Business Chief North America - April 2021

NORTH AMERICA EDITION

April 2021 | businesschief.com

GoDaddy: The dynamics of change in procurement READ NOW

Microsoft: Innovation at the Speed of Relevance

Leadership: The Digital leaders of evolution

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NFP: Timely digital transformation

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New CEO leads on Sustainability Citigroup’s first female CEO Jane Fraser FIND OUT MORE FEATURING:

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The Business Chief Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

GEORGIA WILSON EDITORAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH CREATIVE TEAM

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

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH PRODUCTION EDITOR

JANET BRICE

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

ANDREW STUBBINGS SAJANA SAMARASINGHE

PROJECT DIRECTORS

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

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JAMES WHITE RICHARD TURNER MARK CAWSTON

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

EDITORS LETTER

Global supply chains take another hit If events of the past year haven’t been enough to rattle the supply chain industry, March 23 saw hundreds of container carriers and vessels navigating the Suez Canal grind to a halt when the ‘Ever Given’ ran aground in one of the world’s most important trade routes

“It is estimated that the owners could face over US$3bn in liability claims”

BUSINESS CHIEF MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Following a week long battle to free the ‘Ever Given’, the ship is finally free and on its way to Felixstowe, but what effect has it had on global supply chains?

With figures reportedly in the three hundreds, the ship that ran aground on March 23 at 05:40AM GMT caused a significant backlog in the Suez Canal. While those that could begin to take the costly voyage around Africa, 320 remained waiting for the vessel to be freed.

Suspending all traffic through the Suez Canal, excavators, salvage teams and tugboats worked tirelessly to refloat the vessel coinciding their efforts with high tides.

It wasn’t until 3:00PM local time on March 29, that the ‘Ever Given’ was finally freed heading to the Great Bitter Lake for a full inspection. It is estimated that the owners could face over US$3bn in liability claims.

But can the damage to global supply chains be reversed? Time will tell.

While the Suez Canal Authority is expected to increase the number of vessels moving through each day, more than 18,000 containers still have no fixed delivery date, which is likely to continue to damage global supply chains. The FIATA expects there to be high delays in shipments, increased costs, and product shortages.

GEORGIA WILSON

georgia.wilson@bizclikmedia.com

© 2021 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

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CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Global News 16 People Moves 18 Timeline: Pfizer/Biontech

COVID-19 vaccine 20 Legend:

Jane Fraser 22 Five Mins With:

Nicolas Maechler

38

Leadership

2021 and Beyond: The evolving role of a digital leader

26

IBM Global Business Service How IBM is evolving its unique partnership with SAP

46

NTT Global Sourcing The Power of One

66

Human Capital

Why employee wellbeing should be your priority

74 NFP

Timely digital transformation

92

Corporate

The Future of audits and Assurance

100 116

GoDaddy

Tuning in to the dynamics of change in procurement

Digital Stragety

Digital agility: the future for digital transformation success

124 CHOC

Acceleration of Telemedicine for Paediatrics

142

Technology

A new era of intelligent automation

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Creating Digital Communities in Cyber

154

170 Top Ten

Strategic consultants in the USA

MTM Inc.

So much more than just a lift

182

Presidio

Managing migration risk

204 NTT

Supporting a new generation of SAP capability in the cloud

218 Lumen

The leading light in secure connectivity

230

Landmark Dividend

Investing in our Digital Future

242

Newmont

Making technology the future of mining

CONTENTS

252

City of Hamilton

Technology for Growth

262

University of Buffalo The connected campus

276

F5 Networks

Adaptive applications from data center to edge

300 290

Microsoft

How Microsoft is driving defense Innovation at the speed of relevance

City of Memphis

The City, the CIO, covid and collaboration

312

324

Cost. Service. Agility.

Supply chain’s new troika

Wireless M2M on the edge

KEARNEY

EPIC IO

338 Flooid

Headless commerce for a new era of retail

366

Datorama

352

The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD Delivering patient care through innovation

378

KDDI Telehouse

AI-powered marketing intelligence

Connectivity is our core strength

392

406

Your best defense is a good offense

Driving the people experience

Schenck Process

UNIT4

420

434

Smart, sustainable packaging from Amcor

When our patients do better, we do better

Amcor

ChenMed

BIG PICTURE

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April 2021

The light at the end of the tunnel Global

COVID-19 caused major disruptions to organisations around the world in 2020, but the promise of worldwide vaccination in the near future is providing a light at the end of the tunnel.

With 7.79 billion people vaccinated around the world so far, organisations emerging from this global threat will certainly face challenges, but the innovations, transformations, agility and partnerships gained from the pandemic stands to build solid foundations for surviving and thriving post COVID-19.

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THE BRIEF “THE CHALLENGE AHEAD IS TO LEVERAGE TECHNOLOGY WITHOUT COMPROMISING DATA SECURITY AND AUDIT QUALITY”

BY THE NUMBERS

Which changes made in response to COVID-19 are here to stay?

Source: Gartner

65%

Emilio Pera

Partner and Head of Audit, KPMG Lower Gulf  READ MORE

“Digital agility needs people who are flexible, that think creatively and value change”

Flexibility on when people work

44%

90%

Changes to monitoring productivity for remote workers

Allowing employees to work remotely at least part time

Phil Lewis

Vice President, Solution Consulting EMEA, Infor  READ MORE

“Over the next few uncertain months and beyond the pandemic, intelligent automation is here to stay”

84% 80%

of employers are set to rapidly digitalise working processes

Simon Coombs

Industry X Digital Manufacturing & Operations Lead, Accenture UK  READ MORE

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April 2021

READ MORE

31%

of CEOs of decision believe that makers a shortage of said their skills in the firms have workforce is increased one of the key their spending threats to their on RPA in the organisation’s past three growth months prospects READ MORE

READ MORE

 APPLE Apple announces its largest quarter by revenue of all time, totalling US$111.4bn for the first quarter of 2021.

INNOVACCER:

Breaking down information silos in healthcare Founded in 2014, unicorn company Innovaccer strives to connect and curate the world’s healthcare information making it accessible and useful.

What happened in Innovaccer’s Series D funding round? February 2021, Innovaccer announced its latest Series D funding round of US$105mn led by Tiger Global, joined by B Capital Group, Steadview Capital and M12 (Microsoft’s venture fund). The company’s Series D funding brings its total to US$225mn.

What are Innovaccer’s plans for the funding?

Innovaccer’s promise is to save hospitals (and patients) time and money by “breaking down information silos that prevent physicians from obtaining a holistic view of their patients.”

The company’s centralised information hub pulls data from healthcare giants, labs and insurance, harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to better predict and stop health problems before they become chronic.

 GENERAL ELECTRIC (GE) AND TOSHIBA General Electric (GE) and Toshiba in talks, discussing the possibility of co-producing technology for offshore wind turbines.

- KPMG KPMG has entered into exclusive talks with HIG Europe about a £400m sale of its UK restructuring business.  IKEA Ikea reports a 10% drop in UK sales to £1.9bn after closing its stores for nearly three months during the pandemic.  ASTON MARTIN Aston martin reports a £322m operating loss in 2020, alongside total retail sales dropping by 32%.

W A Y U P APR21

W A Y D O W N businesschief.com

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GLOBAL NEWS

1

UNITED STATES

Goldman Sachs commits billions to impact black women’s lives The largest commitment of its kind, Goldman’s One Million Black Women initiative commits US10 bn in investment capital and US$100 mn in philanthropic capital to advance racial equity. In partnership with Black women-led firms, this will drive investment in housing, healthcare, education, job creation, and more.

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April 2021

2

UNITED STATES

Mastercard follows Visa with debut sustainability bond Building on its pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and to bring one billion people and 50 million small businesses into the digital economy by 2025, Mastercard issues first-ever Sustainability Bond. This follows Visa’s green bond debut in August 2020.

3

SINGAPORE

Dell Technologies funds innovation lab Ideate. Experiment. Co-create.

That’s the idea behind Singapore’s Global Innovation Hub, an initiative funded by Dell Technologies (US$50 mn) to drive digital innovation. The Hub will focus on augmented reality, data analytics, cloud-native, cybersecurity and edge computing.

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5

KOREA

Samsung breaks Ericsson’s 5G global speed record Recently reaching world record 5G data speeds of 6.23Gbps, Samsung beats Ericsson and Qualcomm’s January record of 5Gbps. The breakthrough speed was set using a flexible new approach combining 4G and 5G (EN-DC technology) to maximise the benefits of both networks.

EGYPT

Suez Canal Bank accelerates digital transformation Egypt’s Suez Canal Bank is digitally transforming its customer experience to increase financial inclusion, as just 32.8% of the population has a bank account. With Temenos Infinity, products and services will be more accessible and optimised for mobile and advance tech like AI will be leveraged, for a Chabot service, for example.

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PEOPLE MOVES BINA MEHTA FROM: KPMG TO: KPMG WAS: HEAD OF CLIENTS AND MARKETS AT KPMG UK NOW: ACTING CHAIRMAN For the first time in its 150 years of operations, KPMG UK has appointed its first female leaders. Bina Mehta, Head of Clients and Markets at KPMG UK has been appointed as acting Chairman following Bill Michael stepping down.

Mehta has over 20 years of experience in the international M&A and restructuring industry across the UK, USA and Canada.

Mehta is also Chair of KPMG’s Emerging Giants Centre of Excellence in the UK and is a regular commentator on issues that impact founders and fast growth businesses.

In addition to Mehta, KPMG has also appointed Mary O'Connor, who has taken on the role of acting senior partner. She is carrying out Michael’s day to day executive responsibilities.

16

April 2021

Mehta has over 20 years of experience in the international M&A and restructuring industry across the UK, USA and Canada.

JETTE NYGAARD-ANDERSEN FROM: ENTAIN TO: ENTAIN WAS: NON EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR NOW: CEO Replacing Shay Segev, Jette Nygaard-Andersen has been appointed by Entain as its first female Chief Executive Officer (CEO). The move made by Entain, increases the number of women leading the FTSE 100 to six.

With over 20 years of experience in leadership and operational roles in media, entertainment, sport and digital businesses, as well as a track record of working with fast-growing digital next generation online and mobile entertainment companies, Nygaard-Andersen joined Entain in 2019 as a Non Executive Director.

JIM BAILEY FROM: ACCENTURE TO: CAPGEMINI WAS: SENIOR MANAGING DIRECTOR NOW: CEO OF THE AMERICAS STRATEGIC BUSINESS UNIT With more than 30 years of experience in leadership, Jim Bailey has joined Capgemini as CEO of the Americas Strategic Business Unit. Coming to Capgemini from 30 years at Accenture as Senior Managing Director, Bailey was a founding member of the Accenture Digital Leadership team, he was responsible for its mobility and internet-of-things practices globally. businesschief.com

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TIMELINE PFIZER/BIONTECH COVID -19 VACCINE A brief timeline of the development of the Pfizer/Biotech COVID-19 vaccine candidate

March 13th 2020

March 17th 2020

April 9th 2020

May 14th 2020

Pfizer’s five point plan

Pfizer and BionTech co-develop vaccine

Pfizer and BionTech begin human trials

Responding to the global outbreak of COVID-19, Pfizer released a fivepoint plan. The plan called on the biopharmaceutical industry to join its commitment to unprecedented collaboration in order to battle COVID-19.

Pfizer and BionTech agreed to a letter of intent for the co-development and distribution of a potential mRNAbased coronavirus vaccine to prevent the infection of COVID-19

Pfizer advances the battle against COVID-19

18

April 2021

To further advance the battle against COVID-19, Pfizer Inc. and the Pfizer Foundation pledged US$40mn in medical and charitable cash grants to combat the global health effects of the pandemic.

As part of the global COVID-19 vaccine development programme, Pfizer and BionTech began human trials on May 14, 2020. The first participants were dosed in the US in a clinical trial for the BNT162 vaccine programme.

Nov 18th 2020

Dec 2nd 2020

Dec 8-21 2020

Pfizer and BionTech complete phase 3

MHRA gives temporary authorisation for the vaccine

UK, US and Asia administer first doses of Pfizer vaccine

Following the completion of Phase 2 of the trial, Pfizer and BionTech reported on November 18, 2020 the completion of its worldwide third phase in which their mRNA-based COVID19 vaccine candidate - BNT162b2 - met all primary efficacy endpoints.

December 2, 2020 saw the Medicines & Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) in the U.K. grant temporary authorisation for the use of the COVID19 mRNA vaccine. Marking the first authorisation of the vaccine following its worldwide

Six days after the temporary authorisation granted by MHRA - the UK administered its first dose of the Pfizer/ BionTech vaccine. Seven days after the UK, the US administered its first dose on December 14, 2020, and on December 21, 2020 Singapore received Asia’s first batch of the Pfizer/BionTech vaccine.

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LEGEND

Taking the Citi by storm Jane Fraser CEO, Citi

J

ane Fraser’s appointment as the first female CEO of a major Wall Street bank is quite an accomplishment. A personal one for Fraser, but a much bigger one for women on Wall Street attempting to penetrate the traditional steppingstone roles to CEO positions that are overwhelmingly filled by men.

In a report on gender parity in finance in 2020, consulting firm Oliver Wyman found that women held just 6% of CEO positions at major financial firms globally in 2019, a 2% drop since 2016.

Fraser was named CEO of Citigroup in September and started the job on March 1, 2021, becoming the first woman to take the reins of one of Wall Street’s four major banks, just as momentum for Women’s International Day was kicking off.

And her very first day in office, Fraser made a public pledge that Citigroup Inc. would achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. Legend, indeed, though not unsurprising, as Fraser has become known as a leader who ‘gets stuff done’.

20

April 2021

The number of women among CEOs of the Fortune 500 firms.

37

A McKinsey consultant turned financial executive, who’s been with Citi for 16 years, most recently in the bank’s number two spot as President of Citi and CEO of the Global Consumer Bank, Fraser is renowned for having a ‘solid track record’ and for being a ‘fixer’, having worked her way through key business units at Citi, leaving each in a better state than she found it.

Take Latin America. When Fraser was appointed as CEO of Citi’s Latin America business in 2015, the division was tarnished. Fraser turned it around, not just growing net revenue and profit, but also enhancing the work culture.

Little surprise that she’s been heralded as the ‘Number 1 Woman to Watch’ for two consecutive years by American Banker, and that her name’s been circulating top banking circles for the last year with rumours swirling that she’d been earmarked for top jobs at Wells Fargo and HSBC. And while her credentials (University of Cambridge, Goldman Sachs, Partner at McKinsey, MBA Harvard), and Wall Street reputation, speak for themselves, it’s what has been described as her ‘ferocious work ethic’ yet reluctance to sacrifice her personal life to get to the top, that has resonated with many in financial circles.

And especially women.

Here’s hoping her captainship of the world’s ‘most global bank’ proves not just a success for Fraser, and for Citi, but marks a catalyst for gender equity industry wide.

“I’m often asked, ‘Can you have it all? Can you do it all?’ And I say, ‘Yes, you can, but you can’t do it all at once and don’t expect everything at once.”

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FIVE MINS WITH...

NICOLAS MAECHLER NICOLAS MAECHLER, SENIOR PARTNER AT MCKINSEY & COMPANY DISCUSSES CURRENT TRENDS IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX)

Q. HOW HAS THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) LANDSCAPE CHANGED SINCE THE OUTBREAK OF COVID-19?

» The last few years have seen

a huge increase in management focus on customer experience (CX) for business, which was seen somewhat traditionally as a consumers’ topic. The impact has been significant as customer experience matters in all industries.

Moving from simple annual surveys to real feedback loops, they have started redesigning their operating models to be more customer centric. COVID-19 accelerated this shift: when your industry is at risk, those focusing on their customers come through stronger.

Q. HOW ARE ORGANISATIONS CURRENTLY MANAGING THEIR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PERFORMANCE?

» Companies of all types – airlines,

banks, department stores - are still heavily reliant on survey-based tools and feedback loop systems to gather and respond to customer feedback. By touching 5-10% of your customers, these approaches act as a good temperature check to see how the company is doing. However, it falls short of understanding and proactively addressing what the core of your customers want.

“ IN A DIGITAL-FIRST WORLD, COLLABORATIVE TOOLS, AUTOMATION, AND DATA AND ANALYTICS WILL BE KEY” 22

April 2021

Q. WHAT ARE THE TOP THREE TECHNOLOGIES THAT ORGANISATIONS SHOULD LOOK TO INVEST IN WHEN IT COMES TO CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE?

» In a digital-first world, collaborative

“ THE LAST FEW YEARS HAVE SEEN A HUGE INCREASE IN MANAGEMENT FOCUS ON CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE (CX) FOR BUSINESS” Q. HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS MOVE BEYOND SURVEY-BASED SYSTEMS TO DELIVER CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES AND MANAGE PERFORMANCE?

» We noticed that many customer

dissatisfactions could be predicted based on a certain course of actions (e.g. a late delivery, a missing customs form). Using innovative analytics platforms with real-time insights, CX leaders can translate the massive volume of existing customer and operational data to spot signals and take immediate actions. This in turn helps to drive customer acquisition, retention, market differentiation, and higher customer satisfaction (and many times lowers costs as well).

tools, automation, and data and analytics will be key. Here’s why: by using big data, predictive analytics, and machine learning, companies can go from “How are we doing?” to “How do we deliver on what customers want, now?”. This customer-focused, datadriven approach will allow companies to unlock efficiencies, predict customer behavior, track satisfaction drivers, anticipate churn, and flag opportunities to turn loyalty into profitability. But we also have to remember that CX is a team sport – and integrating people, process, and the right technology – will be a differentiator.

Q. HOW CAN ORGANISATIONS BENEFIT FROM ADOPTING SUCH METHODS AND TECHNOLOGY?

» One leading airline built a

machine-learning system based on 1,500 customer, operations, and financial data points to predict both satisfaction and future revenue for all of its 130 million customers, every day. The airline used this data to identify and prioritise those customers whose relationship was most at risk. Working with a combined team of approximately 12-15 data scientists, CX experts, and external partners over three months, the programme resulted in an 800 per cent uplift in satisfaction and a 60 per cent reduction in churn for priority customers. businesschief.com

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How IBM is evolving its unique partnership with SAP Example of an image caption

26

April 2021

WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE

IBM

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IBM

28

April 2021

IBM

IBM’s SAP Practice is dedicated to

the evolution of both companies and their joint strategy to drive the next generation of business processes

S

AP wasn’t always the technology giant it is today and was originally founded by five engineers who left IBM to start the company. IBM Global SAP Practice leader Matt Schwartz remembers joining SAP in 2004, when it had fewer than 10,000 people in North America. “It was a much smaller, more intimate organization,” Schwartz recalls. “I pretty much knew every SAP consultant but it is a much different situation now.”

The growth of SAP has been exponential and fueled by a number of acquisitions which has created a new level of complexity. “It was easier to sell, consume and understand what SAP was at that time,” Schwartz admits.

The company, its customer base and its product offerings have expanded. “I’d say the biggest change is that it was very easy to understand what SAP stood for 20 years ago. It was an integrated ERP system. It was one application and now it’s a multitude of applications – it’s an ecosystem. SAP calls it an Intelligent Enterprise. We believe the value now is connecting those Enterprise applications and adding intelligence to them through intelligent workflows.”

SAP rising Do smaller, nimbler companies offering cloud native software solutions pose a threat to monoliths like SAP? “Its Déjà vu all over

again, right?” Schwartz replies with a grin.

“If you look back 20 years companies were buying SAP for finance and supply chain while others purchased a combo of SAP and best of breed capabilities in Supply Chain like i2 and Manugistics, PeopleSoft for HR and Ariba for procurement. You had clients that went with best-of-the-breed solutions and had SAP for their digital core back then, and this continues to happen today even with the newer SaaS solutions in the market. SAP has reached an understanding that customers will continue to make these choices and the power is in seamlessly linking these applications through capabilities in their Business Technology Platform underpinned by the capabilities of the cloud providers.

“ Our ability to help clients understand the business case for change, the value of the transformation and how SAP can help them drive that transformation, helps SAP achieve all their goals” MATT SCHWARTZ

IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE LEADER businesschief.com

29

IBM

Matthew Schwartz talks about IBM's Digital Transformation

The real shift, Schwartz thinks, is in the way we think about integrating and building the next generation of SAP solutions.

Architecting intelligent workflows means leveraging improved API integration capabilities, infusing intelligence with AI and machine learning algorithms. While delivering an outcome with business process management orchestration and continuous business process improvement mining. This is a new way of thinking for both our customers and even our consultants.

It represents the way we need to move

“ Sustainability has become a key driver in commercial decision-making, and software plays its part” MATT SCHWARTZ

IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE LEADER

30

April 2021

to ensure we are building cloud enabled solutions for the future while allowing customers to fully leverage their best of breed solutions as part of their end-to-end processes. This approach with S/4HANA as the digital core provides the ability to define and deliver the business case our customers require to drive their digital transformations.

Partnership depth The IBM-SAP partnership started at the founding of SAP and remains as the longest, strongest partnership in the ecosystem.

What keeps that relationship strong?

“At the core of our partnership is our shared goal of satisfied clients,” Schwartz explains. “Satisfied clients want to buy additional applications from SAP and more implementation services from IBM. Success stories help both SAP and IBM to gain new customers and satisfied customers are also willing to speak to others about their success providing more opportunity to IBM and SAP.

IBM

Given IBM’s track record in the SAP business with over 6,700 projects delivered, SAP feels comfortable making commitments to their customers about IBM’s ability to deliver the business outcomes enabled by SAP. IBM’s ability to deliver on time, on budget with realized value for joint customers continues to fuel the strong growth of the partnership.

“From a sales perspective, our ability to partner with the SAP field has always been enabled by our support helping the C-suite, the board and the shareholders of an organization understand the value they're going to get from SAP.” When working with IBM, our joint customers understand the business case for change, the value of the transformation and how the different SAP applications can help them drive that transformation, as well as the return on investment they can expect. This helps SAP achieve their goals and this shared mission creates a level of trust in the partnership.

MATT SCHWARTZ TITLE: IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE LEADER LOCATION: CALIFORNIA Matt Schwartz is firmly from the management consulting side of the industry, starting out at Andersen Consulting (now Accenture), first on the coding side, then with SAP practice in the mid-late ‘90s. He went on to work in the Price Waterhouse (now PwC) SAP practice.

With the dot-com boom in full swing, he joined a couple of start-ups before joining SAP in 2004, where he would spend almost a decade. “I figured if I was going to be in the SAP ecosystem, why not join them?”

Schwartz says. He followed SAP with a stint at IBM, then another management consultancy stint, this time at EY (again in the SAP practice). Four years ago, the call came from IBM to return to the fold.

Schwartz came back on board to run the North America SAP practice, doubling business in a short period of time, before stepping up to his global role.

1911

Year Founded

$73.6bn Revenue 2020

345,900

Number of employees

EXECUTIVE BIO

ERP sustainability What happens next in SAP’s journey?

According to Schwartz, it’s already happening.

“Sustainability has become and as policies change will continue to be a key driver in commercial decision-making and software plays a part.” The ability to properly account for carbon impact and to manufacture and

IBM

market sustainable products will take on a new level of importance for organizations.

Looking for ways to lower the carbon footprint, increase the profitability of products while having a positive impact on the environment will become front and center. IBM and SAP are working together to combine their solutions and expertise to respond to this market demand supported

by IBM’s work on the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. This capability is what organizations and shareholders are looking for and as a consumer, that's also what I want. It's about organizations working with IBM Global Business Services and SAP to leverage the technology to facilitate the changes required by the environmental agenda.

Garrick Keatts took over from Schwartz at the top of America's SAP practice in 2020.

He thinks IBM’s SAP proposition is unique.

“When you look at IBM's core fundamental offerings of what we can do for clients to help guide them and what that journey

GARRICK KEATTS TITLE: IBM NORTH AMERICA SAP PRACTICE LEADER

Garrick Keatts is an IBM lifer, starting out at the firm straight from college as a supply chain consultant in the SAP practice. His work has taken him around the world in international markets (visiting 60-70 different countries), but always flying the flag for IBM and SAP’s unique partnership. He returned to the US to focus on SAP HANA before taking on the North America SAP practice leader role in May 2020. “I think what's interesting to me in that time period is what's changed and what hasn't. If I think back 16 years ago, so much of our work with our clients on the SAP front was about getting them transacting capability and allowing them to do that at scale with efficiency. Fast forward to today, so much of the priority with our clients is really more about insights and giving them a more granular level of insights at a quicker pace that they can use to make better business decisions.

What hasn't changed is the fact it's still so much of our work is around giving our clients efficient transacting in platforms to drive their business and their growth

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: COLORADO

“ There's not a partner out there that has the offerings to do the strategy, work, the implementation, the run from an application and an infrastructure perspective” GARRICK KEATTS

IBM NORTH AMERICA SAP PRACTICE LEADER

IBM

Garrick Keatts talks about IBM's SAP practice in the Americas

should look like, actually implement it for them and get them to that state of utopia that they seek,” he says. “And even from a business perspective to be able to manage that both at an application and from an infrastructure perspective, we're very unique in the SAP partner ecosystem that we can do all of those things. There's not a partner out there that has the offerings to do the strategy, work, the implementation, the run from an application and an infrastructure perspective.”

Keatts is obsessed with data cleanliness, and suggests that in the past data was moved around to the extent that it was effectively massaged before reaching decision makers.

“Today, the business user is seeing that data in its raw state in an instantaneous fashion. We know getting that data into these environments in a very clean and continuously governed state is critical for business operations and program success. It’s incredibly important for

both the expectations and the outcomes the business desires, and to see successful delivery of projects.

Truth in data “There’s less appetite from business users to be held from the truth today than ever.

They want to understand where the issues are. They want to get to them quickly, and they want to be able to identify those issues before they become a major problem. They want the opportunity to fix them in flight versus having to initiate some sort of project 1, 3 or 12 months later.”

IBM was awarded the SAP North America Award for Partner Excellence for 2021. For someone who has spent his entire career in the orbit of IBM and SAP, Keatts has a granular understanding of the partnership.

He sums it up as “alignment of objectives”.

“We’re both about helping our clients be businesschief.com

33

IBM

“ Digital transformation hasn’t simply appeared.

It’s been evolving for a long period of time” ALLAN COULTER

CTO, IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE

Allan Coulter talks about Enterprise IT within IBM

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April 2021

IBM

ALLAN COULTER TITLE: CTO, IBM GLOBAL SAP PRACTICE INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES Allan Coulter has been with IBM for 23 years. Having started out as an accountant (“incredibly boring”), he was given the opportunity after graduating from University to dabble in financial software programming – the company he worked for then started an SAP program….from here he joined PwC then IBM in the SAP Service Line.…”I starting off as a Finance Process Consultant then I got involved in some of the new technologies when they first came out, the likes of SAP Business Warehouse, SAP Portal and the likes…..I was always the person that was invited to check out the new stuff…. I was interested in how things worked, so I got involved in what was then called Basis…I combined all of this when certifying in Enterprise Architecture. I actually ended up with a really good balance of process skills and technical skills. I think this has ended up being crucial in the role I have now, as I get to see how technology is best applied to improve the way our customers deliver their processes….”

IBM

more successful in their business operations.

When we're both on that mission path, it creates a lot of complimentary synergies and it doesn't create much conflict. That's why the relationship has been so strong for so long and will continue to be.

“When you look at what SAP is taking to its clients, IBM has to support that with the business strategy up front around business transformation. We have the ability to execute on every migration option that’s out there for our clients from ECC to S/4 HANA. And we have the ability to run that infrastructure platform using the most proven technology that has ever run SAP on the IBM Cloud. That aligns us, and lines us up very nicely to continue to be successful together.”

Allan Coulter, CTO for the SAP Practice, has also been with IBM for over 20 years. He has 36

April 2021

witnessed the evolution of SAP from a singleERP solution to one that has evolved over time to a software stack that underpins the Digital Transformation ambitions of IBM’s customers.

“However Digital transformation hasn’t simply appeared. It’s been evolving for a long period of time. Even 10 years ago, we had clients that started to infuse automation into the way we were building out the processes….. what we are delivering today is the next iteration, what we call the Intelligent Enterprise.

For me, it’s really as simple as making SAP simpler, smarter and more connected to the rest of the application portfolio using a set of new technologies from IBM and SAP. Truly a partnership For Coulter, the relationship between IBM and SAP is “truly a partnership”. “We know the strength that each party brings to the

IBM

table. We’ve been a partner of SAP for over 40 years, but it is constantly evolving… a great example of this is the ‘Evolution Partnership’ we signed last year with SAP that is how we collaborate on taking the Intelligent Enterprise story to the market.

The partnership is really about how to accelerate that ambition level….“How do we use the new technology solutions from SAP, the likes of Data, AI, Automation, IoT combined with the core ERP system to create new outcomes for our customers.

When you combine SAP and IBM technology, you have an amazing platform foundation for creating new innovations, new ways of working, new customer and employee experiences – at the end of the day, this is what it is really about – it’s about the creation of new experiences powered by technology."

But the biggest change in Coulter’s opinion is the new integration approaches.

“Companies are moving away from this wall-to-wall ERP story – they’re adopting a balance of ERP and best of breed…so the new technologies need to reflect this change… and to shift from old fashioned integration techniques into a more APIbased approach.

As part of Evolution, we’re constantly building out end-to-end process solutions that are designed to easily integrate SAP with these new cloud-native applications… this means that we have the platform foundation to help any client realize their Digital Transformation journey irrespective of their complexity."

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LEADERSHIP

2021 AND BEYOND: THE EVOLVING ROLE OF A DIGITAL LEADER Business Chief North America speaks to Jaggaer and McKinsey Digital exploring the role of a digital leader in 2021 and beyond

WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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April 2021

What does it mean to be a digital leader?

“The rate of technological change will arguably be faster in the next several years than in the past 25 combined,” begins Jim Bureau, CEO of Jaggaer. “New tools, features, and functionalities go to market nearly every day. Having access to the latest and greatest technology isn’t what defines digital leadership – it’s how organisations leverage these tools and capabilities at scale to solve problems strategically, drive value-adding initiatives, meet business objectives, and equip customers to achieve their desired outcomes.”

Those organisations that are digital leaders act on early signs of change, “These organisations are forward thinking. They see opportunity and embrace it. They know the longer they wait to adopt a new technology, the harder it will be to catch up to peers and the market. They recognise that digital technology is a means to achieving goals, not the end. And, most importantly, they understand digital leadership is about enabling their customers to also be digital leaders, so these customers can deliver success for their own customers.”

LEADERSHIP

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“ The rate of technological change will arguably be faster in the next several years than in the past 25 combined” JIM BUREAU

CEO, JAGGAER

With digital leadership drastically changing in the last few years, Rodney Zemmel, Global Leader of McKinsey Digital, adds that “it’s now the determining role in leading successful digital transformations. Today, it is the role of the CEO that can truly affect the scale of change and commitment required for a digital transformation to be successful. Pre-COVID, businesses were already shifting to this new ‘digital era’ but now more than ever digital touches every corner of a business and success depends on its ability to generate new value from digital.”

The essential traits of a digital leader When it comes to being a digital leader, Bureau emphasises, “the essential traits are the same today as before the pandemic.

The difference lies in their urgency and significance. Digital leaders have vision, ingenuity, a collaborative spirit, and a relentless focus on customer success.”

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, “the pandemic highlighted the need for agility and resilience, and the fact that honing these two organisational traits should start well before disruptive events occur.” As a result, “business and technology leaders are speeding up digital investments and strategies to survive and recover from the health crisis. In the longer term, they’re also tapping automation to act faster and create space to think bigger and more strategically, businesschief.com

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LEADERSHIP

Developing Agile Leaders for the Digital Age

putting them in a better position to guide their organisations and customers through future disruptions.”

Adding to these traits, Zemmel says “digital CEOs need to constantly think how

“ Pre-COVID, businesses were already shifting to this new ‘digital era’ but now more than ever digital touches every corner of a business and success depends on its ability to generate new value from digital” RODNEY ZEMMEL GLOBAL LEADER, MCKINSEY DIGITAL

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April 2021

technology is going to change their business, and understand how value is migrating. To be a successful digital leader, you need to reimagine value and own the change to make this happen. By not effectively communicating what your digital transformation is and letting a thousand digital flowers bloom, is a recipe for failure to scale.”

Reflecting on how the traits have evolved since the pandemic Zemmel adds, “everything is now accelerated ten-fold, and the need to evolve and shift priorities is paramount. It’s imperative for the C-suite to work together to ensure they stay afloat and innovate. We’ve heard from many CEOs over the course of last year that tell us what they thought would take months or years to achieve, they’re now doing in days or weeks. This is unlikely to slow down in 2021.”

COVID-19: the role of a digital leader “During the initial outbreak, digital leaders brought clarity and support as organisations

LEADERSHIP

were forced to transition into a new way of doing things practically overnight. Everything from partner and supplier communication and negotiations, contract reviews and approvals, internal collaboration, receipt of goods and supplies, and more, had to be rethought for a remote working environment,” reflects Bureau.

“As an essential service, banks needed to source personal protective equipment (PPE) for staff at a short notice, and in a manner that didn’t require in-person signature. Companies, public sector organisations, and educational establishments required completely paperfree procurement processes to avoid supplier on-site visits for bid delivery. These teams also needed centralized remote access to verified supplier data, so they could quickly purchase critical supplies in the event of an emergency.

“Digital leaders offered direction around how to best leverage existing cloudbased infrastructure, and where to make additional investments, to preserve business continuity and reduce unnecessary risk while organisations made this shift to remote operations.”

Before COVID-19, technology pilots were carefully planned and slower to move.

However, the pandemic has highlighted the

Rodney Zemmel GLOBAL LEADER OF MCKINSEY DIGITAL "To be a digital leader you need to put digital technologies at the center of your business’ operation and strategy. Companies that are doing this right and winning are investing in technology, data, processes and most importantly, their people."

Jim Bureau CEO JAGGAER Experienced leader that motivates and empowers individuals creating highly effective and accountable organizational culture. Have grown and sold private equity lead organizations as well as large scale publicly traded companies to sustained growth. Highly skilled in organizational change management.

value of speed. “The immediate priority for all digital leaders is to build a forward-thinking, adaptive culture that embraces innovation and experimentation. Transformation happens much faster when folks at all levels of the organisation are bought in, raise ideas, and play their part in driving digital initiatives forward.”

While many businesses were already on a digital transformation journey before COVID-19 Zemmel adds that “the reality is 70% of digital transformations fail to achieve their businesschief.com

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LEADERSHIP

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April 2021

LEADERSHIP

“ The immediate priority for all digital leaders is to build a forward-thinking, adaptive culture that embraces innovation and experimentation” JIM BUREAU

CEO, JAGGAER

full potential. The biggest barriers are a lack of alignment around a top down businessled technology roadmap, a lack of matching resources to priorities, and a failure to build capabilities, including agile working.”

Post-COVID-19: the future for digital leaders “In the early stages of the pandemic, the focus was on getting and implementing technology as fast as possible to address the immediate impacts. Now, the emphasis is shifting to ensuring the tools are being used in a way that drives long-term business value,” says Bureau.

Many organisations believe that adoption is the biggest barrier to enterprise-wide implementation. “This is often due to skills shortages and the fact those expected to use the tool don’t always have prior experience.

In addition to providing robust training and support, look for solutions with strong user interfaces. User experience is more important than ever now that we’re operating in a remote working environment.”

With using technology strategically being at the heart of digital leadership, “identifying areas in which you can invest further in automation. By eliminating routine and low value tasks, will provide teams with more capacity to focus on projects that require more intellectual thinking and drive higherlevel initiatives forward.

Looking ahead, “digital leaders are asking how they keep this pace and momentum going. This pandemic has made digital even more relevant for businesses. They’ve had to undergo their own transformations overnight so that they can serve their customers through digital channels that might not have existed before COVID. Leaders have had to make hard and often high-stakes decisions fast to ensure their resilience, and as I’ve mentioned, digital, technology and data need to be at the centre of it all,” concludes Zemmel. businesschief.com

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NTT Global Sourcing: The Power of One Arvind Kumar, Global VP of Indirects at NTT Global Sourcing, on partner ecosystems and how a novel approach to indirect sourcing delivers true value WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

Arvind Kumar

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April 2021

It is 4 am in Houston, Texas, when Arvind Kumar checks his emails and preps for the day ahead. The Global Vice President of Indirects at NTT Global Sourcing has an important call with a team in India, 11 hours ahead, and will be working right through to the early evening. It is a demanding role, but one that Kumar relishes. He is an executive energised by the prospect of big picture programmes and an emphatic champion of bringing businesses together to achieve through collaboration that which would be impossible alone.

Kumar’s values very much align with the shared philosophy of the NTT Global Sourcing team, a 60-strong global outfit that was assembled two and a half years ago

by CEO Mark LeNeve to advance the role of sourcing within NTT and centralise the group’s buying power. Commanding upwards of $30bn in annual spend, it is a powerhouse of procurement.

From the outset, the startup identified three core areas that would need to be modernised and reformed to excel in the modern landscape, and to realise the vision of the group’s top executives. NTT GS’s primary directive is to leverage the group’s combined influence and unify the hundreds of companies and entities that operate under its banner. “Our whole focus has been to

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

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Arul C.T, founder and CEO of HelixSense, holds more than 25 years of global experience in automation and venture exits calls HelixSense a “disruptive digital transformation company”. HelixSense aims to leverage technology and literally disrupt and reimagine how companies manage their assets.

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Using unique edge analysers, the HSense platform collects data from assets and makes them self-reporting.”

Using the cloud only for secondary analytics, “HSense” orchestrates digital asset management, while following maintenance standards and allowing for highly reliable risk mitigation.

The process consists of IT-OT integration where “big data” is collected by connecting IT databases and building management systems to “HSense,” integration of people with process standards such as ISO55K and SMRP practices, analytics and AI with structured, relevant and auditable data. AI-powered reports alert on trends and predictions providing actionable insights.

Another game-changer is Helix’s R-FIT IOT ready to fit technology which accelerates transformation, creating Return on Investment (ROI) from the start.

Combining the Internet of Things (IoT) and operation technology, HelixSense’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) replaces traditionally siloed functions with a fully integrated digital ecosystem that leverages data for the betterment of all stakeholders, resulting in

Digital Twins “A digital twin is a digital representation of a physical object. In the case of building construction, a digital twin can tell you how to build, help you collaborate between stakeholders and assist you in maintaining and managing with optimum eff iciency. We are currently building a number of digital twins (cobots) to assist managers and technicians in using virtual reality. Our digital twins can also provide reports and prescribe risk mitigation actions.

“HelixSense partners with NTT Global Sourcing on their transformation road map. NTT supports us with an extensive global customer base. We collaborate to create new joint revenue models for our customers,” says Arul.

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

“NTT has created a meeting platform which allows everybody to work together seamlessly.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

bring the strength of NTT as a group into one programme. Our job is to make sure we bring projects into a central focus area that can help us drive the big picture value and give back to the various operating companies across the group.”

First, NTT GS established a common platform through which these decentralized

entities could bring their initiatives together.

Better planning and strategic sourcing allows for the consolidation of spend across the business and its categories. The team also identified roughly 200 best-in-class vendors with which to build long-term partnerships.

Kumar’s role with this newly minted procurement division is indirects, a broad remit that encompasses payment solutions, everything to do with real estate – from land acquisition and construction through to lease back and infrastructure built for data centres – and managing all the facility workplace services around the globe. It is also involved in the digital transformation programmes within the group, though “there's a slight difference in our approach,” Kumar explains.

The implementation of new digital platforms such as SAP Ariba are group-level decisions that roll down to the company level.

In this regard – in the traditional definition of digital transformation – Kumar’s division has little involvement. “But what we do in

Arvind Kumar; An insight into NTT Global Sourcing

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April 2021

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

2018

NTT Global Sourcing Inc. founded

60

Number of Employees for NTT Global Sourcing Inc.

80+ Projects

$100m Estimated Savings

contributing to the digitalisation efforts is to look at the pre-existing programmes and processes across the group and within the categories that we manage. We also ensure there is automation, enforce digitalisation, and transform the category and processes from legacy to next-generation.”

Ecosystem of value This process of upscaling and reshaping legacy systems is also evident in Kumar’s approach to indirect sourcing. Traditionally, procurement is a one-way process of assessing and negotiating terms with a vendor to supply a product or service. Kumar’s model has upended this linear structure, instead creating an ecosystem of partners with an economy of shared capabilities, ideas and revenue generation opportunities.

“I’m very passionate about this,” Kumar says.

“I truly believe there's a larger picture that a lot of procurement organisations don't realise. The supplier partner ecosystem we are building on a strategic level provides vast opportunity to create and add incentives to businesses within

Executive Profile:

Arvind Kumar Title: Global VP of Indirects Industry: Strategic Sourcing Arvind Kumar joined NTT Global Sourcing when it was established in 2018, and oversees the group’s indirect sourcing as Global Vice President Indirects. His remit covers payment solutions, real estate construction, land acquisition, and managing all the facility and workplace services for NTT Group globally.

An experienced executive, Kumar’s 20-plus year career has seen him work with market-leading organisations in banking, real estate, sourcing, and telecommunications, among others.

Prior to joining NTT, he held several senior roles at French multinational Capgemini, including Global Head Workplace Transformation / Furniture & Fixture Standardisation, and Regional Chief Procurement Officer for India, UAE and APAC.

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

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our group, and for partners to work together to generate new income and business. I am a big proponent of building a supplier ecosystem, depending on certain projects, initiatives or categories, and promote collaboration with NTT in the middle of it as an incubation hub.”

Kumar envisions NTT Global Sourcing as the “choirmaster” of this global network,

standing with an overview of the entire ecosystem, driving strategy and aligning these partners to work together – the upshots of which are beneficial to the entire value chain. “Not only does it help us generate better value with the partners, but also for our partners to work together in collaborative programmes,” Kumar says. “As a result, NTT businesschief.com

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Deliver your global brand >

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

has created a meeting platform, which allows everybody to work together seamlessly.”

He explains that today, partners that never knew each other before aligning with NTT are now working closely in conjunction to create new business and revenue opportunities.

At the same time, these collaborative projects strengthen NTT’s supply chain and develop go-to-market solutions that benefit the group’s existing and new clients.

Building the future This complex network of partners will soon be enshrined in a major capital project that has been in the works for some years and, in many ways, sits at the heart of NTT’s future. In Sunnyvale, California, the group is readying the unveiling of One NTT Vision Campus, a smart, sustainable building that is a physical manifestation of its capabilities

“ [One NTT Vision Campus] is a living, breathing showcase of our ecosystem partners and what they deliver together with us.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

NTT Global Sourcing

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Community impact

Supporting local partners is central to the One NTT Vision NTT is a global conglomerate, but remaining local and supporting the communities it works in is central to the One NTT Vision. Arvind Kumar, Global VP of Indirects at NTT Global Sourcing shares more: “I think it's our responsibility as a strategic sourcing arm of a company to maximize the benefit for everybody in the supply chain,” says Kumar. "We do that by making sure the vision and mission for a company gets translated to everybody that's in that combined team, whether internally or externally, because in many cases these are an extension of NTT.

At the same time, we must keep a focus on impacting the community.

“I strongly believe when you do projects in my space, in real estate, we should always look to local partners, local players who are in the community, because they need a lot of help through COVID. It’s a combination of taking the big boys that we work with and integrating it with the smaller partners in the community that are in a five, 10, 20-mile radius of our office. We want to bring value to them and make sure that they're sustainable, make sure they get through this hurdle, and give them an opportunity to truly live and breathe. At NTT these are the missions and values we stand by, the One NTT Vision, and that touches all these elements as a company.”

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Arvind Kumar: Sunnyvale, the one NTT vision substainable campus

and future goals. Upon its mention, Kumar is instantly energised.

“That is a very special project, very dear to my heart and the work I do every day because I've always wanted to be part of a sustainable, smart building programme.

This is the vision of our CEO, bringing NTT companies together in one common real estate platform, one common office, but also make it a smart and intelligent workplace which focuses on employee experience, sustainability, wellness – all the key measures that today are important. At the same time, it has state of the art technology in terms of sensors, automation, IoT, and so on. And on top of that, it is a sustainable building, which means we have a solar captive fuel cell hybrid system with backup power being managed to back up the building and save utility energy costs.

“This is a living, breathing showcase of our ecosystem partners and what they deliver together with us, how we use it

internally, and how we give back to employees.

And also it becomes a showcase to show clients what we can do for them with these kinds of platforms and technologies as a solution provider.”

For Kumar, the central role NTT Global

“The key for sourcing organisations in the future must be a solutions-driven approach.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

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Sourcing played in the Sunnyvale project illustrates how his division deviates from the traditional procurement function.

“Sunnyvale is a classic example of how we brought that spirit to life and really demonstrated that we go above and beyond standard procurement negotiation and other sourcing activities. We were also there

advising, guiding, developing the strategy, supporting the business, integrating the partners, bringing the ecosystem, creating this whole smart building concept of the One NTT Vision.”

The outbreak of COVID-19 threatened to derail this construction project, and Kumar vividly recalls the onset of the virus.

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“ I truly believe there's a larger picture that a lot of procurement organisations don't realise.”

Arvind Kumar

Global VP of Indirects, NTT Global Sourcing

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Returning from Sunnyvale to Texas on a flight last February, he awoke the next day to find companies shutting down, airports beginning to empty out, and individuals and businesses standing still, not quite sure how to react.

