International Women’s Day edition 2024

DIGITAL MAGAZINE

INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY EDITION

INSIGHTS FROM MARIA VON SCHEEL-PLESSEN ON THE STARTUP, TECH AND LUXURY INDUSTRIES

LYUDMYLA

BARON

Head of Marketing Technology at Pvh Corp. on driving fashion forward – for good

EMMANUELLE CAMEAU ON TRANSFORMING THE GENE THERAPY FIELD AT CYTIVA

Do you work with a disruptive and innovative company that’s going places?

We want to hear from you.

Tell us all about the startup or SME by emailing enquiries@ithink.media and we’ll consider them for inclusion in an exciting project we have lined up in 2024.

Subscribe and keep your eyes peeled. More to come soon…

FROM THE FOUNDER

Welcome to the International Women’s Day edition of Innovation!

For the first time ever, we’re thrilled to bring you 13 exclusive interviews with the female thought leaders who have been a part of our magazine over the past year! Covering a huge range of sectors and topics, we’re featuring interviews and insights from female leaders at Pvh Corp. (p6), Telehouse France (p24), Tinka (p60), TransferMate (p78), Cytiva (p92), FläktGroup (p110), SLB (p126), Grünenthal (p144), Isavia (p158), Boohoo Group (p176), Selectra (p194) and Daiichi Sankyo Europe (p208).

As a female business founder, I am incredibly proud to feature so many women innovators disrupting their respective fields and I look forward to featuring many more across 2024 and beyond. We hope you enjoy this collection of highlights from the past year!

If you would like to be considered as an interviewee or have a story for us, please get in touch.

Danielle Harris Founder and Director

WHAT'S INSIDE...

6

Lyudmyla Baron Pvh Corp

Hanane Pelissier Telehouse France

Daniela Lourenço Tinka

Irina Tsonova TransferMate

Maria von Scheel-Plessen

126

158

144

208

176 194

Janaina Ruas Filiponi SLB

Ambre Exposito Selectra

Emmanuelle Cameau Cytiva

Anna Björk Bjarnadóttir Isavia

Nadine Hessel FläktGroup

Megan Reutin Grünenthal

Laricea Ioana Roman-Halliday Boohoo Group

Madalina Burghelea, Daiichi Sankyo Europe

DIFFERENTIATION THROUGH INNOVATION

Lyudmyla Baron, Head of Marketing Technology at PVH Corp. discusses the fashion company’s innovative approaches to tech, data and redefining customer loyalty programmes.

DIFFERENTIATION

ESTABLISHED IN 1881, PVH CORP. IS A LEADING FASHION COMPANY THAT CONNECTS WITH CUSTOMERS IN OVER 40 COUNTRIES. ITS GLOBAL BRANDS INCLUDE CALVIN KLEIN AND TOMMY HILFIGER AND IT IS COMMITTED TO DRIVING FASHION FORWARD FOR GOOD.

ut what does this look like from a technological and strategic perspective?

Here to tell us more is Lyudmyla Baron, the Head of Marketing Technology at PVH. She originally joined the company’s digital transformation department in its early days, which has since evolved into a digital product department.

Lyudmyla explains how before COVID hit PVH had

already made significant and exciting strides in technology development, positioning it well to pivot towards becoming a techfocused fashion company.

As an established legacy corporation, PVH now has a strong track record of deploying technology as an enabling force in its processes and service provision.

“I see modern technology as the driving force for process innovation and service provision as well

LYUDMYLA IS GRATEFUL TO HER COLLEAGUES JOSEMAR PEREZ (ABOVE) AND CLAIRE ROQUES (BELOW) FOR THEIR HARD WORK SETTING UP VALUABLE COLLABORATIONS WITH CREATIVE FORCE, REAKTOR AND OTHER EXCITING PROJECT PARTNERS.

because traditionally as a corporation with such a rich history, it’s common to have a lot of different technologies that span decades of development, improvement and evolution,” says Lyudmyla. “So by using newer technology while keeping the legacy systems up to date and also improving where we can with what becomes available on the market, we can channel the spirit of continuous improvement both of our technology and processes – it's a really strong combination.

“One example is our photo studios process where we have recently collaborated with Creative Force to update our process management. Our work together has allowed us to save costs by automating a lot of manual labour and introduce new methods of reporting and tracking the status of a process or a season campaign.”

Lyudmyla elaborates, “In a dynamic industry like ours, innovation is a key differentiator in the competitive environment. We have several dedicated

“PVH CORP. MAXIMISES THE OUTPUTS OF ITS INNOVATION AND TECHNOLOGY STRATEGIES

BY DEPLOYING

DATADRIVEN DECISION-MAKING

”

teams for innovation and my journey with PVH began in a Digital Hub at the intersection of digital transformation, technology and digital ventures. As a corporation, we have also incubated some exciting start-ups in the digital showroom and 3D design and selling fields. Those start-ups have now graduated from inside the corporation and have merged into their own entity, serving other brands with the capabilities that have been born inside our corporation.”

PVH Corp. maximises the outputs of its innovation and technology strategies by deploying data-driven decision-making.

“As a company, we strive to be data-driven and make informed decisions. It is one of the leadership behaviours that we promote at every level because we believe that everyone is a leader,” says Lyudmyla. “It is a top priority and we encourage each other to source

relevant data accordingly. From a technology perspective, I'm in a good position to help stakeholders from various business teams to get the relevant data to ensure that our processes work so we have a good overview of what is happening in our systems across all the channels and all the touch points for the consumers but also inside our systems too.

“So from that perspective, for example, I help teams introduce monitoring techniques because it's hard to manage what we don’t know. First, it is about asking the right questions to gain more insights. This allows us to refine our monitoring capabilities to better answer the subsequent questions that we are asking. Second, it is then a question of processing the relevant data that we collect and we have a dedicated department for data and business analytics that is working on our corporation’s data lake. This entails collaboration between a lot of departments to ensure that data flows throughout the company from consumerfacing touchpoints to the right teams because consumer data is paramount and it's crucial to ensure on every level that we meet security, legal and GDPR requirements for every new tool or software that we introduce. It's important to align the data

The leading workflow platform for content creation at scale

The leading workflow platform for content creation at scale

Launch new eCommerce products in days, not weeks.

Launch new eCommerce products in days, not weeks.

EDITORIAL PROJECTS

EDITORIAL PROJECTS

Manage creative photography and video projects from brief to campaign

Manage creative photography and video projects from brief to campaign

Marketing campaigns

Marketing campaigns

Lifestyle product photography

Lifestyle product photography

Elevated PDP content

Elevated PDP content

ECOMMERCE PHOTOS, VIDEO, AND COPY

ECOMMERCE PHOTOS, VIDEO, AND COPY

Reduce time-to-market for eCommerce product content

Reduce time-to-market for eCommerce product content

Manage content production from sample to product display page (PDP).

Manage content production from sample to product display page (PDP).

Decrease cost-per-asset

Decrease cost-per-asset

Eliminate hours spent on manual tasks with workflow automation.

Eliminate hours spent on manual tasks with workflow automation.

Top brands and retailers like PVH use Creative Force to efficiently scale creative production and deliver product photography, video, and copy at high volume.

Top brands and retailers like PVH use Creative Force to efficiently scale creative production and deliver product photography, video, and copy at high volume.

Experience the future of eCommerce content creation at creativeforce.io

Experience the future of eCommerce content creation at creativeforce.io

Access digital assets from anywhere

Access digital assets from anywhere

Cloud-based storage and version tracking provide a single source of truth.

Cloud-based storage and version tracking provide a single source of truth.

Increase visibility with real-time reporting

Increase visibility with real-time reporting

Accountability and status updates for every shot and deliverable.

Accountability and status updates for every shot and deliverable.

and make it accessible to the departments that could use it for data-driven decisions so that we can learn from our consumers and from our audience so we can serve their needs better.”

As she discusses the notion of security and legal requirements, Lyudmyla reinforces the ethical responsibility for business and tech leaders in particular.

in the next few years combined with the amount of automation and reduction of manual work that new tools on the market today already provide – I think these are very important topics to consider.”

But at PVH Corp. data is not only used in decision-making, it also underpins and drives software development as well.

“WE RECENTLY SWITCHED TO CREATIVE FORCE

FOR THE MANAGEMENT OF OUR OVERALL STUDIO PROCESSES WHICH PROVIDED IMPROVEMENTS SUCH AS SAMPLE TRACKING, VARIANT ASSET NAMING AND CROPPING, OUTFIT CREATION, CONTACT SHEETS AND REPORTING – TO NAME A FEW”

“It's important to stay up to date on emerging trends and keep an eye on the big disruptive technologies because they impact every industry. Fashion is no exception,” says Lyudmyla. “In any business process that supports decision-making with analysis of large amounts of data, the new technology offers unprecedented capabilities for leadership in general. But it's important to know how the new developments are going to affect the workforce broadly speaking. The amount of upskilling that will be needed

Here Lyudmyla highlights the importance of partnerships in the operations at PVH Corp.

"We recently switched to Creative Force for the management of our overall studio processes which provided improvements such as sample tracking, variant asset naming and cropping, outfit creation, contact sheets and reporting – to name a few. Their enhanced reporting and tracking of the process show us all the modifications to data flows. This has enabled our teams to have a

comprehensive overview in one place of where the data is shared or modified, the status of those samples/assets, the data on models or crews and the metadata of the assets. So from that perspective the data that is now readily available and can serve us in making further improvements. Now it is possible to look at the entire flow of assets and identify where we could make

possible improvements in the future to streamline operations or increase quality or any other desirable performance metrics."

At its core, PVH is a brand builder and one of its growth drivers as a corporation is excelling with the best consumer engagement. It wields technology and digitally led strategies to innovate the customer

user experience. In particular, PVH prides itself on its innovative approach to loyalty programmes.

“So loyalty is a very important topic for us, and we've had very successful loyalty programmes for decades,” explains Lyudmyla. But the company is always looking to innovate and improve its offering. Lyudmyla draws attention to

exciting new projects underway like the Tommy Together initiative at Tommy Hilfiger in Europe which is currently live in Germany and Italy with other markets to follow soon.

“Tommy Together really focuses on engaging with the customers,” says Lyudmyla. “Classic loyalty programmes are very transactional and reward the higher spenders.

But for us, it's important to connect with consumers based on their values and not necessarily on the size of their wallets. We also see and appreciate that when the economy slows down or there is uncertainty in general, people shop for clothes less. But when they do, they shop with the brands that they feel a personal connection with and that align with their ethics. As a result, we try to reflect this and engage

development teams were able to develop and launch our backend capabilities in five months since they started working with us to the go-live date. For a programme and initiative that spans several departments and has omnichannel capabilities and touch points with the consumer, it's incredibly impressive.”

Beyond their loyalty programmes, PVH also strives to personalise

“REAKTOR WHOSE WAY OF WORKING, SPEED AND QUALITY IS A RARE COMBINATION THAT YOU DON'T FIND VERY OFTEN. BUT WE ARE HAPPY THAT WE HAVE FOUND IT IN OUR PARTNER REAKTOR”

with our customers based on their values and enhance customer satisfaction through our loyalty programmes. For instance, we need to make sure that there is an ease of use within the products that we serve them. So if it's signing up for a loyalty programme, we also want to enhance the backend capabilities for any new or updated programme. And here we have collaborated with Reaktor whose way of working, speed and quality is a rare combination that you don't find very often. But we are happy that we have found it in our partner Reaktor, whose

their consumer engagement strategies to enhance its service provision for its customers at a grassroots level with the content the company distributes.

“One of the drivers of global growth is the balance in standardisation and personalisation of content, but also for our processes and strategies,” reiterates Lyudmyla.

“One example of that is how different departments or markets can use systems or technologies that work better for them to meet their needs while also better

“WE'RE MAKING WAVES IN THE DIGITAL ARENA THANKS TO THE DEDICATED WORK OF OUR CONTENT TEAMS AND ADVANCED SOLUTIONS LIKE THE ONE PROVIDED BY BLOOMREACH”

serving the consumers they engage with.

“For instance, we use Bloomreach as one of our preferred content management systems (CMS) to help us deploy our digital assets effectively in a way that resonates with our target audiences. We're making waves in the digital arena thanks to the dedicated work of

our content teams and advanced solutions like the one provided by Bloomreach. Moreover, since the COVID lockdowns ended it has been a pleasure being able to collaborate with strategic partners again face to face, beyond the realms of virtual meetings, sparkling inspiration and toasting to new ideas on Amsterdam’s canals.”

SO WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD AT PVH?

For Lyudmyla, she emphasises the importance of sustainability and using PVH’s scale as an empowering force for other representatives in the fashion industry.

“So one of the big goals that is close to my heart and fundamentally important at PVH is driving fashion forward for good. I think for the fashion industry in general, there are a lot of improvements to be made in terms of sustainability and equity in all the areas, markets and regions that we operate in throughout our supply chain. The scale and size of our corporation makes it challenging to close those sustainability gaps quickly, but the long-term strategy that we have is very practical and we have already achieved many significant milestones. For example, we hit our interim target of 50 per cent renewable energy usage three years ahead of schedule, after installing the world’s most powerful solar roof at our state-of-the-art warehouse and logistics centre in Venlo, which now powers all of PVH Europe buildings in the Netherlands.”

“But on the other hand, the size of our corporation also allows us to make a tremendous difference and join forces with other organisations in the fashion sector to give a leg up to

much smaller start-ups and help the most innovative companies scale up their operations. One way that PVH is achieving this is with the Tommy Hilfiger Fashion Frontier Challenge that we hold yearly.

