Digital Innovation Magazine - March 2023

speak to

We

Thomas L. Hager, VP Global Accounts Financial Services, and David Weber, CTO Financial Services Global Accounts, at Lenovo

It has been a pleasure to edit Digital Innovation Magazine for the last five years, interviewing some of the leading industry figures in the European digital technology space. This edition marks my final magazine as editor, but I leave the publication in very safe hands. I look forward to reading future issues, and wish all the team the very best.

Our March edition is packed with four fantastic interviews from Lenovo (p6), Element Logic (p34), loveholidays (p40), and TransferMate (p66). We cover everything from having a continuous innovation mindset and leveraging software as a key differentiator, to disrupting the online travel market and digitalisation of the onboarding process. Thank you to all our amazing interviewees for their contributions this issue.

We also have some great technology features lined up for you on topics including electric vehicles (p24), women in tech (p56), big tech companies expanding in Europe (p80), and next-generation marine solutions (p90). Plus, don’t miss this issue’s start-up of the month on page 100!

As ever, I hope you find the magazine engaging, informative and intriguing. If you have a story you would like to tell, we would love to hear from you.

This just leaves me to sign off and thank everyone at iThink Media for their continued support over the years.

Over and out!

Anna McMahon Editor

Published by

6

We talk to Lenovo’s Thomas L. Hager and David Weber

Irina Tsonova, Head Global Due Diligence TransferMate, on digitalising the onboarding process

90

Investing in technology for next-gen marine solutions

Creating solutions to solve business challenges: Trust, Leadership, Innovation, and Ecosystem Will Drive Success

Thomas L. Hager, VP Global Accounts Financial Services, and David Weber, CTO Financial Services Global Accounts, at Lenovo, highlight the value of continuous innovation and collaboration with customers and partners.

Driven by the need to continuously innovate, Lenovo is the only global technology provider with an integrated, open choice ecosystem of systems, devices and solutions from pocket to cloud, to deliver smarter solutions that drive business transformation.

ver the years, Lenovo has established itself as one of the leading tech companies in the world, with a reputation for producing high-quality products and services. In this article, we will explore the strengths of Lenovo and what sets it apart from its competitors.

Lenovo’s diversified portfolio allows clients to develop proof of concepts, customise requirements, and choose specifications that best suit their business needs.

Thomas L. Hager, VP at Lenovo, picks up the story; “Lenovo has transformed into a full service

provider, from the desktop end user, all the way to the data centre. With the focus on services, Lenovo has brought three aspects together – the end user business with the PCs, the data centre business with the servers and storage, and the services underpinning everything it is offering, to bring a full-scale solution to its clients.”

Thomas, together with his global CTO, David Weber, is focused on the financial services industry and insurance. Thomas and David design solutions that are industry specific; the technology is contextualised for the operating environment of their clients. There are many

Thomas L. Hager, VP Global Accounts Financial Services

technologies, new and existing, that can be identified as part of a solution, from Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and AR/VR, to servers, storage, services and security. Lenovo’s purpose is to deliver a solution that is right for its clients.

Using AI as an example, Lenovo has invested heavily in AI initiatives, including enabling products to support and develop inference and training, hardware accelerators, liquid cooling, AI innovation labs

and we are always developing and looking out for the next big thing besides delivering mature and industry-leading technology. It is so exciting to innovate in this space, working closely with our customers and partners.”

One field in which AI is being heavily used is ChatGPT, an advanced AI chatbot which interacts in a conversational way. Thomas says, “It is all about speed and efficiency. We have a lot of repetitive, mundane

“Without AI, we would not have the efficiency and cost reduction that clients are looking for in an increasingly tough marketplace. If you cannot automate, you cannot scale, so we can expect to see huge productivity gains in the industry over the next few years”

and an AI partner programme. For Financial Services Institutions, this enables the rapid development of new use cases for better customer service via virtual assistants, portfolio visualisation and modelling; digital twins for simulating branch or infrastructure operations; or enhanced security such as for computer vision, fraud detection, anti-money laundering (AML), and zero-trust infrastructure.

David explains, “The common thread is around innovation. We are a leader in many different technologies,

tasks that we have to do. How can you bring in efficiency, minimise errors, and find solutions to complex problems? Without AI, we would not have the efficiency and cost reduction that clients are looking for in an increasingly tough marketplace. If you cannot automate, you cannot scale, so we can expect to see huge productivity gains in the industry over the next few years.”

Staying close to clients, its partners, and understanding technology are key to Lenovo’s business strategy.

As demand for compute grow, it’s critical for organisations to get the most performance from their IT budgets.

One of the hottest areas where organisations are looking to improve their business processes is with artificial intelligence (AI) because of the variety of scenarios where AI can find improvements for their business from quality control, improved security, better awareness for equipment maintenance and improving overall efficiency.

For financial services the benefits of AI can range from automating tasks to reduce repetitive requests, improving accuracy for financial modeling algorithms, identifying fraudulent activities quicker and implementing chatbots like ChatGPT to improve customer service.

Taking AI from concept to production at scale has been a challenge. Implementing AI may require specialised hardware, knowledge of advanced skills sets in AI and DL, and access to custom tools that turn data sets into business results.

To help overcome these challenges Intel offers one of the broadest AI product portfolios ranging from hardware to software. Intel software portfolio includes

libraries and software development kits (SDKs) that are designed to reduce the learning curve to speed up development and faster deployments.

The AI reference kit includes AI model code, end-to-end machine learning pipeline instructions, libraries and oneAPI components for crossarchitecture performance. These toolkits are open source and designed to make AI more accessible to organisations. All of Intel’s software and toolkits such as oneAPI, Intel® Distribution of OpenVINO™ toolkit and AI Reference Kits are available at www.intel.com. Intel® also has one of the widest ranges of hardware portfolios that consist of processors, GPU’s, storage devices, network adapters, wireless products, and FPGAs.

Today, there are over 100 million Xeons installed in the market. Building on decades of data center leadership, the 4th Gen Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors have the most built-in accelerators of any CPU on the market to deliver performance and power

organisations budgets. efficiency advantages across the fastestgrowing workload types in AI, analytics, networking, storage and HPC. The builtin Intel Accelerator Engines on 4th Gen Xeon can help improve power efficiency by offloading common tasks from the embedded CPU cores on chip, boosting overall application performance while minimising power usage. Intel Advanced Matrix Extensions (Intel AMX) which is one of the built-in accelerators is enabled to optimise deep learning (DL) training and inferencing workloads and can quickly pivot between optimising for general compute and AI workloads. Developers can leverage Intel’s Accelerator Engines through many of the toolkits such as oneAPI Deep Neural Network Library and oneAPI DL engine and these toolkits have been integrated into popular opensource tools such as TensorFlow, PyTorch, PaddlePaddle, and ONNX.

Learn more about Lenovo solutions powered with Intel Xeon processors and speak to a sales representative to find the right solution for your business.

www.intel.co.uk

David continues, “We think, for example, that the branch of the future is going to be more inclusive in terms of addressing the customer needs at each point in their lives. It will go beyond the transaction towards relationship building. Whether it’s visualising your portfolio with AR or VR, or using a smart kiosk in six different languages, there is so much we can do. I believe we will

see the branch be at the front end for increasingly reaching out to customers, bringing them in and building deeper relationships, especially for financial planning and wealth management.”