“Now imagine, I'm running a construction project in Sunnyvale, I'm sitting in Texas, and we are in the heart of COVID. But we still have a timeline to meet, and we are pressured, and there's a cost impact associated with shutting down, then reopening, and other delays.”

Here, indirect sourcing came into its own.

“We played a big role, as you can imagine.

In terms of procurement, we needed safety gear, PPE, masks, hand sanitiser – all of these things that were in short supply. On the other hand, we also had to help our clients

NTT GLOBAL SOURCING INC.

procure these things, so we used our supply chain to support them through that process.”

In the end, construction never stopped on the One NTT Vision campus. “We are close to completing the building and looking ahead to the big launch,” Kumar says. “We never stopped. We actually pulled through the businesschief.com

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Arvind Kumar: Expresses his opinion on small businesses during these difficult times

times and really made it happen against all odds. We kept people-focused, kept people safe and positive, and ensured that the business could continue.”

With the global vaccine effort now well underway, Kumar believes we should remember the lessons learned during this turbulent period. “The key for sourcing organisations in the future must be a solutiondriven approach, focused on the value the supply ecosystem brings to the company when you build strategic partnerships. I think we need to look at a larger focus on that because in the next world that we're living in post-COVID, the supply chain partners and suppliers can add a lot of value in terms of not only managing the cost structure but being resilient to these activities.”

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April 2021

WHY EMPLOYEE WELLBEING SHOULD BE YOUR PRIORITY From wellbeing programmes to virtual self-care, employee care is being redefined in the post-pandemic era across America with HR leaders reshaping packages, a focus on mental health, and innovative wellbeing apps WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

W

hen it comes to employee benefits, supporting physical and emotional health is top priority for most employers in the post-pandemic world. However, less than 3 in 10 employers say their wellbeing and caregiving programs have been effective.

That’s according to a new survey by Willis Towers Watson (WTW), which also found the majority of employers cite rising stress and burnout as the number-one wellbeing and mental health concern.

“The pandemic has taken its toll on employees especially in the areas of emotional and social wellbeing. In fact, the impact is so great that many employers expect these effects will continue in a postvaccine environment,” said Regina Ihrke, Wellbeing leader, North America, Willis Towers Watson.

“Therefore, many employers are now acting with urgency as they look to take their wellbeing programs to the next level.

To achieve this transformation, they will

ramp up listening to their employee needs, communication efforts and realignment of benefit programs with a focus on mental health and caregiving.”

Health benefits remain key The reality is that COVID-19 has catalysed a new era, accelerating the shift from ‘traditional’ group insurance cover to employee health benefits characterised by health technology and a wider definition of wellbeing – that encompasses not just physical health, but increasingly mental health too. As businesses work to regain their footing post-pandemic, HR leaders will be looking to reshape company offers, adapting health, wellness and benefits programmes with the delivery of everything from enhanced sick leave and financial assistance, to adjusted hours of operation, childcare provisions and mental health support.

To address these challenges, 62% of those surveyed WTW said enhancing mental health services and stress/resilience management businesschief.com

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as a top priority over the next six months, compared with just 47% six months ago.

Encouragingly, twice as many employers report developing a strategy for benefits in a post-COVID-19 environment as a top priority, suggesting a shift from crisis management to future planning.

Mental health support in focus Even before the pandemic, prevalence of mental health had become a common workplace issue, leading HR managers to introduce wellness programmes into its benefit packages and insurers to deliver such policies.

In the wake of the pandemic and its aftermath (a recent global study by Qualtrics and SAP revealed that 67% of respondents were experiencing heightened stress levels) and as workplaces adjust to the ‘new normal’ and the struggles that come with it, more organisations are recognising the importance of mental health and emotional wellbeing programmes.

“Employers have assessed their caregiving support was not as effective as hoped, and as a result the mental health of their workforce is suffering,” said Rachael McCann, senior director, Health and Benefits, Willis Towers Watson. “Many solutions were short term in nature, which contributed to their ineffectiveness. With the stakes so high, employers need a revamped approach to caregiving support that includes a holistic view of benefits, paid time off and flexible work policies.”

Such numbers are reflected in Pacific Prime’s Global Employee Benefits Trends 2020 report. While 34 per cent of businesses have already introduced additional private mental health support, 44 per cent have started to provide professional mental health support, and 35 per cent have introduced extra physical or mental training sessions.

“Increasingly, companies are offering programmes that help employees monitor and reduce their stress levels, provide apps to assist with relaxation and sleep, and hold workshops on emotional resilience,” states Pacific Prime’s CEO, Neil Raymond.

“Employers are also progressively using telehealth programmes to provide mental

“ The pandemic has taken its toll on employees especially in the areas of emotional and social wellbeing” REGINA IHRKE

WELLBEING LEADER, NORTH AMERICA, WILLIS TOWERS WATSON

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health counselling and are more willing to offer counselling sessions through EAPs (emotional assistance programmes).”

The report highlights six global benefits trends: 1. Refinement and reassessment of group health insurance 2. Adoption of technology 3. Mental health benefits 4. Family-friendly benefits 5. Flexible working arrangements 6. Financial wellbeing 70

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The long road to new normal According to the WTW survey, two-thirds of employers (67%) expect to reach a ‘new normal’ in terms of returning to the workplace and bringing to an end pandemicrelated policies and programs during the second half of 2021. One in four (26%) expect that to happen by Q1 2022 or later.

Leading companies are already doing their bit to tackle the stresses and strains created by the pandemic, and adjusting their health and wellness offerings.

Unilever has unveiled a 14-day mental wellbeing resilience programme, which

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utilises tools created by the Resilience Research Center to cover a wide range of topics, including dealing with negative thoughts.

EY Global’s employees can participate in daily workouts online through the EY Exercise programme as well as attend online seminars covering topics like nutrition and sleep.

In addition to wellbeing programmes, businesses are considering and trialling other employee perks, from flexible hours to continued remote working, that take into consideration the demands of the pandemic and subsequent working habits, with a focus on promoting work-life balance.

Wellness delivered via technology Driven by corporate demand, emerging self-help apps and digital health and wellness solutions have gained significant ground.

While mental health app Intellect supports users with a range of interventions, digital mental health provider Safe Space offers three tiers of service for corporates, from giving employees access to selfhelp resources, to letting corporates top up digital wallets so staff can attend counselling sessions to offering corporates curated employee programmes.

“Workplace mental well-being will be one of our top priorities going into 2021,” said Safe Space founder Antoinette Patterson.

“Safe Space’s vision is to make digital mental healthcare and education accessible and comprehensive to businesses of all sizes, from startups to MNCs.” Perkbox is a platform that offers a suite of products including Perks and Perkbox Medical. It serves companies of all sizes from SMEs to large companies such as Whole Foods and Levi Strauss & Co.

Room for disruption A recent Boston Consulting Group (BCG) survey of more than 2,300 companies around the world for its annual Digital Acceleration Index (DAI), showed that healthcare is one of the least digitally mature industries, scoring an average of 44 out of 100. That score was 20% below the two leading industries (technology and financial institutions) with an average score of 55. This suggests the healthcare industry is still ripe for disruption.

Work From Home Employers expect nearly two in five employees will still be working remotely at the end of 2021, compared with 57% who work remotely now, although that varies by industry, according to WTW.

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“ Employers have assessed their caregiving support was not as effective as hoped, and as a result the mental health of their workforce is suffering” RACHAEL MCCANN

SENIOR DIRECTOR, HEALTH AND BENEFITS, WILLIS TOWERS WATSON

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HUMAN CAPITAL

Many companies are also offering employees access to virtual doctors appointments. While this technology has been around for a few years now, demand has soared during the pandemic as access to face-to-face healthcare has been limited.

These telehealth apps have been joined by a swathe of mental health apps in the past 12 months. Youper, for example, uses AI technology to help manage depression via their downloadable app. The AI

assistant works by talking back and forth with you. The assistant will ask prompts that encourage you to think about your thought patterns and behaviours. It will then summarise your conversations and provide insights.

With the world cautiously inching towards the lights at the end of this dark tunnel, it’s reassuring to know that technology can help alleviate some of the problems both employers and employees are facing. businesschief.com

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NFP

Timely digital transformation

WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: JAKE MEGEARY

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Agile insurance broker builds vibrant future for global clients with virtual engagement through the pandemic

B

y definition, insurance is financial protection from uncertainty. The uncertainty of the global pandemic has made businesses and individuals much more risk averse.

While our outlook to taking out insurance may have changed due to the effects of COVID-19, NFP’s timely digital transformation has armed their employees to successfully work remotely within the new business landscape and helped them engage with clients around the world.

“I think there is now an appreciation for protecting yourself against risks that you may not foresee,” said Mike Goldman, President and Chief Operating Officer of NFP, speaking from their offices in New York City.

NFP is regarded as a growth company driven by its ability to attract high-performing firms, expand their community and be a catalyst to elevate value for their clients.

It prides itself on having a personal touch and makes it clear they ‘start the conversations that create a more secure future for everyone’.

As a leading insurance broker NFP specialises in property and casualty, corporate benefits, retirement and individual solutions and continuously empowers businesses to ‘build from their foundations to grow and flourish’.

Founded in 1998 NFP has offices in the United States, Canada, Europe and Puerto Rico with teams specialising in all industries

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Mike Goldman

NFP

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Mike Goldman from NFP talks about Insurance Technology

from sports to healthcare and transport.

They enable client success through the expertise of their professionals, investments in innovative technologies

“ I think we have an incredibly collaborative environment and people are really focused on getting the best possible results for clients.

That’s enabled us to be a very innovative, nimble company” MIKE GOLDMAN

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF NFP

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and by establishing enduring relationships with highly rated insurers, vendors and financial institutions.

A former attorney, Goldman joined NFP in 2001 and served in a number of diverse roles before becoming the head of Mergers & Acquisitions in 2005. He became chief operating officer in 2013, and in 2018 he added president to his title while also taking on NFP's emerging InsurTech/FinTech/ Digital Health Venture Investment Fund, driving the company’s active and deliberate investment in technology.

NFP’s philosophy is that innovation starts with inclusivity. While technology brings innovation to life, they think that true innovation brings value to everyday lives by solving problems, enhancing convenience and reducing costs.

Timely digital transformation NFP started the digital transformation of the business four to five years ago – which was

NFP

MIKE GOLDMAN TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER INDUSTRY: INSURANCE LOCATION: NEW JERSEY

EXECUTIVE BIO

a timely move in light of how the pandemic accelerated remote working practices for their 5,800+ employees.

“We feel pretty lucky because a couple of years ago we made some very significant investments on the technology side of the equation,” said Goldman. “We moved all of our operations to a common agency management system and we moved everyone to Salesforce on the front-end of the house, investing a lot in our technology platforms. We moved to a place where we could effectively have our entire workforce go remote without missing a beat.

“We were able to put people on Zoom and Microsoft Teams and have them in front of clients even from their homes. It proved to us that you can get stuff done even in remote environments. It showed us that our employees could collaborate and service our clients just as effectively as before,” commented Goldman.

“We could also see the real benefit and resulting business value of the systems we'd invested in like Salesforce, and being more forward thinking about where our pipelines were. I do think it helped accelerate some things for us,” he said.

“I'm proud of how we have shown a lot of resiliency in the environment. We’re pretty optimistic that as vaccines roll out, we'll be

As President and Chief Operating Officer of NFP, Mike Goldman directs initiatives that empower NFP to strategically expand within an extremely efficient, regionalised operating structure.

To ensure NFP offers the most complete services possible to clients, he is involved in bringing in new acquisitions and guiding the integration of their employees and unique skill sets.

Goldman, a former attorney, started at NFP in 2001 and served in a number of diverse roles before becoming the head of Mergers & Acquisitions in 2005. He led the company’s emerging InsurTech/FinTech Venture Investment Fund and became President in 2017.

The Digital Future of Insurance Is Now 2020 drove the industry to a turning point where the traditional ways of doing business are in the rear view.

The road ahead is built on open technology.

Mobilizing operations on the go. Taking you to new customer service destinations.

Exploring uncharted business opportunities and operational speeds.

Trust Applied to be your technology partner of the future to light a digital path of productivity, simplicity, intelligence and value.

Let’s get there together.

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Applied Systems: Your indispensable partner of choice

Watch Applied Systems speak about their Partners

Powering the business of insurance through innovative cloud-based software makes Applied Systems a global leader Applied, the leading global provider of cloudbased software that powers the business of insurance, is the indispensable partner of choice for NFP.

Applied is recognised as an innovation leader in insurance automation and is the world’s largest provider of agency and brokerage management systems.

“We’ve been a partner with NFP for more than 10 years - our companies have grown together throughout the US and Canada, said Trevor Bunker, Chief Customer Officer at Applied.

Bunker said independent agencies are attracted to Applied because they offer scale and expertise. “We bring expertise around digital connectivity – gone are the days of closed systems. Independent agents want choice and the flexibility to innovate. Our open architecture provides flexibility and easier access to more quickly integrate third-party applications so independent agencies can be in control of their own tech destiny,” he said.

“We provide that digital ecosystem or digital platform, by which they run their business and help support their customers. Our goal at Applied is to really be that essential partner to customers like NFP, who look out for their customers to help them protect what matters most,” said Bunker.

“Our internal mantra is to be an indispensable partner - to be that partner of choice. We strive to be that partner you want to bring into the room every day - we focus on being the easiest company to do business with,” he said.

For more than 35 years, Applied has led an industry which they helped to create with a mission to continuously improve the business of insurance. Since 1983, the company has been at the forefront of insurance technology.

Commenting on industry trends, Bunker said today’s customer expectations are driven by big tech – shaped by their experiences interacting with companies such as Google, Uber and social media platforms.

“We are helping our customers continue to stay ahead of those innovation curves,” he said.

Learn more now

NFP

getting back to a more normal environment.

When you look at what played out in 2020, which entailed a lot of risks for people, the value of the services and the products we provide really stood out in this environment and helped protect our clients and enable them hopefully to get through this,” he said.

Goldman pointed out that NFP found themselves advising clients on an increased array of services than what they were doing before the pandemic. “We held seminars around availing yourself of small business loans, addressing cyber vulnerabilities, proactively supporting employee well-being, creating policies for employees working from home and other challenges and opportunities emerging from the pandemic.

We felt we had the ability to introduce experts to our clients and help them navigate through this environment.

“ We moved to a place where we could effectively have our entire workforce go remote without missing a beat” MIKE GOLDMAN

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF NFP

“I think that the biggest message is if you're thoughtful about protecting yourself and your business against risks – and you take a long-term view – even when there are bumps in the road like we hit this past year, you'll get to the other side of them stronger than how you went into them,” he said.

Innovation and venture Goldman said NFP formed both an innovation lab and a venture fund to stay informed 82

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1998

Company Founded

5,800+ Number of employees

270+

Offices across the United States

40+

International offices

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Transactions with total acquired earnings making it the biggest year in NFP history – highlights included NFP’s Rose and Kiernan acquisition and the Fiduciary Investment Advisors acquisition (FIA)

DiMeo

DiMeo and Associates (an owned NFP company) to recently rebranded Fiducient Advisors

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Excellence through technology As a Microsoft Gold Partner, Maureen Data Systems (MDS) aims to digitally transform businesses with the use of cloud infrastructure, security, data analytics, and managed services. MDS is a woman—owned business, embracing a culture of inclusivity, diversity, and consistent learning.

LEARN MORE

NFP

NFP—You’re Only Human

and play an active role in solving client problems with innovative solutions. “The thought process behind that was there were so many new technologies coming to market and things that frankly we thought could be advantageous from a client perspective,” he said.

“We really wanted to be thoughtful, consistent and deliberate about how we evaluated opportunities. We wanted to have a central place to funnel ideas, evaluate them and make decisions about supporting them and promoting them to our clients.”

This led to NFP investing in Indio – a company that simplifies the insurance application process to make it fast, collaborative and easy for the client to use. “We rolled out Indio across many of our offices in the fall,” said Goldman, who pointed out that NFP’s philosophy is to invest in companies that add real value

and create solutions that will be helpful to clients’ businesses.

“We were able to help them drive to a much more positive result and it ultimately ended up in a very successful acquisition for them. That's just one example, but what really differentiates us is our ability to solve the holistic problem of how our clients interact with insurance carriers and how data is exchanged throughout that process,” he said.

Goldman pointed out the insurance and financial services industry has tended to lag behind in the introduction of new technology citing how onerous the manually intensive process to acquire life insurance was in the past.

“The goal and the expectation is that you get better and you improve and you make it more seamless for people. That's really how we've been thinking about things and businesschief.com

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Technology as a problem solver Goldman pointed out that during NFP’s digital transformation the impetus was put on how technology should be used to solve problems and make the insurance buying process easier for clients.

“We did decide to move all of our own information to the cloud because we thought it was a much more nimble kind of process.

We continue to have a flexible environment around technology so we can plug things in or out as they become better for us and for our clients. It’s been our philosophy to be as flexible as we can with technology because the pace of change isn’t slowing down,” commented Goldman “We’ve been very fortunate to work with a number of companies that share our views on what it means to be a good partner and provide leading technical solutions.

Applied Systems, which provides insurance agency management software, Mitel on the cloud VoiP telecom front, Maureen Data Systems (MDS) and Motifworks on our cloud infrastructure and application strategy –

how we can expedite that process and make it much easier. If that involves making investments or getting behind solutions, coming to market and helping show the insurance carriers why those solutions are better, then we can be a real expediter in that process,” said Goldman.

“Our clients are able to look back and learn from their own data and get it in a digestible way that can inform decisions that impact their business. Our perspective is that we are the advisor and we have a unique vantage point in really seeing and improving the full chain of that process.”

“ I think when you look at what played out this year, which entailed a lot of risks for people, I think the value of the services and the products that we provide really stood out in this environment” MIKE GOLDMAN

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF NFP

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“ I think we have a unique vantage point in really seeing the full chain of that process” MIKE GOLDMAN

PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER OF NFP

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these stand out as organisations who see every interaction as a collaboration. They listen and work really hard to earn and maintain trust, and it shows in their results.”

Competitive advantage NFP has the advantage of being an agile private company, giving them a competitive advantage. “We've had a consistent investment group that's been with us since 2013 and wants to continue with us. They understand

NFP

our business, they understand our strategic vision, and frankly, they allow us to execute with little to no distractions,” said Goldman.

“We were a public company for a long time and I think most public company leaders would agree that there are plenty of distractions – we just don't have those now.”

Goldman stressed that NFP also stands out from its competitors due to the fact the company has an engaging culture and listens to its employees.

DID YOU KNOW...

HOW NFP MAKES THE DIFFERENCE • People-first culture driven by recognition, community, well-being, development and inclusion • Open and transparent communication with a willingness to listen to new ideas • Proactive collaboration that inspires the celebration of all successes • Team-driven sales enablement based on where the industry is headed, not where it’s been • Consistent recognition as one of the best places to work in insurance • An integration process that minimises business disruption and maximises value • A global network of expertise and solutions across business lines and industries • “What if” innovation connecting problems with solutions to enhance outcomes for clients • An agile, growing brand defined by deep relationships, expertise and community • Sales growth potential supported by national buying power and operational efficiency • Continue to advance D&I within our business, our industry and the communities we serve, making focused efforts to attract, support and grow diverse talent while educating and building awareness throughout our workforce so we can create a more inclusive workplace for everyone. Robust technology makes it easier and more secure for our clients to do business.

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“The level of engagement and passion that our people have for serving clients and for supporting each other is really great.

I think we have an incredibly collaborative environment and people are really focused on getting the best possible results for clients. That has enabled us to be a very innovative, nimble company.”

Goldman outlined the key challenges posed by the pandemic from remote working to welcoming new employees who have to embrace the NFP culture over a Microsoft Teams meeting.

“We continue to operate in a somewhat unnatural environment and everyone is still, for most aspects of their work life, working remotely.

“The challenge is really to continue to keep people engaged and focused. You

Supporting your remote and hybrid workforce.

LEARN MORE mitel.com

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have to be very deliberate about what your communications are and make sure that you're communicating frequently with each other because you don't have the ability to just stop by someone’s office or serendipitously run into people in the hall to exchange ideas and thoughts.

“You really have to be very proactive in reaching out to people and communicating.

We are also consistently bringing new people into the company. So, getting those people up to speed and getting them to feel the culture is just more difficult in this environment,” he said.

Importance of collaborations According to Goldman the hallmarks of a great collaborator or partner company is a willingness to share data. “Securely and

efficiently sharing data is a really important part of our evaluation of who to partner with. We ultimately want to be able to use the data that we have for the benefit of our clients,” he said.

“If we have a concern the data is going to be held up by somebody else or that there could be any impediments to us being able to analyse and use that data, we'd be hesitant to really partner with somebody like that. If they're solving a problem in the value chain that we think has independent value and they're willing to allow us to use the data for our client's benefit, then I think we feel good about that from a collaboration standpoint.”

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The Future of AUDITS and

ASSURANCE Business Chief discusses the future of audits and assurance and the core priorities for the function in 2021 with KPMG WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

S

peaking with Emilio Pera, Partner and Head of Audit, KPMG Lower Gulf, he explains that “Audits are conducted in accordance with the International Standards on Auditing (ISA) on financial statements as a whole assurance, on the other hand, will provide different levels of comfort on specific elements of the financial statements and could include non-financial information as well.

Assurance is a much wider concept with a wider application.”

Initial impact of COVID-19 for audits and assurance Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Pera reflects that “the most significant change is rapid digitalisation.” While prior to COVID-19,

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

Emilio Pera, Partner and Head of Audit,

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

“ Audit firms are also using data analytics and in-house technology to effectively audit data held and processed in clients’ IT systems, to better identify risks” EMILIO PERA,

PARTNER AND HEAD OF AUDIT, KPMG LOWER GULF

“the winds were already changing,” comments Naveen Kalia, Partner, Audit, KPMG Canada. Auditors have had to adapt to new ways of working at a much quicker pace, harnessing remote tools and methods to deliver audits and connect with clients to review documentation, inspect evidence and engage in a secure environment. “As a result, information technology and data security have become key,” adds Pera.

In addition to new remote working technologies, Pera adds that “recent changes in auditing and accounting standards have led to the increased use of specialist resources and skills as part of the audit, and as technology is playing an increasingly important role in obtaining audit evidence, audit procedures are also reassessed to drive efficiency, whilst not compromising on quality.” businesschief.com

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

COVID-19 presents new risks “The standards haven't changed, yet the pandemic has resulted in new risks. There have been significant changes to internal controls as a result of remote work arrangements this makes business more vulnerable to fraud and cybersecurity attacks, often while facing resource constraints and staff reductions — making it even more difficult to design effective controls.”

The future for audits and assurance and the core priorities for 2021 “One of the priorities in 2021 is to understand how we can leverage what we learned during the pandemic to further enhance audit quality. For instance, technology has been widely adopted to improve audit quality, by driving efficiency and greater coverage of a client’s portfolio,” comments Pera.

It is important for the accounting industry to remain a step ahead of businesses transforming the way they collect and process data. As a result “continuing to invest in cognitive, machine learning and 96

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

“The challenge ahead is to leverage technology without compromising data security and audit quality” EMILIO PERA,

PARTNER AND HEAD OF AUDIT, KPMG LOWER GULF

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AUDITS & ASSURANCE

“ After embracing digitisation and artificial intelligence for high-quality, highly efficient audits, there's no going back. The future of audit is within reach and closer than ever” NAVEEN KALIA,

PARTNER, AUDIT, KPMG CANADA

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artificial intelligence capabilities to provide organisations with data-driven business insights as well as evolving reporting and regulatory requirements,” will be vital going forward, explains Kalia.

“Audit firms are also using data analytics and in-house technology to effectively audit data held and processed in clients’ IT systems, to better identify risks,” adds Pera.

While KPMG states that investments in technology are critical, there is no onesize-fits-all solution. With new technologies and expectations evolving rapidly, auditors need to constantly upgrade their skills and approach to bridge the skills gap.

“The emergence of cutting-edge tools and innovation transforming audit has accountants thirsty for the knowledge to keep pace and thrive in the future of audit,” notes Kalia.

Another benefit for the future is remote working, Pera explains that such workplace models “provide more flexibility and agility in both the delivery and connection with clients. Looking at a market such as the Middle East for example, specialist resources can operate virtually across geographies rather than being restricted through physical presence. This has also benefited work-life balance as teams are not required to travel extensively and be present in office or at the client site all the time.”

Reflecting on the future for audits and assurance, Pera comments that “moving forward, auditors will be expected to exercise extraordinary judgement while evaluating asset impairments, valuations and estimates, even as they operate within uncertain markets exacerbated by the pandemic. The challenge ahead is to leverage technology without compromising data security and audit quality.” businesschief.com

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GODADDY

GoDaddy: Tuning in to the dynamics of change in procurement Keith Tice, Chief Procurement Officer, walks us through the comprehensive transformation that has radically upgraded GoDaddy’s procurement processes WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING

I

've been with GoDaddy just shy of eight years: I came in May of 2013, just as GoDaddy was beginning a new transformation,” states Keith Tice, Chief Procurement Officer. “When I joined the company, procurement essentially did not exist here.” It’s a bold conversation opener, and one which perfectly anticipates the details of both Tice’s and GoDaddy’s accomplishment, which saw a function primarily managed by business stakeholders and a legal contracts team become a developed, dynamic, and digital process of its own.

Founded in 1997, GoDaddy’s stature as one of the US’ foremost internet domain registrars and web hosting companies has only grown over the years. Now with over 20 million customers worldwide spread across almost 60 different markets and 9,000 employees in 14 offices speaking roughly 30 languages to 100

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PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE service them, this Scottsdale, Arizona business is one of the internet age’s most enduring global success stories.

Although Tice arrived with a significant challenge to overcome when he first joined, his expert level of experience gained from over 20 years of work in purchasing gave him the clear vision needed to begin overhauling procurement at GoDaddy. “I brought a mindset that focused on how we structure, separate and categorize the various spend aspects of what we're doing, particularly in terms of understanding suppliers and how they fit in the company,” he explains. Integrating this mindset required good oversight and command of data, something which was made difficult by legacy infrastructure. Tice’s goal was to spearhead a digital transformation that would go above and beyond the solutions he’d worked on previously.

GODADDY

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GODADDY

“ When I joined the company, procurement essentially did not exist here” KEITH TICE

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY

The first step of Tice’s plan required a broad evaluation of GoDaddy’s supplier network, “prior to my arrival the company had about 10 times the number of suppliers that we have today.” Following a six-month period of rationalizing the available data, he made the decision to shift away from difficult-to-manage Excel spreadsheets to an integrated platform that provided a single pane of glass visibility into the

Keith Tice: Insights to vendors and suppliers @ GoDaddy.com

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KEITH TICE TITLE: CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER LOCATION: ARIZONA, UNITED STATES INDUSTRY: INTERNET SERVICES

• Why are you doing this?

• Why this vendor in particular?

• Why does it cost this much?

• Why are we paying for that?

• Why is it necessary?

Tice’s next move was to transmit the idea that each and every vendor is “expendable”, acting as a challenge for them to proactively justify GoDaddy’s spend through competitive service and delivery. “Step three was then

EXECUTIVE BIO

company’s spend with each supplier. “I needed to figure out what makes sense for GoDaddy, and I did that through a series of interviews with internal stakeholders about why they have certain vendors performing certain tasks for us.” Tice used the ‘five whys’ as his model:

Keith grew up in a very small town in the northern high plains of Texas. After attending college at Tarleton State University, Keith began his career working in the protein industry for IBP, Inc., which is now a part of Tyson Foods. The goal Keith had set after leaving Tarleton was to establish a career in Procurement. His first role came in 1997 with The Dial Corporation, not a part of Henkel. Keith initially managed Procurement for the Armour Star Brand of food products, a division of The Dial Corporation. As he progressed through the various functional areas within Procurement for Dial/Henkel, Keith was recruited to build a Procurement function and organization at GoDaddy.

Starting in May 2013 the transformation and building of the Procurement organization with GoDaddy began as a team of three focused on IT requirements alone.

Today, the organization and team Keith has built is managing all third party spending through the efforts of 12 staff located around the world.

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Drive Demand.

Drive Action.

Drive Results.

Turning results into revenue. Performance marketing focused on business outcomes.

Learn more

GainShare: Transparency and Accountability in Performance

Bryan Walkey, CEO of GainShare Performance Marketing, discusses the company’s partnership with GoDaddy alongside its mission and culture.

With a career spanning over 30 years, Bryan Walkey is the CEO of GainShare Performance Marketing.

“I joined the firm full-time four years ago, but I've had an association as an advisor to the firm for over 30 years. Before joining as a partner and CEO, I had worked with Gainshare to coordinate teams and delivery in both Toronto and Chicago. The goal today is to drive seamless delivery and results across teams, tactics, and markets.”

Known as Northern Lights Direct for more than 35 years, the company recently rebranded as GainShare Performance Marketing. “We started in DRTV, and so we felt it best to change our brand name to better represent who we are today. We now do so much more than direct response TV. As a performance marketer, we coordinate the customer journey across all channels, and we wanted to ensure we showcased that scope.”

GainShare’s relationship with GoDaddy Discussing GainShare’s partnership with GoDaddy, Walkey explains, “GoDaddy is a performance culture, and they're looking for a high return on their ad spend, and we help them accomplish that and acquire customers in the most efficient way possible.

We provide strategy, media planning, buying, optimization, and analytics. We work with a number of their teams, including performance & brand video, creative and business intelligence.”

“With GoDaddy, it is truly a collaborative effort.

We feel like we're part of their team. Because they're a performance-driven company, they hold us to account every day, every week, and every month. We're in contact with them multiple times a day, measuring daily and continually optimizing.

At the end of the day, it is all about performance,” he adds.

What makes GainShare different from its competitors?

“As a performance marketer, we provide transparency, accountability, and we're driving return on investment, return on ad spend,” begins Walkey. “There's been a lot of moaning in the marketing community about procurement driving the price to zero. Well, we believe it’s essential to drive the cost of marketing and investments directly to the bottom line.

We are excited to work with CMOs, CFOs, and Procurement equally because we're focused on business outcomes,” he continues.

“We talk about return on investment, return on ad spend, we profess transparency and accountability, all things that resonate with both procurement and finance. We deal with the marketing team on the things that are important to them. And we plan and answer procurement on the things that are important to them as well. So, it's a true business relationship.”

gainshare.com

GODADDY

$3.32bn Revenue in FY 2020

1997 Year Founded

9,000+ Number of Employees

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GODADDY

to renegotiate and/or add the right suppliers categorically across the company to service our business needs adequately, not just the way people perceived our needs,” continues Tice. “That shift, while difficult, put us in

“I brought a mindset that focused on how we structure, separate and categorize the various spend aspects of what we're doing, particularly in terms of understanding suppliers and how they fit in the company” KEITH TICE

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY

a position where the relationships with vendors have become very strong. To take us to the next level of innovation, we needed to bring in vendors that could change the game for us: new technologies and new ways of working.”

In addition to consolidation, GoDaddy’s digital roadmap meant that the daily admin of procurement needed to modernize. Dispensing with rote manual tasks that introduced margins for error as information was traded from one system to another through automation was key, as was incorporating spend analytics and e-procurement platforms. Of course, no tech-based transformation story of the last 12 months could avoid the effect of COVID19, and it is in this regard that Tice adds special praise to GoDaddy, “I really have to emphasize how well the company did moving everyone quickly from the office to remote working.” However, the challenge businesschief.com

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Digital Transformation — Driving IT Growth in the Next Normal.

These are unprecedented times for businesses everywhere.

Zones has what it takes to strategize and execute your digital transformation. Our IT solutions and services will ensure maximum return on technology investment, reduce modernization costs, optimize operations for a more effective workforce, and enable scalable cloud infrastructure for future growth.

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Partnership goals: Zones LLC and GoDaddy on DT

Zones LLC is a strategic partner of GoDaddy. We chat to Sean Hobday, SVP of Global Business Development, about digital transformation on a global scale.

Sean Hobday, SVP of Global Business Development for Zones LLC, has had an exciting 12 months. The company is a strategic partner to GoDaddy - the internet domain registrar and hosting company based in Arizona.

Zones offers a wide variety of solutions. At the company's core, Global Supply Chain as a Service (GSCaaS) has been in overdrive since the start of the pandemic in early 2020.

Hobday says, "Making sure that businesses and enterprises can get the IT hardware, software, and solutions that they need domestically within the US, but also all around the world, has been a critical differentiation to ensure clients’ success for Zones during COVID." Hobday describes the relationship Zones LLC has with GoDaddy as evolutionary because it has grown significantly since the companies formed the partnership.

From working on projects in one location for the global internet and hosting company, Zones LLC now handles much of the corporation's IT logistics worldwide.

"GoDaddy approached us because they had a business problem in one of their locations, and they needed

quick fulfilment of hardware to support a small office.

We were able to do that efficiently and effectively."

He continues, "GoDaddy is a company that continually acquires smaller companies within their space around the world to enhance their growth. We were a good fit because Zones has offices and fulfillment centers in key locations to align globally.”

Flexibility in the current working climate is also essential; Hobday points out. “We make sure that at our core DNA, we have the right flexibility and processes frameworks that allow for adaptability to help clients succeed in their digital transformation” The work-from-home mandates have been challenging; however, it is essential for businesses to navigate the complexity, Hobday states. "The solutions that we offer bring tremendous and immediate value to ensure GoDaddy's business continuance with a distributed workforce.”

He adds, "As our partnership grows, we'll be able to address and fortify other solutions within data center, security and networking areas as well.

zones.com

GODADDY

Keith Tice: Talks to us about user experience @ GoDaddy.com

was far from being merely a technical one: procurement, he states, is strongly rooted in person-to-person negotiation on both sides of the table. Reflecting on the beginning of the pandemic, Tice claims that he genuinely feared the effects of losing this important aspect, “I was becoming increasingly worried that the effectiveness of my team was going to start to decline because they just don't have that ability to work with the vendor one-on-one.”

Despite his concerns, GoDaddy’s saving grace turned out to be the ready availability of conferencing software like Zoom. Tice’s team quickly adapted to the new paradigm and didn’t miss a beat; turning in a 2020 110

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performance that was equal to or better than the previous year, Tice states that he was pleasantly “shocked” by the results.

“It’s gotten to the point now where I've recently hired two new permanently remote employees. I didn't hire them with any intention whatsoever to move them into one of our hub offices. Whatever the new normal looks like, I don't see my team going back to how things were unless specific needs arise.”

The spirit of embracing change at GoDaddy is easily visualized by its recent rebrand that features a slick image of the word ‘go’ shaped into a heart. “With our logo change, we're thinking about over 20 million customers out there: what’s their

GODADDY

“ To take us to the next level of innovation, we needed to bring in vendors that could change the game for us: new technologies and new ways of working” KEITH TICE

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY

philosophy and what can we do to support them? ‘Go’ exemplifies all that we want them to do; it captures that entrepreneurial spirit and it's paying homage to the importance of humanity and joy that we wanted in that logo.”

Focusing on CX (customer experience) is a big part of fulfilling the renewed promise of that logo. “A few years ago, if you went to GoDaddy with the intention of buying a domain, adding hosting or email, or any of the various products that we're offering, you would have found a front of site architecture that was cumbersome,” says Tice. Subsequently, this was improved by reducing the amount of clicks customers businesschief.com

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EPAM and GoDaddy Join Forces to Help Small Businesses Succeed After a decade of strong growth, internet pioneer GoDaddy recognized the need for a strategic partner to help navigate the ever-increasing pace of digital transformation and constantly evolving customer demands.

“We needed a highly-skilled workforce that could hit the ground running,” says Keith Tice, Chief Procurement Officer at GoDaddy. “We trust EPAM’s quality of service, their people, attention to detail and leadership. They are a partner we can grow with.”

EPAM offered what GoDaddy was looking for: the ability to accelerate roadmaps, re-prioritize technology plans, transition to a modern AWS Cloud architecture and engage the right mix of professionals to get it all done seamlessly.

GoDaddy started as a domain registrar and is now the world’s largest services platform for entrepreneurs around the globe. GoDaddy is the place where entrepreneurs and small business owners come to name their idea, build a website, attract customers and sell their products and services online. Today, GoDaddy has more than 20 million customers.

Over the years the need for engineering resources at GoDaddy has grown dramatically.

The small business owner that once came to GoDaddy for just a domain name and hosting services, now looks to the company for everything from eCommerce to social media marketing.

In 2020, GoDaddy and EPAM kicked off projects to modernize GoDaddy’s eCommerce platform and deliver a more streamlined single sign-on experience for its online customers.

Previously, the customer sign-on and signup experience was focused on security more than convenience. GoDaddy wanted both. Already, A/B testing has shown significant success in changes delivered by EPAM. GoDaddy’s customers now have easier access to the company’s products in a highly secure environment.

Meanwhile, EPAM engineers on the eCommerce project team are ensuring that the existing architecture is seamlessly supported as they build a more scalable and flexible platform that will further GoDaddy’s ability to offer solutions that meet customers’ unique needs. At the same time, GoDaddy gets the tools they need to be more agile in responding to demands.

As GoDaddy continues to grow, company leaders wanted to ensure that whatever project they initiate to help their customers, they would have the right partner to make it happen. EPAM is excited to be a part of this journey helping GoDaddy and its customers build businesses globally that will grow and thrive as we all discover new ways to harness the power of digital.

Learn more

GODADDY

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GODADDY

“ Go’ exemplifies all that we want [customers] to do; it captures that entrepreneurial spirit and it's paying homage to the importance of humanity and joy that we wanted in that logo” KEITH TICE

CHIEF PROCUREMENT OFFICER, GODADDY

need to perform to find what they need.

GoDaddy also introduced automated chatbots to streamline its communication channels and ensure queries are resolved diligently. “We’ve brought in chat automation so that our customers can come in, get what they need, and then move on. Speaking with a GoDaddy care representative is a fantastic experience, but, at the end of the day, running their business is what's important for our customers.”

This sense of technological pragmatism combined with a refreshingly adaptable mindset will form the bread and butter of GoDaddy’s approach to procurement in

2021. However, Tice has grander visions for his department beyond cost reduction, value creation and capital management. “We now are very focused on reducing supply risk and members of my team have goals set against that - we call it ‘joining forces’. I've also moved our organization into becoming more of a strategic advisor to the business as a whole. We now understand their roadmaps and where they're headed, and we're able to align suppliers and or technologies to match that.” As digital transformation continues to accelerate there will still be challenges, particularly relating to properly onboarding and training new remote-based team members, but Tice is certain that “every dollar spent” will enhance procurement’s influence, build supplier relationships, and facilitate its growth. Times are changing, he reasons, and those who can’t keep up with the new program are in danger of being left behind.

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AGILE DIGITAL

DIGITAL AGILITY: THE FUTURE FOR

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SUCCESS

Phil Lewis, Vice President, Solution Consulting EMEA at Infor answers five questions on the importance of digital agility for digital transformation success WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

Phil Lewis, Vice President, Solution Consulting EMEA

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Digital Transformation.

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AGILE DIGITAL

“ It is no longer if a business will go cloud but more a question of what type of cloud” PHIL LEWIS,

VICE PRESIDENT, SOLUTION CONSULTING EMEA, INFOR

What does the term ‘digital agility’ mean?

Digital agility can be understood as the readiness of an organisation to quickly take advantage of digital capabilities, without having to get bogged down in new projects just to get a new programme underway.

This necessitates an open, cloud-based application landscape so a business can seize new opportunities such as business intelligence, big data or AI without having to go through a cumbersome integration and bolt-on process. This makes an organisation

Cloud-based solutions “I foresee cloud-based solutions, particularly with regard to external workforce management, playing a vital role in lending businesses the flexibility they need to take steps toward recovery. Just as they always have, contingent labour and services providers deliver the depth of skills and expertise necessary to propel businesses forward. With the right sets of digital tools, organisations can achieve maximum visibility and value from these essential workers, ramping up and down efficiently as the new year unfolds.”

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AGILE DIGITAL

The impact of COVID-19 2020 was been defined by supply chain disruption. The impact of COVID-19 has accelerated trends that will not only lead to the diversification and localisation of supply chains, but also increase the need for digitalisation and end-toend visibility. Now more than ever, procurement is uniquely positioned to be transformative and highly impactful for businesses as we enter a new era of data-driven intelligence.

A shift away from the traditional, linear supply chain to a broader supply network, coupled with dynamic partnerships driving innovation, will be key to gaining a 360-degree view of supply, improving cash flow, developing new products and pursuing sustainability initiatives.

Breaking away from reactivity and focusing on proactivity will be essential in tackling new business challenges in a post-COVID-19 world.

Network strategies, and making use of data-driven insights, will be important in avoiding repercussions from future shocks and shifts, replacing linearity with interconnectivity.

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more agile, focusing on the creative application of the technology to the needs of the business, such as identifying new opportunities for revenue.

How important is digital agility when it comes to ensuring a successful digital transformation strategy?

Hugely important, but it is not just about the tools but also organisational culture.

Digital agility needs people who are flexible, that think creatively and value change. Many large-scale enterprises and businesses in our key sectors face huge, initial for ways into digital transformation – they are understandably fearful to ensure they have the right tools, people and culture to make it work. There needs to be a focused endeavour to see the end benefits of digital transformation and that is where the agility has to start – making

AGILE DIGITAL

sure there is consideration of the tools, platform and business processes right up front. Agility also leads a business towards realising the projects are not just about technology to incrementally improve the status quo, but an entire approach that – from the outset – aims towards optimisation and transformation. A key part of this is developing an agile culture – the freedom to have ideas. Too many employees are scared of ‘crazy’ ideas being shot down or putting a black mark against their name. For digital agility to lead to transformation, challenging of the norm must be built in to how the business thinks.

“ Businesses tend to assess digital projects with a focus on either customer, supply chain, internal efficiency or people - those are the four main drivers for digital” PHIL LEWIS,

VICE PRESIDENT, SOLUTION CONSULTING EMEA, INFOR

What is driving the transition to digital agility?

Businesses tend to assess digital projects with a focus on either customer, supply chain, internal efficiency or people – those are the four main drivers for digital. These are often organic and arise from an ongoing ‘how can we do better’ attitude. This has been accelerated by concerns of competition as companies are now fearful of being left behind competition and disruptive entrants.

There is palpable fear around being digitally relevant and this is promoting digital agility.

What have been the cornerstone technologies that have furthered digital agility, and what do you see emerging as a cornerstone technology?

It is all about how attitudes towards data have changed. It was previously seen as a necessary evil but is now the number one asset in a business. Typically this drives an obsession with big data labels but it is what you do with the data that matters – using the likes of AI / BI / IoT etc to turn that data into a truly valuable asset. The automotive industry is the prime example businesschief.com

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AGILE DIGITAL

“ It is all about how attitudes towards data have changed. It was previously seen as a necessary evil but is now the number one asset in a business” PHIL LEWIS,

VICE PRESIDENT, SOLUTION CONSULTING EMEA, INFOR NAME SURNAME JOB TITLE, COMPANY NAME

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April 2021

AGILE DIGITAL

– using and selling the data produced by a car. Interestingly, we now almost take ‘cloud’ for granted – had we answered this question 24 months ago, cloud would have been the first consideration, but it is now table stakes. It is no longer if a business will go cloud but more a question of what type of cloud. We have moved far beyond the infrastructure conversation – the how – and into the what and why a business looks to embrace digital. In terms of the next specific technology, it really depends on the maturity of the individual company or project – businesses are only just reaching the point of a digital fabric rather than a bunch of digital projects. Prescriptive working, driven by AI and fed by masses of sensor data, holds a huge amount of promise for the B2B / industrial markets and we see some very encouraging early shoots in asset maintenance and field service.

How important is it to develop a digital culture and change management plan when it comes to digital agility, and what would you say are the best practices for these two concepts?

Communicating the vision of digital is vital but most employees these days accept the constant and relentless change of business – but a business still does need huge buy in from the workforce to be on board with constant evolution. The good news is that most businesses actually have this: people are realistic, especially in a post pandemic world that has enforced a huge mindset to accept change and exploit it. Again it comes down to people and culture – as long as people feel able and valued to contribute new ideas, it is going to work. This demands masses of communication to lead to embracing change at this pace. businesschief.com

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ACCELERATION OF TELEMEDICINE FOR PAEDIATRICS WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

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CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

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CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

‘Wonderful world’ of telemedicine eases pressure on patients who access care through The CHOC Link at Children’s Hospital of Orange County

T

he pledge by clinicians at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) to ‘protect the magic of childhood’ could not be more apt when you discover one of their founder’s was Walt Disney.

Disney provided financial support to open the first dedicated children’s hospital in California 55 years ago. Today, it’s undergoing a digital transformation - harnessing the power of intuitive technology - which is creating a smooth experience for patients and clinicians.

Since 1964, CHOC has provided the highest quality medical care to children. Affiliated with the University of California, Irvine, the regional paediatric healthcare network includes a stateof-the-art 334-bed main hospital facility in the City of Orange and a hospital-within-a-hospital in Mission Viejo.

CHOC also offers many primary and specialty care clinics, more than 100 additional programs and services, a paediatric residency program, and four centres of excellence – The CHOC Heart, Neuroscience, Orthopaedic and Hyundai Cancer Institutes.

One side effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has been a drop in the number of patients attending hospital appointments. This downtick has accelerated the need for healthcare providers, such as CHOC, to have a Digital Front Door (DFD) and offer telemedicine to their young patients.

