Business Chief Europe - Feb 2018

TOP 10

EUROPE’S BIGGEST IPOS

February 2018 • EUROPE EDITION

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

CHANGE FOR THE PEOPLE,

BY THE PEOPLE

Alibaba Taking British business to 488mn Chinese consumers Exclusive Interview: A Q&A with David Lloyd, Alibaba Group’s UK, Ireland & Nordics Managing Director

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FOREWORD FEW RETAILERS ARE able to match the mighty Alibaba for its customer-base, but how exactly can businesses in Europe take advantage of its huge reach in China?

In our cover interview this month, Tom Wadlow speaks to David Lloyd, Alibaba’s Managing Director for the UK, Ireland the Nordics, who reveals the avenues companies can explore to showcase their products to the e-commerce giant’s 488mn active consumers.

“Our mission globally is to make it easy to do business anywhere,” says Lloyd. Read the full, exclusive Q&A on page six.

Elsewhere in this edition, Conrad Fritzsch, MercedesBenz’s Director of Digitalisation, Marketing & Sales, outlines the theory and practice behind a digital transformation while Stuart Hodge assesses the challenges businesses face in retaining their most valuable talent.

Recent trends in operational risk management are also analysed, Paris is the European hub profiled in our regular City Focus feature and February’s top 10 ranks the biggest IPOs on the continent in 2017.

Finally, our exclusive digital reports feature interviews with the DVLA, NFU Mutual, the NHS Business Services Authority and Universal Electric Corp – all involving in-depth discussions with top executives and industry experts.

Enjoy the magazine, and join the conversation on Twitter: @Business_Chief.

Enjoy the issue!

http://europe.businesschief.com www.bizclikmedia.com

F E AT U R E S

Opening up a Chinese market of 488mn consumers and counting

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TECHNOLOGY

22 CHANGE FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE 4

February 2018

PEOPLE

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Indeed how What’sshows the key to an ‘unlimited tomake keeping your leave’ work best policy talent?

CITY FOCUS

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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y

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Why operational risk management is vital – and where it’s headed

FUTURE, PARIS ASSERTS ITSELF AS THE EUROPE’S NO.1 TOURIST AND BUSINESS HOTSPOT

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TOP 10

60 European IPOs of

2017 5

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TECHNOLOGY

76 118 DVLA

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102 6

February 2018

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L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y

Opening up a Chinese market of 488mn consumers and counting An exclusive Q&A with David Lloyd, Alibaba Group’s UK, Ireland & Nordics Managing Director

Writ ten by TO M WA D LOW

HOST OF THE world’s largest 24-hour online shopping event, Alibaba’s influence on the global retail stage is unrelenting. On 11 November 2017 alone some $25bn of sales passed through its portal.

Driven by an ever-expanding middle class Chinese population with growing disposable incomes, the ecommerce giant is proving to be a valuable platform for companies all over the world looking to establish a customer base in China.

The UK and Scandinavia are among such targets, and David Lloyd, Managing Director for the UK, Ireland and Nordics, is the man responsible for opening doors for native businesses…

What attracted you to join Alibaba Group back in 2016?

For someone who is fascinated by how the internet brings people together, and is passionate about retail and working internationally, the opportunity to work at Alibaba was a natural next step for me.

We’re going through a very exciting time, which sees the radical and rapid transformation of the retail industry worldwide, but in China, 12

February 2018

The Mercedes-Benz Arena in Shangha

what we in the West still consider futuristic, is already a reality. This is driven, among other factors, by the surge of a new consumer: younger, internationally-oriented, tech-savvy and seeking great quality, original foreign products.

This changing landscape has made it necessary for brands to rethink their strategies to engage with their consumers, with data technology representing a crucial part of the

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y

Jack Ma, Executive Chairman Alibaba

ai

equation. Alibaba Group has been a pioneer in this field, and since 2015 we have been responding to the changing retail world by blending the online and offline spheres to create seamless brand and customer experience. We are trialling new technologies and helping brands trade globally – all with the sole mission of making it easy to do business anywhere. It’s an honour to be part of such an exciting moment in the company’s history.

Now, as Managing Director for the UK, what is your overriding objective?

Our mission globally is to make it easy to do business anywhere, and it’s no different in the UK. My focus is to help British businesses find success in China, supporting them to reach the 488mn annual active consumers on our platforms, a number which keeps on growing. This can range from businesses who already have 13

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y a presence in China and need help expanding their offering, to those who have never even considered selling to the Chinese consumer and helping them embrace crossborder trade for the very first time.

We have an increasing number of diverse British brands joining Tmall and Tmall Global, our B2C ecommerce marketplaces for international brands looking to sell to China. Some of those already on our platforms include Dyson, Whittard of Chelsea and Burberry.

2017’s Singles Day event generated $25bn in sales. What do you think is the key to its success?

Singles’ Day is the world’s largest 24-hour online shopping event and last year’s was our most successful yet – with 39% year-over-year increase in the value of goods sold - but it isn’t just about massive sales. Since Alibaba first adopted 11.11 in 2009, it has evolved from being a single shopping day to a global retail and entertainment festival, during which we can glimpse what the future of retail will look like.

The event this year was built on two fundamental pillars: New Retail and “retail-tainment”. This was a 14

February 2018

natural direction for us, driven by the understanding that, for Chinese consumers, shopping is an immersive experience, one that does much more than merely ask consumers to passively add items to their ‘virtual cart’. In China, shopping is a social activity, which is even more enjoyable if carried out with family and friends and enriched by entertainment and gaming elements.

Moreover, this year we further enhanced the pool of brands and products shoppers could access: over 15mn product listings made available by 140,000 participating brands, including 60,000 international (compared to the “only” 100,000 brands participating in 2016).

Alibaba coined the term New Retail last year – in simple terms, what does this mean?

New Retail is completely redefining commerce in China and it is a gamechanger for Alibaba and retail in the country. We are anticipating a reimagined retail industry driven by the integration of offline, online, logistics and data across a single value chain, coupled with social media, interactive content and

$25bn

sales generated via Alibaba on Singles Day 2017

entertainment on one platform.

New Retail, therefore, sees ecommerce and physical retail work together, rather than in opposition, with the ultimate aim of creating deeper brand engagement and better shopping experiences for consumers. In China, ecommerce currently accounts for approximately 18% of total retail.

Through “New Retail” we want to bring our data and technological capability to work with and digitally transform the 82% of offline retail.

This isn’t to get into the bricksand-mortar retail business, but

rather to help bricks-and-mortar operators restructure and enhance their operations, including customer experience, inventory management, logistics and retail spaces, to enable them to succeed in the digital era.

How was technology used to enhance the consumer experience at this year’s 11.11 festival?

11.11 demonstrates the technological innovation and global scale of the entire Alibaba ecosystem.

One of the ways in which we bring New Retail to life is through new innovative technologies, some of 15

“My focus is to help British businesses find success in China, supporting them to reach the 488mn annual active consumers on our platforms, a number which keeps on growing” – David Lloyd, Managing Director for the UK, Ireland and Nordics, Alibaba

An Alibaba Tmall vending machine 16

February 2018

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y which were showcased at this year’s 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.

These range from augmented and virtual reality applications, facial recognition and scan-and-deliver convenience. For example, we launched an augmented realitypowered ‘magic mirror’ experience, where consumers were able to test different types of make-up on screen. From the same touchscreen, consumers could immediately order products from the likes of Maybelline and L’Oréal and have them delivered.

More than 1,000 brands converted over 100,000 physical locations into “smart stores” – digitised stores that have seamless payments and logistics options.

Over a million merchants utilised various online-offline integrations under Alibaba’s new retail format to enhance merchant operations and create exciting engaging consumer experiences.

About 50 shopping malls will have New Retail-powered “Pop-up Stores”, where consumers can browse and use virtual fitting rooms and “magic mirrors” to “try-on” outfits and cosmetics.

We also held our annual ‘See

Now Buy Now’ fashion show, a live fashion event preceding 11.11, where retailers showcased their products in an engaging, entertainmentfocused format. For example, Adidas used 3D mapping to project images onto the models’ clothing as they walked down the runway. Across seven different media platforms, customers were able to livestream the event and pick and buy products in real-time via their mobiles.

This all shows how ecommerce and media platforms can be used to create one seamless experience for viewers, bringing technology, entertainment and shopping together in one place.

Are there other technologies you are developing to further improve the shopping experience?

We see a great potential in how data technology applications can help make the shopping experience, even the grocery purchases, highly personalised, entertaining and convenient. We know this represents a challenge for brands, which have to look into new ways and formats to enhance the experience of their consumers – but together with hundreds of them, we are already 17

experimenting all this in this big retail laboratory that is China today.

Let’s take Hema supermarkets, for example. This a prime example of this evolution that’s taking place and a great example of how we are building New Retail. With over 20 entirely digitised stores across China, Hema provides consumers with a three-in-one retail experience that encompasses all modes and desires of urban shoppers.

In an innovation that is unique to Hema, deliveries are fulfilled not from a separate warehouse, but from within the store itself. As a result, goods reach customers in a three-kilometer radius as quickly as 30 minutes after ordering. They can also scan products in-store to either add it to their virtual shopping basket or find detailed information on a product and its origins, or simply have fresh food prepared and enjoyed at the store’s on-premise dining area.

The shopping experience of the future will be defined by ease, speed and brand engagement – all things we are committed to delivering at their highest capacity.

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February 2018

Alibaba’s third annual 11.11 Global Sh

How big a presence does Alibaba have in the UK, and what are your aims for growth in the coming year or so?

Alibaba established its London office in 2009, the first step in its globalisation programme towards Europe. Since then, our office has grown massively and it is now the hub for several business units of the Group, from the team responsible for the development of Tmall and Tmall Global, to Cloud, B2B, Fliggy and Alipay.

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y

hopping Festival Gala

Growth only makes sense for us if it is achieved in a sustainable way and, most importantly, if it is built upon the satisfaction of our customers, who are central in our business approach.

We put customers first, always, because we believe that our and their success are aligned and inseparable.

In the future, we’ll continue to work with a wide range of British brands, companies and stakeholders, developing the best solutions for them to thrive in the digital

economy and make the most of the many opportunities offered by globalisation and global trade.

What is the size of the opportunity for British businesses looking to tap into the Chinese consumer market?

