. Mamone adds “We worked hard to ensure individuals have the flexibility and are empowered to drive their own agenda and schedule.” Mark runs the largest team at GBG, and so any and all business-specific strategies have been introduced in one way or another by the office of the CIO. Keeping in mind the macroeconomic landscape that COVID-19 has now presented to the world, customers want methods that are safe, secure and seamless.

This growing move to online means that products by GBG need to be able to cope with concerns of reach, security, compliance, scale and speed. To do this, GBG leveraged the cloud and the very latest technologies

within that cloud such as event-driven architecture, micro-services, containerisation and functions as a service (FaaS).

Speaking about trust and the backbone GBG has to play in that, Mamone emphasises that now is not the time to be complacent, adding further "You could have argued that Polaroid or Nokia had their respective markets sewn up. They didn’t. You could argue that there was no marketplace larger than Walmart – you’d be wrong. Tesla has disrupted Space. Amazon, online retail.

Netflix, online media. But if you think these can’t be overthrown, you’re wrong. It’s going to be hard but in the current climate, nobody can be complacent - we certainly aren’t.

That’s why we focus on our team members and the customer, with data and technology at the core of who we are.This is valued by a growing global customer base looking for secure solutions that can evolve to help them prosper and grow. It’s ever changing, and we’ll never get complacent.”

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UNIT4 PSA, ENABLING PRACTICES OF THE FUTURE WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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Unit4 PSA Smart Cloud Collaboration platform for better workflow, faster decision making, and an agile workforce empowered to focus on what matters

U

nit4 PSA’s ecosystem of powerful teams and partnerships are perfectly aligned to make for an exceptional people experience that drives customer success for Professional Services, so you can offer a better way to work that makes for a better place to work.

Manav Singh, General Manager and Scaleup Leader for Unit4 PSA, explains how Unit4 PSA aims to enable practices of the future through disruption. “For me, disruption is all about honing in on a true customer ambition and creating a simple path to execution. A lot of people focus on customer problems and in my view that always results in incremental improvements. Pure disruption is to be able to leap from the incremental and creating something truly game-changing – and for this to be meaningful it needs to align not to current problems but future ambitions of customers. As a scaleup leader, this is what I always like to have as my goal and to take away the noise of what I hear as issues to be solved but rather focus on the why and the desired end state of my customers.”

To that end, Unit4 PSA remains unrelentingly focused on:

Manav Singh General Manager and Scaleup Leader

• Evolving operating models to be more remote and in line with the new reality • Seamless data flows and intelligence to ensure full transparency and ease of decision making businesschief.eu

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MANAV SINGH TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE LOCATION: NETHERLANDS I am a scale-up leader embarked on a current mission to create a globally leading business, enabling professional services organizations to optimize their project and peopledriven business by deliverin a leading practice management suite supporting the end to end proces from opportunities to cash. I am energized to bring an innovative technology to market enabling professional services organization to execute their business flawlessly.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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UNIT 4 | Know Your Customer

• Empowering practices to proactively assess customer needs and formulate propositions • Meaningful automation, ensuring your valuable people are spending their time on the right priorities • Innovating new and sustainable business models such as value-based pricing All this delivered in a single solution built within Microsoft Dynamics CRM making sure that end customers are always at the centre.

By leveraging the Microsoft platform not only do we rationalize the IT landscape for practices but also make sure that practices unleash the true potential of a platform that they have already invested in The secret to Unit4 PSA’s success is that Singh himself remains married to a winning framework rooted in the belief in his people and the strategic alignment of

business partners. It’s old-school thoughts done in a new age way, with heart, passion, and conviction. And his customers are better for it.

Redefining PSA to help practices Pivot, Strengthen, and Amplify To achieve operational excellence, you must address the following four key areas: Executing profitable projects, optimising resource utilisation, billing with precision, and winning more business.

Unit4 PSA gets you there, despite our ever-changing world.

Practices built for the future create an environment that allows their people to focus on what matters most – delivering customer value. By leveraging technology, companies can remove non-valueadd administrative tasks and streamline workflows, and empower their people, businesschief.eu

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providing all the information employees need to be successful at their fingertips.

Remote-work and a global pandemic pose epic challenges, but Singh and his “team of teams” are up to the task. Engineered for flawless execution and customer success, Singh sticks to old principles, but like vinyl records, and hipster trends, he has made the old new again by understanding and leveraging their true value.

A unified platform focused on optimising front-end operations with automated setups, seamless data flow and integrations, and built-in intelligence ensures that practices are focused on delivering value to customers 396

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timely and profitably. With a clear view of current operations, practices plan for the future by making sure they have the right resources and strategic customers. All this within a simplified IT landscape.

Built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power platform, Unit4’s PSA Practice Management is a full end-to-end solution built for professional services to standardise work, from sales, automation to onboarding your customer, project management, expenses, invoicing, financial transactions, and human competence management.

Singh explains, “We help practices manage their end-to-end process from the point an

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SOFTWARE Industry

20

We operate in 20 countries

Tailor-made

For Accountancies, Consultancies, IT services and Engineering practices

GLOBAL PARTNER NETWORK

opportunity presents itself until the point that they invoice the end customer. We cover everything from managing an opportunity, creating projects, staffing people, measuring utilisation, booking time, managing expenses, approvals, and so forth, all the way until invoicing the end customer.

“All of that in a single solution that is built on Microsoft technology which has its own advantage of making sure that we don't have any legacy technology. Being ERP independent also has the added benefit of delivering faster time to value. That is, essentially, what we offer. But, in actuality, we’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your

business pivot. We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before.”

Team of Teams “The magic is in the combination of a clear goal, energised and empowered people, and creating a safe space where it's okay to make mistakes. I think that’s what fuels a productive and effective organisation. And from there, you amplify and scale,” says Singh.

“When it comes to decision-making, a traditional team gums itself up, creating a choke point. And at the pace at which the world moves today, what you need is a ‘team of teams’, a segregated autonomous unit. You give these teams the autonomy to make decisions and execute on visions.

If you do that right, then the only factor you need to bind these teams together is a common goal.”

Unit4 PSA enables practices to realise the power of this construct. With its Smart Cloud Collaboration, Unit4 PSA delivers a single solution leveraging Microsoft Power Platform with seamless integration to O365, Power BI and Azure toolsets – making information and intelligence available to all fringes of a practice and empowering individuals to make the right decisions at the right time.

As Singh says, “There needs to be a common-sense of consciousness. Everyone needs to understand what the aim is so that day-to-day, they can make the right decisions and ultimately get you to your goal. This engrains a sense of agility, and an ability to pivot and react to changing conditions dynamically, and delivering a resilience that a traditional way of working does not give you.”

ITK: In The Know Solutions Group With customer in over 20 countries, Unit4 PSA's success is supported with a robust businesschief.eu

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ecosystem of strategic global partners. ITK stands as a shining example of the close collaborations that make up Unit4’s rich global partner ecosystem.

“Our partners are very important to us, and ITK is a great example of a very successful partnership that we highly value.

They are very true to their name and bring a bounty of industry practice that make them not just a technology partner but a trusted advisor. That’s really where their experience shines.

“We have a very close collaboration with our partners, ITK being one of our key ones, and we are always on the same page in terms of how we are addressing the market, what can we do for them, and how we can make them more successful.

“So that relationship really works very, very closely. The interesting thing is that all our partners are not just software partners; they’re

“ We’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your business pivot.

We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

users. ITK is an IT services firm, and they use PSA to manage their own practice. So they’re not only advocates for us but can showcase the value that PSA brings. They can speak to some of the challenges that they faced and how we helped them to manoeuvre them.”

When it comes to selecting partners and ensuring mutually beneficial relationships, Singh prefers quality over quantity. “Otherwise, you spread yourself out too thin, and you’re not able to provide them with the right level of focus and attention that they need, and it really doesn’t help you to mutually grow. So our businesschief.eu

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philosophy is to focus on the right partners.

“This means that we're going to have fewer partners, but the partners that we are going to have will be equally invested in our vision as we are. This allows us to throw all of our weight behind those select partners and make sure they are successful, and together, we’ll drive market penetration and make them the face of the region.

“You have 120% of our support, and we will make you successful. In return, all we ask is that you be as equally invested as we are in delivering on the vision we have for the business and the product.” It’s a nice, intimate circle of partners, backed by the right people, empowered for success. Advantage: Transforming the Way You Work Advantage stands as another example of a carefully selected partner. Singh shares his

“ For me, the strongest relationships are built when people want to collaborate with you rather than need to collaborate with you.

Being open, honest, and genuine have always been key pillars for me to achieve this” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

Transform the way you work with Advantage and Unit4 Transform your business with a Professional Services Automation solution with Advantage, the UK partner of choice for Unit4 PSA implementations. For more info, call us on 020 3944 8381

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thoughts on why they were selected and the value they bring. “As an established player in the world of Dynamics for over 20 years, Advantage has helped to provide Small and Midsize Businesses (SMBs) with the resources and intelligence required to make informed, timely and strategic decisions to help their business prosper. As one of the only Microsoft Gold Partners providing CRM, ERP, and IT Managed Services all under one roof, they really can help to transform your business.”

“Adding Unit4 into the mix only strengthens their offering. As project managers themselves, they understand the complexities and issues that your team may face on a day-to-day basis

and can offer a deeper understanding of the ways to solve your pain points.”

“Our partners are our lifeline, and Advantage is a perfect example of how our product can enhance their offering. Advantage brings a wealth of industry knowledge and technical expertise across a variety of technologies and overlaying Unit4 PSA on top of all that brings it all together in a seamless way. They really are true to their name and are giving businesses across the UK the 'Advantage Edge'.

“We work very closely with all our partners and felt Advantage were ideally placed to help us strengthen our proposition in the UK market, and we really are on the same page in businesschief.eu

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addressing the market, what we can do for our potential customers and how we can give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

“So that relationship really works very well and very closely together. The key thing with Advantage, and indeed all of our partners, is that they are users of the product, they aren't just talking the talk, they are walking the walk, which means any issue you are likely to face has already been seen, addressed and a solution found."

Justin Bown, the Sales Director at Advantage concurs with this view. "It really is a gamechanger for us internally as it has significantly helped to reduce costs and time with our projects. And from our customers perspective, it really helps to bring all of those disparate systems together under one roof."

Hunger. Persistence. Authenticity.

Unit4 PSA has created a team that is passionate and aligned towards a common goal – enabling next-generation practices to thrive in the new business reality. But it’s not done yet. Unit4 holds fast to the belief that improvements are never done, and business should never remain static and continues to move at the speed in which today’s challenging business environment requires.

The other key component of a successful “team of teams” is ensuring they consist of the right people with an alignment on personal goals and expectations.

In order to clearly communicate goals, Singh says his construct consists of three areas, “First, I give them a crystal clear picture of what we want the end state of the business to be. How big do we want to grow? What regions do we want to capture? What customers do we want to target? And how are we going to get them?”

All components of a standard business plan, Singh points out, but the difference is in the clarity and execution.