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CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

John Henderson and Adam Gold | Choc, Partners and the Future of Healthcare and Technology

The CHOC Link More than two million children across four counties are now benefiting from telemedicine as their parents’ can now access their electronic medical records (EMR), make virtual appointments and check their billing and health plans on a system called the CHOC Link.

John Henderson, Vice President & Chief Information Officer highlighted how the use of telemedicine on the CHOC Link accelerated during the pandemic.

“Prior to COVID-19 our telemedicine presence was minimal - we were only doing about 100 visits a year - but this moved very, very quickly and by mid-March we had launched a full-scale program and we were doing almost 600 visits a day and wound up doing almost 70,000 telehealth visits,” he commented.

As CHOC has focused on getting our patients coming back to in person visits, our telemedicine visits are now averaging 350 128

April 2021

“ PRIOR TO COVID-19 OUR TELEMEDICINE PRESENCE WAS MINIMAL - WE WERE ONLY DOING ABOUT 200 VISITS A YEAR - BUT THIS MOVED VERY, VERY QUICKLY AND BY MID-MARCH WE HAD LAUNCHED A FULL-SCALE PROGRAM AND WE WERE DOING ALMOST 600 VISITS A DAY AND WOUND UP DOING ALMOST 70,000 TELEHEALTH VISITS” JOHN HENDERSON,

VICE PRESIDENT & CIO, CHOC

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

a day which is about 22 per cent of CHOC’s ambulatory volume. “Initially it was a bit of a challenge to educate everyone on how to use the platform as we were moving really fast to get up and running, yet we wanted to educate as many providers as possible.

We had to do a lot of education with our providers who hadn't really been doing telemedicine visits prior to the pandemic, “ said Henderson who pointed out patient satisfaction has stayed at the 90th percentile.

The CHOC Link is a parent’s secure connection to their child’s medical information. It is a place for parents to communicate with their child’s doctors and clinics using a free and easy-to-use tool.

“We know medical bills and records can be confusing for patients so we can assist with insurance, identifying prior authorisation requirements, deductibles and helping parents obtain and understand their child’s medical records,” commented Henderson.

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT & CIO COMPANY: CHOC INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: ORANGE COUNTY

EXECUTIVE BIO

The CHOC Link offers the following: • View and print a child’s health issues, allergies and medications • Send a message to doctors or health care teams • Request an appointment • View current appointments and request to reschedule or cancel them • See a child’s laboratory results • Review and print radiology reports after reviewing with a physician • View visit summaries and discharge documents • Review and print radiology reports after reviewing with your physician • Request prescription renewals • Learn more about your child’s medications through our connected health library • Pay a bill

JOHN HENDERSON

John Henderson is steering the digital transformation at the Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC). As head of the Information Services Department, he has been at the forefront of telemedicine at California’s leading children’s hospital and saw its use accelerate during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The CHOC Link - which is part of Henderson’s digital transformation at the hospital - is an online tool used for patients to access their electronic medical records (EMR), make appointments – both virtual or face-to-face with clinicians at the 334-bed hospital.

“Four years ago, I made the leap to Southern California and CHOC we've been on a very fast journey ever since. We have been modernising our infrastructure and moving down a path of digital transformation to build the analytics program as well as portfolio management to build what I call a service and solutionsoriented organisation.”

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CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

Tech for Good VMware streamlines the journey for healthcare organizations to become digital businesses that deliver better experiences to their patients, while empowering clinicians to do their best work. Our software spans App Modernization, Cloud, Networking & Security and Digital Workspace. Achieve connected care and drive agility, safety and trust with a digital foundation for healthcare.

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VMware and CHOC: enabling better outcomes

Watch VMware talk technology in Healthcare

Rodney Davis, Staff Solutions Architect at VMware, tells us about enabling healthcare organizations to be more efficient and deliver better patient outcomes

well, so we understand that providing good natured Rodney Davis has a background in delivering care is critical for their mission and their success. technology solutions inside hospitals and The partnership comes by way of making sure that healthcare organisations. After a stint at Texas our technology is supporting that mission, from top Children’s Hospital where he was responsible to bottom” Davis explains. for providing applications, devices and technology in many different forms to care providers and As an example he cites a current project to deliver organizations to clinicians’ hands, something patients, VMware he joinedstreamlines VMware asthe partjourney of theirfor healthcare a new technology into solution architecture team, focusing specifically become digital businesses that deliver betterthat experiences to their has previously never been successful. “From on healthcare.

VMware’s perspective, patients, while empowering clinicians to do their best work. Our we’re here to make sure that is successful. Ultimately that’s leading into care Their core service is delivering any application to software spans App Modernization, Cloud, Networking & Security being more accessible to the clinicians, and maybe any device on the cloud. “That means customers Achieve connected care drive agility, moreand consistent as well. Finally, those patients get are going and to beDigital able toWorkspace. get applications and services safety with a no digital foundation healthcare. go home with better services and the clinicians into the hands ofand theirtrust customers, matter where for to can do their jobs in a more efficient manner.” they are, or what they’re doing. That’s where VMware is leading the charge in the industry.”

VMware’s portfolio is continuously expanding, and Davis explains that in the last decade they’ve They have a partnership with Children’s Hospital transitioned from being a data centre company Orange County (CHOC), helping the organization LEARN MORE to an application company, before moving into with their strategy and vision as well as execution security and networking. “All this ties into the idea plans. “The mission that CHOC has is something that we make sure our customers are connected, that’s near and dear to most professionals - we all no matter where they are” he adds. have family and most of us will have children as

Tech for Good

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

“Our digital transformation has been focused on enhancing the patient and clinician experience,” commented Henderson. “It really began with the implementation of the EMR which is really the hub of the engine from which everything sprouts from.”

CHOC’s digital transformation aims to make the patient’s visit more efficient by eliminating the paperwork - which can be filled at home or wherever it's convenient for the patient by us taking a mobile first strategy and a key element of improving the patient experience.

“We are very focused on population health and managing our populations. So we feel our digital transformation is going to help us focus on if someone's not coming in for a visit due to COVID concerns or any of the other health maintenance they are missing, we're going to know who they are and we'll be able to do the outreach with our care managers so we can make sure we keep them safe and get the care necessary to keep them healthy.”

Henderson pointed out telemedicine is particularly useful in assisting specialty clinics such as diabetes and obesity but particularly psychology which also gives a physician a glimpse into a patient’s socio economic conditions which they didn’t always have access to before the pandemic.

“We don’t always get this kind of insight during an in-patient visit and they may not be really willing to share what's happening at home. A telemedicine visit is obviously visual and from a provider perspective, the clinician has a better insight which helps them provide even better care,” said Henderson.

CHOC is currently focused on growth and expansion. “Although we serve the Orange County region, we also are focused on serving the surrounding geography as it is 132

April 2021

“ WE LOVE INTERACTING WITH THE PATIENTS AND WORKING ON THESE PROJECTS THAT WE KNOW ARE GOING TO BENEFIT THEM” ADAM GOLD

CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER, CHOC

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

our vision to be the leading destination for children's health regardless of geography.

We don't want to have any borders with the patients that we serve - we want to serve all pediatric patients - wherever they live,” commented Henderson.

ADAM GOLD TITLE: CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER COMPANY: CHOC INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE LOCATION: ORANGE COUNTY

NicoBoard app – helping parents stay engaged Parents of patients in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at CHOC came up with the idea of a new app to help better understand, track and analyse data showing their baby’s progress while receiving care.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Adam Gold, Chief Technology Officer at CHOC is not only responsible for IT at the children’s hospital but has also put the fun into technology for the patients.

Gold, who started at CHOC in 2018, launched Tech Tuesday - a hands-on technology project with the young patients in CHOC’s resource centre - and is also involved with the Turtle Talks project donated by Walt Disney.

“We love interacting with the patients and working on these fun projects that we know are going to benefit the patients,” said Gold who previously worked at UC Irvine Health and was technical advisor at NeuroComp Systems.

From Cloud and Data Center, Security, Collaboration, Networking and AI to Digital Transformation, Managed and Professional Services or Financing, ePlus brings a vast perspective that helps organizations design, orchestrate and seamlessly implement versatile technology solutions. Whatever is waiting around the next corner and whatever is next on the path forward, ePlus is the right partner to give you the perspective to achieve more.

Learn more

ePlus and CHOC – driving better patient outcomes

Watch the ePlus and CHOC Partnership

Justin Mescher and Anthony Lakin tell us about working together to create better patient outcomes. ePlus is a global provider of technology solutions focused in the areas of cloud, data center, networking, security, and collaboration. Anthony Lakin, Chief Information Security Officer at Children’s Hospital of Orange County (CHOC), explains that partnering with ePlus and selecting them to address CHOC’s cybersecurity concerns was easy. “I’m very deliberate about my interaction with third party vendors because they need to understand the problem I’m trying to solve and bring value add to that. That’s what I found in ePlus; I feel as though they’re a deep bench that I can leverage. The services that specifically I partner with them on are vulnerability management as a service and our 24-7 security operations set.”

“Partnerships are the lifeblood of what we do,” says Justin Mescher, VP of Cloud and Data Solutions at ePlus. “I put them into two categories: customer partnerships and technology partnerships. On the technology side, our customers trust us to identify the right technologies to meet their needs. A lot of that involves knowing those technologies inside and out, what fits where, and identifying the best solution to meet the customer’s specific requirements.”

Most of ePlus’ customers are in the process of modernizing their applications and platforms to support their digital transformation initiatives. “Our goal is to be able to continue to align with our customers, to help them be the most efficient service provider back to the business as possible,” Mescher says. “There’s going to be continued investments in cloud, security, AI/ML, and analytics.

Those are the areas that are going to maximize that value to the business.”

Lakin says that CHOC’s vision and strategy heavily depend on building strong relationships like the one they have with ePlus. “We’ve also seen that with the pandemic, having a partner like ePlus allows us to be more agile and dynamic, and that’s going to be paramount to our success.”

“The team at CHOC really stands out to me,” Mescher says. “They are very purposeful about patient outcomes. One consistent theme I’ve seen across the board interacting with the technology teams at CHOC is that the patient is always number one, and technology supports that need. It’s so exciting to work with a team like that,” he adds.

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

“ WE DON'T WANT TO HAVE ANY BORDERS WITH THE PATIENTS THAT WE SERVE - WE WANT TO SERVE ALL PAEDIATRIC PATIENTS WHEREVER THEY LIVE” JOHN HENDERSON,

VICE PRESIDENT & CIO, CHOC

DID YOU KNOW...

LEGACY OF WALT DISNEY FOR CHOC

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Walt Disney’s legacy lives on for young in-patients at CHOC. From his early fundraising efforts before the hospital was built, to the resort’s $5 million gift toward construction of the new Bill Holmes Tower, CHOC and Disney have enjoyed a meaningful partnership.

Having a children’s hospital in the community was important to Walt Disney, who in 1960 sat on the hospital’s founding board. Early in CHOC’s history, Disneyland artist Bob Moore designed the CHOC mascot Choco Bear. Disney artists also helped create the child-friendly feel of the lobby of the new tower, which houses the interactive “Turtle Talk with Crush” show donated by Walt Disney Imagineering.

Adam Gold, Chief Technology Officer at CHOC enjoys stepping away from his desk and interacting with the patients. “It's a nice reminder as to why we're here. We love

April 2021

“This is just one example of parents working with the hospital,” said Henderson.

“Our families play an integral and active role in their child’s care plan. These tools build upon that commitment and help families stay engaged and ask important questions.”

The NicoBoard is a tablet-based app that translates a stream of numbers pulled from their baby’s EMR – data such as body temperature, weight gain and loss, feed volumes and more – into easily understood, simple sentences complemented by visual aids like graphs and charts. Coupled with curated education and research materials, this helps parents better analyse trends and track progress and enhance decision making.

interacting with the patients and working on tech projects that we know are going to benefit the patients,” said Gold.

“A few times a day we have our partners down the road at Disney interact with the kids in real time. So they get to talk to Nimo, Crush or their favourite Disney character.

The kids really enjoy that. We also do a program called Tech Tuesday where we go out and we do a tech hands-on technology project with the kids in our resource centre which is cool and that seems to have got some good traction as well.”

The Disney Team of Heroes app unlocks stories, games, and other entertainment offerings on mobile devices that can be enjoyed in the hospital. The app interacts with special Disney, Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars murals to bring their characters to life.

Disneyland Resort is CHOC’s largest corporate donor over the past 25 years.

Last year’s annual CHOC Walk in the Park at the Disneyland Resort raised more than $2.1 million.

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

Virtual environment CHOC has a number of partners including ePlus (with Cisco) VMware which is vital for its virtual environment.

“I always say you need a solid, strong foundational infrastructure otherwise you can introduce shiny, new objects and it's like you're building on quicksand. Our foundation in modernising our infrastructure was critical so VMware is a key partner in our virtual environment and how we deliver solutions through our mobile phones,” said Henderson.

“Our in-patient units use virtual desktops for speed. We want our clinicians to be as efficient as possible. So they tap in with

their best authenticate to that system, but what’s important for the patients is that his device roams with them.” Henderson points out that when a provider or clinician gets interrupted and returns five minutes later to re-engage the device will remember all their details saving the clinician time.”

Adam Gold, Chief Technology Officer, commented on how the vendors ePlus (with Cisco), VMware Palo Alto were critical in getting the hospital’s infrastructure built.

“Cisco was a great partner when it came to the server and network technologies.

VMware is the company we use to stand up our new virtual desktop environment, as businesschief.com

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CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

“ OUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION HAS BEEN FOCUSED ON ENHANCING THE PATIENT AND CLINICIAN EXPERIENCE. IT REALLY BEGAN WITH THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE EMR WHICH IS REALLY THE HUB OF THE ENGINE FROM WHICH EVERYTHING SPROUTS FROM” JOHN HENDERSON,

VICE PRESIDENT & CIO, CHOC

well as our new mobile device management environment. So leveraging the VMware horizon infrastructure, which is actually running within our Amazon web services and cloud infrastructure was critical especially for our remote workforce. “ePlus was the vendor we worked with on our VAR basically to coordinate all of those efforts. The expertise they brought to the table was really the underlying understanding of our environment. But also the understanding of our culture and what we're really trying to accomplish.

They took all of that information and really made sure that the resources working on our projects were in line with what we were trying to do.

Gold, who has been CTO at the hospital for nearly three years, said the future of IT would move towards a more virtual environment.

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“There will also be the continued expansion into the cloud as this is going to be key for us over the next few years, which really ties into big data, analytics and machine learning. There's a lot of focus right now in leveraging that data to help make the right clinical decisions on the right business decisions,” he said.

The Bill Holmes Tower ushered in a new era for the hospital in 2013. In January 2021 CHOC was certified as a Health Information Management Service (HMIS) level, state seven organisation. This was the third time it had achieved this designation and is one of the first paediatric hospitals in the US to have this status.

CHOC was recognised in January 2021

by The Leapfrog Group who named it as the top children’s hospital in South California.

“I think one of the things that makes CHOC

CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL OF ORANGE COUNTY

1964

Year founded

1.2m

Number of employees More than

2m

children across four counties access care at CHOC Conducted almost

70,000

telehealth visits in 2020 State-of-the art

334-bed hospital

unique is our fantastic quality and safety,” commented Henderson.

Augmented reality Predicting what advances in technology will shape the future of healthcare, Henderson points out that augmented reality will help to streamline information and content.

“I think it’s really going to help drive a lot of the change in healthcare. There's so much information, so much content and it's all over the place and this will make it simple for providers, clinicians and the back office workforce.”

Commenting on data analytics, Henderson said this is always going to be a strategic asset when it comes to predictions and will help to see how a hospital is performing in a real-time scenario. “Embedding those things at the point of clinical care delivery means

we’re doing a number of things with data science, such as prediction and looking at the history of re-admission or detection of potential events. I think those are the things that are going to become more prevalent.

“I think those types of technologies are what's going to really be critical for healthcare and beyond,” he said.

As CHOC accelerates its digital transformation one focus is going to be wellness from a paediatric point of view.

“We want to make sure what we're doing is providing the opportunity for not only physical wellness, but also mental health and wellness. That's the key focus for CHOC in the future. We're going to connect and continue to build upon those programs,” he said.

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INTELLIGENT FEATURE HEADER AUTOMATION

AD

MF

SC

A NEW ERA OF INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION Business Chief speaks to five executives from Blue Yonder, Red Hat, GE Digital, Accenture and UiPath to discuss the future of intelligent automation WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON 142

April 2021

MW

RT

THOSE PARTICIPATING IN THE ROUNDTABLE INCLUDE:

MW: Matt Wells, Vice President, Digital Product Management, GE Digital

AD: Alan Duncan, Senior Director of Industry Strategy (Manufacturing), EMEA, Blue Yonder

SC: Simon Coombs, Industry X Digital Manufacturing & Operations Lead, Accenture UK

MF: Massimo Ferrari, Consulting Product Manager, Red Hat

RT: Renzo Taal, SVP & Managing Director, UiPath EMEA businesschief.com

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INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

1

Please could you define intelligent automation, and what it can provide organisations?

AD: Intelligent automation can enhance operations and provide supply chain efficiency, helping to predict problems before they arise and increase the ability to navigate disruptions even months in advance. This puts organisations in a much better position to meet demands than ever before, with the long-term goal being to build a fully autonomous supply chain that is capable of identifying and resolving problems without any human intervention.

MF: Intelligent Automation is a relatively new term, and as such, it's often framed in very different ways, sometimes called ‘cognitive automation’. It's used to describe the intersection of automation and AI-powered decision-making technologies.

“ Machine learning and analytics technologies are at the forefront of current technologies that are facilitating intelligent automation” MATT WELLS

VICE PRESIDENT, DIGITAL PRODUCT MANAGEMENT GE DIGITAL

The main benefit offered by intelligent automation is the ability to actually perform actions based on data-driven recommendations, as opposed to just reporting a problem.

MW: From proactive analysis to guiding operator response, modern intelligent automation technologies use the IoT’s connected systems, layered with new apps to help companies create and maintain revenue streams and improve operations. Companies around the world are blending combinations of digital capabilities and industrial assets to drive productivity and efficiency across an organisation or environment. In addition, intelligent automation technologies can businesschief.com

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“ As organisations navigate through uncertain times, intelligent automation has played an increasingly crucial role, helping to make key decisions” ALAN DUNCAN

SENIOR DIRECTOR OF INDUSTRY STRATEGY (MANUFACTURING), EMEA, BLUE YONDER

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help companies to reduce risks and costs by leveraging the data within the organisation to avoid downtime and facilitate predictive maintenance.

SC: The role of automation has evolved across industries in the last decade, with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) accelerating the fulfilment of basic, repetitive tasks that require no human judgement. Intelligent automation is the next natural advancement of automation capabilities; by tightly integrating with AI and machine learning analytics, software platforms and models can learn, adapt and evolve to make business critical decisions – much like a human can.

RT: Intelligent automation is Robotic Process Automation (RPA) amplified by Artificial Intelligence (AI). Simply, intelligent automation unlocks potential by allowing for the automation of non-rule based processes.

The benefits include improved efficiency, business continuity and process resilience

INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

AI 101: What is Intelligent Automation? | Accenture

all while reducing human error, creating scale and increasing both customer and employee satisfaction.

2

What are the current trends when it comes to intelligent automation?

MF: Surprisingly, while AI has been used for quite some time in different areas of business analysis or IT, automation is a relatively recent adoption.

One of the major trends is the adoption of intelligent automation for response and remediation use cases. Take IT Security as an example, which is an area where automated response and remediation is growing. AI is well-established in this area, such as in the form of tools like threat analysis systems, but the use of automation to perform remediation actions on a threat identified by one of these technologies is a fairly new concept.

This is often intentional and reflects the maturity level of many enterprise organisations and the fact that AI and automation are orthogonal opportunities.

MW: Machine learning and analytics technologies are at the forefront of current technologies that are facilitating intelligent automation. Fourth generation HMI/SCADA can add a layer of proactive analysis to deliver predictive intelligent alarming that makes it possible to evolve from being reactionary to predicting when an event will occur and taking proactive steps to remediate a pending situation. Machine learning can help to reduce the ‘noise’ that is inherent in system deployments today. This technology allows companies to use raw data to derive intelligence that will improve efficiency, reduce unscheduled downtime, and decrease process risk by providing information to the right operators in context, at the right time and place. businesschief.com

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SC: Businesses are increasingly scaling the use of automation from specific functions to their wider business strategy, with the particular benefits of intelligent automation now a key objective. To enable this, we are seeing many businesses take a step back and place greater focus on the quality of their data and how it informs their foundational framework for intelligent automation. Some of the key capabilities this framework gives businesses include intelligent virtual agents such as bots and chatbots, which can be used for all manner of functions such as customer service, the IT helpdesk and logistics. As businesses become more advanced with intelligent automation, we are seeing their solutions become highly intuitive, whether predicting events and recommending reactive strategies, or automatically resolving queries with no need for human input.

RT: As with many trends in 2021, intelligent automation is being further driven by the pandemic and the need to fully digitise workflows that can no longer be undertaken by teams in physical offices.

For example, online transactions have increased, as consumers and businesses continue to order more products and services via the Web. Demand for cloud services has risen, in part because of the need to support more ecommerce transactions and homebased workers. More than ever, we need to combine thinking (AI) and doing (RPA) to complete tasks and support employees working remotely.

As this happens, we will see workers embrace this change and start to demand more of automation – perhaps even becoming citizen developers and building their own intelligent automations. Moreover, these automations will become even more powerful with autonomous automation. To put this another way, we’ll see robots managing 148

April 2021

robots. They will be unattended – capable of monitoring and handling themselves.

3

How has the intelligent automation market been impacted by COVID-19?

AD: As organisations navigate through uncertain times, intelligent automation has played an increasingly crucial role, helping to make key decisions around everything from stock planning and management right the way through to shipping routes and price points. Ultimately automation has and will continue to help organisations to get ahead of the game: quickly responding to changes in consumer behavior by helping to make intelligent and profitable decisions. Those who don’t adopt the technology risk falling behind the competition, especially during unpredictable periods.

MF: This pandemic is a time of unprecedented challenge that affected all of

INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

“ The main benefit offered by intelligent automation is the ability to actually perform actions based on data-driven recommendations, as opposed to just reporting a problem” MASSIMO FERRARI

CONSULTING PRODUCT MANAGER, RED HAT

us in many different ways. It urged many organisations to change, from transitioning to a work-from-home productivity model to accelerating their adoption of public cloud services.

These are two examples where automation technologies became essential to cope with the scale and urgency of the demand. That's why automation, in general, moved from being an opportunity, discussed in technical groups, to an imperative at board level.

The technology evolved and is still evolving, and this is because of the new level of problems we're still trying to solve, which obviously are also driving more adoption.

MW: Now more than ever, software is mission critical for industrial companies as they meet the world’s toughest challenges with resilience, flexibility, and grit. Companies need the right tools to maintain business continuity with remote monitoring and control businesschief.com

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capabilities so they can adapt production to extreme changes in volumes and mix of products. Today’s solutions must scale from plant to enterprise-wide and then beyond the four walls to enable connected workers as well as enterprise-wide visibility both on-premise and in the cloud.

SC: COVID-19 has made intelligent automation more important than ever. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) carried out on the factory floor has evolved to become more intelligent, which was critical for maintaining business continuity whilst keeping workers protected and socially distanced.

The other dramatic shift has been in the area of supply chain, with unexpected spikes in demand for certain products and services, and a complete drop off in others. The incorporation of intelligent automation across the supply chain has been crucial to ensuring continued efficiency, by adapting with agility and forecasting future needs.

The pandemic has shifted landscapes and mindsets more generally, too, shining a light on the need for investment in digital and data to both prevent and react to seismic change. Whether it’s manufacturing, hospitality, healthcare or finance – all sectors have been given a harsh push toward digital transformation in order to survive.

RT: COVID-19 has undoubtedly impacted intelligent automation. While many organisations were already undergoing digital transformations before the pandemic hit, the rapid change in businesses practices and climate forced them to accelerate these efforts.

Business leaders had to, and must continue to, innovate to find new ways of working, to adopt new business models and to increase efficiency in order to survive and thrive in less than favourable economic conditions.

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For many firms, intelligent automation (IA) has been the answer. Thirty-one percent of decision makers recently surveyed said their firms have increased their spending on RPA in the past three months – a key component in the landscape of IA technology

4

How can intelligent automation help industries navigate the global changes and challenges that are here to stay as a result of COVID-19?

AD: Within the manufacturing industry, adopting intelligent automation has made it realistic for supply chains to make recommendations and decisions without the need for human intervention. The time and human brain power saved will enable manufacturers to focus on increasing efficiency, productivity and accuracy of

INTELLIGENT AUTOMATION

operations. It also helps to keep processes more robust in the event of staff turnover, so that supply chains can continue to operate efficiently if employees get sick from COVID19 or move onto new roles, retire or leave the business.

The role intelligent automation plays in keeping one step ahead on customer buying behaviour, rather than simply responding to incidents as they occur, is crucial as manufacturers navigate their way through the pandemic. This will play a key role in ensuring supply chains are resilient enough to cope with subsequent disruptive events that could occur in the future.

MF: Automation is usually associated with IT, as a way to simplify, accelerate and reduce the cost of provisioning and configuration of services and applications. While automation

proved to be very effective in those tasks, it can be used in many other areas of IT, like Network Operations, Security Analysts and Security Operations providing benefits across virtually any industry.

Intelligent automation can help organizations react faster to changes outside their control, but, once implemented as a core technology, allows people to do more with the resources they have at their disposal, overcoming the challenges of scale, of always growing digital services, complexity of a more distributed workforce and customer base and speed of changes required by market motion.

MW: As everyone has adapted to working remotely, there has been a large appetite for collaboration tools. However, most of these are IT tools, not operations technology tools, that industrial companies need to use to operate machines and continue to run and manage their business. Industrial automation technology tools allow for remote operations that promote policies like social distancing, while keeping teams safe and equipment maintained. This technology is the intersection between collaboration and enterprise productivity.

In addition, the push to faster, more agile production applications drives industrial

“While many organisations were already undergoing digital transformations before the pandemic hit, the rapid change in businesses practices and climate forced them to accelerate these efforts” RENZO TAAL

SVP & MANAGING DIRECTOR, UIPATH EMEA businesschief.com

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“Over the next few uncertain months and beyond the pandemic, intelligent automation is here to stay” SIMON COOMBS

INDUSTRY X DIGITAL MANUFACTURING & OPERATIONS LEAD, ACCENTURE UK

companies toward a more holistic view of their operations that allow them to anticipate supply chain and production disruption.

They are looking for global solutions that can deliver global visibility, orchestrate the execution of all their processes, and optimise each of their assets and plants in the context of the enterprise. This involves tools that provide for Rapid Application Development (RAD), zero-downtime upgrades / updates, and deployment of self-serve analytics across assets.

Companies are also using industrial analytics to improve asset, process and people performance combining data across various data sources to rapidly identify problems, discover root causes and predict future performance. Enhanced software analytics improve quality, utilisation, productivity, and delivery of operations across the enterprise.

SC: In manufacturing and supply chain, we saw the rapid reshaping of production lines to cope with the volatile demand in the early months of the pandemic, when businesses pivoted to adapt to the sudden surge in demand, for example, for ventilators and PPE. Elsewhere, augmented reality, IoT and advanced analytics have allowed businesses to automate and streamline where they have had to scale back or re-direct their workforce. In call centres, whether supporting retail, hospitality or healthcare, for example, intelligent

automation has been put to good use by directing customers to the right department without having to go through human operators.

This has enabled human counterparts to focus on the important task of dealing with customer issues in a time of particular distress.

Over the next few uncertain months and beyond the pandemic, intelligent automation is here to stay. Corporations have seen firsthand how intelligent platforms are enabling agile business. The events of the last year have shown just how important preparation and adaptability are and when integrated with the business strategy, intelligent automation not only allows for agility in crisis, but can help to prepare for future challenges that humans cannot do alone, meaning business can proactively prepare for various situations.

RT: As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, organisations and healthcare institutions around the world are facing extreme challenges – from hospital backlogs to influx in demands to business continuity challenges.

RPA is – and will continue to – offer relief to overwhelmed organisations, and is already being used by UiPath customers to automate processes.

Organisations across industries – including healthcare, insurance, government, retail, banking, and transportation – are using UiPath software robots to address the influx of demands brought on by COVID-19. businesschief.com

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MTM INC.

SO MUCH MORE THAN JUST A LIFT 154

April 2021

MTM INC.

By creating an ecosystem of collaborative partnerships fueled by innovation, MTM removes barriers and brings a whole-person approach to healthcare WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

B

y focusing on doing the right things, MTM has created a beautiful thing; An ecosystem of collaborative partnerships, fuelled by innovation, all focused on the same goal— removing community barriers and bringing a whole-person approach to healthcare while doing right by our planet, and its people.

Having experienced immense growth over the last ten years, MTM now runs an estimated 20 million trips per year and is the number one private healthcare transportation provider in the USA, across 32 states. And with good reason.

By remaining unrelentingly focused on its core principles and objectives, MTM has unlocked a whole new level of value for its clients, reducing program costs while increasing satisfaction rates. As Rick Holbrook, CTO at MTM, says, what MTM has built is more like a community of likeminded business partners who are always looking at the bigger picture of improving health outcomes for members.

When you remain focused on the mission rather than a static idea on how you get there, ideas flourish, and innovation prospers. In the end, everyone wins.

Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) From The World Health Organization (WHO), “Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, grow, businesschief.com

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Helping Companies Reimagine CX And Turn Vision Into Reality Learn more

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1-800-553-8159 www.five9.com Social icon

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Your Contact Center is Now the Front Door to Your Business Contact center innovation is now an essential part of a company’s digital transformation strategy. After all, which department has the greatest sphere of influence on the customer experience and brand perception? Over the past year, the contact center has become the new front door of your business.

You need to be ready to deliver the exceptional experiences your customers expect.

During 2020, contact centers that migrated to the cloud were able to adapt and maintain their customer service standards with minimal disruption. Managers learned new ways to manage a remote workforce with cloud-based quality and performance management tools, gamification, and real-time analytics that ensured customer service standards were met.

Smart companies leveraged their migration to the cloud to also expand their omnichannel strategy. They quickly added intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) to automate routine conversations handled by live agents, freeing them to provide value on complex issues and empowering customers to quickly get the answers they need. Others used the migration to streamline their operations, automate workflows, and improve productivity and the overall customer experience.

Five9 has enabled thousands of organizations to quickly move their contact center to the cloud and achieve digital-first transformation.

Watch Genefa Murphy discuss the partnership between Five9 and MTM

A few Five9 successes include: • A financial services organization saved over $1 million per year by migrating to the cloud and surpassing its first call resolution goals.

• A healthcare provider used the power of AI to schedule appointments and provide vaccine updates for 80% of incoming COVID calls.

• A retailer leveraged AI and workforce optimization to coach agents and transcribe conversations in real time for greater efficiency, accuracy, and compliance.

If last year served as a catalyst for digital transformation, this year is indicating momentum towards reimagining the customer experience.

Now that the contact center is the new front door of your business, taking advantage of the power of the cloud is paramount. By partnering with Five9, your door will be wide open to provide world-class customer experiences.

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MTM INC.

live, work and age. These circumstances are shaped by the distribution of money, power, and resources at global, national and local levels.”

The organization further states, “The social determinants of health are mostly responsible for health inequities – the unfair and avoidable differences in health status seen within and between countries.”

Availability of transportation, food insecurity, and inaccessibility of nutritious food choices are examples of SDOH, which MTM hopes to help combat.

“Our real mission as a company is to remove barriers to individuals to access community and resources. But what we really want to do is accommodate people so that getting their health care is easy and cost-effective. That's why we exist.” said President and CEO Alaina Maciá.

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“ As the population ages and wants to age in place, we want to transport them where they need to go, but we also want to bring services to them. So we're expanding our platform to allow for meals and grocery, as well as home care coordination and home modifications” ALAINA MACIÁ

PRESIDENT AND CEO, MTM INC.

MTM INC.

The Art of Grabbing a Lift “If the technology works, people are going to adopt. We believe that, and it’s part of our strategy.”- Rick Holbrook, CTO, MTM Inc.

TAMARA CARLTON TITLE: D IRECTOR OF SOCIAL DETERMINANTS OF HEALTH AND PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT INDUSTRY: HOSPITAL & HEALTH CARE LOCATION: ST LOUIS, MISSOURI, USA As MTM’s first Director of Social Determinants of Health and Product Development, Tamara leads the organization’s strategies for helping clients remove community health disparities among the populations they serve. Tamara joined MTM in 2016, leading the company’s Product Development team. She has more than twenty years of experience in marketing, operations, and product management for Fortune 500 companies in the healthcare, transportation, retail, and financial industries. Tamara holds a Bachelors of Science from Bradley University and an MBA from Saint Louis University.

EXECUTIVE BIO

MTM is re-imagining healthcare with a value-based business model focused on identifying and removing the SDOH that are the cause of health disparities through a holistic, whole-person approach that drives client value and promotes superior outcomes by focusing on the well-being of members. By expanding into providing services such as meals, groceries, and home modifications, MTM is hoping to further assist those who want to age in place so they can do so safely, happily, and healthily.

These services will also be extended to any individuals who require the resource, whether private pay or Medicare/Medicaid beneficiaries. “People want to live a healthy life, but if they don't have access to good quality food, fruits, and vegetables, if they have trip hazards in their home, these things put them at risk and impede their ability to do so. That’s why MTM looks at the whole member experience and what we can do to address social determinants of health.”

Maciá said.

Following their commitment to taking a whole-person approach to healthcare, MTM further plans to extend its service. Maciá says, “As the population ages and wants to age in place, we want to transport them where they need to go, but we also want to bring services to them. So we're expanding our platform to allow for meals and grocery, as well as home care coordination and home modifications. Because as people age in place, they need modifications to their homes like turning a tub into a shower, et cetera. And we believe our job is to help people age in place, happy and healthy.”

ServiceNow; making the world work better people ServiceNow; making the world of of work better forfor people

digital transformation journey.

“ServiceNow is the Underpinned a people-first culture, digital transformation journey.

“ServiceNow is the Underpinned by aby people-first culture, platform or platforms for digital workflows.

And ServiceNow is making world of work better platform or platforms for digital workflows. And we we ServiceNow is making the the world of work better deliver those workflows across the organisations for people digital workflows solutionsdeliver those workflows across the organisations in in for people withwith theirtheir digital workflows solutions

the silos systems within them, creating A great workflow is the underpinning of great the silos andand systems within them, thusthus creating a a A great workflow is the underpinning of great seamless enterprise system with action that enables experiences.

ServiceNow provides digital workflows seamless enterprise system with action that enables experiences.

ServiceNow provides digital workflows great employee customer experiences that make for a smarter way to workflow, bringing great employee andand customer experiences andand that make for a smarter way to workflow, bringing unlocks productivity.

The Now platform is scaleability, safeguarding business continuity, productivity. The Now platform is the the scaleability, safeguarding business continuity, andand unlocks foundation forof allthose of those workflows across empowering productivity. foundation for all workflows across an an empowering productivity. organisation.

And we really pride ourselves in being customers serving of the organisation. And we really pride ourselves in being WithWith overover 62006200 customers andand serving 80%80% of the one platform, one data model, with one architecture.

Fortune become defining enterprise one platform, one data model, with one architecture.

Fortune 500500 has has become the the defining enterprise not only dohave we have purpose-built workflows AndAnd not only do we purpose-built workflows for for software company of the 21st century. software company of the 21st century.

IT, employees, and customers, we’re also able IT, employees, and customers, we’re also able to to integrate communicate across of systems the systems ServiceNow, putting people-first integrate andand communicate across all ofallthe ServiceNow, putting people-first of record and infrastructure that may be in place, Cathey Regional Sales Director at ServiceNow of record and infrastructure that may be in place, Jeff Jeff Cathey Regional Sales Director at ServiceNow providing our customers with a single pane of glass explains ServiceNow’s people-first culture our customers with a single pane of glass explains howhow ServiceNow’s people-first culture has has providing to get their work done. helped them there.

“ServiceNow is making helped them get get there.

“ServiceNow is making the the to get their work done. of those customers is MTM. Having expertise world of work better for people.

Our cloud-based OneOne of those customers is MTM. Having expertise world of work better for people. Our cloud-based in the healthcare industry has helped ServiceNow platform and solutions deliver digital workflows that in the healthcare industry has helped ServiceNow platform and solutions deliver digital workflows that in working to leverage its platform create great experiences unlock productivity in working withwith MTMMTM to leverage its platform andand create great experiences andand unlock productivity succeed in its goal of breaking down community for employees in the enterprise.

ServiceNow prides succeed in its goal of breaking down community for employees in the enterprise. ServiceNow prides barriers by removing streamlining workflow, on being a people-centric organisation by removing silossilos andand streamlining workflow, itselfitself on being a people-centric organisation thatthat barriers and providing them with the connectivity that’s wins as a team.

We always try to stay hungry and and providing them with the connectivity that’s wins as a team. We always try to stay hungry and required for their people, processes and systems. humble.

Diversity, inclusion and belonging are required for their people, processes and systems. humble. Diversity, inclusion and belonging are essential to who we are, to how grow, ServiceNow to support organisations essential to who we are, to how we’llwe’ll grow, andand howhow ServiceNow waswas builtbuilt to support organisations just just continue to innovate. like MTM drive meaningful outcomes. we’llwe’ll continue to innovate. like MTM drive meaningful outcomes. success is dependent on our people “Our“Our success is dependent on our people andand on on servicenow.com those people having talent those people having the the rightright talent andand the the rightright servicenow.com mentality to be able to deliver the future of work to mentality to be able to deliver the future of work to our customers. our underpinnings around our customers.

AndAnd withwith our underpinnings around culture and people first, ServiceNow has grown culture and people first, ServiceNow has grown to to $4 billion in revenue 13,000 employees overover $4 billion in revenue withwith 13,000 plusplus employees and thousands of customers around the world, and thousands of customers around the world, including MTM, that renew with us at a rate including MTM, that renew with us at a rate of of about Soof allthat of that serves mission about 99%.99%.

So all serves our our mission wellwell and helps ServiceNow become the defining and helps ServiceNow become the defining enterprise software company of 21st the 21st century.” enterprise software company of the century.”

digital journey, service TheThe digital journey, howhow service nownow cancan helphelp

Cathey, regional sales director at ServiceNow Jeff Jeff Cathey, regional sales director at ServiceNow explains how ServiceNow helps enterprises on their explains how ServiceNow helps enterprises on their

MTM INC.

MTM Technology

20m

Scheduling trips

12m

members nationwide

NEMT broker one of the most established in North America

7.5m

calls every year

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For over twenty years, MTM has collaborated with carefully chosen partners to develop innovative solutions that promote independence, remove barriers, and help connect community resources with the people that need them. By leveraging the capabilities of today’s deep tech and partnering with just the right people, MTM has been able to build a user-friendly digital platform that streamlines workflows.

Digitization also avoids the errors and limitations of manual, paper-based processes. And all while increasing the quality of life of members.

MTM has mastered the art of grabbing a lift. MTM Link mimics all the best qualities of Uber and Lyft that make for a user-friendly experience while unburdening users from

MTM INC.

the hassle of paper-based claims processes and easing scheduling for their network of transportation providers. They even send appointment reminders and monitor app usage to help clients ensure maximum adoption rates and decrease no-shows.

The ‘Where’s My Ride’ feature connects drivers with users and drops a pin to identify a more exact location than an address can provide, highly beneficial at large, multi-building medical facilities. Personal profiles, auto-fill capabilities, appointment reminders, mileage tracking, and electronic gas mileage claim submission all ease the process of arranging for a ride. Credential checks, quality monitoring, and a user rating and complaint system keep members safe, happy, and arriving at their scheduled

appointments on time, helping to increase efficiencies.

For less tech-savvy customers or even those who simply prefer human interaction,

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Dynamic Enterprise Solutions that Redefine How Work is Done Agile | Product | Technology Cprime, a global consulting firm, helps transforming businesses get in sync.

From ideation through continuous delivery of value to the market, we help visionary business leaders like you scale and exceed business goals.

BUILD YOUR SOLUTION cprime.com

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MTM INC.

MTM has fully staffed 24/7 call centers.

They have also designed a streamlined digital experience for their network of subcontracted transportation providers, so they can quickly and easily accept, deliver and claim trips.

Driving Client and Partner Success “The thing about technology is that you can't just throw technology at something and expect it to work. You could be automating a bad practice. So you have to reinvent yourself a little bit. You have to find the right technology and the right partners as well. We look for technologies that enable or open up our platform to be intuitive and easy to use,” said Holbrook.

RICK HOLBROOK CTO, MTM INC.

ALAINA MACIÁ TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CEO Named among the 2012 Most Influential Businesswomen by the St. Louis Business Journal. Alaina has taken the non-emergency transportation management business to a new level by focusing on strategic planning, proven management processes, and continued business and personal improvement.

MEET THE TEAM

“ We spend a lot of time looking for the right partners. We don’t use the ‘P’ word lightly when it comes to our technology partners.

We find ones that are flexible, that are open, that allow us to flex the system in whatever manner that makes sense so we can streamline workflows”

RICK HOLBROOK TITLE: CTO Driven entrepreneurial and innovative Chief Executive with nearly 35 years of leading healthcare industry organizations. Expertise in founding numerous inventions, emerging markets and software solutions.

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Alaina Macia talks about how MTM is helping people

He goes on to explain, “We spend a lot of time looking for the right partners. We don’t use the ‘P’ word lightly when it comes to our technology partners. We find ones that are flexible, that are open, that allow us to flex the system in whatever manner that makes sense so we can streamline workflows and

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make life easier for the people who need to leverage our system and so we can deliver on our promises in the best way possible.”

The platform was carefully designed with users at heart to ensure optimal extraction of benefits for all parties, from the end-user to service partners, and is at the forefront of MTMs success.

A digital claims process eliminates the likelihood of errors and speeds up the claims process, which improves cash flow, and safeguards against fraud, waste, and abuse.

Driver complaints are investigated and validated through GPS records. MTM is also able to monitor who downloads the app and uses the information to offer assistance and help increase adoption rates.

But the fun doesn’t stop there. As all members have a personal profile and the app downloaded onto a device, they can send out targeted marketing to help clients

MTM INC.

“ At heart, MTM is a company that cares about community impact, and we feel very strongly about diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate change.

And so we take a stand on these positions” ALAINA MACIÁ

PRESIDENT AND CEO, MTM INC.

Addressing Social Determinants of Health Access to Quality Healthcare Economic Stability Neighborhood & Physical Environment Education Food Quality & Stability Community & Social Contact

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Top 5 reasons customers are choosing AWS Guru Gurushankar, PhD, Worldwide leader of medical devices, shares five reasons customers are choosing Amazon Web Services (AWS) Guru Gurushankar, PhD, is the worldwide leader for medical devices within AWS’s healthcare and life science practice and holds over 25 years of healthcare and medical device experience. Dr Gurushankar took a moment to share the top reasons he believes customers are choosing AWS. Agility “AWS lets customers quickly access resources as they need them, deploying hundreds or even thousands of servers in just minutes. This means customers can very quickly develop and roll out new applications, and it means teams can experiment and innovate more quickly and frequently.

If an experiment fails, you can always de-provision those resources without risk.”

Cost savings “If you look at how people end up moving to the cloud, almost always the conversation starter is around cost.

AWS allows customers to trade capital expense for variable expense, and they only pay for IT as they consume it.

And the variable expense is much lower than what customers can do for themselves because of AWS’s economies of scale.”

Elasticity “Customers used to over-provision to ensure they had the capacity to handle their business operations at peak level of activity. Now they can provision the resources that they actually need, knowing that they can instantly scale up and scale down along with the needs of their business, which reduces the cost.”

Innovation “The fourth reason is the speed of innovation. Because customers can focus their IT resources on developing applications that differentiate their business and transform their customers’ experiences, instead of spending time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of managing their infrastructure and data services.”

Globality “AWS allows customers to deploy globally in minutes. AWS has the concepts of a region, which is a physical location around the world where we have a cluster of data centres.

AWS customers leverage around 76 availability zones across 24 geographic regions worldwide. And we are continuously adding new regions. We have had more than two, three regions announced very recently, and we don’t plan to stop there.”

One such customer is MTM, a leading non-emergency medical transportation broker based in the United States. Dr Gurushankar shares how the culture and mindset at AWS helps drive successful objectives-based customer partnerships.

“AWS customers have come to appreciate that our culture is really different. We are unusually customer-focused versus competitive focused. In fact, 90% of all the things we build are driven by what customers like MTM tell us and how they matter to them. We’re also pioneers, and we hire builders. We’re always looking at how they can reinvent flawed customer experiences. And finally, we are unusually long-term oriented. We are trying to build relationships and businesses that will outlast all of us.”

MTM INC.

get a word out. Contract protocols such as two-day notice requirements are built in to ensure compliance. And for their logistical partners, drivers are able to see open orders and route and schedule pickups. MTM also has a dispatch team to ensure lastminute requests are fulfilled and help with any issues.

For their clients, MTM provides a near real-time customizable dashboard that can monitor KPIs and provide decisionmakers with real-time data to help drive improvements.

