Business Chief - USA, March 2018

March 2018 • USA EDITION

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FOREWORD HELLO AND WELCOME to the March 2018 edition of Business Chief.

This month, we feature an exclusive interview with Intelenet CEO Bhupender Singh, who discuss how the transformation of the business process outsourcing industry has impacted its business operations on a global scale, particularly with the digital revolution.

“We have to apply significant amounts of technology, have a fairly deep understanding of the business we’re doing, and apply significant data analytics. So that’s been a big focus for us and other industry leaders over the past 10 years,” he says.

SAP and Cisco also feature, where they discuss how companies can further manage their data effectively. Building on this subject, Michelle Boucher, Vice President, Global Talent Management at Colonial Life outlines ways in which creativity can be fostered through increased workplace diversity.

Furthermore, General Motors’ Global Manager of Renewables Rob Threlkeld discuss how renewable energy is continuing to impact the automotive industry, where globally renowned companies are committed to utilising renewable energy sources.

On top of all this, we look at what Austin, Texas has to offer, as well as the top 10 most expensive restaurants in the US.

Enjoy the issue!

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Business process outsourcing and the digital revolution

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Why getting data infrastructure right is vital for modern businesses

Reframing company culture for better workplace diversity

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TOP 10 MOST EXPENSIVE RESTAURANTS IN THE US

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Business process outsourcing and the digital revolution Business process outsourcing has changed significantly as a result of the digital revolution. Intelenet Global Services CEO Bhupender Singh reflects on this change and looks to the future of his global company

Wr it ten by OL I V I A M I N NO C K

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

HAVING SEEN HUGE developments in the business process outsourcing industry and experienced various company mergers, acquisitions and name changes, Intelenet CEO Bhupender Singh reflects that his actual job title hasn’t changed in over 15 years, despite having been “under four different logos”. However, since working in management consulting 10

March 2018

at McKinsey where he first became involved in business process outsourcing, the industry has been disrupted to the point that, day to day, Singh’s job is almost unrecognisable.

“It was called IT enabled services at the time,” he remembers. “I got involved in that sector at McKinsey and it was a case of preacher turned practitioner – I believed in it and decided to practise it.”

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

“A bank talks about its balance sheet, a real estate company about its land bank – for a services company, our biggest asset is our people” – Bhupender Singh, CEO, Intelenet Global Services

Bhupender Singh, CEO, Intelenet Global Services

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insight.

Intelenet employs over 50,000 people in 70 different centres across eight different countries

From India to the US... does geography matter?

From origins in India to a significant footprint in the US, Singh points out that Intelenet is well and truly globalised. “We have about 55,000 people operating out of 70 centres in eight countries. We’re a global company now, originally set up in India for about five to six years before expanding, but I would also say that now, to some extent, it’s irrelevant where you are,” Singh tells us from New York, where he has travelled for business meetings. “I spend a lot more time in the US and UK than India, as 12

March 2018

that’s where most of our business is. To some extent we’re indifferent geographically. For a US business they might like to get some activities done in Guatemala, India or the Philippines, for example, if they are back office in nature. We are happy to support from wherever the client is comfortable.”

In the US, the company has around 2,000 employees across three locations. “Our biggest centre is in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where we recently added 400 new seats and are becoming one of the biggest employers in the region. We also have locations in Kentucky and North Dakota.”

A revolution in outsourcing Having overseen all this expansion, Singh has a valuable insight into how the industry has developed. “I’ve been fortunate enough to see its evolution from being essentially about labour cost arbitrage to a significant disruptor through digital revolution.

In the early 2000s, companies mainly outsourced labour to us because, as a small company, we could hire people at lower cost. With sustained geographic outsourcing, for example US to US, one could expect to hire at about 10% lower cost than some bigger companies. With cross-border

outsourcing, say from the US to India, one could expect almost 50% labor cost arbitrage. The entire industry was about replacing one person with another, at lower cost.”

Now, Singh explains, there’s a lot more to it than that. “As we moved into the late 2000s, expectation grew beyond labour cost arbitrage and outsourcers could leverage value through incremental process changes, with lean or six sigma methodologies.

Still, all clients expected from us was an incremental 2-3% year on year, to beat inflation… that was a fairly manageable expectation.

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“Any kind of disruption is always a threat as well as an opportunity. If you can build the capabilities to disrupt, it’s an opportunity, but if you’re complacent it’s a threat” – Bhupender Singh, CEO, Intelenet Global Services

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It’s only been in the past few years we’ve experienced real disruption.

“This has been in the form of the digital revolution. Clients expect a step change, with minimal 25-30% improvement on the cost of structure in terms of business performance. This is not always possible in simple ways anymore. We have to apply significant amounts of technology, have a fairly deep understanding of the business we’re doing, and apply significant data analytics. So that’s been a big focus for us and other industry leaders over the past 10 years.”

High expectations Nowadays, Intelenet serves six different sectors for business, but three of these make up around 80% of its business: banking and financial services, travel and healthcare. In these sectors, Singh says “we are seeing a sizable drive for change and innovation. In the financial service sector, fintech means high street banks which may have approved mortgages within two weeks are now forced to compete against fintechs doing so within minutes. We have supported some of our clients in seamless contactless technology, at

L E A D E R S H I P & S T R AT E G Y least for low value items, to help them compete with fintech offerings.”

In terms of the healthcare sector, Singh comments that is particularly significant in the US, which spends about 13-14% of its GDP in this area. “Over 50% of this goes toward non-clinical activities. We work on making the administrative process more efficient, in order to free this budget up for the clinical side, as opposed to more wasteful areas.”

Singh’s example of Intelenet’s work within the travel industry illustrates just how far business process outsourcing has come from simply reducing labour costs. “One of our customers is a low-cost carrier in Europe, and an EU ruling means refunds must be offered for flights delayed for certain periods of time and certain reasons, such as weather. On the days of these disruptions, our client was flooded with emails, chat sessions, and calls from passengers enquiring about their eligibility or negotiating refunds, so the total number of contacts coming to us would increase by 300-400%, which obviously one cannot staff for. This posed two risks for the client: poor customer experience, and possible fines from the EU. Our team designed

and managed an automated robotic process for the client so passengers reaching out via any channel – email, chat, telephone – were redirected to a website where they filled in a simple form and we responded within six hours. The client made savings and improved customer experience.”

Keeping up with digital These increasing demands are part and parcel of the digital revolution, the impact of which Singh reflects on: “As Charles Dickens described the industrial revolution, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Any kind of disruption is always a threat as well as an opportunity.

If you can build the capabilities to disrupt, it’s an opportunity, but if you’re complacent, it’s a threat.”

How has Intelenet dealt with this revolution? “We aggressively adopted and invested capabilities which we refer to as TAP: Technology Tools, Analytics and Process Consulting.

The ultimate goal is to make sure we can go back to offline, and say that if an activity is being done by 100 people we think we can do this with 75 people by deploying TAP capabilities.

“In the sort run, this actually implies 15

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Digital progress has seen the nature of business process outsourcing change markedly

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March 2018

that for one or two quarters we are cannibalising our own business – but this is smarter than someone else doing it to us, as it enables us to do so in a planned manner and build stronger partnerships with customers who see us as a progressive partner, so within three or four quarters, this business comes back to us. In some cases clients find new lines of businesses they will use us for, such as new geographies or service lines, because we’re a progressive partner. As a result, we’ve seen a healthy growth rate of double digits over the past three years.”

Intelenet’s biggest asset “A bank talks about its balance sheet, a real estate company about its land bank – for a services company, our biggest asset is our people,” Singh explains. Intelenet puts a lot of emphasis on hiring and motivating staff, including allowing flexible working to retain talent.

“Here in the US we have roughly 300 people who work from home – skilled, experienced professionals who want to work four to five hours a day outside an office environment.

We have developed technology to

provide virtual offices in the home, where we can monitor their activity.”

Hiring the right talent in the first place is paramount. “Our team of experts details the manpower specs needed for any new process,” Singh explains, adding that overqualification can be a key barrier. “We can’t hire an MD or engineer for an activity where you just need high school qualifications. The employee will get frustrated and leave within six months.

You have to define the specs and use the right process, especially in the US where our application-to-hiring rate is around five to one and in India where it is seven to one.” As well as ensuring a rigorous recruitment process, Intelenet has found referral hiring to be beneficial. “We encourage our employees to recommend friends and family members, as they have the best understanding of our job requirements and company culture. Having like-minded people on board is a huge asset.”

Singh adds that the company uses similar analytics for internal talent management as it does for clients, with positive results. “We found employees to be most vulnerable during their first 60 days, as they try 17

to find their place within a huge company.

We launched a program called Extensive 60, which maps out the first 60 days for every new employee and ensures a touch point with someone who has been at the company for at least five years. This has made a significant improvement on our retention rate.”

The future of Intelenet So far, Singh has enjoyed his time at the forefront of changes in business process outsourcing, and looks to the future with excitement. “The last decade has been really dynamic. We’ve had to constantly evolve our business model, and it’s exciting to think about the next step. Will clients be happy with 30% improvement or ask for more? What’s the next disruption and how do we reinvent ourselves?

That has kept us on our toes. Secondly, having started small in India and built a footprint in eight countries, it’s exciting to have so many people across geographies where despite cultural differences, at a process level and human level there are lots of similarities.”

Thinking about the future for the industry, Singh advises a bigger-picture outlook. “It’s difficult for a CEO to stand up and say ‘my top five clients declined 10% this quarter because I cannibalised my own business’, but it is necessary to forget about quarterly earnings and do the right thing for the long term to be a leader in this industry.”

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

“The last decade has been really dynamic.

We’ve had to constantly evolve our business model, and it’s exciting to think about the next step: will clients be happy with 30% improvement or ask for more?”

– Bhupender Singh, CEO, Intelenet Global Services

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WHY GETTING DATA INFRASTRUCTURE RIGHT IS VITAL FOR MODERN BUSINESSES Stuart Hodge speaks to experts from SAP, Cisco and Warwick Analytics to outline how quality, effective data infrastructure can help optimise a company’s business processes…

Writ ten by STUART HODGE

TECHNOLOGY ONE OF THE most important hires for companies across most sectors these days is that of the data scientist.

As data analysis and technology strategy expert Q Ethan McCallum observes on his website, there is no point in hiring a data scientist until you have the correct data infrastructure in place. Doing so would be akin to hiring Lewis Hamilton for a racing team, but providing him with a car liable to break down before the finish line. “To invest in such a data infrastructure is to invest in the longterm success of your firm’s data science activities,” Q McCallum notes.

The principal challenges with data come mainly from the volume, the plurality of sources and types, and the discrepancies in how it is gathered, processed and ultimately used.

Sven Denecken, Head of Product Management and Co-Innovation for SAP’s S/4HANA business suite, embraces the challenge of navigating the ever-changing tides when it comes to data. “As a product manager, I’m like a kid in a candy store. I want to use that technology. I want to use that data. I want to use those concepts, but my job is to bring it all together with an actual business process. Big 24

March 2018

“You cannot know exactly what your customers want tomorrow, but you want to predict it as much as you can” SVEN DENECKEN Head of Product Management and Co-Innovation for SAP’s S/4HANA

data is more important than ever and the technology is there to compute it in vast amounts and with great speed.

The more you can virtualise and put into in-memory speed computing, the better you will be able to adapt your business processes. You cannot know exactly what your customers want tomorrow, but you want to predict it as much as you can.”

That’s how companies can ensure proper enterprise resource planning, and that is what the SAP S/4HANA suite does: a real-time

enterprise resource management suite for digital business built on the company’s advanced in-memory platform, SAP HANA, deployable in the cloud or on-premise.

Denecken, not unexpectedly, describes it as “the best enterprise resource planning software on the cloud” barring none, and he was happy to break down what he sees as the prerequisites for any company to succeed when it comes to structuring and interpreting data.

“I would argue infrastructure as a

service, security, and the availability of the data are three key ingredients you need to start with,” he asserts.

Whether talking about unstructured, structured or semi-structured data, Denecken is adamant these different types need to be combined if a company hopes to optimise its business processes. Everyone talks about big data. “I’m actually more a fan of the right data. Big data’s the starting point. It’s a commodity. The right data is bringing you a competitive advantage.

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TECHNOLOGY

“The trick is to analyse 100% of the right data in the right way” DAN SOMERS CEO Warwick Analytics

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“We need to realise that data itself is the new gold. It’s a case of the more data the better, in whatever shape or form: unstructured, structured, or semi-structured; we need to collect much more. The key question is how a company deals with it. For example, text messages, audio, semi-structured data, are much less voluminous… I want to make sure that we process this in the right way. This is where process knowledge and data knowledge need to come together.”

This is also where a lot of companies tend to fall down, according to Dan Somers, CEO of predictive analytics firm Warwick Analytics. “Less than 1% of data is analysed. This in itself is bad, but there are also a lot of types of data which are not very informative.