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“ I’ll show up a hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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With an unrelenting focus on the end goal, and teams of teams all pointing towards the bullseye, Singh then sets a schedule, prioritises, and measures the efficacy of solutions. Those that are considered to be successful are amplified. Those that aren’t are scrapped before moving on to the next idea.

It’s a systematic, quantified process that allows them to arrive at the best possible solution— A perhaps simple yet powerful concept that optimises outcomes.

“I want them to be hungry and to do things because they want to do them, not because I told them to. So, let’s mutually agree on what’s

important for you and for the company, and let’s consider that the floor because there is no ceiling.

“The second thing I ask for is persistence.

Nobody comes to work to fail. Nobody will drive to their office and say, you know what, today I'm going to do a poor job and aim to fail at what I do. However, things will rarely work out the way you want them to. There will always be problems, either you don't have the right people, or you don't have the right budget, or you have a global pandemic. There are a gazillion things that could happen. You have to keep persisting and not let the challenges bog you down.”

“If you're using half your concentration to look normal, then you're only half paying attention to whatever else you're doing.” — Erik Lehnsherr Cringing at the analogy, Singh references a quote from Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto, from the X-Men comics.

Despite its perceived “cringyness”, however, it’s perfectly apropos to his thoughts on the importance of authenticity.

“The third thing I ask from an individual is for them to be genuine. Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits.

I’ll show up a hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me,” Singh says.

“The world is not static. It’s dynamic, and as things change, you must be able to pivot. To avoid becoming extinct, your business must evolve at pace with the changes. You must redesign your business models to meet the challenges of the day, that’s what teams of teams is for, and that’s what Unit4 PSA is for.”

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DATA-DRIVEN MANAGEMENT TO CURB COVID-19 WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

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PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

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How Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority used the power of data driven healthcare organisation management to fight the pandemic in Italy

H

ouston, we have a problem,” is the memorable famous quote from the Apollo 13 space flight which resonated with Marco Foracchia CIO of Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Italy.

The former biomedical engineer is a man who likes a plan, but 13 years after joining the public healthcare authority he had to become flexible to the challenges posed by the pandemic which ripped through the Emilia-Romagna region. But like the astronauts, who triumphed over adversity, Foracchia led his ICT team with a vision and the help of a data-driven approach.

Foracchia compared the IT challenge faced by Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority, to the ‘square peg in a round hole’ scene from the Apollo 13 movie. Like the astronauts, his team focused on the problem in hand to reach their life or death goal. Foracchia stretched the intended use of most software systems to adapt to the pandemic scenario in order to properly manage the new types of data, gather and distribute all the information necessary for the top management to fight COVID19. A winning choice was the adoption of population analytics to monitor the spread of COVID-19 among the one million population and treat people at home via telemedicine.

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Marco Foracchia, Chief Information Officer

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

Solidarity: embracing change at scale in insurance

“Our ICT team focused on solving the issue at any cost, even though the tools we have are not really built for this kind of unexpected event - just like the astronauts on Apollo 13 who had to adapt what they had to survive and safely return to Earth,” said Foracchia.

“We had to be flexible, we had to be creative - which can be hard for us engineers who like a plan - and look for the best possible solution. I believe this is an attitude that is now embedded in our ICT team and will help with any future emergencies. I'm very proud of how my team reacted to the pandemic,” said Foracchia who pointed out the vaccine roll out was now easing the pressures.

The health authority is now focusing more than ever on using telemedicine and virtual consultations to treat people at home, which is vital in a region which stretches from the Apennine Mountains to the Po Valley and is largely made up of an elderly population.

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Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority IRCCS, was born from the merger between the current Ausl and the Arcispedale Santa Maria Nuova hospital in the year 2017. The reorganisation now provides a single hospital unit, called the Santa Maria Nuova Provincial Hospital, divided into six establishments which includes an oncology research institute and hundreds of public health services: • Archispedale S. Maria Nuova of Reggio Emilia • S. Anna Hospital of Castelnovo ne 'Monti • San Sebastiano Hospital in Correggio • Guastalla Civil Hospital • Ercole Franchini Hospital in Montecchio • Cesare Magati Hospital in Scandiano

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

“ Population analytics really showed its power during the pandemic.

It was impressive to have the capability of analysing data as soon as it was produced and watching the time and geographic distribution of new cases”

MARCO FORACCHIA TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: ITALY Marco Foracchia is the Chief Information Officer at the Local Health Authority of Reggio Emilia (network of six public hospitals, with approximately 1,600 beds and public health services).

Foracchia has been visiting scholar at the Resource Facility for Population Kinetics at the University of Washington (Seattle, USA) within the R01 GM-60021 NIH funded project. He has worked in R&D for private companies.

He earned a Master’s Degree in Electrical and Biomedical Engineering from Università degli Studi di Padova (Padua, Italy) and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering and Medical Image Analysis from the Politecnico di Milano (Milan, Italy).

MARCO FORACCHIA

Data-driven analytics and management After many years working around the world as a biomedical engineer, Foracchia is relishing the fact he has returned home to focus on a healthcare system which is driven by data analytics. “Suddenly my job to take care of my grandparents and my community is now the focus of my everyday job, which is great,” he said.

“As I have an international perspective I am able to bring new ideas and connections from the outside to a local level, so I always try to keep my eyes open. I'm really interested in technologies that analyse data and population analytics which really showed its power during the pandemic. It was impressive to have the capability of analysing data as soon as it was produced and watching the time and geographic distribution of new cases.”

The health authority has always been data driven but this was accelerated during the pandemic due to the speed at which it

EXECUTIVE BIO

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

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used technology for getting in touch with patients and sent more than a million SMS messages during the pandemic.

“This proved to be extremely effective in terms of keeping in touch, especially as we had a very simple link that anybody on a smartphone could open up and then interact with us on the website or through an app.

“It is all about making existing technology configurable and flexible and if this technology is used properly and widely it gives me hope for the evolution of e-health.” spread. “They had to rely on the numbers that I gave them to make decisions on the management of hospital beds. It was now like landing a plane in fog: you have to rely and trust your data,” said Foracchia.

“This change brought up the importance of technologies. Suddenly the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) for counting and tracking the evolution of COVID-19 infections became the most useful tool and the health authority was demanding more from their ICT managers.”

“This was not about trend technology like Artificial Intelligence, it was about using simple technology to analyse big numbers and using it seriously. We also

“ We also used technology for getting in touch with patients and sent more than a million SMS messages during the pandemic” MARCO FORACCHIA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

Roots of telemedicine Telemedicine started within the health authority 15 years ago to ensure patients have access to information. “If a patient is in the mountains and has diabetes we don’t want them to come down to the hospital every month - this is an example of the basic roots of our telemedicine approach as we want to keep them comfortable and away from the central hospital. This was especially true during the pandemic,” commented Foracchia.

“Today, we have moved towards a more sophisticated form of telemedicine, which has been accelerated due to the pandemic, but the philosophy is still there,” said Foracchia, who pointed out once COVID-19 hit all information about the pandemic was centralised at Santa Maria Nuova Provincial Hospital.

“Telemedicine allowed us to follow the progress of COVID-19 patients at home rather than admit them to hospital. Their condition would have been stable and we were able to monitor them and contact them frequently. But not only the patients, their families, their contacts, every person that had been in contact was put in quarantine and we had to keep in touch with them. businesschief.eu

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“We have the technology to have virtual consultations with patients at home and patients with implanted cardiac devices can share information with our cardiologists at the hospital. We also have patients who require ECG information that are visited at home by nurses or general practitioners.

“The fact that a person can have a CT scan up in the mountains where we have few radiologists and the CT scan is read by a radiologist who is a 100km away is a major breakthrough because it means that the person gets the same quality healthcare as everyone else without having to travel to the hospital.”

Benefit of the Electronic Health Record (EHR) The EHR is the set of digital data and documents of a health and social health generated by present and past clinical events, also referring to services provided outside the National Health Service, which a patient can access through a PC or mobile device, with SPID, FedERa or smartcard credentials.

This includes: • Book specialist visits and exams online • Modify or cancel appointments booked online • Pay health tickets online and view payment receipts • Change or revoke the family doctor • Self-certify age and income exemptions “The EHR makes all information available directly to the patient who can access their complete record of diagnostic procedures at any place in the region,” said Foracchia.

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6

Hospitals

2017

Year founded

8,000 Number of employess

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

“ It’s all about making existing technology configurable and flexible and if this technology is used properly it gives me hope for the evolution of health” MARCO FORACCHIA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

DID YOU KNOW...

FALLOUT OF THE PANDEMIC The COVID-19 pandemic claimed a total of 123,282 lives in Italy (as of May 11, 2021) with the peak of 993 deaths recorded on the single day of December 3, 2020.

The region with the highest number of deaths was Lombardy, which is also the region that registered the highest number of coronavirus cases and was the epicenter of the outbreak in the country. This lies only 220km from Emilia-Romagna Region.

Italy's death toll was one of the worst in the world. However, the country has started to see light at the end of the tunnel with the vaccination program which Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority is now rolling out to protect its one million population.

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PARTNERS THAT SHARE INFORMATION

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DID YOU KNOW...

Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority has a strict mandate for all partners within their ecosystem, to share information.

“When we acquire any new ICT systems, they have to fully integrate within the pre-existing ecosystem,” said Marco Foracchia, CIO of Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority.

“This approach guarantees that any new extension in terms of technologies within our institution is shared. This principle guides every procurement aspect. Every time we buy a new device or new system, we have that in mind. There's no way around it - even if it’s an excellent piece of technology - if it's not possible to integrate it, then we're not interested.”

Philips rose to the challenge of opening up and helping Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority manage residual ICT - such as ultrasounds, photographic images and video streams - which needed to be stored.

“We started the partnership with Philips about eight years ago and it was great to find a company open to the challenge of sharing information.

It was visionary from their point of view. They had to go beyond their current technologies but they liked the idea of being open, ingesting several types of information data that no-one wants to manage and sharing it around the Province or to other systems.”

“As EHR was started 15 years ago it was very ahead of its time, now it's very common to have these personal health records. But for us having this mature type of technology proved very effective during the pandemic as we could communicate electronically with the patient. The availability of this channel of communication between a healthcare institution and a patient to share their personal health record was extremely effective.

“In the last 15 years we have worked to show clinicians that sharing information through technology was possible and it could help their everyday practice. And

REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

“ This was not about Artificial Intelligence, it was about using simple technology to analyse big numbers and using it seriously” MARCO FORACCHIA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

now they take for granted that a CT scan is available anywhere in the Province and a colleague on the end of the phone can take a look if they need a second opinion. They grew with the idea of sharing information. They grew with the idea that the patient could actually see the information they were putting in the system.”

Focus on value of technology As Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority is a public body this means they have a set income based on the size of population covered. “Our advantage is we do not adopt technology for the sake of it, we adopt businesschief.eu

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“The fact that a person can have a CT scan up in the mountains where we have few radiologists and the CT scan is read by a radiologist who is 100km away is a major breakthrough” MARCO FORACCHIA

CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, REGGIO EMILIA LOCAL HEALTH AUTHORITY

technology for the value behind it - so this must keep costs stable and improve the service. This approach creates a competitive advantage with respect to other healthcare institutions within the same region or at the national level.