Through their unwavering dedication to delivering the highest quality of service and their ability to develop comprehensive

“ We look for technologies that enable or open up our platform to be intuitive and easy to use” RICK HOLBROOK

provider networks, they help clients accomplish their objectives while achieving their vision of communities without barriers.

And they do it all while remaining committed to working towards sustainability and fairness for all. “At heart, MTM is a company that cares about community impact, and we feel very strongly about diversity, equity, inclusion, and climate change. And so we take a stand on these positions. We talk about it frequently, both publicly and with our employee base. And we know that our employees are aligned with our mission and our vision. And these are societal commitments to make our community better,” says Maciá.

The proof is in the pudding. MTM boasts an incredibly long list of awards and accolades, but most notably in corporate culture and wellness, aligning with their core values.

As we said in the beginning, by focusing on doing the right things, MTM really has created a beautiful thing.

CTO, MTM INC.

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STRATEGIC CONSULTANTS IN THE USA Business Chief North America lists its Top 10 Strategic Consultants in the US ranked by their founding year WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

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10

Strategy& 2014

Strategy& is a part of PwC, it helps its clients to realise their ambitions and provide advice on the choices to make in order to do so.

Via its global network, Strategy& provides clients with its deep and broad capabilities expertise, by combining its strategic foresight with the experience of frontline teams across PwC. “Businesses come in all shapes and sizes, which means we have to be prepared for whatever challenges you face. We have the resources and experience to navigate and deliver in both today’s real world and tomorrow’s unknown future. It’s a powerful combination that helps you build a better strategy from day one,” states Strategy&.

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09 GEP

Est. 1999 GEP is a leading provider of innovative supply chain software, and “global supply chain and operations consulting powerhouse.”

Believing that real solutions require ‘more than a hammer’, GEP organised itself and its services around providing the best results for its customers quickly, easily, and efficiently. GEP offers a unified approach to solutions delivery, integrating strategy, software and managed services to help clients achieve their strategic, operational and financial objectives.

"Our formula is simple: bring in amazing talent who will delight our customers,” Dr. Subhash Makhija, Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder of GEP.

TOP TEN

08

“Everything we do is driven by our values. We search for selfstarters and free-thinkers who want to work together and share success”

BSR

Est. 1995 A global team of sustainable business experts. BSR works alongside its network of over 250 member companies from around the world “to build a just and sustainable world.”

From its operations in Asia, Europe and North America, BSR provides insights, advice, and collaborative initiatives to create long-term business value, and scale impact. “Our mission is to work with business to create a just and sustainable world. We envision a world in which everyone can lead a prosperous and dignified life within the boundaries of the Earth’s natural resources.”

07

Oliver Wyman Est. 1984

A global leader in management consulting operating in 29 countries. By combining deep industry knowledge and specialised expertise in strategy, operations, risk management and organisation transformation, Oliver Wyman works with clients to optimise businesses, improve operations and risk profiles, and accelerate organisational performance to seize opportunities.

Scott Mcdonald, President and CEO, Oliver Wyman, quotes above. businesschief.com

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06

Alvarez & Marsal Est. 1983

Founded by Tony Alvarez and Bryan Marsal, with a mission to “seamlessly link operations, performance improvement and value creation to best help companies turn areas of stagnation into growth to achieve sustainable results,” this ethos remains at the core of its operations more than 35 years on.

Alvarez & Marsal is a global consulting firm that provides organisations problem solving and value creation solutions. “We work as advisers, interim leaders and partners who tell you what you need to know, not always what you want to hear.”

Alvarez & Marsal believes that its operational heritage helps it to decipher challenges and identify new opportunities to mitigate complex problems, shifting demands and tumultuous business environments.

05 Gartner Est. 1979

Leading research and advisory company. “We’ve expanded well beyond our flagship technology research to provide senior leaders across the enterprise with the indispensable business insights, advice and tools they need to achieve their mission-critical priorities and build the organisations of tomorrow.”

Operating in 100 countries, Gartner provides leaders across multiple industries – including supply chain, finance, information technology and product management – with its insight, advice and tools to achieve their mission-critical priorities.

“Together with our clients, we fuel the future of business so that a more successful world takes shape.”

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04

Bain & Company Est. 1973

Global consulting firm that strives to help the world ambitious company define the future. Bain & Company works alongside its clients as a team with a shared ambition “to achieve extraordinary results, outperform the competition and redefine industries.”

Operating in 37 countries, Bain & Company strives to complement its tailored, integrated expertise with an ecosystem of digital innovators to deliver “better, faster and more enduring outcomes.”

Harnessing its talent, expertise and insights, Bain & Company’s 10 year commitment to invest over US$1bn in pro bono services to help organisations tackle “today’s urgent challenges in education, racial equity, social justice, economic development and the environment.”

03 BCG

Est. 1963 BCG (Boston Consulting Group) partners with leaders in business and society to “tackle their most important challenges and capture their greatest opportunities.” At the start of its journey BCG “was the pioneer in business strategy.”

Operating in more than 50 countries in industries such as aerospace, defence, automotive, education, medical and industrial, BCG believes that “to succeed, organisations must blend digital and human capabilities. BCG’s diverse, global teams bring deep industry and functional expertise and a range of perspectives to spark change through leadingedge management consulting as well as data science, technology and design, digital ventures, and business purposes.”

“Better, faster and more enduring outcomes” 176

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02

TOP TEN

Kearney Est. 1926

Dating back to 1926, Kearney was founded on the belief that its success as consultants “will depend on the essential rightness of the advice we give and our capacity for convincing those in authority that it is good,” Andrew Thomas (Tom) Kearney, Founder.

As a leading global management consultant operating in over 40 countries, Kearney works with over three quarters of

the Fortune Global 500, as well as some of the most influential government and non profit organisations.

“Regardless of location or rank, our consultants are down to earth, approachable, and have a shared passion for doing innovative client work that provides clear benefits to the organisations we work with in both the short and long term.”

Kearney | It's the company you remember

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Change that Matters

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TOP TEN

McKinsey Est. 1926

The consulting company has been helping organisations in the public, private and social sectors to drive change for over 90 years.

“From the C-suite to the front line, we partner with our clients to transform their organisations, embed technology into everything they do, and build enduring capabilities.”

Operating in 65 countries and more than 20 industries – such as logistics, real estate, automotive and technology – McKinsey combines its global expertise with its local insights to help organisations to achieve their ambitious goals.

“ Our firm is designed to operate as one—a single global partnership united by a strong set of values, including a deep commitment to diversity, and making positive social impact through our work and the way we run our firm”

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MANAGING MIGRATION RISK WRITTEN BY: JOHN O'HANLON

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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We talk to Dave Trader, Vice President and Field Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) of Presidio, a role we have seen evolve rapidly as cyber attacks have grown in number and severity

I

n the words of Gartner, “Many security teams have overinvested in a plethora of tools. As a result, they are also suffering from alert fatigue and multiple console complexity and facing the challenges in recruiting and retaining security operations analysts with the right set of skills and expertise to effectively use all those tools.”

Facing this dilemma is the stock-in-trade of Presidio, through its full life cycle model of professional, managed, and support services including strategy, consulting, implementation and design – and above all security.

The company has demonstrated its expertise in helping customers design, architect, build, migrate and manage their workloads by building close partnerships with all the major infrastructure and cloud providers - including Microsoft, Google, Palo Alto, Red Hat and IBM - and in February 2021 achieved Premier Partner status within the AWS partner network. In the last year Presidio has brought into its portfolio two companies that extend both its global reach and its full-stack capability. Coda adds software development and coding abilities the company didn't have before, while Dublin-based Arkphire brings access to wider global markets.

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Dave Trader Vice President and Field Chief Information Security Officer (CISO)

PRESIDIO

PRESIDIO

Managing migration risk

However, alongside infrastructure delivery, Presidio has developed unique expertise around cloud, collaboration and crucially cybersecurity. The level of threat has rocketed this century as new ways of using, accessing, and storing data are adopted and vulnerabilities proliferate.

“We are able not only to help companies transition and transfer their workloads to the cloud, but also we can effectively enable them to secure those workloads,” says Dave Trader, who has been Presidio's Cybersecurity Practice Lead since the beginning of 2019, and global Field CISO since January 2021. He is one of the industry's leading security experts with 20 years' experience, including eight years with 186

April 2021

the Marines specializing in critical military security and communications, and most recently Chief Information Security Officer at GalaxE Solutions. He's also a graduate of the FBI CISO Academy, one of fewer than 200 since the program was inaugurated in 2015.

Since early 2020 the market has seen a rush to migrate to the cloud. “We are trying to get applications closer to the user, which raises issues around latency and security concerns about the right way to achieve that as the workforce moves from office to home,” says Trader. “We have moved from 'cloud first' to 'cloud right'. We start with an evaluation so that we can advise as to whether cloud is really best for this client and if so in what configuration.”

PRESIDIO

DAVE TRADER TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT AND FIELD CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER (CISO) INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY SECURITY

Intrinsic Security and vSOC Security can't be an add-on anymore.

Security baked into everything from code to the DevSecOps space right through to deployment at the edge is what Dave Trader calls intrinsic security. “AWS is a good example of that in the cloud space.

We believe that security has to be in the process every step of the way as we test the environment and look for gaps and vulnerabilities that we can exploit.” His team rigorously looks for cracks in the clients' systems, then makes sure they are all sealed.

Since his arrival Trader has made a point of highlighting certain key services. “I've really tried to double down on our virtual security operations center (vSOC) services and bring

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: NEW YORK Dave Trader holds numerous CyberSecurity certifications; including CISSP. He has received numerous endorsements from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and NSA and is a graduate of the FBI CISO Academy.

A results-driven leader, MBA graduate, and senior-level IT Executive offering years of experience, Dave creates secure network environments for large, global enterprises as a Chief Information Security Officer.

Dave has the ability to build an entire Cyber Security program from the ground up. He has created a template for a successful cybersecurity program and is constantly evaluating against that template.

Dave has an extensive networking and technology background with broad security experience and success in applying cutting-edge approaches to incoming threats by joining the tactical military strategy he obtained in the United States Marine Corps to a practical enterprise application.

Never trust, always verify Okta as the core of Zero Trust Okta is the leading independent identity provider. The Okta Identity Cloud enables organizations to securely connect the right people to the right technologies at the right time.

Learn more

Watch about the partnership between Okta and Presidio

Okta: identity for the internet Okta’s vision is a world where everyone can safely use any technology: its promise, to protect the identities of all users, while asking “what more can we make possible?”

Today IT leaders cite secure employee access as their primary focus, thanks largely to an explosion in remote working. “One of the scariest parts of the quick switch to remote work is the need to move quickly and securely,” says Brock Dooling, Partner Alliances Engineer at Okta, a trusted platform to secure every identity, from customers to workforce. More than 10,000 organizations trust Okta’s software and APIs to sign in, authorize, and manage users.

Getting identity right is really important – but complicated. Clients can use Okta to enable their users to sign in with a username/password or with their social accounts like Google or Facebook using pre-built sign-in components from Okta. “After the user has signed in, you can retrieve their user profile, secure your APIs and application backends so that only authorized users and applications can call them.

With Okta clients can use their existing stack to build sign in, protect their APIs and move on with their lives!” That message is not lost on Okta’s

partners. Recently the CTO of lifecycle managed services provider Presidio Dave Trader told us: “Okta has been a huge help in managing secure user authentication, while allowing developers to build identity controls into applications, website web services and devices.”

Password access is notoriously vulnerable, so automation of user authentication is at the top of the developers’ agenda. Okta FastPass is already delivering passwordless login using default authentication implemented through biometric capabilities, rather than only by user-specific certifications. On March 4 2021 Okta acquired a complementary authorization platform. It will continue to support and expand Auth0, with a view to eventual integration.

“Together, we will shape the future of identity on the internet,” promises Brock Dooling. “Okta and Auth0 address a broad set of identity use cases, and our identity platforms are robust and extensible enough to serve the world’s largest organizations and most innovative developers.”

Learn more

PRESIDIO

DID YOU KNOW...

THE 20 CIS SECURITY CONTROLS

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Basic CIS Controls 1. Inventory and Control of Hardware Assets 2. Inventory and Control of Software Assets 3. Continuous Vulnerability Management 4. Controlled Use of Administrative Privileges 5. Secure Configuration for Hardware and Software on Mobile Devices, Laptops, Workstations and Servers 6. Maintenance, Monitoring and Analysis of Audit Logs Foundational CIS Controls 7. Email and Web Browser Protections 8. Malware Defenses 9. Limitation and Control of Network Ports, Protocols and Services

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10. Data Recovery Capabilities 11. Secure Configuration for Network Devices, such as Firewalls, Routers and Switches 12. Boundary Defense 13. Data Protection 14. Controlled Access Based on the Need to Know 15. Wireless Access Control 16. Account Monitoring and Control Organizational CIS Controls 17. Implement a Security Awareness and Training Program 18. Application Software Security 19. Incident Response and Management 20. Penetration Tests and Red Team Exercises

PRESIDIO

those forward.” A vSOC, he explains, is an outsourced, comprehensive, round-theclock data monitoring solution that enables a company to identify threats as they arise.

“We saw a gap in the market where we found companies building their own SOC. That can work for a while for companies but ends up enveloping their entire team as the vulnerabilities overwhelm them. They were looking for some help and we saw an opportunity to bring in our expertise and promote internal enterprise security teams so they can handle major events, while we are at hand to deal with the day-to-day events and protect their environment. We have been able to build a great practice around that.”

Traditionally, security events have been viewed through aggregating or logging programs like Palo Alto's Prisma, he explains.

“When those logs and events come in they typically go to a security center dashboard or platform, but we now see clients getting overwhelmed with a host of lower level alerts. They'd never be able to hire enough analysts to cope with the onslaught of events.

That's why our managed service component utilizes automation to the hilt to combat the problem of alert fatigue. We are doing that very successfully with the help of partners like Palo Alto and others, fighting automated attacks with our own machine learning defenses: our team here at Presidio has built a first class offering and a first class vSOC service.” businesschief.com

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5-STAR MILITARY-GRADE CYBERSECURITY FOR ALL Rapid cyber incident response and early cyber threat detection.

Contact your Presidio representative today.

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PRESIDIO

Another benefit for Presidio's vSOC is its portability. Clients can stay with platforms they have in place – automation enables the solution to run without the end user noticing any change. “Customers tell us they had no idea that level of automation was even possible and are really enjoying the insights and outputs they are getting through being able to leverage the automation we have baked in through APIs.” Covid opportunities and challenges In March 2020 Presidio saw a freeze on travel and has since worked mainly from home. “Generally, about 70% of people now work entirely from home,” says Trader. “That brings with it a lot of security concerns, for example shadow IT. We saw VPN licensing go through the roof. The home network may be insecure, and once it is connected to the office network, others using a shared device may be downloading malware through games or social media. Cybercriminals look for their chance, well aware of the wormholes that can open up this way.”

The secure access service edge (SASE) is made front and center of his conversations

with clients. “Latency became a problem. We had engineering companies and architects that were spending six or seven hours downloading blueprints they were working on at home, rather than the secure networks they had in the office. That placed a focus on identity access management and real-time assessment of the end user at the end-point.

That is why identity is so important: the perimeter has shifted!”

Addressing the end-point required user and entity behavior analytics (UEBA), a process of gathering insight into the network events that users generate every day. It can pick up

“ I have seen companies where up to 50% of their network is scorched earth, irrecoverable” DAVE TRADER

VICE PRESIDENT AND FIELD CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER (CISO), PRESIDIO businesschief.com

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the 'impossible traveler' where a user appears to interact with the same resource from two different locations but could not possibly have made that trip in that time.

“We'd have to ask that user to add another layer of validation, and we are seeing companies adopt that, which is very encouraging,” says Trader. One of Presidio's main partners Cisco has a gold standard UEBA solution in DUO, which is scalable, easy and inexpensive to set up. “I see DUO becoming integrated with identity access planning at many enterprises and it is really working out well.”

COVID-19 has proved that a dispersed workforce can work as well as a concentrated one, so this is likely to become a permanent change. However, in most cases people are working on systems that the company does not own or control so

PRESIDIO

“ We tackle alert fatigue very successfully with the help of partners like Palo Alto and others, fighting automated attacks with our own machine learning defenses: our team here at Presidio that has built a first class offering and a first class vSOC service” DAVE TRADER

VICE PRESIDENT AND FIELD CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER (CISO), PRESIDIO

what used to be called BYOD has morphed into MDM, or mobile device management.

This enables IT departments to secure, monitor, and manage end-user mobile devices from smartphones, tablets, laptops, and even IoT devices. “Nevertheless, I'd say that 70% of companies are not doing validation on their employees' devices ahead of time, so these systems may not have antivirus and we are seeing compromised systems being allowed into enterprises,” cautions Trader. “Hacking organizations are aware of this and I have seen them purposefully seeking out these back doors to the enterprise networks. I have also seen an uptick since November 2020 of hacking organizations doubling down on ransomware in almost every vertical.”

Prevention better than cure The problem is very serious: Trader is getting around four calls a week from businesschief.com

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Discover Your Security Maturity Score Is your organization on the right path as you navigate today's cybersecurity landscape?

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PRESIDIO

major companies under attack despite taking reasonable care. “We are helping companies recover and step through triage, getting them stabilized and moving them through into recovery. But I have also seen companies where up to 50% of their network is scorched earth, irrecoverable. A situation like that is an existential threat for a business. But I am trying to have more conversations on the proactive side so that firefighting is not needed. But even if you do everything I would prescribe as best practice it doesn't mean that a state-sponsored entity won't be able to breach your defenses with some kind of ransomware or other form of cyber-attack.”

This may seem bleak, but Presidio and its partner ecosystem have the best minds in cybersecurity focused on staying ahead in this war. “In 2021,” he says, “ransomware will pick up, so our trusted advisor position will become even more relevant.

Many more companies are hiring CISOs, and their conversations are going direct to the board. I have been doing presentations at the board level to give them a perspective on cyber threats and best practice solutions. My

“ I see monumental opportunities in what our security practice can accomplish in 2021” DAVE TRADER

VICE PRESIDENT AND FIELD CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER (CISO), PRESIDIO

message is that this mountain is not insurmountable. If you get the fundamentals right and follow best practice you can prevent the majority of the issues that are happening all around the world. We are continually

investing in additional capabilities to provide cybersecurity consulting, advisory services and vSOC/MDR+ services our customers are consuming”

PRESIDIO

Partnership, and cooperation In the war against cyber attackers, alliances become vital. “I rely heavily on what our partners bring to the table,” insists Dave Trader. “We work with tremendous partners, depending on their specific specialty. Palo Alto and Cisco are always our number one and two partners across the board. They do a great job full stack, and they have solutions around everything we have talked about today.”

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Cisco is working on SecureX, an open, cloud-native platform that connects Cisco's integrated security portfolio with those of customers for a simpler, more consistent experience across endpoints, cloud, network, and applications. “SecureX will be the hub joining the spokes of all Cisco's security products and that is really working out well. We engage well with them because so many customers leverage the full portfolio of services they have.”

PRESIDIO

“I'd say that 70% of companies are not doing validation on their employees' devices ahead of time, so these systems may not have EDR and we are seeing compromised systems being allowed into enterprises” DAVE TRADER

VICE PRESIDENT AND FIELD CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER (CISO), PRESIDIO

INDUSTRY Technology security

3,000

Number of employees

For the rest, he is guided by his customer.

“When we go into a customer's environment and ask them to lay out the controls they have in place to protect themselves, I am actively listening for over a dozen key areas.” Basically, he follows the NIST-CSF governance controls, and as he goes through those domains, customers tell him which solutions they prefer and have adopted. “I routinely find they have covered most of the best practice controls, but I introduce some partners they may not have considered.”

He always starts with the data. “With the edge dissolving if you don't have a good handle on who is accessing your data, when, where and how, you can quickly lose your grip on it. Varonis is a good example because they really understand how the data is encrypted, how it lives and breathes and traverses the network.” If we start with the data, we know what we’re protecting. If we secure the data properly and absolutely, we have less risk when an intruder does get into the network. Varonis provides outstanding visibility to that data and helps us understand the level of security needed. businesschief.com

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Data Security Platform The most powerful way to find, monitor, and protect sensitive data on premises and in the cloud

Data Protection

Privacy & Compliance

Threat Detection & Response

Get a free data risk assessment.

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Trusted by thousands of the world's most secure organizations.

www.varonis.com

PRESIDIO

To address incident response issues, a partner he might suggest would be CyberDefenses. “I have done multiple engagements with this team. They bring rigor to the security response, bringing in forensics, knowing how to run triage then move on through stabilization to recovery. They can find out not only how the target was compromised but what was taken and what this event looks like from a governance risk and compliance perspective. Presidio works really well with CD throughout the incident performing remediation steps including professional services and additional consulting to recover the business operation.”

Many attacks get through because the alert was missed or not actioned. He has found Arctic Wolf a dependable ally for its (SIEM) offering. “From a concierge perspective my customers feel that Arctic Wolf has a handle on everything they do.”

Though at first glance some of these services may seem to compete with Presidio's in-house portfolio, partners are essential in delivering successful outcomes.. “Where I can I always lead with Presidio's services, but there are situations where we need to bring in partners.”

One problem facing the end user may be different dashboards that complicate authentication. To overcome this, he has found Okta a big help in managing businesschief.com

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“ SecureX will be the hub joining the spokes of all Cisco's security products and that is really working out well” DAVE TRADER

VICE PRESIDENT AND FIELD CHIEF INFORMATION SECURITY OFFICER (CISO), PRESIDIO

secure user authentication, while allowing developers to build identity controls into applications, website web services and devices. “In practice I may have different options to suggest. I feel that IAM (Identity Access Management) is a cornerstone for so many broader security methodologies like Zero Trust, SASE, and others. Okta does a great job helping with IAM at every level from CASB through MFA. I have many larger enterprise companies that utilize Okta as their primary identity partner and they are incredibly happy with the versatility.”

These partners and many others are bringing in new applications and services all the time, so here Presidio's strength is knowing exactly what is in development. This work will continue, he promises. “My team is going to continue to grow: we are hiring across the country and across the world and we are going to continue to be able to support our customers in every region. I see monumental opportunities in what our security practice can accomplish in 2021.”

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NTT LTD.

NTT: Supporting a new generation of SAP capability in the cloud How NTT’s SAP capabilities on Azure can provide a trusted path for enterpriseready innovation in the cloud

WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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NTT Ltd. is helping its customers bring the intelligence, agility and security of Azure to their SAP applications. Kirk Compton, Vice President of Cloud & Enterprise Application Management Services for NTT Ltd. in the Americas, explains how NTT is partnering with Microsoft and SAP on a global scale working towards automation and standardization to help solve operations challenges. “When our customers are looking to move their workloads to the Azure platform, we've got the data center space, the network, and the people who can enable them to successfully migrate to a cloud strategy.”

That partnership has matured over the past year. In December 2020 NTT announced a broader alliance with SAP around global supply chain and sustainability which will see the two working together to help develop the next generation of solutions for enterprise customers. Along with a partnership with Microsoft, announced in 2019 to develop global initiatives with Azure, the three companies are now in a unique position to offer solutions that draw on a collective synergy.

NTT LTD.

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NTT LTD.

“ We’re able to remove the barriers to cloud adoption and help our customers modernize SAP architecture to optimize processes and increase productivity.”

Kirk Compton

Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

Automation & Standardization For many organizations the SAP environment is a behemoth; a core application for business operations. It touches most business units and is critical to financial transactions, supply chains, HR, payroll and more. So, when customers are thinking about moving to the cloud the key considerations will always be time and cost.

“If I'm a CIO and I want to figure out what it's going to take to get me into the cloud environment. I've got to dedicate members of my team to analysing that proposition just to figure out my strategy; and that can be very expensive,” reasons Compton. “At NTT we’ve partnered with Microsoft and developed a micro-site with an assessment tool that allows customers to build that picture for free; they don’t need to hire us to make that assessment. What does their SAP environment look like? What applications do they have? What is the size of the environment? And through that intake, we're able to provide a report providing that picture and how long it might take to migrate these environments; and perhaps most importantly, what the estimated cost would look like. What is your business going to be like in the cloud environment? Is it truly a cost saving? Where is the ROI?” This assessment strategy is all about the automation and standardization of new

DP NTT Kirk Compton

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NTT LTD.

Migrating SAP to Azure cloud – the big business benefits • Optimize cost efficiencies Move from CapEx to OpEx, and drive down costs through pay as you go pricing models for both managed services and cloud consumption.

• The agility to prepare for the future Imagine having an IT infrastructure that can flex with seasonal business requirements and achieve greater agility with Azure Virtual Machines.

• Scale while reducing risk Safeguard your SAP platform against unforeseen events with our cutting-edge, proven technology. High availability options are simple when your ERP system is hosted on Azure.

• Gain valuable business intelligence Accelerate innovation with actionable data on your SAP systems to improve your decision making.

• Empower your business to do more, on a global scale Enterprises have been fast to adopt cloud for non-critical applications but maybe nervous about migrating mission-critical SAP applications. Azure cloud is about speed, automation, scalability, time-tovalue, and innovation. Today, the cloud becomes more than just a deployment option, it becomes an enabler of expanded capabilities.

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NetApp: Agile and secure data handling Enabling visibility over performance, future proofed stability for upgrades and enhanced data management

by Dan Brightmore

NetApp drives digital transformation for organisations migrating their data and SAP workloads to the cloud. You can trust the storage specialists to deliver business continuity, whether that’s in a private on-prem data center or in a public cloud with Azure, with a unified view.

Data transformation “We’re on this journey with our customers when one of the key things they need is consistency,” explains Michael Zakariudakis, Business Development Manager for the SAP Alliance at NetApp. “They need guaranteed flexibility to scale up and down as required, and with our NetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP solution we enable a seamless data transformation experience for them.”

Secure speed of change When it comes to speed of execution, NetApp works with NTT to ensure their joint customers have the agility and visibility to execute change when their business needs to innovate. “When they need to act rapidly in a continually shifting market, we’re there for them,” assures Zakariudakis. “We make sure we can affect a total cost of ownership that considers operational change, business process change, and not just technology. Jointly with NTT, we provide the ability to transform their SAP application architecture securely.”

Future-proofed data stability Dealing with numerous landscape refreshes there are many iterations to navigate during a business transformation. “We can help our customers invest in the capacity and the performance they need at any point in time on their journey,” maintains Zakariudakis.

“Over-investment in a certain capacity, performance, tier, or stack can happen, and businesses find themselves locked in when faced with critical decisions. How can they move on with this transition? We help them invest in the right capacity performance at that key point in time.”

Learn more

NTT LTD.

strategic partners, help our customers reach their targets as quickly as possible so they can modernize SAP architecture to optimize processes and increase productivity.”

Following on from the assessment process, NTT runs workshops fuelled by a design thinking methodology to make sure business and IT are aligned on a strategy with the right priorities to move forward.

Business Intelligence Moving your enterprise environment to S/4HANA provides the ability to get access to your data faster with the accumulation of good data strategies one of the great benefits. Moving to that environment in the cloud allows businesses to take advantage of other Microsoft components and analytics solutions.

“There’s a significant amount of collaboration going on between the companies with the Microsoft Azure IOT hub and the SAP Leonardo solutions suite helping customers navigate the IOT space,” notes Compton. “It's amazing to see how artificial intelligence and machine learning are really starting to become operational in nature for our customers. Alongside this, at NTT, we’re also developing our smart solutions evident solutions, reducing impact and cost for customers to be able to get to the cloud more efficiently with limited business disruption – a key component to these upgrades.

“Downtime is something most companies don’t have the opportunity to factor in,” adds Compton.

NTT uses its S Discover tool that goes out across the network analysing every application and data point coming into a company’s SAP environment. “With our assessment we’re able to remove the barriers to cloud adoption and, with the support of our 210

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“ NetApp’s toolsets and capabilities help our clients get visibility into their performance and where their data is being secured and stored.”

Kirk Compton

Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

NTT LTD.

1952

Year NTT founded

USD11bn NTT Ltd. global revenue

40,000

Number of NTT Ltd. employees globally

in our work with the Las Vegas smart city project, the Tour de France and the IndyCar Series. We’re providing a lot of the live data analytics being used by sports broadcasters which shows how our collaboration with SAP on Azure provides speedy results.”

Partner smart to prepare your business for 2027 and beyond…

With mainstream support for the SAP ECC platform ending in 2025, and all core SAP products set to be optimized for the SAP HANA database, now is the time to consider transforming your SAP platform into an agile and flexible one that will remove complexities, improve efficiencies and drive your organization’s success for years to come. NTT believes Microsoft Azure is the ideal platform to support that migration and open up a world of new opportunities driven by continued innovation and business intelligence.

NetApp is a key strategic partner supporting these migration efforts. “The way they manage file systems for data, means that when businesses make that move to the Azure platform they can specifically call out their storage strategy,” explains Compton.

“NetApp’s toolsets and capabilities really help

Executive Profile:

Kirk Compton Title: VP Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd. Industry: Information Technology & Services Kirk Compton has a proven track record of continued success in delivering growth in global and regional leadership roles.

A market leader in client focused solution development, delivery and management, Compton drives enterprise growth by aligning corporate strategy ahead of market conditions and ever-changing technology solutions. He has held expansive roles at NTT Ltd. providing global, regional, and vertical leadership across multiple technology platforms – including ERP, hyperscalers, private cloud and most recently Smart solutions.

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Reacting to a Covid-19 world “The big trend we’ve seen during the global pandemic is consolidation,” explains Compton.

“With the work from home/work from anywhere methodology many organizations are looking to reduce their real estate spend on everything from office space to data centers. Moving a data center from a physical location that you're paying for to a cloud environment, that could be consumption-based, can help companies transition through the current challenges. As you migrate workloads, being able to spin up and spin down environments, to be able to do projects on demand without having to acquire infrastructure, without having to acquire a network, are part of that transformational

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experience for customers. How do I transform faster?”

“Allied to the push towards consolidation, the other big trend we’re seeing at NTT is organisations facing up to their staffing challenges and the need to up-skill,” reveals Compton. “SAP has produced a few reports over the last two years around the lack of skills in S/4HANA trained individuals due to cost constraints and budgeting. But that's really where our sweet spot is at NTT. We have the right skills, capabilities, and partnerships to be able to provide strategic solutions using a shared service model that’s becoming more and more attractive in the current climate.”

NTT LTD.

NTT Ltd.’s Managed Services client testimonial video

our clients get not only the visibility into their performance and where their data is being secured and stored, but as SAP matures, as the environments move forward, we've also got the NetApp capability to futureproof stability for our clients to handle upgrades and caching while managing the data that goes along with that.

All of this makes it a really critical component.”

Intel have also been investing in strategic partnerships with both NetApp and Microsoft for a number of years. “Using their IP, we’re utilising capabilities that have influenced our drive for automation and standardization,” reveals Compton. “It's the only way we can help customers reduce cost – that cost comes in many different areas across the decisionmaking process. Partnering with Microsoft to do the assessment, whether that's the actual performance of the environment or the

standardization of moving your environment to the Azure cloud, using the tools from NetApp and Intel are huge drivers for our customers.”

Certifications, Compliance & Security Setting up a network infrastructure with a strong foundation on Azure in NTT’s

“ Using Intel’s IP we’re utilising capabilities that influence our drive for automation and standardisation.”

Kirk Compton

Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

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AWAKEN YOUR DATA The only data center CPU with built-in AI acceleration. The latest 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors feature Intel Deep Learning Boost to accelerate your AI inference up to 30x*.

LEARN MORE

*Compared to previous generation hardware. For more complete information about performance and benchmark results, visit www.intel.com/benchmarks

THE COLLABORATIVE POWER OF THE ECOSYSTEM DELIVERING SUCCESS As an industry leader with the purpose to create worldchanging technology that enriches the lives of every person on earth, Intel has been and is at the forefront of technology growth and development, catering for all business solution needs.

Through a broad ecosystem, Intel is focused on delivering an end-to-end data portfolio that stretches from the edge to the cloud, powered by artificial intelligence all while being more secure. All of this is enabled and achieved through the strong collaboration of the ecosystem mentioned.

An often overlooked though integral part of the ecosystem is the Service Integrators (SI), also known as Solution Integrators, like NTT Limited, who have a global alliance with Intel, where together they solve difficult challenges and deliver business outcomes.

The role of said Service / Solution Integrators is to influence IT decisions, recommend on the architectural designs and deployment across on-premise and cloud, and ultimately deliver complete end-to-end hardware and software solutions together with the broader ecosystem of OEM & ISV partners like SAP and Cisco.

With enterprises embracing artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and big data analytics, the solutions are required to access and handle large data sets faster, which can be addressed by Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory (PMem) which removes I/O bottlenecks to maximize CPU utilization. Intel & SAP have collaborated to bring Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory support to SAP HANA and Intel and the OEMs, like Cisco, have collaborated on system designs that support Intel® Optane™ Persistent Memory modules allowing for a variety of configurations to suit all customer needs.

Intel and NTT Limited have collaborated for a number

of years, designing solutions that meet customer needs in industries such as enterprise, manufacturing, agriculture, automotive, financial, and more all around the world, with great success being realized when forces are combined with the greater ecosystem.

It is through insights gained while working through these relationships that Intel is able to create technologies like Intel® Software Guard Extensions (SGX). SGX enhances the last part of the data journey by securing data-in-use, enabling for example AI workloads to be performed on otherwise untapped data sources. In fact, 2nd Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable Processors are the only mainstream data center CPU with built-in AI acceleration enabling organizations to deploy highly performant applications without using complex and expensive new hardware. By collaborating with Intel, along with Service / System Integrators like NTT Limited and the technology ecosystem clients can feel comfortable in the knowledge that their business challenges can be addressed, delivering the best possible outcomes.

THIS IS YOUR DATA ON INTEL Intel technologies may require enabled hardware, software or service activation. No product or component can be absolutely secure. Your costs and results may vary. © Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.

Other names and brands may be claimed as the property of others.

NTT LTD.

“ We have the vertical expertise across the globe to manage SAP environments for our customers and help them implement systems, automate their environments, deliver on business outcome strategies, examine the different vertical solutions they want to run and operate new revenue channels.”

Kirk Compton

Vice President Cloud & Enterprise Application Managed Services, Sales, Americas, NTT Ltd.

data centers allows the company to stack up from an applications perspective with industry leading certifications, compliance and security. “We're Azure experts,” says Compton. “We've got the highest level of certifications from an SAP perspective.

Every year, SAP audits our operations and our data centers to make sure we stay at the highest level of compliancy for SAP environments. We’re really proud of the fact that for the past couple years, we've been the highest rated partner in the SAP ecosystem for these certifications with the highest level of security.”

Compton maintains that the process of optimizing an environment makes it even more important to ensure data is secure, optimal, being backed up and stored properly to perform at the highest level. “We have the vertical expertise across the globe to manage SAP environments for our customers and help them implement systems, automate their environments, deliver on business outcome strategies, examine the different vertical 216

April 2021

solutions they want to run and operate new revenue channels. But in the end, the real differentiator is that we have the best SAP people working for our customers.”

Time to transform The speed of business transformation, as witnessed in 2020, is changing. Legacy SAP solutions aren’t capable of meeting today’s

NTT LTD.

business challenges. Meanwhile, the public cloud is past the tipping point of enterprise adoption. NTT are making it possible to run your business better with SAP applications, and their data, in the Azure global hyperscale cloud.

“To succeed in today’s disruptive environment, it’s time to be decisive and start planning the move of your SAP systems to Azure,” affirms Compton. “By marrying your

SAP data to other data on Azure’s agile cloud platform, you’ll be able to use end-to-end, realtime insights to quickly enter new markets, fend off the competition, improve your margins, and grow your business.” So why wait?

There’s never been a better time to migrate.

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THE LEADING LIGHT

IN SECURE CONNECTIVITY How the Lumen platform is driving the 4th Industrial Revolution with services supporting network infrastructure, cloud edge and collaboration.

WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

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L

umen delivers the fastest, most secure platform for next-gen business applications and data. Its platform integrates extensive network infrastructure, cloud connectivity, edge computing, connected security, voice, collaboration and enterprise-class services into an advanced application architecture.

The 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) is here, and it’s changing the way companies use technology. Lumen is one of the leading lights driving that change.

With a move away from private data centres and the push towards the cloud, Lumen is supporting its customers with their latency-sensitive day-to-day applications for everything from automation and robotics, to AI and self-driving cars.

“Our customers told us they needed connectivity closer to where their applications are consumed,” explains Lumen’s Vice President for Global Security Services, Christopher Smith. “To do this, we repurposed many of the central offices we previously established for legacy voice

COMPANY NAME

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Lumen Technologies: Andrew Dugan, CTO

systems (made largely redundant by the rise of smartphones) and turned them into mini cloud data centres. The industry is calling that the cloud edge, and it’s the next natural trend for the application experience.”

Network Integrated Security “Security plays a huge part in the move from private, on-premises to public cloud,” explains Smith. “Security is a crowded

space,” he says. “Everyone’s got their unique approach on how to make things more secure; and, in some cases, how to scare people into feeling insecure.

Lumen’s goal is simply to create threatfree traffic for its customers. “The way most security works, you either put a perimeter at the edge of your data centre or cloud, or you're doing something on the server to watch for bad behaviour,” says Smith. “With

“ My mantra is that security is not something separate from the things we sell, but we build it into the things that customers are buying from us.”

CHRISTOPHER SMITH,

VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL SECURITY SERVICES, LUMEN

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LUMEN

CHRISTOPHER SMITH TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL SECURITY SERVICES COMPANY: LUMEN INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: LOUISIANA, USA

Black Lotus Labs Lumen also has an in-house threat intelligence team branded Black Lotus Labs®. Tasked with watching the network for anomalies, they’re on the lookout for malware, C2s and anything that leaves a footprint on the network.

“I think of our team as weather forecasters,” explains Smith. “If you were living in Florida and were worried about a hurricane, you could turn on the news and get updates days before it hit. That’s what our threat intel team does. They see those threats before they impact our customers, and we can act on that. The most egregious threats we can take right off the network; we are able to blackhole them so they can never touch our customers. We also work with law enforcement to help them prosecute the worst offenders of malware and C2s.

Allied to this, we build capabilities into our

EXECUTIVE BIO

Lumen being the largest public peered IP network on the planet, we have visibility to threats on the network before they even breach a customer's infrastructure.”

Christopher Smith consistently creates world-class product experiences through solid product management practices. His ability to identify and solve his customers’ business problems stems from more than 20 years of experience developing and managing technology products and applications for the Enterprise market. Chris currently serves as Lumen’s Vice President of Global Security Services. In this capacity, he oversees the Connected Security pillar of the Lumen platform. This includes investment oversight, and product and revenue management for the global security-product portfolio. Prior to joining Lumen through the Level 3 acquisition of CenturyLink, Chris was Vice President of Product Management, responsible for enterprise voice solutions and the global data center portfolio. He also served as a director in the CTO office at Global Crossing, where he was responsible for setting and incubating technology direction, and developing and managing the suite of SIP Trunking services.Chris’s work for Lumen is just a side gig, however. For his real job, Chris plays guitar in a band, and he intends to resume playing live shows post-Covid.

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Security Without Compromise Fortinet Security Fabric

Security-Driven Networking

Empowering the largest enterprise, service provider, and government organizations around the world with intelligent, seamless protection The Fortinet Security Fabric architecture can deliver security without compromise to address the most critical challenges, whether in network, application, cloud, or mobile environments.

“We’ve driven the evolution from point defence products via integration to what are now unified platforms across the prevention technology stack, the detection stack and the response stack,” explains Jonathan Nguyen-Duy, Vice President of Fortinet’s Global Field CISO Team. “These three pillars are the foundation of our cybersecurity offering.”

Fortinet can meet the demands of an ever-expanding attack surface, giving enterprises the power to take on the ever-increasing performance requirements of the borderless network - today and into the future.

Convergence

The latest research shows 80% of all attacks that lead to breaches and major disruptions, could have been mitigated through simple digital media controls.

“Wherever we have large enterprise environments, we see gaps of visibility and control and those gaps are due to the complexity of the environment,” explains Nguyen-Duy. “Fortinet’s broad integrated and automated approach helps manage the complexity IT teams see each day enabling them to improve cybersecurity.”

Nguyen-Duy believes networking, security and application performance need to be working in

a tight holistic fashion to deliver the business outcomes and end user experience service providers like Lumen are focused on for their customers. Fortinet offers support to provide that foundation with out of the box solutions for the convergence of security and networking irrespective of where an enterprise or small to medium business is on its journey.

Automation

Today’s operating environment sees teams almost overwhelmed by too many alerts on too many devices, on too many management consoles… “As prevention, detection and response technologies mature, leveraging artificial intelligence will allow us to automate workflows so we’re better able to identify and mitigate threats with greater accuracy and speed,” says Nguyen-Duy. “Security needs to be wherever the computer is, meaning wherever the data’s being processed and wherever it’s being stored. For Fortinet, that means end-to-end solutions on the LAN edge, the WAN edge and the Cloud edge, in whichever form factor makes sense for that business, whether it’s a virtual machine, a cloud delivered service or consumption and licensing models. We provide this integrated fabric of technologies with over 400 other vendors spanning 3,200 products. Out of the box, enterprises can access an ecosystem of technologies all designed to work together so that the operator can focus on operating the technology rather than integrating it.

It’s the key to moving the industry forward...” fortinet.com

LUMEN

“Everyone’s got their unique approach on how to make things more secure; and, in some cases, how to scare people into feeling insecure.

Our goal is simply to create threat-free traffic for our customers.”

CHRISTOPHER SMITH, VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL SECURITY SERVICES, LUMEN

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portfolios that leverage this intel to help protect our customers proactively.”

Rapid Threat Defense To offer proactive protection, Lumen has developed a capability called Rapid Threat Defense. “It’s a capability not a product,” states Smith. “My mantra for the security practice is that it’s not something separate from the things we sell, but built in. So, if you're buying network connectivity, SD-WAN or UC, security is built in.

Smith explains Rapid Threat Defense is one of those built-in ingredients. “Security engineers take the threat intel they see on the network and build it into the data lake

supplemented by third party intelligence we either pay or partner for,” Smith adds. “When threats become active, we've got a softwarebased policy engine that can push blocks to any of the devices we manage – such as Fortinet and Palo Alto firewalls – to prevent you from ever talking to that threat.”

Rapid Threat Defense is also built into Lumen’s DDoS practice. “If we see a DDoS attack forming out of the network, we will put a policy block into all of our global scrubbers, so the attack can never hit a scrubber and never hit a customer. It gets black-holed off the network.”

Smith sees this approach as a policy remediation engine that means customers don’t have to take action themselves.

“If you're a CISO and you're managing the edge of your network, you've got SD-WAN devices and firewalls, and you have to pay a bunch of expensive, hard-to-hire people to manage the policies on all those devices. It's not hard, but it's complex, tedious work that

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Accelerate Digital Transformation with Intelligent Network Automation In the cloudy, software-defined era of digital transformation, the network has never been more critical. Empower network operations to deliver digital experiences at the speed of business with intelligent network automation.

In partnership with Itential, Lumen has enabled customers to rapidly respond to “changing market demands by providing agile, on-demand and responsive network and cloud services. Itential’s automation and integration capabilities provide Lumen with comprehensive orchestration of activities across all network types and IT systems while ensuring streamlined customer experience.

”

Shawn Draper, Vice President of Network Service Fulfillment, Engineering & Field Services, Lumen

itential.com

developer.itential.io

info@itential.com

LUMEN – A SECURE ‘DIGITAL EXPERIENCE’

LUMEN

“Our team is available in the chat should customers need any help or advice” CHRISTOPHER SMITH,

VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL SECURITY SERVICES, LUMEN

There has been a significant rise in DDoS attacks during the global pandemic.

Lumen has created a simplified way for businesses to quickly deploy the security solutions they need to protect themselves from DDoS attacks. “Late last year we saw a 1200% increase in emergency DDoS orders from customers who have business critical applications and do business over the internet,” reveals Lumen’s Vice President for Global Security Services, Christopher Smith.

you're paying really expensive people to do.

We have automated that, and we don't charge separately for it. It's built into our products.”

Partnering to Protect Smith believes it’s impossible to have a relevant security practice without partnerships. With so many threats and options to counter them, collaboration is key to deliver protection with equipment, software and services. “We leverage

To meet the needs of those suffering from DDoS attacks, Lumen launched a self-service portal on Lumen.com.

Customers can educate themselves on the offer, get a quote online, agree to some simple commercial terms, and log in to mitigate the attack by themselves.

“Our team is available in the chat should customers need any help or advice,” says Smith. “It’s all completely automated and takes less than 15 minutes to get businesses protected.”

partners such as Fortinet and Palo Alto for the firewalls, WEF equipment and DDoS scrubbers that you can put in a data centre to protect your edge or SD-WAN devices,” he says.

Lumen is a platform services company, so it procures, stages and sets up equipment like firewalls for its customers. “We manage them on their behalf, along with any endpoint software or SIEMs they already have,” says Smith. “Firewalls are turning into businesschief.com

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software – they’re virtual and not physical – but the premise is still the same. And then we leverage software companies like RiskSense and CyberSaint to supplement our professional security services practice. We package up the right partners as ingredients that we use to provide a tailored security service to our customers.”