Regarding human interaction in the branches, for example, how do you use AI in the context of a human relationship so that they

will continue to be important in the future? Thomas answers, “Digital is good, but you still need to have relationships. AI allows you to be more of an expert in the context of that relationship. You need data, and the data needs to be closer to the servers that calculate the data, saving on both time and energy. I believe edge servers are a game-changer here, as ESG underpins everything we do.”

On the topic of corporate sustainability and ESG, David says accessing data and serving it up quickly heavily relies on the technology. He explains, “There are issues in the data centre around cooling because everything is getting hotter. How can you make your system design super-efficient? With the best air cooling and liquid cooling designs, you can take steps to becoming carbon neutral and even carbon negative by reusing excess heat. DreamWorks is a fantastic example because they switched to Lenovo and significantly reduced their computer data centre energy requirements becoming more efficient, more secure, and quieter. We are industry leaders in this space, and many of our clients are waking up to realise that water cooling technology will be the way to go.”

All these technologies and capabilities are great, but only if they can be delivered on time, and with trusted quality. The past few years have really challenged supply chain delivery schedules. Lenovo took many actions to fortify its supply chain, including building new manufacturing plants, expanding existing ones, and making more of the sub-assemblies like motherboards. In fact, Lenovo jumped six spots to number nine on the global supply chain rankings by Gartner.

From a supply chain security perspective, Lenovo makes itself responsible for its entire supply chain, from development of devices to them being in the hands of clients and end users, to ensure a secure ecosystem of trusted partners. David elaborates, “We have a transparent supply chain initiative, so everything manufactured is delivered as expected, and there is an audit trail. We also have a trusted supply chain where we require our vendors to comply with our high

university. He adds, “There is a huge demand for cyber security from our clients, so we have responded by opening up our own cyber innovation centre, in Israel. The partnership with Ben-Gurion University of the Negev underscores the drive to continuously innovate around our ThinkShield security portfolio, and with partners from industry and academia. This illustrates the commitment of Lenovo to help their clients tackle

Hyperview offers a really interesting software and RFID tagging solution that is battery-less and last for 10 years, so customers are able to see where their assets are, at a rack level or by room”

standards, complemented by an everexpanding ecosystem of likeminded partners. It is both a holistic approach and a multi-pronged view requiring constant vigilance.”

In addition to Lenovo’s secure supply chain, Lenovo takes security very seriously. It has a comprehensive suite of end-to-end security management solutions that protect clients’ end points, secure identities, and keep data safe.

Thomas is enthused by the opening of Lenovo’s cyber innovation centre in Israel in partnership with the local

overall security challenges and cyber threats.”

Great technologies, products, and supply chains are critical, but they have even greater value when combined with solutions that drive business value. Lenovo therefore looks for partners that will help create a solution to a specific problem that a client is experiencing. Thomas continues, “We often meet with our clients to discuss their challenges and create full solutions with them by bringing our partners on board with us. We have a comprehensive onboarding

process because we want to make sure everything we recommend is fully vetted.”

David adds, “We use customer engagement to drive our strategy, fill in any gaps, and identify new partnerships. We are very organic in terms of being close to the market, close to our customers, and delivering what they need.”

The company has formed close partnerships with established industry leaders such as Intel, and new partners including ReadyWorks and Hyperview to name a few, around the automation piece, for example. David explains, “Getting rid of manual efforts and

David Weber, CTO Financial Services Global Accounts

IT Asset Lifecycle Management

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• Automate daily IT activities like onboarding/offboarding, troubleshooting, inventory reconciliation, end user communications, audit response, system updates, and more.

• Orchestrate large scale IT programs such as device refresh, server upgrade, data center migration, cloud migration, VDI migration, and more.

• Identify cost savings opportunities for hardware provisioning and software licensing.

• Migrate EOL systems 3X faster to mitigate security risks and maintain compliance.

See an immediate return on your investment with ReadyWorks. Schedule a demo today at ReadyWorks.com/ITAM-Innovation

managing your assets need to be a priority from both a server and PC point of view. By integrating with the tools of our clients and partners, we can look at the estate, find out what needs to be upgraded or migrated, track the assets (via an innovative software and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) solution) to avoid data loss (and fines), and then ultimately retire them – for which, Lenovo offers asset recovery services for products approaching the end of their lifecycle, including data

deployed by our clients. They use ReadyWorks to streamline asset lifecycle management processes including supply chain tracking, shipping and receiving, deployment, maintenance, inventory tracking, decommissioning, disposal, financial reporting and audit response. The result is better clarity and control over their environment, which helps them to make more informed decisions about purchasing, upgrading, and replacing hardware and software – as well as influencing

“ReadyWorks is a great example of of innovative software that leverages automation and AI. They're also able to improve security by identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring that all software and hardware are up to date, secure and drive new sustainability initiatives”

removal, machine refurbishment, and sustainable material reuse.”

ReadyWorks is a great example of this innovative software that leverages automation and AI. Gartner refers to this class of software as "digital platform conductors" (DPC) and recognised ReadyWorks in its recent market guide. ReadyWorks provides visibility across the entire IT estate and orchestrates key business processes across complex, disconnected systems. ReadyWorks integrates with and complements the existing tools

other change-related decisions. They're also able to improve security by identifying vulnerabilities and ensuring that all software and hardware are up to date, secure and drive new sustainability initiatives.

Customers were increasingly asking for an RFID solution to keep track of their assets in their data centres. David continues, “Hyperview offers a really interesting software and RFID tagging solution that is battery-less and lasts for 10 years, so

“Intel is mentioned as a great example of working with Lenovo hand-in-hand to be time-to-market with the latest technology innovations, whether on the PC side, Edge, or server side, with exciting new capabilities”

customers are able to see where their assets are, at a rack level or by room. Importantly, they also have sensor data so they can tell the temperature etc, combining alerting capabilities, sustainability, data tracking, and security.”

The strength of Lenovo lies in its ability to bring single solutions together into a full solution to solve the client’s business problem. David adds, “I like to say that we build the best and we partner for the rest. The future offers unlimited opportunity for us. It is really exciting. We have so many areas to

build upon. I am currently working on solutions for anti-money laundering, high frequency trading, and branch transformation, for instance. I really think we have plenty to contribute.”

Intel is mentioned as a great example of working with Lenovo hand-in-hand to be time-tomarket with the latest technology innovations, whether on the PC side, Edge, or server side, with exciting new capabilities. For example, Lenovo servers feature the latest generation ‘Eagle

Lenovo ThinkPad Laptop

Take Control of Protecting Your Data

Today, threats to our most sensitive data have been increasingly advanced, creating tremendous risks for companies, governments organisations, cloud providers and more. The risk of exposing confidential data not only comes with the potential of great financial loss and an ongoing lack of trust, but plays a part in preventing us from making discoveries and taking full advantage of public cloud resources, economics, scalability and agility.