China is one of the largest and fastest growing ecommerce markets in the world. The country now has an estimated 731m internet users, and mobile devices are increasingly used 19

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y as the shopping tool of choice.

The ecommerce market in China, coupled with the country’s growing middle class and desire for international goods, represents a huge opportunity for British businesses. We are not talking just about big numbers, but it’s also incredible to see how brands are finding new, innovative ways to engage with their consumers – revolutionising the traditional way of doing ecommerce as we know it.

Marketplaces like Alibaba’s Tmall and Tmall Global play a crucial role in a shopping environment like the Chinese one, where users spend on average more time on ecommerce platforms than in the West, and they are not only looking to buy but rather to live an immersive, omnichannel experience.

This is all very different from the UK, where consumers either search for a product online or go straight to a brand’s website and demand rapidity and convenience, rather than a moment invested with social meaning.

As a British brand willing to tap into the China market, it is important to choose a trusted partner to work with. Being present on one of Alibaba’s marketplaces brings with it a brand awareness and access to 20

February 2018

the Chinese consumer that would be difficult to achieve otherwise.

We have already over 200 UK brands with stores on our platforms, and we expect to welcome more in the next few months, to represent the “made in Britain” excellence, quality and reliability.

What do you expect the ecommerce and retail scene to look like over the next five to 10 years?

The channel you shop in is becoming increasingly less relevant: in China, the lines between on and offline are now more or less invisible, and I expect to see this trend continue in the UK. Datadriven technology will play a key role in designing a consistent and entertaining shopping experience for customers at every touchpoint, as ecommerce players strengthen their investment in offline experiences, and as traditional players embrace new technology.

The better that businesses use data, the more successful they will be. The real challenge for retailers will be to find the right blend of personalised, engaging service, relevant branding, and products to catch the attention of tomorrow’s consumers.

David Lloyd, Managing Director for the UK, Ireland and Nordics

“Through “New Retail” we want to bring our data and technological capability to work with and digitally transform the 82% of offline retail”

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CHANGE FOR THE PEOPLE, BY THE PEOPLE Writ ten by BEN MOUNCER

Digital transformations are now seen as mission critical to businesses large and small, yet Conrad Fritzsch, Mercedes-Benz’s Director of Digitalisation, Marketing & Sales, explains why people as much as technologies are the true drivers of change

TECHNOLOGY

SPEAK TO THE leader of any ambitious business in any region of the world, and it won’t be long before you arrive at one particular topic in the conversation.

‘Digital transformation’ may well rank as the buzziest of buzz phrases from 2017, a year that also made convincing commentators ‘influencers’, heralded any progress points as ‘nextgen’ and redefined an employee’s (human, not robot) working capacity as ‘bandwidth’.

While quirks in language come and 24

February 2018

go, however, the plans and processes that define a ‘digital transformation’ are here to stay. This is no fad. Like the office chairs you sit in and the screens you’re reading on, technology as the vertebrae of a business – and installing it quickly - is becoming less desirable and more just plainly essential.

Yet a recent study, conducted by Vanson Bourne, reported that nine out of every 10 digital transformation projects fail. The research called on input from 450 CIOs, CTOs and

The parent company, Daimler, knows the pairing of its mobility platforms with the trends and futuristic technologies of tomorrow is the answer to the individual needs of its customers

Chief Digital Officers at sizeable companies in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany and France. This startling rate of derailed disruption is consensus, not just a manufactured statistic.

Why does the embedding of digital in businesses prove so problematic, when the very people charged with managing that business have, more often than not, made it their priority? Are they trying too hard, losing sight of its true purpose?

“When you have true customerobsession, then this is what will drive your transformation because you see what’s important and what’s not so important” CONRAD FRITZSCH Director of Digitalisation Marketing & Sales at Mercedes-Benz 25

Video: An insight into the experience and shape of digital transformation at Daimler with the Digital Life Day 2017

CONRAD FRITZSCH Director of Digitalisation Marketing & Sales at Mercedes-Benz

Conrad Fritzsch, born in Berlin in 1969 joined Daimler AG in August 2017. He is the Director of Digitalization Marketing & Sales Mercedes-Benz. He is the driver of the digital transformation.

In order to promote entrepreneurial creativity and cooperation, Fritzsch brought digital marketing and IT together within a swarm organization. In his function, he leads the digital transformation and Mercedes me, which offers a digital, personalised ecosystem and is all about to satisfy customer demands.

Besides, he promotes a seamless customer journey, which is ensured through the new website in frontend and backend “OneWeb�. Further he is responsible for eCommerce. With the creation of new international delivery hubs, Fritzsch is also very active in worldwide recruitment of digital high potential employees.

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February 2018

TECHNOLOGY Conrad Fritzsch is Director of Digitalisation, Marketing & Sales, at Mercedes-Benz. As the overseer of a digital transformation in a worldfamous company steeped in tradition, he is keenly aware of the challenges.

For him, the focus shouldn’t be on technology itself, but on people.

“Customer-obsession is the starting point for any transformation,” he tells Business Chief from the automaker’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.

“In the past (at Mercedes-Benz), often we built things because we can. Technical things, more driven by innovation, more driven by what us as engineers can build. Now we’re trying to find out what our customers want today and tomorrow.

“What is important for our customers? When you have true customer-obsession, then this is what will drive your transformation because you see what’s important and what’s not so important.”

Fritzsch joined Mercedes-Benz’s parent group, Daimler AG, in August 2016. In the short period since he has started the long journey to change, trying to impart his expertise on a company boasting 280,000 employees; a weight of work he

admits being surprised by initially “Coming from start-ups, I really underestimated how huge and complex the company is,” he remarks.

The 48-year-old’s primary role is to weave innovative digital products into modern working models, all with the customer’s requirements as the motivation. For example, Fritzsch lead on ‘Mercedes me’, the manufacturer’s range of mobile services and apps that come together to deliver a best-inclass digital service to its customers.

His most notable change so far, though, has been to merge MercedesBenz’s marketing and IT provisions, creating a swarm mentality that has hastened the pace of change from both a technical and personnel perspective.

He claims its most crucial aspect has been the buy-in of the employees.

“The first point that you have to really solve is, does the company want to change or not? Not only the Board, not only the top management, everyone. We have to create a working and culture model that works for all of us.” explains Fritzsch.

“Digital transformation in big companies is more a transformation of the people, from A to B. It’s not too much about digital only; you have to 27

TECHNOLOGY understand that the people are the core in this changing process. Daimler is a fantastic company and it knows that we have to change because the world is changing, the customer is changing.

“In our department, there were around 250 people from IT and the business unit together. We said, ‘Okay, these are our problems we have to solve and these are the people we have’. Then you see white spots because there are new roles we didn’t make! When you build digital products like apps, you need all kinds of experts – so we built a team from both outside experts and inside experts.”

A vital part of the process was establishing the new working models, with the scale of change broken down into step-by-step parts – an approach

“Digital transformation in big companies is more a transformation of the people, from A to B” CONRAD FRITZSCH Director of Digitalisation Marketing & Sales at Mercedes-Benz 28

February 2018

to transformation that Fritzsch likens to developing a key piece of software.

“When you build software, you go out with beta, the version one, version two etc. This is the same method. With the people, we said ‘let’s change in this direction’. We built a Daimler blueprint which combines the strengths of start-ups and global company,” he adds.

“Everybody was on the boat, they had the right mindset. They didn’t say ‘so we made something wrong and now some guy’s come here and has some big answer?’. We built a solution together and everyone could see that solution. That is super important when you want to change.”

Fritzsch’s energy for his mission is career, and it’s a passion that powered a unique career ahead of him taking up the role at MercedesBenz one and a half years ago.

Back in 1993, he co-founded the advertising agency Fritzsch & Mackat, where he served as Creative Director, leading on all creation and consulting. His innovative spark saw him launch tape.tv in 2008, an online music video streaming service that, at its peak, serves 3.9mn unique users, hosting videos from high-profile

DigitalLife Days is a method for the Group to keep staff informed of technological developments and show digital transformation in action artists from around the world.

Fritzsch left the company in 2016, with Daimler picking up the phone.

“I have never worked on this scale. And I thought, ‘okay, the transformation of the car industry is a fantastic challenge’,” he reveals.

“In my life, I had built my own companies but I had never had one of these corporate challenges, as they described; when a corporate company really wants to change. I thought, with all the skills and experiences I gathered in the past, that I can do it.”

Is he content with how it has gone since he picked up the baton in August?

“Am I happy how it goes? 100% yes.

Are we done? 100% no. It’s a really tough journey for us,” he summarises.

“In my world, when I made it my plan in August, September 2016, I thought it will be much quicker.

We’ve decided that we need more people, to move forward and to change more dramatically.

“With digital transformations, don’t make a plan and think it will just work. There is always a change, there is always a new idea from outside, there is always a distraction.

But you have to take everyone on this journey with you.”

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What’s the key to keeping your best talent?

Stuart Hodge looks at the main challenges companies face in terms of staff retention and some of the novel approaches big companies are taking to create a positive culture Writ ten by STUART HODGE

PEOPLE FOR ANY BUSINESS, ensuring that you keep hold of your most talented members of staff in an often increasingly competitive job market can be the difference between sustained success and the possibility of stagnating or going backwards.

Indeed, a recent Willis Towers Watson study showed that more than half of all organisations globally have difficulty retaining some of their most valued employee groups and that more than a quarter of employees are considered ‘high-risk’ for turnover.

Most scholars would agree that motivation is at the heart of keeping a workforce happy and, according to a recent report by Forbes, establishing an emotional connection with staff is the key to ensuring a cohesive and inclusive culture around the company.

The Forbes study asked HR professionals what their biggest challenges are related to corporate culture and they said overwhelmingly that creating a cohesive culture (55%) and retaining talent (41%) gave them the most concern.

Lola Gershfeld, Psy.D, Board Dynamics Specialist and CEO at 32

February 2018

52% of executives feel culture is primarily set by the current CEO Level Five Executive, says creating that emotional connection can be done using a three-stage plan called Board/Team Dynamics Process.

“When everyone is familiar with and understands one streamlined process the culture becomes much more cohesive,” she says.

“Team members start speaking

W H AT ’ S T H E K E Y T O K E E P I N G Y O U R B E S T TA L E N T ?

the same language and using the same tools to work through conflict. This is where you start to see some really positive changes.

“In our work, we’ve found that culture has to start from the top.