Professional Security Services Support Part of Smith’s job is to run Lumen’s Professional Security Services team, which helps customers anywhere on their security journey. “We can help customers no matter where they are technically, from ‘Hey, I really don't know what I'm doing and I need to build a security practice from scratch,’ to ‘I've spent $500,000 standing up a noisy SIEM, the board

Nova Context’s path computation Leading the way to fully orchestrated hybrid networks with automated network design, optimized resources, decreased costs and reduced provisioning fallout.

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Lumen: Imagine Possibilities

is expecting me to share results, and I can't find the talent to manage it.’”

Smith says his team can go deep or wide – whether consulting to help create a practice, or coming in to operate any part of a customer’s infrastructure on their behalf. “We can be on-premise or remote – wherever our customers are located, we can help them protect themselves,” Smith says.

The Lumen Security team has also built a Digital Experience portal that customers can access 24/7, and choose the security services they need (with help to achieve the right configuration) to take the best advantage of Lumen’s scrubbing technology.

Lighting the Pathway to Success Smith’s goal for the Lumen security portfolio is to achieve profitable growth while further establishing Lumen as the platform for amazing things. “If you consider all the legacy

companies that have come together to form Lumen, there was a time where some of the additions to our current portfolio weren't making any money. I came from some of those companies. But we're never going to go back to a place that looks like that,” he pledges.

Lumen is also putting tremendous efforts into an edge compute strategy. “We believe it's about application performance and building the platform that helps these applications of the future perform the way that they need to, by being closer to where they're consumed,” says Smith. “That involves the network, the facilities and the platform orchestration we're going to deliver.

Delivering security for our customers will be a big part of that.”

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LANDMARK DIVIDEND

INVESTING IN OUR

DIGITAL FUTURE Landmark Dividend helps to develop investment, ownership and operating structures in cloud, colocation and critical infrastructure WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE PRODUCED BY: CAITLYN COLE

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T

he Digital Infrastructure team at Landmark Dividend collectively boasts decades of experience developing, owning and running data centers – working for the likes of Equinix and Digital Realty.

Leading that team is Christof Hammerli, the former Director of Corporate Development for Equinix (the world’s largest IBX data center and colocation provider).

“We might have competitors that, on paper at least, are bigger than us or have more capital available, but what differentiates us at Landmark is that we have a deep understanding of the industry from an operational perspective and can walk the walk and talk the talk with data center owners,” says Hammerli. “We’re not simply investment analysts, we speak their language. And it’s a specific technical language once you're on site. On the surface, it might be a real estate investment that you're making, but it’s a very specialized investment. I think our experience gives people on the other side of the transaction a lot of comfort that the group that's buying

LANDMARK DIVIDEND

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Christof Hammerli: Landmark Dividend

their data center actually knows what they're talking about and understands why this asset is mission-critical, and why it needs to be up and operational at all times. It makes a big difference and makes us a better buyer.”

Agility & Expertise Landmark has the expertise and agility to handle transactions from a million to hundreds of millions of dollars (a recent 18-month period saw the acquisition of 16 data centers) and has a broad appetite across the spectrum from a risk perspective.

“We acquire stabilized, core-type assets where there's a single tenant in place with a 10 to 15-year lease and very few moving parts,” offers Hammerli. “We also work with assets subject to very short leases, with tenants moving out or partial leasebacks in place, where we have a portion of a building that needs to be leased. In some cases, we take over operations with our partner, or provide a comprehensive service level 232

April 2021

agreement and actually take over ownership, to make sure that the equipment and infrastructure will deliver on expectations and provide the guaranteed uptime for the tenants to execute their businesses.”

Hammerli believes Landmark’s flexibility makes the company a true partner. During the three years since he arrived at Landmark and put the Digital Infrastructure team together, more than 30 transactions have been closed with brokers, bankers, engineers, large operators and enterprises. “They know who we are, that we know the space and that we do what we say we’re going to do.

When we agree to terms, they come back the exact same way from our attorneys and we don't take somebody to the closing table and re-trade at the last minute. That sets us apart from the competition much more so than us paying the highest price or having the cheapest capital.”

Landmark Dividend is a partner for the longterm with many long-standing

LANDMARK DIVIDEND

relationships with tenants over a decade or more. “In many cases we’ve known the CEO, CFO and CTO since a company’s inception and can offer the right advice and support for the challenging times we’ve experienced over the past year during the global pandemic,” says Hammerli. “Whether that’s looking at extending payment terms to navigate the step change of a COVID-19 world or improving sites. We don't buy an asset and let it sit there and merely collect the rent. We work actively with our tenants and partners to provide additional dollars to regenerate and expand sites to continue adding value to make sure these assets remain viable and keep up with the times. For example, you can increase power density or cooling. This approach positions Landmark well for success going forward, with continued growth expected in the U.S. and Canada, and international expansion, particularly in Europe.

Rising to the Challenge in a COVID-19 World Landmark saw its business double year-overyear in 2020 with industry growth accelerating

TITLE: HEAD OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE COMPANY: LANDMARK DIVIDEND INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

European Expansion When COVID restrictions relax, Hammerli expects to hit the trail to Europe to push Landmark’s global expansion plans. “I grew up in Switzerland and worked in Europe as an equity analyst earlier in my career and later as Director of Corporate Development with Equinix, so I know the market well and have relationships with a number of the major operators,” he says. “It’s a natural move for the company to expand the portfolio and would be beneficial, not only for us, but also for many of our tenants and partners that have a global presence in Europe and the U.S. and need to provide a service across borders. We plan to set up a small team in Europe and actively source opportunities in the coming months.”

CHRISTOF HAMMERLI

Christof leads the Digital Infrastructure division at Landmark and has over 20 years of experience in various finance, risk management and corporate development roles. He is responsible for sourcing, negotiating and closing acquisitions with continued responsibility for asset and property management. Prior to joining Landmark, Christof was Chief Acquisitions Officer of Carter Validus. At CV he was instrumental in leading the development, acquisition, strategy and execution of two of the firm’s CV Mission-Critical REIT (Real Estate Investment Trusts) Data Center platforms. He was responsible for sourcing, negotiating, structuring and closing acquisitions, as well as strategic and operational leadership. Previously, Christof was Director of Corporate Development for Equinix, the world’s largest IBX data center and colocation provider, and the world’s largest public data center REIT (as measured by enterprise value), from 2007 through 2011, and before that worked for MetLife from 2004 to 2007, and Credit Suisse and Ernst & Young.

BCLP: MULTI-DISCIPLINARY DATA CENTER EXPERIENCE

JAMES GRICE @ BCLP LAW

MEETING THE LEGAL NEEDS OF THE DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE ECOSYSTEM ON A GLOBAL SCALE FROM M&A ASSET TRANSACTIONS TO ENERGY PLANNING The Data Center & Digital Infrastructure Team at international law firm Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner draws from a deep well of knowledge and experience to help clients address all aspects of mission critical development, including tax incentives, construction, acquisition and sales, financing arrangements, operations, leasing, subleasing and co-location along with environmental permitting, power purchases, power procurement strategies and agreements, user agreements, SLAs and maintenance agreements.

ADDING VALUE “We’ve structured our service offering to provide a comprehensive perspective on all the disciplines that are relevant to both the digital infrastructure investor and the developer, owner and operator,” explains BCLP Partner James Grice. “We’re a force multiplier for companies like Landmark Dividend seeking to scale as needed on their projects with everything from a compressed timeline on diligence to transactional real estate documentation for a build-to-suit.”

GLOBAL SCALE As a global law firm, BCLP can draw on a team of 1,400 professionals with one of the largest real estate teams in the world, allowing it to deploy resources when and where necessary. The ability to scale smartly sets the firm apart and leaves it well placed to meet the growing demand for digital services and the infrastructure required to support them.

“The overall data center ecosystem is on the path to double digit annual growth in the foreseeable future,” forecasts Grice. “BCLP is in tune with the totality of that ecosystem and the infrastructure layer driving the internet, e-commerce and the digital economy.

For example, the hyperscale market is forecast to grow by at least 25% annually over the next five years with many new investors trying to penetrate the space. We have the experience and skill to support the virtual layer with data security and software, while also focusing on the infrastructure layer needed to drive that digital growth. We’re going to see more division and subsets develop within the asset class. Whatever shape that takes, we’re well placed to navigate the marketplace.” bclplaw.com

LANDMARK DIVIDEND

“ We have a deep understanding of the industry from an operational perspective and can walk the walk and talk the talk with data center owners.”

CHRISTOF HAMMERLI HEAD OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE, LANDMARK DIVIDEND

due to the work from home/work from anywhere requirements. The need for greater connectivity affected all aspects of the digital world including a multitude of environments that need connectivity from hyperscale services or in the cloud and at the edge.

Hammerli notes that closing transactions which require on-site appraisals has proved difficult, but business is booming.

“Everything initially took longer than usual, but the team did an amazing job figuring out that puzzle and putting it back together, and we have actually closed a record number of transactions. Raising additional capital has been impacted by the COVID restrictions.

While there is record interest from capital sources in the space, it's difficult to close a fund with new investors if they can't travel to see you or tour your sites.”

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Building a Business with Trusted Partners Mission-critical infrastructure investments require not only the expertise to drive frictionless connectivity across borders but also the boots on the ground to deliver vital support services. Landmark works with a trio of key partners: The company has in-house counsel but also teamed up with BCLP when the Digital Infrastructure division was launched, and they needed a legal partner to get to market quickly. Experts in negotiating data center leases, BCLP has a team dedicated to digital infrastructure and experience working with Fortune 50 companies and large enterprises.

“BCLP has the bandwidth to handle the volume of transactions we're processing, with multiple deals in parallel, and negotiate contracts and service-level agreements (“SLAs”) with large operators.

LANDMARK DIVIDEND

MARKING THE TRENDS

DID YOU KNOW...

“5G capabilities will bring new technologies that you and I don't even know that we need to have today,” reasons Hammerli. “And if we talked again in five years, we would say, ‘How did we ever do without it?’ These new technologies will need not only the 5G connectivity, but also the data centers behind it to handle, manipulate and store the data. I believe that this will drive the rise of edge computing, which in turn will drive data center growth overall.”

Hammerli believes there’s more need for data center space at the edge… “There are two separate trends going on at the same time. One is clearly the edge and building comparatively small data centers in many locations, in every city. Yet, at the same time, we're seeing the opposite trend, where hyperscalers are building massively large, highly efficient data centers that are not only driving down the cost of compute, but also driving the efficiency of the data centers themselves, and making them

greener. So, fewer data centers, but much, much larger in size. Those are the data centers located on a campus that may offer 100 megawatts of power, for example, versus an edge data center, which may offer less than a megawatt, in terms of power only.”

Hammerli also expects the colocation space to grow in between. “All of these different pieces need to be connected together, from the low latency that needs to be right where the end user is located, to the assistance in things like self-driving cars, all the way to the data that's on the largest scale that needs to be manipulated,” he notes. “Overall, I expect the space to grow.

Over the last four years a massive amount of capital has expressed interest in investing in this space. Four years ago, investing in data centers was considered an alternative asset class. Today, we're starting to work our way out of that definition and more into a core food group where the largest investors all now have an allocation.”

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LANDMARK DIVIDEND

Our Experience Delivers Results.

DH Capital is a private investment banking partnership combining deep industry expertise in digital infrastructure, telecommunications and SaaS having completed over 60 deals in the past 5 years aggregating over $18 billion in transaction value.

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LANDMARK DIVIDEND

“Four years ago, investing in data centers was considered an alternative asset class. Now it’s becoming a core food group for larger investors.”

CHRISTOF HAMMERLI

Their expertise gives us the confidence that they know the difference between real and perceived risks. They’re deal-makers,” says Hammerli. “It’s our plan to grow internationally, so BCLP is a true partner that has the experience to represent us on that stage. They’ve also made introductions and opened doors for us.”

DH Capital is a leading advisor to the data center and managed hosting sectors – having completed over 185 transactions totaling more than $30 billion. “They’re a niche investment banking firm within the digital infrastructure space,” explains Hammerli. “They’re one of the most important players – certainly the best connected with everyone from bankers

HEAD OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE, LANDMARK DIVIDEND

to operators to private equity groups. They’re very nimble at what they do and have been working with Landmark for the best part of the last ten years. They're incredibly creative partners and knowledgeable of the space.

They provide great research for us and we work with them on a number of fronts. Mostly deal-based and transaction-based, where we engage with them in helping us complete a deal or where they represent a seller on the other side, and then work with us to finalize the transaction.”

BCS is a Dallas-based end-to-end facility management solutions provider. “They’re businesschief.com

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“ BCLP has the bandwidth to handle the volume of transactions we're processing, with multiple deals in parallel, and negotiate contracts and SLAs with large operators.”

CHRISTOF HAMMERLI HEAD OF DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE, LANDMARK DIVIDEND

probably the most important factor for our tenants,” explains Hammerli. “They offer a complete turnkey solution where they provide anything from janitorial to security services, all the way through to infrastructure management and preventive maintenance. As landlords, we're not staffed or qualified to do this sort of work ourselves. Our customers and tenants interact with their teams on a daily basis so it’s an important relationship for us and a key extension of our service offering. They’re a true side-by-side partner and involved with us from the beginning on transactions as we look to negotiate SLAs. They have experience 240

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providing a range of services for systemically important data organizations that keep the country running, with every certification that could be required. They are trusted with the most important data in the world and are incredibly important to Landmark.”

2021 Landmark is planning to expand its portfolio in 2021, with a focus on larger acquisitions.

“We want to build on our success from 2020 and deliver an even better year this year,” maintains Hammerli. “From a total acquisitions perspective, we're looking

LANDMARK DIVIDEND

to grow that number again with portfolio acquisitions that include multiple data centers in one package. Traditionally, we focused almost exclusively on individual asset acquisitions where every transaction we closed was one building and one data center. With the help of our capital partners, we plan to pursue existing portfolios with as many as 15 assets in one acquisition.”

Hammerli reveals that there will also be greater emphasis on buildto-suit hyperscale projects. “We’ll focus our efforts this year on brand-

new development opportunities with large enterprises, typically hyperscale providers, that are looking for new buildings, a new shell in a particular market, and we provide the capital – from acquisition of land to construction and all the way to take-out.”

With the team Hammerli has put in place, and the bench depth of key partners at Landmark’s disposal, you should not bet against them in doubling down again this year.

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Luis Canepari CIO, Newmont

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Newmont:

MAKING TECHNOLOGY

THE FUTURE OF MINING

How the world’s leading gold miner is digitally transforming to rethink the mining life cycle, unlock productivity, improve safety, reduce costs and support sustainability

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WRITTEN BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE

ewmont’s considered implementation of technology is a key part of the digital journey towards operational efficiency and sustainability across its global operations. Chief Information Officer, Luis Canepari, is championing the company’s digital transformation efforts as it seeks to embrace automation and electrification.

Automation “The era of manual processes in mining is over,” states Canepari. “Blasting, drilling, hauling, the processes at mills – all will become increasingly automated over the next 20 years. Whether we like it or not as an industry, that's where we're going to have to go if we want to remain competitive.”

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE The process of automation is well underway at Newmont’s Boddington Mine in Australia, which will be the first open pit gold mine in the world with an autonomous haul truck fleet (AHS). Boddington’s autonomous haulage trucks feature rigorous safety controls to reduce employee exposure to potential vehicle interactions. Newmont is also executing a robust people strategy at Boddington, providing opportunities for reskilling and redeployment of haul truck drivers to other roles supporting the AHS. Artificial Intelligence “Artificial intelligence and predictive analytics go hand-in-hand with automation,” adds Canepari. “Access to data is key for our businesschief.com

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Luis Canepari: Newmonts biggest challenges

operations. Correlating our drill data with the block modelling allows us to make faster decisions based on real insights. If you look at the success ratio for exploration in mining, it's pretty low; if we can improve that by a couple of percentage points, it will have a significant impact on our reserves. With data being generated across our organization, the ability to use artificial intelligence to tell us where our next drill site should be is a game-changer.”

Digital Transformation Compared to other industries, mining has been slow to adapt to new technologies. Canepari pledges Newmont is aiming to rethink the mining lifecycle. “We’ve had a huge success with our first electrified mine at Borden, and we’re taking all the lessons learned from projects like these, and making them part of our Newmont mining model. Every new mine we're building, we're trying to re-create that digital transformation experience from our other mines.”

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Rapid Discovery with IBM Digital transformation has been a major undertaking for the IT department at Newmont. “The partnership with vendors like IBM, supports our work to consolidate our systems and further realize the synergies we have across the business since the acquisition of Goldcorp in 2019.”

IBM was brought in through a rigorous RFP process. “We demonstrated to Newmont that we would bring top talent, and keep them there, to effect the changes needed successfully and bring these two companies’ systems together across finance, master data and supply chain management,” recalls Gene Allen, a Partner at IBM Global Business Services.

“We had to learn how to dance together. We are both 100-year-old companies, but we used Rapid Discovery, an Enhance Program Launch and Agile methodology to help us deliver successfully together smoothly and efficiently.”

IBM implemented Rapid Discovery to support this delivery. “We were looking at

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the five-year roadmap for Newmont to plan how everything should be sequenced and budgeted to accelerate this digital journey together,” explains Allen. Because change is rapid in the mining industry, it was important to identify the different constituencies in Newmont and how the move to a digital core should be sequenced to modernize, eliminate redundancies and sequence their systems changes in years to come.”

Canepari highlights that Newmont piggybacked on IBM’s M&A experience to place all systems into one single landscape.

“Rapid Discovery was about bringing our key stakeholders together across every business function for the most optimal outcome.”

LUIS CANEPARI TITLE: CIO INDUSTRY: MINING LOCATION: USA

“ With the migration of all our systems to the cloud, we’ve managed to shut down five data centers already.”

LUIS CANEPARI CIO, NEWMONT

EXECUTIVE BIO

Operational & Technological Alignment Canepari’s team are focused on catering to all stakeholders, from the mining sites to the back office. “We build trust and reliability. For us to enable automation, AI and push forward with this digital transformation our system needs to be reliable, even during a global pandemic, and our networks need to remain operational at all sites, no matter how remote their locations,” he says.

Luis Canepari joined Newmont in April 2019 as Vice President and Chief Information Officer; having most recently served as Goldcorp’s Vice President, Technology since 2012.

As CIO, Luis leads Newmont’s information technology organization and is responsible for driving and overseeing enterprise-wide plans to further realize value from Newmont’s strategic business and technology investments.

Luis has a history of leading major transformation and innovation initiatives.

He was honored with a 2017 CIO 100 Award for business and technology innovation, and the 2014 Business in Vancouver Forty Under 40 Award.

Before joining Goldcorp, Luis was Director of Engineering and Construction at AES Corporation, responsible for leading major capital projects in Latin America and recognized for his significant community contributions. Prior to that, he held various IT leadership roles at AES and ExxonMobil Corporation. Luis holds an MBA from Georgetown University. He also holds a Bachelor in Science in Systems Engineering from Universidad Metropolitana. He is also a Certified Information Security Manager and a Certified Information Security Auditor.

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The pressure of the global pandemic has allowed Canepari’s IT team to test out new ideas. “With so many of us working remotely it's been the biggest experiment for remote operations that we’ve ever had as a company,” he notes.

“We have thousands of employees working from home. It has completely shifted the mindset from the idea that we all needed to be sitting at the mine site. This past challenging year has given us the opportunity to learn how to make our operations more efficient.

Everything we’ve invested in, is beginning to pay off. We have resilient networks and a reliable infrastructure backbone that allows us to work remotely. And now that we have tested them to the fullest, we can factor these into our operations.

Working remotely is also enabling Newmont’s IT organization to attract a more diverse workforce and overcome the challenge of what Canepari identifies as the misconceptions around the risks of a job in the mining industry. “By widening the net for outsourcing we’ll be able to attract even more talent to our IT organization.”

SUSTAINABILITY

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DID YOU KNOW...

Technology will continue to support Newmont’s sustainability efforts as the business looks to develop onsite renewable power generation and energy efficiencies. It’s all part of a new ethos for the business spearheaded

by CEO Tom Palmer. The work from home/work from anywhere paradigm prompted by the global pandemic has seen Newmont, like many other businesses, embrace proven methods of business interaction offering the flexibility that connects the boots on the ground to the boardroom. How the business is powered, both by people and fuel, is under constant review.

“Both new and existing mines are going to significantly reduce our emissions in the future. We have committed to a 30 percent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2030, with an aspiration of reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” says Canepari.

“It’s one of our biggest priorities and will be supported by the continued electrification of our mines.”

Strategic Partnerships Consolidating the approach to partnerships since the merger with Goldcorp has been vital for Canepari and his team. “At the end of the day, more than half of my IT organization is outsourced,” he says. “Therefore, it’s really important to work with the right partners to create lasting collaborations that can support ERP and our business transformation. Our partners are helping us drive the outcomes we’re expecting in the short term. They allow us to scale and de-scale, depending on our needs. Just as important is how they culturally fit with our organization. We aim to work with companies who can easily adapt to our style and understand our requirements for a higher

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Luis Canepari: Newmonts Digital transformation

level of detail. It is that higher level of detail that keeps our employees safe.”

To leverage automation and artificial intelligence, a robust and stable network is key. Newmont is working with Starlink and other private LTE providers to enable connectivity across all areas of its mines and at remote exploration sites across the globe.

“Starlink doesn’t rely on traditional ground infrastructure,” says Canepari. “This type of satellite connectivity can deliver highspeed broadband internet ensuring the low latency that can support our efforts in remote locations.”

Innovation in the cloud “The migration to SAP S/4HANA and bringing our infrastructure to the hybrid cloud - has given us more agility; we can deliver projects faster and move more rapidly,” reveals Canepari. “It also gives us the opportunity to experiment with proven tools from other industries. We’re getting out of the

“ Blasting, drilling, hauling, the processes at mills – all aspect of mining will become increasingly automated over the next 20 years.”

LUIS CANEPARI CIO, NEWMONT

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Luis Canepari: Newmonts Latest Achievements

“ Borden’s electric underground fleet eliminate diesel particulate matter from the underground environment and lower greenhouse gas emissions.”

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infrastructure business and re-training our team to move away from supporting servers to focus on finding opportunities to make our operations more efficient.”

Canepari adds that cloud adoption is driving value by allowing him to deploy his team on more meaningful projects. “With the migration of all our systems to the cloud, we’ve managed to shut down five data centers already.

We're starting to explore the possibilities of Edge Computing and what that means for our mines.”

BORDEN – ‘MINE OF THE FUTURE’

DID YOU KNOW...

Technology is the future of mining Mining companies are becoming technology companies and Canepari is excited by the chance to both boost production levels as well as ensure the safety of employees across the globe. “With more and more sensors and

In 2019 Newmont inaugurated its Borden Gold Project, Ontario’s mine of the future, featuring state-of-the-art health and safety controls, digital mining technologies and processes, and low-carbon energy vehicles.

Anchored in a mutually beneficial partnership with local communities, Borden achieved commercial production on schedule within budget.

At 1,000 square kilometres, Borden’s land package represents additional exploration upside, as the deposit remains open at depth in a favourable mining jurisdiction.

“Borden opened a new gold mining district in Ontario and profitably extended operations at the Porcupine complex near Timmins,” explains Newmont CEO Tom Palmer. “In addition, Borden’s electric underground fleet eliminate diesel particulate matter from the underground environment and lower greenhouse gas emissions.

This will help reduce energy costs, protect employee health and minimize impacts to the environment.”

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CYBERSECURITY

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DID YOU KNOW...

Cybersecurity has taken on greater significance for Newmont in the age of autonomous trucks and drills.

Canepari points out that, unlike securing SAP or payroll data, safety is at stake.

“As CIO, I’m focused on how we ensure the right controls in place to secure this new technology, when just ten years ago it wasn’t even on the agenda. We need to provide true segmentation across the network with innovation and compartmentalization so we don't have the entire company exposed at any given time. A production system in Africa needn’t be exposed to a risk that we may have in Australia and so forth. We’re trying to contain risk to smaller components and manage it better.”

Canepari measures success more in his team’s ability to respond rather than their ability to prevent. “It’s not just about firewalls,” he says. “We must develop the ability to quickly identify the risk, any breaches, and respond rapidly to them.

That’s the biggest change in culture that I see from a cybersecurity perspective.

It’s about really focusing on the response time, and the recovery is paramount.”

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“We had to learn how to dance together.

We are both 100-year-old companies, but we used Rapid Discovery, an Enhance Program Launch and Agile methodology to help us deliver successfully together smoothly and efficiently.”

GENE ALLEN

PARTNER, IBM GLOBAL BUSINESS SERVICES

devices connected to our operations we can analyze the data via the cloud in real time to improve efficiencies and safety at every level.

The role of a CIO has changed significantly; from providing systems to providing the value that delivers safer working conditions.”

Canepari also sees it as his team’s responsibility to enable the company to meet its emissions reduction targets and allow operations to become more environmentally friendly. “As CIO, system abilities are part of my DNA and I believe as a company, we need to leverage technology to develop our systems to better harness energy management, emissions controls and water management as they will be significant drivers in terms of the success of a mining company over the next 20 years.”

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CITY OF HAMILTON:

TECHNOLOGY FOR GROWTH Cyrus Tehrani, Chief Digital Officer at the City of Hamilton, on the city’s extensive digital programmes and the benefits they have provided through COVID-19 WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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yrus Tehrani is Chief Digital Officer at the City of Hamilton, a role which attracted him due to its unusual specifications. “They were filling a Chief Digital Officer role and looking to do some creative things. Many cities don't have CDOs yet and the opportunity to help shape the direction of digital transformation was what attracted me to the role. ” Despite the ‘Digital’ in his job title, Tehrani’s influence extends beyond that domain. “It’s a bit of an odd portfolio in the sense of a CDO per se, where my focus isn't solely on the digital service channel deliveries that the city has.”

Instead, Tehrani oversees a diverse portfolio based around digital transformation as well as being a champion to promote the digital transformation occurring across the wide range of services the city provides.

“That involves looking at processes both internally and externally. For instance, our digital communication team is in the midst of a project to completely refresh

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We Are Hamilton

our website, ensuring it’s multilingual and in-line with new web standards for those with disabilities.” Other initiatives include corporate partnerships and standing up additional digital services to give people the ability to interact with the city across multimodal channels. “We've launched a digital online engagement platform where we can put up projects and have people interact with them and give us feedback on those projects – which

“ My focus isn’t solely on the digital service channel deliveries that the city has” CYRUS TEHRANI

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has been really great due to COVID and the inherent limitations on in-person engagement activities.”

A significant part of Tehrani’s role sees him overseeing smart city initiatives, partnerships as well as innovation. The city recently introduced a transit app to make it easier to plan trips thanks to estimated arrival times and trip planning functionality. “Our transit division worked with the software developer that creates our scheduling and transit management systems, which were already pretty advanced. Bus stops have phone number where you could text to get detailed route information, and we have an interactive voice system where you could call in and get information but the new app further enhances the service experience for our transit riders.” Also implemented have been measures to further simplify the experience of citizens, with digital payment solutions at parking meters and upgraded digital library selections.

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Enhancements to city digital services delivery is prioritized based on value to citizens as Tehrani explains. “We’ve launched an online engagement platform, where people can pin places on a map, if they're talking about a park for instance, and tell us what features they do or don't like. From that, we can engage them with surveys and provide them with a timeline and visibility of who's listening to their concerns.” Another important issue for a city of Hamilton’s size and mix of urban, suburban and rural environments is internet access, especially in the age of COVID-19, and it has subsequently embarked on a broadband survey to

CYRUS TEHRANI TITLE: CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: GOVERNMENT

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: ONTARIO, CANADA Cyrus Tehrani is Chief Digital Officer at the City of Hamilton, a role which attracted him due to its unusual specifications. “They were filling a Chief Digital Officer role and looking to do some creative things.

Many cities don’t have CDOs yet and the opportunity to help shape the direction of digital transformation was what attracted me to the role. ” Despite the ‘Digital’ in his job title, Tehrani’s influence extends beyond that domain.

“It’s a bit of an odd portfolio in the sense of a CDO per se, where my focus isn’t solely on the digital service channel deliveries that the city has.”

Instead, Tehrani oversees a diverse portfolio based around digital transformation as well as being a champion to promote the digital transformation occurring across the wide range of services the city provides. “That involves looking at processes both internally and externally. For instance, our digital communication team is in the midst of a project to completely refresh our website, ensuring it’s multilingual and in-line with new web standards for those with disabilities.

CITY OF HAMILTON

1846

Year founded

8,300 Number of employees

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CITY OF HAMILTON

identify connectivity requirements.

Tehrani affirms that the ethos behind such initiatives is all about getting people to better interact with the city. “It's not necessarily about the shiniest technology solutions. It’s more about making sure you improve the processes around how people engage with the city.”

“We can provide a timeline and visibility of who’s listening to their concerns” CYRUS TEHRANI

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, CITY OF HAMILTON

The digital measures and programmes already in place were undoubtedly beneficial in the city’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including keeping the wheels of democracy turning. “The city was able to move quickly to virtual council businesschief.com

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meetings, virtual committee meetings,” says Tehrani. “We worked closely with our local network provider, a local cable channel and with our IT group to be able to have all of our counselors meet and vote virtually on a virtual voting platform and conduct meetings via Webex.”

Among its other responses to the virus was a partnership between the city, the public library, two school boards and its regional innovation centre. “That involved collecting up all of the 3D printers that were present across those organisations and setting them up at the central library branch. This resulted in a lab of 25 to 30 devices printing PPE face shields, which were then distributed and provided back to the city and then also distributed out to agencies in need.”

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“ We’ve gone from, historically, a mostly manufacturingbased economy to a mix of technology, life sciences, creative industries, goods movement, agribusiness and food processing, tourism and advanced manufacturing” CYRUS TEHRANI

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, CITY OF HAMILTON

operating hardware. “We have a large footprint of buildings and infrastructure within the city – over 200 facilities that are connected across our infrastructure, whether that be wired or wireless. All of our public buildings are generally wifienabled, including recreation centers, senior centers, pools, arenas, libraries and civic buildings, where citizens would go to interact with citizen services. Cisco provides that backbone core network infrastructure for the city.”

There is a lot of innovation also occurring in the city including the McMaster Innovation Park. “It's under development and continues to grow, but in terms of square footage, it will be one of the largest of its kind in North America,” says Tehrani. The idea behind the park is in converting research projects into commercialisation. “It will have conference space, hotel space, and room for a broad mix of startups, SMBs and more established companies. It's literally an entire city block.”

That’s very much in line with the city’s vision for the future, having historically been an industrial steel town. “Hamilton has really diversified its economy,” says Tehrani.

“We've gone from, historically, a mostly heavy manufacturing-based economy to a mix of technology, life sciences, creative industries, goods movement, agribusiness and food processing, tourism and advanced manufacturing .” Hamilton has duly been recognised as among the Top seven Intelligent Communities of 2020 by the Intelligent Community Forum. “That looks at several economic domains such as connectivity, work and innovation as well as social and cultural growth such as engagement, inclusion and sustainability. It’s with the idea of moving from a view of ‘smart’ cities, which might be a little bit more focused on the technology side of things, to a more holistic businesschief.com

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“ The city was able to move quickly to virtual council meetings, virtual committee meetings” CYRUS TEHRANI

view of the programmes that a city and partner institutions deliver.”

Going forwards, Tehrani is focused on continuing to improve digital means of service delivery, as people become accustomed to multimodal delivery common to tech companies. “Everything we do is underlined with the aim of using technology with the goal of supporting ease of access to service delivery and the economic growth of the community,“ he says.

CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, CITY OF HAMILTON

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The CONNECTED CAMPUS Brice Bible, VPCIO, explores how technology is expanding the vibrant campus experience beyond the buildings and lawns of University at Buffalo WRITTEN BY: RHYS THOMAS PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

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ampus life is the beating heart of any great university. Students hurry to their next class, ideas are exchanged over cups of coffee, and chance meetings spark friendships that last a lifetime. The past 12 months has, in many cases, put this bustle of social and educational collaboration on hold. But at the University at Buffalo, that vibrancy has continued relatively uninterrupted.

A well-respected and metropolitan higher educational institute, UB is split across three campuses, where close to 32,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students from 105 countries study, conduct research, and engage in experiential learning and extra curricular enrichment. Technology plays a key role in ensuring all students and faculty get the most from their UB experience, “from the student in the fifth row, all the way through the student that might be learning remotely in the Bronx,” says Brice Bible, Vice President and Chief Information Officer (VPCIO).

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steer the overarching position of technology as a tool to enhance the experience of everyone on campus. He is also an emphatic proponent of inclusivity and ensuring that students have equal access to resources wherever they choose, or are forced in today’s circumstances, to study. It’s a philosophy that is wholeheartedly supported by an exemplary leadership team, he says.

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fellow Vice Presidents into the institution,” Bible says. "So, right off the bat, I’m fortunate enough to work with a leadership team that is high performing, and has the skills and capabilities, and collaborative mindset, to effectively meet the needs of the institution.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic broke out in early 2020, UB was already well prepared to respond as the result of this pragmatic approach to continued development. “It's obvious, but as a CIO for around 20 years, I still have to remind myself that it's my job to not just be serving today's needs,

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BRICE BIBLE TITLE: VPCIO COMPANY: UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO INDUSTRY: HIGHER EDUCATION AND RESEARCH

but to project what those needs are going to be in three to five years,” says Bible. A pandemic was, of course, never a core focus of that planning, but UB’s strength as a “multidimensional” learning institute by design gave it a strong foundation from which to react.

Bible considers the simple matter of maintaining lines of communication between students and faculty: “They needed simple, robust, synchronous video capability for their classes.” But a one-size fits all approach did not work. Zoom was not ideal

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: BUFFALO, NY, USA “We have what we call the Tech Squad, a student service out of our organisation. A student can go on the website and pick a time and we will show up at their room wherever they live and help them with the technology. We don't go into physical rooms currently, we made that virtual so students still could go and say, ‘Look, I need some help, and I'm free between three and four. I want that slot.’ And so we virtualised the tech squad so that students could still get that one-on-one help.

“In the one-on-one process used back before COVID, we would ‘storm through the dorms’ at the beginning of the semester - all 4,000 dorm rooms - and see students as they moved in and offer assistance. We could do that physically before, but now we can’t.

So we flipped it so that we now do it virtually and offer that same assistance.

I think it was very helpful. This is just another way that we've tried to retain the look and feel of campus using the technologies we have at our disposal, so the students still felt like they were a part of something bigger.”

Ivy.ai: advancing AI in higher education Mark McNasby, CEO, Ivy.ai discusses the company’s natural language omni-channel AI, as well its partnership with the University at Buffalo Mark McNasby, CEO, Ivy.ai has been an EdTech entrepreneur for the last 20 years. “I started a company in 2001 called OptimalResume where we sold into the career centers at universities.” One of the challenges McNasby found his customers facing was that students weren’t coming to the career center, “so we came up with this idea for my second business called br.im, which was basically a virtual collaboration platform, allowing somebody who was in the career center to work with students who are remote”.

He co-founded Ivy.ai in 2016, of which he is CEO, a natural language omni-channel AI chatbot, available on websites, SMS, Facebook messenger, Amazon Alexa, and even email. “When someone asks the chatbot a question we compare what they’ve asked to a large database of questions and data that we’ve used to train the model. Once the bot understands what the person is asking, it provides them with a particular answer,” he says.

“Ivy.ai has two main goals. One is the dissemination of information - someone asks a question, we give them an answer - but it is also very useful for collecting information. For example, perhaps for a prospective applicant interested in attending a school the bot can

ask them for their contact information, which can be implemented into the engagement strategy that the school has.” McNasby added that AI chatbots also collect valuable transactional data that provide a real-time feedback loop as to what is most relevant to students and when.

Ivy.ai’s partnership with the University at Buffalo “One of the main problems that we solve is that Ivy.ai levels the playing field for all different types of students.

Student equality is a big theme which is tightly related to accessibility. So our chatbot creates the same level of service and answers for students regardless of their circumstance.”

In partnering with the University at Buffalo, Ivy.ai is helping the university to achieve its vision of making information accessible to anyone wherever they are.

“The pandemic essentially highlighted some deficiencies for the university, and how they were delivering their services to stakeholders who don’t necessarily have equal access to technology and systems. Part of their strategy of digital transformation is to use a chatbot to make all information accessible to all users. So their plan is essentially to start with the IT help desk, and then ultimately roll it out to the wider campus through a departmental deployment strategy.”

UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

7,000

Wireless access points on campus.

100%

Starting in their first year, 100% of UB students can get involved in research, service or experiential learning.

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for performance-based classes, for example, which needed a platform for high-speed, real-time video. “So we would work with them to build a solution for those kinds of things, and we could then expose that to the rest of the faculty, who would look at that and go, ‘Hey, that kind of fits me so I can use that too’. Those faculty members were the best. They know what they're doing, they know the content they need to get across to their students. That's their role, that's their expertise. And our job was then to listen and help them find technological ways to effectively do that.”

This is just one example of a digital ecosystem that fuels UB’s hybrid approach, where students can study on campus

“I’m fortunate enough to work with a leadership team that is high performing, and has the skills to effectively meet the needs of the institution” BRICE BIBLE

VPCIO, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

and off in disparate but equally rewarding fashion. While maintaining social distancing was of paramount importance to the university’s leadership, so too was retaining the fundamentals of its tight-knit culture of collaborative, hands-on learning. “We're an on-premises campus, and we want to be that,” says Bible. “We’re a research school, we are hands-on collaboration, and we want our students to have that multidimensional relationship. So during the pandemic we never went 100% remote. We did not at the end of spring semester, and we did not all the way through the fall semester. Our businesschief.com

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UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO Lead your institution through the new normal and beyond

Today’s learners and faculty have high expectations, requiring an integrated and flexible learning experience that operates seamlessly and intuitively. By partnering with Blackboard, you can enhance your institution’s brand by providing students and faculty with a holistic and integrated modern learning ecosystem.

Blackboard helps lead institutions through the new normal and beyond. We bring together the technologies and services our clients need to lead their institution through the digital transformation.

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Brice Bible on University at Buffalo's UBIT system

students are actively engaged in out of class activities, whether clubs for student groups, or a host of other things. And so we wanted to provide technology tools that helped them stay connected and still feel part of the institution.”

Students and faculty have access to a broad array of digital resources to expand their learning and extra curricular support beyond the confines of the lecture hall.

Many of these services can be accessed through the UB portal, a secure and intuitive platform that ties the online learning experience together, underpinned by a fast and reliable infrastructure.

Partners have been integral to that seamless hybrid approach learning at UB, “and I can’t thank our vendors enough,” says Bible. “Many

of them have put profits a little bit aside and focused on need. And you remember who those people are and we appreciate it very much.”

“Our underlying infrastructure is HP Aruba, our wireless network of choice with 7,000 access points. I appreciate HP Aruba’s immediate assistance, not just with making sure that it runs, but also with regards to data: where are the students, how many are there?

That was data that we had not typically used, other than performance-based, and they

“By using these technologies there are opportunities for closer relationships to be formed” BRICE BIBLE

VPCIO, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO businesschief.com

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aggressively worked to help us in that space.

“And I can’t say enough about Blackboard.

We moved to Blackboard in the cloud more than a year ago, so that put us in a good position. When our faculty and our students are accessing our LMS of choice here, we ensure they've got robust access, not just from campus, but also when they're away from campus somewhere. As you can imagine, the data and the content that's inside of Blackboard has dramatically ramped up.”

Bible says that he was “so impressed” with the creative ways faculty and students have been using these tools. But he admits that they are not as intuitive as plug-and-play solutions like Zoom, and as a result learned a fundamental lesson that has helped refocus UB’s digital transformation.

“We need to ramp up that personal relationship with the student,” he says. “We need that AI tool that will help guide faculty through the complex questions that they may have about using technologies, or even pedagogically, to be able to change things in their classroom.”

UB has partnered with Ivy.ai to bring artificial intelligence to campus for the first time. “I appreciate Ivy in their role because I think they've helped us, as with other schools, in aggressively transitioning to meet the one-on-one needs of our institution. And can I say that's one of the big challenges, is retaining relationships, retaining the connected feel of the institution.”

This is a critical point in Bible’s vision of the role technology will play for UB classes of 2025 and beyond, illustrated during an autumn forum, in which the UB President was interviewed through video conferencing, and joined by 300 IT staff members online.

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“We wanted to provide technology tools that helped [students] stay connected and still feel part of the institution” BRICE BIBLE

VPCIO, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO businesschief.com

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“ It’s my job to not just be serving today's needs, but to project what those needs are going to be in three to five years” BRICE BIBLE

VPCIO, UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

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“His face was this close,” Bible says, motioning to the size of his own head in the Zoom window through which the interview for this report was being conducted. “And the staff on the call could all see that the President has a sense of humour, that he’s personable. Typically most people would see and interact with him in a formal setting, much further away, and with a more rigid structure, depending on what the occasion is. So one of the benefits that's come out of this is, by using these technologies, are opportunities for closer relationships to be formed. That applies with the faculty and their students, because now each student in a class of 200 sees their faculty member as close as sitting around a table.”

What is clear is that people will continue to be the central focus of UB’s digital strategy. Bible outlines two disparate, but very likely scenarios for students learning remotely during the pandemic. One retires to a cosy cottage in Cape Cod, with all the amenities and luxuries one could desire.

Another moves back into a cramped co-living environment in the city, above a busy shop, and with limited access even to high speed internet.

“Why should one have better than the other?” he says. “The technology then becomes the decision-maker of who's going to be successful. So that's shame on us. As the CIO, I'm kinda technical,” he says. "I have problems when I'm at home connecting and I get frustrated by it.

And so if I'm frustrated by it and I know who to call to get help, what about the faculty member or the student? This is somewhere I think we need to, and will work towards, being better.”

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ADAPTIVE APPLICATIONS FROM DATA CENTER TO EDGE WRITTEN BY: JOHN O'HANLON

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PRODUCED BY: RYAN HALL

F5

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F5 has become the key partner to customers looking to transform into digital businesses, a process that the pandemic has accelerated exponentially.

We talked to F5 EVP and CTO Geng Lin.

W

hen F5 started in 1996, it was primarily focused on shaping the online environment for the gaming industry. As a pioneer in loadbalancing, it quickly found a horizontal niche in helping its clients target applications to scale. Businesses could now grow at the pace of users without redesigning applications and redeploying their infrastructures. F5 focused on helping enterprises to scale data center workloads mainly composed of traditional three-tier web architectures. Leveraging the load balancer’s position in the data path of the target applications, F5 also expanded its products into the area of application security with capabilities such as application access management and firewalls.

As businesses started to virtualize their environments, F5 evolved to help its clients navigate the new reality. Moving to

a public cloud environment introduced further challenges for enterprises. F5's virtualized application delivery controller made it possible to detach application load-balancing and application security functions from the hardware environment, enabling customers' workloads to move into a public cloud environment. This solution appealed to the CIO community as it preserved its operational procedures, configuration, and integration points with the tools and applications already in place.

The brave new world of adaptive applications Since 2018, business has been swiftly moving into a world of microservices. F5's “sweet spot” in helping organizations scale and protect their applications has extended to enabling better developer-oriented businesschief.com

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F5

“ POINT SOLUTIONS WERE YESTERDAY'S STATE-OF-THE-ART FOR THE SECURITY BATTLEGROUND. NOW THE ATTACKERS ARE ON A DIFFERENT LEVEL.” GENG LIN

EVP AND CTO, F5

tools. In May 2019, F5 acquired NGINX, the creator of a widely adopted open source platform for microservices and distributed web applications globally. NGINX open source powers more than one-third of the world’s web applications across all types of environments. F5's CEO François Locoh-Donou stated: “We believe that with our combined F5-NGINX solutions, our customers – from the app developer to the 280

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network engineer to the security specialist – will for the first time benefit from the agility and flexibility enabled by modern technologies without compromising on the time-tested fundamentals of security, manageability, and reliability. F5 is 100% committed to the continued innovation and increasing investment in the NGINX open source project.”

In the meantime, security, too, took on new levels of importance as attackers began to exploit automation and a growing cadre of connected devices. Infrastructure and application attacks grew to unprecedented

F5

GENG LIN TITLE: EVP AND CTO

levels, threatening providers of services such as payment processing. F5’s expertise in scaling security capabilities became a key component in businesses’ strategy to thwart attacks.

The appointment of Geng Lin as EVP and CTO at F5 closely followed the NGINX acquisition. With broad leadership experiences at Cisco, Dell, Google, and most recently JPMorgan Chase & Co., Lin is a recognized technology expert in cloud services, distributed systems, and modern applications – precisely F5's competency.

He has co-authored two books on cloud and data-intensive computing and holds nine patents. At Cisco, he served as the CTO of the Cisco-IBM Alliance. At Dell, he was the CTO of Networking Group and a Dell Fellow. In addition to his technology expertise, his experience at Google as CTO of Corporate Networks and Head of Service Engineering of Next Billion Users and at

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: F5 Geng Lin is Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at F5. He is responsible for leading technology strategy, product evolution, and critical innovations for the company.

Lin joined F5 in 2019 from JPMorgan Chase & Co., where he was Managing Director, Chief Development Officer and Head of Engineering for Consumer and Community Banking. Prior to JPMorgan Chase, Lin worked at Google as CTO of Corporate Networks and later as Head of Service Engineering for Next Billion Users. Previously, he served as CTO of Networking Group at Dell and CTO of the Cisco-IBM Alliance at Cisco Systems.

He was also an appointed Fellow at Dell and Distinguished Engineer at JPMorgan Chase.