“ICT in the company has evolved to focus on covering a broader number of patients.

Italy is a very old country, therefore our main issues tend to revolve around the elderly and chronic diseases created with age and we also have an oncology institute which attracts patients from all over the region,” he said.

The IRCCS in Advanced Technologies and Models of Care in Oncology of Reggio Emilia is an oncology research centre incorporated into the Reggio Emilia Local Health Authority, which combines a very high level of quality of care with an orientation to translational research activity, clinical and health care in the oncology field.

As the birthplace of the Italian flag, EmiliaRomagna region looks set to emerge from one of the worst health crises in a century with the rollout of their vaccine program and continued focus on data analytics to drive future decisions for the health authority.

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BSI CYBERSECURITY

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ENABLING CYBER-RESILIENCE IN THE ERA OF EMERGING TECHNOLOGY WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

BSI CYBERSECURITY

Organisations need to embrace digital transformation to remain ahead. BSI helps clients with digital innovation, governance measures and cyber resilience

W

“ Leadership is an evolution, and while managers are appointed, this doesn’t naturally mean that they are recognised as leaders” MARK BROWN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE, BSI

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ith the rise of the internet, one thing that became evident was the simultaneous exposure to an increase in risk. Slowly but surely, organisations looked at enterprise solution providers to protect their networks from hacking, cyber-attacks and data breaches.

Now, years later, and with no sign of technology advancements halting, is cybersecurity enough to keep organisations protected and resilient?

Mark Brown, Global Managing Director Cybersecurity and Information Resilience, Consulting Services at BSI, talks about cybersecurity in a post COVID world. Mark addresses the imminence of Industry 4.0 and the transition to cyber-resilience as a growing frontier to technology enabling business transformation, rather than inhibiting it being solely focused on negative risk and compliance.

A managing director with almost 30 years’ industry experience, Mark has held a number of high-profile leadership positions in cyber-security. Notable places of work include organisations such as Ernst & Young, SABMiller and SunGard. Leading up to his current position in BSI’s Cybersecurity and Information Resilience team, Mark also worked with Wipro as Senior Partner and Global Practice Head, leading the Industry 4.0, Operational Technology (OT) and Internet of Things (IoT) Security practice.

Having served in the Armed Forces up until 2005, Mark brings a level of discipline,

BSI CYBERSECURITY

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BSI - Enabling cyber-resilience in the era of emerging technology

commitment and fortitude to his role, and this reflects in his leadership style. Mark is a strong mentor and believes in trusted empowerment, adding “Leadership is an evolution, and while managers are appointed, this doesn’t naturally mean that they are recognised as leaders.” He is a strong advocate of the power of coaching.

When asked about some of his major influences, Mark says “Family is always a big influence in how you respond in business and you always look up to the success of your direct family. My father worked for the same company his entire life, so I have a blend of influences from my own professional and personal life that leads me to trust the empowerment and openness of management.” To date, Mark believes in having the metaphorical ‘open door’ policy for his people as he finds that being approachable is crucial to productivity, inspiration and retention within the team.

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“ Family is always a big influence in how you respond in business and you always look up to the success of your direct family.

My father worked for the same company his entire life, so I have a blend of influences from my own professional and personal life that leads me to trust the empowerment and openness of management” MARK BROWN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE, BSI

BSI (British Standards Institution) is at the cornerstone of shaping, sharing and embedding best practice for organisations.

The Cybersecurity and Information Resilience division is specifically tasked with

BSI CYBERSECURITY

MARK BROWN TITLE: GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE INDUSTRY: INTERNATIONAL TRADE & DEVELOPMENT LOCATION: ENGLAND Mark is responsible for driving the global growth of BSI’s Cybersecurity and Information Resilience business, with a key focus on strategy and how BSI can help clients manage their cybersecurity and data governance challenges.

Mark has more than 30 years of expertise in cybersecurity, data privacy and business resilience consultancy.

He has previously held leadership roles at Wipro Ltd., and Ernst & Young (EY), amongst others. He brings a wealth of knowledge and proficiency on the Internet of Things (IoT) and the expanding cybersecurity marketplace having worked for Fortune 10 and Fortune 500 firms as Global CISO/ CIO and CTO.

EXECUTIVE BIO

providing cyber risk advisory and security testing services to clients, looking at areas like data privacy, compliance and governance, as well as niche capabilities such as e-discovery, and e-forensics. In addition to these core services, a large number of new and enhanced services directed at overcoming the threat involved with emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, 5G, Blockchain, Industrial security are also offered by BSI, including but not limited to OT and IoT security, penetration testing technology arenas such as infrastructure, network ,application, attack simulation and red teaming exercises.

With the world moving towards a virtually digital space as a direct consequence of COVID-19, more and more organisations are now looking at transitioning to cloud-based systems. This opens up a significant number of vulnerabilities pertaining to cyber security and governance. Even with this acceleration, the burning question remains – why do organisations need cyber resilience?

To explain this in the simplest way possible, Mark draws a direct comparison between traditional IT structures and cloudbased systems. He says “Using traditional routes to manage your own IT would mean you were in control of your own destiny and the advantage of on-premises technology meant it was within your perimeter and within your control. With cloud-based systems, you are no longer in control, and you have to have a trade-off between the benefits of cloud with elasticity and the speed to deployment, the avoidance of capital costs on an ongoing basis, and the move to an evergreen IT, which is an opex cost. However, that trade off comes with the reality that you lose control and somebody else is now looking at managing that environment on your behalf.”

BSI CYBERSECURITY

“ Using traditional routes to manage your own IT would mean you were in control of your own destiny and the advantage of on-premises technology meant it was within your perimeter and within your control. With cloudbased systems, you are no longer in control, and you have to have a trade-off between the benefits of cloud with elasticity and the speed to deployment, the avoidance of capital costs on an ongoing basis, and the move to an evergreen IT, which is an opex cost. However, that trade off comes with the reality that you lose control and somebody else is now looking at managing that environment on your behalf” MARK BROWN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE, BSI

According to Mark, BSI is not just an end-of-the-line security service provider, adding “BSI is the business improvement and standards company – whilst standards are a big part of what we do, we also help to create excellence and business improvement within organisations. This means that we have to understand the journey our clients are going on, and we have to be able to be there to assist them on that journey.” Embracing that journey for clients would mean being ahead of these technologies, and one way to ensure that BSI continues to provide ancillary services is through an ecosystem of strategic partnerships. One such partner, McAfee

provides BSI with the expertise to offer a full portfolio of services to their clients.

However, this partnership goes beyond business solutions. Mark adds that there is a level of maturity and brand recognition that sharing an ecosystem with McAfee offers.

Speaking of their shared synergies, Mark says that BSI and McAfee have employed a joint approach towards this partnership, creating a mutual benefit for both parties. Whether it's introducing accounts to each other or sharing the wealth of knowledge that both organisations have, a joint partnership with McAfee has created many business and thought leadership opportunities for BSI. Having a cloud security strategy is crucial for organisations as it gives them a better understanding of the breadth of cloud

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services and in turn helps them navigate risks and enhance governance, especially those that rushed to Cloud without fully understanding its scope. Mark adds, “Although the cloud is more advanced today, data breaches do still occur. This is often due to a lack of understanding of Cloud architecture and awareness of responsibility

“ BSI is the business improvement and standards company – whilst standards are a big part of what we do, we also help to create excellence and business improvement within organisations. This means that we have to understand the journey our clients are going on, and we have to be able to be there to assist them on that journey” MARK BROWN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE, BSI

for securing data.” For organisations to adopt an effective cloud security strategy they need to consider how they will integrate often disparate security solutions. This is necessary to maintain control over a dynamic infrastructure and technology landscape, but more importantly, it needs to strike a balance between security protection and compliance. Central to achieving this balance are two key actions.

Firstly, organisations should ensure that they deploy automated discovery of new virtual machines extending the organisational cloud landscape. This first step is necessary to enable the secondary action, i.e. the deployment of consistent security policies across the hybrid cloud environment.

However, as more and more organisations move towards a cyber-physical model and increase their dependence on IoT, the risk continues to grow.

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1901 Company founded

£539.3m Revenue (2020 results)

5,237 Number of employees

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ADOPTING A CLOUD-BASED SYSTEM

DID YOU KNOW...

• 17% decrease in Cloud adoption in sectors such as media, due to perceived lack of visibility and control of cloud-based systems

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• 80% of decision makers blame the fear of vendor lock-in for their Cloud aversion • 75% of IT managers lack confidence in ongoing data protection and privacy in the Cloud Source: bsigroup Insights Cloud Adoption

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So how long can organisations ignore these cybersecurity risks? Understandably, it is impossible to protect something if you’re not fully aware of what needs to be protected. For this reason, BSI provides clients and partners with the right tools to understand their cloud infrastructure and works in collaboration with them to help mitigate the risks. In recent years, many organisations have increased their cyber security measures to protect their enterprise technology, however that only covers one side of the resilience equation. Is on the rise, and companies now need to also look aggressively at securing their operational technology (OT) – the manufacturing systems and software that control business processes, as well as the production of goods and services. Mark adds “The lifeblood

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Cybersecurity challenges in the 4th Industrial Revolution

of business, OT arguably faces security challenges even more grave than classic enterprise IT. You can't take all the best practices from enterprise IT and simply apply them to that industrial world; they simply won't work.” The advent of 5G wireless and other trends is starting to bring far more digital intelligence into business production processes. As the Internet of Things (IoT) meets legacy OT, an entirely new set of vulnerable targets emerge. Although many organisations are reviewing their practices in light of their pandemic experiences to recommit to digital transformation, these vulnerabilities could have a much greater impact. Mark further adds that when it comes to industrial IT, factors like confidentiality, integrity and availability flip on its head. The two key priorities in

“ Although the cloud is more advanced today, data breaches do still occur. This is often due to a lack of understanding of Cloud architecture and awareness of responsibility for securing data” MARK BROWN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE, BSI

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INDUSTRY 4.0 • By 2024, the world will no longer be talking about OT because it will all be the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)

DID YOU KNOW...

• By 2025 there are expected to be 75 billion IoT devices connected to the Internet, resulting in even greater risks and challenges facing CISOs

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• Over the past three years, more than 60% of organisations have added industrial security responsibility to the CISOs’ already over-flowing portfolio • 80% of organisations say they are now starting to address OT and IoT cybersecurity.

Source: bsigroup Insigvhts Industry 4.0

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these machine-led environments is safety and availability, therefore much emphasis needs to be laid on ensuring that board level discussions consider these differences between enterprise and industrial IT, and safeguard them with the right security tools. From a strategic perspective, organisations should follow a phased approach – first, identifying the assets of their environment and detecting the risks they pose. Next, determining the response to failure and putting a framework in place for governance and recovery. The final step would be to actually implement that framework in a sustainable, rather than project-focused manner. Mark uses the example of when discussing the impact that IoT will have on the environment. He says that globally, over 50% of people buying new cars consider security as a key purchase decision, putting evidence out there which indicates that placing security into the process provides a continual assurance in the decision-making process.