Everyone tends to look up to learn behavior. This is backed up by a recent study from Duke University

that says 52% of executives feel culture is primarily set by the current CEO. And, while boards of directors do not directly choose the firm’s culture, they influence the choice of culture by picking the CEO. “Boards also modify the eventual success of the culture by reinforcing or undermining it through their 33

PEOPLE

“Addressing emotional connection is the way to arrive at a cohesive culture that retains and attracts talent” - Lola Gershfeld, CEO, Level Five Executive approach in addressing challenges together and making that emotional connection with the executive team.

“So, to have a long-term effect on culture, you have to start with the board and the executive team.

This might seem overwhelming, but in that same study, 91% of executives said culture is important at their firm and 78% view culture as one of the top three or top five factors that affect their firm’s value.

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Executives and boards understand the value of culture and they are looking for long-term solutions.

“Improving culture is within arm’s reach. We know how to fix culture for the long haul; it’s just a matter of committing to it. Addressing emotional connection is the way to arrive at a cohesive culture that retains and attracts talent.”

But this is just one approach to creating a positive culture within

a company. For some companies, such as the Star Entertainment Group in Australia, it’s more about creating an operational identity and sense of belonging for employees.

“With over 4,500 staff, the real trick is to ensure that everyone is willing to act autonomously,” says Dino Mezzatesta, COO. “It’s important to have confidence and faith in your employees and support them to give their best. There are four things

we ask our employees to do: live it, bring it, own it and deliver it.

“By ‘live it’ we mean that people need to understand guests and their expectations to ensure that what they provide is in keeping with what a customer wants. When we talk about ‘bringing it’, we want our people to always give of their best and to bring everything that they can to offer to our customers. ‘Own it’ means step up, don’t be afraid to take ownership of situations, to be brave and not to be scared to do things differently. And ‘deliver it’ is basically the final step, because if you do the top three then you should be able to be the perfect host.”

Given the Star Entertainment Group’s award-winning hospitality offering, there can be no doubt that this approach is working, but another important factor for businesses is ensuring that they are helping to develop the leaders of tomorrow as well.

Figures in the TalentKeepers Workplace America report show that a disappointing 36% of organisations are taking steps to develop leaders to drive engagement.

“Leaders need to be trained in 35

PEOPLE

A US study shows 36% of organisations are taking steps to develop leaders to drive engagement

employee engagement skills and must understand their role in retaining and motivating people,” says Christopher Mulligan, TalentKeepers CEO and author of the report.

“The first step in leveraging leaders is determining how well they are currently doing and understanding specifically what training they need to become successful. Every leader should have engagement and retention goals, incentives to meet those goals, and consequences for failing to do so.”

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Clearly the pressure to keep your best staff has never been greater and the lengths companies will go to in creating a positive working culture and environment are more creative than ever.

For Paul Alexander, Head of Indirect Procurement for EMEA with BP, the best way to ensure staff loyalty and to keep them happy in their work is by engaging employees on an intellectual level to stimulate and challenge them.

“My view is that inspiration and

W H AT ’ S T H E K E Y T O K E E P I N G Y O U R B E S T TA L E N T ?

learning is really what people are turned on by these days and that’s what creates a successful team,” says Alexander, who is a bonafide leadership expert and speaker with a passion for the subject.

“Something that compounded my thinking was research by Zenger and Folkman. They’ve written a couple of books, the first of which is called ‘The Extraordinary Leader’ and their research is absolutely fascinating.

“They’ve found many things in their studies and they’ve used very, very large sample groups to test their assumptions. They have

“Inspiration and learning is really what people are turned on by these days and that’s what creates a successful team” - Paul Alexander, Head of Indirect Procurement for EMEA, BP

found very clearly that the ability for leaders to inspire interest and the resource and sincerity you put into development and learning are the things that will drive success.

“I do believe in a knowledgebased economy and a productive economy: you need to have people who want to work for you and are motivated and want to succeed.

“The research on the millennial generation really underlines all of this, I think what they’re asking for which is to be treated with respect, not to be hugely well rewarded but to be sensibly and adequately rewarded but to be treated well and given the opportunity to learn and fulfill themselves.

“I think that’s what we all want; the difference now is that a lot of work has gone into listening to millennials who have a loud voice and I think and hope our workplace is evolving the way it needs to do for the benefit of us all.

“Another thing I would point to is the work of Dan Pink. What he says is three things really turn people on: autonomy, the freedom to do the job the way they want to do it; mastery, giving them the 37

PEOPLE Employees who are “engaged and thriving� are 59% less likely to look for a job elsewhere

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February 2018

W H AT ’ S T H E K E Y T O K E E P I N G Y O U R B E S T TA L E N T ?

support to excel at what they do; and purpose, helping them find a reason to do what they do.

“If I could crystallise everything that I’m saying about leadership into one word it would be: inspiration. Within procurement, they can be the kind of people who turn up, place orders and do a commodity task, or they can be the people who save the company.

“My very strong belief is that when people come to work they should be able to have a good time and I don’t know why so many organisations struggle with that.”

Indeed, when Alexander breaks it down like that it is hard to fathom why so many companies find it difficult to create such a positive environment for staff to work in, and no doubt this issue is becoming increasingly important.

Research from Gallup shows that employees who are “engaged and thriving” are 59% less likely to look for a job with a different organisation in the next 12 months.

Companies like German online clothing retailer Spreadshirt have an even more novel approach to creating that positive culture and ensuring that work is a fun place

for employees to come into, as Philip Rooke, CEO, explains.

“We have a Feel Good Manager whose job it is to make Spreadshirt a great environment to work in and a big part of this job is organising the company events. We always have a big summer party where family and friends, but also former Spreadsters, come together. Now we also have a “Spreadster exclusive” event, called Wandertag, like a summer outing.

“Talent retention isn’t a big problem for us. We have a great product and a great company, but we do not take that for granted.

Like any company we have our bad days. Our culture and talent retention is led by our Head of Recruiting and Feel Good Manager.

“She’s responsible for the onboarding process for each new Spreadster, and improving workplace culture. In particular she has brought in programs on management communication to improve the way we work with talent. If you respect and empower talent, it wants to stay.”

Words which should perhaps be borne in mind by companies who are worried about competitors poaching their most talented employees.

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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y

Why operational risk management is vital – and where it’s headed

Writ ten by STUART HODGE

Business Chief looks at how operational risk management has developed in recent years and what we can expect in years to come...

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y MITIGATING RISK. IT’S a challenge that every company faces but it’s sometimes a difficult thing to confront or to feel that you’re maximising the potential from.

It can mean anything from having more money set aside for workers’ compensation to an awareness of transaction risk in crossborder deals – that’s why there can often be a reticence in certain sectors to properly address it.

Michael Rosenberg is from WPV Corp, a company which claims to have developed technology that almost completely mitigates the risk of harassment/sexual harassment and workplace violence, using a validated risk assessment and an incident reporting system that is held outside the organisation.

“Managing risk can literally mean the difference between a company being profitable and being bankrupt,” he says assertively.

“Reactive cultures that ignore risk waste millions of dollars literally having to deal with emergencies. It’s like a car: if you don’t do the maintenance and ignore the risk, it will break down at the worst possible time and cost you a lot of money to fix and replace.

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Feburary 2018

Many organisations still use spreads

“Ignoring operational risk leads to significantly higher insurance rates, turnover, lost time and most importantly brand degradation.

“Identifying and preventing operational risk before it becomes a crisis literally is the single largest factor in ensuring a company’s survival.”

But what exactly is operational risk and how do you manage it?

“Typically, operational risk is a highly-siloed discipline in

sheets to manage risk

organisations,” explains Val Jonas, CEO of British consultancy company Risk Decisions.

“Good risk management may be carried out locally, but this doesn’t necessarily meet the organisation’s need to achieve a connected view of risk. It also doesn’t encourage creativity in thinking about both up-side and down-side scenarios. This is exacerbated by the fact that most organisations still use spreadsheets

to manage risk in each silo.

“Those organisations most effective at risk management embed a culture of risk awareness and management as a top-down imperative. This encourages more informed risk taking, drives creativity and increases business performance.

“Key strategies include establishing a consistent approach to give panorganisation visibility of risk, while allowing different operational areas to 43

We asked

Tim Ng…

Operations is an oft used word in the business world, but what does it really mean?

“As a Chief Operating Officer, my challenge is multifaceted. It is not a role that is well defined. It is a role that is integral to the company but is also unique to the sector I am in. The role of a Chief Operating Officer for a financial services firm is very different from one in manufacturing, technology or health.

“The maturity of the business impacts greatly on the skills necessary to ensure that the company operates in a manner that allows it to react to internal and external pressures.

“With market uncertainty and volatility caused by Brexit and the pressure on the currency markets, companies have required a sustained pursuit of greater efficiencies and major business transformations.

“The nature of the position is diverse with a wide variation in operational roles from one sector to another, but the core lies in supporting the CEO and determining the optimal strategy for the future and then help implement it.

“As a CTO, it made sense to move into a broader role within the company which is primarily a technologyenabled business. The ability to marry technology and development skillsets to operations gives us the capability to take our operational agility to another level. We are not wedded and reliant on third parties, we can develop and create our own solutions to operational challenges.

“The challenges facing operations are varied and can be likened to guerilla warfare – you just don’t know where you will have to be next.”

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Feburary 2018

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y

manage risk as appropriate. This will increase and improve collaboration which can lead to valuable insights e.g. supply risks impacting multiple areas of the business. Another strategy is to implement regular audits of key suppliers’ risk policies and processes to ensure they deliver. For example, pharmaceutical companies ensuring that the third-party companies running their clinical trials will do so ethically and in the required time-frames.

“Finally, all business cases should include an assessment of risks, with clear explanations of how they will be managed.”

One of the key facets of operational risk management companies have to address in this day and age is the prospect of cybercrime.

Figures in last year’s Accenture Cost of Cyber Crime study showed that the average annual cost of cybercrime is $11.7mn, increasing annually by 22.7%, with the number of breaches increasing by 27.4% to an average of 130 each year.

“Operational risk management is getting more important in recent years due to the new and more stringent regulatory requirement while organisations are keen to embrace the digital transformation which essentially increases the risk exposure as a result,” says William Tam, Director of Sales Engineering, APAC, for global cybersecurity expert Forcepoint.