Lin is an industry-leading expert in distributed systems, software-defined infrastructure, and cloud services. He is a contributing author of two books on cloud and data-intensive computing.

He has published many technical papers and holds nine U.S. patents.

Lin received B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in computer science from Peking University and a Ph.D. degree in computer science from The University of British Columbia.

F5

1996

Year founded

6,500

Number of employees

$2.35bn Revenue USD

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JP Morgan Chase as Chief Development Officer and Head of Engineering for Consumer and Community Banking offered him a unique vantage point to understand the evolution of digital businesses.

In recent years, businesses in every industry sector have embarked on the digital transformation journey. Lin says: “Take banking as an example: transactional systems such as ATM networks, credit cards, bank accounts, etc. have been in place for years, but digital transformation and mobile banking have made it possible to link previously siloed transaction systems together to deliver a seamless digital user experience. Today, you don’t need to go to a bank branch to open a new account.

“THE CHALLENGE FOR DIGITIZATION IS TWOFOLD – TO DIGITIZE THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS FLOWS AND TO DIGITIZE THE USER EXPERIENCES.” GENG LIN

EVP AND CTO, F5

You can open a bank account using your mobile phone in 10 minutes without ever interacting with a bank representative.”

Such seamless digital user experiences require that the complete user journey – often accomplished by multiple applications distributed across multi-cloud environments at a global scale – is optimized and protected.

Security is difficult in such an end-to-end user journey across distributed environments.

Security protects the individual points — or the “cracks” attackers could find between the elements that went into building the system and exploit them. businesschief.com

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F5

" LEADERSHIP DEMANDS THAT WE EXPAND OUR OWN QUALITIES THROUGHOUT OUR TEAMS" GENG LIN

EVP AND CTO, F5

Yet that was yesterday's state-of-theart for the security battleground, according to Lin. “Now the attackers are on a different level,” he says. “Even assuming all the building blocks fit nicely together without any cracks, attackers can still penetrate the systems. How? By means of massive automation and computing power to gain the necessary credentials and assume a legitimate identity to mimic a real user. Not

only do you need to detect vulnerabilities in the system, but you need to use telemetry information, analytics, and AI techniques to analyze attacker behaviors to distinguish bots from real, legitimate users.”

That need led to the acquisition of Shape

by F5 in January 2020. Shape technology uses data analytics and machine learning to defend against automated bot attacks and fraudulent transactions. Shape technologies are used by three of the top four banks in the U.S. Today, F5 is integrating Shape technologies with the rest of F5’s security offerings to prevent application-layer attacks on its customers, saving them billions of dollars and consolidating its position as a global leader in multi-cloud application security services.

COVID has accelerated the trend towards distributed digital businesses The effectiveness of F5's application delivery and security technologies to scale and protect application workloads depends heavily on location. “Meeting the workloads where they are is a key factor to effectively and efficiently scaling and protecting the target workloads,” Lin says. “There are three locations to place the workloads: at the data center, in the public cloud, and at the edge where the vast majority of users actually experience digital services.”

These first two locations traditionally have been the major deployment environments for application workloads – and are amply addressed by the core F5 technologies we have looked at already. businesschief.com

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F5

“ APPLICATIONS ARE THE BACKBONE OF THE DIGITAL ECONOMY.” GENG LIN

EVP AND CTO, F5

The last one, edge, is an ever-evolving challenge to enterprise businesses and hence an opportunity for F5. How can the user experience be made consistent and secure wherever the application or the digital service is being accessed?

Lin is well placed to answer this having led Google's engineering and service team as it set out to solve the last-mile challenge within its own ecosystem. Other early movers such as Amazon and Facebook have taken the same route to build their own in-house solutions, but not all enterprises have the same level of resources and technical 286

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expertise to do so. And as many enterprises retain their traditional applications while integrating modern applications built on microservices and cloud-native architectures, their environments are becoming more complex, leading to inconsistent application performance and new security vulnerabilities.

While the edge posed a challenge to business enterprises aspiring to evolve digitally before COVID, the pandemic has significantly amplified this challenge.

“COVID has accelerated digitization and application delivery to the edge at a pace we have never seen before,” says Lin. “The

F5

pandemic has compelled CIOs to speed up their digitization process. You could say businesses, and society generally, have become distributed systems.”

“Distributed” is a key theme for F5 and has led to the conclusion that edge computing will be important to nearly every business.

“We believe that digital businesses in every industry sector will need a new platform to deliver applications and to process and analyze data,” Lin says. “That platform is Edge 2.0, and we envision it will be an essential component of the user experience of every digital service.”

F5 AT A GLANCE Operations 76 locations in 43 countries Customers F5 solutions are deployed in: • 48 of the Fortune 50 companies • All 15 executive departments of the U.S. cabinet • The top 10 global telecoms operators • The top 15 U.S. commercial banks

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F5

This was the catalyst for F5 to accelerate its multi-cloud and edge strategy during 2020, culminating in the acquisition of Volterra in January 2021. “Volterra is the first universal edge-as-a-service platform and is key to executing on our Edge 2.0 vision,” Lin says. “For example, a U.S. bank wanting to roll out merchant payment services globally may face difficulty building its own edge services in diverse places such as Scandinavia and Thailand. Volterra enables the bank to give its customers a uniform 288

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digital experience wherever they are. The bank can preserve its security policies and user experience service level agreements.

Digital experience is now a big competitive differentiator for businesses.”

A model for partnership Traditionally, F5 was seen as the perfect partner to major infrastructure technology vendors that can facilitate the best networking up to layer 3 but have no visibility at the level of application workload

F5

and distributed applications at layers 1-7. That simple, layered Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model has changed, Lin comments. “The stack has become blurred in this converged world. We need to look at partnerships from a customerdriven lens.” He offers the example of the long-standing partnership between F5 and VMware, companies that overlap in some respects but which define areas in which they complement one another to serve the needs of common customers. This kind of

relationship, he says, will increasingly define future partnerships.

Where gaps show up in the company’s capabilities and which it must move fast to fill, F5 has been quick to acquire. “Our acquisition strategy is clear,” Lin says.

“NGINX addresses developer needs, the Shape acquisition strengthens our analytics capabilities, and Volterra gives us the edge presence and addresses multi-cloud operational challenges. These are capabilities we couldn't have developed in-house, at least not fast enough to meet the circumstances in which we found ourselves.”

Over the last years, many enterprises have come to realize that – unlike bornin-the-cloud digital businesses such as Google, Amazon, and Uber – they have not yet fully digitized the processes by which they interact with their customers.

Enabling digital experiences takes globalscale application delivery, security, and rich data processing.

“Such a Google-like in-house environment wouldn't be replicated even in tier one enterprises,” says Lin. “The demand for a common application-oriented distribution layer that marries enterprises’ global users and distributed workloads across multicloud environments is huge. I came to F5 because of CEO François' vision is to transform F5 into the leader for this application-oriented distribution layer, a vision we call adaptive applications. I wanted to help F5 reach the vision.”

This exciting vision played a big part in attracting Geng Lin to F5, where he is now able to influence a huge global technology endeavor.

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CITY OF MEMPHIS

Kimberly Bailey, CIO

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CITY OF MEMPHIS

THE CITY, THE CIO, COVID AND COLLABORATION The City of Memphis reeled under the impact of the pandemic, its newly appointed CIO Kimberly Bailey an unknown quantity: we asked her how her team responded.

WRITTEN BY: JOHN O'HANLON PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

Y

ou might have thought that Kimberly Bailey had a lot to prove after Memphis' Mayor Jim Strickland appointed her as the City's first female African American CIO in January 2020. A native Memphian, after university she shifted to Atlanta, Georgia in 1996, gaining experience with General Motors and IBM before returning to her home town in 2003 to work with the Memphis Grizzlies NBA team, helping them move into their new home, the $250m FedExForum. In 2018 she came back into the City government as IT lead in the HR department, getting to know the directors of every department and gaining intimate knowledge of what they do.

When the search for a new CIO started late in 2019 she was asked to assume the role of Deputy CIO to help in the search, so she drew up an outline of the qualities and experience she thought would be needed. By December the search was concluded – and she was informed by the Mayor's department that as she was clearly the best person to execute those plan, would she please accept the job. “It has been a fantastic journey. My first internship after graduation in 1995 was at the City of Memphis in the then CIO's department so it's an amazing feeling to now occupy this seat!”

Technology in partnership Between 1995 and now the perception of IT has changed, but she knew that much more change would be needed. “I wanted to change how the organization looked at the IT division - not just as a glorified emergency service but as a strategic partner. Just before the pandemic closed us down we did a roadshow, invited all the department directors and their deputies, and asked them what they needed, what challenges they'd faced in dealing with our division, and how they thought we should move forward.” This dialogue altered the relationship radically, and also made it easier for the CIO's department to implement its own programs. As an example, she identified a large corpus of shadow IT where departments businesschief.com

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Kimberly Bailey talks the City of Memphis' IT development

had accrued their own solutions. They were very amenable to her suggestion that these be replaced by enterprise solutions wherever possible. “Now they see us as the people to help them make the right choice, confident that we want what works best for them.”

Bailey's intimate exposure to HR work over many years helped shape her leadership style. The human element became critically important as Covid-19 struck. “I don't just check on what my teams are doing, but how they are doing: they are more than a resource for us: we are a resource for them and all 8,000 city employees too.” Kimberly Bailey's approach is best shown by her actions: her first action on becoming deputy leader in 2019 was to schedule a 15-minute one-to-one meeting with each of the 80 staffers in the IT division.

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“ We immediately decided to send home our noncustomer-facing people, like programmers and developers and project managers” KIMBERLY BAILEY CIO, CITY OF MEMPHIS

CITY OF MEMPHIS

suggest to make it better. I know them and they know me. We have a portal where you can chat with the CIO any time. I schedule these meetings myself so they don't have to go through my EA” And since the lockdown she has continued to add members to her team – nobody lost their job, indeed there have been advantages as she is now able to onboard people who live in other cities.

Leading in an emergency

By March 2020 the IT Division found itself having to respond to unprecedented circumstances. “We immediately decided to

KIMBERLY BAILEY TITLE: CIO INDUSTRY: GOVERNMENT

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MEMPHIS Kimberly Bailey is Director of Information Technology and the Chief Information Officer for the City of Memphis. She is the first African American female to hold the position. Bailey is an experienced leader with demonstrated skills in project management, team building, public speaking, and team facilitation. She enjoys finding new and innovative ways to address complex issues and obtain excellent outcomes.

The native Memphian began her career with the City of Memphis as a college intern in the Information Systems Division.

Since then, this ambitious woman has steadily progressed securing IT and project management positions with international and award-winning organizations such as the Memphis Grizzlies, Technicolor, AutoZone, Pinnacle Agriculture Holdings, and CBRE. She returned to the City of Memphis in 2017 as the

send home our non-customer-facing people, like programmers and developers and project managers. They could work from home easily and we needed more space for the people who did have to come into the office so they needn't work in proximity.” These guys probably had the right hardware, but not all the city's employees had. What to do, when 500 laptops and docking stations had to be sourced in short order? Very fortuitously Bailey and her deputy had recently paid a visit to a local IT recycling contractor, ER2. “I have to admit that I was not enthusiastic about going there initially, but the place was only five minutes

HRIS Solutions Manager and was instrumental in the upgrade of several vital operational components within the Human Resources Department.

Bailey received her BS in Management Information Systems from Christian Brothers University and MS in Computer and Information Sciences and Support Services from Bellevue University. She shares her knowledge and passion for technology with the IT professionals of tomorrow as an adjunct professor at Christian Brothers University.

In addition to technology, she serves as assistant secretary of the Shelby County Health, Education, and Housing Board. Bailey expresses her love of history as the publisher of the children’s coloring book series Color & Read which highlights the accomplishments of African Americans. It can be found online at www.colorandread.com.

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Powering connections across the city or the world.

The world wants to be more connected. More collaborative. More efficient. More mobile.

At Mitel, we power real time communications and collaboration solutions for businesses and governments of all sizes. Because they need it to be reliable. More modern. More secure.

LEARN MORE

Mitel’s communications technology powers the City of Memphis As the pandemic swept across America, the solution installed by Mitel came at precisely the right time Mitel has supported thousands of cities around the world over the last 50 years. “It was exciting to have the opportunity to bring that experience to bear in helping the City of Memphis modernize its communications infrastructure and the way its staff communicates and serves area residents,” said Stephanie Ford, Vice-President of Vertical Sales at Mitel.

Discussions around the upgrade began in 2019 when stakeholders convened to gain a better understanding of the challenges they needed to address in overhauling the City’s disparate systems.

“We had a PBX system that was over 20 years old, and only one person in our organization really knew how to support it,” said Kimberly, Bailey, the City’s Chief Information Officer. “We were looking for a solution that could better meet our needs. That’s why we chose Mitel.”

Leveraging the MiVoice Business platform, Mitel designed a solution with an integrated contact center that lets employees and the wider community connect more easily via the device

and channel of their choice. Working together with its partner CRI, Mitel enabled the City to get the new contact center up and running in time to respond to higher call volumes associated with COVID-19 related inquiries.

“The contact center is the ‘storefront’ of any organization, so the impression created within that space sets the stage for the entire customer experience,” said Ford. “With a modern contact center, the City of Memphis can depend on this virtual storefront to ensure the impression it’s making is the best one possible.”

Just as importantly, the new communications platform can support the City’s employees even when they’re not working behind the traditional office walls. This feature proved especially valuable when the pandemic hit and organizations first felt its impact. While many were initially unprepared, the Mitel solution allowed the City of Memphis to power remote working and maintain operations.

“The initial implementation was very successful, so we’re continuing to deploy the Mitel infrastructure throughout the entire enterprise.

Everyone loves it because it’s so much easier to use and it’s moving us into the digital space we want to be in,” said Bailey.

CITY OF MEMPHIS

“ I want to know what each person does, what they like about their work and what they would suggest to make it better” KIMBERLY BAILEY CIO, CITY OF MEMPHIS

from our office so we went along anyway. We were blown away to find out that they not only recycled but also provided hardware and did imaging. We had found a very lean outfit, very well organized and a very good partner for us.

So, two weeks later when we needed these laptops we went to them rather a local retailer.

I reached out to them and they responded immediately and they were able to deliver.”

This was a great confidence builder for a division led by an untried CIO at a time when Memphis needed its IT team to deliver.

It also illustrated the value in the focus she gives to relationship-building. “Everything came together as if we had practiced it beforehand.” she said. As it happened, the way was smoothed by the fact that Microsoft Teams software had already been purchased by the City of Memphis though it had never been turned on. “We turned it on and we put together some quick reference guides and training materials. We simply sent everybody home and that worked and it has been phenomenal all the way through and everybody has responded and it has been a very good experience for us to see how we have been able to come together with partnership-building and relationship296

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building.” In fact, so successful has been the move to remote working that this arrangement will be made permanent for many.

The tools may have been in place but that's only half the story. We've seen how Kimberly Bailey leads by consensus, not wanting to impose solutions as it were, from above.

So right at the beginning of the process she surveyed her teams to see how they felt about working from home. “I wanted to be mindful of the fact that many of my team have young people studying and maybe elderly relatives who need attention from time to time. We have a hoteling arrangement: if someone needs to come in or a team needs to meet, they can schedule a space. We don't want anyone to feel excluded, we just want them

CITY OF MEMPHIS

to feel as safe as possible. I think the team appreciates the flexibility with the ability to work remotely and being able to come in and meet with colleagues and customers when they have to.”

GOVERNMENT Industry

8000

Number of employees

MEMPHIS Location

Fundamental fixes During this time, the work of the IT Division has had to continue uninterrupted, with some 50 different projects currently ongoing. The data center has been upgraded and relocated, and a number of transformational projects started. Outstanding among these has been the implementation of DocuSign. “We are a government entity so we deal with a lot of documents – these get drafted then they move up the authorization chain until they get to the Mayor's office, usually many days later. With people working remotely this process, always cumbersome, is near impossible so DocuSign has been invaluable in cutting the time it takes to get contracts and official documents through. Everyone really appreciates being able to still continue business at home, using any device, without waiting for the paper to come across their desk.” Now the IT team is looking to extend this facility to residents when they interact with the City.

The other big transforming upgrade came in the nick of time, being installed just as remote working came in April 2020. “We were operating with a 20-year-old PBX system, and only one person in the organization knew how to keep it going! Our telecom technology team was influential in selecting the most effective new system for the City, and that's when we chose Mitel as our provider.” The MiVoice system custom designed for Memphis allows call center managers to listen in and coach their teams, a function they had asked for. “We are rolling the system out across the entire enterprise – it is helping us get into that digital space where we want to be, and businesschief.com

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above all the users are all appreciating the benefits of a communications structure that is fit for purpose So, nothing had to stop because of Covid, though budgets were hit across all departments. “We had to save money,” Bailey admits, “but I think we have managed to find ways to scale back. I was glad not to let go of any of my staff as some departments may have had to: we just looked at how we were doing things and how we could do them differently. Remember that saving time always saves money.”

Her readiness to listen to her team’s suggestions was demonstrated when her security team suggested an upgrade of the security platform. They brought a convincing business case for introducing an endpoint security platform that would give better antiviral performance than the legacy Symantec software – they also wanted to start compliance training for the staff to minimize the vulnerability of the system with so many people working from home. “They found a great program in CrowdStrike: it is trackable and user-friendly, it's a lot better for our purpose and we get to push it out to more endpoints in different divisions.” At their instigation, they started a monthly security newsletter to keep employees aware of issues, and started compliance training with the help of Infotech.

Post-Covid, many efficiencies that have been introduced will continue to yield benefit.

Nevertheless she looks forward to the day she can return to normal levels of spending allowing her to bring on more transformational ideas, “Innovation is always in my sights. We have a three-pronged approach, infrastructure, implementation, and innovation. We had to do so much infrastructure and implementation work in that first year, but now we can start to look at ways we can bring in automation, 298

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CITY OF MEMPHIS

“I think the team appreciates the flexibility with the ability to work remotely and being able to come in and meet with colleagues and customers when they have to” KIMBERLY BAILEY

CIO, CITY OF MEMPHIS

machine learning, chatbots and IoT.” With competent leaders in her team to oversee the infrastructure and implementation piece she will take personal charge of innovation once the foundations on which it rests are where they need to be.

For now, though assessment, then rationalization, of the IT environment takes priority. “I am proud of the foundation work we are doing, which will ensure that whatever innovation we put in place will be sustainable.

So, we are carefully looking at what applications are aging and need replacing, or where we can save money by shrinking some of the complexity, or by phasing out some of the solutions that have accrued over time. We have more than 200 contracts in place with a host of different vendors, and we do need to cut that vendor base down to size.”

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MICROSOFT

How Microsoft is

Driving Defense Innovation at the Speed of Relevance Traditional acquisition and development techniques lack the agility required to deliver mission critical technology solutions in the defense and intelligence domain. Kate Maxwell explains how that’s changing.

WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

D

efense and intelligence missions are moving increasingly into the information domain,” says Kate Maxwell, CTO, Defense & Intelligence for Microsoft Worldwide Public Sector. It’s a radical shift from what Maxwell calls “kinetics”, which remain a threat, but even traditional defense benefits from the advances in data science and connectivity.

“Information is helping our defense customers get ahead of their adversaries,” Maxwell explains. “Cloud computing enables secure information sharing across services, domains, and the allied community - all the way from headquarters to the tactical edge, to that soldier at a forwarddeployed location. And once that level of interoperability is achieved, we help our customers figure out how to turn raw data into insights. That's a big leap that is facilitated by capabilities like artificial intelligence, machine learning and high performance computing. Raw data is one thing, but how do we get to insights and businesschief.com

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1975

The year Microsoft was founded

1986

The year Microsoft stock shares first went public

$143bn Microsoft's revenue in USD, in 2020

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“As technologists, we often run after the amazing and shiny new technology.

But if we don’t get the culture right and really seek to understand how people and technology interact, that new technology is not going to take hold. Period” KATE MAXWELL

CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR, MICROSOFT

infer intent? When our customers can turn data into insights and get inside their adversary’s decision cycle, that's how they find competitive advantage in the digital battlespace.”

MISSION SPEED Despite Microsoft’s gigantic clout in the cloud computing arena, there’s more to the future of defense than spinning up a Microsoft Azure server or two. “Mission speed,” is one of Maxwell’s mantras, which means 5G and satellite communications are high on her list of priorities, not to mention virtualisation technologies – augmented reality, virtual reality, mixed reality (a significant upgrade to traditional training and mission planning activities that often include “drawing pictures in the sand”).

But fostering a culture of innovation is crucial to Maxwell’s own mission.

“As technologists, we often run after the amazing and shiny new technology. But if we don’t get the culture right and really seek to understand how people and technology interact, that new technology is not going to take hold. Period.” businesschief.com

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Microsoft for Defense and Intelligence

“ Our focus is on delivering world-class capability and digital transformation to the international defence allied community” KATE MAXWELL

CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR, MICROSOFT

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She talks about Will Roper’s ‘digital trinity’ as a philosophy and is also insistent that “antiquated, quite lengthy” government acquisition is a problem to be fixed. “It’s really hard to drive innovation at the speed of relevance when you have bureaucracy and red tape. But you also have to balance the need for speed with maintaining the integrity of the acquisitions process.

“And then there’s cultural transformation.

I mention all these digital models, but people are at the core of any transformation effort. We have to upskill the defense workforce, give them the right digital skills so they’re prepared to build and develop capabilities in new ways. We have to introduce design thinking into workplace processes so we can truly understand the customer and be a mission partner. I feel Microsoft is extremely well positioned to

MICROSOFT

do that. And this is an amazing time to be driving that digital transformation for the defence community.

“Microsoft is an iconic technology enterprise; we’ve been around for a long time, and we’ve been serving defence and intelligence customers for the better part of 40 years. In Worldwide Public Sector, our focus is on delivering world-class capability and digital transformation to the international public sector community.

And my team focuses specifically on the allied defense & intelligence community.

“Microsoft has the largest and most mature cloud partner ecosystem in the entire market, which is critical when it comes to driving innovation. Our job is to break down the barriers to entry so independent software vendors can bring their capabilities to bear for the defence and intelligence landscape. It’s a huge part of our value proposition.”

TITLE: CTO COMPANY/SECTOR: DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE FOR MICROSOFT WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

THE DEFENCE LANDSCAPE When Maxwell discusses the defence landscape, she is talking about an array of threats. “This is not meant to be a doom and gloom story,” she says as she paints a picture of growing global disorder where established threats live alongside nonstate actors increasingly armed with sophisticated tools. Throw in geopolitical and civil unrest, terrorism, climate change and public health crises, and it looks decidedly doomy and gloomy.

“Technology is advancing at a really incredible pace, and that’s good for defense agencies, but it’s also good for their adversaries, because technology is increasingly capable, available, and in some cases becoming less expensive by the day.

Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS), or drones, are a great example of this.

KATE MAXWELL

Kate Maxwell is the Chief Technology Officer for Defense & Intelligence in Microsoft’s Worldwide Public Sector. Maxwell is an accomplished technology leader and strategist with almost 20 years of experience supporting Defense & Intelligence customers around the globe.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Maxwell held various engineering leadership roles within Raytheon Technologies, including Technical Director and Chief Engineer of multiple product lines.

She was also the Founding Director of the Raytheon Innovation Center – a global corporate innovation engine that inspires and empowers employees to innovate.

Maxwell is a passionate advocate for STEM outreach and diversity, and she commits her time to making a difference through volunteerism.

MICROSOFT

“ We’re seeing this evolving defense landscape where there is a contest in every single domain: land, air, sea, space and cyberspace” KATE MAXWELL

CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR, MICROSOFT

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The US Air Force has maintained air superiority for decades, and all of sudden that air superiority is being threatened by $400 quadcopters that you can buy at any big-box store. The threat is asymmetric, and very real.

“We’re also seeing this evolving defense landscape, where there’s contest in every single domain: land, air, sea, space and cyberspace. The battlefield itself is changing. The landscape is moving increasingly to the digital domain. It’s all about who has information dominance.

It’s all about data. It’s about insights.

It’s about secure connectivity, especially at the tactical edge.”

MICROSOFT

168,263

Current worldwide Employment Headcount at Microsoft

97,656 Current Employment Headcount at Microsoft in the US

CEO

Satya Nadella is the current chief executive officer of Microsoft

2030

Last year, Microsoft announced their plans to be carbon negative by 2030

THE DX JOURNEY “At Microsoft, we take a very customer-driven and mission-centric approach to everything we do. This is not a one-size-fits-all digital transformation journey. So, we see three horizons for defence and intelligence. First is the foundational transformation, where we are helping our customers modernise the defence workplace, facilities, and installations. Data is a critical asset, so we help our customers understand where all of their data lives and map out their data estates.

Migrating unclassified data and workloads to the cloud is a great first step. Then we help them work out how to harness and fuse that data and put it to work for them.

“The second horizon is about expanding on that transformation and helping our customers become even more datadriven and agile. We help our customers migrate qualified, sensitive data estates to the cloud. We help them take advantage of digital engineering tools and methods, ubiquitous computing, and AI to draw out insights, optimize their operations, and enable a common operational picture across domains, all the way to the tactical edge.

“And the third horizon is about unlocking all of the advanced capabilities that you can bring to bear once you have gone truly digital – enabling our customers businesschief.com

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MICROSOFT'S 4 PILLAR STRATEGY Four key pillars of Microsoft Worldwide Defense & Intelligence digital transformation strategy: Modernise the defence and intelligence workplace Deliver trusted and secure infrastructure and services Protect the information domain and help grow cyber force capabilities Optimise defence and intelligence operations and enhance datadriven decisions

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to disrupt and deliver innovative mission capabilities at the speed of relevance.

This includes a host of advanced capabilities including productivity tools for mannedunmanned teaming, cyber ops capabilities, synthetic environments for training and mission planning, and growing our customers’ network through avenues like space and 5G.” SPEED IS EVERYTHING “Speed,” Maxwell insists, “is everything.”

One of her top priorities for the defense and intelligence community is enabling modern methodologies like DevSecOps, and improving the feedback cycle to constantly deliver improvements and high-value mission capabilities. “You don’t win a conflict by being the first to invent a capability,” she explains, “you win by being the first to field it.”

MICROSOFT

THE WORLD’S LARGEST PARTNER ECOSYSTEM Kate Maxwell explains Microsoft’s unique partnership position

“ Partnership is critically important, because we seek to drive innovation to the defence and intelligence missions we serve. Our technology partners are bringing these new mission capabilities forward” KATE MAXWELL

PARTNERSHIP

CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR, MICROSOFT

“We have more partners than all our top cloud competitors combined.

We’re partnering with many defence systems integrators as well as independent software vendors. As an example, we partner with Myriad Technologies for multi-domain, multi-level security collaboration. We partner with Semantic AI on artificial intelligence capability.

We’re collaborating with C3.ai to help us solve predictive maintenance issues for defense customers. And we’re partnering with companies like SES and Kongsberg Satellite Services (KSAT) on the space side of the house. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

“Partnership is critically important, because we seek to drive innovation to the defence and intelligence missions

we serve. Our technology partners are bringing these new mission capabilities forward. And we know a lot of small and commercially-facing independent software vendors have a hard time breaking into the defence community because they might not have the clearance, infrastructure, or domain knowledge needed to do it. They might not have the right license or accreditations to be able to sell to government acquisitions bodies. So enabling technologies – cloud platforms, containerisation, microservice architectures – unlock the door for those companies to come in and serve up their capabilities to defense customers. And that is one way to inject diversity and capability into the defense ecosystem, and drive innovation at the speed of relevance.”

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“ Legacy platform procurement doesn’t work today, especially for software systems.

This demands agility.

We need innovation at the speed of relevance” KATE MAXWELL

CTO, DEFENSE & INTELLIGENCE WORLDWIDE PUBLIC SECTOR, MICROSOFT

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And that’s why she insists government acquisition models need to adapt. “Historically speaking, they have not been set up to accommodate that need for speed. Most government contracting vehicles are set up to support legacy platform procurement – a really lengthy bid, proposal, and development process. That doesn’t work today. And it certainly doesn’t work when you’re talking about building software systems. They demand agility. We have to modernise our acquisition methods to match the mission need, and that will help unlock innovation at the speed of relevance.”

Despite legacy acquisition processes (“antiquated”, “frustrating”), Maxwell notes

that they were installed for good reasons, and that change is not just at the service of technology. Those processes were, after all, “put there with good intent.” But the time for change has come.

“The key point is that digital transformation is not just about the technology. It’s also about people, process, and governance. And that, in many ways, is the hardest part.”

When asked why Microsoft is so passionate about the defense & intelligence domain?

“These efforts save lives. That’s why I come to work every day. I think it’s incredibly rewarding to see our customers realising the value of their own digital transformation, and hearing success stories from the field. This matters.”

So digital transformation is about cultural transformation? “This is very much a people story. This is about people and their interactions with the system. As Peter Drucker says, ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. One of the things we do at Microsoft, and one of the things that brought me here, is that we put people and mission at the core of everything we do. We frame every digital transformation around the customer need, and their challenges and stakeholders.

“There’s a lot of uncertainty around digital transformation. People might not know what it means for them or for their job. They might be worried. ‘Is my role going to change? Do I have the right skills to do this?’ For every organization that is transforming, your number one objective has to be bringing your people along on that journey, and getting it right so that it works for them. And that is certainly true for defense and intelligence as well. Digital transformation is a people story, and Microsoft is a mission partner.”

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Cost. Service. Agility.

SUPPLY CHAIN’S

NEW TROIKA Suketu Gandhi, Kearney’s Global Leader in Digital Supply Chain and Plan on Sense and Pivot and supply chain’s new troika; cost, service, and agility WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: CAITLYN COLE/ GLEN WHITE

W

hat was at first thought to be a one-time disruption, the ultimate black swan event, has now become the new normal. The hardwon lessons of COVID-19 have shown us that moving forward supply chain resilience will be as imperative to business as cost and performance.

Suketu Gandhi, partner and global product leader, Digital Supply Chain and Plan is helping companies the world over set a new plan for the “new normal”. Gandhi shows clients the way to achieving their targets by building agile supply chains that leverage today’s best tech to sense and pivot with fast, informed decision making.

Real resilience is far more than performing “what if” scenario analysis and disaster response planning. It’s about increasing capabilities and building lighting fast reflexes, so you can respond to fluctuations in demand and an ever-changing business landscape with dynamic resource and capacity planning.

As CEOs, COOs and CPOs now look to restructure their business model with the businesschief.com

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“ Our success as consultants will depend on the essential rightness of the advice we give and our capacity for convincing those in authority that it is good” ANDREW THOMAS KEARNEY

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aim of increasing organisational resilience and agility, produced in partnership with MIT Technology Review, Kearney offers a comprehensive resilience stress test.

Speaking with clients such as Mars and Johnson and Johnson, MIT and Kearney took a tech-centric view of data needs and how AI can help.

The report says that at the core of company efforts to increase resilience and agility there should be two strategic priorities; decreasing complexities and using data to increase visibility at every node in the supply chain, and developing action plans to efficiently respond to change and disruption.

Ghandi walks us through.

Reducing Complexity Complexity must be managed, not expunged.

“You have to step back and look at your business a few years out and think, what are the three things I should do? What are the structural changes that I should make?

KEARNEY

SUKETU GANDHI TITLE: PARTNER AND GLOBAL PRODUCT LEADER, DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN & PLAN COMPANY: KEARNEY INDUSTRY: MANAGEMENT CONSULTANCY

LOCATION: CHICAGO

EXECUTIVE BIO

You must be very deliberate in the choices that are made based on the options that are available,” Gandhi says.

“One of the key dimensions is finding commonalities and what can be done to standardise further. The more common you can make things, the easier manufacturing, assembly and sourcing become. Although it seems quite logical, unfortunately, we don't find people doing that.”

“Another key element is inbound and outbound transportation, what we call geography. Where do you manufacture?

Where do you sell? Now that's a simple question, but then you must also look at the geographical boundaries you cross and how many political boundaries as well. And that second question, political boundaries, is a loaded one because that can cause issues.

Brexit is a good example of that.

“The other part of geography is that countries like China and India are going to start insisting that if you sell in their

Suketu Gandhi is a recognized industry leader and subjectmatter expert in digital transformation, IT strategy and enterprise architecture, technology’s role in retail, the Internet as a channel, outsourcing and offshoring, IT organization evolution, and the use of technology for highly mobile assets. He is frequently published on digital transformation topics in outlets ranging from MIT Sloan Management Review to the Wall Street Journal. Suketu’s consulting work focuses on the impact of digital on business models, customer experience, operations, and IT. Suketu is a partner, based in Kearney's Chicago office.

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We Make It Happen Aera Technology is the Cognitive Automation company that makes business agility happen.

With our partners, we deliver the digital platform that integrates with your existing systems to make and execute business decisions in real time.

Aera Technology: redefining agility in supply chains

Gonzalo Benedit, GM EMEA, Aera Technology on how Cognitive Automation is redefining agility in supply chains, as well as the company’s partnership with Kearney With 15 years of experience in various enterprise software leadership roles, Gonzalo Benedit joined Aera Technology in 2020 as General Manager, EMEA. “Aera is a digital platform that enables Cognitive Automation for large enterprises, such as FORTUNE 500 companies. So pretty large scale organisations operating mostly within the Consumer packaged goods (CPG), pharma chemicals and discrete manufacturing industries. At Aera Technology, we help them to digitise, augment, and automate decision-making at scale,” says Benedit. Whilst Aera Technology is headquartered in Mountain View, California, the company operates worldwide, with more than 450 colleagues across Asia, Europe and the Americas.

Empowering leaders with Cognitive Automation When asked: what makes Aera Technology’s Cognitive Automation platform unique? Benedit believes “its uniqueness comes from the fact that it’s a single platform that is able to address the core dimensions that are critical to deliver Cognitive Automation at scale: data, science, process, and change.”

Breaking down the four core dimensions, Benedit adds that “when it comes to data, Aera Technology is able to build a single data model. We’re able to connect with all the transactional systems of an enterprise and build a single end-to-end data model. When it comes to science, we help our customers to apply and deploy deterministic

logic, machine learning (ML), and simulations. In terms of process, it’s about digitising the way decisions are being made in a certain company, division or country. Last but not least, the fourth dimension is about change on which we not only deliver an intelligent experience that allows users to easily engage with the platform, but also generate a digital record of all the decisions that have been made and the context under which those decisions were made.”

Aera Technology’s partnership with Kearney After recently announcing a strategic alliance with global consulting firm Kearney, Benedit explains that Aera Technology is “incredibly excited about our partnership.

This means a lot to us, and I would say there are two core components to this partnership - transformation and opportunity. For us, it’s an amazing opportunity working with Kearney; it gives our customers access to incredible experience built throughout almost a century, so that’s invaluable. Combine that knowledge with our ability to deliver at a very fast pace, Cognitive Skills, and a digital platform for Cognitive Automation, together we can enable self-driving enterprise. That’s a pretty unique value proposition for our customers.”

MEET AERA

KEARNEY

1926

Year founded

3,500+ Number of employees

$1.4 bn Revenue USD (2019)

country, then you must manufacture in their country. You have to give back some of what you take. So those are the type of political considerations you must take into account when building a strategy. You must decide where to manufacture, understand costs, service, agility and resiliency and put it all together.

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that having that as a constant is absolutely critical. Don't change that proposition because otherwise, you end up with a situation of circular logic, and you never reach an end.

“If you start to look at things like changing features, then you have to consider if the customer will be willing to pay for it and you start to go around and around. New product development starts to fight with supply chain, who fights with the CPO, who fights with sales and marketing, and you never make your way out of it. That's why I say,

KEARNEY

emerging because the CFO used to call the CPO only to reduce cost. Whereas now he has to be a part of the discussion of risk. Our strong perspective is boards are going to start asking this question regularly.

“The fundamental equations of being a CPO or running a supply chain have not changed. The math is still the same, but the granularity, however, has changed. It used to be that people would look at things at a country level, then geographical, then segment, then region. Now you’ve got to be at a customer individual order level. That's the level of granularity needed.”

Gandhi says another change has been a move away from a one-size-fits-all approach to technical solutions, “There was this view

“The fundamental equations of being a CPO or running a supply chain have not changed. The math is still the same, but the granularity, however, has changed” SUKETU GANDHI

PARTNER AND GLOBAL PRODUCT LEADER, DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN & PLAN, KEARNEY

leave that constant, don't mess with it and move forward.”

“However, no amount of effort will protect you against every shock. That's the first thing we tell people; you can’t protect against everything. So, what are the choices you want to make? And that becomes a CPO, CEO and CFO question.”

Cost. Service. Agility. Supply chain’s new troika.

The emergence of supply chain’s new troika.“So now we have a new Troika

that says a general solution for one is easily applicable to the other one. Now, what we are finding is that as we get into the world of artificial intelligence and machine learning, AI allows you to identify the parameters that matter.

“For example, if we buy a standard shoe, versus an athletic one, one may be sold on price and the other one on features. That quite significantly changes how supply chain should look at it. And so now general solutions lose their power because it's easy to find a very specific solution.” businesschief.com

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Lastly, Gandhi points out the maturement of risk tolerance, a factor Sense and Pivot looks at, shifting from implicit to explicit.

Sense & Pivot Kearney started on the Sense and Pivot journey almost three years ago after spotting the trends around the difficulty of forecasting, the inflexibility of distribution centres, manufacturing facilities and transportation networks.

However, there was still resistance to change. Ghandi says, “What COVID did was fundamentally accelerate the trend. What we thought would take another year to two years all of a sudden just came to life.

It’s what I call the shift left phenomenon; years became months and months became weeks.”

Just how unpredictable the world can be was a hard-earned lesson. Supply chains quickly realised they need to adapt and perform against plan despite the business challenges brought on by the disruptions and the limitations that lay within the supply chain. Sense and Pivot helps organisations to mitigate the impacts of risks such as extreme weather, geopolitics and unpredictable changes in consumer demand, creating a dynamic, highly responsive and resilient supply chain.

Ghandi says the companies should be asking is if they are set up to sense the right information in order to pivot assets.

Real-time information can be pulled from a myriad of resources such as business partners, social media, manufacturing facilities (for machine capacity or handling times), or even point of sale information.

This information can then trigger an action or inform decision making. The trick is in aligning the right data to the companies goals.

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“ No amount of effort will protect you against every shock.

That's the first thing we tell people; you can’t protect against everything. So, what are the choices you want to make?”

SUKETU GANDHI

PARTNER AND GLOBAL PRODUCT LEADER, DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN & PLAN, KEARNEY

KEARNEY

Suketu Gandhi from Kearney talk about resilience in Supply Chain

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Sense and Pivot is aimed at companies unique organisational objectives, such as cutting costs, meeting new demand requirements or achieving scalability. By leveraging advanced technology to sense information signals, Sense and Pivot goes beyond the collecting and analysing data and improves business performance by creating opportunities for proactive actions and well-informed decision making.

At one customer, using advanced analytics and sensing daily inventory consumption demands at the SKU and store level, the company is able to pivot and quickly adjust shipments to reallocate inventory, 322

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reducing stockouts, returns and inventory waste, increasing it’s annual operating income by 10%.

However, none of it can be accomplished without the right people doing the right things.

Gandhi On People “We love technology. Absolutely. Who doesn’t? But you don’t want to over-index on that either.”

The Building resilient supply chains report states “Initiatives to drive digitalisation and supply chain resilience must include components of people and process change

KEARNEY

“ So now we have a new Troika emerging because the CFO used to call the CPO only to reduce cost. Whereas now he has to be a part of the discussion of risk” SUKETU GANDHI

PARTNER AND GLOBAL PRODUCT LEADER, DIGITAL SUPPLY CHAIN & PLAN, KEARNEY

management. This is a critical step for ensuring that data and insight drive real decisions at every stage of the value chain.”

Gandhi recollects a saying that is all too fitting, “a colleague of mine told me if processes and software could rust, that would be wonderful because then we would rebuild. Unfortunately, they don't.”

The signs of an outdated process in need of a redesign are harder to see than rust on a machine part. But processes can no longer be allowed to become stagnant.

“It used to be that you would design a strategy and you went to sleep and then just executed it every day. And hope that

in three years, you got to look at it. That model is dead. Now we have a continuous design and execution model. That’s a big change, and that’s the essence of Sense and Pivot.

Ghandi points out that just as it takes a skilled driver to drive a fast car, as technology expedites how we do business, the need for leadership and expertise matters even more.

Because, of course, the faster you go, the harder the impact.

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WIRELESS

M2M ON

THE EDGE WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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EPIC IO

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Epic IO's dynamic founder and CEO talks technology, AI, and smart communities as the company launches new projects for 2021

K

en Mills happily describes himself as "a big nerd." The technology whizz-turnedentrepreneur is the CEO of Epic IO, the parent company of Broad Sky Networks – a machine-to-machine (M2M) platform providing wireless connectivity to mobile and fixed devices, and IntelliSite.

IntelliSite is an artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud-based management solution within an IoT platform that carries out heuristic-based monitoring, smart community as a service (SCaaS), with remote monitoring and management.

As well as providing a range of services directly to business customers, Epic IO has a partnership with Dell, playing a key role in the company's strategic offerings of dynamic, cuttingedge technology.

But Mills hasn't always been so entrenched in the world of IT. Initially, he opted for a career in physics. Following a stint in the U.S. Navy where he specialized in nuclear engineering, Mills moved into the computer industry and has never looked back.

"I love all things technology and I love to learn about interesting things," he says, describing the journey that saw him gain a prestigious college scholarship but quickly failed to excite him, thus leading him to the U.S. military. Mills qualified for the U.S. naval nuclear program —then had another epiphany.

"At some point, I realized that most people wouldn't want me to be the person running the nuclear reactor, so I got into computer technology instead," he laughs.

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Ken Mills, CEO

EPIC IO

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Solving customer challenges with Edge Computing, IoT, AI, and Connectivity | Ken Mills | Epic IO

Following a stint at a technology sales company, he joined Cisco, and then Dell, where his grasp of technological trends enabled his quick rise to become the company’s CTO. During this period, Mills launched several successful technology startups — and it was just a matter of time before he branched out with his own vision.

Epic IO acquired Broad Sky and IntelliSite in 2020. Since then, the company has moved from strength to strength, as Mill's vision of the future of technology has firmly steered the company on the roadmap to success.

AI and M2M services One of IntelliSite’s specialties is machine-tomachine (M2M) solutions. This service gathers data, analyses it, and then performs actions based on the information it processes. This ensures operations run smoothly across a wide range of industries. Mills uses the example of shops and customer behaviors following the pandemic. The whole dynamic has changed, 328

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he says, around something as simple as grocery shopping and current data is not accurately reflecting current behaviors.

"You know these kinds of dynamics are interesting because we’ve entered a whole new world. There is no data reporting how long a customer is willing to wait now. There is no data on how long a queue line is. No data revealing what the optimal utilization or capacity is in your conference room or how your break room is being used, or your office space. The previous data is outdated. It no longer applies.

"Being able to use AI to understand the heuristics of the environment, to provide real actionable data back to managers, customers, cities, and campuses to show how their facilities and assets are currently being utilized is super valuable right now," Mills explains.

KEN MILLS TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: IOT + AI TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Ken serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Epic IO, IntelliSite & Broad Sky Networks.

Ken has an early background in nuclear physics and reactor engineering, and over 20 years of business-to-business technology and information security expertise.

Prior to joining IntelliSite, Ken was the General Manager & Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Dell Technologies Safety & Security, IoT, and Computer Vision business unit.

During his tenure, he was recognized as one of Dell Technologies top security and public safety experts who were instrumental in

“ There's this concept around the ‘digital divide’ that reminds us how important it is to make sure that those without the economic means can still get access to all these different services” KEN MILLS CEO, EPIC IO

establishing and growing Dell Technologies Safety and Security solutions.

Ken holds a Bachelor of Science (BS) in Business Management from the University of Phoenix and a Master of Public Administration (MPA) from Clemson University. He is a member of the Security Industry Association (SIA) and serves on the Cybersecurity Advisory Committee for the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, an Advisory Board Member for the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security, and a member of the Forbes Technology Council.

INTELLIGENT SAFETY AND SECURITY FROM EDGE TO CORE TO CLOUD

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THE DELL TECHNOLOGIES ADVANTAGE Whether it’s gaining customer behavioral insights in a retail store, predicting failures in manufacturing plants or managing traveler flow in an airport, data driven organizations across the globe are capitalizing on the immense power of deep learning techniques on video and digital images.

At Dell Technologies, we’re committed to providing you with fully integrated safety and security | computer vision solutions ranging from physical security, situational awareness, to digital forensics. We help turn your data into actionable intelligence enabling you to protect people, property, and your business.

Our advisory, design, build, integration, and lab validation services help deliver the right edge to core to cloud safety and security system to meet your needs today and tomorrow.

Dell Technologies addresses your unique requirements with a comprehensive strategy that brings together a full range of components where every part of the ecosystem is represented by a combination of our infrastructure, services, and industry leading, validated partner solutions.

“Dell Technologies Safety and Security | Computer Vision solutions portfolio and subject matter expertise help reduce risk, cost, and complexity by leveraging a comprehensive solution to fit your specific industry requirements.”

William Reed — Dell Technologies General Manager Safety & Security Computer Vision

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EPIC IO

"We do that in our own conference room.

Right now, I'm measuring how often my conference rooms are being used and by how many people. We can check to see if they are maintaining safe social distances and if they are wearing masks."