“ If you wait to simply do testing as a final stage, you may reduce your costs up front but you'll actually increase your costs overall for the project, because the retrofit of security into a project which hasn't had security built in by design can often be as much as 30 to 40% of the total project cost” MARK BROWN

GLOBAL MANAGING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFORMATION RESILIENCE, BSI

BSI CYBERSECURITY

Digital trust | The route to a safe, secure and cyber resilient organisation

Historically, an often underestimated arm of cyber resilience is testing. Whether it’s an automated vulnerability assessment or a simulated penetration testing, businesses need to employ offensive testing techniques to verify the full impact of

identified vulnerabilities. However, this is not a one-time process. Organisations need to adopt a continued testing model as opposed to point-in-time testing, which doesn’t present a full picture of potential threats. This overall cyber resilience method should ideally run from initial concept to minimal viable product (or MVP) and through internal staging versions before being tested again in the live environment. Best practice aside, this model of testing also has proven benefits.

Mark concludes by saying “If you wait to simply do testing as a final stage, you may reduce your costs up front but you'll actually increase your costs overall for the project, because the retrofit of security into a project which hasn't had security built in by design can often be as much as 30 to 40% of the total project cost.”

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FRANCE GETS UPTIME-CERTIFIED TIER IV COLO DATA CENTRE WRITTEN BY: MELISSA KHAN PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN 432

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HPE, Future Facilities and New Generation partner to provide Thésée’s innovative colocation DCMS system

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hésée DataCenter, a 100% French colocation hosting services provider –from a few bays to a complete building – has embarked on a colocation project like no other with the launch of their Uptime-certified Tier IV data centre. Located in Aubergenville, 25 minutes from Paris, Thésée is independent and neutral towards telecom operators and cloud providers, giving French-owned organisations the sovereignty they seek from a data centre.

Eventually comprising six data centre buildings, each housing two identical data halls of 534 square metres, the facility is aimed at mixed-density from legacy to HPC server hosting, but in an energy-efficient manner. Each data centre hall benefits from its own 6Sigma Digital Twin from Future Facilities to ensure that capacity is managed efficiently and that it is always working at optimal efficiency from a power and cooling standpoint. Thésée has worked together with Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Future Facilities and New Generation to offer a world-first experience to its end customers with complete transparency on what is occurring in the customer’s data centre space. This is groundbreaking in terms of colocation customer experience. The secret to this customer experience comes from an end-to-end integrated Data Centre Management System (DCMS) designed businesschief.eu

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WHY DID THÉSÉE IMPLEMENT A DIGITAL TWIN?

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• Offer clients a rich, innovative customer experience – an essential tool in the communication between the data centre and its customers • Allow clients access to a 3D vision of their IT equipment and operating conditions – a home away from home data centre experience • Provide complete transparency to customers in real-time on performance and service level indicators • Allow customers to develop precise knowledge of the evolutionary capacity of their infrastructures and plan future installations risk-free • Help Thésée better optimise the filling of the data centre and use full capacity - essential to the financial success of the data centre

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by HPE, integrating solutions from Future Facilities and New Generation with all of the information accessed via a single web portal. Thésée will offer the end customer the opportunity to manage their own data centre space via a web portal with access to all alarms and performance metrics, as well as the ability to interact with a virtual replica of their 3D space and have access to CFD simulation to assess IT deployment options.

The 6Sigma Digital Twin is the only CFD tool

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CHRISTOPHE BOUNIOL TITLE: PRESIDENT Christophe Bouniol, president of the company, has a great management experience associated with a commercial experience, based on more than 20 years in sales and leadership in Europe, as well as his expertise in team management, rigor and commitment to quality services for customers acquired in the management of subsidiaries of U.S. companies, allow to set a course for the young company that is Thésée DataCenter.

DAVE KING

that allows data centres to optimise the design, improvement and operational planning of data centres. The 6SigmaDCX product suite, the industry's leading data centre CFD tool, is built for both data centre design and operations.

Its 3D representation of the physical data centre - combined with a cutting-edge CFD (computational fluid dynamics) solver - lets data centre providers safely simulate the impact of change on a data centre’s resilience, physical capacity and cooling efficiency.

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: PRODUCT MANAGER Dave King has over a decade of experience in the data centre industry. Most of that time has been spent either consulting on design and troubleshooting projects around the world or training people in the application of engineering simulation for the design and operational planning of data centres. His accumulated global experience has resulted in the publication of numerous papers and being asked to share this knowledge at many leading international conferences. Now a Product Manager at Future Facilities, Dave is using that experience to drive the development of the industry leading data centre simulation product suite, 6SigmaDCX and the 6Sigma Digital Twin.

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6Sigma Digital Twin Simulating the Impact of Data Center Change Without Risk Follow us on:

Learn more

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“ This integration facilitates the dayto-day management of the data centre operations on the customer-front and allows users to have an open and transparent dialogue with their providers for the first time ever” GILLES CIEZA

CEO AND FOUNDER NEW GENERATION

The 6Sigma Digital Twin has been used throughout the data centre design phase to validate Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s design, understand rack density limits, and simulate failure scenarios. A digital twin is essentially a 3D representation of the entire data centre and includes all its characteristics – from physical dimensions to energy consumption, giving customers a real-time, cost-effective view. Speaking further about the 6Sigma Digital Twin and its capabilities, Dave King,

Product Manager of the 6SigmaDCX product suite at Future Facilities, says, “The 6Sigma Digital Twin will be used extensively by both Thésée and its customers, in the day-today operations of the data centre, allowing them to see a 3D virtual replica of their realtime data centre space. Customers will use insight from dashboards, reporting, and CFD simulation to make informed decisions on IT upgrades and capacity planning.”

In addition to offering digital access, the digital twin also behaves as a predictive tool with the use of CFD simulation inputs, helping customers gather insights on the data centre’s thermal environment and taking necessary measures to increase efficiency. King, who has been working with Future Facilities for the last 14 years, understands the need for this technology, businesschief.eu

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Thésée Datacenter Colocation 6Sigma Digital Twin

“ Thésée is a key partner for us in France to develop our service strategy, and we will go to market together in order to commercialise the software for our own customers” PASCAL LECOQ

WORLDWIDE DIRECTOR OF DATA CENTRE TECHNOLOGY HPE

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adding that simulation has helped organisations make better decisions and adapting to a multi-tenant environment has brought much-needed flexibility to the customers who use these data centres.

Future Facilities has been working closely with their French reseller Wattdesign to build the digital twin model that grants almost full autonomy to the end-users of the Thésée data centre. Originally designed by HPE, Future Facilities were able to connect with Thésée on the implementation of the digital twin as a result of this collaboration.

Future Facilities worked closely with partners

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PASCAL LECOQ TITLE: DIRECTOR Director at HPE Pointnext, in charge of Worldwide Datacenter Technology Services Practice, "I focus on Advisory, Professional and Operations Consulting Services that include Data Center transformation and consolidation programs, featuring strategic advisory consulting from Edge to Cloud, concept and detailed design, implementation and commissioning services, Data Center assessments and capacity planning, operations consulting, as well as solution offerings as Modular Data Centers from Micro DC’s to POD’s (Data Centers in containers), Datacenter Management Services, Datacenter as a Service."

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like Wattdesign, HPE and New Generation to ensure that Thésée’s colocation centre was equipped with the latest product suite, which meant building some new integration models and adapting the software to cater for a multi-tenant environment. Thésée co-founder Christophe Bouniol, who has years of experience working in the IT space, understands the need for customer sovereignty and transparency, and so offering a French-owned data centre to its end users and implementing Future Facilities’ 6Sigma Digital Twin didn’t require a second thought. Bouniol says that high

MEET THE TEAM

TITLE: CEO "NewGen is a high tech company specializing in deep tech and integration of complex solution s for B to B clients. We develop innovative solutions for DC Operators aiming at creating value through the adoption of our DC Management System technologies (DCMS) NUVEA PaaS. Our platform provides easy overall integrated management of DC operations, dramatic cost reduction as well as overall optimization of DC management. NUVEA PaaS enables DC operators to quickly build up a service stack and generate additional revenues through its market place."

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USE OF CFD SIMULATION IN DESIGN • Finetune the data centre design and find out the design limits • Simulate failing AHUs in high-density environments: N+2, N+1 and N scenarios • Optimise whitespace organisation • Ensure that cooling could cope with space configurations at Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 of implementation using 6-12 AHUs • Explore the thermal dynamics of the computer room when low- and highdensity racks are placed in close proximity

DID YOU KNOW...

USE OF CFD SIMULATION IN OPERATION

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• Check the risk of any data centre changes and maximise performance • Make informed ‘scientific’ recommendations to clients on rack and equipment placement • Allow customers to test future scenarios and take full advantage of the data centre capabilities with confidence • Simulate every data centre change, both in pre-sales and capacity planning

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“ At Thésée, we are proud to work with our business partners such as HPE –who helped us design our data centre, New Generation who helped us build our own portal, as well as Future Facilities and Wattdesign in France who helped realise our solution for a best in class colocation data centre” CHRISTOPHE BOUNIOL PRESIDENT THÉSÉE DATACENTER

availability and increased energy efficiency are Thésée’s competitive advantage and continues to test and implement solutions that will continue to provide these benefits to his data centre facility. Speaking about the collective collaboration that helped bring the data centre to life, Bouniol adds, “At Thésée, we are proud to work with our business partners such as HPE – who helped us design our data centre, New Generation who helped us build our own portal, as well as Future Facilities and Wattdesign in France who helped realise our solution for a best in class colocation data centre.”

Thésée has worked closely with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to build a new generation data centre (NGDC), bringing together the best in class technologies and solutions. The collaboration between HPE and Thésée is two-fold – the first being on a design and concept level, allowing HPE to choose contractors, monitor quality, implement changes and integration of the DCMS (along with partner New Generation).

The second phase of collaboration focuses on the sales and business development of the data centre, allowing HPE to migrate their client roster to Thésée’s data centre. Pascal Lecoq, HPE’s Worldwide Director of Data Centre Technology Services, adds, “Thésée is a key partner for us in France to develop our service strategy, and we will go to market together in order to commercialise the software for our own customers.” businesschief.eu

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At the heart of this collaboration is New Generation, offering an enhanced customer functionality through end-to-end integration of all the systems – from DCIM and BMS to operations optimisation components – with the help of their NUVEA PaaS web service portal. New Generation has had a long-standing partnership with HPE, working together to create an integrated management solution for the data centre and its customers. Gilles Cieza, CEO and founder of New Generation, adds that this integration “facilitates the day-to-day management of the data centre operations on the customer444

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front and allows users to have an open and transparent dialogue with their colocation providers for the first time ever”. With the NUVEA PaaS model, Thésée’s end users will be able to log in to a single web interface to see all data centre and operating condition metrics, as well as order equipment and decide on planned upgrades. Customers will be able to see their data centre space with full equipment specifications as a 3D view, powered by the 6Sigma Digital Twin. Thésée will offer its customers the ability to simulate future capacity planning to ensure their space usage is maximised without risk.