“The continuously shifting ‘threat landscape’ requires an equally transformative view on behaviourcentric security. To manage cybersecurity risk, companies need to include measures that understand the nature of human intent and the ability to dynamically adapt security response. That’s the path forward to stop cyberattacks dead in their tracks.

“Cloud computing has been 45

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y a key disruptor to operational risk management. As business critical data continues to move to the cloud, and be made available to anyone anywhere, traditional perimeter-based security and riskmodelling are becoming obsolete.

“Organisations need to concentrate on when and why people interact with critical data. Additionally, as malware continues to evolve, the risks will multiply, leaving traditional security controls ineffective.”

It’s an ever-evolving space, and requires companies to be clear in their thought process and implementation.

Jeff Skipper, an expert in organisational psychology who runs his own consulting firm, Jeff Skipper Consulting, believes it is an area which companies often fail to address.

When asked how important operational risk management is in the business world, he responded assertively.

“Very,” says Skipper. “And it’s too often overlooked because risk management doesn’t seem like ‘productive’ work. You only feel the gap when something goes off the rails.

However, the impact of that can be measured in revenue hits, reputational 46

Feburary 2018

damage, and employee exits.

“In my work with leading organisations in both the public and non-profit sectors, risk management is most commonly only given lip service.

The leaders whom I advise are the ones who continually surface risk as a lever to remove obstacles and act.

“Combining high risk awareness with the strategic use of what I call ‘leadership capital’ is a critical combination for successful initiatives.

It has made the difference between 10% and 100% cost overruns.”

Skipper believes that poorlymanaged strategic projects are often at the root of organisational failings with regards to risk management.

“It’s very common for the best people to try and avoid key projects because they are very demanding,” he says. “But having the best people with strong skills and leadership is key in these situations.

“Secondarily, there are major gaps in future anticipation. We don’t give people time to think about the ‘what ifs’, which can be the greatest source of risk avoidance as well as innovation.”

One of the key areas where innovation is expected in the ORM

“Managing risk can literally mean the difference between a company being profitable and being bankrupt” - Michael Rosenberg, WPV Corp space, as it is in so many others, is by embracing cognitive technology.

David Cahn is the Director of Product Marketing for Elemica, a leading business network for supply chains of process businesses, discussed how that might, and might not, change things.

“Cognitive risk management involves the decision by a human to follow the risk mitigation procedures, but knowing the risk of something doesn’t prevent us from taking a chance anyway,” says Cahn.

“However, cognitive science is being incorporated into technology to create powerful tools that tackle complete problems. Advanced analytics and automation will increasingly play bigger roles as tactical solutions to drive efficiency or to help executives solve complex problems.

“The real opportunities lie in re-imaging the enterprise as an intelligent organisation – one designed to create situational awareness with tools capable of analysing disparate data in real or near-real time.

47

“Organisations need to concentrate on when and why people interact with critical data” - William Tam, Director of Sales Engineering, APAC, Forcepoint “The goal of cognitive governance, as the name implies, is to facilitate the design of intelligent automation to create actionable business intelligence, improve decision-making, and reduce manual processes that lead to poor or uncertain outcomes.

In other words, cognitive governance systematically identifies ‘blind spots’ across the firm then directs intelligent automation to reduce or eliminate the blind spots.”

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Feburary 2018

Tim Ng, COO of Europe’s leading digital health business Now Healthcare, casts an eye even further forward.

“A key challenge in the future will be the necessary integration of new and future technologies into core processes, world-changing technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning,” says Ng. “Data is at the heart of operations, and those who can harness it will be more

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y successful than those who can’t.

“The greatest impact and trend will be the use of artificial intelligence.

This is a logical next step from business intelligence – systems that can consume data from multiple data streams and provide actionable intel in a format that is easily digestible to the management.

Say goodbye to huge teams of analysts: AI will be the new norm.

“Technology in general will drive greater change, so operations people will need to thrive on the adrenaline of complexity and change. The operational canvas will be changed forever and this needs to be embraced.

“The world economy has faced and is still facing large structural changes on the way to bringing business to the international stage. Technology has impacted hugely with the world becoming a much smaller place – globalisation of businesses has significantly accelerated with small companies able to enter the global markets through the use of technology.

It is no longer an honor reserved for large companies and SMEs. “Because of this, agility is required.

Agile operations allow the companies

to react to market conditions and plot routes through the minefield of consumer demand. I expect operational processes to be more agile with changes made almost instantaneously, as technology allows access to real time KPI (key performance indicator) management to an unprecedented level.

“Deeper integration of systems and data will be necessary with mobilisation and real time access a key enabler. With executives able to access data anytime and anywhere, leading to strategic and tactical decision making many factors quicker than previously possible.

Micro services will be the new fabric for operations with the reliance on the large monolithic enterprise systems no longer necessary.

Imagine if you could piece together the services you needed like a jigsaw.

Able to add, update and discard as necessary when new technologies or better AI became available.

“These are just the beginnings – it is no longer enough to be a safe pair of hands. It is now necessary to have the mindset of an innovator and creator to ensure that operations are able to support the needs of the business.”

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PAR CITY FOCUS

BUSINESS CHIEF TAKES A LOOK AT WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS FOR PARIS AS A CONTINENTAL TOURISM HOTSPOT AND BUSINESS HUB Writ ten by STUART HODGE

RIS

CITY FOCUS

BOUNCING BACK AS A TOURIST HOTSPOT

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K T T

AFTER THE PARIS terror attacks in November 2015, the French economy was directly hit by a major drop is tourism numbers to the French capital, with the decline taking 0.2 percentage points off the country’s economic growth in 2016.

The total number of tourists visiting Paris in 2016 fell by 1.5mn, but the number increased by 10% in the first half of the year after a concerted attempt by local authorities to reduce fears and attract visitors back to the city.

The mayor’s office offered discounts for tourists and developed a plan to reduce the waiting time at key attractions as well as promoting some of the city’s less salubrious neighbourhoods and districts.

Frédéric Valletoux, President of the regional tourism board, says that the drive must continue to ensure that the rise continues this year.

“These efforts will continue in order to strengthen our competitiveness

“ WE NEED FLEXIBILITY, BUT ALSO A NEW KIND OF WELFARE SYSTEM, WITH MORE RIGHTS FOR PEOPLE TAKING RISKS, AND MORE RIGHTS FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE NOT FINDING THEIR PLACE IN GLOBALISATION” – Antoine Foucher, Chief of Staff to the French Labour Minister and make the destination more welcoming, cleaner and safer. It took three years for New York to bounce back after the September 11th attacks, for Madrid it was a year and for Paris also a year.

“The international situation remains turbulent, and terrorism a daily threat.”

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CITY FOCUS

LABOUR REFORMS FRENCH PRESIDENT EMMANUEL Macron is bringing in controversial new labour laws which will give employees more freedom to hire and fire workers, but those will be counter-balanced by expanded unemployment benefits for workers and revamped training programs, similar to what is seen in Scandinavian societies. The proposed overhaul of unemployment benefits will tighten conditions for the subsidies though.

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February 2018

“We need to adapt France to globalisation while still being French,” says Antoine Foucher, Chief of Staff to the French Labour Minister.

“We need flexibility, but also a new kind of welfare system, with more rights for people taking risks, and more rights for people who are not finding their place in globalisation.”

Leading economists, though, doubt that easing firing will inspire companies to hire more people.

“In the short term, it will actually make it easier to destroy jobs,” Eric Heyer, an economist at the SciencesPo university in Paris, told the New York Times. “A lot of businesses have too many people”.

Another move by the Macron administration has been to majorly reduce a “wealth tax” which it says has driven vast numbers of millionaires out of the country.

But Alexandre Derigny, a

spokesman for a group of trade unions, says that’s not true. “The idea that companies won’t settle in France because of high taxes is a false argument, that they tell us to pass policies that are difficult to justify in the eyes of the population,” he says.

Despite many dissenting voices and widespread protests in Paris about the reforms a few months ago, Macron confirmed in a speech at the turn of the year, that he will not be stopped in forcing his reforms through in 2018.

“I will ensure all voices, including contrary ones, are heard. But all the same, I will not stop acting,” insists the President.

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CITY FOCUS

COULD BREXIT SEE A MAJOR INFLUX OF NEW COMPANIES INTO PARIS? THE IMPENDING DEPARTURE of the United Kingdom from the European Union has led vast numbers of companies looking to relocate and consider Paris as their new base.

Eight of the world’s top 100 companies including oil giant Total, insurance specialist AXA and the BNP Paribas bank are currently based in the French capital and a good few more could be set to follow given 56

February 2018

the city’s proximity to London.

Marie-Célie Guillaume is Chief Executive of Defacto, which manages Paris’s La Défense business district, the largest of its type in Europe, and she has been at the centre of attempts to try and lure companies across the water.

“The uncertainty opened up by the Brexit vote is growing even bigger today,” she says, speaking to The

“ UNTIL NOW ASIAN FIRMS SETTING UP IN EUROPE IMMEDIATELY CHOSE LONDON WITHOUT A MOMENT’S THOUGHT. NOW IT’S CLEAR THAT THEY ARE HESITATING BETWEEN GERMANY AND FRANCE” – Marie-Célie Guillaume, Chief Executive, Defacto

Guardian. “We have no clarification of the full timeframe or the conditions of Brexit, and if there’s one thing companies hate, it’s uncertainty.”

The striking business district is ready to accommodate the potential influx with hundreds of thousands of square metres of fairly cheap office space for any company that might decide to relocate staff from London, and Guillaume is hopeful that it will provide a real boost to the French capital.

For her though, it’s not just about encouraging companies currently based in the UK capital to move to Paris – she also is looking to companies further afield which may be looking to establish a European base.

It is expected that Paris will mainly be in competition with Frankfurt, home of the European Central Bank for prospective business.

“Our target is not just companies that

are currently in London,” Guillaume adds. “Until now Asian firms setting up in Europe immediately chose London without a moment’s thought.

Now it’s clear that they are hesitating between Germany and France.”

It seems that Paris is seizing the moment, supplemented by the Macron administration’s business-friendly reforms.

Goldman Sachs’ Chief Executive, Lloyd Blankfein, praised the city on social media at the end of last year, saying he was “struck by the positive energy here in Paris. Strong government and business leaders are committed to economic reform and are well through the first steps.”