There is tremendous opportunity for application and solution developers to take charge of their data security using new hardware-based controls for cloud and enterprise environments. Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX) offers hardware-based memory encryption that isolates specific application code and data in memory. Intel® SGX helps protect against many known and active threats. It adds another layer of defense by helping reduce the attack surface of the system. Intel® SGX allows user-level code to allocate private regions of memory, called enclaves, which are designed to be protected from processes running at higher privilege levels. Only Intel®

Intel SGX —The trusted choice for confidential computing

Most researched and deployed hardware-based TEE for the data center

Broad ecosystem support and validation

Intel know-how and commitment to provide continuous hardening

Discover how the combination of Intel® SGX’s hardened security and verification capabilities, along with Intel’s ongoing collaboration with its broad security ecosystem help minimise the potential attack surface and reduce even theoretical risks.

“If you don’t have trust, nothing will work. It connects across the world – different people, cultures and businesses – and it takes time, effort and commitment. This is something to be celebrated at Lenovo”

Stream/Sapphire Rapids’ platform and processors, with new DDR5 and PCIe Gen 5 speeds, plus the CXL architecture which will open up new capabilities for integrating vast amounts of memory, accelerators, and storage at speed, enabling new high performance and lower latency applications such as AI – whether at a branch office, data centre, private or hybrid-cloud.

Thomas believes that by bringing together smarter IoT, smarter infrastructure and smarter verticals, Lenovo can become a dependable partner for its clients around the world. Looking to the future, David highlights that there will be a shared focus on the edge and hybrid-cloud, with everything infused by AI.

As a final point, Thomas and David describe Lenovo’s top drivers

for success – trust, leadership, innovation, and the wider ecosystem. But, which is the most crucial? Thomas concludes, “The most important driver in today’s business world is trust. How do you ensure you are working in a trustful manner with your clients and their data to build a trusted relationship? If you don’t have trust, nothing will work. It connects across the world – different

people, cultures and businesses – and it takes time, effort and commitment. This is something to be celebrated at Lenovo. It is a precious asset we have built with our clients, and once established, it creates speed and mutual value. For us, it is the number one driver for success.”

For further information on Lenovo, visit www.lenovo.com

Europe is set to edge ahead of China in the use of electric vehicles by 2030, according to a report.

Photos from www.tesla.com/tesla-gallery

THE CITI STATE OF GLOBAL ELECTRIC VEHICLE ADOPTION REPORT HAS

FORECAST

THAT EUROPE IS EXPECTED TO HAVE A 67.3 PER CENT PENETRATION RATE – UP FROM 22 PER CENT IN 2023 –FOR NEW ENERGY VEHICLES.

his places it ahead of China (66.6 per cent), South Korea (60.5 per cent) and the US (45.8 per cent), while the Middle East and Africa are forecast to have a penetration rate of only 2.7 per cent.

In October 2022, an agreement was reached by the European Parliament and European Council ensuring all new cars and vans registered in Europe will be zeroemission by 2035.

“Reaching zero emissions by 2035 raises questions around

the long-term relevance of hybrid technology in Europe and implies an outright ban on combustion engine technology within 15 years,” the report said.

“While OEMs (original equipment manufacturers) viewed electrification as just a tool to meet CO2 targets a couple of years ago, it has now become an integral part of many of their strategies. The uptake from end consumers has also been encouraging, as evidenced in the strong BEV (battery electric vehicle) sales outperformance since 2020.”

The growth in popularity of electric vehicles was shown in the UK in the past year, as battery electric new cars took a market share of about 17 per cent in 2022, overtaking diesel for the first time to become the second most popular system after petrol (according to data released by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders shows).

December saw battery electric vehicles claim their largest ever

monthly market share of 33 per cent, driven by a large number of Tesla cars being delivered.

Last year was regarded as a good year for electric vehicle adoption in the US, with new vehicle sales penetration growing throughout the year to more than 5 per cent of total light vehicle sales.

The rise in EV adoption came despite significant price increases implemented by car makers to

“EVS HAVE GAINED IN POPULARITY NOT ONLY FOR BEING ELECTRIC, BUT ALSO FOR CONTAINING STATE-OF-THE-ART CONNECTIVITY AND OVER-THE-AIR SOFTWARE UPDATES, OFTEN WITH NEXT-GENERATION ADVANCED DRIVER ASSISTANCE SYSTEMS FEATURES”

offset input costs. However, twothirds of total EV sales came from just eight US states.

The Citi report said there could be a sudden rise in demand on the way; “Though US EV penetration

continues to lag other geographies, we continue to believe that the structure of the US auto market lends itself well for a potential sharp and sudden inflection in EV demand.

“TESLA, THE WORLD'S BIGGEST ELECTRIC CAR COMPANY, ANNOUNCED ANOTHER RECORD FOR ANNUAL DELIVERIES, AS IT SHIPPED 1.31 MILLION CARS IN 2022, UP MORE THAN 40 PER CENT YEAR ON YEAR”

“This is because vehicle density in the US – the ratio of vehicles per household –ranks highest in the world at greater than 2x, with around 285 million light vehicles on the road.

“EVs have gained in popularity not only for being electric, but also for containing state-of-theart connectivity and overthe-air software updates, often with next-generation advanced driver assistance systems features. As the supply of available EVs grows and as EV charging infrastructure continues to expand, it is conceivable that an increasing number of US households will rapidly decide to migrate to a one internal combustion engine and one EV household –essentially retaining the best of both worlds.”

The economic downturn could, however, provide a shock to EV adoption in the US. EV sales in California account for 35 per cent of the US total, and they could be susceptible to the

technology industry layoffs which have been prevalent in recent months, especially with demand supported by a greater mix of younger buyers. EV adoption in the latter part of the decade will depend on newer battery technologies and the ability to launch high volume EVs at mass market prices.

Meanwhile, in China, the adoption of new energy vehicles is being driven by consumer

appetite for the technology, strong product cycles and government incentives. Growth in EV users will be aided by a sharp rise in the number of models available to buyers, and particularly at a lower price point.

“Across the price stack, we expect the number of distinct NEVs (new energy vehicles) available for sale to increase from 235 models in 2022 to 399

models in 2025,” the Citi report said.

“On average, we expect 70 per cent of NEVs to transact at prices below RMB200,000 ($28,700) and only 5-7 per cent of NEVs to transact at prices above RMB300,000 ($43,000), during that forecast horizon.”

The report comes as Tesla, the world's biggest electric car company, announced another

record for annual deliveries, as it shipped 1.31 million cars in 2022, up more than 40 per cent year on year.

However, Tesla's deliveries missed Wall Street estimates, and even the company's own growth projection of 50 per cent, despite opening two new factories last year.

For further information, visit www.tesla.com

Source: www.thenationalnews.com

SOFTWARE AS A KEY DIFFERENTIATOR IN WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION

Sutharshan Nadarajah, Technology Director, and Timo Eberhard, Head of Digital Transformation & Project Management Office (PMO), at Element Logic, explore their organisation’s key ambitions in the lead up to 2025.

lement Logic is a leading provider of warehouse robotics and automation solutions, all of which are located within the four walls of the distribution centre. It was established in 1985, but last year saw the company double both its turnover and number of employees. Growing ecommerce organisations need to automate their warehouse operations to be competitive in the market, which is where Element Logic can assist.