“We open the challenge to startups from around the world that are making a positive impact in either sustainability, inclusion, diversity or any other goals that promote progress in the supply chain of the fashion industry in general. The winners receive a monetary prize, but founders and leaders at the companies are also offered further education opportunities at one of the top business schools in the world. The support network we can provide from a big brand like Tommy Hilfiger brings so much value to a startup that operates in one of the countries where we manufacture our products, such as Bangladesh. The weight that a name like Tommy Hilfiger carries helps boost contestants and winners because they can sign on with new factories or businesses within the market. In traditional working industries and sectors, there must be an incentive to switch over to more progressive approaches and that is where a large brand like Tommy Hilfiger can really empower start-ups around the world.”

For more information about PVH Corp., visit their website pvh.com.

ADDED VALUE

ETHICAL USE OF AI

Lyudmyla is an active and enthusiastic AI ethicist and she encourages professionals in the technology industry to seize opportunities where they can engage in the latest discussions about new AI developments in their fields.

“In general, we have already suffered some consequences from irresponsible technology usage, for example on social media platforms. But I love the current trend for people getting into think tanks and working groups involving regulatory bodies like the European government and other governments around the world. They are creating frameworks to solve and tackle issues that are exacerbated by technology because it makes everything bigger and faster but can also exaggerate human flaws and biases.

“I'm happy to participate in this movement and I'm also part of several organisations that are promoting inclusivity, diversity, morality, knowledge and ethics in AI. I would encourage anybody who is interested in this to participate in those

discussions, find the organisations that are close to them locally or online and tap into the digital innovation era that we are living in. A lot of forums, for example, and economic organisations of European parliament are open to public participation as well. I think these are the issues that we need to tackle together to understand how to enhance our daily life with the new technology that is already here, but do it in a way that is responsible and serves everybody in society. To achieve this we need to know the needs of the people, let the people express themselves, and pay attention because now it's also much more possible to hear and consider perspectives different from our own from around the world.”

EVENTS

Lyudmyla is thrilled to be involved in the opening keynote on day two at the Generative AI for the Creative Industries event on September 12-13, 2023, where she will be presenting on the topic ‘Discover the Path to Responsible AI: Unravelling the Intersection of Consent, Personalisation, & Ethical Consumer Engagement.’

CONNECTIVITY, RELIABILITY, FLEXIBILITY AND SECURITY

RELIABILITY, SECURITY

Head of Procurement and Financial Control at Telehouse France discusses how procurement strategy, digitalisation, environmental awareness and security form the core of their global service provision and growth.

FOUNDED IN 1989, TELEHOUSE FRANCE PROVIDES INDUSTRYLEADING DATA CENTRE COLOCATION SERVICES AND MANAGED IT SOLUTIONS WITH GLOBAL CONNECTIVITY AND REACH.

t is owned by KDDI, a Japanese Fortune 500 company which is one of the top ten telecommunications companies in the world. Telehouse has more than 45 data centres in over 24 cities – including such key locations as London, Frankfurt, Paris and Marseilles.

Representing Telehouse France, a subsidiary of Telehouse Europe,

and here to tell us more about the company’s procurement, technological, environmental and security strategies is Hanane Pelissier, their Head of Procurement and Financial Control.

With more than 16 years of experience in the industry, Hanane is a procurement and financial management expert. She specialises in project organisation

and management, performance monitoring and improvement, transformation and change management. Recognised for her emotional intelligence, rigour, leadership and agility she is a business partner and a growth enabler at Telehouse who steers the organisation's trajectory with engaging leadership while developing a growth strategy that combines economic performance, resilience and sustainable development.

When asked to describe the company’s services, Hanane says, “Telehouse France is a leading provider of data centre services in France. We operate five carrier-neutral data centres, offering a wide range of services designed to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes looking for secure, reliable, resilient and scalable data centre solutions.”

Telehouse offers a different range of colocation options including

Shared Facilities Management (SFM), from half-rack to full modules, which has been developed for clients with space requirements that are likely to change over time. They also offer Dedicated Facilities Management (DFM). Dedicated suites provide the confidentiality and security required for certain critical activities. All of their facilities are equipped with state-of-the-art security systems including biometric access control, CCTV surveillance and 24/7 security staff on site.

“WE PRIDE OURSELVES ON THE QUALITY OF OUR SERVICES”

“In addition to colocation services, Telehouse France also offers a range of managed IT solutions including connectivity, security and network services,” Hanane continues.

“We pride ourselves on the quality of our services. Telehouse is committed to upholding the highest environmental, security and corporate social responsibility standards. This is reflected through our various ISO-obtained certifications, including ISO 9001 for Quality Management System, ISO 27001, HDS and PCI DSS for Information Security and Business Continuity. Telehouse has a proven record of meeting the highest international data centre standards, so we have the full scope requested for data centres in order to operate correctly.”

When asked what sets the company apart, Hanane

“OUR PROCUREMENT STRATEGY REFLECTS OUR ORGANISATION’S VISION AND GOALS TO SUPPORT TELEHOUSE’S PRIMARY OBJECTIVES AND BUSINESS STRATEGY”

identifies four key factors, “Telehouse is well regarded in the industry for their connectivity, reliability, security and flexibility. We are trusted partners for companies in the business world looking to scale their IT operations, connect their business and stay competitive in an increasingly digital marketplace.”

But where does Hanane operate within these endeavours?

“I'm a member of the Executive Committee and responsible for leading finance controlling and procurement functions on our different sites. I make sure we are developing and driving the implementation of finance and procurement strategies to sustain transformation and growth at Telehouse,” she says.

5 PILLARS OF PROCUREMENT STRATEGY

Telehouse sees procurement strategy as a roadmap to be implemented and ultimately make the business more competitive in its markets. For them, it defines how an organisation runs its procurement function, provides a governance framework and gives direction for the way the organisation intends to conduct its procurement function and activities.

Hanane elaborates, “Our procurement strategy reflects our

organisation’s vision and goals to support Telehouse’s primary objectives and business strategy. Our procurement strategy is based on five key points: cost optimisation, supplier management, risk management, compliance and strategic sourcing. We aim to build strategic relationships with competitive suppliers so we can acquire necessary goods and services of the best quality, within a specific cost range and ensure they are delivered on time. As a global provider of data centres, Telehouse’s procurement strategy is designed to support the company’s growth and success. It focuses on ensuring that Telehouse can secure the goods

and services needed to operate efficiently, effectively, securely and affordably.”

Technology and digitalisation are crucial to this strategy.

“Digitalisation plays a transformative role in procurement and in finance, it is reinventing these two functions,” says Hanane.

“By leveraging digital technology, we streamline our procurement and financial operations to reduce costs and improve efficiency and accuracy. By digitalising procurement, we can address current challenges and stay future proof. We have been on a journey towards digitalisation of our procureto-pay (P2P) process for several years now. This has helped us to automate some mundane tasks, accelerate purchase approval workflow, streamline certain transactions, reduce costs and processing times, mitigate the risk of error in banking transactions, free up data and improve expenses control alongside budget monitoring. Taken together, these advantages contribute to improving the technological, economic and also logistical performance of our department.

“TELEHOUSE AIMS TO OPTIMISE COSTS ACROSS ALL AREAS OF OUR PROCUREMENT OPERATIONS WHILE PAYING PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO THE QUALITY”

“So today and in alignment with our current business model, we are investing in new digitalisation projects as we consider it to be crucial for the success of our business.”

DRIVING GROWTH BY IMPROVING EFFICIENCY

Underlying their digitalisation and procurement strategies, Telehouse is always looking to improve efficiency and thereby drive growth. For instance in cost optimisation, Hanane explains, “Telehouse aims to optimise costs across all areas of our procurement operations while paying particular attention to the quality. We identify opportunities in all purchasing categories by considering total cost of ownership (TCO) when analysing offers, negotiating multi-year agreements, leveraging automation and digital technology and optimising our process. We also implement short-term initiatives allowing quick wins, such as reviewing and monitoring current contracts terms, challenging technical specifications, avoiding maverick spending and challenging uncompetitive suppliers.”

Telehouse considers risk management a critical and continuous process. Appropriate risk assessments are undertaken, reviewed and managed throughout the procurement journey, so the company built a robust risk management framework to mitigate the risks associated with procurement and finance. This includes identifying potential risks, developing contingency plans and implementing measures to monitor and mitigate these different threats.

In terms of supplier management, Telehouse maintains a strong and close relationship with key partners in order to ensure that they meet company standards for quality, reliability and security.

“We care deeply about delivering the best overall value and service to our customers and society. Partnerships with our suppliers are an integral part of this goal, because we consider our suppliers as a seamless extension of the wider Telehouse team. We need the best

partners by our side to overcome obstacles, embrace opportunities and build an exciting future. As such, we developed performance matrixes to monitor our partner compliance while also developing a robust system of analysis of our partners’ performance. We are very careful when selecting and shortlisting providers before going to do business with them because our vision for procurement at Telehouse is to become the primary customer for the best suppliers,” summarises Hanane.

“RIBBON COMMUNICATIONS IS ONE OF OUR KEY PARTNERS FOR THE TELEHOUSE METROCONNECT SERVICE”

One such supplier that Telehouse works with is Ribbon Communications.

“Ribbon Communications is one of our key partners for the Telehouse Metroconnect service,” says Hanane. “Telehouse selected them as a partner after a full market assessment. The high-performance solutions they offer convinced us to go ahead with them for our strategic connectivity projects. They are a global provider of real-time communications software and IP optical networking solutions.

“In fact, before choosing them we looked for a partner offering a high level of security and operational excellence because we must have these conditions to connect our Parisian sites, which

Making Data Centre Walls Transparent

Handling More Interconnection Traffic with Lower TCO

Imagine that the world relied on one giant data centre with all the zettabytes of application and storage data whizzing about between servers over an area of only several tens of square kilometres. Located at the Nor th Pole for cooling, powered by several nuclear plants and linked to the world’s telecommunications networks using optical fibres strung along the lines of longitude, this might be considered the height of efficiency

Of course this vision is impractical for reasons of latency, data redundancy and competition between businesses. The result is that the world today suppor ts about 8,000 data centres. The challenge then becomes to network these data centres together, to make them transparent to each other, for caching data locally to reduce latency, interworking between applications and mirroring data for business continuity This requires many thousands of high speed optical links spanning distances from tens to thousands of kilometres. And every year inter-data centre traffic demands keep growing.

Ribbon’s solution to this challenge is a revolutionary optical transpor t platform, Apollo OT9408.

Optimised for data centre residency with front to back airflow and a 600 depth, OT9408 suppor ts more traffic over fewer wavelengths while d lowering the cost per bit . It does this by delivering:

• Best Wavelength Reach – To transpor t multiples of 100GbE, 400Gb future 800GbE client traffic, OT9408 exploits next gene transceiver technology to deliver industry-leading 1.2T haul, 800G wavelengths that cover the entire metro-regional space, tripling the reach of current competitor solutions, and 400G for ult

• Industry-leading Density – OT9408 suppor ts industry-highest 19.2 in a 2RU form factor.

• Best Power Efficiency – With consumption as low as 0.11W per gigabit, OT9408 consumes 50% less power per bit than competitive solutions. This green characteristic is especially impor tant to reduce data centre energy costs.

• Optimal Spectrum Use – OT9408’s high performance 1.2T solution uses 150GHz spectral bandwidth that aligns with the 75GHz bandwidth needs of its cost-power optimised 400G solution. This enables multiple solutions to co-exist on a single fibre without any wasted spectrum.

• Advanced Pluggability – OT9408 uses pluggable technologies for all client and line interfaces, enabling pay-as-you-grow economics and facilitating field maintenance.

• Superior Openness – OT9408 is designed for easy operation, including field replaceable modules and streaming telemetry. Moreover, its wavelengths can be deployed over existing line systems as alien wavelengths, with control exercised in a disaggregated fashion using standard OpenConfig interfaces. Its 400G wavelengths also suppor t OpenROADM interoperability.

Contact

Ribbon now to see how Apollo OT9408 can enhance your data centre interconnect solution. rbbn.com

are a crucial connectivity hub in France providing direct access to more than 750 global operators.

“Ribbon offered us advanced technology capability with a turnkey custom installation of their solution. So, thanks to this strategic partnership, we successfully offer our corporate customers the ability to optimise their costs by hosting their IT infrastructure in our Telehouse 3 campus and benefit from highspeed, reliable and low latency connectivity with our central connectivity hub in Paris TH2

Voltaire site which is one of the five most connected data centres in the world.

“In fact, thanks to Ribbon and our strategic partnership, we have been able to break down data centre walls to help more customers benefit from our connectivity.”

However, IT infrastructure needs the right facility to host it, and here Telehouse works closely with Cap Ingelec – one of the leading French data centre design and construction companies.

Cap Ingelec is one of the French leaders in engineering, thanks to its know-how in the design and construction of technical buildings, particul arly in the fields of datacentres, cleanrooms and critical facilities. We offer our engineering expertise through project management and turnkey projects.

“We rely on their know-how to support our engineers and help them progress on our various expansion projects and plans. This includes, among others, our new project in Telehouse 3 campus, while also respecting our expectations and requirements in terms of reducing our carbon footprint,” says Hanane.

“Cap Ingelec are committed to our objective of implementing

But even the fastest, most reliable technological solutions hosted in the latest state-of-the-art data centres still need one fundamental resource to function: energy. For Telehouse, it is vital that this energy be as sustainable as possible.

Since 2015, Engie has been the energy provider for Telehouse. Commenting on this eight-year partnership, Hanane lauds

“CAP INGELEC ARE COMMITTED TO OUR OBJECTIVE OF IMPLEMENTING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS AND DESIGNS, OPTIMISING OUR CAPEX COSTS AND REDUCING OUR TIME-TO-MARKET”

innovative solutions and designs, optimising our CapEx costs and reducing our time-to-market. These advantages represent a real competitive differentiator in our business. With Cap Ingelec we introduced a new contractual model guaranteed maximum price contract (GMP), an openbook agreement. Thanks to this new contract model, we work with full transparency and confidence with Cap Ingelec – allowing us to move forward quickly, to unite our forces and skills to face market challenges, all while controlling our costs and deadlines.”

the connection between the companies, “We have a longterm relationship with Engie. They provide all our data centres with green electricity. Our partnership is based on proximity, listening, responsiveness, expertise and trust. Our objective in working with them is to consume less and better.