As plans for Brexit become more defined, so will the expectations of how much Paris will benefit from the highly anticipated exodus of companies from the UK. 57

FACTS PARIS, FRANCE’S CAPITAL, is a major European city and a global centre for art, fashion, gastronomy and culture. Its 19th-century cityscape is crisscrossed by wide boulevards and the River Seine. Beyond such landmarks as the Eiffel Tower and the 12th-century, Gothic Notre-Dame cathedral, the city is known for its cafe culture and designer boutiques along the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. The city is also home to Europe’s largest business district, La Défense, which provides employment for 180,000 daily workers and has 3.5mn square metres of office space.

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February 2018

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T O P 10

European IPOs of

2017 The region scored the highest number of deals since 2007. Looking back at 2017, we rank the top 10 IPOs in Europe by proceeds (Sources: EY & Bloomberg) Wri t te n by D A N B R I G H T M O R E

T O P 10

10

Terveystalo $1.042bn (Finland)

www.terveystalo.com In just 15 years Terveystalo has become the largest healthcare service company in Finland, offering versatile healthcare, occupational healthcare, medical and examination services in nearly 150 clinics around Finland. Its customers include private individuals, companies and communities, insurance firms and the public sector. Terveystalo employs almost 9,000 healthcare professionals with more than one million customers and in 2016 registered 2.7mn doctor visits, accounting for 12% of Finland’s total.

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February 2018

09

Play Communications $1.054bn (Poland)

www.playcommunications.com Founded in 2005 Play Communications is one of the fastest growing European mobile operators and the second largest mobile network operator in Poland based on reported number of subscribers, with over 14.3mn subscribers as of March 2017, a 37% increase year on year. Play provides mobile voice, messaging and data offerings and services to consumers and businesses on a contract and prepaid basis. Play has been one of the most successful late entrants to the mobile market in Europe, gaining a subscriber market share of approximately 27% during ten years of operations.

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Delivery Hero $1.115bn (Germany)

www.deliveryhero.com Niklas Ă–stberg founded Delivery Hero in 2011 building the global leader in online food ordering. His founding team shared decades of knowledge of working with internet companies. Headquartered in Berlin, the company boasts 1,000 employees at its HQ alone along with employees from over 70 nationalities across five continents delivering best practice from markets at each corner of the world. The business is backed by first-tier investors and to date $1bn has been raised to aid Delivery Hero on its mission to provide people with the easiest route to their favourite food.

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07

ALD $1.238bn (France)

www.aldautomotive.com ALD S.A. provides fleet management and long-term vehicle leasing solutions to companies in France and internationally. It offers full service leasing, outsourcing solutions, sale and lease back services, and fleet consultancy. The company also provides tools and services for fleet managers and drivers; and maintenance, assistance, availability of a vehicle, and tire management services. In addition, it engages in trading of used cars and light commercial vehicles, as well as the retail sale of used cars. The company was founded in 1946 and is based in Puteaux, France. ALD S.A. is a subsidiary of Societe Generale Group.

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06

En+ Group $1.5bn (Russia)

www.enplus.ru En+ Group is a leading vertically integrated aluminium and power producer unique among natural resources companies. The company’s website claims its business advantage comes from the full integration of world class hydro power assets that reliably and sustainably supply the energy required for the production of aluminium. Allied to this, its aluminium production capabilities make it the largest producer in the sector outside of China. With an established presence in 19 countries and a strong operational hub in Siberia, combining the assets of both metals and energy segments, the group is able to capture global opportunities through best-in-class assets and scale.

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22ND OF MARCH 2018

KISTAMÄSSAN, STOCKHOLM

www.datainnovationsummit.com

05

Galencia $1.886bn (Switzerland)

www.galenica.com Galenica is the leading fully-integrated healthcare provider in Switzerland, operating the largest network of pharmacies in Switzerland (made up of 500 own, joint venture and independent partners) offering well-known own brands and products, exclusive brands and products from business partners as well as a variety of on-site health services and tests for customers. It also provides marketing services, distribution and supply chain management of OTC (over the counter), para-pharmaceutical and health and beauty products.

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04

BAWAG Group $1.975bn (Austria)

www.bawaggroup.com BAWAG Group operates one of Austria’s largest capitalised banks with more than 130 years’ experience, serving over 2.2mn customers offering financial products and services through a multi-channel strategy, combining a centrally managed branch network with a digital banking offering. BAWAG Group is a major player in the direct banking market through its easybank business as well as online and mobile platforms. It offers comprehensive savings, payment, lending, leasing, investment, building society and insurance products and services to retail, small business and corporate customers across the country allied to its global presence, particularly in the DACH region. For the financial year 2016, it ranked among the top 5% of European banks across key profitability and efficiency metrics.

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February 2018

03

Landis & Gyr Group $2.381bn (Switzerland)

www.landisgyr.com For more than 120 years, Landis+Gyr has been an industry leader in energy management solutions. Using its advanced metering infrastructure and other cutting-edge smart grid technologies, it helps utility companies all over the globe improve their operations, protect their assets, lower their operating costs and provide better customer service. With a focus on quality, reliability, and innovation Landis+Gyr’s website states its mission is to utilise its portfolio of products and services to modernise its customers’ smart grids for the future.

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02

Pirelli $2.614bn (Italy)

www.pirelli.com Pirelli was founded in Milan in 1872. Still headquartered there, it’s now a global brand known for its use of cutting-edge technology, high-end production excellence and passion for innovation that draws heavily on its Italian roots. With around 30,000 employees and a turnover of €5bn in 2016, Pirelli is a major player in the tyre industry and the only global player focused solely on the consumer tyre market, for cars, motorcycles and bicycles. After de-listing in 2015 the company underwent a thorough reorganisation and invested in new skills and functions critical for the future, such as Consumer Marketing, Digital, Data Science, Cyber, and Velo. In March 2017, Pirelli spun off its industrial tyre business to focus 100% on consumer tyres to deliver innovation and specialties for its comprehensive product portfolio.

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01

Allied Irish Bank $3.837bn (Ireland)

www.aibgb.co.uk AIB Group PLC provides banking and financial products and services to individuals, businesses, and corporate customers primarily in the Republic of Ireland and the UK. The company offers various deposit products, such as current accounts, demand deposits, regular saver deposits, notice deposits, fixed term deposits, junior/student saver deposits, and currency deposits. It also provides a range of loans, including personal, car, home improvement, travel, education, wedding, and overdraft loans, as well as graduate finance, mortgages, corporate finance, asset finance, business loans, energy efficiency finance, farmer credit line and farm development loans.

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February 2018

BI Q RE ZCL UO TE I C DI EIV CK 15 SC E O A 1 TO UN 5 T* %

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NHSBSA Harnessing the power of technology to better patient care Written by Catherine Sturman Produced by Andy Lloyd

Behind the development of new digital tools, the NHSBSA continues to support the healthcare of patients in England and Wales, transforming its services to guarantee the delivery of industry-leading services

E

stablished in 2006, the National Health Service Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) has centralised a multitude of services under one core umbrella. This includes Citizen Services, (Help with Health Costs and Student Services), Primary Care Services (Prescription Services and Dental Services) and NHS Workforce Services (NHS Pensions and HR Shared Services).

The organisation strives to support patients in the daily management of their healthcare needs, embracing new digital tools in order to provide a service that is resilient, seamless and caters for all ages amidst growing consumer demands.

“In terms of a transformation, it’s not just around technology. Over the last two years, we recognised that we needed to transform our

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February 2018

services to be able to cope with the demand and pressures being placed upon them,” explains NHSBSA’s Chief Digital Officer Darren Curry.

“To increase demand for our services and make them more efficient, not just from a cost perspective but through ease of use, access and speed, my role has been to take the organisation on that journey, developing digital services for our users, customers and other NHS organisations.”

Seamless services The NHSBSA’s journey has seen its services move towards an increasingly customer-centric model, which has seen it not only transform end to end user experiences, but also the culture of how the organisation views and delivers its services.

Darren Curry Chief Digital Officer

Darren is an experienced transformation leader with 17 years’ experience in the NHS both patient facing and non-patient facing. With a varied breadth of experience and a background including Digital Transformation, Portfolio, Programme and Project Management and Primary Care managing a GP Practice

europe.businesschief.com

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NHSBSA RADICALLY TRANSFORMS CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIPS WITH DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY Digital technologies are changing the way in which clinicians, citizens and patients manage and make use of the UK health system. As a result, this is enabling health enterprises to improve labour productivity, human experiences and allowing clinicians and service workers to broadly apply their knowledge. It is no longer about what technology can do for people but what people can do with technology.

Accenture to bring the full scale of Accenture’s skills and approach. The Digital Factory balances the certainty of a supply of skilled resources, provided in a managed service structure against the need to adapt to changes in demand that come when undertaking ambitious and innovative programmes.

Resources and teams are scaled up and down depending on the total number of projects as well as the demands of the project.

The NHS Business Service Authority (NHSBSA) is working closely with Accenture to change the way it interacts with its customers and sharpen its focus on high-quality and highvalue interactions across customers and the services it provides. Digitisation is at the core of this ambitious initiative, enabling fundamental changes to how services are currently delivered.

This collaboration is enabling the NHSBSA to continue its digital transformation journey, working alongside Accenture to adapt and scale to meet demand fluctuations over time.

Accenture understands the need to evolve with its customers by providing consistent high-quality delivery and harnessing Accenture’s broad range of innovations in supporting its client’s vision. When digital technologies adapt to the people that use it in healthcare—health insurers, providers and consumers—people have the power to define the future of healthcare.

Accenture is currently working with NHSBSA in a flexible model called the Digital Factory.

The Digital Factory acts as an entry point into

TO FIND OUT MORE, VISIT US AT ACCENTURE.COM/HEALTH

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TECHNOLOGY

‘The Authority will roll out Artificial Intelligence in all of its contact centres to cater to increased patient demand’

“We’ve altered our delivery model to become increasingly agile, where we are looking at our services from a user need perspective and reacting to those changing needs. We have therefore built a strong emphasis upon user research and creative roles in the organisation in order to build services which meet the needs of those users,” Curry says.

Adopting a cloud-first hosting model has been instrumental to the growth and improvement of NHSBSA’s services and enabled it to cater towards growing populations and increased demands on its traditional service model. “Our cloud services were developed in partnership with Arcus and Amazon Web Services (AWS),” adds Curry. “This has enabled us to increase flexibility while reducing deployment times so that we’re now deploying multiple releases per month. It’s still less than where we ultimately want to be, but it’s a lot quicker than where we were.”