Sutharshan Nadarajah, Technology Director explains, “Our mission is to make our customers more profitable by optimising their warehouse performance. We are the world’s largest provider of AutoStore-based solutions, as well as offering a one-stop shop including software for warehouse

automation. We only provide automated solutions to our customers. We build the software around the hardware from our partners to provide a solution that fulfils the needs of our customers.”

Existing software products in Element Logic’s ecosystem include eManager, eOperator and eController, and the internal R&D team is constantly working on new developments. The company is a one-stop-shop for warehouse automation, and alongside the software focus, they are experts in AutoStore, the robotic piece-picking arm and conveyors.

Element Logic has developed eLogiq, the data platform that collects and combines the huge amounts of internal and external data from the company’s software and hardware solutions to

provide more data-driven services to its customers for optimising warehouse performance.

Sutharshan says, “We must think one step further from data visualisation and reporting to utilising data to provide data-driven services to optimise warehouse performance. We must help our customers to work smarter and not harder. We have several ambitions that we are working towards for 2025. One of the most important goals is software as a key differentiator in warehouse automation. Our software should be one of the key reasons for our

customers to select Element Logic. To achieve this ambition, we are continuing to develop a fully connected, integrated software ecosystem. We have defined six golden rules that our software products need to follow.”

The R&D department is responsible for developing all of Element Logic’s software products designed to optimise warehouse performance. Timo Eberhard, Head of Digital Transformation & PMO, is driving the transformation process within R&D together with other functions across the company. He says, “With increasingly interconnected data sources, there are greater possibilities to make our hardware more intelligent with the software products we have available. The customers can therefore experience more added value and increasingly optimise their warehouse performance. We want to ensure every customer has the possibility for the right individual value that is the best fit for them and their specific stage of development. Customer data gives us the possibility to provide customised value.”

So, how are digital transformation, product-centricity and product

“WE MUST THINK ONE STEP FURTHER FROM DATA VISUALISATION AND REPORTING TO UTILISING DATA TO PROVIDE DATA-DRIVEN SERVICES TO OPTIMISE WAREHOUSE PERFORMANCE. WE MUST HELP OUR CUSTOMERS TO WORK SMARTER AND NOT HARDER”

Sutharshan Nadarajah, Technology Director

management interconnected? Timo answers, “Digital transformation refers to the use of technology to drive a fundamental change. Productcentricity and product management practices are a catalyst to drive this change. Organising cross-functional tech and product teams along the value chain gives us even more possibilities to drive value for the customer, eg through continuous and iterative approaches and feedback loops, and ultimately results in a clear product-market fit.”

Besides being very customer oriented, Element Logic has started its journey to being more product centric by encouraging a stronger productcentric mindset in the company. Sutharshan explains, “Developing more scalable products ensures market fit and also helps to increase recurring business. It is all about having a product factory mindset. We must build the products needed by our customers based on great market insight, starting with defining a particular problem and finding solutions to it.”

Sutharshan highlights the importance of leveraging leading-edge technology to optimise warehouse performance. He says, “If you don’t understand the technology trends, you will be forced to change your strategy. Technology changes how we do things, and it changes the business environment, which again imposes changes in the strategy of a company. So, we need to understand the technology trends to be able to change our strategy before we are forced by our business environments. It is one of the golden rules for our software products. We have to base our solutions on leading-edge technology in order to be efficient and competitive.”

The six golden rules that all Element Logic software products must focus on include:

1. User-centricity

2. Standard and scalable

3. Modularity

4. Seamless experience

5. Tech-first and first mover

6. Value and data-driven.

Timo adds, “Being at the forefront of technology is in the DNA of Element Logic because we were the very first distributor of AutoStore-based solutions. We were also the very first to offer a robotic piece-picking solution integrated with AutoStore. Consequently, it is important for us to deliver the best-in-class solution with leading-edge technology to our customers.”

Element Logic prides itself on its strong cross-functional collaboration between the various teams within the company. Sutharshan continues, “Our pre-sales engineering team talks directly to the customer and understands their needs. We ensure we have strong collaboration with them because they are bringing the customer needs closer to us. Then we have the product management and technology teams, which develop

the products. Internal collaboration is essential, but also collaboration with our partners, as our solutions include their technology. Hence, we promote strong collaboration with the product management, R&D and engineering departments of our partners.”

Element Logic has developed an autonomous pick-and-place solution for its customers. Sutharshan says, “Having piloted a robotic arm for two years, we successfully delivered to Swedish pharmaceutical company, Apotea. The pharmaceutical industry with lots of small pickable items is one of our sweet-spot customer segments for our robotic piece-picking solution, and now we have a very good case for it. It's an exciting time for us!”

Looking ahead to Element Logic’s principal ambitions for the next few years, Sutharshan reinforces the fact

that the company’s focus will be on what it means to be a productcentric organisation with crossfunctional collaboration. He concludes, “With software as one of our key differentiators, we have done some careful thinking about how we want to develop our interconnected software ecosystem. Becoming a productcentric organisation with product factory mindset will help us to achieve our ambition and be able to deliver even better value for our customers.”

For further information on Element Logic, visit www.elementlogic.net

ABOUT ELEMENT LOGIC

“BEING AT THE FOREFRONT OF TECHNOLOGY IS IN THE DNA OF ELEMENT LOGIC BECAUSE WE WERE THE VERY FIRST DISTRIBUTOR OF AUTOSTOREBASED SOLUTIONS”

Timo Eberhard, Head of Digital Transformation & PMO

Download our whitepaper about software, ‘Data utilization: The next level of warehouse automation’

Element Logic is a technology company that optimises warehouses for customers to gain a competitive edge. The company was founded in 1985 and is headquartered in Norway. They operate worldwide, and it is the world’s first and largest AutoStore partner. Element Logic offers its customers automated and robotic solutions, software and consulting services. Their total revenue for 2021 was EUR 304 million.

Disrupting Online Travel

loveholidays’ success comes on the back of 150,000 requests a minute to its website and a data technology-complex task in the order of 500 billion holiday offers a day.

Happy holidaymakers are the public face of loveholidays.

As an online travel agency, the company helped more than 2 million people find their perfect getaway in 2022.

Global travel restrictions did not stop people searching for a break in the sun in the middle of the pandemic, says loveholidays’ chief technology officer Mike Jones. Some even booked in the hope their break would go ahead. Director of engineering and head of platform George Malamidis says, a little ruefully, “The first summer after lockdown we were breaking records for a month or two. People clearly wanted to go on holiday… though by November a lot of bookings had to be cancelled again. Covid just reinforced people’s desire to go on holiday.”

Now people are allowed to fly again, converting an idea into a fulfilled booking, rather than a wishful browse, highlights loveholidays’ emphasis on providing excellent customer service as well as an array of well-targeted options. Despite operating in the highly competitive online travel agency (OTA) space, the company rarely advertises, relying on effective digital marketing and its reputation for rapid response times, backed by smart technology, says Mike.

