THE FOUNDATION TO BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES PROJECT PARTNER
B U S I N E S S I N T E RV I E W
John-Paul Edwards, Chief Information Officer at Broadstone, explains how the company is working towards achieving the best outcomes for its clients.
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roadstone is a leading independent provider of specialist pensions and employee benefit solutions for SMEs, as well as large corporates, with 1,600 clients, servicing around a quarter of a million members and beneficiaries. Its purpose is to create happier, healthier and financially-inclusive outcomes for these clients, which include employers, employees, trustees and beneficiaries.
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Based in the UK, Broadstone now has seven locations countrywide, with plans for further expansion, having invested heavily over the last few years in mergers and acquisitions. John-Paul Edwards joined the company seven months ago as Chief Information Officer (CIO). He says, “It is a really exciting time to join the Broadstone Group. I have been impressed by the
"My passion as CIO lies in creating innovation through technology in order to make a difference" expertise, talent and knowledge we have across the different business units. The ambition of the group to embrace technology and be at the forefront of digital innovation to benefit clients and members has been extraordinary. My passion as CIO lies in creating innovation through technology in order to make a difference, ensuring client experiences are best in class. It is my job to guarantee the whole
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team feels inspired and confident in the technology they are using.” The pensions and employee benefits sector saw rapid changes at the start of the pandemic, with businesses shifting online overnight and employees working from home in a short amount of time. John-Paul says, “We did two years’ worth of transformation in two months! The sudden growth in home working has quickened up transformation and enabled more opportunities for enhancing employee experience. For me, technology is the foundation to business opportunities. 6
“The technology investment will continue to grow, and at Broadstone, our two investment priorities are on the digital and information technology side. Our large number of technology initiatives touch a wide range of business opportunities and processes, so we are able to demonstrate the value of IT at both the initiative and corporate strategy level.” John-Paul cites automation as an example. He explains, “The use of RPA and artificial intelligence in the pension space used to be considered too difficult to do
because every scheme is different. However, the evidence that we have has shown us that complex processes can create opportunities for digital optimisation. It is crucial for technology teams to work even more closely with the business teams. When it comes to legacy systems, we need to be smart about which elements remain essential and automate them, and which elements we can look at differently.”
"Working with NexBotix has assisted us in connecting the technology with the business side to boost the productivity of the team and achieve the business optimisation outcomes we need"
Broadstone is partnering with NexBotix to help identify the right use cases and validate the right automation technology, whether RPA, AI, or natural language understanding (NLU). John-Paul elaborates, “Working with NexBotix has assisted us in connecting the technology with the business side to boost the productivity of the team and achieve the business optimisation outcomes we need. Our end goal is to reduce the burden of paperwork and look at combining inputs from lots of disparate legacy systems. It is not about automating for automation’s sake. To get to the hyper-automation stage, we need to standardise our processes, improve quality and cycle time, and implement adaptive governance processes. If we get that right, we will start to see a more multidisciplined team across the group.”
John-Paul sees today’s role of a CIO comprising of four jobs, stemming beyond the technology side and deep into the business. He outlines the four jobs as follows: 1. Information and technology operations – making sure systems are stable for end users 2. Digital evangelising – encouraging and improving digital dexterity, ensuring other CXOs make better use of technology to become more capable in the business areas 3. Digital orchestration – orchestrating analytics and technology production of the business areas 4. Digital engineering – the actions we need to take to enable technology uses within and outside of IT for reliable, secure, integrated and scalable business solutions. 7
The Journey to Hyperautomation As Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies become more pervasive and reliable, they’re becoming more accessible to a broader range of companies. Hyperautomation is an increasingly prevalent approach which involves the use of multiple technologies that, when combined, enable faster scaling of business process automation across an organisation. A recent study by McKinsey & Co. found that over half of the work that people do can be automated, saving an estimated £20 Trillion in wages each year. Deploying a hyperautomation strategy needs senior stakeholder buy-in and is delivered programmatically over a period of time. Here at NexBotix, we do things a little differently. We take a partnership-based approach with our clients. We’re currently working with the Broadstone Group to identify process use cases across the business that lend themselves well to automation. There are several Pensions Administration and Employee Benefits tasks that are highly manual, include digitised documents, and require data cleansing and data entry into multiple systems and databases. Some of these processes are complex and our solutions utilise advanced AI technologies including Machine Learning and Natural Language Understanding. The benefits are potentially huge in terms of time, operating costs and improved efficiency. It also means that teams can focus on less manual tasks and on more rewarding