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6Sigma Digital Twin by Future Facilities

“The 6Sigma Digital Twin will be used extensively by both Thésée and its customers in the day-to-day operations of the data centre, allowing them to see a 3D virtual replica of their real-time data centre space” DAVE KING

PRODUCT MANAGER, FUTURE FACILITIES

Future Facilities’ 6Sigma Digital Twin and the innovative systems architecture combine to offer Thésée customers a truly unique experience. The use of Future Facilities’ CFD simulation via the 6Sigma Digital Twin allows both Thésée and its customers the ongoing ability to predict outcomes and make operational decisions in a cost-effective and risk-free manner whilst maximising energy and capacity efficiency. The insight offered

by Future Facilities’ 6SigmaDCX product suite is crucial to the continued success of the Thésée DataCenter project. Speaking about how Future Facilities continues to

adapt to the needs of the industry, King adds, “We work not only with companies running high-density AI applications but also with companies who are trying to make the most out of 25-year-old ageing infrastructure, so we have quite a large breadth of experience.

So, whenever we come up against something new, we're always trying to make sure that our software adapts and evolves to allow people to simulate anything that they have in their existing data centre with our software.”

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Powering Data Democratisation with Modern Decision Platforms WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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Delivering decisions at scale to the business through Data & Intelligence from Cognizant, Microsoft & Informatica

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he trifecta of Cognizant, Microsoft and Informatica allows customers to make better use of data as they modernise their businesses to stay relevant and drive business value. One way of accomplishing this is simply about changing perspectives, as Pramod Muralidharan, Practice Head Global Growth Markets - Data Modernisation Pre-Sales, Solution & Offering Development, explains: “Traditionally, organisations have been building a data estate that is fit for purpose and expecting that to drive business outcomes. What we believe is critical for companies to make intelligent decisions is to put the business outcomes first, instead.”

Doing that requires foregrounding a number of different data signals. “We truly believe in the concept of the digital feedback loop,” says Microsoft’s Najat Messaoud, Senior Director – Azure Business Lead. “At the centre of that digital feedback loop are the employees, the customers, the operations and the products. The challenge is synthesising the data that flows through all these different areas to improve all the business outcomes and experiences.”

It’s not just the approach that leads to improved outcomes and optimised experiences; the modernisation of legacy systems is another crucial factor.

“Modernisation brings in modern data architecture that enables improved decision-making, and breaks the barriers of data silos,” says Muralidharan. Then there’s the fact that AI and data are two sides of the same coin. “I don't think one

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Cognizant - The Future Of Data Modernisation with Microsoft & informatica

exists without the other. The topic of data modernisation is critical for AI, which helps you to drive intelligence and become the true differentiator for our customers.”

In short, data modernisation is powering the data revolution, and real-world examples of its benefits are everywhere. “Our customers are doing everything from making scientific discoveries, making decisions about how to roll out healthcare policy, or improving the supply chain cycle

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in an enterprise setting,” explains Informatica’s Bob Markese, SVP, Cloud Modernisation. The acceleration that data brings has only become more apparent due to the ongoing pandemic.

“During the crisis, the customers that are more resilient to the disruption are the ones that have adopted a data-driven strategy for their company,” says Muralidharan.

“In two weeks, Cognizant built a solution for a global convenience store chain that accurately forecasts purchasing and supply chain planning. We integrated new data sources including COVID-19 data, historic product performance data, competitor data and weather data. We built a digital command centre to monitor real-time store performance based on credit card transactions, resulting in a 20% increase in forecasting accuracy and savings of over US$10m in product shipments.

“With that in place, customers are, for instance, able to see every interaction

COGNIZANT

“The Technology & Modern Decision platform alone cannot solve all business problems. Data Culture and Talent are critical cogs in driving outcomes”

PRAMOD MURALIDHARAN TITLE: PRACTICE HEAD – GLOBAL GROWTH MARKETS – DATA MODERNIZATION PRE-SALES & SOLUTION COMPANY: COGNIZANT INDUSTRY: IT & SERVICES LOCATION: GERMANY Based out of Frankfurt, Pramod leads the Data Modernization Pre-Sales & Solutions for Global Growth Markets for Cognizant. He is a veteran in the Information Management space having played the role of trusted adviser to organizations to define & execute their AI/Data Science, Analytics & Information Management strategy & roadmap.

He is passionate about putting data in C-Suite and play advisory role to Chief Data/Analytics/Digital Officers to drive their data journey and data democratization initiatives. He has led transformational Data & AI/ Analytics digital engagements with hyperscalers, incubated AI & Analytics delivery organization and practice competency development.

PRAMOD MURALIDHARAN

with their customers, every moving part of their supply chain and every financial transaction, anywhere in the world in realtime. That allows these customers to react more quickly, mitigate threats and ultimately become more resilient.”

Succeeding in that kind of data transformation requires a keen focus on a number of factors. For Informatica’s Markese, the number-one focus should be on having a modern platform. “It has got to be cloud native, today. Too many companies are trying to lift and shift all legacy to the cloud and having nothing but challenges doing that. While it's a quick and dirty solution, it doesn't get you the benefits of a modern platform such as AI-powered intelligence. A modern platform is also scalable, secure and governed.”

Aside from the technology, having in place a data culture is another critical success factor. “The organisation’s change management is the bridge between success

EXECUTIVE BIO

PRACTICE HEAD - GLOBAL GROWTH MARKETS - DATA MODERNISATION PRE-SALES , SOLUTION & OFFERING DEVELOPMENT, COGNIZANT

Moving your data to the cloud?

Let our AI do the heavy lifting.

With Informatica’s Intelligent Data Management Cloud, you’ll realize value from your data faster and deliver better business outcomes. Deploy cloud analytics at petabyte scale across your enterprise.

CONTACT US

COGNIZANT

and failure of the investment in a data initiative. Technology & Modern Decision platform alone cannot solve all business problems. Data Culture and Talent are critical cogs in driving outcomes,” says Muralidharan.

Of course, solving business problems is also the preserve of Cognizant, Microsoft and Informatica, and the three come together to offer customers a holistic solution. “I call the Cognizant, Informatica, Microsoft partnership a golden triangle, which helps solve data democratisation initiatives and partners with our customers for the entire journey and beyond,” says Muralidharan.

“In terms of Cognizant, Informatica and Microsoft, we are able to cover end-to-end the data ecosystem to successfully orchestrate modern decisions.” Microsoft’s Messaoud emphasises the importance of its partner ecosystem to unlocking value for its customers.

“We bring trusted expertise to the table, but it's actually our partners that understand the customer’s business needs and can address the challenges that customers have that can be sold with technologies coming from us and also from the broad ecosystem long-

“Every enterprise is striving to become a data-driven organisation that makes better and faster decisions” PRAMOD MURALIDHARAN

PRACTICE HEAD - GLOBAL GROWTH MARKETS - DATA MODERNISATION PRE-SALES , SOLUTION & OFFERING DEVELOPMENT, COGNIZANT

standing relationships that we have, for example, with Informatica and Cognizant.”

Taken together, the expertise of the three companies can allow CxOs to respond to pressure for modernisation stemming from boards, as Markese explains. “Sometimes they'll come to us and ask us, ‘What should be our data modernisation strategy?’ And we say, ‘We'll give you the platform and the tools, but you have to go to Cognizant to identify your business outcomes, develop your strategy, implement quickly while future protecting your technology decisions and continue to unlock business value and innovation along the way.’ And then they'll ask, ‘Well, what cloud platform should I be on? How do I put in the infrastructure?’ And for that we tell them to go to Microsoft. When you put all that in place with our intelligent data management cloud platform, the pieces coming from those two other trusted partners all fall into place.” businesschief.eu

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BOB MARKESE TITLE: SVP, BIG DATA COMPANY: INFORMATICA INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE LOCATION: UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Bob Markese brings over 45 years of technology and leadership experience to his role as Senior Vice President at Informatica.

Bob is responsible for executing Informatica’s global sales and support efforts for Informatica’s Cloud Data Warehouse & Data Lake business segment.

Bob has held various senior leadership positions in sales and marketing as well as managing software product and development teams. In addition, Bob was the CEO of a world class Information Lifecycle Management company with a range of products sold globally. Applimation, Inc. was acquired by Informatica in 2009.

He then transitioned into the role of SVP of Informatica’s Data Security business.

In the current business landscape, digital data transformation is set to become a must, if it hasn’t already. “That can be very daunting and very challenging to enterprises, small and large,” says Markese. “We see it across enterprises, small and large. That's because there is such explosive growth of data out there that they have to manage and make splitsecond decisions about their business, and they know they need a new way to do it.”

Democratising access and sharing data is to the benefit of all, and increased sharing and collaboration around data could lead to a more inclusive economy and aid the economic recovery.

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Naturally, challenges remain in the way of reaching this future. “There’s an inability to respond to customers or business events in a very timely manner,” says Muralidharan.

“Another aspect is cost. Many clients have significant legacy investments. It is also about governance and bringing people, practices and technology together.”

While customers want to move forward with a modern data platform, often they don't want to be the first one to do so. They might ask who has already done it as they want to mitigate the risk. That's often the biggest hurdle.

Despite these challenges, the future is bright for organisations seeking to make the most of data. “Every enterprise is striving to become a data-driven organisation that makes better

“Data modernisation is not easy. It's a multi-year journey and, for most enterprises, it's hard” BOB MARKESE SVP, BIG DATA, INFORMATICA

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Year founded

290,000 Number of employees

$16.7bn Cognizant revenue

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NAJAT MESSAOUD TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR AZURE BUSINESS LEAD COMPANY: MICROSOFT INDUSTRY: COMPUTER SOFTWARE LOCATION: GERMANY

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Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud Team helps and teaches the largest Enterprise customers with their digital transformation projects to achieve more with their Organisation in a highly competitive and disruptive environment.

We help leaders to manage their legacy businesses in the most performant and secure way, while support them with their Digitalization, Cloud and IoT Projects in the most agile and cost efficient way.

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“During the crisis, the customers that are more resilient to the disruption are the ones that have adopted a data-driven strategy” NAJAT MESSAOUD

SENIOR DIRECTOR – AZURE BUSINESS LEAD, MICROSOFT

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and faster decisions to optimise experiences and drive business value,” says Muralidharan.

“And that's not just the multi-billion dollar companies, that goes across the board. It’s not a fad and it's going to be here for quite a period of time.”

No one is pretending the journey is easy, but it’s certainly one that’s worth making – as Markese explains. “Data modernisation is not easy. It's a multi-year journey and for most enterprises, it's hard. So you better pick the right partners who put clients first,

have experienced the potholes of digital transformation and deliver strategies that ensure short-term success and long-term value. That’s why Cognizant, Microsoft and Informatica can jointly get you to your data destination faster.”

To learn more on how Cognizant, Microsoft and Informatica can assist your company click here

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Leverage the Power of Data with Infosys Consulting WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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The vision to reinvent your enterprise to compete in a digital world is the focus of Infosys Consulting who unlocks the power of disruptive technology

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Infosys Mysore Training institute

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he vision to reinvent your enterprise to compete in a digital world is the daily focus for experts at Infosys Consulting who unlock the power of disruptive technology to make this dream a reality.