New, digital ways of working have also removed any potential difficulties within traditional, paper led processes and applications, where new digital applications have saved not only time for end users

europe.businesschief.com

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NHS BUSINESS SERVICES AUTHORITY (NHSBSA)

and clinicians while driving down costs for the Authority. Additionally, embracing technology has led to an increased public awareness regarding the types of services and support that the Authority can offer.

However, testing new services and garnering feedback through consumer engagement has been essential. The implementation of cross-functional teams, where midwives, pharmacists, hospital

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staff and GP’s have been included in the development of the services provided, has only seen services improve and receive positive feedback across the board.

“Developers, project managers, researchers and designers all take these products out and show them to users in real world scenarios in order to improve the access of these services and make them as easy to use as possible,” adds Curry.

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When we spoke to users, we were able to redesign certain features, and have seen an increase of approximately 70% in cases where people now complete their journeys online – Darren Curry, Chief Digital Officer

Patient support One such area of extensive positive feedback is how digital tools have raised awareness of the NHSBSA’s Help with Health Costs services.

“From user research, we identified a need for users to obtain better visibility of the help with health costs they were entitled to,” notes Curry. “This has traditionally been a paper process, with multiple pages and a lot of understanding needed,

making it quite difficult for some people to access. Through the work that we’re doing, we have made it possible for a user to identify what help with health costs they could get in less than five minutes online.

“Some people we spoke with weren’t getting essential treatment because they couldn’t afford it or were not aware that a service existed. We are therefore making our services as accessible as possible,

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in order to make a direct impact.”

Working alongside Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs) has also seen the NHSBSA develop services which provide analytics to prescribers through its ePACT2 product, a Business Intelligence (BI) tool where data surrounding dispensing trends can help identify emerging trends, but also mitigate particular risks.

One area that this has been used is in Polypharmacy, where a patient may be prescribed 10 or more medicines

Some people we spoke with weren’t getting essential treatment because they couldn’t afford it or were not aware that this service existed. We are making our services as accessible as possible – Darren Curry, Chief Digital Officer

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at the same time. Indicators can be has been completed, where similar used to identify particular patient technologies seen in Amazon Alexa groups that maybe at more risk and have also been embedded within the enable informed insight to prescribers. Authority’s contact centre operations.

“The system allows a CCG to “It’s providing a number of benefits identify trends. It’s predicting these to users. We implemented this in four things and utilising historical data. weeks and went live with an initial You know patients prescribed A and service. However, we also made sure B, but therefore they that patients had the now have an increased opportunity to drop NHSBSA was risk of developing out and speak to an established in X. It has been well operator at any point received,” says Curry. in the process, as we don’t want to force Partner power people to use it,” With growing observes Curry. populations and a “Through this shrinking healthcare budget, patient process, we had a success rate services continue to remain under of over 40% of all customers that strain, leading the healthcare industry called in, where their queries could to continue to look at providing be resolved with the AI which had digital solutions to its customers. been put in place. Whilst users Utilising artificial intelligence (AI), can talk to an operator between the NHSBSA’s contact centre has 7am and 5pm, we’ve got AI on the piloted supporting users in some phone 24 hours, seven days a week. of the most routine questions, This is now set to be rolled out. leading to a drop in wait times and “I’m looking to explore where we an increase in operator availability. can apply that technology further,” Working with Arcus and Amazon, continues Curry. “This will enable our the NHSBSA’s initial proof of concept contact centre operators to speak with

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users who need more support and have complex queries giving people an increased quality of service.

“However, whilst we’ve made incremental improvements, it’s difficult to be constantly ahead of new technology and new approaches to delivery, which is one of the key drivers of doing the transformation.”

Service improvements Monitoring all user feedback via data analytics, the NHSBSA continues to listen to its customers

in order to develop, enhance and improve its products and services.

For example, its prescription prepayment service, where patients with multiple prescriptions are able to obtain a pre-payment service where for a set fee, a patient may get as many prescriptions as they need, which Curry describes as “kind of

NHSBSA has

2,500 employees

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a season ticket for prescriptions.

“People were originally a bit reticent due to the look and feel of the service and the payment screen associated with it,” observes Curry.

“We identified through Google Analytics that people were therefore dropping out at specific points. When we spoke to users, we were able to redesign these features, and have seen an increase of approximately 70% in cases where people now complete their journey online.”

Working to build capability Aligned with UK Government ITC strategy to drive innovation and increase efficiencies, NHSBSA is collaborating with established, innovative companies and SME suppliers. Through this, the organisation is increasing selfsufficiency and building capability.

One such example is through its partnership with Valtech in the transformation of pension services, supporting the development of the NHSBSA team’s knowledge and skills.

Valtech have been supporting NHSBSA since mid-2016, and has

established blended, co-located teams on NHSBSA sites in Fleetwood, Newcastle, and in their own offices in central Manchester. In partnership with Valtech, NHSBSA is delivering a range of new, innovative services within the Digitisation of Pensions, enabling members to manage their pensions more efficiently. From day

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When we spoke to users, we were able to redesign certain features, and have seen an increase of approximately 70% in cases where people now complete their journeys online – Darren Curry, Chief Digital Officer

one, a key goal of the engagement has been to establish and grow in-house capability, reducing longterm reliance on suppliers.

Working with enablement and delivery experts such as Valtech, NHSBSA is employing the collaborative delivery of business-critical services as a catalyst for digital transformation.

“We’re making sure that within these partnerships there is an arrangement to increase knowledge in there,” adds Curry. “It’s as much about leaving a self-sustainable capability and not creating a reliance or dependency as it is about the service. Working with partners such as Valtech on collaborative delivery supports this.”

Future improvements With Curry describing the healthcare industry as “a hotbed of innovation,”

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the emergence of health wearables and products to support patients in the daily management of their healthcare needs will continue to inspire the NHSBSA to develop and deliver exceptional user-focused solutions. “In the future, we’ll get a lot more analytics predicting health issues. People will then address them in advance of them occurring,” concludes Curry.

“I think there is a huge opportunity in the joining of social care in the UK. Through the use of technology, we can put the onus of enablement upon the patient or the user to take their health into their own hands.

“We are very much on an ongoing road map for all of our services, delivering the transformation and continuing to carry out user research to the benefit of our patients.”

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NFU MUTUAL An IT transformation with the customer at heart Written by Dale Benton Produced by Andy Lloyd

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After over a century of market leading, customer focused insurance services, NFU Mutual has embarked on an aggressive reorgnisation of its IT infrastructure

“

It’s our mutuality which sets us apart,” reads NFU Mutual’s website.

“We’re owned and run for you, our 900,000+ members, and we work hard to protect your interests.”

NFU Mutual started life in the UK back in 1910 as a means of attracting new union members for the farming community. The farming community is very much the heart of the company, it says as much in its name – the National Farming Union Mutual Society Ltd. Fast forward over a century, and NFU Mutual is a market-leading and award-winning provider of insurance, protection investments and investments not just to the majority of UK farmers, but thousands of other businesses, homeowners and drivers too.

Modernisation Over the course of the company’s

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long history, it has only been able to achieve its current position through a sustained commitment to its community and its members, but it has been a journey of transformation and modernisation.

This is where Tim Mann, CIO at NFU Mutual, comes into play.

Recruited in 2010, Mann entered the company to oversee a complete modernisation of NFU Mutual’s IT infrastructure, with the goal to ultimately better serve its customers.

It is the company’s belief in the customer, Mann is convinced, that truly separates NFU Mutual from other insurance providers.

“The interesting thing about NFU Mutual is it really is a very customercentric business,” says Mann. “I’ve worked in companies previously where they talked about putting customers and shareholders at the top of the list. NFU Mutual really

does do it. We really live it.”

This approach to the customer and providing customer service to the highest standard not only drives the business, it is the sole purpose for the modernising of NFU Mutual’s IT infrastructure.

When Mann entered the business and was set this transformational task, he carved the entire process into what he describes as three phases.

Phase one: Brilliant Basics For Mann the idea was simple, on the surface at least.

“It was a case of getting everything that we already had, our technology and our processes, and making sure it worked and it was reliable,” he says.

“And while that does sound simple, it proved to be quite a challenge.”

An insurance company lives and dies on its relationship with the

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customer and how it provides an accessible portal or communication between those customers and the company. Brilliant basics was centred on creating a reputation for delivering service.

To this end, Mann and his team worked tirelessly to ensure that from top to bottom, the IT function worked exactly as it should.

This phase in particular, proved a key turning point in the whole modernisation process.

“That’s the heartland of any transformational journey really,” he says. “If you can do that, and prove what you’re doing is successful, then people in any company will start to believe in you and start to trust in technology.”

Brilliant Basics may have been the first phase of the process, but Mann is keen to stress that it’s a phase that continues to this day as NFU Mutual still values that promise of service over anything else.

Phase two: Changing the Game The second phase of modernising NFU Mutual’s IT was, once more, focused on what was already in place. Mann set out to use the existing technology to change the way the company does business.

“It’s trying to get our systems to do more of the routine work,” he says. “This in turn allows our people to do that very special thing that they are good at, that no one else can do.”

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“I’ve worked in companies previously where they talked about putting customers and shareholders at the top of the list. NFU Mutual really does do it. We really live it” TIM MANN CIO, NFU MUTUAL europe.businesschief.com

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in technology or large technology Phase three: Changing the Rules projects,” he says. “People found In changing the rules, NFU Mutual is it hard to see where we were going researching, exploring and investing to get returns on our investment. in new ways in which the company “Over the last seven years, people writes insurance through technology. in the business have become But as Mann points out, it’s a more confident, leading to more phase that will take some time. investment in technology and more “We are spending a little programmes and projects. It’s more time getting into really exciting right now.” changing the rules The second key and the insurance challenge for Mann writing process,” and NFU Mutual is he says. “And if partner relationships.

I’m honest, this will When Mann first The year that be a continuously joined NFU Mutual, NFU MUTUAL evolving phase as the company had an was founded technology will only outsourcing contract continue to advance.” that was failing to add Naturally, with any true value to the business. transformational process, it’s never This was very much the first action going to be completely plain sailing. that Mann took, exiting that contract To redefine and transform the core safely and working with new partners. components of a business, there are But the challenge lay in finding of course going to be challenges and the right partners, ones that had hurdles that need to be cleared. the capabilities to keep up with For Mann, first and foremost, NFU Mutual’s ambition. In fact, there was a cultural challenge.