work that adds to client value, leading to significant improvements in employee morale and retention. When an organisation is selecting a partner to work with, NexBotix believe that some of the following attributes are key to delivering joint success:
• Working closely and deeply with the
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client to truly understand the detail of the particular processes, and all of the nuances that are associated with it. Having our own in-house software meaning that we have full control of the solutions we deliver, as well as the ability to be more creative with our commercial model. The ability to work with a large array of technology partners and vendors in the market, ensuring we can deliver a solution to suit the most demanding organisations or use cases. Offering pay-as-you-go approaches based on utilisation or transaction volumes so that customers only pay for what they consume. Delivering off-the-shelf solutions enable us to deploy capability to customers faster, also meaning we can allow customers to realise a quicker time-to-value. Taking an ROI-centric approach means that customers have visibility
“Our partnership with Broadstone Group is focused on delivering value and benefit by accelerating the processing of time-critical activities in Pension Administration and Employee Benefits” Chris Porter, CEO of NexBotix
of predicted and realised business benefits before they implement. • Customer Experience and Customer Success is really important to us and is a key business value we maintain at all stages of the customer journey. • Finally, we’re creative and have a strong technology roadmap, developing new low touch, selfserve products, which we have established by spending time understanding the needs of our customers and through paying close attention to the marketplace and advancements in technology.
“NexBotix offer expertise and a depth of capability that we don’t yet have internally. We’re looking forward to jointly developing innovative and strategic AI based solutions for the business” John-Paul Edwards, Chief Information Officer, Broadstone Group
Working across multiple industries, NexBotix has gained invaluable experience which can be used to support new client engagements. Clients have reported significant cost savings from using our software, typically over 50% of the current cost with each process deployed. We’re often asked where a company should start their automation journey. This one is very simple for us to answer. If you haven’t yet identified a candidate, then head over to your Finance department and have a chat with your FD about Accounts Payable. Invoice Processing is guaranteed to deliver a positive outcome.
To get in touch with NexBotix and book a Product Demo or a free Discovery Workshop, you can contact us here: sales@nexbotix.com www.nexbotix.com
"A digital solution for deferred pension schemes called Sirius allows consultants to provide advice on deferred benefit pension schemes to trustees and sponsors based on real-time information" The CIO role has evolved over the years and John-Paul believes it will continue to do so. He adds, “As we start to see the business teams outside of IT make fuller use of the technology, the CIO role will expand. My role has become far more complex with the various mergers and acquisitions on top of the transformational tasks.” One of the areas of opportunity for Broadstone is in its Investment Consulting business. A digital solution for deferred pension schemes called Sirius allows consultants to provide advice on deferred benefit pension schemes to trustees and sponsors based on real-time information. John-Paul explains, “Sirius shares insights on the funding level of the scheme and its end goal objectives. We 10
can start looking at integrated dashboards to monitor and consider investment options and their funding levels to achieve a client’s long-term objectives. This is a great case of where the business is playing a role in technology-related decision making. That, for me, translates to the evolution of IT and the role of CIOs in a company’s change journey from a traditional to a digital business.”
conflicting solutions, adding to HR’s workload and disengaging employees. Our role at Broadstone is helping employers to bring together a complementary set of simple, easy to use solutions that work together harmoniously. Our SME digital hub is a solution to create a simple online experience targeted at SME’s looking to source and buy a workplace pension and a range of employee benefits, comprising auto-enrol, pension support, protection and wellbeing solutions and an employee engagement platform. The hub streamlines these processes and takes the burden away from small businesses that want to engage digitally but do not want lots of complications. They require access to their benefits in one place.”