The trick is to analyse 100% of the right data in the right way. Mostly, people are just deploying analytics for visualisation. Unstructured and text data are very poorly analysed and form the majority of data today.

Much of the time there’s a ‘so what’ at the end of analysis because people are asking the wrong question.

“One example is analysing voice of customer data for topics and sentiment whereas the better

analysis is to validate (remove trolls and statistically validate across all customers removing skews) and then isolate the topics and sentiment which drive customer churn and/or loyalty, as these are the things that predictively make the difference.

“Start with the right question and analyse the right data,” Somers advises. “Then, once you start from there, find the tools that can help, don’t always just do what the data science team is capable of. It must fit the business and be flexible enough to be updated and ‘live’ as things inevitably evolve, rather than bogging the data science team down in curation.”

Being able to do all of these things requires a strong and robust network, or at least one which is attuned to a business’s own requirements and needs. That is very much the ‘domain’ of David Goff, who is Head of Enterprise Network for UK and Ireland for world networking leader Cisco.

“What my team is there to do, and what Enterprise Network is there to do, is to find ways that we can drastically simplify the network or actually make the network intuitive,” he explains. “To make it intuitive – that means to be able to see, 27

to think, and to act itself, without manual intervention requires data.

“Then it’s about how we use visibility of data to be able to inform the network and to ensure that the network is something that adapts and has the rigidity that business needs to be able to capture transitions on IAP, cloud and mobility.” But from a network point of view, it’s less about looking within the data itself and more about how its transportation can be facilitated.

All of the factors outlined so far need to be considered when it comes to how to structure data, but what 28

March 2018

also needs to be remembered is that technology is constantly evolving and that the playing field is always subject to disruption and change.

Goff says he expects “ongoing innovation, creating ecosystems” and Denecken agrees that there is further room for disruption in the data space – in fact, he expects it, saying that anyone who manages to marry “the combination of big data, AI and business processes” will be on to a winner in that regard. He acknowledges that more and more processes are going to become streamlined

TECHNOLOGY “I’m not going to hire a consultant to dig at that for a year – but I will rely on certain market data to sense it, and then based on that sensing, drive my business processes or my automation” DAVID GOFF Head of Enterprise Network for Cisco in UK and Ireland

or automated thanks to artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“There will be always niches where experts and very bright people will find an even better way or will fill in holes,” he adds. “Already today, what we can do with process robotic automation disrupts many business processes. So, would I, today, invest into a short service centre company to outsource labour tasks? Personally, I wouldn’t. I think those tasks will be automated first.

“On the other side, a lot of opportunities will be created. There’s a lot of discussion about things like

access to big data, access with algorithms to make it more intelligent etc., but the closer you get to the business process, the more you will own that piece of the data. The further you go away, the more you will rely on third-party resources. Maybe also to pre-empt it, to pre-condition it, to pre-extract certain data. If I want to know what my customer base is doing, I’m not going to hire a consultant to dig at that for a year – but I will rely on certain market data to sense it, and then based on that sensing, drive my business processes or my automation.”

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Business process outsourcing and the digital revolution

HAVE YOU SEEN OUR OTHER TITLES?

CITY FOCUS

AUSTIN Top 10

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BREAKING THE MOLD OF I.T

Andres Cubero, the Jetro Restaurant Depot’s firstever CIO on recognizing the importance of digitization

PEOPLE

Reframing company culture for better workplace diversity Michelle Boucher, Vice President, Global Talent Management at Colonial Life advises how creativity can be fostered in the workplace

Writ ten by MICHELLE BOUCHER

PEOPLE

Google spent $265mn on a datadriven diversity programme 83% of Vodafone employees say flexible working has helped improve productivity

Boston Consulting Group’s stunning New York office

MOST OF US would agree the greater the diversity of minds in business, the greater the diversity of perspectives, talents and creative solutions.

However, progress of achieving workplace diversity has been surprisingly sluggish. For example, Google’s data-driven diversity program cost $265mn to implement, but still failed to significantly change the composition of its workforce. Such results imply money isn’t everything when it comes 34

March 2018

to implementing diversity initiatives.

However, with the right internal strategies and robust planning, there are steps any organisation can take to help its business embrace diversity.

REASSESS TRADITIONAL WORKPLACE ENVIRONMENTS From interview processes to decision making, most of our workplace environments are built around eye contact, noisy group work and

generally overstimulating settings. But traditional workplace environments and routines may not be for everyone.

By adapting your workplace to cater to a diverse array of age groups, personalities and work styles, you can drive better efficiency and performance.

For example, consider offering the option of open office spaces versus quieter, private working space for your employees, so they can pick an environment where they’ll be most

‘ It’s valuable to move the culture of your business away from being dominated by how many hours employees work in the office’

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PEOPLE 5 tips on how to improve your creative space…

• Allow employees to have a choice of which environment they will be productive in, for example between an open workspace and a quieter, private working space.

• Remember the workspace needn’t be the office and if your organisation offers flexible working, employees can choose their own space, with work from home options proving popular.

• If necessary, make use of virtual technology allowing users to remain in an environment they find comfortable, especially for interviews.

• Subtly encourage collaboration by making sure your office space has ample space to connect and chat, even if this may be in a break area.

• P rioritise organising employee affinity groups; communities within corporations that encourage people with similar experiences and backgrounds to connect.

Adobe’s Lehi offices boast an indoor climbing wall and is part of Adobe’s wellness initiative 36

March 2018

productive. Individuals with autism or hyper-sensitive personalities may need different workplace accommodations, such as changes to lighting or headphones to prevent auditory overstimulation.

Team meetings and brainstorms are central to many workplace routines, but not everyone excels in these conditions. In fact, research by Harvard shows some employees worry about other team members’ views and when they perceive others have more expertise, their performance declines. This is especially challenging for introverted or less confident individuals.

Encouraging a subtle collaborative environment can prevent employees from feeling forced into sharing ideas and concerns. Simple ways to do this include integrating mentoring into everyday practices and modelling collaborative behaviour from the top down.

CONSIDER INDIVIDUAL STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES What if we created tailored roles to really benefit from each employee’s unique talents and contributions?

‘ Could your interviews be conducted virtually?

Some candidates may interview better in surroundings that are familiar to them’

Some in the business world are already beginning to think this way: A PricewaterhouseCoopers 2030 report entitled ‘Workforce of the future’ discusses the benefits of workplaces that focus on individual talents to compete in the race to give consumers what they want.

Business leaders can tap into this by developing non-traditional roles that maximise individual strengths and are less reliant on linear thinking. For example, recent ground-breaking research from Johan Wiklund revealed many individuals with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder are great at solving certain types of complex issues in isolation because they become hyper-focused on a problem capturing their attention.

The research also discovered many 37

PEOPLE individuals with ADHD enjoy improvisation, so high-pressure pitches and shifting strategy may be less emotionally and cognitively taxing for these workers. If nurtured in the right way, these skills are extremely effective in business.

While it’s fine to set individual tasks, ensure non-traditional roles still include a collaborative element.

Encourage teams to share ideas and feedback on other workplace projects with each other to ensure everyone feels part of a team and no one becomes too isolated.

PROMOTE FLEXIBILITY AND TRANSPARENCY In a global workplace survey by Vodafone entitled ‘Flexible: friend or foe?’, 83% of respondents said adopting flexible working had helped improved productivity and 61% said it helped increase company profits.

That’s why it’s valuable to move the culture of your business away from being dominated by how many hours employees work in the office.

You can do this by writing flexible policies with work-from-home options and encouraging employees to use that time. Not only does this show 38

March 2018

Instagram’s Silicon Valley office

willingness to support individual needs, it’s a good way to alleviate the additional stress that comes with commuting or having to work overtime.

Help people understand the nuances of their jobs, too. We want to celebrate employees’ unique offerings and diverse perspectives, but we also want them to understand how their individual routines, what they do and why they do it, contribute to overall business success.

About Colonial Life

‘ Encouraging a subtle collaborative environment can prevent employees from feeling forced into sharing ideas and concerns’

CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL RECRUITING PROCESSES Employee Benefit News reports it costs employers 33% of a worker’s annual salary to hire a replacement if the worker leaves the company, so recruiting and retaining the right person for your business is vital.

However, the behaviour of some individuals may run counter to common notions of what makes a good employee.

This doesn’t mean solid communication skills, being a team player, emotional

Colonial Life is a market leader in providing financial protection benefits through the workplace, including disability, life, accident, dental, cancer, critical illness and hospital confinement indemnity insurance. The company’s benefit services and education, innovative enrolment technology and personal service support more than 86,000 businesses and organisations, representing 3.7mn of America’s workers and their families

intelligence and the ability to network aren’t all important skills to have in a workplace. But focusing only on traditional criteria may systematically screen out individuals with unique special talents.

Think about ways you can adapt your hiring policies to encourage diversity.

Could your interviews be conducted virtually? Some candidates may interview better in surroundings that are familiar to them. Or would it be better not to hold a traditional interview at all?

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PEOPLE CREATIVE SPACES AROUND THE WORLD… What makes a creative space?

Good design from the outset certainly helps. Fortune has mentioned some of its favourite offices around the world and these include…

Hyland Software

Adobe Systems – the company’s Lehi office features a rock-climbing wall so employees can take a break but stay motivated to make it to the top. The adaptation is part of Adobe’s wellness initiative and the idea was put forward by staff themselves.

Autodesk – the company’s California office features a green space with deckchairs and hammocks so employees can take a well-earned rest or nap. This is part of a sleek, fresh design.

Hyland Software – the company’s offices feature an onsite barber offering a relaxing wet shave in a comfortable chair.

Boston Consulting Group – the company’s New York offices have 40

March 2018

Zappos office a photo wall which employees can decorate with their own snaps. This touch of personality encourages employees to “own the space” but remains in keeping with the sleek wooden design.

Zappos.com – the Zappos Family office is bright and airy with an eclectic mix of styles and playful features, including a ball pit and stuffed camel.

‘ By adapting your workplace to cater to a diverse array of age groups, personalities and work styles, you can drive better efficiency and performance’

Autodesk’s San Francisco office Adapting how the interview process is structured was a key action taken

by Willis Towers Watson in its bid to attract colleagues on the autism spectrum. Company research revealed a work trial or test can often be a better way to assess someone’s suitability for a role.

CREATE CONNECTIONS While diversity is about celebrating and leveraging differences, no one wants to feel so unique they’re isolated from peers and adrift in the workplace.

Prioritise organising employee resource and affinity groups – communities

within corporations that encourage people with similar experiences and backgrounds to connect.

By providing such avenues for networking, socialising and mentoring, you demonstrate that diverse individuals are not only finding success within the company, they’re willing to help others succeed as well.

With tools like these at their disposal, employees are far more likely to feel part of a diverse yet inclusive workforce.

After all, what really matters is your workforce feels secure in an accepting work environment, allowing them – and your business – to thrive.

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General Motors’ Global Manager of Renewables Rob Threlkeld says right now is the most exciting time to work in sustainability – Business Chief finds out why Writ ten by STUART HODGE

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or a company like General Motors (GM), sustainability is now a vital cog in its global operations.

With businesses now working towards objectives set out in the Paris Agreement on Climate Action, there is now not just an incentive, but an imperative to work towards the goals delineated in the strategy, which aims for a global low-carbon economy by 2050.

Companies have been aware of the need to take a more ecological outlook for a number of years now, well before the agreement was submitted to the UN. A byproduct of this has been an exponential increase in the pace of innovation we’ve seen 46

March 2018

General Motors World Headquarters

in the renewables space across all industries. It’s particularly true for GM, which has signed up to the RE100 agreement, outlining how the world’s most influential companies are committed to 100% renewable power.

That pace of innovation is something that is only set to continue, says Rob Threlkeld, Global Manager of Renewables at GM. He believes it will only get quicker as time goes on. “You’ve definitely seen it rapidly

“From a company standpoint, we’re always looking for the most economic source of generation that we can procure and sometimes getting it to our facilities can be a challenge” – Rob Threlkeld, Global Manager of Renewables at GM

- Detroit, MI, USA

increase in the last five years,” he says, “especially with smart meters and other applications that allow you to choose when you use certain types of electricity – whether it’s green or not – and what the costs actually are.

“It’s also in the transportation sector. Five years ago, there was not a lot of talk around autonomous vehicles. Electrification was starting to just start to come around. We only had the (Chevrolet) Volt at that

time. We’ve now got the Volt and the (Chevrolet) Bolt. But you can see this massive switch to where autonomous vehicles are definitely part of a future with zero crashes, zero emissions, and zero congestion components. You’ve seen this technology revolution in both the utility and transportation sectors. You’re going to see more change in those sectors in the next five years than we’ve seen in the last 50-100 years.”

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BREAKING DOWN GM’S FOUR-PILLAR RENEWABLES STRATEGY… ENERGY EFFICIENCY GM knows that reducing its overall energy consumption, as a company, has a direct correlation to its renewable energy percentages. Whether it’s something as routine as switching out lights to LEDs, GM looks at how it can optimise its energy management systems around its production and manufacturing sites, in particular, to become energy efficient.