Mann feels that this is still one of “In the beginning, there wasn’t any the biggest challenges he faces confidence with regards to investing on a daily basis, even now.

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“We like to know what’s important to our partners.

We know what’s important to us, and meeting customers’ expectations in their moment of truth is key” TIM MANN CIO, NFU MUTUAL

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The way that the company handles this challenge is by looking to partner with companies that share the same value and approach to customer service.

“I don’t want to use the slightly clichéd phrase of same culture, but we certainly seek partners that share our values,” says Mann.

“We like to know what’s important to our partners. We know what’s important to us, and meeting customers’ expectations in their moment of truth is key.”

“So, while shared values about customer service and intent are quite important to us, we also ask what their plans are, are they heading in the same direction as us.”

It is this approach to customer service and partners that has seen NFU Mutual strike a strong relationship with one of its biggest

partners, Guidewire, to implement one of its biggest technology platforms, ClaimCenter.

ClaimCenter is an end-to-end claims management solution that supports all lines of personal and commercial insurance. Through ClaimCenter, NFU Mutual will be able to utilise automated technology to strengthen its focus on customers, increase operational efficiency and reduce loss costs.

The solution is currently a work in progress, with NFU Mutual looking to build the software into its IT function in two releases – motor insurance, and then household and commercial.

“Release one [motor] is the most straightforward but equally it’s also the biggest volume of claims that we handle,” says Mann. “We will follow that up with household and commercial claims. We won’t be able to tell right away, but we will monitor the data that comes out of that implementation and see just how our customers respond to it.”

Customer focused

NFU’s modernisation has been driven by a customer focus infrastructure has been all about, and Mann is determined that the future of the company will be built on that very customer focused foundation.

So, what next for NFU Mutual? After a century of continuously delivering award-winning, unrivalled insurance services, and with an internal IT infrastructure to back it up, where will Mann and the company go next?

“The last bit of our modernisation journey will see us look at our back-end systems,” says Mann. “Of course, it all depends on where the business is going, but I can say for certain that as a company, no matter where we go or what we do, we will continue to be there for our members.

“That is all that really matters.”

That customer focus is what the modernisation of the company’s IT

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Driving transformation at the DVLA Written by Fran Roberts Produced by Richard Durrant

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is an executive agency, sponsored by the UK’s Department for Transport. Located in Swansea for over 50 years, the agency is now in the middle of an exciting IT transformation programme

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ver the years the DVLA has embraced modern technology, moving many of its services online. For example, driving licences can be applied for or details amended online, rather than using a paper form. Such digital transformation continues to this day through the DVLA Strategic Plan 2017 to 2020, which lists both moving to more agile and cloud based services, alongside online processes for notifying a medical condition, in its priorities.

“DVLA spends over £300mn a year on goods and services. It spends a lot more on goods and services than it does on staff, which is unusual in the public sector,”

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advises Andrew Falvey, Commercial Director. “My team manages around 300 contracts – about 250 of which are IT contracts, along with 2,500 data sharing contracts and 250 agreements with other government bodies. The biggest category we have in terms of spend is IT. “We’ve got 15 fully MCIPS qualified staff and another 20 staff being trained to this level at the moment.

Overall we have about 68 staff in commercial roles in my Directorate.”

MISSION CRITICAL With 45mn driver records stored in its systems, IT is fundamental to the DVLA. “They are mission critical,” Falvey comments. “If our systems

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Andrew Falvey Commercial Director

Andrew Falvey joined DVLA in 2010 as Head of Commercial Services, moving to become Assistant Director (Commercial) in 2012. He became Commercial Director in May 2015.

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Ricoh partners with the DVLA to deliver digital transformation.

The Ricoh Commercial & Industrial Printing Team has been a long term partner of the DVLA Output Services Group.

Thirty years ago we were the provider of high-speed mainframe printers, today we are a systems integrator and technology enabler providing workflow solutions that have underpinned and evolved with the DVLA operation for almost 20 years.

Ricoh (formerly InfoPrint Solutions) was at the forefront of the drive in the UK to turn the Gartner Automated Document Factory concept into a practical reality. DVLA was among our first customers to embrace both the concept and the Ricoh approach.

Our earliest workflow implementation successfully focussed on the secure production of DVLA’s array of paper-based products. The tracking of data, logical pages, physical pages, documents and envelopes all ensured that driving licences and tax discs were accurately delivered to the intended recipient.

When the DVLA introduced its new photo card driving licence, a highly competitive tender process showed that it made clear sense to build on the system already in place – evolution, not revolution.

The security, reliability and availability of the system was already proven. What needed to be proved next were scalability and flexibility. The system

was extended to provide DVLA with two unique capabilities: a secure stock control system and a new class of output device – a laser engraver.

Every UK Driving Licence has a unique identifier built into it during the base card manufacturing process and the enhanced system tracks every card through the manufacturing process: booking cards into and out of a secure vault; matching a driver to a unique card number; engraving data and image onto each card; matching the finished licence with the correct paper carrier prior to enveloping; providing an audit trail for every card for every step of the process and finally feeding other DFT systems with any necessary production data.

Having set the benchmark for secure licence production, the Output Solutions Group was confidently able to use the same technology to offer additional services both within the DVLA and externally to other Government departments. Consequent evolutions have seen the introduction of other digital technologies on the same workflow platform.

Smart Tachograph cards and Biometric Residency Permits both now emerge from the same production system and both contain a chip for encoded personalised information.

Secure card production is now a key offering for DVLA.

In meeting stringent Home Office requirements for tracking and audit for the Biometric Residency Permit, the DVLA production facility has shown itself equipped to meet the demands of even the most exacting customers.

The recent migration to Ricoh’s latest generation of workflow software has positioned the DVLA ready for another decade and for the adoption of other new digital technologies.

Building on tried and trusted technology, Ricoh Process Director is the result of over 20 years of research and development into workflow and process automation. There is no doubt that other physical products produced by OSG will evolve to include more digital content and Ricoh Process Director will continue to be the core enabler that facilitates the expansion of digital, but in a secure and managed way.

Ricoh is delighted that the strong and close partnership with the DVLA is now set to move into a fourth decade.

We look forward to continuing to work together to design, develop and deploy solutions that handle the complexities of mission critical communication in a fast changing world.

Ricoh and DVLA share a passion for excellence and innovation and that shared passion has been the cornerstone of our partnership and our joint success.

Target provides DVLA award winning Direct Debit solution for vehicle tax payments in just eighteen weeks Target designed and implemented a solution for The DVLA that enables consumers to pay their vehicle tax

by Direct Debit. Three years on, the service has been used by more than 17 million drivers to set up 40 million Direct Debit mandates and has collected over £5bn in revenue, including £156m in a single day.

Reliable as well as popular, it has been an important element of DVLA’s ongoing “Simpler, Better, Safer” strategy and helped DVLA increase its digital take-up.

In 2016, Target secured a new contract to continue to manage the system for a further two years.

Simple, quick and efficient: since the DVLA launched its online vehicle tax renewal service in 2006, it has become recognised as an exemplar amongst the public sector web services; and helped position DVLA as pioneers of government digital transformation.

17 million users Just 18 weeks after Target was brought in, the solution went live and was met by huge demand.

The reliability of the solution, added to its simplicity from the user perspective, has meant that Direct Debit has become a preferred payment method for over 17 million customers.

The solution A secure online system, interfacing with BACS; and the provision of a contact centre solution serviced by DVLA agents.

The results • 17 million customers have paid by Direct Debit • £5bn worth of Direct Debits collected – including £156m on a single day in 2017 • 24x7x365 service availability • High levels of customer satisfaction

Rohan Gye, Vehicles Service Manager, DVLA commented: “From the user perspective, Direct Debit has been a major success for us, we want to make paying vehicle tax as simple and convenient as possible in a way that suits them. With the support of Target we are pleased to offer millions of motorists the choice of paying vehicle tax by Direct Debit in annual, six monthly or monthly instalments”

The DVLA’s collection service is now one of the largest in the country in terms of both the number of customers and the revenue generated.

Savings and satisfaction As well as the benefits to customers, the service has also helped the DVLA meet other financial and strategic targets such as increasing digital take-up.

Target has continued to work closely with the DVLA to optimise and continuously improve the service.

That combination of innovation and service helped the solution win Best Online Payments Solution (Consumer) at the 2016 Payments Awards.

Click here to visit our website

ABOUT US Target are a leading business services provider in lending, investments and insurance creating value for clients through digital, customer journey, outsourcing and operational transformation. Our aim is to transform the way you service your clients. Target is proudly part of the $4.5bn global organisation Tech Mahindra, a global leader in IT solutions, BPO, business consulting services & digital technologies with operations in over 90 countries and 112,000 employees worldwide.

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at DVLA go down then about 4,000 long-term supply contracts with IT people stop work, so availability suppliers. We’ve also got a very big is huge, resilience is massive. cloud transformation programme Supporting that is very important. going on as well,” explains Falvey.

The challenge we’ve got is the age of our IT systems, they are dated legacy MAJOR MILESTONES systems. We’re six months into a The move away from big IT contracts transformation programme to move has been a major change for the away from these legacy systems, DVLA in recent years. “One of the and to totally re-engineer major milestones for DVLA and re-architect our has been insourcing our IT IT. Supporting function, which was back DVLA SPENDS that is a massive in 2015. We insourced priority for our IT over 300 people, commercial team.” which followed the As the largest end of a long-standing A YEAR ON GOODS category within the IT contract. That created AND SERVICES commercial directorate, a great deal of work for around 25 employees the commercial team, in are entirely dedicated to IT. The terms of novating and insourcing all DVLA has moved away from big IT the contracts that were part of the contracts. It has some enterprise outsourced contract,” Falvey advises. agreements with companies like IBM “We ran a commercial project and Oracle, but the vast majority for 18 months to do that, and of its IT contracts now are two successfully managed to insource years in length, which is following or novate around 180 contracts.

GDS (Government Digital Service) I think the perception was that guidelines. “We’re moving, as when we insourced we’d have much as we can, into open source fewer IT contracts, but of course to get away from being locked into when you insource you’re

OVER £300MN

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suddenly in charge of all aspects of IT. Therefore, everything – from licences, support and maintenance, hardware, software, resourcing, contracting – comes in-house.