The collected data is analyzed, and insights are produced that can be acted upon, even in real-time scenarios. But just as often, companies need such information to create long-term strategies.

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DID YOU KNOW...

Founded in 2003, Broad Sky Networks provides worldleading internet services. The company specializes in 4G LTE wireless Machineto-Machine (M2M) and IoT equipment and services. Currently serving the U.S. and Canada, Broad Sky provides bundled solutions that include low CapEx packages which allow customers to easily deploy primary or business continuity services to meet any budget.

Broad Sky's M2M platform simplifies the management of remote devices, reduces costs, and provides the availability of mission-critical applications. The company was acquired in 2020 by Epic IO.

Mills explains: "Take the new health and wellness expectations that employees and customers have as they enter a facility.

Contactless entry is now a requirement because people no longer want to touch a handle or surface when they walk through a door or use the buttons on an access pin panel — or even press their thumb to a sensor as a form of ID." A growing number of use cases The amount of use cases that M2M and AI — as part of an IoT installation — can leverage is, according to Mills, essentially endless, starting with the simplest situation.

"A great example of applying machineto-machine services is making sure that ultra-cold storage freezers are working, so vaccines don't spoil. That sensor could have 5G or 4G connectivity with an application

EPIC IO

“ At some point I realized that most people wouldn't want me to be the person running the nuclear reactor, so I got into computer technology instead” KEN MILLS CEO, EPIC IO

that is able to send alerts, saying 'Hey! This set of freezers across these multiple sets of manufacturers need to be fixed because they are not going to maintain the necessary temperature to provide proper storage levels for the vaccine."

The demand for such services is closely related to the growth of edge computing, says Mills, who believes that cloud and edge computing is becoming a much more integrated service, rather than one technology outperforming another.

"The use of edge computing is growing because a lot of compute processing is being driven to the edge of campuses and cities and towns and communities.

"Most of the time you need a high level of connectivity to deliver that data fast and accurately. Cellular connectivity is an exceptionally reliable and affordable way to do that."

With smart communities on the rise, along with more automated or “smart manufacturing” in industry and transportation, Epic IO is seeing a massive demand for its services.

"We are now seeing edge technology at traffic intersections being used to improve pedestrian safety and traffic analysis. We can put edge sensors with computational power at an intersection and then wirelessly send that data back to analyze and get results from hundreds or thousands of intersections to understand what's going on,” says Mills.

"We can find out how many nearaccidents there are, what kind of vehicles are passing through, if there are more bikes now than recorded before. When we are armed with that granular level of information, we can adjust to the changing traffic dynamics in the city. Because the ongoing pandemic has changed everyone’s behavior. So, traffic patterns have changed too." businesschief.com

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“ Our ethos is rooted in helping to make the world a smarter, safer, more connected place. Ultimately, that is what we are focused on” KEN MILLS CEO, EPIC IO

The end goal of this data collection, processing, and analytics, much of it in real-time, is, says Mills, to understand what's really happening.

"When you're armed with that information, you can work on reducing pedestrian fatalities to zero — which is a huge deal — by tapping into AI and M2M solutions."

Mills continues, "From a business point of view, connectivity and sensors allow us to build that whole picture for our customers. We use Broad Sky Technology to send that data where it needs to go."

Transformative technology Epic IO's unique combination of services does not only facilitate the needs of businesses.

Mills is passionate about empowering smart communities and fostering the potential to improve living conditions, the environment, and education, through the power of connectivity. This is one of the company's major initiatives for 2021.

"I don't like the term 'smart cities' because it's not accurate," Mills says. "Smart technology can be applied to all types of communities — from villages in India to university campuses — anywhere where people gather around the world. The term ‘city’ implies that only metropolitan areas would benefit from such connectivity. That is not true."

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The work Epic IO is carrying out with IntelliSite is focused on this cause, he says, which will change people's lives for the better.

"How do you register for a vaccine on a web page if you don't have a computer at home?” he asks. “How do students participate in remote learning? The returning awareness of the digital divide has become particularly important. Widespread adoption of iPhones has masked the problem. Equal access to internet bandwidth remains an issue for households that don't have the economic means to purchase different services.

"Epic IO has solutions that are going to be very important in 2021 where we can deploy wireless connectivity to parks and buses and other places where people lacking access to that connectivity can obtain high quality, highly secure services."

EPIC IO

INTELLISITE

2020

Year founded

IoT + AI Technology Industry

200+

Employees

$40M/Year The capability doesn't just involve internet access for education. "At the same time, we can deploy IoT wireless gateways in those locations, enabling cities to run things like smart parking meters, which generate new sources of revenue for the city. Sensors can also be used for air quality, or leak detection in the water system.

"All kinds of different examples can be cited.

For the same investment and that provides wireless connectivity for those who are less fortunate, we can provide additional services to

DID YOU KNOW...

Revenue

Formed in 2001, IntelliSite® provides the industry's most complete IoT and AI-enabled Edge Computing solution powered by their IntelliCore platform. IntelliSite’s applied solutions of Heuristic-Based Monitoring (hBM) - one of the most complete thermal monitoring solutions for elevated body temperature, occupancy management, and people counting - and Smart Communities as-a-Service (SCaaS) - providing solutions that address public safety, intelligent transportation, and healthy living - are utilized by mid-market and enterprise-class customers, partners, and federal, state, and local governments worldwide. IntelliSite is focused on bringing the world together through technology and powering positive change by delivering complete, outcome-based solutions for businesses, governments, and communities worldwide.

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“ A great example of applying machine-to-machine services, is making sure the freezer is working, so the vaccine doesn't spoil” KEN MILLS CEO, EPIC IO

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EPIC IO

every citizen, improving the digitization of the city or the town or the community."

“In some way, we spent 2020 just trying to figure out the best application of this platform for 2021. Now, cities, towns, campuses are going to the next phase to provide high-quality services and resources to their citizens. And our technology, we hope, will play a big part in that."

Epic IO strategy Mills is the first to admit that Epic IO has undergone some radical developments over the past twelve months and that 2021 is looking similarly busy. He laughs and shrugs as he talks about the company's progress.

"Yeah. We acquired three companies, launched a new ERP, launched a new CRM and we built three new products that didn't exist before now. So, 2020 was crazy.

"In 2021, we're launching our new enterprise AI platform. I believe it’s the first enterprise approach to delivering computer vision for customers across many different use cases and across cities, towns, and communities," Mills says proudly.

"You know, our ethos is rooted in helping to make the world a smarter, safer, more connected place. Ultimately, that is what we are focused on."

Mills says big tech providers like Cisco and Dell are committed to creating a better world through technology. "Even though we are much smaller than them, I believe we also have a responsibility and an opportunity to accomplish that with our technology, too. We are very interested in building solutions with integrated software and hardware technologies that are used for good and applied in the right way to drive a better, safer, smarter, more connected world."

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FLOOID

HEADLESS COMMERCE FOR A NEW ERA OF RETAIL

WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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FLOOID

Flooid’s unified commerce solutions concentrate on the heavy lifting of basket management and pricing, leaving retailers free to concentrate on their customers

A

year ago, give or take, PCMS rebranded as Flooid. But the decision to change the name of the company was far from a whim. A slew of vendors in the point-of-sale market had initial-based names, and PCMS wanted to break free from being clubbed in with POSonly providers. As Flooid was born out of PCMS’ ashes, the board was intent on getting the message out that while POS was part of it’s offering, it wasn’t the whole package.

“We felt doing a rebrand would create a bit of noise in the market,” explains Flooid CEO EMEA Martyn Osborne. “Point of sale is just one of the things we provide to retailers, but we’ve always provided a slightly different mix of capabilities beyond just POS. We were able to amplify some of the other things we do.”

Osborne, who’s been with the business for 24 years, took the helm at the time of the rebrand. His roles in product development and operations mean he’s been heavily invested in the operational side of the business.

Customer experience is at the heart of Flooid’s selfcheckout technology.

Essential retail It hasn’t necessarily all been a smooth ride.

Many of Flooid’s customers are essential retailers: grocers, FMCG, health and beauty/ pharmacy, all to some extent protected from the worst retail fallout from Covid19 restrictions on opening. Another vertical for the company is fast fashion, which has businesschief.com

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“ The rebrand gave us an opportunity to amplify some of the other things we do” MARTYN OSBORNE CEO, FLOOID

been hit harder by the global pandemic.

Fortunately for Flooid, because the company serves all retail verticals the work with essential retailers has helped balance the challenges seen in other retail sectors.

“We knew that some of our clients would be hit harder than others,” Osborne admits, “and this situation has certainly presented challenges.” On the plus side, convenience and supermarket operators “have fared better and they’ve innovated their way through it.”

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in its customers’ decision making. Even customers who have a tendency to “dibble around a bit” have sharpened their courses.

“We’ve seen a big acceleration of things like self-service and mobile payments within the supermarket area. We’ve seen some really quick decision making that would normally take months, and it’s been done in weeks.”

Build the platform, not the product One of Flooid’s strengths is that despite a broad portfolio that takes in pricing management, promotions, loyalty schemes

FLOOID

MARTYN OSBORNE TITLE: CEO COMPANY: FLOOID INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: WEST MIDLANDS, UK

and basket management on and offline, it doesn’t offer consumer apps. “We provide all the heavy lifting,” Osborne explains, “and the key thing is pricing consistency. If you think about consumer applications, it’s very different to building industrial apps. And we’ve decided not to build the consumer applications because we don’t do enough of it to be good at it consistently, every day. We work with a couple of partners and we’ve also extended the platform capabilities so that the retailer themselves can build their own assets. And this is key

EXECUTIVE BIO

Martyn Osborne is EMEA Chief Executive Officer, Group co-CEO and Group CPO of Flooid whose unified commerce platform technology is transforming the in-store experience and helping some of the biggest retail brands create frictionless customer journeys regardless of where a consumer decides to begin their shopping experience – whether it is online, in a store, or on a mobile app.

Flooid and Intel: Enhancing the retail experience Flooid and Intel are enhancing the retail experience with a unified commerce edge-to-cloud solution that provides retailers with the ability to seamlessly follow the customer through the shopping journey. Flooid is also proud to be a member of Intel’s Open Retail Initiative (ORI); a collaborative effort to accelerate iteration, flexibility and innovation at scale. With Intel and Flooid every touchpoint can be a transaction and every customer experience a discovery.

LEARN MORE

The future you’re building starts here

For retailers, being open for business means being open to innovation.

Innovation that redefines what’s possible in store and inspires shopper loyalty across every channel.

“Surprise and delight” is all about timing. Having the right AI and analytics at the edge means your touchpoints are smart enough to know when the time is right. And what messages will turn your customers’ shopping experience into a truly remarkable one.

Let’s make retail remarkable.

Visit intel.com/retail © Intel Corporation. Intel, the Intel logo, and other Intel marks are trademarks of Intel Corporation or its subsidiaries.

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FLOOID

“ It’s no longer just how we’ll build the tool. It’s how can we build solutions that we can bring partners into the ecosystem that add value” MARTYN OSBORNE CEO, FLOOID

– in retail, we find that retailers want to build some of this capability in house rather than relying on a vendor to produce it.

“It’s changed how we think about the product investment and how we think about the solution. It’s no longer just how we’ll build the tool. It’s how can we build solutions that we can bring partners into the ecosystem that add value. How can 346

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we bring solutions to market that enable retailers to build some of their own assets on top of that platform?”

Headless commerce Flooid calls this approach the headless commerce platform. This architecture allows retailers the flexibility to separate the front and back end solutions and

FLOOID

Flooid dashboard reporting provides deep insight.

provides the flexibility to enrich the customer experience. Effectively it’s a set of tools that runs centrally in the cloud, allowing retailers to run POS, basket management and pricing. That means the customer can alter pricing in tandem in physical retail and on its ecommerce platform, and everything is run in a secure, centralised location.

“Whether you’re going into a store with an app on your phone, or you’re going to the checkout, or the self-checkout, if you come out of there with the same basket of goods, whether you bought it using a selfcheckout or POS or on your phone, the receipt will look the same. The items on the receipt will be the same and, crucially, the price and promotion calculation will be identical. That’s actually quite hard to pull off because getting consistency between different systems such as a POS and consumer mobile, which operate differently, isn’t that easy – invariably

Flooid: headless commerce for a new era of retail

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you’ll get inconsistencies with how things are done if it's not done properly.

“We’ve used many of the same technology assets in the headless commerce solution of what they’ve got running in a POS. They’re making changes to it quite frequently and they don’t want to rely on a vendor like us adding shopping lists and changing the graphics. We sell them the API, we sell them the engine and we charge it on a transaction basis, so there’s very little upfront cost to that.”

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manifestation of the rebrand – pulling sharp focus on software that seamlessly works across the retail spectrum, while offering customers the option to build the bit that’s seen by the people they know best: their customers.

Osborne feels the solution also fits with a world in which companies no longer want to be locked into a single monolithic vendor, which supplies every facet of their technology set-up. “I really feel the days of the single vendor coming in as a one-stop shop are, if not ended, then limited. Retailers are savvy, and they’ve got some really smart people in house as well that can do some of this. I

FLOOID

Flooid exhibits at an industry event.

think providing basket management – heavy lifting – is still in the vendor space, but the experiential side of it – apps and things – are quite personal and need to be tied into the brand offering.”

Small change Not all of Flooid’s customers are huge supermarkets. Osborne talks about customers which have between 400 to 1,000 shops. “They’re more inclined to take something that’s more turnkey. They generally don’t take as long as some of the big guys to make a decision, but they are still in the best of breed area, and they will

choose the best ecomm platform, they’ll choose the best POS. They might not have the propensity to build stuff themselves, but they still have the propensity to go out and get the best solution – best for the job, not just buy it all from one place. So actually, the strategy is working for us.

“And it helps with entry points, too.

So even if a customer is talking about replacing their point of sale, that might be a nine-month job and in essence we’re going to sell you a newer, shiny version of something you already have.

We can say ‘why don’t we start the project somewhere else? What can’t you do with your current platform?’ You might not be able to do mobile, or some of the omnichannel journeys. Why don’t we start with those and do the POS piece at the end?

So you deliver some really early value in the lifecycle chain. Our sales approach and strategy approach plays really well for what the market wants. And we get told that it’s refreshing that we’re not trying to land-grab everything. We’re trying to be really good at what we do, but we know where our boundaries are.”

As retail adjusts with its customers – to online, to self-checkout, to click-andcollect and to whatever is added to the basket of shopping requirements in future – it’s the platform that has to remain robust, and that’s what Flooid’s platform is delivering.

Security in aisle nine Speaking of robust, there is of course an element of security. Federico ‘Fred’ Vezzani is Head of Site Reliability Engineering at Flooid. For him, the key is to keep pace with the constantly changing threat landscape. “There are three major steps,” he says. “You need to monitor businesschief.com

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everything, then you need to verify everything, then you need to encrypt everything.

“You need to have cyber defence solutions, for sure. In order to verify everything, you need to understand who is actually using the system, so you need digital identities and then to encrypt everything.

You need data protection systems. The technologies are changing really fast and that requires constant adaptation.”

What adaptation? “The biggest transformation is from old-school IT teams to Site Reliability Engineering and DevOps. It’s all about breaking down barriers and automating routine work. Our engineers should work 50 per cent on manual work, and 50 per cent to remove that work.”

Digital transformation in retail Covid-19 has sped the journey of retail bricks and mortar towards a hybrid future where shoppers are online and in the store, potentially at the same time. Attitudes to payments are changing, led by the increased use of contactless payments and, owing to their higher payment ceilings, mobile.

Osborne sees the change in payment habits becoming permanent. “These big accelerations we’ve seen due to Covid are not going to go away,” he predicts. “Once you’ve got the ability to go into M&S to buy a sandwich for your lunch on your phone, and you can get in and out very quickly, why are you ever going to stand in a queue again? And we’ve definitely seen those things as part of the digital transformation having a big impact within the store. They’d started anyway, but Covid has accelerated things like contactless payments. Those things have a big impact within the digital space within the store.”

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Flooid powers many self-service capabilities including FlooidPay a simple, safe contactless payment option.

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THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD

DELIVERING PATIENT CARE THROUGH INNOVATION DELIVERING PATIENT CARE THROUGH INNOVATION WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS

PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

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THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD

Wayne Young, CEO of The Harris Center for Mental Health and Intellectual and Developmental Disability (IDD), tells us how they’re using the latest technology to deliver patient care on the streets of Houston.

T

Wayne Young

he biggest thing that drives us is our mission, which is to transform the lives of people with behavioral health and IDD needs" Young says. "Everything comes back to that – how we’re trying to meet the needs of our community, the individuals that are receiving our services, and in some cases, those individuals that need our services, but haven't found their way to us yet.”

Technology, and going through a digital change, seemed like a clear way to achieve this goal. “The concept of transformation exists throughout our organization, and digital happens to be a part of it. It seemed intuitive to us that if we're radically rethinking how we meet the needs of our community, that we lend a fair amount of consideration to technology and digital approaches to meet those needs.”

“As a fairly traditional public mental health system, it's been a bit of a journey, but we’ve made significant inroads. Our CORE program is one of these efforts.”

“CORE is the Clinician and Officer Remote Evaluation program we implemented in collaboration with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. At its most basic element, the program uses a HIPAA-compliant technology platform to connect law enforcement officers with a crisis mental health clinician at the time of a 911 dispatch businesschief.com

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Closing the technology gap in healthcare | Wayne Young | The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD

to a call with a mental health component to it.Our crisis clinicians provide support, clinical assessment and recommendations on appropriate call resolution.”

To do this the Harris Center equipped law enforcement partners with tablets,and launched the program as a year-long pilot in 2018. “We've had some really tremendous outcomes” Young says. Law enforcement partners have noted decreased utilization of emergency rooms, improved decision making, reduced time on calls, and identification of alternative resources as just of a few of the benefits of the program.

“When officers are dispatched they may or may not have any idea that there’s a mental health component influencing what's happening with that 911 call. With a tablet they literally have to click one or two icons to connect to our crisis clinicians via a telehealth system.”

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involved, helping both them and law enforcement decide what the next step is, and whether it’s necessary to send further community based support such as a mobile crisis team, or if a hospital visit is required.

CORE has been tremendously successful – less than 1% of the individuals involved in response calls in the pilot ended up going to jail. “We were able to find alternative responses, and what initially looked like a 911 police call turned into an opportunity to provide the person with support and services.”

THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD

“The biggest thing that drives us is our mission, which is to transform the lives of people with behavioral health and IDD needs”

WAYNE YOUNG TITLE: CEO INDUSTRY: HOSPITAL & HEALTH CARE LOCATION: TEXAS Wayne Young is the Chief Executive Officer of The Harris Center for Mental Health and IDD, the state-designated Local Mental Health Authority and Local Intellectual and Developmental Disability Authority for Harris County, Texas. As the CEO of one of the largest behavioral health organizations in the nation, Wayne is passionate about the planning and delivery of large-scale behavioral health and intellectual and developmental disabilities services to a population who rely upon safety net systems of care.

Wayne previously served as the chair of the Texas Health and Human Services Commission Behavioral Health Advisory Council and was recently appointed to the Texas Judicial Commission on Mental Health. In 2019, Wayne was honored to have been named to Modern Healthcare’s list of Top 25 Innovators and to have received the Charley H. Shannon Advocate for Justice Award from NAMI Texas.

WAYNE YOUNG

The next phase is to expand the program so that around 200 tablets are made available to Harris County’s law enforcement officers and first responders. Young explains why this next phase is important: “Law enforcement want to do a good job and they understand the mental health implications, but they sign up to be police officers, not mental health counsellors. How we leverage our expertise, and make that expertise available to them, is critical.”

“Sometimes there's a safety component – there are times when law enforcement responds to mental health calls and there are outcomes that are less than desirable.

One quarter of police-involved shootings are linked to mental illness, half of which occur in the person’s own home. So it’s thinking about how we provide them with the tools to deal with these situations and have a safe outcome for both the officer and the individual that's the subject of the call.

Ultimately we want to get them care and support, as opposed to an arrest or being put in jail.”

The program’s elements are HIPAAcompliant, and they’ve leveraged the

EXECUTIVE BIO

CEO, THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY

Verizon Frontline is honored to support the Harris County Center and the Harris County Sheriff Department in enabling their communities to allow law enforcement and mental health professionals improve the lives and experiences of people with mental illness.

Verizon: Transforming communication at the Harris Center Jason Taylor, Verizon, and Wayne Young, the Harris Center, discuss how their organizations’ collaboration has enabled a new approach to healthcare comms.

“Verizon might primarily be known for its network, but we prefer to say that we’re a technology company that brings solutions to customers,” states Jason Taylor, Executive Lead for the Public Sector.

Wayne Young, CEO of the Harris Center, reflects that, when deciding how best to implement remote evaluation capabilities for clinicians and police officers, the company was intent on only collaborating with well-established partners. “At its core, what we’re trying to do is utilize technology to make law enforcement more efficient and improve the lives of people with mental illness. To achieve this task, we needed a reliable partner whom we could trust.” The answer was Verizon.

“Verizon’s focus was to make sure that citizens or patients that needed to engage with the Harris Center could do so while retaining that personal touch,” Taylor explains. This proved to be a complex task requiring rigorous planning that went beyond simply supplying technology, “We looked at getting the right connectivity, making sure we provided the correct devices, and then securing everything to protect the flow of communication.”

The Harris Center’s innovative approach also makes it an ideological match for Verizon, positioning itself to always focus on the future, which in turn makes for a highly collaborative partnership. “We’re both focused on making a positive impact and as we move into the world of 5G, I believe that solutions and benefits will open up for communities that we haven’t even imagined yet.”

Young praises Verizon for always providing a solid, ‘behind-the-scenes’ service that’s seamless, scalable, reliable. “We needed a partner who could think flexibly and be agile with us as we solve problems in new and innovative ways,” he concludes. “Working with Verizon, I think the future is looking bright.”

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THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD

capabilities of Verizon and Lifesize to facilitate it. “When we first set out to start CORE it was a concept at best. We had questions about connectivity, about whether the tablets would work, whether we’d be able to see people at night or if we would be able to hear people next to busy roads.”

Young explains.

“We wanted to build on our learnings, so in those early phases we would literally reach out to Verizon and say, ‘we had a call in this area and the signal wasn't very strong, how do we boost that, and can you help?’

They were always responsive. The interface needed to be simple for an officer to use out on the road, and we needed to be able to do a crisis assessment in the middle of a shopping center for instance. It can’t be complicated.”

“Our partners were willing to come alongside us when the concept of a real time mental health crisis response in partnership with law enforcement was unproven and unconventional. They've been tremendous – collaborative, responsive, and scalable.”

Young explains the medium of telehealth is well suited to behavioral health care.

“It requires significantly less physical evaluations than other forms of healthcare.

Talk and interactions are critical and the assessment process relies more on communication than traditional physical assessments. Our usage of telehealth as a platform for service delivery has gone up exponentially since the pandemic began.

We operate a lot of community-facing emergency crisis services that still have to be in-person, but we pivoted a large number of people to work remotely very quickly.

“We’ve developed some best practices around how to do this well, because we want to keep a close eye on people who are not receiving home visits any more 360

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THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD

“It seemed intuitive to us that if we're radically rethinking how we meet the needs of our community, that we lend a fair amount of consideration to technology and digital approaches to meet those needs” WAYNE YOUNG

CEO, THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY

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“Law enforcement partners have noted decreased utilization of emergency rooms, improved decision making, reduced time on calls, and identification of alternative resources as just of a few of the benefits of the program” WAYNE YOUNG

CEO, THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY

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Meet Stephen: Harris County Mental Health Jail Diversion Program

due to the pandemic. For those we are currently serving, people have maintained a pretty healthy trajectory and we're not seeing dramatic increases in needs for crisis services than usual. However, we have seen a sharp (15%) rise in the mental health utilization across Houston due to the impact of the pandemic. We have relied upon telehealth to increase our capacity so that we could serve more people during this challenging time.”

Delivering consultations virtually is also enabling them to reach more people. “It's more accessible for some people, and makes outreach easier,” Young says. “But there are also some challenges, for instance not everyone has broadband access, and

many of the people we serve have pre-paid cell plans which makes it a challenge for them to use a significant amount of minutes on telehealth services. We’re having to think about how we work with strategic partners to improve access so we can continue delivering this type of care.”

They are also considering the long-term impact of the pandemic, in terms of social isolation and the lack of connectedness most people are experiencing. “To support our community during these difficult times, we operate a statewide COVID-19 support line for Texas Health and Human Services Commission. We get calls every day from people that maybe aren't in crisis, but need to talk to someone. We're businesschief.com

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“It won't be long before most people want to receive care, particularly behavioral health care, delivered through their cell phone, and we need to respond to that demand” WAYNE YOUNG

CEO, THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND INTELLECTUAL AND DEVELOPMENTAL DISABILITY

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THE HARRIS CENTER FOR MENTAL HEALTH AND IDD

seeing that impact across our communities – individuals who may not have previously had a mental health concern, but are being impacted by the environment we're in. I think we're all impacted by it to some degree, it just depends how connected we are to support in our communities and how effective that support is in helping us manage this really challenging time.”

In the next few years, one of their strategic priorities is to deliver "care anywhere". "It won't be long before most people want to receive care, particularly behavioral health care, delivered through their cell phone, and we need to respond to that demand.

There is a reason that behavioral healthcare has more no shows than other types of healthcare. People often disengage from treatment and one factor is about convenience and responsiveness. We've got to turn this on its head and be responsive. We've now proven we can be agile and we can get really creative about it – my vision is for us to provide care in a variety of different formats and locations to meet people's needs in the way they want us to. Technology and digital health will support that vision."

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Datorama: AI-powered marketing intelligence Salesforce Datorama enables marketers to optimise their marketing budget for maximum efficiency and business impact WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

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arketers are always looking at ways to improve the impact of their campaigns and drive business growth which is why they are turning to Salesforce Datorama.

Created a decade ago by marketing professionals for marketers seeking to gain a competitive edge - especially in today’s commercial landscape shaped by uncertainty and the Covid-19 pandemic - Datorama is the leading cloud-based, AI-powered marketing intelligence and analytics platform for enterprises, agencies and publishers.

Datorama is the only intelligence platform that helps marketers connect all of their data, uncover deep marketing insights and better understand campaign performance.

With Datorama, marketers can also create, distribute and access powerful marketing analytics apps with speed and ease.

“Our goal for the past 10 years is being able to help our customers automate their data and digital insights to transform their business,” said Boaz Ram, Head of Technology Partnerships at Datorama.

DATORAMA

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“ Our goal for the past 10 years is being able to help our customers automate their data and digital insights to transform their business” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

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Founded in 2012 in Tel Aviv, Datorama was acquired by Salesforce for a reported $800 million in 2018. The high-profile purchase promised marketers, ‘one unified view of data and insights… to optimise engagement at scale’.

Datorama enables more than 3,000 leading global agencies and brands including PepsiCo, Ticketmaster, Trivago, Unilever, Pernod Ricard and Foursquare - to optimise marketing campaigns, automate reporting and make data-driven decisions faster.

Datorama marketplace The Datorama marketplace extends the power of the Datorama’s marketing intelligence capabilities by enabling developers to create custom apps that marketers can discover and use on their platform.

The marketplace features prebuilt apps from partners, like Xandr, Brandwatch and Pinterest which helps

DATORAMA

BOAZ RAM TITLE: HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS COMPANY: DATORAMA INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE

EXECUTIVE BIO

to improve marketing analytics and democratising them.

Ram said that Datorama set out to simplify the process for marketers who have more than 3,0000 platforms to choose from when looking to reach the alldigital customer across every touchpoint.

“Every Platform has its own data set, usually they work in silos and then it becomes extremely hard for marketers to understand. There is too much data to choose from and understand how they impact on each other, what's the return on investment (ROI) or the efficacy of a specific campaign,” he said.

“So that's what Datorama is built for. The purpose is to help marketers ingest all these different data sources from all these faces, all these platforms into a single coherent data model. It then enables marketers to create reports and dashboards to drive cross channel real time insights which helps optimise their marketing.”

Boaz is currently the Head of Technology Partnerships at Salesforce Datorama, and is part of the Datorama Management team. In his current role he manages all types of technology partnerships, including building an ecosystem of partners around the Datorama Marketplace.

Prior to joining Datorama, Boaz served in different product leadership roles for the past 15 years, in Adobe, Yahoo, and Mediamind/Sizmek/Amazon.

Datorama is Boaz's third acquisition in his last four companies. Boaz specializes in Product Management, Product Strategy, Partnerships and Marketplaces, Marketing Technology, Advertising Technology and B2B in general, and has vast experience in building growth products and acquisitions.

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Salesforce acquired Datorama for a reported

$800mn Enables more than

3,000

global agencies and brands to optimise campaigns

Founded in Tel Aviv in

2012

“ We are built by marketers for marketers” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

Artificial Intelligence (AI) gives Datorama the power to drive the marketing platform giving it a competitive edge as it is able to map, model and harmonise data at speed. This enables it to make smarter decisions for clients.

“We are built by marketers for marketers, and we understand marketing - other platforms are more generic. That means we have a model that is structured for marketing,” commented Ram. He pointed out that AI-driven technology allows Datorama to look at data and highlights different aspects that can help customers optimise their data. “These insights can advise a marketer on the best regions or times to run their campaigns for a better ROI.” Value of ecosystems Ram emphasises the importance of ecosystems to Datorama comparing their businesschief.com

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“ These insights can advise a marketer on the best regions or times to run their campaigns for a better ROI” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

successful business model to how Apple evolved their iPhone.

“Ecosystem is my favorite subject. I like to use the iPhone analogy. When the iPhone was launched in 2007 it did not have an app store. When it came out, it was just a smarter phone,” he said.

“Although it introduced the internet to the palm of your hand, it couldn't extend its capability to do other things. The app store only came out in the third generation of the iPhone, which was in 2009.

“Think about how we use the smartphone today - very little for actual phone calls or texting and more for banking or shopping which comes from other vendors and partners that built apps for the iPhone.

“And that's really the concept of Datorama’s Marketplace ecosystem. It's basically to democratise the platform and help our partners and customers build solutions, using our technology and really expand the capabilities and the breadth of the solutions that we have beyond what we thought was possible.”

Ram said that although Datorama has an “awesome engineering and product team” 372

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Boaz Ram from Datorama talks about digital marketing from a data perspective

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“ And that's really the concept of Datorama’s Marketplace ecosystem. To democratise the platform and help our partners and customers build solutions, using our technology and really expand the capabilities and the breadth of the solutions that we have beyond what we thought was possible” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

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2012

Year founded

519

Number of employees

$75.3mn Revenue USD (2019)

they're limited in resources. “Partners that can think beyond our spend and resources and expand the capabilities of the platform to help our customers leverage their solutions - so that's the power.”

Datorama has an app with Brandwatch which allows marketers to understand the reach of paid campaigns, not just organic, which is a major benefit for anyone on social media.

“We have an ecosystem of consulting partners and system integrators, like Accenture and Deloitte and smaller companies like Nabler, which help us sell Datorama as an extension of our sales and customer service teams which will help us scale. And that's something that we've expanded and learned a lot.

Solutions for ecommerce The restrictions imposed by the COVID19 pandemic from remote working and lockdowns has seen marketers turning to Datorama to focus their online sales.

“Everyone's turning to ecommerce and now there's a need for a lot of website analytics, a lot of ecommerce solutions and integrations with ecommerce sites like Shopify, Amazon and Walmart,” said Ram. “A lot of the things that we saw happening in small steps during the past eight years really accelerated in a way that no one thought was possible during the first eight months of the pandemic. I think ecommerce will stay and grow stronger.”

Salesforce acquisition When Salesforce acquired Datorama three years ago it opened up global markets and took it to the next level. “It brought in massive scale to roll into the Salesforce machine and that changes a lot of our processes,” commented Ram. businesschief.com

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POWER OF THE DATORAMA DEVELOPER PORTAL Datorama’s Marketplace includes Salesforce apps, as well as apps from customers and partners that have been built using the Datorama Developer Portal. These include: • Salesforce Marketing Cloud Cmail: Offers customers interactive analytics that help benchmark and measure the effectiveness of email marketing campaigns • Xandr Invest Essential Monitoring: Identifies ad server discrepancies and surfaces KPI performance trends for marketers to optimise campaigns and budgets more effectively • Workspace Health: Monitors data quality across every marketing source in one actionable view • Social intelligence: Compares brand presence for competitive insights across Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn and Twitter • SmartLens Apps: The following apps deliver improved reporting for top marketing sources by displaying KPIs, trends and instant analytics

“ A really good leader needs to define a vision, have the ability to articulate it and finally the determination and conviction to go ahead with it” BOAZ RAM

HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY PARTNERSHIPS, DATORAMA

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“We've grown in size with the acquisition and in relation to the global resources open to us. Salesforce is an amazing company to work - as I think, it has the right heart in place - especially with its involvement in philanthropy.”

Looking ahead, Ram says the proliferation of marketing solutions is ever-changing.

“It's a very dynamic industry, Apple recently announced that, as part of the iOS 14 update, it will be giving users the choice to block the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) identifier at the app level.

“This is going to kill the option to track campaigns using their Apple phones. And that's a major change in the industry.”

According to reports, Apple has taken the strategic stance that privacy is a user right and is currently taking steps to grant users more ability to opt-out of any type of targeting or

tracking the change is expected to occur across Apple’s entire product portfolio.

IDFA is a unique identifier for mobile devices and is used to target and measure the effectiveness of advertising on a user level across mobile devices.

Looking ahead how technology will shape the industry in the near future, Ram predicts cryptocurrency will take off - not just as a speculative financial tool - but as an actual currency to be used in retail and marketing.

“I think it's, it's getting to the point where it's mature enough and safe enough for some of these currencies. I'm excited to see how the GameStop drama pans out.”

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KDDI TELEHOUSE

CONNECTIVITY IS OUR CORE STRENGTH WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

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Ryo Kurita

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Creating a seamless experience for the end user is the result of a visionary approach in global connectivity services from KDDI TELEHOUSE

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onnectivity is the core strength of KDDI TELEHOUSE which seems apt for a company that was conceived in the same year as the first text message was successfully sent to a Motorola beeper.

KDDI TELEHOUSE is a single source provider for colocation, cloud migration and connectivity services. According to General Manager, Ryo Kurita, the company predicted a shift in data management 30 years ago.

Today, it has a global footprint of more than 40 data centres offering support for startups to Fortune 500 companies – showing its visionary strategy has been successful.

While the world was perfecting online networks, KDDI TELEHOUSE was perfecting the infrastructure to support the increasing demand for network operations they predicted was coming.

KDDI TELEHOUSE is one of the leading providers of carrier-neutral data centres from Shanghai to Paris and with personnel around the world including San Francisco where Kurita spoke from his office about the importance of a rock solid digital infrastructure to support data – which is getting bigger every day.

“ Connectivity is our core strength” RYO KURITA

GENERAL MANAGER, KDDI TELEHOUSE

“Connectivity is our core strength,” said Kurita who pointed out the company now has a presence of over 40 data centres covering 10 countries including London, New York and Frankfurt.

Ongoing investments by $48 billion Japanese parent company, KDDI, ensures it is one of the most financially stable providers in the industry. KDDI is a Global Fortune 300 Company and continuously invests in its facilities and services.

Kurita commented there can be some confusion over KDDI and TELEHOUSE. “They are basically the same company,” he said.

“KDDI is the parent company of TELEHOUSE and the second largest telecom carrier out of Japan. It provides comprehensive global ICT solutions such as system integration, cloud migration, Internet of Things (IoT), network services and related IT services.

TELEHOUSE is the brand name of the data centre arm and originally established in New York in 1989 and London Docklands opened as our first purpose-built colocation facility in Europe in 1990,” he said.

Connecting mission-critical systems As more enterprises seek ways to re-invent themselves online and stay agile to survive the fallout from the pandemic there are more calls than ever for faster data speed – a call KDDI TELEHOUSE is answering.

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KDDI TELEHOUSE: Connectivity is our core strength

“ Throughout our whole 30 year journey we've focused on positioning ourselves to be a connectivity data centre provider, enabling an ecosystem that our customers can leverage to easily connect with each other, and then enjoy rich connectivity in our facilities” RYO KURITA

GENERAL MANAGER, KDDI TELEHOUSE

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trust KDDI TELEHOUSE to guard their missioncritical systems.

KDDI TELEHOUSE provides a neutral, scalable peering infrastructure that assures a reliable stable internet connectivity which is a simpler option for faster connections between network, content and cloud providers. Many of the world’s major Internet Exchanges (IX) are established and operating in TELEHOUSE facilities worldwide.

The TELEHOUSE Docklands campus is known as the home to the London Internet Exchange (LINX), the world largest internet exchange carrying a huge amount of European and global internet traffic. Across the waters, TELEHOUSE Paris Voltaire hosts multiple IXs including France IX, and TELEHOUSE America operates NYIIX in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. All are significant hub locations for the backbone of the global internet.

Similarly, in Japan, TELEHOUSE Tokyo Otemachi collocates the largest IX in Japan, JPIX, enabling an ecosystem of

KDDI TELEHOUSE

providers that result in quicker, more stable connectivity to the average person on the street and in their homes.

“One of our iconic campuses is London Docklands where we strategically established a carrier neutral data centre and the most connected data centre in the world,” said Kurita. “Throughout our whole 30 year journey we've focused on positioning ourselves to be a connectivity data centre provider, enabling an ecosystem that our customers can leverage to easily connect with each other, and then enjoy rich connectivity in our facilities.”

RYO KURITA TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: CALIFORNIA Customer-focused and datadriven is how Ryo Kurita, General Manager of KDDI TELEHOUSE, describes his leadership strategy with the KDDI TELEHOUSE. Kurita started his career journey with KDDI 15 years ago working at their Japanese headquarters in Tokyo where he focused on the nonJapanese enterprise market including data centres, mobile phones and fixed network services.

“I relocated to the San Francisco Bay area seven years ago with extended responsibility to lead the team that maintains the relationships with all major US global companies on a global scale,” he said.

Low latency and cost-effective connections With many of the world’s largest cloud providers already established in TELEHOUSE Data Centres, global businesses can benefit from these low latency and costeffective connections. The KDDI TELEHOUSE ecosystem also provides a platform for its customers to connect with more than 3,000 business partners in the TELEHOUSE ecosystem. The private network ensures accelerated access to applications hosted in

$48bn 40+

Global data centers in 10 countries, giving flexibility and scalability

190

Countries have global network coverage

EXECUTIVE BIO

in revenue for Japanese parent company, KDDI

KDDI TELEHOUSE

“ One of our iconic campuses is London Docklands where we strategically established the carrier neutral data centre and most connected data centre in the world” RYO KURITA

GENERAL MANAGER, KDDI TELEHOUSE

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KDDI TELEHOUSE

1989

TELEHOUSE data centre opens at the Teleport, New York, USA

1990

TELEHOUSE Docklands was established and became the home of the London Internet Exchange

1999

TelehouseVoltaire opens in Paris

2000

TELEHOUSE expands in Asia with Hong Kong

2012

TELEHOUSE expands further in Europe with a Frankfurt location

2017

TELEHOUSE launches its cloud connectivity service “TELEHOUSE Cloud Link”

2020

TELEHOUSE launches new fourth facilities in Frankfurt and fifth in Tama, Tokyo

2022

TELEHOUSE is expanding its iconic London Docklands campus, and will open TELEHOUSE South businesschief.com

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KDDI TELEHOUSE

“ I think that is a reason why our customers choose TELEHOUSE – to be able to provide a better user experience for their end users” RYO KURITA

GENERAL MANAGER, KDDI TELEHOUSE

public, private or hybrid clouds.

Commenting on what the competitive edge is for KDDI TELEHOUSE, Kurita re-emphasised that “connectivity is our core strength. Customers can connect with all kinds of ISPs, carriers, contents providers and hyperscalers. Many people who use smartphones, or enjoy online services such as SMS gaming or streaming services, are all accessing cloud services – some without realising it,” he said.

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“Many people are accessing cloud services knowingly or unknowingly by using Apple or Google products to some degree. Being able to connect with those cloud and content providers, as well as carriers or ISPs in a faster and easier way is a critical component for all service providers who run their businesses over the internet. I think that is a reason why our customers choose TELEHOUSE – to be able to provide a better user experience for their end users,” he said.

As one of the most widely connected ecosystems globally, TELEHOUSE Carrier Interconnect brings together more than

KDDI TELEHOUSE

750 connectivity partners – such as leading global Internet Exchanges and Tier 1 carriers – with all the major mobile, cloud and content providers as well as enterprises and financial services companies.

Outlining the importance of partnerships with hyperscalers, Kurita said that from a data centre provider perspective, some of their data centres like London Docklands or Paris Voltaire were selected as AWS Direct Connect or Microsoft Azure ExpressRoute locations.

“It is not only a data centre provider relationship, we also support these huge cloud businesses in multiple ways. For example

DID YOU KNOW...

POWER OF PARENT COMPANY: KDDI The parent company of TELEHOUSE is KDDI, a global fortune 300 Japanese telecom and system integration provider.

Established in 1953, KDDI has been operating as a leading telecommunication provider in Japan for over 60 years serving more than 60 million users and providing its own successful brand of handsets.

With about 45,000 employees worldwide, KDDI has more than 100 offices in 28 countries around the world, supporting clients locally. With a diverse portfolio of services, KDDI owns and operates a number of global subsidiaries to ensure their clients have access to the best performing end-to-end ICT infrastructure.

KDDI’s offers a full-scale end-toend international network services to more than 190 countries. This enables customers with overseas subsidiaries to build full-mesh global networks by accessing KDDI’s Global network.

KDDI maintains Network Operations Centers (NOC) in its TELEHOUSE sites to monitor the network infrastructure of customers to ensure their performance is uninterrupted.

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“ We help many enterprises adapt to make their business sustainable and efficient now and in the future” RYO KURITA

GENERAL MANAGER, KDDI TELEHOUSE

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with TELEHOUSE Cloud Link, we provide a platform for companies to access multiple cloud providers, including Google, AWS, and Microsoft. Another example is last year when we launched AWS Wavelength in Japan showing how KDDI TELEHOUSE can bring connectivity and cloud together. We have AWS Wavelength equipment located in our data centres right at the edge of our mobile network in Japan. This enables AWS users to develop and launch their applications at the edge of the network to leverage the ultra low latency and high bandwidth over our 5G network. These are just some examples of how we are going to strengthen such partnerships with these hyperscale cloud providers.”

Always looking ahead KDDI TELEHOUSE leverages decades of experience in technology to anticipate

KDDI TELEHOUSE

where their customers will be tomorrow.

Their Tokyo research and development engineers are investing in developing technologies that will be game-changers in our future.

“We help many enterprises adapt to make their business sustainable and efficient now and in the future,” said Kurita.

“One good example is in the IoT arena.

Our IoT solution was adopted by some major automobile companies and our SIM cards are embedded into their automobiles on a global scale. For instance, KDDI has collaborated with Toyota Motor North America and AT&T who provide 4G LTE connectivity. It’s adding a feature of data communications to the legacy car function itself – our platform is helping those automobile companies to collect and analyse the behavior of how they drive. I think that is a very exciting business model shift.

open to this as long as it had synergy with their existing service portfolio.

Looking ahead, Kurita outlined some of the main expansion plans for TELEHOUSE. “We’ll be launching our new Dockland campus, TELEHOUSE South in early 2022 which is just 300 meters from our existing London Docklands campus. A network of dark fiber cables will facilitate integration with the existing Dockland campus. This location enables customers to benefit from low latency

TELEHOUSE DOCKLANDS – WORLD’S MOST CONNECTED DATA CENTRE

DID YOU KNOW...

Strategic acquisitions On the subject of global acquisitions, Kurita said, not limited to the data centre business, but for KDDI as a whole, they were always

TELEHOUSE Docklands North became Europe's first purposebuilt neutral colocation facility when it opened in 1990 and is the most connected data centre in the world.

London Internet Exchange (LINX) traffic has been moving through the carrier-neutral TELEHOUSE campus since 1994 due to the number of carriers present in the data centre and the level of latency.

In August 2016, TELEHOUSE Europe added to the facility and opened a $177 million North Two data centre of 24,000 square metres which is the only UK data centre to own a 132 kV on-campus grid substation that is directly connected to the National Grid, reducing transmission losses and improving power density and service continuity.

TELEHOUSE London North is listed as most populated data centre in EMEA by the data centre rankings working with more than 530 network carriers, ISPs and ASPs.

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“ I predict that data centre demands are going to be on a more micro a level and spread around more locations with the combination of a shorter latency path” RYO KURITA

GENERAL MANAGER, KDDI TELEHOUSE

and access the highly connected environment and dense ecosystem.

“We are also adding a couple of more megawatts capacity in Paris and Frankfurt as well and during the last year we also opened a large Tokyo data centre campus – what we call “Tama 5” – that gives us plenty of space to build even more data centre capacity in the future.

“As a connectivity data centre provider we'll continue to expand our data centre portfolio on a global scale as well as enhancing our connectivity related services such as Cloud link and AWS Wavelength,” he said.

Casting his thoughts to the future, Kurita said: “I think everybody agrees mobile edge computing is a buzz word in the data centre and the cloud industry at the moment because more real time edge transaction is needed by the nature of the business and cloud providers want to get closer to their end users to realise seamless transactions with any devices.