SOURCING RENEWABLES Finding out the cheapest and most efficient means by which renewable energy sources can be secured is vital to any company, particularly a global enterprise like GM. The main two methods GM uses to do this is through power purchase agreements or onsite generation.

ADDRESSING VARIANCE AND INTERMITTENCY On the automotive side, this can mean looking at what the company is doing in terms of its advanced transport operations, whether it's battery storage, electric vehicles, fuel cells, etc. On a more general basis it refers to what the company is doing to address the intermittency of renewables on the grid by innovating when it comes to, for example, using new storage technologies or electrification efforts.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES The final pillar is essentially how GM really leverages policy and scale to look at green tariffs, opportunities with utilities, and working with regional transmission operators. The company always looks to address the technology transformation that's going on in a way that has a “broader value” to the communities it builds manufacturing facilities on, as well as consumers.

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S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y ENERGY DEMAND Despite these disruptive changes in mentality and attitude, there are still plenty of concerns around where these efforts are ultimately headed. In the US, which remains GM’s primary base of operations, a recent report from the Wind Energy Foundation identified a serious gap between corporate America’s near-term demand for renewable energy and the electricity grid’s ability to meet that demand. Threlkeld says the issues cited in the report are simply part of the natural progression of change.

“I think it’s just part of the evolution of the process,” he says. “Going back five years, as we looked at how corporations such as GM could scale up the use of renewables, it was more around what the companies really need to do in this space to engage with each other. The next logical step was: how do we gauge the utilities, which are really the natural potential owners of the renewable energy assets? That’s where we started to take off as we looked at green tariffs in the US and what utilities were starting to offer.

“The last component in this natural progression is the issue of moving this

low-cost electricity. From a company standpoint, we’re always looking for the most economic source of generation that we can procure and sometimes getting it to our facilities can be a challenge. How do we now engage relevant stakeholders – the regional transmission operators or the independent system operators in this process – as technology drives the future both in utilities and transport? It has to be in a way that ultimately benefits all the customers. We don’t want to do unnecessary upgrades should technology supersede our work.”

ELECTRIC CARS AND THE FUTURE OF TRANSPORTATION While GM has grown to much more than just an automotive enterprise, it makes sense to scrutinise the sustainability of the company’s vehicular operations. The technological transformation of cars into electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and fuel cells has completely changed the way the organisation now looks at its automotive strategy.

“Where we used to be more worried about the price of a litre of gasoline, it’s now focused on the cost of electricity, 49

S U S TA I N A B I L I T Y and when the consumer actually utilises that electricity,” says Threlkeld.

“You can see transformation with a lot of our efforts in energy efficiency and renewables in support of our manufacturing side of the operation that now impacts the product side.

From a competitive standpoint, they’re really linked together in a way they weren’t before, even a few years ago.

“Last October, we announced 20 new electric vehicles between now and 2023 as we march towards that all-electric future. The ‘zero emissions’ component is an important part of our product messaging and sets a competitive opportunity for us to look at how we viewed manufacturing in the past during our previous sustainability efforts. We’ve always focused the company in that direction. We’ve now got it both on the manufacturing and the product side when you look at the mobility component associated with the future of transportation.”

EFFECTIVE STRATEGISATION AND A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE GM’s four pillar sustainability strategy is fairly straightforward in terms of the goals it sets out and its implementation, but every 50

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decision the company makes is thoroughly considered and well thought out. Threlkeld says it is therefore important to stay on top of what’s happening with regards sustainability and renewables more widely. “I think it’s very important to strategise,” he affirms. “As a person who has always been educated by what’s going on in the industry, I like to read a lot of different articles on what the industry is doing. I need to feel the pulse of some of these technological changes and how they have an impact on the broader efforts in electrification, whether it’s transportation or renewables. It’s really about gaining that knowledge and then being able to strategise

GM’S RENEWABLE GOALS… • ALL FACILITIES TO BE POWERED BY 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY • ALL FACILITIES TO BE 100% LANDFILL FREE • ACHIEVE 20% REDUCTION IN ENERGY INTENSITY BY 2020 • ACHIEVE 20% REDUCTION IN CARBON INTENSITY BY 2020 • ACHIEVE 15% REDUCTION IN WATER INTENSITY BY 2020

HOW ARE THE EFFORTS GOING? “I think it's progressing well,” answers Threlkeld. “I just recently signed two 100-megawatt wind power purchase agreements to supply 100% of our load for seven of our manufacturing facilities in Ohio and Indiana. Those two were some of our largest deals to date and will actually get us to 20% of our electricity being matched with renewable energy by the end of 2018.”

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

around all the changes taking place.

Another change that Threlkeld has seen is a move away from simply considering the environmental, operational and potential PR consequences of any decisions regarding renewables, to a situation now where sustainability efforts are as much motivated by financial considerations as the other factors. “In every project we do, we look at it from the financial perspective and obviously pull all the additional intangible benefits, 52

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environmental attributes, the right things for the company to do in our efforts towards sustainability.

Everything we’re looking at is purely driven by the financials now.�

The renewables space, like any other, has its daily ups and downs as demand increases and decreases, despite the generally increasing need for it, and it works similarly on a month-to-month or year-toyear trend. Threlkeld feels that the process of learning when the peaks and troughs happen is an important

“I think battery storage is definitely going to be a disruptor in this space, as well as blockchain and artificial intelligence” – Rob Threlkeld, Global Manager of Renewables at GM

component of integrating the proper generation sources at the lowest cost possible. He is also aware that, when it comes to technology, it’s an ever-changing landscape, and is in no doubt as to where the next disruption may be coming from.

“I think battery storage is definitely going to be a disruptor in this space, as well as blockchain and artificial intelligence,” asserts Threlkeld. “How do you leverage all the technology and what is going on in the systems, whether it’s the grid or an individual

solar array or your home? How do those all integrate together to move the system in a much smarter way so it could deploy generation assets when needed as well as reducing generation assets when not needed, such as charging electric vehicles when the grid is actually requesting you to do so. With those questions in mind, I think artificial intelligence, blockchain, and those efforts are going to be key for us going forward to really leverage this technological transformation.”

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AUS CITY FOCUS

Headline

Seque rest volorum aute velestio intem illibus es qui ut alit et, sita iuntur?

Writ ten by AUTHOR

STIN

ASIDE FROM RESIDENT TECH GIANTS, A SERIES OF INNOVATIVE SMALL BUSINESSES ARE ALSO HARD AT WORK TO “KEEP AUSTIN WEIRD”, AND KEEP IT ON THE MAP Edited by OLIVIA MINNOCK

CITY FOCUS

AUSTIN, TEXAS, WITH A POPULATION OF NEARLY 948,000 AS ESTIMATED BY THE CENSUS BUREAU, IS THE FASTEST-GROWING LARGE CITY IN THE US, ACCORDING TO FORBES. THE CAPITAL OF TEXAS IS ALSO THE COUNTRY’S SECOND MOST POPULOUS, AFTER PHOENIX, ARIZONA, AND IS THE ECONOMIC AND CULTURAL EPICENTER OF THE AUSTIN-ROUND ROCK METRO AREA WITH AN ESTIMATED POPULATION OF OVER 2MN PEOPLE.

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ACCOLADES AND AWARDS Austin is much more than a quicklyexpanding metropolis. It’s also a city that’s known as a hotbed of musical talent and its year-round warm weather. Austin is also routinely recognized for a host of awards and accolades. For example, in 2017 alone: • Austin was named by US News & World Report as the number one place to live in the country • The city was listed by Forbes in the number one slot as the “Next Biggest Boom Town in the US” • Forbes recognized Austin’s South River City neighborhood as number two in its ranking of the “Best Cities and Neighborhoods for Millennials” • Austin was ranked as the sixth best place to live in the United States by WalletHub Other notable accolades include Forbes’ ranking of the city in 2016 as number one on its list of “Cities of the Future” and the FBI noting that Austin was the second safest major city in 2012.

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AUSTIN IS KNOW FUELED BY HIGH TECH

Residents of Austin comprise a diverse mix of college students, blue-collar employees, musicians, government workers and hightech employees. While the city’s official slogan denotes it as “The Live Music Capital of the World”, it also adopted the moniker of “Silicon Hills” during the 1990s as tech and development firms flooded the region. Numerous tech-oriented Fortune 500 companies base their headquarters of a regional office in the city, including:

CISCO A global leader in both networking and IT, Cisco helps companies connect, collaborate and communicate with each other and people around the world with their transformative products and practices.

BEING A “CLEAN AIR CITY” BEC PUBLIC BUILDINGS AND PLACE

ITS UNOFFICIAL SLOGAN – “KEEP A SMALL BUSINESSES IN O

THE COMPUTER SCIENCE AND TEXAS AT AUSTIN WHICH GRAD BEING THE MARK SPECI BEING AMONG THE 10 BEST PL ACCORDING TO CBS MONEY W IBM For over a century, IBM has been fueling an era of constant innovation. With nearly $80bn in revenue in 2016, the technology company continues to change the way the world does business.

GOOGLE As one of the leading technology 58

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WN FOR...

ECAUSE OF ITS STRICT NO-SMOKING MANDATES THAT ARE TO ALL ES INCLUDING BARS AND RESTAURANTS APPLICABLE

AUSTIN WEIRD” – A REFERENCE TO PROTECTING UNIQUE, LOCAL AND ORDER TO KEEP LARGE CORPORATIONS FROM SQUEEZING THEM OUT

D ENGINEERING PROGRAMS AT THE UNIVERSITY OF DUATE THOUSANDS OF STUDENTS EVERY YEAR E FOUNDING LOCATION AND HEADQUARTERS OF WHOLE FOODS KET, AN INTERNATIONAL, UPSCALE GROCERY STORE CHAIN THAT IALIZES IN FOODS THAT ARE NATURAL, LOCAL AND/OR ORGANIC LACES TO RETIRE IN THE COUNTRY, WATCH DATA IN 2012 companies in the United States, Google provides an array of internet-related services that include cloud computing, hardware, online advertising technologies, software and search.

PAYPAL An American company, PayPal provides an online payment system that facilitates the transfer of money

and serves as an alternative to traditional banking services.

DELL Dell, a company with its headquarters in Round Rock, a suburb of Austin, delivers trusted technology solutions that are designed to help communities, countries, businesses and consumers around the world achieve more.

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CITY FOCUS

SMALL BUSINESS IN AUSTIN PUTTING THE CITY ON THE MAP While Austin is a highly desirable and convenient location for global conglomerates, there is also plenty of opportunity for small businesses that fill a unique niche. Below are just a few of the many notable examples found thriving in the city:

TREEHOUSE TreeHouse is a home improvement store with a difference. Its focus is on “smart” homes: making sustainable, healthy and thoughtful homes for everyone. Through a mix of great design, cutting-edge technology, progressive products and dedicated staff, TreeHouse delivers customized solar power, lighting, weatherization, remodeling and other services to Austin and the surrounding area.

The company is also a significant charitable presence in the city.

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MITSCOOTS Since 2012, Mitscoots has been changing the apparel business with their 100% American-made socks, tanks, beanies, gloves, t-shirts and scarves. Much like the Toms business model, Mitscoots donates an item to the homeless for each one they sell.

At Mitscoots, though, this is taken one step further by employing those individuals who are transitioning from homelessness to package up the orders in the Austin location.

SPRINGDALE FARM Located in the heart of East Austin, Springdale Farm’s mission is to research sustainable urban farming and agricultural practices and educate the local community about them. Its products, which include candles, locally-grown produce, jams, eggs, bath products and more, are made with 100% natural ingredients.

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TOP 10 MOST EXPEN RESTAURANTS IN TH WITH 26 MICHELIN STARS BETWEEN THEM, CONSIDER THESE DINING DESTINATIONS FOR SERIOUSLY DEEP POCKETS. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO MOST COSTLY, WHICH EATERY CLAIMS THE CROWN? TUCK IN AND FIND OUT Wr it te n by S A M M U S G U I N - R O W E

NSIVE HE US

MI C H E LI N S TA R GUI D E “ A V E R Y G O O D R E S TA U R A N T I N I T S C AT E G O R Y ” “EXCELLENT COOKING, WORTH A DETOUR” “EXCEPTIONAL CUISINE, WORTH A SPECIAL JOURNEY”

BENU SAN FRANCISCO

10 ELEVEN MADISON PARK

Stashed within a beautiful art deco building that looks out on to Madison Square Park, in 2018 EMP celebrates 20 years of service; hot off the heels of placing top among the World’s 50 Best Restaurants. The tasting menus range from eight to 10 courses – and $295 to $315 per head – which, when paired with wine, will see a couple split a bill for $1,000.

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You’ll spend $295 on the tasting menu, plus an additional 20% on a non-negotiable tip, although you can expect a gastronomic journey that spans a leisurely three-hour sitting in return. According the Benu website, the cuisine featured is “a wide variety of seafood and vegetables, a few meat courses, and some sweets”.