Holiday bookings in the northern hemisphere traditionally peak in January and February, when grey

and gloom provoke thoughts of sunnier climes. Thanks to continual improvements and innovation, the loveholidays website can more than cope with demand whatever time of year online traffic peaks, with site pages loading many times more quickly than competitors, says Mike. It all helps the company stay ahead in a competitive market and Mike credits David Annez, director of engineering, Eugene Neale, director of

business IT and customer experience (CX) engineering, and George for achieving innovative change across the business.

“David has helped us deliver a world first in AB testing – testing cache pages on the edge – while Eugene helped us address customer issues quicker, and win a lot of awards, with the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the contact centre space.

customer service,” he says. “It seems reasonably well accepted these days, which is sad.” To change both perception and actual experience, he set out to develop technology to reinstate great customer service in the travel industry. It harked back to the “good old days, when everybody knew your name and it was all extremely personable,” as Eugene

“We have ripped apart core parts of the business, and made some amazing changes across the business, but fundamentally we have not changed the model”

Mike Jones, Chief Technology Officer

George spearheaded many of the infrastructure changes that have been foundational to the speed improvements. So, we have ripped apart core parts of the business, and made some amazing changes across the business, but fundamentally we have not changed the model, we have just made it a lot better than it used to be,” says Mike.

The holiday market and bookings are a very emotive business, Eugene points out – a fundamental reason to keep making improvements.

“The travel industry is one of the lowest performing sectors for

puts it, observing that he had never encountered such legendary service in his lifetime.

Customer satisfaction has been at the heart of every job Eugene has taken on, so he turned to conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to achieve that aim at scale. The move has won customer service and holiday industry awards, yet despite the accolades Eugene feels there is more to achieve.

“It’s a journey, like everything… and we’re still very much in the starting phase,” he says. Whatever the industry or service, currently opting to talk to a “real” person

often means holding on a phone line, queuing for connection to a call centre. loveholidays will soon offer an alternative solution, Eugene says. The chat pop-up that is so useful answering online customer queries will undergo another innovative change.

“There will be a natural voice – which we’re currently trying to decide –

there’s so much that goes into it,” he smiles.

Does loveholidays position itself as a disruptor business, an innovator in technology or both? The leadership team concentrated on the loveholidays brand over the last three years, says Mike, so now they are seeking improvement and change

in other aspects of the business, particularly in-house.

“Previously loveholidays was known as a very entrepreneurial, fastgrowing business, winning awards in the sector. We want to be known as an innovator in technology and being great at what we do from a technical perspective. We are investing in the cultural aspects of our business

run four Hackfests now and they’ve been hugely successful,” he says. “The engagement is super-high and the ideas impressive.”

“At the last one, people used AI and called colleagues as they were presenting, so they were talking to the chat-bot, which was cool,” says David. Though they are not part of the IT development, call centre

“From the moment somebody interviews for a job at loveholidays, to when we start working together, we make it clear that the expectation is that we innovate and learn”

George Malamidis, Director of Engineering and Head of Platform

practices, and we want to become known as an awesome technology company to work for, across many different dimensions,” says Mike.

Gathering new perspectives from within the company is part of that journey and one of the reasons David set up the company’s Hackfest or hackathon. “The goal was to bring together engineers, designers and product people across multiple teams, to come up with interesting ideas that we could potentially try out on the site, or internally. We’ve

and marketing teams add another dimension to the exchange. “We’ve also built new features on our website as a result of Hackfest, for example, customers can compare Google reviews for their accommodation and are able to favourite their holidays,” says David.

loveholidays can personalise recommendations for hotels by analysing customers’ preferences. Working with customer data platform RudderStack, loveholidays captures events and data from many sources,

primarily its own website, but also from its experimentation platform and internal applications.

“It allows us to collect all that data and store it, and then lets us analyse and understand customer behaviour, experiments, system behaviour –and it does that without us having to think about it. Using RudderStack has helped us improve our systems and website, so it is a critical part of our business. We currently send around 6 billion to 7 billion events through RudderStack monthly – huge volumes,” says David.

Besides innovation aimed at improving customer experience,

Hackfest has sparked ideas for helpful tools internally, such as the portal that visualises all that loveholidays has to offer, allowing staff to understand the company set-up more easily.

“We have a complex set of services across a lot of teams. When new people join the company, they want to see how everything is connected and so a couple of engineers built a portal that lets us do just that. It has been hugely beneficial,” he says.

loveholidays celebrated a decade in business in 2022 and Mike wants to ensure that future company

“Using RudderStack has helped us improve our systems and website, so it is a critical part of our business. We currently send around 6 billion to 7 billion events through RudderStack monthly – huge volumes”

David Annez, Director of Engineering

culture provides employees with a sense of autonomy and ownership as well as a workplace. He highlights a lunch-and-learn initiative launched by software engineer Evelina Wahlstrom, where internal and external speakers give attendees mini lectures on interesting topics. These have proved so popular that a bigger venue is needed.

The four directors are also aware that they fit a stereotype of tech leadership and are determined to improve diversity in the industry. The company recently backed a conference for women in tech, at which two female loveholidays software engineers held a successful workshop. Further moves towards engaging a broader cross-section

of employees into the sector, all with an emphasis on innovation, are also planned.

“From the moment somebody interviews for a job at loveholidays, to when we start working together, we make it clear that the expectation is that we innovate and learn. These are two of the core concepts that we apply in engineering and technology in general,” says George. The company has blogged about its five engineering principles, focused on removing barriers to innovation. While some companies set aside a proportion of employees’ work time for personal and side projects,

loveholidays prefers innovation to form part of the everyday. George says the company takes a quantitative approach to measuring toil, operational work, with a view to minimising it, so that 100 percent of time (a goal, not the reality, he admits) can be dedicated to innovation.

“A manifestation of this is one of our engineering principles, which is to focus on differentiation. That means understanding what is unique about loveholidays and outsourcing the rest,” says George, using the company call centre as an example. “We are not

going to build our own telephony systems… outsourcing gave us time to work on our search platform instead, which is bespoke and unique to the industry. It’s what makes our website probably the only one in the industry whose search operates a lot more like Amazon or Google, rather than our competitors’ where you click, and wait for something to come back. That is one example of many.”

“On the old platform, some of the pages were quite slow, so we used Fastly to make them go fast, essentially, and cache them”

David Annez, Director of Engineering

Give your digital experiences an edge

Get the speed, security and edge cloud innovation you need to deliver profitable and engaging experiences.

This is where partnerships come into their own, says Mike. “We look to buy best-in-class software,” he says.

For instance, Fastly allowed loveholidays to level up its experimentation platform in its early beta stages. David explains, “On the old platform, some of the pages were quite slow, so we used Fastly to make them go fast, essentially, and cache them. But that meant we couldn’t test, and so the Fastly computer edge enabled us to run experiments on the edge and be

a business is expansion into new markets and opening international offices, which equates to significant growth for its 250-strong team. The company has plans in place to increase its headcount by 30 percent to support its phenomenal growth, the equivalent of 70 new roles, in 2023, with the majority of those tech-based roles.The directors’ emphasis on innovation is a unifying theme, though their early interest in technology started from different points. Comparing notes, in their younger

“I think you bring everything from your past to make today better”

Eugene Neale, Director of Business IT and Customer Experience (CX) Engineering

able to test some of our most critical pages.”