A challenge John-Paul faces is the lack of interoperability between legacy systems in the pensions space and from providers in the benefits sector. It is hard for employers to know what they need to integrate with and how to access different benefits. JohnPaul continues, “The technology in the employee benefits space is all about bringing opportunities to optimise lifestyle and attract new talent, but there is a risk of
Beyond the SME Digital Hub, Broadstone is developing a multi-experience engagement platform to increase their reach of digital channels. John-Paul explains, “It gives access to different experiences and services through our ecosystem including hybrid integration, integrating different technology platforms, and connecting that with other ecosystems. We are continuing to develop this platform to provide a multi-experience interface to serve both employers and employees, with direct access to financial, physical and mental wellbeing and advisory services. This means we 11
can adopt a digital approach to employee benefits with increased accessibility, and employers can gain access to analytics on how staff are using the platform. They can then personalise it or have their own schemes. For more established businesses that want to focus on a wellbeing and benefit strategy, we believe our technology has the potential to reduce the workload of HR, as well as improving employee engagement, wellbeing, and retention.” Many organisations face a longerterm challenge of building back
trust in their hybrid workforce. How can teams remain cohesive, staff feel supported, and relationships be built in this new working environment? John-Paul answers, “Digital workplace and employee experience technologies as part of our digital hub can support clients. Internally at Broadstone, we too are expanding our use in employee experience technology to help employees feel they are working with the best technology, which matches what they use in their personal life. Softcat’s Office of the CTO helps us to explore areas in which we can exploit greater use
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of digital and cloud infrastructure, and proactive cybersecurity to provide more anywhere-operations to our team. We can use our digital workplace program to understand the employee journey and spot any gaps. A lot of our clients are faced with exactly the same challenges, so our learnings give us the ability to listen to our clients and apply journey mapping techniques to
activities to tackle this problem.” Digital technologies are revolutionising the pensions and employee benefits landscape, but John-Paul agrees that we can only fully embrace the technology if we work with trusted partners. He explains, “Working with our partners allows us to explore what is happening in other industries.
"Softcat’s Office of the CTO helps us to explore areas in which we can exploit greater use of digital and cloud infrastructure, and proactive cyber security to provide more anywhere-operations to our team" make an impact when it comes to employee experience.” John-Paul stresses that these challenges cannot be solved by technology alone. Strategies and a program of work need to be put in place to create the kind of opportunities that used to arise from watercooler moments. He adds, “Informal chats and inperson encounters are now less frequent, but you sometimes need to make contact with someone to show appreciation. You cannot do everything virtually — we are social animals. It is a combination of using employee experience technologies with in-person
Take online shopping, for example. We are used to automation and AI in the shopping experience, so how do we apply that type of technology to our own industry segment? NexBotix and Softcat allow us to tap into use cases in other industries, where we can apply design-led thinking to automation approaches, streamlining them to help us achieve growth. Our partner network enables us to look at the strategy execution of our value proposition in more detail. It is about balancing the technology priorities to maximise the value proposition for Broadstone and our clients. I do not believe you can 13
do it all in-house. There is only so much investment we can make, so it is essential we leverage our partner network.” With the shift in technology habits, Broadstone has a responsibility to guide employers through a market that is flooded with solutions. John-Paul explains, “It is increasingly challenging for employers to find the appropriate technology that will deliver their HR objectives. The businesses that are seeing wider access to multi-experience hubs, increasing the reach of digital channels, will become crucial. For many clients, the challenge is around having the right digital infrastructure, benefit offerings, partners in place, and understanding what data they have got. In employee benefits, data is king. Although much progress has been made in unlocking the potential of data-driven decision making, I believe there is a pivotal role that data insights play in the effective creation and deployment of an employee experience and benefit strategy. All other areas use data and analytics, but HR needs to do it more effectively. This is where Broadstone can help. “Collecting the data is not the issue, it is interpreting it. My team is helping to develop tools that 14
are valuable for our consultants and clients in consolidating data into a single truth. Insights and understanding factors into employee health, for example, will help mitigate the risk in benefit spend, providing an overview of the spend and opportunities for predicting changes in the future. Technology and the use of data will help HR and reward teams to spend smarter, create better employee experiences,
and therefore have an impact on people’s wellbeing and performance.” Benefits technology is set to play a pivot role in engagement and communication, which will be key for many businesses harnessing their capabilities. John-Paul concludes, “The ability to strengthen the relationship between employer and employee is essential. Investments in
Broadstone’s technology is built around ‘people business’. It goes back to our main purpose of creating happier, healthier and financially-inclusive outcomes for our clients. Getting that blend between the human-digital interaction is something very exciting. There are some great opportunities for us and our industry.” For further information, visit www.broadstone.co.uk 15
www.broadstone.co.uk
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