09

PER SE NEW YORK CITY

08 THE FRENCH LAUNDRY YOUNTVILLE

Another exorbitantly-priced gem from Thomas Keller, this time a plush and sophisticated dining room that overlooks Central Park. An everchanging nine-course prix fixe menu ($340) can be boosted even further with a range of indulgent extras – which, depending on the day, might be shaved black winter truffles and Royal Kaluga caviar.

07

Located in the heart of California’s Napa Valley, The French Laundry is one of Thomas Keller’s many esteemed restaurants, serving impeccable French cuisine in a dreamy country setting. So innovative is the chef’s tasting menu, no single ingredient is repeated throughout the meal. Across 12 or more courses, that’s pretty spectacular. Average meal is $310 per head.

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CHEF’S TABLE AT BROOKLYN FARE NEW YORK CITY

06 GUY SAVOY LAS VEGAS Nevada tourists looking for a wee splash of Paris should eschew the hotel that shares its name (and, lest we forget, boasts its very own Eiffel Tower) and head instead to Caesars Palace, where the Savoy restaurant’s iconic menu is delicately paid homage to. You’ll unlikely find foie gras or artichoke and black truffle soup this delicious anywhere else outside of the French capital but, for the price ($345 for the Prestige tasting menu), a flight there may actually prove cheaper.

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On the list of locations you’d not expect to find a three-Michelin starred restaurant, the downstairs of a grocery store hovers somewhere near the top.

But not only does Chef’s Table exist, it remains one of the most soughtafter bookings in NYC. Across two and a half hours, counter-sat diners are treated to a bounty of Japaneseinspired seafood, for the oddlyspecific price of $394.36.

05

URASAWA LOS ANGELES

04 SAISON SAN FRANCISCO Menu? What menu? “A meal at Saison is whatever you want it to be” proclaims the website, with each one personally tailored to a diner’s individual preference. Evoking San Francisco’s chilled atmos with an open-plan kitchen and roaring fire, one thing is certain: irrespective of taste, the cheque will amount to $398.

A desperately-intimate Japanese restaurant, only a small handful of patrons can feast on its omakase menu – that changes daily, stars upwards of 25 courses and costs $400 before tax, tip and drinks – each night.

Its owner, Hiroyuki Urasawa, trained under Masa Takayama (see number one) before establishing California’s most-pricey, and renowned, dining experience. Just, whatever you do, don’t snap photographs – they’re banned.

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02 JOËL ROBUCHON LAS VEGAS Sin City is a place that blends the decadent with the depraved like nowhere else on Earth, and its food scene is no different. Inside the MGM Grand – a casino and hotel that offers its own buffet dinner for $32.99 – is a luxury French bistro, belonging to a chef with a record number of Michelin stars (28, three of which are here). Its delectable tasting menu, before drinks, is $445 per head.

MASA NEW YORK CITY The good news: in accordance with Japanese custom, tips are not expected nor accepted at Masa Takayama’s eponymous eatery. The bad: tax and beverages are not included, while dinner itself will set you back a cool $595. There is no menu to speak of, yet each dish is elegantly made and exquisitely presented, with fresh fish from Japan flown in daily.

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B REAKING THE MOLD OF IT Jetro Restaurant Depot has undergone one of the biggest technology overhauls in the company’s 28-year history, but one thing has remained the same – its commitment to the customer experience

Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Andy Turner

J E T R O R E S TA U R A N T D E P O T

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our years ago, the role of Chief Information Officer didn’t exist at Jetro Restaurant Depot. Since then, the wholesale food service provider has seen a complete root-and-branch transformation of its digital space.

It has been a revamp that is helping the US-based company deliver what matters most to its customers – offering high-quality, fresh foods at a good price.

In doing so, the company strives to provide extraordinary service to independent foodservice operators throughout the US. Driven by an inherent passion for programming and all things technical, this job is in the capable hands of Andres Cubero, the company’s firstever CIO. Recognizing the importance of digitization, Jetro Restaurant Depot has made significant strides in its technology department and it is these steps which have helped the company distinguish itself from its competitors.

“We have made substantial investments in our technologies over the past several years and that has really given us a competitive edge,”

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observes Cubero. “It has allowed us to provide products to our stores in a timely manner, and keep our costs down. That’s been a great operating model for us – putting the right data in the hands of our buyers and our personnel to keep the inventory fresh and in-stock.”

Technological overhaul Focusing on the company’s infrastructure and bandwidth, Cubero and his team have worked diligently to prepare Jetro Restaurant Depot for the digital age. One such initiative that Cubero is passionate about is the company’s plans to implement wi-fi in its warehouses. Over the next 18 months, Jetro Restaurant Depot is set to launch a series of web initiatives. These include a refresh of the company’s, website with the potential of providing delivery services in some of its regions, and a pilot concept of in-store pick-up services.

“It’s a big initiative for the team,” says Cubero. “By the end of this year, we should be in more than 130 locations, and each one of our warehouses is on average, about

FDF WORLD

Andres Cubero Chief Information Officer

Cubero joined Jetro in 1994 as a POS application developer. Over his tenure with the company, he played a major role within the IT department. His major accomplishments include designing and implementing the custom store system solutions that runs the store operations for Jetro and Restaurant Depot. He also designed and implemented the foundation of what would become the data warehousing environment for Jetro/Restaurant Depot.

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60,000 sq ft. It’s a lot of square footage and there’s a lot of equipment that we’d be looking at deploying for a wi-fi installation. It’s a huge initiative for us to cost justify. The challenge for my department is to create return on investment to justify the investment.”

However, this is not just a shortterm vision for the company. In the future, Jetro Restaurant group is hoping to implement a series of omnichannel initiatives to help provide its customers with a seamless and integrated shopping experience.

Transforming the customer experience One initiative that Jetro Restaurant Depot is exploring is the concept of self-checkout. By using scanner devices, customers could scan and

collect their products and then present the data to the sales team. Through this program, the food wholesaler hopes to quicken shopping times, improve efficiency and overall, enhance the end-user experience.

“These new technologies aim to transform the customer experience,” Cubero says. “We’re unique in this space because we are a true brick-and-mortar, cash and carry wholesaler. This allows us to provide good quality products, at better prices, and at lower costs.

“However, the nature of our shopping experience is much different than a traditional grocery store environment: our customers are pushing very large wagons with cases and cases of product,” he continues. “It’s a very heavy load

“I will say that the biggest challenge that I’ve had in this role has been sort of breaking the mold of IT” – Andres Cubero, Chief Information Officer

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that’s going through the front-end and really kind of a challenge for the cashiers to scan. Our goal is to really enhance that customer experience.”

Data analytics The US company is implementing a series of data warehousing and store system solutions and, like many companies, Jetro Restaurant Depot is tapping into the power of data analytics to streamline its operations and bring its technologies to the next level.

However, in an ever-evolving industry, Cubero and his team don’t underestimate the challenges that lie ahead.

“We have a rich amount of data that we’re collecting right now, and so the challenge is being able to provide the data in an easily consumable way to the people who need to make those decisions, who need to look at the data,” says Cubero.

“Having the right kind of presentation tools or the right database environment to allow our decision makers to use the data in an ad hoc fashion is really a challenge

7,000

Number of Employees at Jetro Restaurant Depot;

20

Employees in IT team that a lot of businesses face, and we’re not alone there. However, thanks to our latest digitization strategies we have a high degree of comfort about tackling these challenges.”

Dealing with technical debt As technology continuously reinvents itself, legacy systems can build up quickly. When Cubero joined the team as CIO, the company had a technology footprint that was

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YOU KNOW IT. WE KNOW CLOUD CONNECTIVITY. TOGETHER, WE CAN DO BIG THINGS.

windstreamenterprise.com

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Training Meeting

over seven or eight years old. As a result, tackling the company’s technical debt was perhaps one of the most challenging hurdles Jetro Restaurant Depot has faced.

“Like a lot of retailers, we had fallen into the trap of putting together a technical blueprint for our stores, but then didn’t revise it and change it,” explains Cubero. “When I became CIO and saw what we had been doing, I realized we really needed a revamp.

“It’s been a challenge sometimes because of the cost involved, but we’ve seen a significant transformation. One of the very

first things I did was implement a hard refresh policy, where any equipment that’s five years or older in our warehouses goes through a hardware refresh - that includes servers, point-of-sale terminals, printers, the whole kit.”

As well as this, the company did a point-of-sale refresh where it upgraded its point-of-sale equipment and introduced new scanners that reduce waiting times. On top of that, Jetro Restaurant Depot has been working closely with partners such as Modern Systems to transform its ERP system. “That’s a major project for us

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10 Melville Park Rd., Melville, NY 11747 Telephone: (631) 414-4800 Email: hello@marcumtechnology.com

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Marcum Technology is a member of the Marcum Group of companies. Based in New York, we are a Technology & Managed Services Provider specializing in IT Services, Cyber Security, Software Development, Digital Marketing, Staffing, and Telecom.

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“These new technologies aim to really transform the customer experience” – Andres Cubero, Chief Information Officer

because it’s been a bottleneck on the technology for the last several years,” comments Cubero. “Through this partnership, we should be able to get off that framework and take our systems to the next level.”

Strong industry ties The team at Jetro Restaurant Depot has played no small part in this impressive transformation.

With a small IT team of 20, split evenly between field support and developers, the company has firmly cemented itself as a key player in the food wholesale space. Collaboration has been a key part of Jetro Restaurant Depot’s success and Cubero believes that this philosophy should also extend to the firm’s strong supplier relationships.

“For us, it’s a team effort with our partners,” observes Cubero. “On the infrastructure side of our transformation, Dell has been a big partner of ours and from a consulting and data center perspective, Marcum Technologies has been really key. Illinois Wholesale has also been a really key player for our point-of-sale initiatives, and looking

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‘130 LOCATIONS BY THE END OF THE YEAR – CUBERO’S PREDICTION FOR JETRO RESTAURANT DEPOT’S FOOTPRINT’

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at mobile devices and handheld units for some of our initiatives.

“I think it’s very important for CIOs to look at the landscape of vendors out there and really explore their options.

It’s worth the extra research time to pit the vendors against each other, look at what their offerings are, and make the best decisions for the company from both a technology and cost point of view. That’s been my tactic.

It has exposed me to a lot of different vendors and different solutions, and I find that effort has given me the chance to learn more about the latest technologies and trends.”

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On track for growth Jetro Restaurant Depot has made a strong name for itself in the wholesale food market, offering high-quality yet cost-conscious products for independent restaurants, caterers and non-profits alike.

“Looking forward, I predict we will see substantial changes internally,” he says. “We’re going to be revamping

our business practices by adopting agile project management concepts because it’s vital that we make that transition forward to kind of change and respond to market needs quicker.

With our upcoming initiatives, I see our customer experience getting even better. For us, it’s about maturing our practices overall, whether it’s in the cybersecurity space, or the project management space, or the software development practices as a whole.

Over the past several years, Jetro Restaurant Depot has completely renovated its technology platform and elevated the firm to new heights. The company’s entire IT infrastructure and legacy systems have been overhauled, but perhaps its greatest achievement was its mammoth culture change.

“I will say that the biggest challenge that I’ve had in this role has been sort of breaking the mold of IT,” reflects Cubero. “It’s important to bridge the of gap and see IT not as a serviceonly function of the business, but as a key decision-making partner.”

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Nokia’s ‘conscious’ factory of the futur

Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Charlotte Clarke

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NOKIA

Unveiling its groundbreaking ‘conscious factory,’ telecoms giant Nokia is truly ready for the fast-changing manufacturing needs of the future

S

everal years ago, Nokia set itself an ambitious objective: to envision and create the ‘factory of the future’. Fastforward to today and the telecoms giant has made this distant future a reality with its state-of-the-art concept – ‘the conscious factory’.

With every industrial revolution, factories have evolved to create something unlike anything that has come before. Now, in the midst of Industry 4.0, analytics, robotics, and 3D printing are just some of the emerging trends that are redefining the manufacturing space at large.

By harnessing the potential of these technological trends, Nokia’s

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NOKIA

“It’s a complete game changer” Johannes Giloth (left), Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

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S U P P LY C H A I N

Conscious Supply Network is ushering in a new era of supply chain transformation and battening down the hatches for Supply Chain 4.0.

Nokia’s vision was a simple one: to transform its factories into ‘the conscious factory’ – an agile and intelligent manufacturing service that is fully-automated, green, self-learning, and able to predict and prevent supply flexibly.

To make this hi-tech network a reality, the Finnish giant zeroed in on four crucial areas: digitisation, analytics, robotics and transparency. It leveraged tools such as cloud computing, Internet of Things (IoT), analytics, machine learning, robotic process automation (RPA) as well as augmented and virtual reality. In doing so it has created an endto-end supply chain solution that is more visible, adaptable, and smarter than anything before.

A conscious supply network It has been a mammoth task for Nokia, but it is one which the team believes will revolutionise manufacturing forever.