When loveholidays first decided to work with Fastly its technology was barely used in the travel industry. “Now we have rolled that platform out across all our websites in what was a world first. We’ve worked very closely with Fastly to continue to use it in the future because it is so powerful. It’s really come off well for us,” says David.

What lies ahead for loveholidays as

days they variously built their own PC, launched software, started businesses, released albums, worked as a chef, and at a hedge fund. “We have very different characteristics in the team,” says Mike, as they consider what the future might hold.

“I think you bring everything from your past to make today better,” says Eugene.

For further information on loveholidays, visit www.loveholidays.com

"The team were professional and diligent throughout"

Leigh Feaviour, CTIO for BT’s Supply Chain

"Absolute pleasure working with the Digital Innovation team"

Mun Valiji, Chief Information Security Officer at Sainsbury’s

"A highly professional approach"

Andy Brierley, Vice President, Cloud Application Modernisation at IBM

"Digital innovation Magazine is a very flexible and professional team"

Kim Larsen CTIO, T-Mobile Netherlands

BreakingTHE GLASS

Breaking

CEILING

The gender gap

IN THE TECH INDUSTRY IS WELLDOCUMENTED. HOWEVER, IN RECENT YEARS, THERE HAS BEEN A GROWING MOVEMENT TO BREAK THE GLASS CEILING AND INCREASE THE REPRESENTATION OF SUCCESS FOR WOMEN IN THE TECH INDUSTRY.

ccording to a report by the National Center for Women & Information Technology, women make up only 25 per cent of the workforce in the tech industry. This gap is even wider at the executive level, where women hold only 11 per cent of leadership positions. To shed further light on the issue, Atomico’s State of European Tech report exposed that the proportion of funding raised

by women-only teams has dropped from 3 per cent to 1 per cent since 2018, and, of those receiving funding, they’re getting less.

For one, it means that the industry is missing out on the talents and skills of half of the population. In addition, it can create a culture in which women are not welcomed or supported, which can make it difficult for women to succeed in the industry.

Despite the challenges, there are a number of women who have broken through the glass ceiling and advanced to leadership positions in the tech industry. These women serve as role models and inspirations for others who are looking to do the same.

One of these women is Susan Wojcicki, the CEO of YouTube. Wojcicki is the first woman to lead a major tech company and has been instrumental in driving innovation and growth at YouTube.

Another woman who has broken through the glass ceiling is Reshma Saujani, the founder and CEO of Girls Who Code. Saujani has been a vocal advocate for women in tech and has worked to increase the representation of women in the industry through her organisation.

But, there are still many challenges that women in the tech industry face. One of the biggest is the lack of representation, which can make it difficult for women to find mentors and role

"SUSAN WOJCICKI IS THE FIRST WOMAN TO LEAD A MAJOR TECH COMPANY AND HAS BEEN

INSTRUMENTAL IN DRIVING INNOVATION AND GROWTH AT YOUTUBE"

models who they can relate to and learn from.

Susan Wojcicki

Another challenge that women in the tech industry face is the lack of support. Women often have to work harder than men to prove themselves and earn respect in the industry. Taking an intersectional look at the entrepreneurial community, we see that women of colour are facing additional barriers – and discrimination is incredibly widespread. According to Founderland’s Rise & Thrive Report, in

Germany, workplace discrimination is becoming increasingly prevalent.

Before the pandemic, workplace discrimination was growing by 1015 per cent annually in Germany, which saw a significant increase to almost 79 per cent during the pandemic.

Breaking the glass ceiling in the tech industry is an ongoing process. Despite the progress that has been made, there is still a long way to go to achieve gender equality. By highlighting the achievements of women in the tech industry and addressing the challenges that women still face, we can help to create a more inclusive and equitable industry where all individuals have the opportunity to succeed.

Recognising women in tech means taking time to celebrate successes, highlighting inspiring women to provide references for the next generation, and giving these influential and impactful women a platform to share their voices.

Women have made significant contributions to the tech industry throughout its history. From

"ANOTHER WOMAN WHO HAS BROKEN THROUGH THE GLASS CEILING IS RESHMA SAUJANI, THE FOUNDER AND CEO OF GIRLS WHO CODE. SAUJANI HAS BEEN A VOCAL ADVOCATE FOR WOMEN IN TECH AND HAS WORKED TO INCREASE THE REPRESENTATION OF WOMEN IN THE INDUSTRY THROUGH HER ORGANISATION"

Ada Lovelace, who is considered to be the world’s first computer programmer, to Grace Hopper, who developed the first compiler, they have been instrumental in shaping the tech industry as we know it today.

Despite these contributions, women have often been

Reshma Saujan

Sheryl Sandberg

Jen Hyman Jenny Fleiss

overlooked

the industry. Let’s hope we are now, finally, seeing a growing recognition of women in tech through leadership positions, for instance. Women are increasingly taking on leadership roles in the industry and are making a positive impact on the direction and success of the companies they lead.

For example, women like Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo, have been instrumental in driving innovation and growth at their respective companies. In addition, many women are also starting their own tech companies, such as Jen Hyman and Jenny Fleiss, co-founders of Rent the Runway.

Keep

up the good work, ladies!

Source: www.eu-startups.com

Hyman

Jenny Fleiss

We find out more about TransferMate’s plans for the future with Irina Tsonova, Head of Global Due Diligence.

GLOBAL PAYMENTS COMPANY

TRANSFERMATE HAS BUILT THE LARGEST NON-BANK PAYMENTS

INFRASTRUCTURE IN THE WORLD THAT SUPPORTS THE MOST CURRENCIES WORLDWIDE OF ANY B2B PAYMENTS TECHNOLOGY.

y acquiring 92 payment institutions/e-money licenses as a foundation for this expansive network, TransferMate can move money on behalf of their customers around the world at incredible speed and at low cost.

Irina Tsonova leads the Global Due Diligence function at TransferMate and is responsible for managing high performing teams located in

Bulgaria, Mexico and the Philippines, with a focus on high standards, good customer service, and execution of controls in line with the firm’s risk tolerance and regulatory requirements. Having joined TransferMate in 2022, Irina’s top priority is leading and implementing change initiatives from inception through to implementation, providing input and guidance on best in-class digital onboarding workflows.

“WE HAVE A MODEL TEAM, WE HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE, WE HAVE THE PEOPLE, WE HAVE THE ATTITUDE, AND WE ARE USING THIS TO ENSURE THAT TRANSFERMATE IS THE GLOBAL LEADER IN THE B2B AND EMBEDDED PAYMENT SPACE”

Irina Tsonova, Head of Global Due Diligence.