As enterprises dust themselves down from the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, many are taking a long, hard look at their complex legacy landscapes and seek the help of Infosys Consulting to help them modernise their core systems to accelerate innovation and drive growth.

“The digital race is on”, says Thomas Vogt, Partner of Infosys Consulting - the consulting arm of the tech powerhouse Infosys - one of the top five global IT service brands which operates in 46 countries, generating revenue of more than $13bn.

Infosys is a global leader in nextgeneration digital services and consulting.

For nearly four decades, the company - which boasts more than 250,000 employees - has expertly steered its clients to navigate their digital transformation.

In 2004 Infosys Consulting was created with an aim to help enterprises pursue a path of smart digital transformation and focus on all enterprises from financial services to retail and life sciences.

“The world of business has reached a tipping point, driven by disruptive technologies,” said Vogt, who has 25 year’s experience working within the IT industry.

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“Companies may find themselves at a crossroad where they must choose to embrace digital transformation to evolve, reinvent and reimagine their businesses or be left behind.

“Companies who want to remain relevant in a digital-first world must leverage the power of data and digital technologies to accelerate their business growth, unlock a new paradigm of decision-making and customer experience – because whether they like it or not, the digital race is on.

“We help our clients create digital roadmaps, strategies and solutions and execute their digital transformation to leverage growth and make them agile to future challenges,” said Vogt from his office in Munich, Germany.

“Our consultants are industry experts and help our customers to lead complex change agendas or transformation projects with new 464

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technology and disruptive technologies.”

According to Stefan Ley, Associate Partner at Infosys Consulting, there are two unique and proprietary tools in Infosys armour; Value Realisation Methodology (VRM) and Manufacturing Operations. Value Execution (MO.VE) is helping to drive the digital transformation of their clients.

Digital core solutions Infosys Consulting helps enterprises augment their core digital capabilities allowing them to become agile to market trends and evolve over time, often overcoming a complex legacy landscape that dates back many years.

By augmenting the digital core, which is made up of a set of systems used for processing transactions from sales orders, production planning, procurement, manufacturing execution, logistics, shipping,

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THOMAS VOGT

PARTNER AT INFOSYS CONSULTING

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“ Companies who want to remain relevant in a digitalfirst world must leverage the power of data and digital technologies… because whether they like it or not - the digital race is on”

As Thomas Vogt, Partner at Infosys Consulting celebrates 25 years of working within the SAP space, he praises his global career for giving him an “international perspective on business.”

Vogt is responsible for the SAP practice in the DACH region and for Manufacturing customers in Europe.

“In 1992 I had my first touché points with R/3, the ERP solution from SAP. I worked as SAP consultant, project manager and I led SAP business units and industry divisions on three continents.”

After 20 years with Siemens, Vogt took a role at T-systems in Germany before he moved to Infosys Consulting as a partner in 2019.

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We Deliver.

Masentó Group is one of the fastest growing recruitment agencies in Europe, specialising in contract, permanent and interim solutions.

We have established a great reputation for deep qualification and fast accurate delivery across SAP, Data Analytics and Executive Search.

“Masento have been a reliable resource partner to Infosys Consulting for many years. Delivering high standards of quality profiles, with fast and effective support. We look forward to continuing our successful collaboration.”

Thomas Vogt, Head of SAP DACH region, Infosys

LEARN MORE

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The Infosys Consulting story

“ SAP S/4HANA is designed for the digital core concept with a very dedicated data model, and it has the ability to process large amounts of data in a very short time, much faster than we were used to in the past" THOMAS VOGT

PARTNER AT INFOSYS CONSULTING

billing and financial data, a company can augment their digital capabilities and bridge the gap between physical and digital worlds.

“When we talk about the digital core, we refer to the system that drives the business transactions in a reliable, fast and costeffective way,” said Vogt.

Infosys Consulting focuses on two aspects of the digital core, which begins with an enterprise being digitally-ready and moves to ensure it has a lean core to ensure it remains agile in the future.

According to Vogt, a company needs to be digitally ready with an open architecture, data model, including digital data objects. “The architecture has to allow interoperability and the ability to connect third-party and cloud solutions along with Integration via APIs and connectivity via open standards.

“Secondly, the core needs to be lean core, which is going back to standard, to reduce the businesschief.eu

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Video to come

“ These are not standalone deliverables - or accelerators as they also called - from here and there but are a consistent set of deliverables that we bring to the table and that creates the big value of MO.VE” STEFAN LEY

ASSOCIATE PARTNER, INFOSYS CONSULTING

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core to essential business transactions only with a recommendation to keep all customerspecific solutions and extensions in the cloud.

“This results in higher standardisation, lower cost, increased flexibility and time to adapt to new digital solutions and features coming up in future, which you might not have on the radar,” commented Vogt, who is responsible for the SAP practice in the DACH region (Austria, Germany and Switzerland) and for manufacturing customers in Europe.

Power of VRM and MO.VE The two proprietary tools in Infosys armour VRM and MO.VE are helping navigate their digital transformation, said Ley. “We are very proud to have developed the tool VRM, which helps our clients in three ways: • Constitute the link between the profit and loss and the business processes of an enterprise via so-called value

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STEFAN LEY TITLE: ASSOCIATE PARTNER COMPANY: INFOSYS CONSULTING

EXECUTIVE BIO

diagrams, which helps the client execute the program.

• Quantify the benefits of operational improvements.

• Link the identified benefits to measurable KPIs that allow companies to constantly track and trace the improvement progress to create a robust business case that delivers a high value at a lower cost.

“MO.VE is a business transformation package for the manufacturing industry that comes along with a complete set of pre-defined deliverables for the first phases of a transformation program,” said Ley. “If we are starting with a client working on a transformation, MO.VE means we are not coming with an empty set of templates to be filled in, but we have a set of prefilled templates, which is industry-specific which gives you a real jump-start into any transformation program.

25 years in consulting, Stefan Ley, Associate Partner at German-based Infosys Consulting, is focusing on leading large IT driven business transformation programs.

“I started my career at a small consultancy implementing a Laboratory Management Information System,” said Ley. “After four years, I re-focused on SAP based business consulting while at the same time joining Deloitte Consulting. In 2016 I moved to Infosys Consulting where I built up and led a S/4HANA Centre of Excellence. My latest achievement was the creation of a Business Transformation Program Package for the Manufacturing Industry called MO.VE (Manufacturing Operations.Value Execution).”

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FIVE STEPS TO A LEAN CORE Infosys Consulting helps companies modernise their core systems by following the five steps to accelerate innovation, run the business without worrying about risks and deliver design-led experiences.

1. Experience Deliver design-led experiences built on a deep empathy for customers. Conquer context, content and channel to make CX your competitive advantage.

2. Insight Make your data do more. Act on your next opportunity, next pitfall and next threat before you must. Get to the source of the insights instead of relying on derivatives.

Leverage enterprise knowledge and sense micro-feedback to respond in an agile and meaningful way.

3. Innovate Redefine possibilities by bridging the gap between your physical and digital worlds of your business through software and platforms. Drive continuous improvement with ideas from a cross-section of industries and innovation ecosystems.

4. Accelerate Modernise your core systems to tackle high-frequency decision making at the speed of insights and achieve zero latency.

Build a digital infrastructure that enables your enterprise to listen, learn and leverage entrenched knowledge to make better decisions with minimal intervention.

5. Assure To be the catalyst for growth by solving complex cybersecurity problems, minimising risks and building cyber resilience for your businesses across the globe – digital trust.

“ Masentó has really helped us with dedicated skills and talent capacity.

What I really like about them is they have good access to a rich network of professionals with very good skills” THOMAS VOGT

PARTNER AT INFOSYS CONSULTING

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Infosys

40

Years of service

46

Countries Infosys is present in

1,626 Clients

93.4%

Repeat business

“These are not standalone deliverables - or accelerators as they also called - from here and there but are a consistent set of deliverables that we bring to the table and that creates the big value of MO.VE.” Digital-ready data from SAPS/4HANA Infosys Consulting uses SAP S/4HANA to build a lean digital core for their customers as they consider it to be the best product suite for a digital transformation and allows enterprises to be digitally ready.

“SAP S/4HANA is designed for the digital core concept with a very dedicated data model and it has the ability to process large

amounts of data in a very short time, much faster than we were used to in the past,” said Vogt.

“It also allows the integration of features into the cloud for individual application developments, machine learning (ML), automation and Internet of Things (IoT).

You can either use the SAP cloud platform, or you can connect to the cloud solutions from classical hyperscalers. It is very rich in the business processes, standards and functions, which means the essential business transactions can be delivered out of the box and enjoy the other advantage of being digitally ready and enjoy connectivity.” businesschief.eu

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QUICK FIRE QUESTIONS hat top three benefits will an increased W digitalisation bring to your global clients?

Thomas Vogt says increased digitalisation will enable Infosys Consulting’s global clients across industries to achieve the following: 1. Customer centricity - through omnichannel customer interaction and true customerdriven strategy will enhance the customer experience and give a clear competitive edge.

2. Technologies like ML and prescriptive analytics will enhance business agility and the ability to anticipate and better mitigate future disruptions and global crises.

3. An increase in operational performance.

“5G technologies and IoT-specific devices and technology, with low-cost and low-power consumption, will support widedeployment across the entire supply chain.

“However, the most exciting new trend in 2021 for ERP solutions and business applications will be the acceleration of AI and automation. The core idea behind an AI-first transformation is the aspiration for an organisation to use human-machine intelligence to solve complex problems, make better and faster business decisions, and gain better visibility of operations to create and sustain a competitive advantage.”

What technology trends do you see taking off in the next year?

“The fusion of IoT devices with ERP and business application systems will enable companies - especially those in the manufacturing and logistics industry - to mine and analyse vast amounts of realtime structured and unstructured data through connected sensors,” said Vogt, who pointed out this will in turn increase top and bottom lines.

What message would you give to a company hesitant about starting its digital transformation?

“Companies who want to remain relevant in a digital-first world must leverage the power of data and digital technologies to accelerate their business growth, unlock a new paradigm of decision-making and customer experience – because whether they like it or not - the digital race is on,” said Vogt.

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Infosys Consulting

3000

Expert consultants around the world

2004

The year Infosys Consulting was established as the consulting arm of Infosys

19

Countries Infosys Consulting is present

200+

Active clients globally

Vision into a reality According to Ley, many enterprises tend to have a broad vision of their digital transformation. “We are experiencing enterprises struggling with turning that vision into reality and harvesting the benefits of a real digitalisation. I came across one company that just said ‘we want to become a data-driven company’ - but what does that mean in detail?

Three challenges Ley sees companies struggling with include: 1. Identify concrete opportunities where the enterprise can benefit from digitalisation “One example is to turn unstructured data into structured data so you can further process it and another advantage is this ability of the mass processing of data to make processes more lean and efficient.”