“In former times, if you outsourced a factory it was like a black box,” explains Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia. “You placed an order there and waited until the delivery arrived but, in between, you couldn’t see anything. With our conscious factory, I can see in real-time

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Taco Zwemstra, Senior Vice President

Arttu Ollinaho, Global Key Account

and Chief Operating Officer: “With

Director: “By closely collaborating

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market requirements and to speed up new technology developments.”

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Examples for 4G RFPA high volume parts:

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house and external manufacturing. Partnering with leading companies, leveraging their strengths with our needs,

bands. At the same time, the speed of development and technology creation in the entire supply chain is challenged:

offered us to the chance to optimize our supply chain. Our

the even more complex new products must be available way

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towards a massive MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) type of Base Stations in 5G requires scalability in volume

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ever before. This can only be achieved when supplier and

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planning and supply tooling will enable Ampleon to become even more flexible with the aim to further grow our business with our key customers. Ampleon has embraced “Partnering for Success” as one of the key business drivers towards future growth. Together with our customers, suppliers and R&D partners, and with a next step in supply chain excellence and system support, we are well on our way.

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NOKIA

what happens in each factory and I can optimise the process.

“It’s a complete game changer.”

With over 30 factories worldwide, Nokia’s supply chain is a far-reaching one spanning several continents.

However, the Finnish company only owns three of these factories with the rest being outsourced. Instead of focusing on owning bricks-andmortar, Nokia is concentrating on owning the information, the data, and knowledge behind it. By understanding how the industry is connected together, the

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organisation is creating a conscious supply network, an end-to-end ecosystem built on end-to-end understanding and knowledge.

“Only three of our factories are owned by Nokia because we have not been focusing on manufacturing, we have been focusing on managing a manufacturing network,” observes Giloth. “I only can manage this network if I have data. I don’t care about owning the equipment, but I care about owning the data.

“We are putting thousands of sensors in our factories and

S U P P LY C H A I N

Nokia has more than 30 factories around the world

connecting all our manufacturing and logistics assets together so that they can talk to each other,” he continues.

“With that, we are creating what we call a ‘conscious factory’, where all transactions are visible in real-time in a controlled centre. With that, you can optimise throughput, inventories, quality, and you can apply machine learning to it. It helps you automate the entire process, it helps you ensure quality, it helps you to reduce cost in inventories, and it helps you be more flexible in adapting your supply chain. But having one conscious

1865

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Long-term experience as a premium developer and supplier of advanced technologies is the basis of Viscom’s solutions, which ensures continuous process optimization.

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The company also has numerous regional support and service centers in order to keep the systems at the peak of performance in actual use, even long after the purchase by update and upgrade offers.

micro-computed tomography. The offer also includes solutions for conformal coatings and wire bond inspection. Thus, all inspection gates are covered by a single source.

The portfolio comprises automatic optical inspection, solder paste inspection as well as automatic and manual X-ray systems with

For contact and detailed information write to info@viscom.com or visit www.viscom.com.

Suppliers to the automotive industry make up the largest customer group. Viscom also has well-known purchasers in other industrial branches such as consumer electronics, aviation and aerospace, medical technology and industrial electronics.

The quality of PCBs plays a crucial role in the implementation of functions and performance of electronic products. Thus, Viscom´s PCB inspection is an essential element in any electronics manufacturing process.

NOKIA

factory is just the start of it. We want to create an entire network.”

Presenting the ‘factory in a box’ This is just the beginning of Nokia’s vision for the future; it is also resigning the idea of large manufacturing locations to the past. Unveiling its ‘factory in a box’, Nokia is anticipating the fastchanging manufacturing needs of the future, by creating a conscious ‘Lego’ building block factory.

Offering unparalleled flexibility and agility, this factory in a box aims to revolutionise today’s factory floor. It can be transported to the location, build the necessary volume for ‘country of origin’ requirements and can be moved again as needed.

Agility is a factor which can make or break a company, especially in the telecoms industry, and so the factory in a box could be instrumental as it allows product prototypes to be quickly created, tested and fixed if necessary. What’s more, if a site is hit by a natural disaster, critical customer orders can still be achieved

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“Having one conscious factory is just the start of it. We want to create an entire network” Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

quickly with a portable factory.

“It is a step towards a modular supply chain factory,” says Giloth. “A big problem in the manufacturing space is that R&D and manufacturing should be close together because then you have an immediate feedback loop.

“Every time I have a factory request, whether it’s in Nigeria or elsewhere, I cannot create a factory there and demolish it after a year.

With the factory in a box, you can ship that modular container there, produce

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The future of intelligent productivity MY700 - The ultimate in high-speed jet printing and jet dispensing The future of electronics production belongs to those who can handle any solder paste or fluid deposit with absolute precision and unmatched speed. Part of the new MYPro series, the MY700 Jet Printer and Jet Dispenser combines solder paste jet printing with jet dispensing of adhesives, UV materials, epoxies and more – with micrometer precision and at speeds of more than one million dots per hour. Thanks to a combination of intelligent software and revolutionary jet-printing technology, you can accelerate your production with on the-spot revisions, 3D mounting, and perfect quality solder joints for both rigid and flexible boards. Simply put, it’s the smartest way to boost quality and utilization across a vast range of challenging applications.

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Number of employees at Nokia the product and when it’s ready for mass production, you go elsewhere.”

A global company with a local focus “This will not only transform the supply chain landscape at large, it will also create opportunities for unique regional players,” explains Bo Jensen, Head of Delivery Operations Asia Pacific & Japan at Nokia.

“If we look at it from a local perspective, it also allows us to adapt to local requirements, so this would be advantageous for regions such as Indonesia, for instance, where there’s a lot of discussion about local content and requirements. It creates a lot of flexibility and it also provokes our customers to take a bigger step,” he comments.

Sitting in Nokia’s gleaming regional office in Singapore, Giloth and Jensen passionately bounce back-and-forth as they talk about the latest exhibitions where they will showcase this ground-breaking concept. Sitting in the epicentre of the bustling business district, Nokia

has firmly cemented itself as a major player in the manufacturing space.

The ‘conscious’ factory may have seemed futuristic but it is possible - and Nokia made it happen.

However, this state-of-the-art concept didn’t come about in an instant. It is the result of over a decade’s work, and it is just one step in what has been a complete rootand-branch transformation of Nokia.

A high-level supply chain transformation On this journey, the organisation faced three successive challenges that created what Giloth called an ‘existential moment’ for Nokia – one which would bring about one of the biggest supply chain transformations in the industry. In the past two years, Nokia jumped from 101st to 15th in Gartner’s Top 25 Supply Chain ranking, an extraordinary turnaround that the research firm hailed as ‘triumphant.’ It has been a lengthy process for both the company and its people but Nokia is keen to keep up this momentum.

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“This supply chain transformation has been a journey of around eight years,” Giloth says.

“We were undergoing external shocks to a certain extent. The first challenge was the battle of profitability that was driven by major Chinese competitors, and because of this we needed to cut costs and drive efficiency in the supply chain, and therefore one of the solutions was to create an integrated supply chain.

“We applied a lot of lean, Six Sigma, Kaizen continuous improvement efforts – the bread and butter of a good supply chain,” he adds.

“We renovated our organisational setup. We introduced KPIs and that was just the first step.”

The next challenge confronting Nokia was the pressure to be agile and responsive in a volatile market.

“The need for an agile supply chain became more and more paramount,” Giloth reflects.

“We invested a lot of time and also money in making our supply chain and demand planning, reacting faster to the market changes while not compromising on the lean setup. Then that created an integrated and demand-driven supply network.”

Customer-focused The third and perhaps most pressing priority? Customer centricity.

In many organisations, supply chains are seen

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“We used to be in the trenches of the back office but now we’re more involved from the beginning of the opportunity in order to create the best possible customer experience” Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

as a back-end function, but at Nokia, that notion is being flipped on its head. Giloth and Jensen believe that ‘creating the technology to connect the world’ is more than just a tagline that people associate with the telecoms company – it is a core value that should be interwoven through all aspects of Nokia, including its supply chain.

“Our market is diversifying hugely,” observes Jensen. “We have new customers, new segments, and therefore it’s critical that we are more customer-specific and more consumer-driven. In all aspects, user experience is really influencing our behaviour.

“Interestingly, we’re also seeing that by making our supply chain more customer-centric, we can grow our top line,” he continues. “We are having more strategic engagement with our customers and more what we call ‘stickiness’. This is significant because the more we are in, the more we can help them, and the more likely it is that we can build on this.

“It’s also about building a company

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NOKIA

mentality in the organisation that shows we are an important part of what the customer is seeing in their daily life. We used to be in the trenches of the back office but now we’re more involved from the beginning of the opportunity in order to create the best possible customer experience.”

From top to bottom, customer needs are driving decisions at Nokia. But as each customer has their own unique demands, Giloth describes how the Finnish company has worked to understand and cluster its customers into segments so that it can deliver the things that really matter to them.

“Some customers want to have fast delivery, but they are not really price-sensitive,” Giloth says. “Others are looking at the price only, but the supply chain related KPIs are not that important. You need to really understand the different KPIs and what your customers want.

Our customers have completely different requirements in terms of throughput, reactiveness and on-time

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delivery so we need to understand the requests of the customer and segment our supply chain towards it.”

However, a customer segmented supply chain is just the start, Giloth says. “You also have to create customer intimacy, to really talk with your customers, and be exposed to the customers.

“Therefore, we have people like Bo in the regions being more and more connected with Nokia customers, rather than it being a very back-ended function. On top of that, you need to design your processes and your tools to make it easy for customers to use. Your product configuration can be cumbersome, or it can be Amazon-like. If the customer has a good feel of that user interface, that’s added value in itself.”

True digital transformation Often, ‘digitisation’ can seem like just another buzzword; a few syllables that have saturated business press releases worldwide. However, Nokia has proven it can be more than just on-trend lingo. Over the

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NOKIA

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past several years, it has worked diligently to revamp its digital space but it doesn’t underestimate the challenges that lie ahead.

“Digitisation has become a buzzword because many global supply chains are far away from being truly digitalised,” says Giloth candidly. “The benefits and the potential have not been fully uncovered. At Nokia, we think that the next S-curve in achieving supply chain maturity is digitalisation.

“Nokia is a company of different legacies,” he continues. “It’s a combination of Nokia, Siemens, Alcatel-Lucent, Nortel, Motorola and Panasonic. All those companies we have merged with over the last few years have brought legacy systems and IT systems with it. It is unrealistic to have a monolithic IT system in a dynamic company like Nokia and so we are trying to bridge that by using technology like RPA and artificial intelligence, for example.”

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MTEK 4ZERO SOLUTION A REAL TIME REALIZATION OF INDUSTRY 4.0

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S U P P LY C H A I N

Sustaining supplier relationships Nokia is taking radical steps to accelerate its digital maturity and influence the shape of things to come, but it isn’t doing it alone.

Sustaining strong supplier relations has been key to unlocking Nokia’s supply chain transformation.

“We are working closely with companies to help us automate our processes on a daily basis,” Giloth says. “When it comes to that conscious factory environment, we have been working closely with a lot of sensor companies, small IoT startups, and cloud companies to

really get a deeper understanding.

When it comes to digitalising entire process chains, we have a lot of internal projects, but these are also supported by specialised consultants in those areas.

“As well as this, we have just consolidated our business process outsourcing and that strong focus has really helped us transform our auto management process,” adds Jensen. “We’re also using everyday tools like Office 365 and SharePoint Online to digitise the everyday life of the employee as much as possible.

We want to change the mindsets

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NOKIA

of our people and encourage them to utilise the opportunities that are at our fingertips every day.”

Open collaboration ‘No man is an island’, and the same can often be said about business.

In this ever-evolving industry, the right collaboration could set you miles ahead of a competitor and perhaps no one understands this better than Nokia. As a result, the Finnish company has turned to the Open Ecosystem Network. Built on the principle of data democracy,

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this innovative platform has shaken up traditional business models and proposed a new way of working with different ecosystems and industries.

By connecting developers, startups, business incubators, universities, subject experts and entrepreneurs, the platform allows groups to share ideas and find the right people to develop them.

“It revolves around co-ideation and co-creation with our suppliers, but also collaboration within the company,” Giloth explains. “It’s a digital platform where you can post

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“Getting that outsidein perspective was one of the key levers that helped us reach the next level�

Bo Jensen, Head of Delivery Operations Asia Pacific & Japan at Nokia.

S U P P LY C H A I N

your ideas, where you can have private rooms and where you can also have protected information in there, in case of sensitive intellectual property rights (IPR) discussions, for example. In this way, you can just accelerate the way you are dealing with your suppliers and prepare for the future. In the creation environment, it’s all about speed.”

An outside-in approach This sense of open collaboration is largely a result of what Jensen describes as an “outside-in”

approach. “Getting that outside-in perspective was one of the key levers that helped us reach the next level rather than being satisfied with what we’ve always been doing,” he says.