Streamlining the client onboarding experience yet ensuring the right balance of risk management is a business priority, and a personal mission for Irina. Making the onboarding process as smooth as possible for clients is a must, and being a global organisation, licensed in over 50 countries and jurisdictions, this breath of coverage can present hurdles when trying to establish global standard and forego unnecessary complexity in the compliance program. Irina says, “The key to compliance is a commonsense approach, absent of surprises for the client when onboarding. TransferMate’s Compliance team is the best team I have ever worked with. We have a model team, we have the knowledge, we have the people, we have the attitude, and we are using this to ensure that TransferMate is the global leader in the B2B and embedded payment space.”

TransferMate partners with ComplyAdvantage, a global Regtech provider, for all its client

“

COMPLYADVANTAGE IS ONE OF OUR MOST VALUABLE PARTNERS. WE SELECTED THEM NOT ONLY FOR THEIR INDUSTRY LEADING SOLUTION, BUT ALSO AS THEY SHARE THE SAME VISION AS US TO USE ‘COMPLIANCE AS A COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE”

onboarding, transaction screening and monitoring. Irina adds, “ComplyAdvantage is one of our most valuable partners. We selected them not only for their industry leading solution, but also as they share the same vision as us to use ‘compliance as a competitive advantage’, and they support our mission to develop dynamic rules and controls tuned

to specific inherent vulnerability scenarios, ultimately providing better customer service.

ComplyAdvantage is fit for growth as we scale as a business, offering new product types. They work with us to ensure we keep the bad guys out of our business and don't bother our good clients with overly cumbersome compliance controls.”

At TransferMate, we’re experts in global payments, not experts in compliance systems. That’s why we left it to ComplyAdvantage.

When it comes to financial crime risk detection, TransferMate aims to have “the best compliance team in the business,” said Alex Clements, the firm’s Global Head of FinCrime, Monitoring and Investigations.

TransferMate wanted a partner that could help its compliance analysts stay ahead of rapidly changing criminal behaviour. That required a customisable solution capable of managing multiple risk scenarios as well as accommodating new information from law enforcement and other sources.

“We chose ComplyAdvantage because we wanted a complete solution. We wanted to strip back our data and understand every data point within our model,” explained Clements.

“With ComplyAdvantage, we were able to build a complete rule set, so we could understand the exact risks we’re facing in our business.”

One team, two organisations: The importance of implementation

From the beginning, it was important for TransferMate to partner with a provider that understood its business and clients. During the implementation process, both teams communicated almost daily. Clements described this as a “one team, two organisations” approach. TransferMate worked with ComplyAdvantage implementation consultants to define its data model and scope out the bespoke rules it wanted to build for transaction monitoring. ComplyAdvantage used its industry expertise to help TransferMate achieve its goals, sharing ideas and best practices.

In the first year of the partnership, TransferMate has reduced the time it spends investigating transaction risk alerts by up to 50%. Analysts complete transactions that hit a compliance control in up to 40 minutes. TransferMate has also experienced a reduction in false-positive alerts, giving analysts more time to focus on the alerts that present a real risk.

Learn more about TransferMate’s best practice AML program in this interview with Alex Clements

Streamlining client onboarding while meeting regulatory requirements is a priority for all compliance teams – and TransferMate is no exception. They face the need to identify and verify all clients they onboard, yet also provide a smooth onboarding experience for those clients.

Transfermate chose to partner with Dun & Bradstreet to do just this.

Using our compliance data and technology, they can quickly and easily verify clients against the deep, trusted information available on over 228+ countries and territories, in Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Cloud.

“Dun & Bradstreet has helped us become much more efficient in client onboarding. We no longer need to log in to each country’s company registration web site or download many different documents. We now get a summary of the data we need in just a few clicks, which has accelerated our KYC process. And as everyone knows, the quicker the KYC process is, the better the onboarding experience, and the happier the customer is.”

Irina Tsonova, Head of Global Due Diligence, Transfermate

Dun & Bradstreet combines global data and local expertise to help our clients make smarter decisions. We help you understand who you could do business with, who you should do business with, and who you can do business with.

Our comprehensive data and analytical tools can help you to build effective KYC programs that support compliance with regulations and accelerate due diligence.

To date, our Data Cloud comprises over 510 million company records, more than 500 million shareholders, principals, and controllers, 1.5 million PEPs and 700+ blacklists, sanction lists and more.

Various steps of the KYC (Know Your Customer) process are supported by different partners that TransferMate selects for their individual expertise, be it identity verification, business verification, screening, etc. Irina elaborates, “We are aiming to achieve one system containing all the onboarding steps, end to end. Best client experience always comes with fewer interactions and fast service. That is

why we use Dun & Bradstreet for the KYC part in our onboarding process. Corporate compliance is more complex than ever. Information is dispersed across multiple sources, and manually managing it slows it down and increases the risk of error, whilst the D&B onboard solution that we use provides a single point of access to information and tools to research and make compliance decisions more easily.”

“THE BEST CLIENT EXPERIENCE ALWAYS COMES WITH FEWER INTERACTIONS AND FAST SERVICE. THAT IS WHY WE USE DUN & BRADSTREET FOR THE KYC PART IN OUR ONBOARDING PROCESS”

(Left to right) Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Sinead Fitzmaurice, TransferMate CEO, and Leo Clancy, CEO Enterprise Ireland

“OUR GOAL IS TO HAVE THE WHOLE PROCESS AUTOMATED. AN EFFICIENT AND BEST-IN-CLASS ONBOARDING EXPERIENCE IS WHAT WE ARE LOOKING TO ACHIEVE”

Irina stresses the significance of having trust across the many teams within the company. She says, “TransferMate is a unique workplace. Such a nice corelation between different teams is rarely seen nowadays. We are all here for the same purpose, and you can feel it every day. We value human relationships across the company. There are employees that have been here for over 10 years, so you get the feeling that it’s a place that people have really invested into seeing the firm grow from strength to strength.”

Optimising the KYC process is Irina’s principal assignment for 2023. She continues, “Our goal is to have the whole process

“WE’RE LOOKING TO FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGE THE WAY BUSINESSES PAY, AND WE’VE GOT ALL THE TOOLS TO DO JUST THAT”

automated. An efficient and bestin-class onboarding experience is what we are looking to achieve.”

So, what are the key attributes Irina looks for when building a strong

team? She answers, “Firstly, trust is essential, and creating a safe environment where people feel comfortable to grow, develop and speak up. Managers without the trust from the team will have an

issue in delivering key objectives. Secondly, we need the knowledge and the practice, and thirdly, we need the right attitude. If we have all that in place, we are heading in the right direction. And I believe this is the case for TransferMate.”

TransferMate’s plans for the future involve securing its position as a leader in the B2B payments space. Irina concludes, “We have the

infrastructure, we have the technology, and we have the highest standards of security and compliance. We’re looking to fundamentally change the way businesses pay, and we’ve got all the tools to do just that.”

For further information on TransferMate, visit www.transfermate.com

Which key firms are increasing employment in 2023?

Given recent workforce fluctuations at tech companies, it would be easy to imagine that the overall employment picture is one of doom and gloom.

However, according to Eurostat, in the EU, the employment rate of those aged 20-64 was 74.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2022, which actually increased by 0.3 per cent compared with the first quarter of the year.