“So even with the recent situation in the energy market with high costs and volatility which strained international European governments and companies, our energy procurement strategy and

“WE HAVE A LONG-TERM RELATIONSHIP WITH ENGIE. OUR PARTNERSHIP IS BASED ON PROXIMITY, LISTENING, RESPONSIVENESS, EXPERTISE AND TRUST. OUR OBJECTIVE IN WORKING WITH THEM IS TO CONSUME LESS AND BETTER”

our strong relationship with Engie allowed us to control our energy costs,” says Hanane.

Telehouse is highly aware of the environmental impact of data centres and the huge volume of energy consumption they need to operate.

“According to an international energy agency, data centres use nearly one per cent of the global electricity demand and contribute to 0.3 per cent of all global CO2 emissions,” explains Hanane. “So in this context, Telehouse is always on the lookout for any opportunity to reduce our energy consumption and environmental impact. We have present and future projects brimming with innovative solutions allowing a considerable reduction in our consumption. We are committed to a serious environmental plan, including the development of a photovoltaic park, engagement in PPA contracts

and using excess waste heat from data centres recycled for use in nearby houses, businesses, or communities.”

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

So what are the principal ambitions at Telehouse for 2023 and beyond?

Besides maintaining growth and success, Hanane draws attention to their exciting ground-breaking expansion project in the Paris area which will become their main campus.

“Our new TH3 campus is a hyper-scale data centre facility with an environmentally responsible design that reconciles environmental impacts and energy performance, integrating new technology while also offering a high level of scalability. We are targeting a PUE (Power Usage Effectiveness) of 1.3 and a

ENGIE has been Telehouse’s energy supplier-advisor since 2015, providing green electricity for all its data centres.

ENGIE teams offer businesses and local authorities:

• Close relationships, expertise and customer focus via a team of two dedicated contacts

• Energy budget management expertise

• Eco-friendly solutions

As standard-setters in low-carbon energy, ENGIE works tirelessly with customers to accelerate their transition to a more sustainable world.

Your Energy supplier-advisor entreprises-collectivites.engie.fr

WUE (Water Usage Effectiveness) close to 0,” Hanane describes.

“These goals are ambitious, but we are excited to be focusing on this new data centre. Located 15.5 miles southwest of Paris, the TH3 campus is strategically located. Easily accessible from the capital, the TH3 campus allows companies and organisations to keep control of their data and retain sole access. At the right distance from the many data centres concentrated northeast of Paris, away from possible risks, TH3 is the ideal campus to provide redundancy for the IT infrastructures hosted there, as part of a strategy for diversifying sites.”

The TH3 campus is not only ambitious in terms of its sustainability but also its sheer scale and security goals. Hanane elaborates, “The project is made up of five new buildings for a total IT space of 12,000 square metres. This is an exceptional size facility in the French market, making it a kind of hyper-scale data centre where our customers can expand without any limits in terms of physical space or energy needs. The new data centre has a total power of 18 megawatts.

“Moreover, the site is secured to military defence levels. The data centre is being installed on a former military site building offering exceptional security and technical specification to guarantee continuity of service for our customers. Of course, there are standard CCTV and security measures in place but we also provide constant surveillance from dedicated staff 24/7. We have a clear focus on security.”

With these exciting developments in the near future, Telehouse prides

“THE TH3 CAMPUS IS NOT ONLY AMBITIOUS IN TERMS OF ITS SUSTAINABILITY BUT ALSO ITS SHEER SCALE AND SECURITY GOALS”

itself on how it looks after its staff during times of change and growth.

“Two topics, I think, are crucial for our business success are developing team skills and retaining talent,” says Hanane. “It's especially important for me as a manager in my procurement and financial

functions. We believe categorically that developing team skills and retaining talented employees are critical components for our success. By investing in these areas, we can improve productivity, foster innovation, boost morale and reduce staff turnover and, of course, enhance customer services,

TH3 campus

NOS for the Cloud) ta es this disagg egation and ability one step fur ther. Now proven at scale in the world’s largest cloud networks, SONiC is built around a containerized architecture and uses containerized applications, linking them quickly across the network, using a common language and standards-based APIs to deploy network applications on any hardware.

Integration

Whitebox

because ultimately Telehouse is a highly customer-centric company.”

We look forward to seeing where Telehouse goes and hearing all

about its new Parisian facility when it opens.

For more information, visit www.telehouse.fr

ADDED VALUE

For Hanane, at a personal level, her children and family are a true source of energy and purpose. She insists, “There is no success without your loved ones around you.”

Hanane also emphasises her gratitude to her mentors. “For me, I value the input from my mentors who inspire me enormously and who allow me to always see bigger, farther and more positively. They make even the most challenging circumstances seem a little bit easier.”

But for Hanane it is not only the mentors we know that are important, but the input of strangers is also incredibly insightful too.

“Today, thanks to interconnectivity we have access to a wealth of information. We can follow intellectuals online, absorb new information, discover new challenges and innovations –which is a great privilege. But the one thing I’ll note is that we must

also be careful because too much information can kill communication.”

“I'm excited to be joining several different conferences this year where I look forward to participating, adding some value when possible, exchanging knowledge with different people and seeking opportunities to grow as a professional.”

Hanane has written an article due for publication soon about the criteria of choice for providers and their procurement process which will be dedicated to the new technology sector.

To connect with Hanane and see her article when it is released, you can find her on LinkedIn.

ENTHUSIASTIC INNOVATOR MARIA VON SCHEEL-PLESSEN SHARES HER GLOBAL EXPERIENCE WORKING IN THE STARTUP, TECH AND LUXURY INDUSTRIES.

MARIA VON SCHEEL-PLESSEN LIVES IN MILAN BUT HAS WORKED AROUND THE WORLD IN VARIOUS COUNTRIES, FROM BERLIN AND SINGAPORE TO NEW YORK AND LONDON. MARIA IS A SENIOR EXECUTIVE IN THE LUXURY INDUSTRY AND JOINS US TODAY TO DISCUSS TWO CAUSES CLOSE TO HER HEART: CHAMPIONING WOMEN IN INDUSTRY AND PROMOTING FUTURE GENERATIONS OF WOMEN ENTERING LEADERSHIP ROLES.

What are some of the characteristics and behavioural patterns women can bring to the table to forge ahead in the tech and retail spaces?

From my point of view, it is crucial to be very self-aware – to know your strengths and weaknesses, what gets you excited and what you find challenging. Where are your current limits and how much

do you want to push them? This is very important in order to identify the right path for yourself, turn your weaknesses into strengths by working in a certain environment or industry where you can unlock your full potential.

Once you have done this exercise and know exactly what you want to focus on, what you want to achieve and also what you are

willing to deprioritise in order to do so, I am sure you will find that your environment can read you well, can be very direct, challenge you and by that support you in your growth.

You need to know who you are and where you want to go next and proactively communicate it. Transparency and authenticity are both very key as well.

What kind of learnings and advice can women give other women to break into tech and retail?

It is important to understand the full dimension of the retail business. I started my career in e-commerce startups so coming from a digital-first strategy I needed to learn offline tools, dynamics and tap into areas from supply chain to logistics such as how product demand varies from online to offline and how the consumer profile varies as well.

In the retail industry, the online share is often only up to 30 per cent of the business so retail has high importance and

“IT IS MY STRONG BELIEF THAT IT IS THE MISSION OF WOMEN IN LEADING ROLES TO EASE THE PATH FOR FOLLOWING GENERATIONS AND PUSH THE BOUNDARIES”

needs to be treated in a different way. However it is important that in front of the consumer, the retailer acts as one. It is easier to transform an online store than a sizable retail network – you need to think in longer lifecycles for actions and their implementations. So my advice would be to focus on economics and pricing in your studies and gain experience in the retail business.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that many retailers need talent coming from digital companies in order to support them in digitally transforming the business. The digitalisation of retail is driven by tactics well understood by digital natives, so remember that you can already bring a lot to the table even if you have not worked for a retail business yet.

Can you tell us a little bit about Mission Female?

Mission Female is a network for women in female leadership roles, founded in Germany and currently expanding to further countries in Europe due to its strong organic demand. I am a big fan of the network as it consists of women from various industries and this often drives a very fruitful exchange. Everyone is open to

connecting and sharing success as well as stories of failure and this is an important game changer: you need to be in a circle in which you can open up and share opinions with your peers. The network offers weekly sessions on topics from negotiation skills and rhetorical skills to finding your leadership style. We are often very busy at work and tend to not take the time to take a step back and upskill ourselves in certain areas – this is what the network is for: a constant

“I AM A BIG FAN OF THE MISSION FEMALE NETWORK AS IT CONSISTS OF WOMEN FROM VARIOUS INDUSTRIES AND THIS OFTEN DRIVES A VERY FRUITFUL EXCHANGE”

accompanier of honest exchange and knowledge transmission. There is also a workstream for entrepreneurs being self-employed and for mentees who have applied to be mentored by us.

Secondly, creating your very own metaverse is imperative. More and more brands are jumping on the bandwagon and incorporating elements like gamification or NFTs into their metaverse strategies.

What are some of the exciting and innovative ways brands are transforming their engagement with consumers you think will become more prominent in 2023 and beyond?

Firstly, the consumer nowadays demands a very personalised approach – even 1:1 communication. The brand messages are ideally very tailored, include products a consumer has shown previous interest in and could be the next step in a common consumer journey. This is why strong investments flow into automation and personalisation tools.

Lastly, using social media as an engagement tool is still absolutely worthwhile – if it is used creatively. For instance, brands can choose to create exciting behind-thescenes content or even memes that are relevant to their brand and thereby build stronger relationships with their customers, encouraging social commerce.

What lessons or takeaways would you like to share with young women looking to take on leadership positions?

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, once said: “Your brand is what people say about

you when you are not in the room.” As important as it is to be very self-aware and vocal about branding, it is key to establish your own brand. Know your own value set and determine which ones you intend to amplify and why. What motivates you to be a leader? Is it the growth you enjoy seeing in others, the reward when thoughts turn into actual projects or the diversity of various topics you can manage?

Define this for yourself and then start building your own brand to be the advocate of your own story. I can recommend sharing your thoughts on channels such as LinkedIn as well in order to connect with like-minded peers. Tell your manager where you want to be in the future and work together on making this happen.

“ONCE YOU ARE IN A LEADERSHIP BE A MENTOR! GIVE YOUR AIMING FOR THE SAME YOUR PERSONAL JOURNEY LEARN AND

How can women in established leadership roles help young women who are prospective leaders rise into these positions, stay there and thrive?

My recommendation is to always interview men and women in a 50/50 split for all positions open within your team. Oftentimes you are not in the driver's seat in hiring your own successor,

but you are for the positions within your own team. Especially in technical jobs, it is often tricky to find female profiles but if you can work together with a headhunter and stick with the rule you applied for yourself, results will come. Yes, it often takes longer to find the right female candidate as there are in some industries not as many, but it's worthwhile to take the time and interview 50% male

LEADERSHIP POSITION, YOUR ADVICE TO WOMEN SAME DREAM AND SHARE JOURNEY SO THEY CAN AND STRIVE”

and 50% female candidates and then go for the best match. These are small tactics which can be impactful if executed by many.

Once you are in a leadership position, be a mentor! Give your advice to women aiming for the same dream and share your personal journey so they can learn and strive.

What are your thoughts on where tech is going in the following spaces:

>> Consumer to brand

Consumers have constantly rising expectations towards brands, they demand transparency and communication on subjects that matter to drive change in the world. Diversity and sustainability are two very important topics. The expectation towards brands is that they use their voice and reach in order to be an agent of change. Automation and AI put additional pressure on brands since all the data being obtained needs to be understood and leveraged to drive an excellent customer experience.

>> Brand to consumer Brand communication is becoming more and more personalised. Brands listen to consumers needs, analyse much more insights and adapt themselves towards today's needs while staying true to their heritage. Brands are detecting a commerce-everywhere mindset from the consumer, meaning the general receptiveness towards advertisement and brand identification is always-on.

What do you think will be the most important changes to customer expectations in the next few years and how will brands have to adapt to these changes?

To my mind, there are three predominant consumer trends on the horizon. The first trend seems to be the most intuitive: as consumers become more environmentally conscious, brands must take impactful steps towards

sustainability and environmental responsibility.

Second, today’s key to winning new customers is personalisation. Consumers expect tailored experiences – therefore, brands must invest in the ability to deliver a unique 1:1 message based on previous searches and personal preferences.

Lastly, consumers demand digital experiences across points of contact (POCs) and brands must adapt by investing in a state-ofthe-art omnichannel presence.

What are your principal ambitions for the next few years?

To continue to be a spokesperson for female leadership and digital transformation, to modernise organisations with awareness of the past, to be a connection builder and take my mentees with me on the journey. To drive success in any condition, by producing, stabilising, innovating and controlling whenever needed.

My favourite quote is: “What you should focus on next lies within the discomfort of now,” from the book

“The Courage To Be Disliked” by Ichiro Kishimi. It highlights very well that we intuitively know where we should go next and this often leads to the direction of discomfort which means we learn something new, execute something for the first time, jump into the cold water and start growing.

CONNECT WITH MARIA

ADDED VALUE

Maria Recommends...

PODCAST

The School of Greatness.

BOOKS

Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Miracle Morning by Hal Elrod are wonderful resources to help you to start building new habits.