“After a very long time of trying to optimise looking at ourselves, we managed to turn it around.

We are working with a lot of exciting external companies in order to get a perspective on what others are doing.

“Instead of just looking at ourselves and polishing the chrome it’s about really asking ‘okay, what

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NOKIA

“Customer segmentation is going to become more important with 5G, because today our major customers are the major telecoms operators of the world, the big internet players. In the future, it could be someone like BMW or Tencent.

It could be a bank or a hospital�

Johannes Giloth, Senior Vice President of Global Operations and Chief Procurement Officer at Nokia

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can we do substantially different?

How can we disrupt the sector?”

5G ready With the looming roll-out of 5G on the horizon, the telecoms industry is a thrilling yet unpredictable one to be in. Nokia has consistently been readying itself for 5G, chipping away at any obstacles in its path. Whilst Giloth and Jensen recognise the challenges it still poses, they feel that conscious supply network will propel the firm to new heights.

“The first generations of mobile phone technologies were incremental to each other, but 5G is changing everything,” notes Giloth. “It will open the communications sector to hundreds of other industries because it is vital for uses like autonomous driving and robotics.

“It’s a huge technology shift. We have invested heavily in R&D which has helped to set us apart, but you cannot do this just alone, you need to have partners. We have strategic partnerships that are helping us develop the necessary chips

and technologies. Without those industry ties it’s difficult, and so it takes a much more collaborative approach in many areas. You need to have long-lasting partnerships.

“The market is changing and our customers are changing, and so our supply chain needs to be changing too,” he continues. “Customer segmentation is going to become more important with 5G because today our major customers are the major telecoms operators of the world, the big internet players. In the future, it could be someone like BMW or Tencent. It could be a bank or a hospital. With that, you need to completely rethink your value chains.”

A true telecoms behemoth, Nokia has always left a lasting mark on the sector. The Finnish giant has come a long way since the humble, hardwearing phones it became infamous for and now, as Giloth and Jensen take the ‘conscious factory’ to the global stage, it seems that Nokia’s historic legacy is beginning a new chapter.

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TA K I N G TH E R OA D LESS TRAVELLED WITH PERSONALIZED PROCUREMENT

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T W O R O A D S H O S P I TA L I T Y

T

he hospitality market is saturated with hotels that often look and feel the same. However, amidst this, one hotel management company is cutting through the noise to offer unforgettable, custom-tailored getaways to its guests.

Whether it’s managing a sleek boutique hotel or a hazy, sun-drenched resort, Two Roads Hospitality aims to capture the true spirit of a place.

The Colorado-based hotel management company has a collection of 70 properties in its North American portfolio and it prides itself on embracing the unique nuances between each of these locations, and each of its guests.

Believing that no two trips should be the same, Two Roads Hospitality’s personalized approach is an integral part of the company’s DNA. However, when tasked with sourcing the products and services for such an entrepreneurial operation, this philosophy can prove challenging.

With a wealth of experience across an array of gaming casinos and hospitality companies, this responsibility has fallen into the capable hands of industry veteran Bryan Edwards, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing & Supply Chain.

Personalized approach “For me, probably the biggest draw to join Two Roads Hospitality was the challenge of building a sourcing strategy that embraces the unique needs of each property but still aggregates our national

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“On a daily basis, we aim to create meaningful financial results for the properties, improve services and product value” – Bryan Edwards, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing

spend,” says Edwards. “On a daily basis, we aim to create meaningful financial results for the properties, improve services and product value, whether it’s the food in our kitchens or the operational items needed

for housekeeping. We see how can we can identify opportunities to add value to the overall operation, while embracing the unique needs of these individual properties.”

Launched in 2016 following a merger between Destination Hotels and Commune Hotels and Resorts, Two Roads Hospitality takes a unique approach when managing and operating its portfolio of properties for brands such as Alila Hotels & Resorts, Destination Hotels, Joie de Vivre Hotels, and Thompson Hotels.

Whilst overseeing the day-to-day running of these hotel brands, the company champions the unique differences between each of its locations, properties and guests.

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“Really, everything we do at Two Roads is built on this idea of true authenticity,” explains Edwards.

“We have properties in highly unique markets that embrace everything about the part of the world that they’re in. Whether it’s the design or aesthetic of a property, the ingredients that are incorporated into the food, the language and the approach from our team members. All of these things are designed to bring about a unique guest experience that embraces where we are in the world.”

Focusing on each unique property Less reliant on traditional group purchasing organizations (GPOs), the company’s meticulous, customtailored approach also extends to its sourcing function. As such, Two Roads Hospitality has brought strategic-sourcing in-house with notable success. “When I talk to a property about their needs, my only focus is that specific property,” Edwards explains. “I want to know what’s important to

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them, what they need to run their business, where their opportunities are, where their pain points are and how I can help resolve these issues. In that way, we personalize our strategic sourcing experience more than a traditional GPO does.

“GPO’s take a wide net approach to procurement whereby they throw a wide net out into the water and catch what they catch,” adds Edwards.

“In this way, they’re not necessarily focused on what the specific needs of the property are. Meanwhile, at Two

Roads Hospitality, we’re like a line fisherman. We have a very specific target and a very specific strategy to catch what we’re after. That’s the key sourcing strategy here – how do we focus on the very specific needs of our business when we go to market?”

Sustaining supplier relationships With the growing pressure to reduce spending whilst enhancing value, cost cutting has become a fundamental part of strategic sourcing. As such,

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Two Roads Hospitality recognizes that its tight-knit supplier relationships help the company drive value and differentiate it in the market.

“We’re very proud to do business with our suppliers because they’ve invested a lot to meet the varying demands of our 70 properties,” comments Edwards. “One specific product that we’ve identified for 60 properties may not work for the other 10 and so we collaborate with our partners to come up with a solution for that group. I think it’s that creative approach that enables

“I think it’s those little things – making it a personal experience, making it fun, and making everybody feel like the company owner – that are so important for the team’s morale” – Bryan Edwards, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing

everybody to focus on collaborative work and mutual investments.

“I also think, personally, that our business style has a lot to do with these crucial relationships,” he adds.

“Shaking somebody’s hand, looking them in the eyes and knowing that they’re genuine in their interest to do business with you and that they’re invested on a personal level - that sort of approach really goes a long way. Although this business style might take a bit more time, it creates

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much deeper lasting relationships that we’re able to leverage. It enables us to have suppliers who are invested in making sure our hotels succeed.”

Technological ingenuity In an industry that is being pushed to do more with less, technological innovation is helping Two Roads Hospitality stay ahead of the curve. As a result, the international company is utilizing big data to create efficiency and add real-time supply chain insight to a fast-paced and ever-evolving business model.

Partnering with innovative companies like Buyers Edge Purchasing, Two Roads Hospitality utilizes data warehousing to see itemized details about what the company has bought, where it was bought, how often was

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it bought, what was paid and what the product’s specification is.

“As well as that, Buyer’s Edge also offers something that our industry is not famous for and that’s price assurance,” adds Edwards. “It’s great that we spend months on a sourcing event, deliver a great contract and get a high degree of alignment from our properties into that program, but if nobody is auditing the price to ensure we’re getting the right price delivered, we’re leaving money on the table. Buyer’s Edge has really enabled us to be able to do that work in an automated way.

“As partners go, I consider these folks an extension of my sourcing team,” he adds.

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Retaining key talent The personalized approach Edwards takes to sourcing is one that also transcends the company’s work culture. In the hospitality industry, a sector that has been plagued by a high turnover of staff, Two Roads Hospitality has been an anomaly.

By promoting a flexible, balanced work culture the company has managed to retain its young, talented and forward-thinking team.

“Not only is it a challenge to find key talent, it’s also a challenge to keep them,” notes Edwards candidly. “Therefore, we work really hard to promote a positive working culture. We have a very flexible working environment. The home

office is casual and open. We have a CEO who believes in a family-first lifestyle, and walks the talk. I think it’s those little things – making it a personal experience, making it fun, and making everybody feel like the company owner – that are so important for the team’s morale.”

Working alongside property owners Just as the company knows what makes a guest happy, Two Roads Hospitality also understands the needs and expectations of its property owners. Boasting a deep understanding of global trends and what’s driving change in the sector, Edwards and his team guide properties and help them become a crucial part of local communities

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“For me, probably the biggest draw to join Two Roads Hospitality was the challenge of building a sourcing strategy that embraces the unique needs of each property but still aggregates our national spend” – Bryan Edwards, Vice President of Strategic Sourcing

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in a bid to create lasting value.

“I think, fundamentally, we’re very good at managing a business,” Edwards says. “We know how to make money, we know how to manage a hotel or manage a resort properly.

Not only do we know the nuts and bolts of hotel management well, we do it in a way that allows you, as the property owner, to have an opinion and a perspective on how your business should operate. This balance allows the General Manager and the local team at the property to have a voice in the equation.”

The road ahead Despite its short history, Two Roads Hospitality has grown rapidly to become one of the world’s largest independent lifestyle hotel management companies.

Offering the flexibility of a lean and agile organization with the scale property owners need to succeed, Two Roads Hospitality has gone head-to-head with some of the industry’s major brands. In doing so, the company is ready for the next

generation of travellers – expressive, engaged individuals who want to truly experience a place and who appreciate the personalized touch the company brings to its portfolio.

With 70 North American properties under its wing, the company’s history has continued on an upward trajectory. But when the hospitality sector is rapidly innovating and evolving, what does the future hold for Two Roads Hospitality?

“At Two Roads Hospitality I’m surprised every day,” reflects Edwards. “We have a very busy business development team who are focused on acquiring new management agreements with some very unique properties in unique markets. However, we’re being very purposeful about how we select those opportunities. We want to get into good business partnerships and good business relationships. I’m surprised every day at how sophisticated that is. That’s really an art and a science.

Looking forward, I think our portfolio will continue to grow but I think we’re going to grow smartly.”

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BECTON DICKINSON – A procurement transformation

BD’s procurement operations have been completely revolutionized in recent years, as the company has embraced transformative technology Written by James Henderson Produced by Glen White

BD

T

oday, the procurement operations at Becton Dickinson (BD) – the global medical technology company – are admired and respected across the industry spectrum, with collaboration and joined-up thinking from the company’s procurement teams driving forward the medical equipment giant which turned over more than $12bn in 2016.

But what you see today is the result of a near two-decade effort to make BD’s procurement functions best-in-class. The transformation began in 1999, a time when the company’s procurement was decentralized, fragmented and not perceived to be especially important in the grand scheme of all things BD. In total, BD’s core procurement team numbered four.

One of the first ambitions for the procurement function was developing effective category management and sourcing, as well as delivering demonstrable value to the business as a whole. That gave BD a base from which to build into what is now a truly global end-to-end procurement operation, with various skilled and

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knowledgeable teams – including source-to-pay, indirect, risk and supplier management to name a few – working together for the benefit of the wider company.

From a team of just four less than 20 years ago, BD’s present-day procurement function is home to more than 180 employees and growing, who work towards carefully planned three and five-year roadmaps.

S U P P LY C H A I N

BD Global Procurement strives to continuously deliver the highest sustained value for the company by leveraging its full competitive supply base using highly effective and efficient systems and processes.

Source-To-Pay Critical to the success of BD’s overall procurement function is sourceto-pay. Roger Ambrose is BD’s Senior

Director for Global Source-to-Pay, and has been with the organisation since 1994, when he joined as its European Internal Audit Manager, before taking on responsibility for implementing SAP across the business. Since 2002, Ambrose took responsibility for global processing in Europe, before taking on his current role.

Originally a Chartered Accountant, Ambrose says: “As you move into

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S U P P LY C H A I N

“The challenge right now is there is so much information out there – how do you bring it all together in a way that is meaningful and easy to use, so that our expensive sourcing managers can spend their time using the data instead of collecting it?”

– Roger Ambrose, Senior Director, Global Source-to-Pay

the procurement space, you realise that actually paying the invoice is the least thing that you’re really worried about from a procurement point of view. You want to be using the right suppliers, have the right supply base, get the right pricing, and have access to accurate analytics.”

Ambrose says that the changes made since 2002 are marked, with BD utilizing technology to drive its supply chain transformation. “If I think back to what I was doing in 2002, it’s vastly different to what we’re trying to do today because of technology, but also because of our maturity as a company.

That maturity also shows itself up on what we’re doing on the category side.

“I would say that is true particularly with indirect, but probably across the entire spectrum; our sourcing managers are much more knowledgeable about what goes on in their market sectors. Their job is to understand their category, and not just what BD wants out of it, but what we can then offer to our users and stakeholders, so that they can really leverage that and make more use of it.

“The challenge right now is there is so much information out there – how do you bring it all together in a way that is meaningful and easy to use, so that our expensive sourcing managers can spend their time using the data instead of collecting it? I think that’s

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the journey that we’re on. I think back to those early days, what we used to collect information from, all of our different systems and spreadsheets.