2. Managing the change in an organisation “It’s not enough just to say we have a vision to change our organisation - you need to take the people with you on this digital journey and help them embrace this change,” comments Ley. 3. Robust business case “The ability to create a robust business case for the digital transformation with tangible, measurable benefits – especially if you have already an integrated ERP solution like SAP ECC in place.”

In order for a company to harvest the advantages of digitisation, Ley points out that assuming the broad vision is already articulated, enterprises need to do the following: • Break the vision down into concrete objectives, process design and operational businesschief.eu

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GLOBAL RECOGNITION FOR INFOSYS CONSULTING • Great Place to Work® and Fortune have honoured Infosys as one of the Best Big Companies to Work For™.

• Featured in Wall Street Journal’s 2021 List of 100 most sustainably managed companies in the world • Recognised as one of the world’s most ethical companies in 2021 by Ethisphere Institute, US. • Awarded Top Employers Global 2021 certification in 20 countries across Europe, Middle East, Asia Pacific and North America • Infosys Recognised as One of the Top Service Providers Across Nordics in the Whitelane Research and PA Consulting IT Sourcing Study 2021 • Infosys Awarded UN Global Climate Action Award in 'Carbon Neutral Now' Category

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levers to make the vision tangible for people to understand.

• Leverage the vast experience and company-specific knowledge of the employees.

• Combine the inside-out view of its employees with the outside-in view of consultants as an incubator both on the technology and business side.

• Determine the tangible benefits that can be derived from the digital transformation and provide measurable KPIs to track and trace the execution.

Competitive edge A local presence, platform developments and growth through acquisitions has propelled the company and given it a competitive edge in the market.

“We are proud to be recognised by the Wall Street Journal as one of the top 100 most sustainable companies and we are also listed as one of the most ethical companies in 2021, which is something

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we really believe in as a company,” said Vogt.

Infosys Consulting follows these three steps to success: 1. Global brand with local presence A local presence is vital for Infosys Consulting - they have invested in local talents and have representations in the US, Europe and Asia which they claim has an ‘unbeatable talent pool’.

2. Development of solutions and platforms Live Enterprise and Health Insights Platform are just two examples of their developments.

3. Offer consulting services Infosys founded Infosys Consulting 17 years ago via acquisitions and organic growth.

“To have these three components under one roof and a strong global footprint this differentiates us from many competitors,” said Vogt.

“Infosys started as many Indian based IT services companies with development

and systems and application maintenance and management services,” said Vogt addressing what gives the company their competitive edge.

“Early Infosys understood that this business model based on labour arbitrage would not be sustainable long-term with the upcoming cloud and SaaS solutions. To become relevant and continue to grow in the IT and technology world, you need to move up in the value chain, lead in technology and offer projects and business consulting services.”

Partnerships in focus According to Vogt, Infosys Consulting likes to differentiate its partners in three different ways: • Portfolio • Technology and product • Talent “Given the number of technologies out there in the market, special requirements of industries and customers, and the fact there is a shortage of IT and SAP talents in

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“ Our consultants are industry experts and they help our customers to lead complex change agendas or transformation projects with new technology and also with disruptive technologies” THOMAS VOGT

PARTNER AT INFOSYS CONSULTING

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the market, partners are essential for us to conduct successful transformations.

“Our portfolio partners have knowledge in either a specific industry or have a niche skill, such as being a dedicated retail or SAP FICA (FI Contract Accounting expert), we are able to utilise,” said Vogt.

“Then we have technology and product partners such as SAP and Microsoft. We also have partners such as Panaya, Celonis and SNP that come with dedicated tools to help us in the space of data migration, process mining or helping us to analyse the system landscape of the customer.

“The third category focuses on the talent we are able to use for a specific project. Masentó has really helped us with dedicated skills and talent capacity. What I really like about them is they have good access to a rich network of professionals with very good skills.

“We utilise Masentó to complement our own teams and include those people into our culture, so it is also important they adopt our methodologies. They need to have a certain degree of flexibility to work with us based on our processes as we are an international multicultural organisation.

We were always pleased with those experts Masentó provides to us and our projects.

“These three sets of partners are really vital to make sure we fulfil the requirements of our customers,” said Vogt, who added that their goal is to help enterprises leverage their digital core and show them how IT plays the role of an enabler for the future.

“We drive continuous improvement by transferring digital skills along with ideas from a cross-section of industries and innovation ecosystems.”

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GROWTH THROUGH MARKET DISRUPTION WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

TUENTI ECUADOR

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Chief Executive Officer of Tuenti Ecuador, Gerardo Suarez Napolitano, on how the company’s startup culture and COVID-19 resilience is delivering growth

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erardo Suarez Napolitano is Chief Executive Officer of Tuenti Ecuador, a subsidiary of telecommunications giant Telefonica. He took the role in 2014 before it launched as a separate business unit of Telefonica in June 2015. “Tuenti was launched as a result of the company’s need to create a digital unit focusing on millennials and centennials,” says Suarez Napolitano. “We assembled a team of highly skilled young professionals with mixed backgrounds, bringing them together in a start-uplike environment.” The brand had a strong sense of purpose since the start.

“Since day one, our value propositions have centered around being easy to understand, easy to purchase, and easy to use. One of our key assets was to build strong, simple, data-centric offers that add key value for our customers. That includes music through Spotify, Data roll over, Free voice chat, and an instant prize roulette when you buy a combo.”

The company’s culture matches its youthful and dynamic customer base.

“Ever since we launched Tuenti, we made sure that every member of our team knew exactly where we were, and most importantly where we wanted to be,” enthuses Suarez Napolitano. “Tuenti was

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created as a startup culture - everyone takes care of their own business and everyone must be two steps ahead of their boss.” Suarez Napolitano encapsulates that ideal in his motto: “Perfection is the enemy of progress. We strongly encourage a collaborative approach among the different teams, making it easier to receive feedback, support, and quick responses when any team member needs it.”

In line with its innovative startup culture, the company’s mobile app serves as the principle gateway through which it interacts with users. “App Tuenti is the main touchpoint between the brand and our customers, with an active user base amounting to 55% of our clients,” says Suarez Napolitano.” In late 2020, the

“ PERFECTION IS THE ENEMY OF PROGRESS” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

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Gerardo Suarez Napolitano

TUENTI ECUADOR

Discover Tuenti: Ecuador’s simple but powerful Telco solution

“ WE ASSEMBLED A TEAM OF HIGHLY SKILLED YOUNG PROFESSIONALS WITH MIXED BACKGROUNDS” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

app was relaunched with a completely redesigned user experience and interface.

“This new experience tailors to our customer’s every need. Its main features include an easy to visualise product layout, a brand-new intuitive subscription model, 482

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as well as multi-functional self-care services that bring it all together.”

It’s via initiatives such as the app that the company has achieved huge success in the Ecuadorian market.

“We rely on four main pillars in order to successfully maintain a high-paced growth rate. Product market fit, irreverent communication, a millennial-to-millennial sales force, and a completely digital customer service. This in turn has led us to go from 0 clients in June of 2015, to an outstanding 65% CAGR, reaching 1.3 million clients a little over 5 years later - awarding us 11% of the Prepaid Market Share in Ecuador.“ Supporting its work are trusted partners such as Amdocs. “Amdocs provides us with a comprehensive cloud-based business/operations support systemas-a-service solution,” says Suarez Napolitano. “They serve as a single point of accountability, relieving Tuenti from the

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need to manage complex cross-vendor integrations and ongoing operations and seamlessly scaling up to support our rapid growth.” Amdocs’ solution is the perfect match for the needs of an agile, digitalfirst brand such as Tuenti. “For example, following a major earthquake a couple of years ago, we needed to respond with free usage to support our community. Amdocs

was able to promptly implement the necessary promotions.”

Like all companies worldwide, Tuenti’s operations have been affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to its digital basis, the company was well positioned to weather the storm. “Since before the pandemic, Tuenti’s operation model was far ahead of the industries’ businesschief.eu

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leads a winning digital brand, powered by Amdocs

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TUENTI ECUADOR

GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: ECUADOR Gerardo Suárez Napolitano is an executive with over 25 years experience in several commercial assignments in Latin America. He worked in massive consumer product companies like Procter & Gamble in Venezuela, Argentina and Empresas Polar in Venezuela. Over the last 15 years, he has been working in the telecommunications business with Telefónica where he was Commercial Director in Venezuela, Sales Director of Telesp in Brazil and Commercial VP in Ecuador. In October 2014, he was appointed as Ecuador Tuenti CEO launching the brand in June 2015 as a separate business unit of Telefónica.

Gerardo is an Industrial Engineer by UCAB - Venezuela, Finance Magister

by Unimet - Venezuela and Telecom Business Master by Catalunya University in Spain.

“ WE STRIVE TO BECOME THE LEADING TELCO BRAND FOR THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

EXECUTIVE BIO

standards. With flexible schedules, international relations, optional WFH days, and family fridays, we learned to collaborate in a semi-remote environment from early on. This made the new normal not seem so new to us, as we were able to quickly adapt and maintain operations at all times.” So effective has the company’s response to the pandemic been, that it plans to maintain some of the changes COVID-19 has forced. “One of our biggest

“ WITH FLEXIBLE SCHEDULES, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, OPTIONAL WFH DAYS, AND FAMILY FRIDAYS, WE LEARNED TO COLLABORATE IN A SEMI-REMOTE ENVIRONMENT FROM EARLY ON” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

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2015

Year Founded

$40.3 M Revenue

23

Number of Staff

66%

CAGR Sustained growth between 2015 - 2020

11%

Prepaid Market Share

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Tuenti Talks 29 de octubre Transformación Digital

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accomplishments through the pandemic was being able to quickly coordinate and transfer all of our customer service staff out of the office and into their homes. As the global crisis comes to an end, we are certain that we will not fully transition back to our office spaces, but rather follow in the footsteps of leading innovative companies with a work from anywhere model.”

Looking to the future, Suarez Napolitano is clear that the company is not resting on its laurels. “There is no slowing down for Tuenti. We strive to become the leading telco brand for the younger generations, maintain our current growth rate, and strengthen our market position as the third biggest telco brand in Ecuador.”

Accomplishing those ambitions requires

continuing down its customer-centric path.

“We must continue to digest our customers’ needs, and prepare new and better features that best fit our client base - both during and after the pandemic.”

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BCG Dr Stefan Gstettner, Partner & Associate Director BCG

BCG

BEYOND THE

BUZZ:

DR STEFAN GSTETTNER

TALKS SUPPLY CHAIN

We go beyond the buzzwords Q&A style with Dr Stefan Gstettner, Partner & Associate Director at BCG, on some of supply chain's most pressing issues

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WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA

hen you sit down with someone as knowledgeable and experienced in supply chain as Dr Stefan Gstettner, Partner & Associate Director at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), you don’t mince words. And so I didn’t. I milked every moment, and the man was gracious enough to even let me sneak in a few extra questions.

So we did this one Q&A style. Let’s dig in.

We hear so much about tech and digital transformations that it seems we’ve forgotten about humans along the way.

Could you explain to me the concept of a “bionic supply chain”?