"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

RESPONSIBILITY, TRANSPARENCY AND SECURITY: THE FINTECH

STARTUP STRIVING FOR MORE REGULATIONS

Daniela Lourenço, Chief Information Security Officer at Tinka on innovating the company’s security and governance framework while disrupting the deferred payment market.

BORN FROM THE DUTCH ONLINE RETAIL GIANT WEHKAMP, TINKA IS A DEFERRED PAYMENT PROVIDER BASED IN THE NETHERLANDS.

ince 1960, Tinka handled payments for Wehkamp but as of 2019 the company embarked on a new chapter as a standalone enterprise. It now serves two million customers and handles more than 90 million transactions per year.

Tinka is on a mission to become the most recommended and responsible buy-now-pay-later provider – championing security, transparency and simplicity in the process.

Daniela Lourenço, Chief Information Security Officer at Tinka is here to share insights into how the company is

“WHAT WE WANT TO GUARANTEE IS TRANSPARENCY FOR THE CONSUMER”

building an innovative new security and governance framework to serve its customers’ best interests while transforming the deferred payment market in the process.

Daniela starts by explaining how deferred payment providers are not regulated like credit products –but Tinka is looking to change that situation.

“What we're striving for is to get buy now pay later products regulated,” says Daniela. “So we've been liaising with the European Commission to have a more responsible way of lending money to people and to make sure that affordability is, of course, the main criteria.”

Elaborating on the notion of responsible lending, Daniela continues, “We make sure that the products we offer, although they are not regulated now, are

presented as if they were regulated to have a sustainable way of offering credit and avoid making things difficult for people.

“With many players in the deferred payments sector, you only need an email address and telephone number, sometimes only a name and email, to secure buy now pay later credit without any background checks. They do not check if customers are actually able to repay, which in our view is very dangerous because it encourages people to get into debt.

“What we do instead is consider all the products that offer something

similar to credit to as regulated – so for us that means making affordability checks mandatory. We also want to make sure that by regulating this part of the market all the costs associated with lending are transparent. There are sometimes hidden charges or hidden interest rates with deferred payments. They accumulate and then collection agencies get involved. What we want to guarantee is transparency for the consumer. If the consumer knows how much they can borrow, what they must pay in return and any costs that are associated with the offer, laid out transparently, they can make sensible and informed decisions.”

So how do security and governance factor into the transparent, sensible deferred payment products provided by Tinka?

SECURITY

Daniela joined Tinka in 2022 to build the company’s security roadmap and posture as a standalone enterprise moving from a retail to a fintech mindset. By making this transition, Tinka needed to incorporate new regulations and requirements into its operations.

The security roadmap and governance policies at Tinka gravitate around being futureready and as robust as possible, while also keeping the company’s mission in mind.

Automation and native solutions free up the capacity to focus on the human element of cybersecurity at Tinka. Daniela reiterates that the company’s core mission has two layers: to be the most responsible and most recommended deferred payment provider. Striving towards these goals comes with responsibility, which demands high levels of security provision.

“So as a fintech provider, we always remain one step ahead in

terms of requirements and what is right for the consumer but also for all the stakeholders,” says Daniela. “This means meeting or exceeding the regulatory frameworks of the Netherlands and the EU.”

Here, Tinka is always looking ahead and anticipating new legislation, including two major regulations that will take effect in 2024.

First is the NIS2 Directive –the EU-wide legislation on cybersecurity. It provides legal measures to boost the overall level of cybersecurity in the EU. It modernises the existing legal framework to keep up with increased digitisation and an evolving cybersecurity threat landscape. By expanding the scope of the cybersecurity rules to new sectors and entities, it further improves the resilience and incident response capacities of public and private entities, competent authorities and the EU as a whole.

The second important piece of legislation Tinka has in mind as a company is the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) which will make sure the financial sector in Europe is able to stay resilient through severe operational disruptions.

After performing a gap analysis comparing regulatory and legal frameworks to the state of play at Tinka, Daniela explains how the company deploys the right framework providing a robust set of group controls from globally recognised institutions.

“I like using the NIST Cyber Security Framework which is from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology. It is very complete, very thorough and it is being used by many industry peers because it's a more proactive approach than, for example, following ISO 27002.”

Tinka is also innovating in terms of its cybersecurity by putting native solutions first and automating as many processes as possible. These measures are not only there to protect customers and stakeholders, but they are also time-saving mechanisms to focus on training colleagues and the human element of cybersecurity.

“I'm really proud to say that our employees, or our ‘Tinkans’ as we call them, are very much cyber aware,” says Daniela. “They have even spotted some really sophisticated, fraudulent attacks. Involving them has brought that maturity that unfortunately you do not see in the industry often. I'm delighted that we've built

Tinka and Levi9: The Ultimate Partnership for the Future of Payment Solutions

At Levi9, we pride ourselves on helping our customers achieve their ambitious goals with cutting-edge technology solutions.

In 2022, Tinka faced a significant challenge of separating from its parent company, Wehkamp, while also innovating the Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) market and diversifying its products and customers. As Tinka had a vast amount of historical Structured Query Language (SQL) data to manage, a seamless transition without affecting business continuity was vital.

Our team proposed a groundbreaking hybrid cloud setup, leveraging an existing Direct Connect line between Tinka’s data centre and Amazon Web Services (AWS), to move ~20 VMs & ~30TB of SQL data in a fast and cost-effective manner, ensuring a smooth migration in just six months. By modernising its infrastructure with a fully maintainable, resilient and reproducible setup, Tinka has unlocked new opportunities for growth and diversification.

The collaboration with Levi9 enabled Tinka to achieve several key objectives:

• Secure storage: The new account system allows Tinka to store sensitive customer data, including personal information, in a secure and compliant manner.

• Exclusivity: The system is designed specifically for Tinka and its customers, ensuring a tailored experience.

• Seamless integration: It connects securely with Tinka’s microservices and backend infrastructure, enabling streamlined operations.

• Empowering customers: Tinka’s customers can now securely view and modify their data, giving them control and transparency.

• Agent access: Tinka agents can securely view and modify customer data, improving their ability to provide exceptional support.

• System compatibility: The new account system allows for secure data modification and viewing across various systems.

• As this account system becomes the foundation for Tinka’s customer interactions, it opens up new opportunities for the company to onboard additional merchants, driving growth and success.

Our innovative approach and expertise can help your business thrive in the ever-evolving IT landscape. Reach out to us today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your goals.

www.levi9.com

“DANIELA

IDENTIFIES

FOUR MAIN FACTORS:

SOCIAL ENGINEERING, SUPPLY CHAIN

VULNERABILITIES, CLOUD EXPLOITS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)”

that maturity – we understand the need for innovating and for transforming to be digital first and we get technology to work for us. However, let's not forget about the colleagues that are actually people and they are targets like any other person and I'm very proud that we've built that resilience.”

But what are some of the most pressing security concerns that Tinka considers threats to consumers and stakeholders?

Daniela identifies four main factors: social engineering, supply chain vulnerabilities, cloud exploits and artificial intelligence (AI).

“Social engineering is on the top because it can be used either towards the customer, by impersonating Tinkans somehow, trying to defraud our own

employees for immediate financial gain or they will try and get data that is for immediate financial gain or to weaponise data.

“Credit information is very sensitive and of course very profitable in underground markets, so I think that's the top threat.

“Second, correlated to that, we have supply chain vulnerability. For clarity, this is not that we fear that our supply chain will attack us, but it's the fear that attackers might

leverage our supply chain to get to us if they compromise a partner.

“Third we have cloud exploits. As we are digitally driven and cloud-first, hostile attackers might exploit the services that we work with as a company. We work with big players like Google, and we build trust relationships with those services. But it is an increasingly common way of compromising one cloud service to get to another cloud service and performing that movement across services is

something we are also cautiously concerned about.

“Lastly, something else that has been coming up, of course, is AI and deep machine learning.

“These are threats because they make the simplest attack more sophisticated. They offer ways of counteracting and evading already existing security systems. For instance, AI can learn how to evade antivirus systems because it will study how they work. So let's say an

“WITH THE BLENDING OF HIGHLY ADVANCED AI MACHINE LEARNING AND ATTACKS THAT YOUR SYSTEMS MAY NOT BE ABLE TO DETECT AND REPORT ON TIME, YOU THEN MUST RELY ON THE HUMAN TO DETECT, SPOT AND COUNTERACT IT”

attacker runs a scan and he finds out that the anti-spam system of your e-mail will block any e-mail that isn't coming for more than 50 people at night. So what the machine will do is send 49.

“So AI and deep learning are adaptive in terms of the security systems and it's allowing for more flexibility in protections and responding to new threats. But the threat actors are already two or three steps ahead. So indeed, it's both a benefit and an unknown risk that we are still experimenting with.

“If you join AI and social engineering together, you have a very powerful attack to deal with.

“You have advanced technological ways to perform an attack combined with old school delivery techniques, like a social engineering attack. Phishing, vishing, smishing, all those acronyms that mean one thing: people being deceived or being exploited by exploiting their willingness to help or because people are exhausted or people are

“WE HAVE BENEFITTED FROM THE EXPERTISE AND RESOURCES THAT ARE AVAILABLE FROM LEVI9 AND THE RELATIONSHIP WORKS VERY WELL”

distracted, so it exploits what some call ‘human weakness.’”

But Daniela rejects the overused phrase ‘human weakness.’

“Some of my peers see the human as the weakest link,” says Daniela. “I personally hate that mentality because the human can actually be the strongest link. With the blending of highly advanced AI machine learning and attacks that your systems may not be able to detect and report on time, you then must rely on the human to detect, spot and counteract it.”

“So that's why I don't believe that humans are the weakest link. They may be the strongest link in fact. Humans are the only safeguard we have if we enter the age of quantum computing. We need to realise this and focus on the human element – it is very important.”

SCALABILITYPARTNERS

With these innovative and robust security policies and governance

systems in place, Tinka is now looking to scale its operations.

Some immediate priorities at Tinka include scaling its human resources and technical assets to complement their work from anywhere policy.

Crucial to these endeavours is Levi9.

“Levi9 provides us with expertise for SMEs especially in the development area throughout the organisation and with their human resources we can maintain Tinka as an assetlight organisation,” says Daniela.

“We have benefitted from the expertise and resources that are available from Levi9 and the relationship works very well. Sometimes it is difficult to understand where Tinka ends and Levi9 begins because we work so well together that it is hard to understand who is internal and who is external. We have a five-year relationship with them, and it is not common to have that informal and very close collaboration for so long.

Fasttrack Modernisation: Unleashing the Power of Cloud-Native Architecture with Levi9

Is your business grappling with an inefficient and overly complicated hybrid cloud infrastructure? Are you curious about the benefits of cloud-native architecture but unsure if it applies to your organisation? Enter Levi9’s Fasttrack Modernisation Assessment –a three-week review designed to help you unlock the potential of your IT landscape.

Levi9’s comprehensive assessment is tailored for companies with legacy IT systems or complex hybrid cloud infrastructures. If you find that your applications are monolithic, difficult to change and prone to breaking unexpectedly, Levi9 can help you identify the right time and approach for a massive transformation.

The Fasttrack Modernisation Assessment begins with a one-hour intake meeting to discuss your business objectives, technical challenges and scope of work. Levi9’s experts will walk you through the critical factors to consider when modernising your IT landscape.

The assessment, carried out iteratively in 2-4 weeks, evaluates your workloads, current architecture and codebase. Levi9 will analyse the benefits and costs of moving to a cloud-native architecture and create a tailor-made approach for migration and modernisation in case of a positive business case.

By leveraging Levi9’s 18+ years of experience in designing and using cloud architectures, you can transform your IT landscape into a nimble, microservices-oriented modularised architecture. The outcome of the Fasttrack Modernisation Assessment includes independent expert advice, a modernisation plan, high-level timelines, proposed architectural design, cost estimation and an approach to transition from the as-is to the target situation.

Levi9 has successfully migrated and modernised complex application landscapes for clients such as Essent, Volkswagen Pon Financial Services, PVH and Tinka. Their pragmatic approach has resulted in running cost reductions of over 25 per cent, a 100 per cent increase in the velocity of development teams and a 30 per cent reduction in the cost-to-change.

Don’t let your legacy IT systems hold you back – choose Levi9 to help you embrace innovation, increase productivity and unlock the true potential of your IT landscape.

The ultimate goal at Tinka is to use its influence as a responsible and transparent deferred payments provider to make the buy now pay later markets regulated.

For 2023, this means looking inwards to review the company’s products and confirm or verify if they remain the best, most affordable and responsible choices for consumers in the Netherlands.

But Daniela explains that Tinka’s strategies for scaling their operations, with partners like Levi9 onboard, arose from the context of becoming a standalone company from Wehkamp in 2019.

“We need to build up on what we left behind, most mostly in terms of architecture and ICT assets. We need to learn, as I say, to walk on our own. Although we've been doing this for 60 years, now it is under Tinka's name, with our rules, our principles and virtues,” summarises Daniela.

For more information visit the Tinka website at tinka.nl

Added Value

Company culture

Working at a fintech startup 60 years in the making with a clear mission and virtues is refreshing for Daniela and she celebrates the company culture at Tinka.

“In terms of the culture at Tinka, we don't go by the values because they can seem like something that is static or on paper – but we do live by our virtues. These are captured in the Tinka initials: it’s about being truthful, intrepid, nurturing, knowledgeable, and all in.”

Bigger picture

Daniela’s background is not in IT – her alma mater was in communication and cultural studies, topped up with an executive master's degree in cyber security.

Her academic and postgraduate training influences her passion for educating people on cyber security because it not only improves awareness for Tinka as a company but society more broadly.

“It is vital to understand the culture you are in to communicate your message in a way that it can be understood,” elaborates Daniela.