“It was very heavy workload just to put it all together in sensible categories, even assuming the data was correct. Then, we went over to the category managers who would look in their categories, and their job really was to manually cleanse the

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data and make judgements about supplier categories or look the reasons for increased spending.

“Over the last few years, what we have done is automate a lot of that work, and freed up our teams to use their time more effectively. We’ve eliminated a lot of the administration that’s needed just to bring them together, and we have been pretty successful in building business rules

S U P P LY C H A I N

that reflect the cleansing that the category managers did last time, and so they don’t have to do it again.

You can see there’s a shift there from the cleansing, even the analytical work, to leveraging it and using it.”

Ambrose believes that there is now an opportunity to begin to build in technology – and automation in particular – when designing new procurement tools and systems.

Giving the example of building a new vendor into master vendor list, he says: “We currently have a workflow process that goes through various approvals, and we have to collect a significant amount of data for that vendor for legal and regulatory purposes as well as a sourcing and category strategy purposes. A lot of this information is public and we have the opportunity to use AI to collect it for us.

“We can collect that information in, which not only speeds the transaction, but also probably provides more data than we could get on that supplier, that we can feedback into spend analytics and help our sourcing managers do their jobs.

“We have the opportunity to be really creative about thinking how we use suppliers in our environment, either to ease the transactions or provide information or identify a risk, or be proactive, such as recognising when a supplier is struggling and how can we help, or being able to identify whether one of our competitors has just signed a deal with them. It’s a really exciting time.”

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S U P P LY C H A I N

Indirect Procurement Williams and the Indirect Procurement Since being appointed as VP team have been able to build and Procurement – Global Indirect in April implement five-year strategies across 2014, Patrick Williams is credited with multiple channels, saving hundreds of leading a large-scale transformation millions of dollars for the organization across the full breadth of the Indirect in the process. Such has been the categories to utilize cross functional success, the ‘ReCapture’ name has teams to develop category strategies fallen by the wayside – “it’s just the that drive competitive advantage. way we work now, indirect is very The program was known internally as much on the company’s radar now,” ‘ReCapture’, and is says Williams. fully endorsed by “When I first joined BD’s management BD, our ‘spend committee. under source plan’, Williams says which is when you the buying and develop a strategy, engagement from actually write what Number of senior management we call a ‘source Employees at BD has been integral to plan’, which is the the success of the official document initiative, describing that completely it as “critical”. “The management outlines the strategy I think was in the committee is not something we had 20% range. We are now at 59% and before,” he says. “The program is climbing, so we are making excellent not just sponsored, but governed progress when it comes to developing and controlled by those at the very strategies and implementing them.” highest level of the company. Teams In the company’s journey to supply also do not get to opt-out, so the chain transformation, Williams says scope of it stays consistent.” it has benefitted from taking a wide Off the back of the program, view of what strategies are working

49,500

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“As an R&D team, we have to push the status quo when it comes to technology and how it can help the business” – Noelle Lee, Senior Director R&D Procurement

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within the market sector, an approach which has led to the company exploring other business avenues.

“Essentially, we have the advantage of many companies have actually done some really great things that we can leverage. We can follow it, so it gives us that late-mover advantage of saying, ‘There is a model, somebody cut their teeth on it a little bit, and we can actually apply it and gain lots of advantage.’ A good example would be outsourcing, which BD has started to do more.

“There used be zero appetite for it; the philosophy was that our business extended to the fence at the end of our offices – the attitude is that we could do things better than anyone – which is obviously now not smart. So, this idea of outsourcing is an example where we’re smartly doing certain things. We recently outsourced some IT and it drove tremendous value.”

On leveraging new technology – AI, machine learning, automation, et al – to drive BD’s procurement journey and transformation, Williams is unequivocal. “I am convinced that is the wave of our future across all

of our categories, not just indirect – our focus on digital is laser.

“I’ve assigned members of our IT procurement team to develop strategies for their peers in departments such as IT, finance, legal, sales and marketing, plant indirect, etc. What we’re asking them to do is pair up and look at digital opportunities where there’s machinery involved and you can use technology to be smarter.

“We think on a long-term basis, we could drive hundreds of millions of dollars in the categories themselves by leveraging technology. We are looking at what we can get working on today, and what is perhaps in more of a concept stage that we need to develop to eventually make it usable.”

Global R&D Procurement Less than 12 months old, BD’s Global R&D Procurement division is headed up by Noelle Lee. She leads a global team of associates and that help drive sourcing strategies that supports BD’s innovation pipeline, enabling top-line growth and accelerated time to market. She says the division was

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S U P P LY C H A I N

created due to a recognition that as the importance of innovation grows, more dedicated R&D procurement will be needed to manage the rising spend.

Elaborating on the division’s remit, Lee comments: “It’s about getting as much value out of every dollar that we spend. The industry is going through a lot of change and innovation is being driven forward, so it’s really important for us to have

established this R&D team. We want to become a really trusted partner of the business, and push real top line growth for the company.

“As an R&D team, we have to push the status quo when it comes to technology and how it can help the business. For example, there are now companies that can automate a function such as labelling, which in the past has been typically a manual

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Such is the relationship between the two companies, in 2015 Nypro Healthcare was the winner of the BD Global Award for Partnership Supplier of the Year, recognizing performance beyond the usual customervendor relationship.

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Better together: BD and Bard

job. So we are able to take that to the business with the argument that it will drive efficiency and take over from a function that was previously very labour intensive. This R&D team is taking these ideas and implementing them, which is very positive for BD.” The expectation for the division is such that members of the team are required to have a broad breadth of experience across the procurement

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spectrum, so they speak the language of all stakeholders – liaising with IT in one instance, and then marketing the next, for example.

“It is essential that we are able to fully understand the challenges and targets of all of our stakeholders,” Lee comments. “We are being asked to connect the dots and drive change; we need to act as a change agent and to do that we have to be able to speak the

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“I want BD to become bestin-class compared to our peers, the best-of-the-best” – Patrick Williams, VP Procurement – Global Inderect

language and get everybody on board with our ideas. BD has been very consistent in driving change, whether that’s across the entire organisation or in single functions, and we have to be an important part of that.”

In the months since it has been established, the R&D Procurement division has already introduced insight and perspective to the overall global procurement operation, and Lee says there are many more areas where it can push improvements and growth.

“We need to collaborate more with our preferred suppliers to really challenge them and drive innovation.

We know what the business needs

now and will need in the future and we need to challenge the supplier base to drive that and innovate with us. There is a lot more we can harness from our suppliers and that’s something we will look to do over the next three to five years.

“It’s also important that when we’re working in a global role, we understand how different approaches work for different territories, negotiating with suppliers is very different depending on where you are. A Japanese supplier is going to be very different from an American supplier, for example.”

Lee believes that the transformation

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Founded in

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being pursued by BD and the R&D procurement team will be vital in the overall effort to secure and develop the best new talent to the organisation. “There is an opportunity for us to

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understand procurement so we have to engage with them, communicate what procurement really is and the opportunities within the industry.”

establish procurement as a hugely important driver for change in the business and that is only going to help attract and retain the best talent.

I think many graduates don’t really

Driving ahead BD has come a long way since the turn of the millennium. Where there was previously just a handful of procurement staff, there is now a highly competent and knowledgeable division comprising almost 200 professionals. Once perhaps considered a cautious, BD’s global procurement teams have fully embraced technology to drive both the procurement function and the wider company’s top-line performance. The company is now thinking about how it can utilize AI and machine learning, automation and further bleeding-edge technology to improve yet further.

Describing his goals for the future, Patrick Williams says: “I want BD to become best-in-class compared to our peers, the bestof-the-best.”. If BD continues its current trajectory, it would take a brave person to bet against the organization achieving exactly that.

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Mission critical Data centers you can count on Achieving an array of awards from the Uptime Institute, T5 Facilities Management has proven itself time and time again to be the top critical facility management company for data center owners who demand 100% uptime Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Tom Venturo

T 5 D ATA C E N T E R S

A

s a population, our consumption of data shows no signs of slowing down.

Over the next decade, as the Internet of Things expands ever further and connected devices and data become as important as electricity, data center uptime is set to become a top priority across the globe.

In fact, even today, ensuring the uptime of mission-critical operations is more important than ever with data center downtime costing around $8,000 per minute, according to an in-depth study by the Emerson Network Power and the Ponemon Institute.

Recognising this, T5 Data Centers has distinguished itself from its competitors and made a name for itself for being ‘forever on’, as its slogan promises.

With a record of 100% uptime, the data center company’s impressive standing can be traced back to the company’s Facilities Management and Operations division, T5 Facilities Management (T5FM), which offers on-site data center facilities management,

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T 5 D ATA C E N T E R S

MIKE CASEY President As President of T5FM, Mike is responsible for Facilities Management and Operations for T5 Data Center’s colocation facilities. Mike creates, communicates, and implements T5FM’s vision, mission, and product. Mike is also responsible for the growth of T5FM’s third-party Facilities Management and Operations business. Mike establishes T5FM’s goals and provides the leadership and motivation to achieve these goals.

Mike has over 20 years of experience in project management, development, operations, sales, and leasing of data center real estate, representing both wholesale data center providers and corporate end users. Mike was a member of The Staubach Company’s National Contact and Data Center Practice and later a leader in Jones Lang LaSalle’s Project and Development Services group.

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TECHNOLOGY

remote and smart hands, and staff augmentation services to data center owners across North America.

T5FM not only operates T5 Data Center’s state-of-the-art portfolio of wholesale and colocation data centers, it also operates data centers for a spectrum of Fortune 500 companies in sectors spanning from finance and technology to aerospace and energy.

Four pillars of success “In the data center space, having no outages is key and uptime and safety are paramount,” says Mike Casey, President at T5FM. “I think our four core values are just one element that distinguishes us from our competitors as a successful data center facility management company.”

Built on the so-called ‘Four Pillars of T5FM,’ the company’s unique operating methodology has been one of the key accelerators of T5FM’s success.

These core values - safety,

training, process and procedure, and customer communication offer an operational foundation that mitigates risk, maximizes uptime and meets financial targets.

It is also an ethos which Casey has strived to uphold throughout his leadership.

Ensuring the safety of the personnel, facilities, and equipment is perhaps one of the biggest hurdles facing data center operators today. Therefore, T5FM has strived to create a proprietary electrical safety program and policy which is based on NFPA 70E guidelines.

“Safety is, of course, one of the most important values at the company and it really starts with making it a part of the culture,” Casey explains. “Whether we have a board meeting or an onsite customer meeting, the first item on the agenda is always safety. We’ve created a culture that empowers all the team members to identify any safety risks and influence or change our safety policy across the portfolio.”

Casey and his team also provide a customized, site-specific training program that includes portfolio

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“In the data center space, having no outages is key” – Mike Casey, President at T5FM

training classes and ongoing online testing. The program also includes a deep and comprehensive study of mechanical, electrical and fire protection systems. This in-depth and rigorous training ensures that T5FM uphold only the best operational practices in the data center space.

“There’s a sense of pride and a sense of ownership for those who complete the training program,” says Casey. “However, it doesn’t stop there.

The company also has a continuous improvement training program which causes the team to continually learn about new pieces of equipment or new issues and agendas.”

The US-based company also strives to drive efficiencies across its far-reaching processes and procedures. To this end, Casey and his team uphold consistent, robust and vetted portfolio policies which set the baseline for developing site-specific procedures and documentation. This strategy begins with the company’s meticulous, in-depth playbook that collates years of experience and hands-on data center practices for the company’s employees.

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“Safety is, of course, one of the most important values at the company” – Mike Casey, President at T5FM White glove approach to customer service The company’s final operational pillar highlights T5FM’s commitment to customer service. This is an integral element of day-to-day operations which has helped the company cut through the noise to

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become a leading provider of data center facility management.

“I think some of the things that really separate us from our competition is our approach to customer service,” observes Casey. “We have a white glove approach to customer service.

That means there’s a higher level of

TECHNOLOGY

communication and more customized reporting. It also means that the people we hire, our onsite team, are not only technically proficient, but they have the necessary communication skills to connect with our customers.”

Mission critical focus T5FM has, by all accounts, forged a unique position in the data center landscape. As one of the few remaining companies specializing in mission critical, T5FM prides itself on being 100% data center focused. It doesn’t operate non-mission critical facilities and in doing so, it has allowed the company to hire people who have a mission critical mindset and who are passionate and driven about the data center landscape.

Furthermore, thanks to its real-world experience operating T5 Data Centers’ national data center portfolio, Casey and his team also champion a unique owner perspective which allows the company to truly understand the needs and wants of its clients.

It is because of this highlyfocused and concerted approach that T5FM has been able to grow

retain a talented workforce with a broad range of expertise.

“Over 86% of our site leads have been promotions from within,” notes Casey. “This is because our team members have a mission critical mindset and are passionate about the data center space. They see a growing company. They see room for career advancement and are encouraged by our entrepreneurial culture, a culture where anybody at any level within the organization can make an impact on the overall portfolio. We are the employer of choice in the data center space and this means means have very high retention rates, a highly motivated workforce, and the best team in the industry. At the end of the day, it’s our customers who benefit from of this.”