“The digital supply chain transformation is not just the technology transformation, and that's why we are promoting the concept of the bionic supply chain so heavily because it's mainly humans driving advancements in supply chains. But today, they are augmenting their capabilities or mentored by technology. So we need to take a humancentric approach to all the change that is going on in supply chain transformations.

“Then we need to have an equally savvy view on the technology opportunities and how we can make technology help the humans to drive supply chain management.

Then there is the next step, which goes into cognitive, i.e. intelligent, automation of supply chains. And I do believe that will play a huge role. However, the human aspect will never go away. It will only change. There will probably be less human interaction. It will definitely become more demanding human interaction. But the principle remains the same. It will be the perfect blend between humans and technology that will drive the desired outcomes.”

Extreme market volatility is yet another immense challenge being faced, bringing a lot of disruption to business planning. Along with the logistical issues previously mentioned, supply chains are now dealing with dramatic shifts in both supply and demand and feeling the failings of deterministic models, which previously proved more reliant. businesschief.eu

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Stefan Gstettner: Digital supply chain transformation is not a technology transformation | BCG

Could you lend your thoughts on how new technologies can help with this?

“From my perception, there are two schools of thoughts on this. The first one is let's manage volatility by becoming better at predicting volatility. That encompasses advanced demand planning, forecasting, demand sensing, and demand shaping to anticipate better and then to be better able to respond to it. That's the first school.

“The second school says, look, not all volatility can be anticipated, so let us be agile and respond to volatility as it comes. And I don't believe in predicting volatility because, per definition, it's quite hard to predict 492

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volatility. I would say the truth is somewhere in the middle.

“I see the best companies doing both.

Investing in becoming better to predict what is predictable, also be realistic, but still being high-end in capabilities to predict the future because with AI and some forwardlooking indicators, predictions have become much better even for volatile demands.

Then, building agility into the supply chain remains super important in logistics, in manufacturing, also upstream to suppliers and the combination between building an affordable degree of agility in the supply chain plus becoming better in predicting

BCG

“I think that there has been a too long phase of putting forward technological concepts without really understanding and explaining what exactly they are good for” DR. STEFAN GSTETTNER

PARTNER & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BCG

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volatility. I think that is the sweet spot to overcome the issues here.”

“ I see the best companies doing both. Investing in becoming better to predict what is predictable” DR. STEFAN GSTETTNER

PARTNER & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BCG

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When it comes to all the new tech that is available, I think it’s difficult for people to gain an understanding of the maturity level and think perhaps it’s too early to make the jump. Would you be able to give us a high-level view of this?

“Supply chain particularly doesn't do a good job at overcoming the buzzword level of explaining things. And I think putting forward super buzzwords, like control tower, digital twin, AI, and not to mention blockchain, in the end, it doesn't help if we are not able to explain what exactly we mean. But then, more importantly, what exactly we want to achieve with the term.

“I think that there has been a too long phase of putting forward technological concepts without really understanding and explaining what exactly they are good for. So, therefore, I also sense some degree of frustration with our clients to say, look, these are all nice technological concepts, but ultimately they will not work, and I will not be able to deploy them.

BCG

Dr. Stefan Gstettner TITLE: PARTNER & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR COMPANY: BCG INDUSTRY: CONSULTANCY LOCATION: GERMANY

“Therefore, I think it's always imperative to turn it around from a technology and solution discussion to a business discussion.

What is the business future we are preparing for? And then, in a dedicated effort, looking for solutions to respond to those challenges.

What we call them doesn't really matter. It's more important to have a solid approach to implementation that’s agile, very customer-centric, employee-centric and solution-centric in place rather than hopping on technology trends and hoping that they will do good.”

Prior to Covid 19, you offered a Master Course about the future of Supply Chain Management through MIT, and you say, “Supply chains will look fundamentally different in 10 years. They will turn into agile networks of players, each one of them operating in the sweet spot of capabilities.

At the same time, there will be a drastically increasing challenge to manage this complexity and synchronise the networks.”

Covid-19 has drastically escalated both the need for agility and the challenges you speak

To say he’s had an impressive career in supply chain management would be putting it mildly. Dr Stefan Gstettner holds a doctorate degree in Supply Chain Management from the University of Cologne and is a passionate topic expert in supply chain management and logistics with vast experience in supply chain transformations.

Over the last few years, Dr Gstettner has published numerous articles, including "Death of supply chain management" in Harvard Business Review and "Does your supply chain need a blockchain?" in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. “I must say if I look at the past 20, 25 years that I have worked in supply chain, I think it has always been super exciting, but then it got more and more exciting the further it went on. From the early times when I did my PhD in supply chain management, that was so long ago that you could hardly call it supply chain management, then I was in retail in executive roles, and that was another super exciting time.

“And now it’s been nine years that I’ve been with BCG, which has been extremely exciting with all the digitisation going on and helping our clients in taking large steps in digitising their internal supply chains. And that I think is the most fascinating of times.

To use this technology at scale and identify where we can help our clients to really drive value through those technologies.” businesschief.eu

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“ Supply chains will look fundamentally different in 10 years. They will turn into agile networks of players” DR. STEFAN GSTETTNER

PARTNER & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BCG

of. The agile network you describe sounds like a utopia as we see very few successful transformations. Business complexity is often given as an excuse. Could you lend us your thoughts on how companies can tackle this challenge?

“There was an article I co-wrote in 2018 in the Harvard business review called The Death of Supply Chain Management that resonated quite well in the community because what we said is there is no logical reason why many of the supply chain decisions couldn't be made by machines in the future rather than people because, in supply chain management, it very often comes down to rational trade-offs. It's not about instincts, and it’s not about pure experience or gut feeling. It's about having, for example, to trade-off between service level versus inventory? And there are rules and formulas for this, and so there is no reason for this to be tasked to humans.

“Something that is brought forward, the autonomous supply chain or the lights off planning or self-driving supply chains-even more of those buzzwords-- although fundamentally I agree that there's no reason why these shouldn't happen, there are fundamentals that need to be in place in order to realise something like this. We haven't built the bottom of the house, let's say, and therefore we are not quite ready to build the roof. And at the bottom, there are 496

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really fundamental questions. Like, have we segmented our supply chain well? Do we have our KPIs in order? Are we sure that we have set the right balance regarding the KPI target values? Do we have the right incentive schemes in place? As well as the previously mentioned topics such as capabilities.

“So again, conceptually, I think it's easy.

And to be honest for us as consultants, it's, of course, easy to put on paper that this will happen. But then practically, as we see, this is where the challenges come in. I think that is the task that we all have in supply chain, to have this North Star as a desirable target state of mind. And then we relentlessly work on the fundamentals and then on the technology to achieve this. Because I think for companies, it's desirable to have this end state in place

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because it will make companies much more agile, much more responsive to customer needs. And that's what we ultimately want in supply chain management.”

I loved your comment on rational tradeoffs. If you don't mind, I would like to sneak in a question, because I think that is where people have a lot of difficulties, in setting a formal process for that and understanding that they're going to, let’s say, give up on price a little bit to mitigate some risk or increase safety stocks.

How do you come up with a way to quantifiably balance those things, as you said, rationally?

“Absolutely, and that is a discussion that we very often have with our clients. One additional element to this is scenario capabilities. So if we want to play through certain scenarios, for example, let me take the Integrated Business Planning (IBP) process, which is typically a monthly planning process, which in the midterm synchronises demand with supply.

And obviously, we cannot 100% foresee the future of demand. So we need to look into scenarios, and in those scenarios, it is all about making trade-offs. So if we allocate

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some capacities to a certain market, it will do this to our inventory. It will do this to our overall EBITDA. It will do this to our overall costs. And then we have a second scenario where we probably have a different success profile, maybe less inventory, less cost, but then also a little bit less margin because it's lower margin products or lower margin markets.

“And now there are two difficulties. The first one is that obviously, there are millions of potential scenarios that we can play through to theoretically, practically not, but theoretically, because there are so many permutations of opportunities in complex supply chains. That's the first one. And the second difficulty is, putting values behind the trade-offs is inherently difficult because the link to the finance function very often in supply chains is underdeveloped. This 498

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makes evaluating potential impacts on supply chain KPIs in financial terms or the possible EBITDA impact of a certain decision, for example, relatively difficult.

“Those two points, struggling to find meaningful scenarios to discuss in an IBP process and then having a sound and agreed upon method for determining the financial implications of scenarios in place, make it difficult to make rational decisions.

And that's another imperative I think, for us to work towards being better at defining and financially evaluating scenarios.”

In terms of the scenario or what-if building, is there a new technology that can help with that?

“More integrated systems are coming to the market. And again, I'm not saying that the system resolves anything standalone, but

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“ More and more, I would say there are systems even originating from financial planning and now going more into supply chain planning” DR. STEFAN GSTETTNER

PARTNER & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BCG

I think powerful systems which have these design criteria of linking volume-based supply chain planning with value-based financial planning in a very integrated fashion will be successful in the market.

“More and more, I would say there are systems even originating from financial planning and now going more into

supply chain planning. And I think this understanding has arrived at some highend planning system providers and our obligation now is to make it usable for our clients to use systems like this with the right data.

“This is a good example where, as a concept, perhaps one of the undefined buzzwords, digital twin, could be used to simulate scenarios. Meaning, a digital twin could provide a virtual representation of the internal supply chain with financial and volume data, creating a sandbox, if you will, where implications of varying scenarios and alternative decisions can be played out. This would allow you to fully analyse financial impacts and make better-informed decisions. And I think we will see it in the next five years.”

Supply chain risk management is another businesschief.eu

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“ What I'm advising our clients to do is to think of the supply chain as a permanent set of risks” DR. STEFAN GSTETTNER

PARTNER & ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, BCG

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very relevant but massive topic. There are many areas of risk, and trying to identify and mitigate your largest threats can be an overwhelming task. What do you feel people are or aren't doing right in this area?

“Whenever I talk about risk management, I feel that it is too decoupled from the normal way of running supply chains because I often feel that most of the risk monitoring processes are set up in a supply chain agnostic way. And I do appreciate that there are some risks that are simply not associated with the supply chain. For example, major financial risks or reputational risks may not be as closely related, but then when it comes to supply disruptions, disruptions in factories, and so on, sometimes I don't feel that it is ingrained into the normal processes, like the IBP planning processes and the mitigating actions are too decoupled.

“What I'm advising our clients to do is to think of the supply chain as a permanent set of risks, which sometimes materialise and sometimes not. The ability to respond to both smaller and bigger risks is a capability that supply chains do need to have. There should be little to no gap between the processes, no artificial separation between the standard way of running a supply chain and a risk mitigation strategy. The goal should be to integrate those processes as closely as possible.”

“In risk monitoring activities, I think there's also too much gut feeling involved at the moment. So whenever we work on this topic, we bring in more data-driven, analytical ways of monitoring environments, and then having a better inflow into the risk mitigation discussion, but then putting it into the, for example, IBP planning courses to discuss it seamlessly with the other supply chain topics.”

And with that, he was off, and in my mind’s eye, triaging broken supply chains.

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