“That is where the cybersecurity industry fails sometimes because

approaching, we have many people that still do not know how to handle a computer or phone and we have this huge discrepancy between what we are able to do and what people, in general, are able to do. And this discrepancy creates vulnerability.

“So what I really would like to see is for the industry, in terms of cybersecurity practitioners, to learn how to communicate and not forget who is involved and in the trenches.

“Maybe this involves a customised approach to understanding the risks that people actually face on the ground. In security, there is no onesize-fits-all. So you need to engage, it's our responsibility as practitioners to verify if the audience understands the message, that we look out for what is important to them and how we can help protect them – not the other way around.”

Follow Daniela

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.

Contact us today to discuss how we can support your compliance needs.

www.dnb.co.uk

hello@dnb.com

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

EXPLORING THE POTENTIAL OF TECHNOLOGY AND DATA TO ADVANCE GENE THERAPY

In the wake of a major integration, Emmanuelle Cameau, Strategic Technology

Partnership Leader for Gene Therapy at Cytiva divulges how the company is transforming the gene therapy field.

ON MAY 1, 2023

PALL LIFE

SCIENCES AND CYTIVA –BOTH PART OF THE DANAHER CORPORATION – UNITED TO OPERATE UNDER THE CYTIVA NAME.

oining forces forged an even stronger global provider of services and technologies that focuses on advancing and accelerating the development, manufacture and delivery of therapeutics. With a wealth of technical expertise and talent, a broad and deep portfolio, and exceptional service, Cytiva helps researchers and biopharma advance therapeutics at every stage: from discovery to delivery. The company is now even better positioned to serve its customers as one

standalone operating company in the Danaher Corporation.

Here to tell us more about how Cytiva is wielding technology, analytics and strategic partnerships to serve patients and advance the gene therapy field is Emmanuelle Cameau, Strategic Technology Partnership Leader for Gene Therapy, part of the Genomic Medicine Chief Scientific Office team at Cytiva.

Emmanuelle’s role involves wearing many

hats. She is a thought leader in gene therapy and works closely on the content distributed by Cytiva related to the field. This extends to a commercial role, where Emmanuelle consults with customers about the various solutions and products offered by Cytiva. Lastly, Emmanuelle supports the marketing and R&D departments because she regularly engages with C-suite executives and researchers, so she understands their needs or challenges, which she then feeds

back into Cytiva’s development strategies so the company can serve current and prospective clients even better.

In addition, Emmanuelle embraces the opportunity to be involved in industry groups, such as the BioProcess Systems Alliance’s Cell and Gene Therapy committee, the International Society for Cell & Gene Therapy’s Process Development and Manufacturing ERM (Emergent Regenerative Medicine) committee, and the

Bespoke Gene Therapy Consortium, representing Danaher in the manufacturing sub-team. How can the industry utilise technology to drive down the COGS to better serve the patients?

This is one of the emerging topics in the gene therapy field that features prominently in Emmanuelle's work.

“Lately, there have been some great approvals of gene therapy drugs,” Emmanuelle says. “For instance

“LATELY, THERE HAVE BEEN SOME GREAT

APPROVALS

OF GENE

THERAPY DRUGS”

the latest has been Hemgenix, coming in at a record cost of $3.5 million per dose.”

While this may seem expensive for a single-dose treatment, Emmanuelle explains that when you balance this against the total costs of treatment or courses of therapy this will replace – which can cost closer to $20 million – it is actually an affordable advancement.

But Emmanuelle identifies that the problem is even though these treatments might be cheaper in the long run, they are still too expensive for public providers or healthcare systems to absorb in practice if they were rolled out to all the people needing these solutions.

However, by focusing on the R&D, manufacturing and quality control processes, particularly by

“WE INTERACT WITH POLYPLUS IN COLLABORATION, FOR INSTANCE WHEN WE USE THEIR TRANSFECTION REAGENTS TO GENERATE MATERIAL OR DO EXPERIMENTS THAT HELP US TOWARDS OUR THOUGHT LEADERSHIP WORK”

leveraging new technologies and refined operational procedures, Emmanuelle insists that solutions providers like Cytiva can help the industry drive down the total COGS.

“There was a recent webinar by Clare Blue at Biogen where she states that only 2 per cent of the products manufactured actually goes to a patient because the rest is used for quality control, stability studies, etc,” says Emmanuelle. “So there's clearly some improvement that needs to be made on the quality control assets and methodology to try to reduce the number of samples that are needed at each step so that we still keep the safety and the controls that are needed but with a lower quantity of samples.

“When I’ve talked to some key opinion leaders, I’ve asked how much we need to decrease the cost to get it more affordable and most people align on the fact that we need to be in a factor between 10 and 100 times cheaper.

“Within the manufacturing process, for example, if you look at the downstream for adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors, the yield is usually around 25 per cent. This is not a great yield. Some customers have reached 40 per cent but if you take 25 per cent as a worst-case scenario, it becomes clear that a yield in the downstream of 100

per cent is not realistic. But say we strove towards 80-90 per cent. It means that from 25 per cent you are increasing the yield (and therefore reducing the costs) by about three times – so with all the improvements we cannot reach the 10-100 times improvement I mentioned earlier by key thinkers needed to make therapies affordable and realistic.

“So the answer is to look at the upstream side, that is where the big levers are. So these might include improvements around the transient or transfection process, it's around getting better transient transfection reagents, better cell lines that

are higher producers and better plasmids because we know plasmid quality also has an impact on the productivity and quality of results.

“Last year Cytiva acquired CEVEC, which is a company that has developed the only real stable cell line on the market. Stable cell lines will probably coexist with transient transfection because they make a lot of sense in the development of large indication therapies, high dose therapies, but not so much when it's just a very low dose, low indication say if we have to do a 50-litre batch every year.

“It's not only a question of higher productivity. So for viral vectors and specifically for AAV it’s about finding ways to increase the full/empty ratio. Right now we have processes that have 20 per cent full/empty ratios or more, and some processes have 2 per cent full. But if we were able to get the same productivity, so not even getting better, but get more full AAV particles, we would be making important progress.”

“Cells are living organisms so it’s very often a black box and we don't completely understand what happens in viral vector manufacturing. We need more consistency and a better

T R A

Guillaume Freund, Phd. Scientific Support Manager, Polyplus support@polyplus-transfection.com

Gene Therapy innovators must deal with constant pressure to get their product(s) to the clinic as fast as possible. In this aspect, the speed and flexibility of transient transfection of plasmid DNA to generate functional recombinant AdenoAssociated Virus (AAV) particles are cutting edge advantages over other techniques such as stable cell line generation. Despite being widely used, triple transfection has often been overlooked and labelled as “challenging”. While timing is key in an ultra-competitive market, a growing number of companies realise the importance of establishing robust and highly optimised manufacturing bioprocesses to produce enough potent viral particles. Approximatively 1:100,000 assembled AAV capsids will display the desired clinical output in humans (1) emphasising the fact that viral manufacturers must invest resources to build efficient AAV vector production platforms. And this goal can only be reached by having a robust and consistent plasmid DNA delivery method in place in the upstream process. Allocating proper resources to finetune triple transfection can have a huge positive outcome on the amount of functional viral particles produced.

The path to successfully reach clinical and commercial stages largely depends on the Process Development (PD) efforts deployed for AAV manufacturing, whether you outsource them to a Contract Development and Manufacturing Organisation (CDMO) or perform them in-house. The triple aim of such PD activities consists in:

Achieving highest viral titer

With highest viral particle functionality

Using an economically viable manufacturing process.

To reach this simply put yet ambitious goal, innovators need to develop a consistent and reproducible process. Plasmid DNA delivery is at the core of success since setting up a robust triple transfection step is often considered as the main challenge of upstream bioprocessing. Thus, it is critical to determine the best set of conditions for each specific AAV manufacturing workflow. There are many factors impacting the output of plasmid DNA delivery experiments to produce AAV vectors (Figure 1).

Hitchcock T, et al. Development Approaches to Adenoassociated Virus Production. BioProcess International (2017). Navigating the Complexities of AAV Scale-Up and Manufacturing. Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (2020). Sanderson TP, et al. Scalability comparison between 50 and 500 liter stirred tank bioreactor for production of rAAV viral vector. Cell & Gene Therapy Insights (2021). Hebben M & Nyamay’Antu A. Optimizing the AAV Transfection Process in Suspension Cells. BioProcess International (2021).

www.polyplus-transfection.com

Figure 1: Non-exhaustive set of parameters to explore during optimisation of a triple transfection process for AAV manufacturing.

Each variable should be carefully studied during PD to identify the best performing transfection conditions and finetune the design space to operate in to target appropriate Critical Quality Attributes (CQA) of the process. Until now, most of the work done to improve rAAV production in the field often relied on optimising a single factor at a time. However, this approach is no longer favored because of (1) the multiplicity of factors contributing to rAAV generation, and (2) how these variables can interact. Design of Experiments (DOE) is now widely used to tackle this complexity by enabling to optimise each factor and ultimately determine a unique set of parameters for each specific viral vector manufacturing process. DOE approach allows to screen and optimise many factors, but you first need to identify and rank your drivers to draw clear experiments objectives as optimal transfection parameters cannot be determined in one single experiment.

Also, best performing transfection conditions for one serotype are not necessarily optimal for another – even when producing two different vectors using an identical tissue culture system. This really underlines that spending resources in early stage to tweak the workflow is key. Sometimes less is more. For example, when using the appropriate transfection reagent and conditions, reducing the total DNA amount can improve cell viability and increase overall rAAV particles quality for optimal potency in vivo without compromising on productivity.

Thereby focusing on VG titer alone might lead to back-andforth optimisation between USP and DSP because of poor quality viral particles. You cannot spread yourself too thin when you want to quickly get your product into the clinic. Each PD experiment matters, we will never say it enough: transfection conditions and cultivation parameters need to be optimised for each unique rAAV vector and cell culture setup. And Polyplus offers everything needed to do so.

Appropriate outputs are required to characterise any manufacturing process such as the physical titer expressed as Viral Genomes (VG) per mL of crude harvest. This readout is universally used for rAAV vector titration. VG copies are measured by quantitative PCR (qPCR) or droplet digital PCR (ddPCR), both techniques allowing to screen and select best performing experimental conditions in a sensible timeframe. While relatively quick and easy to determine, the physical titer is not always directly correlated with the final potency and quality of the recombinant vector produced. Thus, even if reaching the highest physical titer remains of primary importance when conducting upstream PD activities, the number of VG produced should not be used as sole criterion to cement best performing transfection conditions moving forward. Assessing functionality of produced viral particles is critical to align both UpStream Processes (USP) and DownStream Processes (DSP) objectives when developing a novel rAAV production platform. In this way, quantifying the proportion of full particles in the crude harvest while measuring their infectivity is required to confirm that the rAAV production method can consistently produce enough potent vector. Infectivity or functionality is usually determined with an in vitro assay using the closest cell type possible to the one targeted in the clinical application (2).

For many years now, PEIpro® is the leading DNA transfection reagent used in viral vector manufacturing processes for Gene & Cell Therapy products. PEIpro® has proven its efficiency, robustness and scalability in large-scale manufacturing of preclinical and clinical batches of rAAV. Abeona Therapeutics exemplified these characteristics by demonstrating the scalability of their transfection-based production process from 50 L to 500 L stirred tank bioreactor3. However, 500 L scale is just the beginning. To keep increasing productivity while easing the scale-up of bioprocesses to even larger bioreactors, Polyplus launched the new generation reagent FectoVIR®-AAV to revolutionise transfection-based rAAV manufacturing platforms: more titer, more flexibility, more scalability, more of everything can be expected when using FectoVIR®-AAV for your rAAV transfection process in suspension cells. Optimising transfection parameters with FectoVIR®-AAV based on a DOE approach can lead to unmatched yield improvements compared to standard triple transfection experiments using commercially available PEI. By combining LogicBio Therapeutics proprietary plasmid technology, Exothera's scale-up capabilities with our FectoVIR®-AAV reagent that ensures scalability of transient transfection, we recently demonstrated consistent high rAAV-8 titer yield, irrespective of scale from shake flask to 2000L scale bioreactor using Pall corporation Allegro STR system.

Polyplus’ unique transfection technologies supports continuous PD efforts deployed by viral vector innovators to make AAV manufacture affordable. Superior reagents such as FectoVIR®-AAV combined with DOE is most probably the best approach to optimise triple transfection experiments and in fine unlock the potential of each specific viral vector manufacturing process. All of this to ensure that each scientist successfully optimises their viral vector production process to ultimately bring Gene and Cell Therapies to market faster.

understanding of the cells and to find levers around higher productivity but also higher full/ empty ratios.”

How is the company deploying analytics technology development to assist viral vector manufacturing?

At Cytiva there are development and innovation projects underway to improve the use of analytics to bring solutions to viral vector manufacturers.

But one of the perks of being part of such a large corporation as

Danaher is that Cytiva can benefit from the wealth of expertise and knowledge across its parent company’s entire portfolio.

For instance, there are companies like Beckman Coulter and Sciex that are dedicated, high-tech analytical providers.

“The big gap or question around this topic is that, currently, we don’t have many tools available to characterise and measure the ways we can improve viral vector manufacturing,” explains Emmanuelle. “For example, when

Unlock Your Potential to Increase Yield and Effectiveness

We understand the barriers holding drug developers and manufacturers back from achieving the potential of their products and services.

Viral medicines face fundamental manufacturing and therapeutic challenges due to cellular antiviral defenses.

Our proprietary Viral Sensitizers (VSE™) unlock your potential to increase yield and effectiveness. Virica is the first company to develop and commercialize VSEs to solve the real-world challenges in delivering the promise of critical viral medicines.

we undertake what we call polishing steps or full/empty separation, we do not necessarily have the tools to differentiate one species from the other in a systematic way. And this is the next step for us as technology developers together with the drug developers – we are looking to build the tools to understand how our products help purify and separate these different species to go a bit deeper than just focusing on the full/ empty ratio alone.”

opportunity to forge strategic tech relationships with the goal of facilitating innovation and furthering the cell and gene therapy fields.