So, that’s been a big change for us in the last couple of years.”

For this project, the team won the award for the Best Public Procurement Project in 2016 at the CIPS (Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply) Supply Management Awards, and the GO Award for Best Contract Management Initiative in 2015/16.

BEST IN CLASS This is not the only area in which the DVLA has won an award recently.

The agency won the Skills Award at the 2017 Civil Service Awards for its CLASS programme. “I’m very committed to learning and development, and we’ve been running for the last couple of years a programme for upskilling and developing our staff. We call it CLASS, which is an acronym for ‘commercial leadership and skills support’. The CLASS programme’s

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been very successful,” states Falvey.

“We’ve got staff doing professional exams with CIPS, and we’ve developed our CLASS programme, which aims to complement formal CIPS training and includes practical learning modules and workbased projects. We’ve also got a mentoring programme, which is more informal, and staff take-up of this has been excellent.”

As with the IT contracts, CLASS is run entirely in-house by the DVLA. “We have done that all ourselves, that’s why we’re very proud of it, because it was devised, developed and designed by my staff, working with colleagues around DVLA,” Falvey explains.

A GROW-YOUR-OWN PHILOSOPHY For people living in southwest Wales, the home of the DVLA, employment opportunities are often challenging to come by. Indeed, according to StatsWales, Swansea has an employment rate of 67.9%, making it within the bottom three areas within Wales. As such, staff tend to

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stay with an employer for a number of years, making it even more important that the Agency invests in its employees and encourages continuous training and professional development.

“We’ve very much got a grow-your-own philosophy.

We do advertise jobs externally and we have brought in some external people but it’s relatively light.

The great majority of our people have been developed and trained, and come through the ranks. I think that reflects the employment situation around here. There aren’t a lot of qualified procurement professionals around, and the ones who are, are working for other bodies and not necessarily able or willing to move,” Falvey advises.

The DVLA employs over 5,000 people and is one of the largest employers in the region. “I’ve been here the last seven years, and we’ve

Working at the DVLA

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DVLA is based in Swansea, Wales

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lost very few staff. I think we’ve lost about three, maybe four professional, qualified staff in the last seven years, one of whom has come back to us, which is interesting. We’re adopting very much a grow-your-own, develop our own philosophy,” Falvey adds.

Optimising operations A further significant project undertaken by DVLA Commercial has been around category management. “We completed a project over six months, called

Optimise, and that realigned our category management and restructured our teams to make sure that we were geared up to support the business. That’s been quite a big change,” Falvey comments.

“We’ve run category management for some time, but this was updating it and refreshing it, and making our resource planning sharper, so that we’re better geared up for the inevitable peaks and troughs that go with the work. We’re

“If our systems at DVLA go down then about 4,000 people stop work, so availability is huge, resilience is massive” – Andrew Falvey, Commercial Director

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also involving senior colleagues more, which is improving internal business relationships.”

Optimise, too, was a project where the staff at the DVLA took full control and ran it in-house.

“I’m really proud that my staff have managed to do these things with little or no external support. I think that’s part of what makes the improvements even more significant, that we haven’t brought in armies of consultants, or teams of contractors to help us, we’ve done this ourselves,” Falvey says.

A SIGNIFICANT INCOME GENERATOR Whilst the registration and licensing of both drivers and vehicles is what the DVLA is best known for, DVLA Commercial is involved in a much wider array of activities. “We undertake selling of our services.

DVLA offers services to other parts of government.

We produce cards for the Home Office for example.

We also produce cards used by the freight industry. We undertake printing for other parts of government – we’re doing printing for GDS Notify, for example,” Falvey observes. “I’ve got a small team that handles where DVLA offers its services across government, or to other public bodies.”

Personalised registrations are another area in which DVLA Commercial is involved. “We sell registration marks, which is an unusual activity in government. We’ve got a commercial website and I’ve got a small team that manages that as well, and that brings in about £100mn a year, so

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Registration and licensing of both drivers and vehicles is what the DVLA is best known for

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Oustdie DVLA’s main HQ in Swansea

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it’s a significant income generator,” states Falvey. That money goes to the Treasury, not to the DVLA. “It’s another interesting aspect of commercial activity at DVLA, which is one of the reasons I wanted to join, to be honest, because it’s never less than interesting,” continues Falvey. “When you talk to people, they assume that we’re the driving licence people, and we are, and you get your vehicle log book as people call it, the V5, from us as well. But as you can imagine, behind that there’s a lot of contracting, and a lot of goods and services to be procured.”

SOLID DELIVERY Naturally, the ongoing transformation programme will be a key focus for the DVLA over the next few years, and the Agency has a strong sense of direction looking ahead. “It’s going to

take us a couple more years until we get to where we really want to be. But we’ve got a roadmap for where we want to go, and we want to become a multi-channel business, and I think we’re well on the way. I think what DVLA’s done in the last couple of years is start to build a reputation as one of the more solid delivery parts of government,” Falvey concludes.

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Power distribution made simple Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Lewis Vaughan

As a global leader in mission critical power distribution solutions, Universal Electric Corporation has provided energy intensive industries with the most flexible, reliable, and customizable overhead power distribution system on the market – Starline Track Busway

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n today’s energy-intensive world, companies rely on power that is on-demand with no downtime. As a global leader in power distribution systems, Universal Electric Corporation (UEC) has made it its mission to make that happen.

Over its 85-year history, the Pennsylvania-based company has grown to become a global leader in power distribution equipment thanks to its world-renowned brand of Starline products, including its four main product lines: Track Busway, Plug-in Raceway, Critical Power Monitor (CPM) and DC Solutions.

By manufacturing innovative electrical power solutions tailored to the specific needs of its clients, the company has earned a reputation for excellence whilst providing the

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data centre, retail, healthcare, higher education, and industrial markets with bespoke power solutions.

Mathew George, EMEA and SW Asia Sales Director at UEC, believes that it is the brand’s technological ingenuity and customer commitment which differentiates it from its competitors.

Bespoke solutions “The reason why we have grown markedly over the last 30 years is that we offer customisable solutions to every customer through our Starline product line,” he says. “We build everything unique for our customer.

In fact, last year alone, we had three thousand SKU numbers of different tap-off configurations. We are one of the only companies in the market who can deliver that level of service

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Mathew George

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“THE REASON WHY WE HAVE GROWN MARKEDLY OVER THE LAST 30 YEARS IS THAT WE OFFER CUSTOMISABLE SOLUTIONS TO EVERY CUSTOMER” MATHEW GEORGE EMEA and SW Asia Sales Director

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and that’s what makes us unique.”

The Starline brand was first created when the company’s owner Donald Ross Jr. had the idea of creating a smartly-designed, stationary, yet flexible overhead power supply system. This idea soon morphed into Starline Track Busway, one of the industry’s leading overhead electrical power distribution systems.

State-of-the-art design Using a patented u-shaped copper design, the Track Busway system is a simple, versatile, fast, and economical solution for supplying power to electrical loads. Tested to the best short-circuit rating in the market, the busway system distributes electricity with greater ease and flexibility which can be critical for energy-intensive companies. Thanks to its unique u-shaped copper design, there is constant tension that ensures a continuous, reliable connection to power. It also features an open channel system with a continuous access slot.

This means that power can be tapped at any location, making it an ideal solution for sites that are looking to expand or have the ability to change layouts.

Maintenance-free “From my perspective, another unique aspect of Starline is that all our joints are bolt-free,” adds George.

“This means that the busway is maintenance-free compared with traditional busways, where there are nuts and bolts in every joint.

With traditional busway systems you need to do regular maintenance and they will need to shut down power. However, with Starline, it’s a maintenance-free system where you do not need to shut down the power. There’s no downtime and so the equipment really enhances the reliability of the whole power chain.”

Sustainability is one of the most pressing issues that is driving today’s data centres towards change and innovation. The Starline product line is meeting this challenge face on by investing heavily in state-of-the-art metering technology, including in-house metering that allows customers to measure their energy at the point of use. That way, customers know how much power they consume, how much they spend, and how they could make potential savings.

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COMPLETE CUSTOMISATION OF PLUG-IN UNITS FOR ANY ENVIRONMENT

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TECHNOLOGY

An international brand It is the company’s technological ingenuity and smart design strategy that has helped to propel Starline as an international brand. Over the last eight decades, the company has successfully expanded its international presence and has opened offices, worked with partners, and served customers all across the globe.

“Within a year and a half, we have overgrown our existing UK facility and have had to move into a facility which is eight times larger,” notes George, explaining the burgeoning market.

“The European market was lagging in its take up of the busway but now it has substantially adopted the Starline product line as the default power distribution equipment. We are quite excited about the opportunities in the region, and that’s why we’re investing in new factories so that we can offer a quicker response time and more local support to our customers.

“We are also seeing more and more data centres being built in Asia, Africa and the Middle East and that’s the reason why we’re expanding in this region too,” he adds. “It has been a great opportunity for us because we have noticed this trend a long time ago, and so we invested heavily in listing to local standards in Asia and abroad.”

Quality and safety Driven by a commitment to customer service, quality and safety are two of the key principles that underline

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everyday business at Universal Electric Corporation. As a result, every product is rigorously tested to the best quality and safety standards across the globe.

By upholding itself only to the highest of industry standards, UEC has cemented itself as a leading player in the industry with a promising foothold in Europe, Asia, and beyond.

“More and more data busways are being installed on a global scale, and our main clients expect the same quality of the product irrespective of which part of the world they go into - that’s something that only Starline offers,” observes George. “We are capable of meeting any global client’s requirements and we have local support in almost every country in the world, that’s what makes us unique.”

Constant, reliable power With over 85 years of industry expertise, Universal Electric Corporation has grown from an American company to a global giant with factories, offices, and customers in every corner of the world. Thanks to its commitment to product quality and customer value, the organisation has

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guaranteed that businesses will have the critical power they need for dayto-day operations. For energy-intensive markets, where power supplies can make or break the integrity of a brand, it’s a notable promise.

“When data centre operators spend millions of pounds investing in their power chain to ensure that they have a reliable energy supply, people often forget that the final distribution portals play a big and important role,” reflects George.

“Through our Starline brand, we have designed a product where you could install the plug-in when the product is live, compared with standard industrial busway where the power needs to be shut down to install a tap-off. We ensure that companies have on-demand power with no downtime and that is critical for today’s businesses.”

TECHNOLOGY

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