Uptime Institute award winner Championing a positive work culture is an admirable feat, but T5FM has also provided the results to back it up. By receiving countless awards from the prestigious Uptime Institute, T5FM has consistently proven its position as a market leader.

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Mike Casey, President of T5FM, Receives Operations Pacesetter Leadership Award

“Given our proven success I think the sky is the limit” – Mike Casey, President at T5FM

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Over the past several years, T5FM has consistently achieved the Continuous Availability Award from the Uptime Institute and, in December 2017, Casey also received the Operations Pacesetter Leadership award for his team’s work in the data center space.

“Although it’s an individual award, in reality it’s a testament to the entire team,” says Casey. “The main reason that we received this award is because we achieved Management and Operations (M&O) stamp of approval from the Uptime Institute across the T5 portfolio last year. We were able to achieve this in a compressed three-month timeframe. We passed with some of the highest scores that Uptime has ever issued. This is a big differentiator for us. It shows our customers and our prospects our commitment to operational excellence that has been validated by a third-party expert.”

Expansion With an array of accolades under its belt and a reputation for operational excellence, T5FM has made a name

TECHNOLOGY

Mike Casey, President of T5FM, Operations Pacesetter

for itself in the data center space and the road ahead continues to look bright. The company aims to grow where it already has a strong market presence, in regions such as Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Portland, LA and Charlotte, and it is also looking further afield for international opportunities, recently announcing a new campus in Ireland.

As consumption of data gathers momentum, data center facility management is set to grow on an

exponential scale and it seems that, thanks to its proven model for success, T5FM is well prepared to tap into this growing demand.

“Overall, I think we have great brand recognition and we have a great reputation in the market,” Casey says. “We’ve got an amazing team behind us and fantastic, loyal customers who have experienced first-hand, the T5 difference. Given our proven success I think the sky is the limit for T5 in the years to come.”

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BUILDING AN EXTR AORDINARY EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE

With over $175mn of construction projects completed since 2010, UDC’s state-ofthe-art facilities are striving to provide a university experience like no other Written by Laura Mullan Produced by Tom Ventura

UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

‘ASPIRE. ACCOMPLISH. TAKE ON THE WORLD.’

T

his is the rallying tagline that is taking the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) to new heights. Situated at the heart of the US capital, UDC is in the midst of several state-of-theart construction projects, which are not only transforming its properties, but its culture and academic life.

With a wealth of experience in the university field, Erik Thompson, Vice President of Capital Assets and Real Estate Services at UDC, is passionate about developing educational spaces.

It is a combination of any institution’s stellar facilities and academic quality which he says helps to deliver a true university learning experience.

“We are both historic and modern all at the same time,” notes Thompson.

“We’re modern in the sense that not too long ago we were a commuter school, one of the newer ways to learn.

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We also have an online education program which is a symbol of our modern educational paradigms.

“I think what distinguishes us is that we are one of the only urban land-grant universities in the country. We offer an affordable education in comparison to our peer schools and I think we give a comparable and, in some ways, better educational experience for a much more affordable price.”

Responsible for the maintenance and operations of all real property assets, Thompson and his team operate all the real estate transactions at the university. This includes the university’s capital improvement plan (CIP), whereby every year the team identify a six-year window of funding and select several projects which they will work on. Whilst academics are seen to be at the epicentre of

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Student Center Plaza Level

university life, Thompson stresses that the effective running of the university’s real estate is vital for a positive learning experience.

“It’s an integral part of the process,” he explains. “You can’t really judge how well a student can learn if it’s 105 or five degrees in the classroom. The same applies if it’s too small, if it’s too big, or if the acoustics don’t work. My department does substantial work to ensure that the educational process happens the way it was intended.”

Since 2010, around $175mn worth of projects have been executed through UDC’s capital improvement plan.

However, one accomplishment stands out in this impressive portfolio – the

institution’s newly built student centre.

As one of only three student centres in the country that has achieved LEED Platinum certification, the building is an impressive feat that underlines the university’s commitment to sustainable and green practices.

“The student centre distinguishes us by showcasing what the university, our students, and our faculty feel about sustainability,” observes Thompson. “It’s not the easiest building to construct or maintain, but it is the soundest decision for our environment.”

Further evidence of the institution’s green mentality is the fact that it has one of the largest green roofs

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“I FEEL VERY STRONGLY THAT WHILE I CAN SOMETIMES USE THE WORD I, IT’S ALWAYS A TEAM EFFORT” – Erik Thompson, VP for Capital Assets and Real Estate

Dennard Plaza – Green Roof

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UNIVERSITY OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

Erik Thompson Vice President for Capital Asset &Real Estate Services (CARES)

Mr. Thompson has amassed a comprehensive background in the field of capital asset and facility management. Placing an emphasis on the integration of his architectural education with his project feasibility and development experience, he has spent nearly twenty years helping public schools, charter schools, community colleges, Universities and municipalities address their facility needs

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in the city. It also has photovoltaic panels on campus and, through a sustainable water collection system, it collects and repurposes about 15,000 gallons of water during storms.

Sustainability is, by all accounts, a thread that is consistent throughout every construction project at UDC and, when a large percentage of landfill and debris comes from new construction builds, it is an impressive philosophy to uphold.

Safety is another characteristic that encompasses UDC’s constructions builds. Every week, Thompson says he meets with his project management team and safety initiatives are at the top of the agenda. Whether they are

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Faces of UDC talking about treacherous weather conditions or fall protection, the team keeps a vigilant eye on issues which could be a potential risk and which could potentially infringe on the safety of the campus and the site.

“In my career, I have had no significant lost time due to injury on any of my projects,” explains Thompson.

“I think the reason that I’ve been able to achieve that is because of how much I focus on safety. It’s not just about meeting the code and legislative standards, but it’s also upholding the high standards we set for ourselves. It almost doesn’t matter if I’ve finished a project on time and on budget if

one of my workers is hurt. Therefore, safety is of the utmost importance.”

When taking on such massive projects, the university is all too aware of the importance of collaboration both within the team and with third-party suppliers. Whether its designers, project management staff or general contractors, these individuals have been integral to the university’s strong roster of successful construction projects. Plus, it’s not just large multinational companies it is working with. UDC is also making a concerted effort to develop relationships with minority-owned and female-owned local businesses.

“I feel very strongly that while I can

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sometimes use the word I, it’s always a team effort,” says Thompson. “Our team have an intrinsic passion for making sure the work is always moving us to the next level. We also work closely with third-party companies where it’s not just a contract partnership but a true relationship.

“Consys Construction, Cannon Design, McKissick and McKissick Project Management are just some, to name a few, that are helping us better the environment at the university. They are helping to make UDC one of the premier institutions in the country,” he adds.

With such an extensive portfolio of new projects, UDC has completely transformed its campus. However, to do so, Thompson and his team

have taken meticulous care to ensure that the academic year is not disturbed. But how does it tackle the difficult balancing act of executing construction projects on time whilst not disrupting the academic year or surrounding community?

“I think we achieve this by staying in constant communication with the academic side of the house,” reflects Thompson. “On any project, the number one focus should be how does it benefit the students.

Therefore, if I’m thinking about how to complete the construction process, I always ask not only how will it benefit the student when it’s completed, but how does it benefit the student by minimizing interruption during the academic year?”

“ON ANY PROJECT, THE NUMBER ONE FOCUS SHOULD BE HOW DOES IT BENEFIT THE STUDENTS” – Erik Thompson, VP for Capital Assets and Real Estate

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Meditation Garden

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To achieve this, the institution completes a lot of construction during the holidays, nights, and weekends where possible. It also spends a lot of resources developing a so-called ‘swing space’ - a temporary site for class locations to be rearranged.

Looking at the road ahead, Thompson is all too aware of hurdles facing the education landscape at large. He predicts that the biggest challenge facing the sector over the coming years will be infrastructure replacement, particularly mechanical, electrical and plumbing.

“These replacements are becoming more common in the sector because of the educational space and construction boom of the late sixties and early 1970’s,” he explains. “During that time, there was a huge increase in the amount of educational spaces that were being constructed. Now, 50 years later, even if you took the best care of those buildings, they’re twice their life expectancy. So, while many

of them are still being renovated and maintained, the majority of them will need to be replaced.”

On top of this, Thompson also predicts the rise of multi-purpose classrooms - educational spaces which could go from a science lab to a business management class in a matter of minutes. This will also redefine libraries which will become more purposeful, digital and space-conscious.

All in all, it seems that the education sector is in a period of flux. But with innovative construction projects in the pipeline and the aim of on-campus housing on the horizon, it seems UDC is well prepared for any changes that come its way.

“We’ve coined a phrase about the changes that are happening here,” says Thompson. “It’s that we’re in transition from being UDC to becoming the University of the District of Columbia. I think that says a lot about the physical and cultural shift we’re going through right now.”

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HEAR THE LATEST BEST PRACTICES WHILE LEARNING FROM AND NETWORKING WITH INDUSTRY PEERS AT 41ST ANNUAL WERC CONFERENCE Written by Gerald Perritt, Vice President, U.S. Contract Logistics, Kuehne + Nagel and WERC 2018 Annual Conference Chair Produced by Denitra Price

WERC Annual Conference brings together 1,000 logistics professionals to upgrade their knowledge with expert-led sessions, expand their network with peers from across the country, to discover the latest innovations and tested solutions

WERC

W

arehousing and logistics professionals like yourself are at the center of the supply chain. No other association recognizes this more than the Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC). That’s why WERC has put on its Annual Conference for Logistics Professionals for the past 40 years, with the 41st edition to be held in Charlotte, North Carolina, May 6-9, 2018.

Participants both past and present attend this event each year to discover targeted, relevant insights from their industry peers about the latest trends and best practices within our field. For that reason, WERC’s Conference topic selection committee puts significant effort into evaluating and selecting all of the 80-plus educational sessions. Because every session is peer-sourced, peer-reviewed and peer-delivered, you can be sure that you’re hearing about the strategies that are most applicable to your operation.

This year, 81% of the Annual Conference sessions explore

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topics never before presented at the event. Among the featured subjects are emerging supply chain technologies and innovations, workforce development, the latest in slotting processes, and inspirational tales from the front lines of operational improvement.

Suppliers and practitioners meet in the WERC Solutions Center to examine the latest innovations

Additionally, 19% of the sessions are back by popular demand.

Things like the latest developments and best practices in metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs), transportation, labor management, outsourcing and execution strategies.

All are perennially popular and will

be covered across thought leader presentations, panel discussions, TED-style talks, Peer-2-Peer dialog groups, and brand-new Learning Pod gatherings.

Further, the 120 expert presenters and panelists themselves are predominantly folks “in the trenches�:

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WERC

WERC CEO Michael Mikitka addresses attendees at its 2017 Annual Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. The 2018 event takes place in Charlotte, North Carolina

79% are director level managers, 37% are practitioners, 21% are C-suite executives, 20% are consultants, 18% are third-party logistics providers—an increase across all titles over the speaker mix percentages of last year’s Annual Conference. (Concerned that some sessions might become a sales pitch?

Don’t be. Suppliers only represent 17% of the speakers—10% fewer than in 2017—and they’re primarily sharing case studies or technology

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selection and implementation tips.)

In addition to filling their brains with three days of learning, the majority of WERC Annual Conference attendees are on a mission to fill their contact lists. That’s why the event is specifically designed with numerous opportunities for intimate networking, both in formal and casual settings.

Among the organized networking sessions, Sunday includes a Kick Start Welcome Reception followed by “Meet and Eat” dinner outings

that give attendees a chance to meet new people while sharing a casual meal. Monday and Tuesday feature three separate opportunities to network while visiting with vendors within the Solutions Center, plus a Women @ WERC breakfast and evening receptions. And, for those who join one (or more) of the offsite facility tours, some of the best informal networking happens on the bus rides to and from the convention center to the host site.

I personally can say that many of my top, go-to people for brainstorming ideas and sharing operational insights and perspectives are connections I’ve made at the WERC Annual Conference during my almost 20 years of participation. Truly, the relationships formed at the Annual Conference have brought me both personal and professional value that has extended far beyond the three days of activities that occur during each event. I am confident you and your colleagues will benefit in the same way.

So don’t miss this opportunity to discover the latest trends

Attendees enjoy a variety of session types at WERC’s Annual Conference, from TEDstyle talks and general speakers, to deepdive sessions that get to the core of today’s industry issues

Logistics professionals meet at WERC’s Annual Conference, expanding their networks and building lasting relationships

and best practices throughout the warehousing and logistics industry at the WERC 2018 Annual Conference. For more information and to register, I encourage you to visit www.werc.org/2018 today.

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The source of value

Procurement executives across the globe continue to see the potential they can unlock throughout the supply chain. They understand that business today is about engaging, collaborating, adapting instantly to evolving needs, and finding new sources of value. Getting that value, however, can prove a challenge.