One of Emmanuelle’s roles at Cytiva is to set up collaborations to generate data together.

She highlights Cytiva’s ongoing collaboration with Virica Biotech.

“WE SET UP A COLLABORATION WITH VIRICA TO TEST THEIR TECHNOLOGY ON HUMAN EMBRYONIC KIDNEY CELL LINE

PRODUCING AAV 8. THE GOAL IS TO SEE IF VSES DRIVE PRODUCTIVITY IN A DYNAMIC SYSTEM NOT JUST FLATWARE”

How does Cytiva forge strategic tech relationships and facilitate innovation to further cell and gene therapy?

On the topic of building new tools, technologies and solutions, Emmanuelle highlights the importance of collaboration with innovative start-ups that are addressing some of the pressing challenges in the gene therapy sector.

But beyond collaboration with start-ups, Cytiva embraces the

“Virica produces viral sensitisers (VSEs) and they had some data on using VSEs to increase the productivity of viral vectors,” says Emmanuelle. “So we set up a collaboration with them to test their technology on human embryonic kidney cell line producing AAV 8. The goal is to see if VSEs drive productivity in a dynamic system not just flatware. We are also looking to see if they can improve full/empty as that’s the big lever but also see how they are cleared through the

“WE HAVE WORKED WITH ANDELYN ON HELPING THEM SCALE UP THEIR UPSTREAM AND DOWNSTREAM PROCESS, INCLUDING PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS THAT CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE AT A LARGE SCALE. IT WAS A MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL COLLABORATION”

downstream as it’s a concern to potential customers.”

But Cytiva not only forges relationships to gather data, but to scale its operations as well.

Here Emmanuelle lauds Cytiva’s collaboration with Andelyn Biosciences, a contract development manufacturing organisation (CDMO).

“Andelyn is equipped with the relevant equipment from Cytiva’s, and we have a process development service – a fee-based offering from three labs in the UK, USA and Asia. We have worked with Andelyn on helping them scale up their upstream and downstream process, including process improvements that can make a difference at a large scale. It was a mutually beneficial collaboration

Driving Client Value for Viral Vector Manufacturing Through a Platform Approach

Andelyn Biosciences is a Cell and Gene Therapy CDMO with 20+ years of experience manufacturing Advanced Therapies from its origins at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Driven by our mission of bringing more treatments to more patients, Andelyn offers a platform approach for suspension and adherent manufacturing that provides value based on three key cornerstones:

1. Cost Savings

• High yielding, scalable and high percentage of full capsids drives manufacturing costs down coupled with improved safety profile

• Assurance of program success through process experience and a track record of reproducibility and operational efficiencies

• Reduced upfront investment in Process Development Activities

• No Cell line licensing fees for manufacturing until BLA

• Continuous carrying of cells – no MCB/WCB manufacturing upfront costs

2. Expedited timelines

• Fully integrated CDMO from MCB/WCB generation to plasmid manufacturing, vector production and extensive in-house analytical capabilities

• Well-characterised platform reduces process development and analytical development activities scope and timelines

3. Reduced risk from IND to Commercial

• Ph1 to Commercial occurs in same site with no need for tech transfer

• Platform approach drives seamless transfer from Pre-Clinical to Commercial through process harmonization

• Nimble and scalable capacity to 2,000L

Scale Up Performance

because some of the work they did on the design of experiments and optimisation of their processes have transferred to us and we then scaled that up even further.”

As with any company, supplier relationships are key and here Emmanuelle discusses Cytiva’s close relationship with Polyplus – a leading upstream solutions provider that supplies Cytiva with transfection reagents and plasmids.

“We interact with Polyplus in collaboration, for instance when we use their transfection reagents to generate material or do experiments that help us towards our thought leadership work. We also engage with each other to support shared customers and to generate joint thought leadership content.”

What are some of the main opportunities or obstacles in the gene therapy industry and how is Cytiva leaning into them?

Emmanuelle describes the sheer volume of drugs that are in the clinical and late-stage clinical phase right now.

“We have shown we can make viral vectors and get them approved by the regulatory bodies and balance safety with efficacy,” explains Emmanuelle. “But they are still very expensive. So now we have to manufacture them with better, newer tools using analytics to make this process more efficient and better predict when we are developing a process to reduce the R&D costs that go into the therapy cost, so the therapies go into the clinic faster.

“There are some cases where therapies can be fast-tracked if the indications are incurable and depending on the country. But we need to be working together with the regulatory bodies so they can keep up with our new solutions. We now have all these different tools amongst mRNA, saRNA, viral vectors, cell therapy, gene-modified cell therapy, oligonucleotides etc, that form what we could call a scientific toolbox. But now scientists have to figure out what is the best tool for what problem, to cure specific diseases. This will be

a revolution because it will allow us to develop the best drugs or therapies for the specific diseases, optimally and effectively.”

What are the principal ambitions and growth plans at Cytiva in 2023 and beyond?

The ambition at Cytiva is to be the biggest supplier in the biotech industry, specifically within the genomic medicine industry.

With the combined Pall Life Sciences and Cytiva portfolio, Emmanuelle says, “We can really answer the customer needs from the early stage of the process to the final stage of the process for delivering therapeutics, regardless of scale, including process automation and/or single-use products.

“Our goal is to continue building on this prominent position while helping and advancing medicine – it’s our core driver to bring these lifesaving and life-improving therapies to people around the world.”

For more information about Cytiva, visit cytiva.com.

A NEW CHAPTER

Emmanuelle is thrilled about the recent integration of Pall Life Sciences and Cytiva.

“We’ve been working on this for years and it’s finally here and I can hardly believe the day has come to pass. But we believe it was the right thing to do and it’s pointing us in the right direction to help our customers and advance genomic medicines.”

EVENTS

Emmanuelle has her fingers crossed that she will be presenting Cytiva’s collaborative work with Virica towards the end of the year in Dublin at the Cell and Gene Therapy Manufacturing & Commercialization Europe conference.

She also invites readers to attend her Cytiva Live 30 webinar on June 13, 2023.

COLLABORATION FOR PROGRESS

Relishing the chance to advance medicine, Emmanuelle embraces opportunities for collaboration and continuing her work with industry thought leaders to give back to the world, an endeavour she finds incredibly motivating and inspirational.

Connect with Emmanuelle

IMPROVING AIR QUALITY AND FOR PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD

Nadine Hessel, Global Director for Supply Chain & Infrastructure at FläktGroup discusses the company’s innovative technology and supply chain strategies as a leader in the indoor air quality industry.

AND SAFETY WORLD

WITH A HERITAGE STRETCHING

BACK MORE THAN A CENTURY,

FLÄKTGROUP IS A MARKETLEADING COMPANY SPECIALISING IN INDOOR AIR QUALITY AND CRITICAL VENTILATION SOLUTIONS.

he name stems from ‘Fläkt’ – the Swedish word for ventilation, an integral part of the company since its original inception in 1909.

FläktGroup was formed in 2016 when Fläkt Woods joined forces with DencoHappel (formerly part of the GEA Group) to become a market leader for energy-efficient Indoor Air Comfort and Critical Air solutions serving a global market.

We sat down with Nadine Hessel, Global Director for Supply Chain & Infrastructure to discuss

the supply chain strategy and innovation at FläktGroup.

Nadine begins by explaining how the company takes a holistic approach to their operations since they cover all stages from design and manufacturing products to delivery, after-sales and servicing provision.

“You can find our products everywhere – in commercial buildings, residential buildings, industrial buildings, and critical applications like data centres,” says Nadine. “We

have 13 production sites, 3,500 employees and we sell in 65 countries around the world. I’m responsible for the supply chain and infrastructure in our business area Services. My main focus is the global availability and storage of spare parts within our service supply chain. This is a bit different from the manufacturing supply chain as the sourcing is not only build and buy, but you can also repair a unit or secure replacement parts.”

So what does the supply chain strategy look like at FläktGroup?

Nadine describes how the approach to the service supply

chain today looks different to the provision offered in the past.

“For us, we need to focus on all components of the supply chain,” explains Nadine. “All aspects provide room for improvement. So if we start with planning it has always been important, but it has shifted from planning for just-intime delivery or just-in-case delivery for service, to now even getting components at all. So it's quite different from the way it used to be. We try to have inventory buffers on the one hand, and on the other hand, we seek to find alternatives for missing components. But if there are some components with a lead

time of two years, the customer can't wait that long.

“So instead of replacing them one by one like we used to do, we try to find an alternative part if it's available. Consequently, one of the core components of our strategy is multi-sourcing. So, of course, we have our main suppliers and it's vital to keep our relationships strong with them. But I'm always open to getting in contact with new suppliers. So I have a lot of suppliers that reach out to me on LinkedIn for example. Usually I meet with them and listen to their propositions. Maybe they will have some components I can use. So that has changed.

“The important thing to note with FläktGroup is that we are a group of international companies put together through acquisitions. So growing together is a challenge for us. Therefore it's quite important within the supply chain strategy to take a global view. To find a component for an urgent service visit, for instance, I can check the stock in our factories around the world. I can ask them ‘What is your production stock like?’ and ‘Can I have that part?’ When you have high commodity availability, you can look at individual entities. But in today's situation, I think a global view is critical. So this has brought

“My main focus is the global availability and storage of spare parts within our service supply chain”

Nadine Hessel, Global Director for Supply Chain & Infrastructure

us closer together within FläktGroup. We have cross-departmental support and always set a global strategy, even for small parts. I can always just look at all the stocks we have and find parts somewhere.

“What is special about the service supply chain is that the demand is not predictable. But it's a good thing because if it was predictable, it would represent bad news for product failures. There are some components that you can exchange and maintain on a service visit, but most of the demand levels for parts are unpredictable. But nonetheless, for me, it's important to have an overview of what we have sold to do some kind of forecasting when possible. So planning is still super important.”

At FläktGroup the company’s supply chain strategy hinges on embracing innovation and transformation to keep their operations and service

provision for customers at the leading edge of the air technology industry.

“Especially in a changing business environment, it's important to be flexible and open for innovation,” says Nadine. “I'm not only responsible for the supply chain, but for the infrastructure at FläktGroup as well. We combine those two things, which for me is fantastic because I love IT and bringing them both together. It's

with the benefits and then decide whether it's the right tool at the right time. Not all innovation is good innovation.

“But at the moment, digitalisation is super important for us and we aim to have user-friendly and efficient tools. Here, we have been working with Würth Phoenix for several years to introduce Microsoft Dynamics 365. I started to work with them on a sales project some years ago, and now

“By working with Würth Phoenix, our service technicians can do most of their administrative tasks with a smartphone, say to record their hours or fill out service reports”

a strong combination because if I see there are some processes or systems we need to adjust, I'm then responsible for those changes as well.

“As a company we are always looking for innovation be it in technological terms or digitalisation. But on the other hand, you cannot follow every trend and we won't explore them just because they're hip. Instead, we will compare our experience

in my new role it’s a pleasure to work with them again on behalf of our service technicians. By working with Würth Phoenix, our service technicians can do most of their administrative tasks with a smartphone, say to record their hours or fill out service reports. Of course, many technicians within the group were able to do this before but as we are different companies put together, we used to have different systems. Now we would like to harmonise

that into one global system for everyone.

“Another exciting technological innovation for our service technicians could be smart glasses they wear out in the field. That is one thing we are testing right now. Say the technician requires some support from the back office, their colleagues might need to see the unit as well to help them –especially with such technologically complex products. With smart

glasses, the technician can share exactly what they are seeing with their colleagues – crucially leaving both hands free to continue their work on the ground. In turn, back office staff can then share images, instructions or files with the technician from their end as well and the technician will see them clearly within the device on a small monitor.

“Another important aspect of innovation and transformation for

“We put QR codes on our unit and customers can scan it and find all details regarding their orders like manuals, spare parts lists – everything they need for the order”

FläktGroup is to make life easier for customers as well. So we have started working with QR codes. For example, we put QR codes on our unit and customers can scan it and find all details regarding their orders like manuals, spare parts lists – everything they need for the order. Additionally, we put QR codes on components, so our customers can find a list of contacts and know where to order a new part easily and quickly.

“Besides these QR codes, our customers can also make spare parts requests directly on our website. What’s more, we also have some units that offer remote access and we will be expanding this feature to benefit our customers and enhance the assistance we offer them. As I'm responsible for the whole service supply chain, this includes digital service provision and site visits. Remote access has been a gamechanger because it saves time and

costs for both parties, which is a fantastic innovation for us.”

Underlying the innovation and transformation at the company, Nadine highlights the importance of partnerships for FläktGroup’s supply chain strategy.

“So for us, strong and reliable partnerships are fundamentally important to our operations,” explains Nadine. “We are dependent on primary materials or components and our partners help us meet our requirements and support us in difficult situations. So even if there are lengthy lead times we can talk to our suppliers. If we don't have materials, we cannot produce units or parts. Without partners, there is no growth or success so partnerships are super important to our supply chain strategy and it all starts with the initial supplier. In turn we not only rely on the partnership with our suppliers, but we have to consider the relationships they have with their suppliers as well. Even if our suppliers have a high vertical integration, they rely on others at some point in their supply chain. As a result, it's crucial to share information. So if our supplier knows there are some parts that are at risk, but we know about that in advance, it's less of a problem because we can adapt

accordingly. So if you have partners, you have to share information and be open to each other. Sharing information is important but I also think it's a huge advantage to have partners who know your requirements. For instance with Würth Phoenix, we've been working with them for years. They know our processes, they know our businesses and they know our IT landscape – so they know what we need. Long-term partnerships are essential for our business.”