“So more of the data needs to be processed locally and that may eventually require more data centre capacity even in tier two or tier three cities. That may also require more well established connectivity even in some emerging countries. I predict that data centre demands are going to be on a more micro level and be spread around more locations with the combination of a shorter latency path,” he said.

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Your Best Defense is a Good Offense WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: KARL GREEN

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Rick Moroski, VP and COO for Americas at Schenck Process on the power of AI, robotics and digitisation in mitigating risk and improving efficiencies

I

had the pleasure of sitting down with Richard Moroski, vice president and chief operating officer for Americas for Schenck Process, who shared his experience on leveraging tech as an offensive move, allowing you to switch your gameplay from reactive to proactive, mitigate risks and improve service levels while increasing efficiencies.

"I was fortunate enough to participate in a session where Michael Porter from Harvard, one of the foremost strategists in the country, discussed how digital is still the key differential advantage for the US and how we must continue our pursuit of digital transformation.

"What everybody has to understand about the digital journey is that you're not buying a refrigerator. You don't just plug it in, set the temperature and expect to be good to go.

To achieve a digital transformation, you need to understand your processes, understand your data. There's a lot of prep work that has to go in place before you start on your digital journey, and then it becomes incremental.

"For Schenck, that journey begins with our engineering team, from drawings to standardisation of documentation parameters and controlling of master data."

Although implementation may not be as simple as plug and play, in hearing Moroski speak, it's apparent the benefits outweigh the initial workload.

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A single source of truth When it comes to change management, most especially when handling critical documents such as product design drawings and specifications, ensuring accurate working documents is imperative to mitigating risks. A simple misreading of a handwritten document, for example, can be a costly error.

Digitisation allows all relevant parties, including external partners, to have access to a single source of truth at any given time, lessening the chance of quality issues and mitigating the risks and associated high costs that stem from inaccurate data and cumbersome workflows.

"When it comes to manufacturing, streamlined approval workflows and having a single digital thread that's accurate and reliable reduces lead times, can decrease costs and results in a better quality product," says Moroski. Why is this single source of truth so critical? Moroski explains, "Because as you're building or preparing to build 396

April 2021

a product, customers can change their requirements on the fly and want to change the specifications" Managing these changes through a manually paper-based system is a slow and arduous process that is highly susceptible to errors and has inherent risk as production, or other stages of the manufacturing process may be happening simultaneously. This can lead to waste and inefficiencies.

"If product configuration changes midway through production, we've wasted materials, machine time and labour. The supply chain could also have materials in the funnel that's affected, or we could have inventory on our floor, either in raw materials, work in progress, or finished goods.

There are very high costs associated with the mismanagement of rev level changes, and it's something manufacturers struggle with. Digitisation in this area brings massive advantages that can heavily impact the organisation’s outcomes."

SCHENCK PROCESS

RICHARD MOROSKI TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER FOR AMERICAS COMPANY: SCHENCK PROCESS Prior to joining Schenck in 2019, Richard Moroski, Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Americas for Schenck Process, spent time working for Boeing, Johnson & Johnson, GE, Orbital ATK and the Triumph Group. Having enjoyed stints in Operations, Engineering, SupplyChain, Procurement and Program Management, Moroski knows by experience the importance of remaining results-focused and has a proven track record of achieving successful transformations.

Whether facing complex global issues, changing market conditions, or adopting new technology, Moroski maintains an unrelenting focus on achieving aggressive company objectives, despite the challenges. His energy, adaptability and mental agility allow him to lead with strength and maintain a winning corporate culture during times of adversity. “I believe culture is a mirror for leadership. Good or bad, it’s a reflection of who you are,” says Moroski.

“ I believe culture is a mirror for leadership. Good or bad, it’s a reflection of who you are” RICHARD MOROSKI

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER FOR AMERICAS, SCHENCK PROCESS

EXECUTIVE BIO

Managing the curve, from reactive to proactive "It's easier said than done, but leadership has to be able to foresee what's going to happen.

They asked Frank Reich, the head coach for the Indianapolis Colts, what the most important attribute of an elite quarterback in the NFL is and the terminology he used was accelerated vision. They can see the patterns

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IT SEES IT UNDERSTANDS IT WELDS

No one else has robotics equipment that functions so fully autonomously. It means you’ll never have to place a perfect part in a perfect way, never worry about weld quality or rework, and never program a robot again. www.path-robotics.com

PATH ROBOTICS: DIGITAL PATHFINDERS TO FUTURE GROWTH

Watch Schenck Process & Path Robotics

Path Robotics’ Andrew Lonsberry explores the exciting partnership with Schenck Process and how its digital solutions provide a true path to future growth Path Robotics is an AI robotics company with a difference. It is pioneering the future of smart robots that take automation and digital transformation in the manufacturing sector to the next level, providing a frictionless path to growth built upon innovation and collaboration.

“We specifically focus on making robots learn how to do human-based tasks,” says Andrew Lonsberry, the co-founder and CEO. “Making robots smart enough to be able to understand how to perform their operation autonomously so that humans can focus on harder contextual problems.”

The company partners with leading manufacturers to power their digital transformation journey. As a partner of Schenck Process, Path plays a vital role in alleviating bottlenecks and underpinning its growth ambitions, providing a “digital thread” that runs throughout the end-to-end manufacturing process.

“What Path does specifically is help Schenck Process to create a solution that allows them the flexibility to be able to run thousands of different parts through a robotics system completely on its own,” Lonsberry explains.

“It doesn’t matter what part the Path Robotic system is looking at, as long as it fits within our weld cell, we see it, we understand it and we weld it.”

Path collaborates closely with Schenck Process to assist its growth plans in a strategic partnership that Lonsberry foresees strengthening in the coming years.

“We see this partnership growing over the next five to 10 years,” he says. “We see Schenck Process continuously growing internally and continuously taking on more. That level of dedication to growth is something that we want to mirror, and we want to match. The commitment we’re making to this partnership is that today is just the first phase of a journey together, Path and Schenck Process, to implement an end-to-end digital thread throughout the manufacturing process and the business. We are excited to be a part of this groundbreaking effort.”

Learn more now

SCHENCK PROCESS

evolving. They can see the adjustments, they can see what's going on in the field, and they can see it as or before it's happening. And they can respond at a moment's notice.

"I transfer that same philosophy to leadership and agility. It’s important to see patterns evolve with market conditions and learn to anticipate what's going to happen.

It allows you to begin planning your moves, find your funding and plan your resources.

It's the difference between being proactive rather than reactive, and it can be a huge competitive advantage.” As they say, the best defence is a good offence.

Safeguarding your continuity of business However, when it comes to manufacturing, proactive gameplay is also about mitigating risks and detecting possible part failures or machine issues as quickly as possible, preferably before they impact your efficiencies or affect your customers. Key parameters can be ongoingly monitored and fed to maintenance engineers or quality leads digitally, removing the need for them to be on-site and allowing for faster dispositions and response times.

"When you think about it from a customer service viewpoint, you want to provide your customer with a system that enables their business to not only run but run better by being ahead of any issues. And I think that's where the IoT solution comes into play. It's one thing to provide a good high-quality product to your customers and competitive pricing, that's all-important, but today, you have to extend yourself beyond just those things.

"Everybody brings good equipment and good solutions. How could I make that equipment functioning in a way where it gives our customers an advantage for how they compete in the market? I think that's critical.

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SCHENCK PROCESS

Richard Moroski describes the Schenck Process

"When it comes to manufacturing, streamlined approval workflows and having a single digital thread that's accurate and reliable reduces lead times, can decrease costs and results in a better quality product" RICHARD MOROSKI

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER FOR AMERICAS, SCHENCK PROCESS

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“ I think that's where the IoT solution comes into play. It's one thing to provide a good high-quality product to your customers and competitive pricing, that's allimportant, but today, you have to extend yourself beyond just those things” RICHARD MOROSKI

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER FOR AMERICAS, SCHENCK PROCESS

"You want to help them avoid downtime and maintain production flow. This, to me, is an opportunity to leverage predictive analytics in order to remain in front of a situation. You can also provide your customer feedback on how their operation is running. Are they hitting their production rates? Is there a quality issue? Generating key data points can make your operation run more efficiently. That can be a huge competitive advantage and make for a valuable market differentiator."

Fighting the labour challenge with AI AI is another technology that can bring massive benefits, says Moroski. "Why? Because with AI, the robot is self-teaching.

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Let's use welding as an example. Our application with Path Robotics is a welding application. How did we justify that? First of all, welders within the United States will become the number one skill shortage within the next two years. So that means if you are in a fabrication industry and require welding as a skill set, you may likely be facing a human resource shortage. AI and robotics can help dampen the potential impacts of that.

"We have just kicked off the beginning of our journey with Path Robotics and will be bringing in their robots this year.

We're very interested in seeing the results.

We’ve received tremendous support and collaboration from Joe Onderko, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, as well as their CEO Andrew Lonsberry, and I fully expect we will see what I call a step level change in productivity. There have always been robots within manufacturing, but an AI robot is the cutting edge of technology.

"That ability to mimic what a person's doing through repetitive trials and improve through feedback and correction allows us to teach the robot how to weld as a human would. It will learn the path of welds, know how much heat is required, etc. We'll also be able to equip the robot with visual capabilities, so it will be able to inspect its own welding. The potential added benefits AI brings are astounding."

"They open up a whole different world, one where you can take work cells and convert them over into robotics, and you can now mitigate all the things that were a challenge over the last year. They don't need to wear face masks. They're not going to need a temperature check. They run as long as we feed them the right data and the information. businesschief.com

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1881

Year Founded

1,001 - 5,000 Number of Employees

Weighing & Feeding Manufacturing Industry

" It's easier said than done, but leadership has to be able to foresee what's going to happen… It's the difference between being proactive rather than reactive, and it can be a huge competitive advantage” RICHARD MOROSKI

VICE PRESIDENT AND CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER FOR AMERICAS, SCHENCK PROCESS

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Kick-off; The transformation journey "For Schenck, there are two critical partners who have helped us kick off our transformation journey, Path Robotics and PTC," Moroski says. "Together, they encapsulate the entire business, giving us the bookends we need to be successful."

"We've been working closely with Kevin Williams, VP of Global CAD Sales for PTC, and he's been invaluable to helping us on this journey. We first started with bringing in Windchill as our product lifecycle management system (PLM).

Windchill collects all of our engineering and technical data, creating a central repository and providing us with that critical single source of truth.

"In addition to that, we're also now using Creo, their 3D product design software, allowing us to pull away from disparate systems and standardize how we design.”

When it comes to ensuring effective partnerships, Moroski says supplier relationships are about open collaborations and transparency. "It's important to be transparent about what your issues are, what you're trying to solve and be open-minded to the technology that they're offering. We understand that they've done this and are leaders in their fields, and so, we value their opinion and listen to what they have to say and appreciate their guidance. Conversely, they are also very interested in what we have to say and what we're trying to solve.

So for me, we could not be teamed with two better partners."

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DRIVING THE PEOPLE EXPERIENCE WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

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Unit4 PSA Smart Cloud Collaboration platform for better workflow, faster decision making, and an agile workforce empowered to focus on what matters

U

Manav Singh General Manager and Scaleup Leader

nit4 PSA’s ecosystem of powerful teams and partnerships are perfectly aligned to make for an exceptional people experience that drives customer success for Professional Services, so you can offer a better way to work that makes for a better place to work.

From Magneto quotes to the value of authenticity, speaking to Manav Singh, General Manager and Scaleup Leader for Unit4 PSA, is anything but boring. The man has an intense passion for what he does, and it’s apparent from the moment you meet him and is reflected in everything he does.

It’s what fuses and fuels Professional Services Automation (PSA), bringing their people and their partners together, empowered and focused on a collective goal, a cohesive ecosystem designed to optimise success.

Built on Microsoft's Power Platform, Unit4 PSA focuses on the operation front end of professional practices, enabling them to optimize operations, innovate business models and win more business.

The secret to Unit4 PSA’s success is that Singh himself remains married to a winning framework rooted in the belief in his people and the strategic alignment of business partners. It’s old-school thoughts done in a new age way, with heart, passion, and conviction. And his customers are better for it. businesschief.com

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MANAV SINGH TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE LOCATION: NETHERLANDS I am a scale-up leader embarked on a current mission to create a globally leading business, enabling professional organizations to optimize their project and peopledriven business by delivering a leading practice management suite to support the end-to-end process from opportunities to cash. I am energized to bring an innovative technology to market enabling professional services organization to execute their business flawlessly.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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UNIT 4 | Know Your Customer

Redefining PSA to help practices Pivot, Strengthen, and Amplify To achieve operational excellence, you must address the following four key areas: Executing profitable projects, optimising resource utilisation, billing with precision, and winning more business. Unit4 PSA gets you there, despite our ever-changing world.

Practices built for the future create an environment that allows their people to focus on what matters most – delivering customer value. By leveraging technology, companies can remove non-valueadd administrative tasks and streamline workflows, and empower their people, providing all the information employees need to be successful at their fingertips.

Remote-work and a global pandemic pose epic challenges, but Singh and his “team of teams” are up to the task.

Engineered for flawless execution and customer success, Singh sticks to old principles, but like vinyl records, and hipster

trends, he has made the old new again by understanding and leveraging their true value.

A unified platform focused on optimising front-end operations with automated setups, seamless data flow and integrations, and built-in intelligence ensures that practices are focused on delivering value to customers timely and profitably. With a clear view of current operations, practices plan for the future by making sure they have the right resources and strategic customers. All this within a simplified IT landscape.

Built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power platform, Unit4’s PSA Practice Management is a full end-to-end solution built for professional services to standardise work, from sales, automation to onboarding your customer, project management, expenses, invoicing, financial transactions, and human competence management.

Singh explains, “We help practices manage their end-to-end process from the businesschief.com

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point an opportunity presents itself until the point that they invoice the end customer.

We cover everything from managing an opportunity, creating projects, staffing people, measuring utilisation, booking time, managing expenses, approvals, and so forth, all the way until invoicing the end customer.

“All of that in a single solution that is built on Microsoft technology which has its own advantage of making sure that we don't have any legacy technology. Being ERP independent 412

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also has the added benefit of delivering faster time to value. That is, essentially, what we offer. But, in actuality, we’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your business pivot. We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before.”

Team of Teams “The magic is in the combination of a clear goal, energised and empowered people,

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SOFTWARE Industry

20

We operate in 20 countries

Tailor-made

For Accountancies, Consultancies, IT services and Engineering practices

GLOBAL PARTNER NETWORK

and creating a safe space where it's okay to make mistakes. I think that’s what fuels a productive and effective organisation.

And from there, you amplify and scale,” says Singh.

“When it comes to decision-making, a traditional team gums itself up, creating a choke point. And at the pace at which the world moves today, what you need is a ‘team of teams’, a segregated autonomous unit. You give these teams the autonomy

to make decisions and execute on visions.

If you do that right, then the only factor you need to bind these teams together is a common goal.”

Unit4 PSA enables practices to realise the power of this construct. With its Smart Cloud Collaboration, Unit4 PSA delivers a single solution leveraging Microsoft Power Platform with seamless integration to O365, Power BI and Azure toolsets – making information and intelligence available to all fringes of a practice and empowering individuals to make the right decisions at the right time.

As Singh says, “There needs to be a common-sense of consciousness. Everyone needs to understand what the aim is so that day-to-day, they can make the right decisions and ultimately get you to your goal. This engrains a sense of agility, and an ability to pivot and react to changing conditions dynamically, and delivering a resilience that a traditional way of working does not give you.”

ITK: In The Know Solutions Group With customer in over 20 countries, Unit4 PSA's success is supported with a robust ecosystem of strategic global partners. ITK stands as a shining example of the close collaborations that make up Unit4’s rich global partner ecosystem.

“Our partners are very important to us, and ITK is a great example of a very successful partnership that we highly value. They are very true to their name and bring a bounty of industry practice that make them not just a technology partner but a trusted advisor.

That’s really where their experience shines.

“We have a very close collaboration with our partners, ITK being one of our key ones, and we are always on the same page in terms of how we are addressing the market, what can we do for them, and how we can make them more successful. businesschief.com

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“So that relationship really works very, very closely. The interesting thing is that all our partners are not just software partners; they’re users. ITK is an IP services firm, and they use PSA to manage their practice. So they’re not only advocates for us but can showcase the value that PSA brings. They can speak to some of the challenges that they faced and how we helped them to manoeuvre them.”

When it comes to selecting partners and ensuring mutually beneficial relationships, Singh prefers quality over quantity.

“Otherwise, you spread yourself out too thin, and you’re able to provide them with the right level of focus and attention that they need, and it really doesn’t help you to mutually grow. So our philosophy is to focus on the right partners.

“This means that we're going to have fewer partners, but the partners that we

“ We’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your business pivot.

We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

are going to have will be equally invested in our vision as we are. This allows us to throw all of our weight behind those select partners and make sure they are successful, and together, we’ll drive market penetration and make them the face of the region.

“You have 120% of our support, and we will make you successful. In return, all we ask is that you be as equally invested as we businesschief.com

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are in delivering on the vision we have for the business and the product.” It’s a nice, intimate circle of partners, backed by the right people, empowered for success.

Hunger. Persistence. Authenticity.

Unit4 PSA has created a team that is passionate and aligned towards a common goal – enabling next-generation practices to thrive in the new business reality. But it’s not done yet. Unit4 holds fast to the belief that improvements are never done, and business should never remain static and continues to move at the speed in which today’s challenging business environment requires.

The other key component of a successful “team of teams” is ensuring they consist of the right people with an alignment on personal goals and expectations.

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“ For me, the strongest relationships are built when people want to collaborate with you rather than need to collaborate with you.

Being open, honest, and genuine have always been key pillars for me to achieve this” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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In order to clearly communicate goals, Singh says his construct consists of three areas, “First, I give them a crystal clear picture of what we want the end state of the business to be. How big do we want to grow? What regions do we want to capture?

What customers do we want to target?

And how are we going to get them?” All components of a standard business plan, Singh points out, but the difference is in the clarity and execution.

With an unrelenting focus on the end goal, and teams of teams all pointing towards the bullseye, Singh then sets a schedule, prioritises, and measures the efficacy of solutions. Those that are considered to be

successful are amplified. Those that aren’t are scrapped before moving on to the next idea. It’s a systematic, quantified process that allows them to arrive at the best possible solution— A perhaps simple yet powerful concept that optimises outcomes.

“I want them to be hungry and to do things because they want to do them, not because I told them to. So, let’s mutually agree on what’s important for you and for the company, and let’s consider that the floor because there is no ceiling.

“The second thing I ask for is persistence.

Nobody comes to work to fail. Nobody will drive to their office and say, you know what, today I'm going to do a poor job and businesschief.com

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aim to fail at what I do. However, things will rarely work out the way you want them to. There will always be problems, either you don't have the right people, or you don't have the right budget, or you have a global pandemic. There are a gazillion things that could happen. You have to keep persisting and not let the challenges bog you down.”

“If you're using half your concentration to look normal, then you're only half paying attention to whatever else you're doing.” — Erik Lehnsherr.

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“ I’ll show up a hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

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Cringing at the analogy, Singh references a quote from Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto, from the X-Men comics. Despite its perceived “cringyness”, however, it’s perfectly apropos to his thoughts on the importance of authenticity.

“The third thing I ask from an individual is for them to be genuine. Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits. I’ll show up a

hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me,” Singh says.

“The world is not static. It’s dynamic, and as things change, you must be able to pivot. To avoid becoming extinct, your business must evolve at pace with the changes. You must redesign your business models to meet the challenges of the day, that’s what teams of teams is for, and that’s what Unit4 PSA is for.”

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Left to Right Rahul Chande, Ranga Mulabagula & William (Bill) Pfeiffer *Photo taken Example of before COVID-19 an image caption

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SMART, SUSTAINABLE PACKAGING FROM AMCOR Protect, preserve, promote – Amcor Vice President of Procurement and CPO, Ranga Mulabagula discusses the journey to ‘procurement excellence’ WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

P

rotect, preserve, promote has been the driving force of global packaging company Amcor for the past 160 years, but they are now heading for the next level of sustainability as they accelerate their digital journey towards procurement excellence.

Amcor is the world’s biggest packaging company – generating close to $12.5 billion in annual sales. Amcor Rigid Packaging (ARP), is the $3 billion business group focused on the rigid packaging market. Originally a beverage-centric packager, the global rigid packaging organisation has now extended its range to develop differentiated products and services to protect food, healthcare, wine and spirits, home care, personal care and technical applications.

PRODUCED BY: THOMAS LIVERMORE Amcor is now focusing on its green credentials following a pledge three years ago to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation that its packaging will be reusable or recyclable by 2025. This includes their polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles which could be a game-changer due to their recyclable credentials, current health crisis and concerns over hygiene. Each PET bottle is capped and sealed to keep beverages protected from pathogens like viruses and bacteria.

But this is just part of the sustainability story for the Australian-American company – which puts customer centricity at its heart – as we learn from Ranga Mulabagula, Vice President of Global Procurement, ARP from their offices in Ann Arbor, US. businesschief.com

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Ranga Mulabagula at Amcor talks about smart, sustainable packaging

“ We are making a distinct difference in a positive way.

Our goal is to make 100 per cent of our products, recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2025” RANGA MULABAGULA

VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

The journey to procurement excellence started for Mulabagula in 2013 when he was approached by Amcor, who were impressed by the work he was doing at General Motors (GM) managing global commodity purchasing and supply chain teams by leveraging GM scale, scope and using first-time analytical modelling and forecast capabilities to predict supply chain bottlenecks.

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Mulabagula, points out Amcor deploys its expertise and knowledge of customer products and value chains to produce packaging that is more functional, appealing and cost effective for customers and their consumers, and ultimately more sustainable for the environment.

“We are making a distinct difference in a positive way. Our goal is to make 100 per cent of our products, recyclable, reusable, or compostable,” said Mulabagula who pointed out it is Amcor’s aim to drive at least 10 per cent of recycled content across the product portfolio by 2025 along with eliminating all plastics like PVC and PVDC as they are more difficult to recycle.”

As head of global procurement in ARP, Mulabagula is leading the organisation to the next level of procurement excellence, managing six global category directors and 43 co-worker strong global procurement teams with responsibility for a $2+ billion spend.

AMCOR

Mulabagula collaborates with his global teams to define and drive the current (FY20-22) and next Horizon (FY23-FY25) procurement objectives, strategy, priorities, metrics, policies, processes, systems and talent for accelerating the ARP "procurement excellence" journey through collaboration, technology enabled sourcing, master data governance (MDG) and procure-to-pay (P2P) solutions for a sustainable performance and “indirects category” transformation.

“ARP is a major converter in the North American packaging industry,” said Mulabagula. “We convert raw materials into the containers and provide services that brand owners (like Pepsi and CocaCola) want and aspire based on their market segment preferences, technical and functional requirements.

“Our geographical reach is global, being the biggest packaging company in the world. And the biggest converter, not just from a size point of view, but the technical know-how, innovation and value we bring to the table. We deliver through a customer centric approach coupled with excellence in operational, technical and value performance, which is why our customers keep coming back to Amcor.”

RANGA MULABAGULA TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO INDUSTRY: PACKAGING & CONTAINERS LOCATION: UNITED STATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

Ranga Mulabagula has been with Amcor for nearly eight years driving the global packaging company’s sustainable procurement-to-pay excellence.

As Vice President of Procurement in Amcor Rigid Packaging (ARP) he is leading the organisation to the next level of procurement excellence. He manages six global category directors, 43 global procurement teams and is responsible for a $2+ billion spend.

“I'm currently leading Amcor’s global rigid packaging procurement excellence journey while striving to meet aspirational sustainability objectives – that is what’s driving me – I have been part of four acquisitions in the last seven years, which has been a fantastic learning and growth opportunity” said Mulabagula – a results driven supply chain and operations leader.

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OAKWOOD PACKAGING COMPANY

The Way Forward in Sustainable Packaging At Oakwood Packaging Company, we are passionate about sustainable pharmaceutical, food, and industrial packaging that helps drive your business forward.

What does OPC provide?

• Protective Packaging from Production Through Distribution • Custom Printed Finished Goods Packaging • Compliance Experts • Award Winning Customer Service Team • Poly and laminated bags, liners, and film Make OPC your trusted partner, allowing your business to continue to focus on your industry while we ensure the best packaging products at the most competitive prices.

What do our customers say about us?

“Our team and I wanted to thank you for all of your help in our immediate need to get bags. You went above and beyond trying to help so early in the morning…”

“Awesome! Always able to depend on your team!”

LEARN MORE

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201.836.0372

AMCOR

BOTTLE WITH LOW CARBON FOOTPRINT

Drive to sustainability Amcor invests $100 million every year in research and development (R&D) to ensure a top-notch pipeline of innovations to tackle the biggest technical and practical barriers to sustainable packaging as the world moves towards the goal of Net Zero by 2050.

PET bottles often have the lowest carbon footprint and according to Amcor their production results in up to 70 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than packaging materials like aluminum and glass. “The problem lies in plastic recycling. So, I think once we accurately define and align on the problem, it's not the plastics packaging per se, but the lack of recycling infrastructure, incentivising and educating the end user where the challenges reside and the solutions exist,” comments Mulabagula.

DID YOU KNOW...

*Photo taken before COVID-19

Amcor is the industry leader in the use of post-consumer recycled (PCR) PET with over 15 years of experience.

PET, which stands for polyethylene terephthalate, is a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family. It is extruded or moulded into plastic bottles and containers for packaging many different product categories including foods, beverages, personal care, dairy and spirits and wine products.

PET bottles are lightweight, shatterproof, re-closable, resealable, reusable and infinitely recyclable (with existing technologies including chemical recycling).

PET bottles often have the lowest carbon footprint and according to Amcor their production results in up to 70 per cent less greenhouse gas emissions than packaging materials like aluminum and glass.

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*Photo taken before COVID-19

1860 Year Founded

$12.5bn Revenue in US Dollars

47,000 Number of Employees

10% Target for PCR across its portfolio by 2025

230 Global presence in 40 countries with 230 sites

$100m Invested every year in research and development (R&D)

1,000+ Packaging assessments are carried out each year

83,917 Tonnes last year tonnes of recycled plastic resin (PCR)

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“The basic needs of packaging have not gone away, which is to protect, preserve, promote but sustainability and end of life requirements are added and enhanced” RANGA MULABAGULA VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

AmLite HeatFlex Recyclable | Recyclable flexible retort packaging

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*Photo taken before COVID-19

“One example, US recycling rates of highvolume plastic bottles are still in the lower thirties, meaning, we are talking significant amounts of waste going to landfills that should not be there. And our challenge as a packaging industry is to accurately define the problem, align with key stakeholders in the value chain and take a leadership position across a multipronged solutions approach to address this issue,” he said.

One example of Amcor’s sustainable products is the ESL (aseptic/extended shelf life) plastic bottles which are revolutionising the packaging of dairy and juice. Amcor’s barrier technology protects against ultraviolet light, maximises the product’s flavour and provides up to a year of shelf life.

Master Data Governance Amcor’s digital transformation is being accelerated with the Master Data Governance (MDG) process along with a P2P solution 428

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through SAP Ariba. “The biggest opportunity for any P2P program resides where the fragmentation or non-standard materials or services is the maximum – if you do it right that’s where the biggest value is,” said Mulabagula.

“The journey started in 2015 with MDG, a process through which we can standardise our materials and services. For example, a product specific application – if we talk about green colored bottles, well, define green? Green can come in different shades and different tones. So, classification and standardisation of that SKU is very important.

And what MDG enables us to do – through the SAP platform – is to standardise material groups to define what the classification criteria is and applies them consistently across the spend.”

“Once the standardisation was in place, we then launched a P2P Ariba program, initially starting off with a high value, high

AMCOR

“ The biggest opportunity for any P2P program resides where the fragmentation or non-standard materials or services is maximum - if you do it right that’s where the biggest value is” RANGA MULABAGULA VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

RAHUL CHANDE TITLE: DIRECTOR, PROCUREMENT SYSTEMS AND TACTICAL EXECUTION INDUSTRY: PACKAGING & CONTAINERS

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Rahul Chande is an executive member of Amcor Rigid Packaging procurement leadership team (PLT) and a champion for digital procurement transformation.

Since September 2015, he has led a global team of 14 professionals to successfully manage a portfolio comprising of digital transformation, global master data and analytics and tactical procurement operations.

He brings more than 20 years of industry and big four consulting leadership experience; in creating business cases for change and leading executive mandates for digital supply chain and procurement transformation.

Previously, as Associate Partner with Deloitte Consulting, Chande successfully

problem areas in “Indirect Categories”; maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) management and then scaling to secondary packaging, professional services,” said Mulabagula who points out ARP is coming to the end of their first leg of the journey to digital procurement excellence.

“Once you have that visibility and transparency, then everything else comes into play in terms of putting in processes, operational resources and dash boards for compliance, consolidation and making sure we deploy back end robust procurement commodity strategies and processes to maximise the value return for our spend,” he said.

implemented 12+ full lifecycle, technology enabled, global supply chain and procurement transformation programs at leading consumer and industrial products organisations. He helped his Fortune 100 clients achieve up to 200 per cent ROI leveraging digital technologies and deployment of center led governance and managed services models; with robotic process automation, advanced analytics, visualisation.

A “published” playbook of business processes, rules books, policies, standard operating procedures, roles and responsibilities, training guides and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure progress was critical to Amcor’s MDM/ P2P journey.

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“ Our geographical reach is global, being the biggest packaging company in the world. And the biggest converter, not just from a size point of view, but the technical know-how, innovation and the value we bring to the table”

WILLIAM PFEIFFER TITLE: SENIOR DIRECTOR, PROCUREMENT AND LOGISTICS INDUSTRY: PACKAGING & CONTAINERS LOCATION: UNITED STATES

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RANGA MULABAGULA VICE PRESIDENT OF PROCUREMENT AND CPO, AMCOR

For example, given this unprecedented visibility and transparency, ARP streamlined and consolidated the supply base by 75 per cent during this transformational journey, while deploying robust supplier onboarding processes across it’s spend.

ARP digital procurement transformation journey has reached the “advanced basecamp” stage in its roadmap. ARP has achieved 70 per cent automation of indirect procure to pay processes, significantly improved indirect spend under management to 95 per cent, adherence to negotiated contracts with

EXECUTIVE BIO

William Pfeiffer is a performancedriven senior leader with more than 20 years of comprehensive experience and recognised success in all areas of Supply Chain Management including Procurement, Transportation, Logistics, Customs, Material Planning and Plant Operations.

Pfeiffer is an innovative, ambitious change agent with a demonstrated track record in the development and execution of business strategies to improve productivity and profitability. Proven ability to develop accountable, collaborative, engaged, result driven teams focused on continuous improvement.

He is highly effective and skilled in strategic sourcing, negotiations, contract management, supplier development/ quality, packaging, demand forecasting, production planning, inventory control, physical distribution, data mining/analysis, cost reduction, cash flow improvement, program/ project management, process and system/ technology deployment and improvement.

*Photo taken before COVID-19

AMCOR

“Ensuring sustainability throughout the entire life cycle and end of use of product is equally as important, hence these requirements are accelerating the sustainability journey in the industry and driving unique business and technology partnerships with strategic vendors.”

*Photo taken before COVID-19

preferred suppliers and sourcing improved to over 75 per cent.

Commenting on how Amcor has risen to the challenges of providing packaging during the pandemic, Mulabagula said: “The basic needs of packaging have not gone away, which is to protect, preserve and promote but sustainability is being added and enhanced even prior to the pandemic”.

DID YOU KNOW...

AGILE IN THE FACE OF COVID-19 “It's been a challenging, but at the same time, very rewarding experience given the paramount importance of safety and health of our co-workers,” said Mulabagula.

“We started off importing PPE and masks from China. And we were the first organisation in Amcor to import and manage this complex supply chain to keep our plants and facilities running. So, we didn't miss a beat from a business continuity point of view, but we realised this was not a sustainable solution in the long term.”

Asset lifecycle assessment Asset is an Amcor tool that helps brand owners assess and accurately communicate their carbon footprint of their packaging products backed by independent verification and labelling from the renowned “Carbon Trust”.

Amcor is driving awareness in sustainability packaging with their Asset lifecycle assessment tool. Detailed packaging lifecycle reports provide fact-based criteria to identify lower environmental footprint options, enabling brand owners to make informed packaging decisions. The company conducts on average 850 packaging assessments for its customers each year.

“So, in collaboration with a strategic vendor we started our own new product line at our New Jersey facility, where we now make our own face masks that we commissioned in 12 weeks. And that was a record by itself.

“I'm really proud of what the team has accomplished, working tirelessly and seamlessly with stakeholders to rapidly install a new manufacturing line. We are now self-sufficient in our face masks and have started charitable donations to local nonprofitable organisations in communities we serve and operate. So that's been a fantastic and rewarding journey and a new experience for all of us at ARP.”

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*Photo taken before COVID-19

DID YOU KNOW...

GLOBAL ORIGINS MAPPED OUT FUTURE FOR AMCOR

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Amcor’s 160-year history touches almost every corner of the world as the founder Samuel Ramsden, a stone mason from Yorkshire, travelled to Australia in the 1860s to make his fortune by opening a paper mill in Melbourne.

Around the same time, in St Louis, Missouri, Judson Moss Bemis founded bag manufacturing J M Bemis & Company, which by the end of the 19th century was among the largest enterprises of its kind in the world.

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Amcor was historically known as APM, or Australian Paper Manufacturers, for more than a century, and in 2019 it acquired the Bemis & Company.

These two complementary companies have gone on to create the global leader in consumer packaging, with the footprint, scale and capabilities to drive significant value for shareholders and deliver the most sustainable innovations for the environment.

AMCOR

“I'm currently leading Amcor’s global rigid packaging procurement excellence journey while striving to meet aspirational sustainability objectives – that is what’s driving me – I have been part of four acquisitions in the last seven years, which has been a fantastic learning and growth opportunity” RANGA MULABAGULA VP OF GLOBAL PROCUREMENT, AMCOR

“This is a unique service from Amcor and important to our customers, who can be assured their product assessment is verified and validated by Amcor and Carbon Trust,” said Mulabagula.

Competitive advantage But what other factors are giving Amcor the competitive advantage? “We continue to focus on value creation for customers and markets – developing unique technologies to serve customer needs, pursuing acquisitions that expand our presence in emerging markets, and help improve the industry structure so we can enhance the value delivery across the packaging value stream.”

“We work closely with brand owners to make sure we are aligned with their corporate sustainability goals and promote our capabilities to accelerate their journey towards this important objective. So that collaboration, innovation, consolidation and communication leads to significant opportunities for customers and Amcor,” he said.

Alliance with Oakwood packaging Amcor works with many vendor partners but the partnership with Oakwood Packaging

is a unique one. “We buy secondary packaging but the relationship is broader than a typical “buy-sell” arrangement. We provide strong value for one another through collaboration in catering to markets we operate and customers we serve.”

“We are also embarking on a journey to make these products more sustainable – how can we drive more recycled content in the bags? Can we collaborate and standardise end of use solutions after consumption of these bags?

“So, there is significant opportunity in terms of re-using the products and also making sure we are putting sustainable materials in these products to start with,” said Mulabagula.

Another partner crucial for Amcor’s digital procurement initiative is Grainger who provides MRO parts and services through P2P enabled Ariba catalogs.

“I believe our ongoing digital procurement journey has set us up beautifully to take the next logical step in deploying future ROI driven solutions (ex: robotics process automation, machine learning, AI tools) in alignment with both internal and external stakeholder needs,” said Mulabagula.

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CHENMED

When Our Patients Do Better, We Do Better WRITTEN BY: MIKE SADR

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PRODUCED BY: DAN BRIGHTMORE

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How nimble data and analytics solutions help doctors transform care for at-risk seniors, improving health and patient experience even during the coronavirus pandemic

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e're looking to be proactive with technology and actually take care of patients before they get sick, not after; and improve their lives.

That's the ultimate goal at ChenMed.” ChenMed’s IT team, led by CTO Serge Perras, is aiming to transform preventive healthcare. It’s a mission based on relationships and putting the focus on the needs of patients not processes.

Patient-Focused “Our mission is to develop a company culture centered around the patient and making sure everything we do - from the clinical process to the technology deployed – improves health outcomes for our patients,” maintains Perras. He notes that, especially during the testing times of a

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global pandemic, reinforcing the bond and connectivity between patient and physician is of paramount importance.

The practice of medicine is very different at ChenMed, explains Perras. “First, our primary care doctors serve a maximum patient panel of 450, not the 3,000+ patients that so typical for family doctors working in fee-for-service practices. With patient panels just one-fifth the industry average our doctors are able to nurture amazing doctor/ patient relationships. They get to earn trust with every call and every appointment.”

Perras adds: “Patient trust is vital to any at-risk medical practice. Without it, patients are going to go frequent emergency rooms and urgent care facilities where doctors do not know them as well and where cost of care is dramatically higher.”

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“ We're looking to be proactive with technology and actually take care of patients before they get sick, not after; and improve their lives. That's the ultimate goal at ChenMed”

SERGE PERRAS TITLE: CTO COMPANY: CHENMED INDUSTRY: HEALTH LOCATION: FLORIDA, USA In 25 plus years in the consulting business, Mr. Perras has experienced numerous business verticals and models. He has built extensive expertise while developing a solid engineering sense.

Over time, he became keenly aware that applying this knowledge for the greater good created better results than only chasing corporate financial rewards. He focuses on business goals that benefit the organization, its constituents, and its clients, all while optimizing human capital.

As a continuous learner, Mr. Perras seeks to produce win-win scenarios everywhere he exercises influence. His leadership emphasizes mentoring and coaching to ensure everyone is aligned to the same goal.

SERGE PERRAS CTO, CHENMED

EXECUTIVE BIO

Digital Transformation There are a number of facets to indirect and direct interaction with patients at ChenMed. Analytics is allowing Perras and his team to better understand the patterns of data provided by the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) associated with key health conditions.

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Serge Perras from Chenmed talks about technology for Healthcare

“By using analytics we can optimize the patient experience by providing the right care at the right time in the right amount” SERGE PERRAS CTO, CHENMED

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“By using analytics our doctors can optimize the patient experience by providing the right care at the right time in the right amount,” notes Perras. “We’re able to use algorithms to enhance medication compliance; to better manage the frequency of both telemedicine and in-person appointments; and to better predict no show appointments so we can increase patientrelevant touch points to improve diverse quality measures.”

Reacting to the challenges facing medicine in a COVID-19 world, ChenMed has broadened its video telehealth capabilities to give patients easy connects with their physician without having to leave the comfort and safety of their homes. “Yes, there’s a limit to how much a doctor can accomplish during a virtual encounter, concedes Perras. “But telehealth is considerably better than no encounter at all.

The underlying thread is to continue optimizing all touch points with our patients.”

We keep finding smart ways to use technology to reduce friction across systems. We keep making it easier for primary care providers to better meet patient needs, while investing substantially less time doing administrative work.

Infrastructure in the Cloud ChenMed formulated a multi-year plan to migrate from a monolithic, tightly coupled, on-premise solution to microservice-based cloud implementation giving it the flexibility to scale its infrastructure.

Now 100 percent Cloud-based, its last data center was closed in January 2020.

“We have the agility to pivot quickly,” adds Perras. “Our CareSuite Platform, the next generation of our EMR, was rolled out to physicians across the organization. We’ve got the capability to do the input monitoring and maintenance to make sure those businesschief.com

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systems are up and running and available.

Reliability is key.”

Perras recalls that just four years ago, paper processes, and all of their manual inefficiencies, were still in place. Since then his team has improved the experience of physicians, front desk staff, medical assistants and care providers. Better healthcare worker experience quickly translates into better care for patients. The goal is to support mobile capabilities to provide access to changing patient data in real time.

“While supporting physicians with the ability to cross reference previous treatments on the database, we’re aiming to develop our self-service capabilities too,” says Perras. “Patients will be able to visualize their own care path and see that history from medications to interventions.”

Driving from transformation to robotic process automation Let Trexin help you “get to done”

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CHENMED

“ We’re demonstrating that in-house IT teams, and the technology they serve, can be a competitive advantage while massively improving outcomes for our patients” SERGE PERRAS CTO, CHENMED

DID YOU KNOW...

A CULTURE OF POSITIVE CHANGE Perras believes the biggest culture shift for IT, especially within healthcare organizations, has been the move from being an order-taking department to a business partner. “We’re moving away from task-driven behaviours,” he says. “We’re demonstrating that in-house IT teams, and the technology they serve, can be a competitive advantage while massively improving outcomes for our patients. Alongside clinical interventions, the influence of technology is growing with the improvement of AI and NLP and the application of algorithms to help us determine approaches to care and the clinical pathways available.”

Perras and his team are providing guidance on data driven initiatives they feel are going to be beneficial. “We’re focused on quantitative ways to analyze data,” he adds. “Everything has to tie back into our core model and those three

pillars – the detection and management of high-risk disease and the reduction of hospital sick days. Autonomy is really important. It's no longer a question of ownership or accountability it’s about collaborating to drive better outcomes and make better decisions.”

The open culture Perras describes nurtures collaboration. “We’ve got a much bigger brain trust now that we’re not just leadership focused,” he notes.

“Our teams come up with great ideas that actually transform care. It’s those grassroots ideas that will future proof the organisation and help us further develop a collective understanding.

It’s also important for us to reach out to others in the industry, working with insights from the Gartners of this world and the organizations that have been there and done it. We rely on our networks as a sounding board to assess the latest trends and make sure we’re aligned.”

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Cap placed on patient/ physician panels

33%

Fewer ER visits and hospitalizations

10x

Time in-person for doctors & patients

100%

Board-eligible or certified doctors

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“During encounters with patients we’re seeing data as a way of adding diagnosis to provide better decision support for our physicians” SERGE PERRAS

CTO, CHENMED

Trends “The big trend is growth,” affirms Perras. “If you look at primary care as a whole, and then focus on the strong health outcomes being achieved by ChenMed and other value-based care providers, it is clear why Medicare Advantage insurance receives strong support from public policy makers.

Competition motivates us to find better ways to modernize and transform care. Historically, there was a belief in a 10-year lag between current technology and the technology that most health care organizations were utilizing. That gap has closed significantly, partly because of the influence of the value-based care model.

A limit on resources means that when we’re optimizing it’s with a focus on what’s actually going to make us more efficient and profitable, so analytics and technology are vital.”

Data science has come a long way and is now capable of delivering the right information at the right time because, as Perras rightly states: “Reports and information are useless if they're not actionable.” For ChenMed it’s the big driver for decision support, analysis around existing data and the management of unstructured data in the healthcare space to help improve patient outcomes. businesschief.com

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Healthy Partnerships The culture of positive change at ChenMed extends to the way technology partnerships have become collaborations in pursuit of providing the best healthcare outcomes.

Trexin Consulting provides the strategic staffing services that allow ChenMed to scale and deal with spikes in capacity.

“With the rate of change we’re experiencing it’s difficult to cover every competency in-house,” concedes Perras.

“You’ve got to have a trusted partner that can service those needs and provide guidance. We’ve worked with Trexin for four years now and the quality of people they bring to the organization has been second to none. We can trust them to deliver and their flexibility and support has allowed us to take on new initiatives with confidence. They have consultants out 444

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there across the industry which feeds back great insights for ChenMed, helping us to plot our path.”

Perras notes Trexin is involved with ChenMed’s RPA initiative – an automation exercise netting hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings by automating manual processes. “They pivot quickly and keep up with our agility,” he says. “It's a real success story, because going forward, not only are we reducing costs, but we're actually allowing ourselves to scale more effectively because we're massively reducing manual processes.”

RingCentral provides ChenMed’s video conferencing services. A long-established relationship has seen the healthcare provider working with the California-based company during its product planning and beta platform development to gain valuable insights.

CHENMED

“They’re more than just a vendor to us,” explains Perras. “We get visibility on how their technology is developing and how it can help us. It’s technology like this, particularly over the past year, that has proved to be crucial. It’s been the cornerstone for our remote approach during the pandemic and something we can rely on.

They’ve helped several of our business units transition smoothly from 100% in the office to virtually 100% remote.”

Another key partner for Perras and his team is SHI International; helping ChenMed consolidate vendor handling for simplicity.

“SHI has provided us with a one-stop shop to manage vendor relationships” he confirms.

“It lends itself well to one of our guiding principles in IT; it's always easier to maintain and manage simple systems than to have to worry about complexity.”

The Future for Healthcare Gleaning better insights from data in real time requires a lot of processing time and power, but remains key to ChenMed’s aspirations for supporting physicians while achieving the best possible outcomes for patients.

“During encounters with patients, we see data as a way to enhance physician decision-making real time. “So, we’re making a big effort to restructure, better store, and better segment data across our enterprise. We’re focused on dealing with the technological implementations required to speed real time and highly relevant data sharing of best practices to consider as our amazing doctors personalize care for each patient.”

The future for Perras and his team is about streamlining and reducing friction to better achieve ChenMed’s goals. “We want to go faster but we don't want to do so by brute force or by increasing the effort. We want to go faster by reducing the resistance across the board in our development lifecycle and how fast we can get tangible and transformative products through our pipeline. We want that pipeline to be even more effective through greater automation of testing, code verification and quality controls to meet our main goal of daytime deployments on demand.”

ChenMed is going through evolution rather than revolution to ramp the maturity of its development process to realise major benefits for both patients and practitioners.

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