As some tech firms are undoubtedly shedding staff, others with a stronger footing are taking the chance to mop up the best talent. The current environment therefore represents a good opportunity to test the waters and see what is available on the job front.

Additionally, there are several career paths and roles within the tech sector that are experiencing growth. Cybersecurity, for example,

is on the rise with a market value that is expected to grow globally to $202 billion in 2023.

Demand for cybersecurity jobs has risen significantly over the past few years. More than one million cybersecurity jobs will be available next year, but less than 400,000 cybersecurity professionals will be trained by that time – if you have skills, you’ll be in demand. Other sectors include data science, cloud computing, artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as virtual reality and augmented reality.

So, if you’re thinking about a new job for 2023, here are five companies that are on the hunt for talent.

A global community working together to make financial services and commerce more convenient, affordable and secure, PayPal has around 30,900 employees globally, its services are available in more than 200 countries/regions, and it supports 25 currencies. With such an international reach and remit, there is a host of jobs available at the company.

Best known for producing and selling computer hardware and software, as well as cloud computing and data analytics, IBM also invented the floppy disk, the hard disk drive, and the UPC barcode. It is one of the oldest and largest tech companies in the world, with operations in over 171 countries and more than 280,000 staff. If you would like to join one of tech’s most venerable firms, then IBM is hiring for roles in Germany and Ireland.

Netflix is the world’s leading streaming entertainment service with 222 million paid memberships in over 190 countries. It says the thing it most values is working with talented people in highly creative and productive ways. Netflix’s core philosophy is people over process, and it aims to bring great people together as a ‘dream team’. The company has a range of opportunities on offer, including plenty of remote roles.

©rinze_vegelien

Far more than a credit card provider, these days, Mastercard is a global technology company in the payments industry. Its mission is to connect and power an inclusive, digital economy that benefits everyone by making transactions safe, simple, smart and accessible. Using secure data and networks, its innovations and solutions allow individuals, financial institutions, governments and businesses to realise their greatest potential. With connections across more than 210 countries and territories, the company is regularly hiring.

Ecommerce giant Zalando is on a mission, evolving from a fashion retailer to an online platform. Through numerous different channels, it connects all the major players in the fashion industry. Over the past few years, the company has attracted more than 3,000 tech experts from all over the world and employs around 17,000 people. It nurtures an active culture of testing, trying out lots of things and taking risks.

FOR NEXT-GEN MARINE SOLUTIONS

Subsea Europe Services has opened a new R&D centre at its premises in the Ocean Technology Campus Rostock.

SOLUTIONS

SUBSEA EUROPE SERVICES HAS ESTABLISHED A NEW DEPARTMENT TO ENABLE THE SUBSEA SYSTEMS, SERVICES AND SOLUTIONS PROVIDER’S MISSION TO SIMPLIFY THE ACQUISITION OF MARINE DATA BY LEVERAGING NEW INTEGRATED, AUTONOMOUS AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES.

ed by Frank Niemeyer, Subsea Europe Services plans to grow the centre further with new data science, mechatronics, software development and platform management roles to ensure crossdiscipline in-house expertise informs the development of truly autonomous survey

platforms and new Data-asa-Service workflows, which can significantly reduce cost and provide cloud access to high-quality marine data.

Offshore Technology

Campus Rostock is often regarded as one of Europe’s leading marine technology and research clusters, making it the perfect location for

Subsea Europe Services’ next phase of expansion. The new R&D facility measures 100 square metres and will be used for further developing the company’s autonomous platform capabilities for marine survey with the Autonomous Surveyor autonomous surface

vessel (ASV), and underwater inspection with the A.IKANBILIS hovering autonomous underwater vehicle (HAUV).

The Subsea Europe Services

R&D team will also focus on creating new applicationspecific AI-powered autonomous

“THE SUBSEA EUROPE SERVICES R&D TEAM WILL ALSO FOCUS ON CREATING NEW APPLICATION-SPECIFIC AI-POWERED AUTONOMOUS CONTROL SYSTEMS AND UNLOCKING THE POTENTIAL OF SWARM SURVEYS FEATURING MULTIPLE AUTONOMOUS VEHICLES”

control systems and unlocking the potential of swarm surveys featuring multiple autonomous vehicles, with crewed or uncrewed motherships capable of managing the entire operation. These cutting-edge marine survey technologies and methodologies contribute

“OUR EXPANDED R&D DEPARTMENT UNDERPINS OUR MISSION TO SIMPLIFY MARINE DATA ACQUISITION”

to a unique and disruptive strategy that can positively transform marine survey and underwater inspection for all stakeholders.

Sören Themann, CEO at Subsea Europe Services, said, “Our expanded R&D department underpins our mission to simplify marine data acquisition as it will drive the development

Sören Themann, CEO at Subsea Europe Services

of truly autonomous survey systems that deliver highquality data at extremely low operational costs, without the need for in-house client expertise or large operations centres to scale.”

Frank Niemeyer joins Subsea Europe Services from his previous role as

scientific research associate at the Fraunhofer Institute for Large Structures in Production Engineering, where he has been on secondment to the Rostock branch office of the Smart Ocean Technology research group, working on diverse technical R&D projects. He has also held R&D positions, including research associate at the University of

Niemeyer added, “I’m excited to apply my R&D experience in the pursuit of achieving true autonomy for marine surveying, as well as supporting the development of the entirely new business models it will enable. Subsea Europe Services

has quickly established itself among the top tier technology companies in this field, and I look forward to becoming part of a team with huge ambitions and the skills and expertise to make it happen.”

For further information on Subsea Europe Services, visit www.subsea-europe.com

Source: www.hydro-international.com

Rostock and chair of Geodesy and Geoinformatics.

rench start-up Greenly has built a softwareas-a-service platform that allows you to calculate your company’s carbon emissions, store and track them in one place, generate a certified report of your carbon footprint, and get some insights about ways to reduce your emissions.

Greenly focuses specifically on small and medium-sized companies, aiming to automate as many steps as possible by integrating with dozens of data sources, and offering advice on how to improve your reporting process and get more granular data. It then generates a carbon report.

Customers who start using Greenly first connect the service with their accounting and financial data. For low-priority items, Greenly can automatically calculate an estimate of carbon emissions. For bigger sources of emissions, the platform will ask questions. It has gathered hundreds of thousands of data points from public database. It tries to learn over time so that you don’t have to answer the same questions again and again.

The start-up is currently building out integrations with electricity providers, cloud services and e-commerce platforms. But the most difficult part of the carbon footprint equation is

Greenly is the go-to carbon accounting platform for your business.

“Customers who start using Greenly first connect the service with their accounting and financial data. For low-priority items, Greenly can automatically calculate an estimate of carbon emissions”

what’s happening upstream and downstream. How can you evaluate the carbon impact of your suppliers? Greenly has created a viral loop. Customers can send a link to a Greenly portal to their suppliers so that they can share more information about their carbon emissions.

There are 400 companies currently using Greenly. While most of them are currently based in France, the company has opened an office in the US to address the American market.

For further information, visit www.greenly.earth Source: www.techcrunch.com