At FläktGroup innovation, transformation and robust partnerships built on transparent communications are the core components for achieving success with its supply chain strategy. But what are some of the major challenges facing supply chain professionals today that these approaches help offset?

“More and more challenges are coming our way,” says Nadine. “At first it was about optimising processes, saving costs and things like that. Then we had to adapt to sustainability policies and new legal requirements such as the Supply Chain Act in Germany. Now we are facing a shortage of materials which in turn makes it incredibly difficult to decide about warehouses and what needs to be stored because it's always a question of capital

commitment versus the risk of not having material. Supply chain professionals also need to consider new applications or technologies they could deploy – whether these are companywide platforms or dedicated software. But perhaps the most prominent challenge I see is the availability of materials coupled with rising inflation and therefore costs – especially when you need access to materials 24/7 for critical applications such as data centres.”

But despite these challenges facing supply chain professionals, Nadine loves her role and is excited about the future of the supply chain industry and how it might look different in the future.

“In the coming years, I hope that the availability of material will improve or return to normal, so we no longer have to create overstocks. But no one knows how long the shortages will last,” emphasises Nadine. “I think that digitalisation will become even more important and artificial intelligence will play a bigger role in inventory management, warehousing and so on. Lastly, I think the focus on sustainability will keep increasing in the coming years.”

For more information about FläktGroup, visit their website www.flaktgroup.com.

EMBRACING SUSTAINABILITY

Environmental awareness and striving for sustainability are causes close to Nadine’s heart. She wrote her thesis on carbon footprints and she loves to find ways to become more sustainable. For instance, in her research, she realised how much CO2 is generated by streaming services.

“I try to stream consciously, so I pause the movie whenever I leave the room,” says Nadine. “Not because of the electricity used by the TV, but because the data centre in the background creates so much CO2. Small steps like that have added a lot of value to my life because sustainability is important to

me. Everyone knows when you're driving around with a car, it's creating CO2, but no one thinks about that when streaming Netflix or even if you just watch a video on your smartphone – it’s all generating CO2.”

EVENTS

Nadine is excited to attend the next Digital X event in Cologne which will take place September 20-21, 2023. She loves how unique the experience is at the exposition, where cafes, bars restaurants and even laundromats become exhibition stands.

“It’s a super cool concept and I’m really looking forward to attending,” says Nadine.

Connect with Nadine

Let’s collaborate…

Innovation Magazine is a specialist technology platform with over 166,700+ readers.

Our community consists of C, V and D level executives from a wide range of industries. A unique blend of thought leadership interviews and features that cover digital transformation, cloud & cyber, enterprise IT, artificial intelligence, machine learning and sustainability.

Digital Magazine

Website

Newsletters

Demand Generation

Whitepapers & Research Reports

Webinars - Hosting & Promotion

Team up with Innovation Magazine and build media programs that deliver.

Find out more

The global technology company driving the future of energy towards sustainability

Janaina Ruas Filiponi, Europe Head of Supply Chain & Sustainability at SLB, on the company’s journey to embed sustainability into the supply chain function and the role the supply chain plays in its vision for a decarbonised, sustainable future.

In the last century, global technology company SLB has evolved and adapted to the ever-changing demands of the energy industry, its customers and partners.

ith a heritage of innovation behind the company, SLB positions itself as an early adopter and pioneer of new mindsets poised to tackle the dual challenge of guaranteeing energy security and affordability while reducing carbon emissions to meet our net zero goals.

In October 2022, Schlumberger announced its rebranded name, SLB, as part of the company’s new identity

focusing on decarbonisation and technology innovation to address the world’s energy needs and forge ahead with global energy transition. The new chapter for the legacy Schlumberger brand underscored the company’s commitment to decarbonisation, digitalisation, new energy systems and innovation in the oil and gas industries. SLB’s bold vision is to accelerate the energy transition with sustainability at the core of its ambition.

Here to tell us more about the supply chain digitalisation, innovation and performance underpinning SLB’s new chapter is Janaina Ruas Filiponi, Europe Head of Supply Chain & Sustainability.

Janaina’s background is in engineering and she has been at the company for over 20 years, working in various departments, starting in operations and now business functions. Today Janaina heads up the supply chain department for SLB’s European operations and oversees the region’s sustainability endeavours. She orchestrates sourcing, supplier management, materials, logistics and regulations alongside taking charge of the internally focused sustainability strategies for that geography.

The two main layers to Janaina’s role are intrinsically linked, since

enacting change with sustainability goals in mind almost always winds its way to a supplier, procurement policy or logistics strategy of some kind, she explains.

“I’m personally very passionate about sustainability. As my awareness about overall sustainability developed, it made sense for me to start embedding sustainability into our supply chain discussions. For example, if we want to go ahead with changes to a solar project, switch the LED lights in our offices or transition our fleet to electric vehicles or electrical forklifts – everything was naturally linked to supply chain discussions,” summarises Janaina. It means we also get to work on our sustainability in terms of our ongoing community engagements and human rights policies across our supply chain.”

SLB embraces innovation across the board as a global technology company and it is also particularly prevalent in the supply chain strategies it has been rolling out since the rebrand last year in 2022.

“Innovation has been embedded into the DNA of SLB, for a very long time,” describes Janaina. “It’s built into the company and with the new chapter where SLB is being guided by sustainability, decarbonisation and a global energy transition, we understand that change

won’t happen without determined and focused innovation efforts. If businesses and companies continue to do things as they are today, the pace of change towards reducing emissions or reaching net zero will be too slow. Therefore, innovation and new mindsets are imperative.

“So if we consider innovation at SLB from a supply chain perspective, our mission is trying to understand from the business and operations sides what our internal demands are and where we need visibility to recognise opportunities for improvements in terms of the goals we’re striving towards. Once we identify the places to focus on, we usually have a supplier linked to them.

“Just over two years ago, we introduced our Supplier Innovation Program (SIP). Here we engage with our top 15-20 suppliers worldwide and as a business, we challenge them to propose a win-win supply chain innovation for us both to adopt.

“After we consider these presentations, we fine-tune our focus towards a few of the most promising proposals and start those projects on the ground. Not only does this catalyse innovation, but it also strengthens our relationships with our high-level suppliers and these relationships evolve into collaborative partnerships.

“We work in the world of data, technology and AI. Everything can have better visibility, more innovative approaches and improved effectiveness”

“SIP started as a global initiative but now we’re cascading it down to the regional divisions of SLB,” continues Janaina. “For example in Europe, we are rolling out the SIP approach to our specific suppliers. But supply chain innovation at SLB is not just limited to the global or continental levels, although the bigger picture perspective is of course crucial. We also explore innovation at a granular level and encourage teams to suggest efficiency improvements that affect our daily processes and operations. That can come in the form of a different way we do tasks or new approaches to apps and data with enhanced visibility.

“We work in the world of data, technology and AI. Everything can have better visibility, more innovative approaches and improved effectiveness. We instil this mentality into our teams. Consider our operations in Europe where we have about 6,000 suppliers. If we aren’t embracing innovation

and efficiency in the supply chain department, missed opportunities and inefficiencies soon multiply out and interactions become more complicated across the board. We want our people to work on valueadded tasks with less time spent on menial or transactional tasks.”

Janaina explains how digitalisation and performance are two core components of SLB’s supply chain innovation.

“At one level we help our clients on their journey towards excellence in performance and digitalisation, so it makes sense for us to embrace them as a company as well,” says Janaina. “More specifically we are currently focusing on the digitalisation of our data. We have a tremendous volume of transactions every single day and if we weren’t digitalising this process, it would hinder visibility and have knock-on effects throughout the entire business. Digitalisation is key for our supply chain and company growth.

“When it comes to performance, it is a mindset for us at SLB embedded into our brand and how our teams operate. So for instance, if we consider the supply tender process, today we are trying to implement new ways of thinking within the existing sourcing process. We’re building in factors such as

security, sustainability or energy consumption.”

SLB champions sustainability by deploying advanced technological innovation, facilitating decarbonisation and striving towards new energy systems. But Janaina describes how these externally directed endeavours have been reflected by internal development as well. She highlights two major initiatives related to training and visibility that have been particularly impactful at SLB within its supply chain.

“Even before our rebranding in 2022 and that shift towards greater emphasis on sustainability and the global energy transition, we recognised a need to improve our internal awareness in terms of sustainable initiatives,” states Janaina. “In the past two years, we’ve been working incredibly hard to develop our awareness and training related to sustainability. It was a huge, multifaceted effort to keep the entire business aware of our sustainability initiatives.

“We started at a global level by developing formal training programmes with supply chainspecific modules. Over time we refined our training efforts and enhanced our courses by

partnering with universities and research centres to advance our awareness even further.

“Many of our key stakeholders, managers and supervisors are being invited to enrol in these 2-3 month training programmes.

“We’ve now turned our attention more broadly towards engagement to capitalise on this momentum, but in a fun, compelling way. We partnered globally with a science education platform that works with companies to highlight the subject of sustainability, based on the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data, but in an accessible and entertaining way. In our region we also launched a Sustainability

Roadshow where we engage in a fun and interactive way with a short inperson workshop focusing not only on the company global directions and priorities but also our own sustainability initiatives to reach all levels of the organisation. That has been successfully ongoing since June, involving several different countries.

“The second pillar of our efforts towards sustainability centres on visibility regarding our emissions. As with any company, we have better control over our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions since they are internal. But it is the scope 3 emissions where the greatest potential impact lies.

“Even though this is the most challenging area to catalyse change,

as a company we have committed to reducing our scope 3 emissions and partnered with CDP Worldwide to improve SLB’s environmental impact with external accountability.”

Janaina describes how SLB has asked its key suppliers to disclose their emissions for several years now. “It's not an easy exercise and we don’t expect details from all our suppliers because some might not have the bandwidth or maturity for now,” she admits. “But it is possible for some of our key suppliers, and for the others, we built frameworks to help them advance their capabilities so they can offer insights. It's critical to work in collaboration with our key suppliers on that journey.”

Due to the global nature of SLB’s operations, Janaina explains that the company recognises its messaging related to sustainability needs to be adjusted to the diverse countries and cultures where they are based.

“In my region we cover over 20 countries, so we created a framework where we could organise ourselves a bit better based on locations. We formed a sustainability SteerCo where we define the direction and priorities in each place. In turn, we adapted different communication strategies to approach our colleagues. To give better transparency and visibility in what we are implementing in the region, we developed an app where

“Teamwork has been an empowering force that propels many of our teams towards collective success”

we provide visibility on all our ongoing projects, their status or progress and who is involved in them.

“This has not only helped us to fulfil that internal demand from our people to have transparency in what was happening across the company, but also it has helped us to track the sustainability projects at a higher level.

“We divide these endeavours into three broad categories. The first is our internal sustainability and emissions. The second is focused on the social side, in terms of our community and human rights work. The third pillar focuses on how we are helping our clients either on the new energy side or how to decarbonise their emissions.

“With the support of many different teams in place, we put all these systems in place so we have transparency from the top down, but also the bottom up. For instance, on the same portal employees can upload ideas for new projects and volunteer themselves to participate in some of those projects. So our engagement is thorough and clear, and we can track what is happening.

“Communication is a key element in any successful endeavour, especially one as complex as sustainability. Timely and transparent information sharing across teams and stakeholders is vital to fostering

collaboration and results. The more education and information that flows towards our teams, the more initiatives and ideas emerge, driving sustainable practices and resilience.

“By leveraging the power of communication, I believe that we can create a more informed and motivated sense of community, engaged towards a more sustainable future.

But Janaina reiterates that major projects like reducing scope 3 emissions and educating its staff on sustainability or deploying supply chain digitalisation and performance require teamwork, partnerships and collaboration.

“Teamwork has been an empowering force that propels many of our teams towards collective success,” says Janaina. “To achieve many of those results, I’m lucky enough to work with a cohesive team and different stakeholders who have been instrumental in helping to achieve our aspirations. The more we work on collaboration across different teams, the more we are able to tackle challenges, overcome obstacles and achieve what would not have been possible without that synergy.

“We cannot solve these profound global challenges by ourselves,” says Janaina. “These issues are very complex, and we rely on allies to help us.

Introducing Entro: Your Partner for Energy and Environmental Improvements that pay off

Are you seeking to embrace energy efficiency practices and unlock the potential of sustainable growth for your business? Look no further than Entro, a leading independent expert consultant on energy efficiency and sustainable buildings. With more than 30 years of experience, we are here to help you navigate the energy transition, reduce risks and achieve your climate targets. Further, we are thrilled to present our innovative “no-cureno-pay” business model, designed to deliver tangible energy savings and cost reductions without any upfront expenses. At Entro, we understand the importance of energy savings for businesses today.

We provide comprehensive services that enable you to create environmental benefits, save time and money, and drive sustainable growth through optimised resource utilisation.

Our team of consultants brings together outstanding multidisciplinary expertise and a unique blend of practical and academic skills. We are working with major businesses involved in owning, managing and servicing buildings, helping them transition to more sustainable practices. Whether you are a corporation, a real estate developer or a facility manager, we have the knowledge and experience to assist you with energy and environmental improvements that pay off on your sustainability journey.

One of our key selling points is our commitment to achieving significant energy savings for our clients. Our estimates suggest that, in most cases, we can obtain substantial reductions in energy use. We understand that committing resources to energy-saving initiatives can be challenging when the returns on investments are uncertain. That’s why we have developed a risk-free approach that ensures you only pay when you see measurable energy savings.

Here’s how it works:

Entro conduct a comprehensive assessment of your energy usage, identify areas for improvement and implement tailored solutions. Throughout the process, we provide ongoing support from experts, establish remote monitoring, create digital twins and apply AI light to ensure the desired results are achieved. Our fee is directly tied to the energy savings you realise. So, the more energy you save, the more you benefit, both environmentally and financially.

With Entro’s “no-cure-no-pay” business model, you have the freedom to prioritise energy savings without straining your budget. We believe that sustainability should be accessible to all businesses, regardless of their size or financial capacity. Our model allows you to make significant progress towards your sustainability targets while remaining cost-effective.

By partnering with Entro, you get more than just a consultant. You gain a trusted ally committed to your success. Our team will work closely with you to identify energy-saving opportunities, implement energy-efficient measures and optimise your systems. We are dedicated to helping you achieve long-term energy savings that positively impact your bottom line and the environment.

Join the ranks of our satisfied clients who have experienced the transformative power of our “no-cureno-pay” business model. Take the first step towards a sustainable future, reduce your environmental footprint and unlock the potential of sustainable growth for your business while you are saving energy and money.

Don’t let financial constraints hold you back from making a positive impact. Contact Entro today and let us help you embark on your sustainability journey with confidence. Together, we can build a greener, more prosperous future.

Visit our website at www.entro.us to learn more about how Entro can help your business thrive sustainably through energy savings.

“Entro helped us understand our habits better and with their assistance we reduced our consumption considerably at our Aberdeen facilities in the first year – it has been a very successful partnership”

“For example, we work closely with Entro – an energy efficiency company from Norway – to reduce our consumption at some of our facilities. We kicked off the project with them at our operations in Aberdeen, Scotland. We have a ‘no cure, no payment’ deal in place with Entro. They visited our sites and deployed their expertise to analyse where we could decrease our energy consumption. From there, we agreed that if they achieved a certain drop in consumption for us within a specific period of time, we would pay them a portion of the savings.

“Entro helped us understand our habits better and with their assistance we reduced our consumption considerably at our Aberdeen facilities in the first year – it has been a very successful partnership.

“We hope we can build on this partnership and expand it to other SLB facilities in Europe.

“Another example of a productive and valued partnership is our work with Red Wing Safety. Red Wing is our PPE provider and we collaborate not only on safety but sustainability as well. For instance, we have been developing more sustainable

overalls and boots that will benefit both companies and work towards goals we are both trying to achieve – always keeping safety front and centre.”

So what does the future hold for SLB?

“I trust there will be a lot of exciting developments in the coming years,” says Janaina. “I envision further

“Red Wing is our PPE provider and we collaborate not only on safety but sustainability as well”

growth related to energy security as this is such a crucial topic. But I also think we are well positioned with the right concepts and right mindset to grow in the right direction, helping our clients but also positively impacting the planet as well. There’s a tangible feeling of excitement here at SLB for this new chapter in the company’s rich history. We’re looking at promising new relationships with many different stakeholders, providers and clients that may evolve into collaborative partners – it’s very fluid and stimulating to witness and be a part of, especially on the new energy and decarbonising side of the company.

“SLB is an innovative company, and we know there are a tremendous amount of opportunities for us to work towards. There is no way that the global energy transition and the drive towards net zero will happen without innovation and that’s embedded into our DNA as a company.”

Learn more about SLB by visiting slb.com.

Personal passion meets professional purpose

During the height of the Covid pandemic, SLB gave employees time off to help them cope with the demands and challenges of lockdowns. Janaina recalls using this opportunity to take on additional training and professional

development related to sustainability since it was a cause close to her heart.

“At a personal level, I wanted to better understand the situation before us,” shares Janaina. “It opened my eyes and once you have that awareness, you can’t ignore it. It just so happened that at the time SLB was focusing more attention on sustainability and everything fell into place for me to embrace the second layer to my role related to sustainability beyond the underlying supply chain dynamic.

“Beyond that, being able to be more aware of the sustainability cause and passing that to my family and kids has been rewarding. I’m a very proud mum of two and they started to talk more about the topic and take the small actions in our daily lives that shows their own early awareness about the theme.”

Book

Janaina is currently reading Hyperfocus: How to Work Less to Achieve More by Chris Bailey and highly recommends the

book to anyone grappling with all the information, priorities and distractions we juggle in modern daily life.

Wellbeing

Janaina believes in finding ways to nurture well-being. “Our mental health is super important,” she insists. “Recently I’ve been more committed to making time for my mental health, which for me meant tweaking my schedule so I can exercise at the start of the day, every day, as much as much as feasible, even if on busy days that means only few minutes. My current year-to-date average daily is around 50 minutes per day. I’ve built this habit over the past year. I realised that if I make exercising a habit it is easier for me to actually keep track of it. Besides the physical benefits of the exercise, it also helps me to cope with so much information ongoing (i.e. such as online training, webcasts, podcast, etc) and overall has been incredibly helpful for my mental wellbeing.”

Connect with Janaina

TRANSFORMATION AND CONSOLIDATION: DOUBLING DOWN ON THE DATA AT GRÜNENTHAL

Megan Reutin, Global Head of Data

Science & Strategy at Grünenthal shares insights into the company’s transformative data journey.

CONSOLIDATION: DATA JOURNEY

FOUNDED IN STOLBERG IN 1946, GRÜNENTHAL HAS DEEP GERMAN ROOTS BUT TODAY IT IS A GROWING GLOBAL BUSINESS WITH A VISION OF CREATING A WORLD FREE OF PAIN.

rünenthal is a global leader in pain management and related diseases. As a science-based, privatelyowned pharmaceutical company, they have a long track

record of bringing innovative treatments and state-of-the-art technologies to patients worldwide. Their purpose is to change lives for the better, and innovation is their passion. They are focusing all

activities and efforts on working towards their vision of a world free of pain.

In recent years, Grünenthal’s innovation has gone hand in hand with a journey of transformation and consolidation of the company’s data strategy. Here to tell us more is Megan Reutin, Global Head of Data Science & Strategy at Grünenthal.

Megan joined the company two and a half years ago and her role covers a plethora of data aspects. These include oversight of Grünenthal’s commercial

data, use of data with regards to artificial intelligence (AI), advanced data science and analytics, data storage, sharing insights across the business as well as data literacy and education, adoption and enablement strategies –encompassing all sorts of analytics from omnichannel to content analytics.

With all these complex moving parts to her role, Megan explains that Grünenthal’s data journey has evolved rapidly in the past five years, but it has been driven by experimentation and innovation.

“Grünenthal’s data journey has evolved greatly over time,” says Megan. “Originally, each of our individual markets had the responsibility of establishing their own data warehouse and over time they've developed their own data ecosystems. Some of these are incredibly intricate and complex. But around three years ago, Grünenthal made the decision to move towards a more centralised approach to data, where the goal was to enable easier and better analytics and reporting, and the company took the opportunity to introduce a data lake.

correct type of data for the insights that we would like to enable across the business, as well as making sure the data that we obtain from our partners is interpreted correctly.

“Then there is Global Portfolio Commercialisation (GPC) in which our Marketing, Medical & Market Access teams sit: our asset teams (within GPC) are a cross-functional group that collaborate with our Commercial Excellence team across many initiatives whilst ensuring that everyone is aware if there’s a change in the market definition of either

“I LOVE THE WAY THAT YOU CAN BLEND DATA SCIENCE WITH TECHNOLOGY AND DATA TO REALLY FIND OUT THE INSIGHTS THAT YOU WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO DERIVE FROM SIMPLE REPORTING OR CALCULATIONS WITHIN AN EXCEL SPREADSHEET”

Megan Reutin, Global Head of Data Science & Strategy

“With regards to governance, each and every part of the business that creates and handles data has a role to play in the governance of the data itself. It’s not a single person, nor a single department's responsibility. There are always multiple teams involved.

“We have the Commercial Excellence team, which is a team that I'm a part of, and we're in charge of driving insights, innovation and best practice for the business (amongst other things!), ensuring that we obtain the

the medicines or the molecules that are used themselves so we can ensure the definition is applied and reflected appropriately in the data structure.

“Lastly, we have our Business Intelligence and IT teams that ensure the correct storage and the persistence of the data received from our partners, as well as enabling company-wide access to the data by the creation of highly streamlined and user-friendly dashboards.”

Despite the tremendous progress and advancements at Grünenthal in the past five years, Megan stresses that the company’s data journey is an ongoing, exciting process.

“We have a real appetite in terms of exploring advanced analytics and data science,” says Megan. “We have a jam-packed project schedule that is super exciting. For instance, we're focusing on optimising the way that we're approaching omnichannel, with content analytics and we're also seeing where it's possible to identify potentially wasted effort in the company, so we can reinvest that effort elsewhere towards activities that really make sense to the business.

“I love the way that you can blend data science with technology and

data to really find out the insights that you wouldn't be able to derive from simple reporting or calculations within an Excel spreadsheet. It gives data an edge that you won’t be able to find anywhere else.

“Lastly, innovation, personally for me is key. I kickstarted my career by playing with bleedingedge technologies, which ignited a passion for challenging the norm and doing things a little bit differently with zero fear of the unknown in terms of new technologies. Thankfully, this experimental approach is welcomed with open arms at Grünenthal where we have a ‘fall fast’ culture, allowing the possibility to try things out without fear of reprisal. This attitude is incredibly important because it enables companies to have that

competitive edge: you learn just as much from failed experiments as you do from successful ones.”

In the context of the company’s transformative data journey, Megan reiterates that a closely related priority for Grünenthal has been championing the responsible and ethical use of AI.

“Grünenthal is championing the responsible and ethical use of artificial intelligence in a variety of ways,” explains Megan. “First and foremost, we have our Digital Ethics Charter, which outlines our commitments to digital trust and responsibility across a variety of areas, including artificial intelligence.

“Secondly, our approach involves a collaborative effort behind the scenes, across a variety of departments. Our goal is to ensure that we're not only legally compliant, but also that those implementing or managing the implementation of solutions have the necessary guidance and education on important related dynamics, such as unconscious bias.

“Thirdly, we're also actively increasing visibility on data and artificial intelligence, promoting transparency about how they are used within the company. Within this, combating data bias is also something that I'm incredibly

passionate about. Solutions are only as good as the data that's been fed in, and the good old expression ‘rubbish in rubbish out’ still stands strong today. All too often technologies are tarred with the brush of being awful, but data is what really matters – it is what makes or breaks a technology. If you don't have good data variety or good data quality, and bias is inherently present in the data, then subsequently this will be reflected in whatever solution is being created, whether you like it or not. A huge focus on the data prior to it being ingested elsewhere is absolutely of the utmost importance.

“Lastly, I am, as are many people at Grünenthal, incredibly passionate about ethical artificial intelligence. I've presented several keynotes on this and one thing I would say is that it's everyone's responsibility to ensure that any technological progression, whether it's artificial intelligence or otherwise, is done ethically and without bias – right from the very beginning of ideation. It's not something you can just drop in at the end of a general release. It needs to be wholeheartedly included at the very beginning, with a concerted effort to ensure that the necessary attention is invested throughout the entire creation lifecycle, of whichever type of solution is being created. Without this, there's no trust and we fall back into that holding pattern of people being scared of technology,

“IN TERMS OF INNOVATION, DOMO HAS ALSO HELPED US ACCELERATE OUR DATA SCIENCE JOURNEY”

with the notion of a sentient future just around the corner hanging over our heads, and people fearing that they've got no control over what's actually to come.

“We need to absolutely obliterate any notion of this fear by increasing visibility on what is being created, how it’s being created and educating people about how to avoid the solutions that are not being created responsibly. So in other words, we must ensure artificial intelligence is explainable from the get-go.”

On the topic of education and raising awareness about technology, Megan emphasises the importance of clear communication related to data science and ethical AI use because transparency is crucial to secure buyin across the company and beyond its walls.

“First and foremost, good and frequent communication is key,” insists Megan. “Enabling visibility over what's happening, why it's happening and how it's been done is also incredibly important. There is a disparity between what needs to be done and how it's done with technology. Bridging that gap, so that it’s less of a black box for people, really seems to help. From the technical and statistical standpoint, there’s a

lot of language and terminology that people are not necessarily aware of. Increasing visibility on that vocabulary helps not only with the understanding of how things are done, but also alleviates the fear that might come with the unknown. Each person will have their own level of data literacy. Even within the same company, you’re not going to have the same level of awareness or comprehension across every single department. Certain individuals and departments will understand the value of data and the benefits quicker and easier than others, it’s only natural. But the goal is to bring everyone on that one single journey so absolutely everyone understands the value of data.”

As Grünenthal embarked on its data journey in the past five years, Megan describes the importance of partnerships to the company’s innovation, operations and growth.

“Partners are paramount to us,” says Megan. “Here at Grünenthal, partner relationships are built on open conversations, trust and respect. One such partner that we've been working with for over three years now is Domo. They have helped us accelerate our move to a centralised data lake, as we were able to prove rapidly that a

centralised data repository was indeed beneficial for the business. What's more, our collaboration with Domo actually allowed us to embark on accelerated experimentation with individual countries as our markets were, and still are, able to easily and rapidly blend local datasets with global datasets. This has enabled a plethora of interesting reporting and analytical capabilities that weren't possible before.

“In terms of innovation, Domo has also helped us accelerate our data science journey, initially focusing on data science models that we borrowed from the CPG industry that also work really well in the pharmaceutical industry. In essence, these models allow us to look at our historical data to determine whether our communication channels are effective or not, for a specific brand or combination of markets, enabling the opportunity to dig down further or deeper into campaigns if we choose to do so.”

Even though the transformational data journey has been underway at Grünenthal for five years, Megan describes how this is just the beginning. So what does the future hold for Grünenthal?

“First and foremost, continuing our data journey is always

the objective,” says Megan.

“Enabling better and more intricate or advanced insights is where I'd love to see the business moving. Another goal is to ensure that there is easier access to the company data across every department. As a passionate advocate of data and technology, I will always champion the increased use of data science in general, for a variety of different purposes and in a range of different departments.

“Generative AI will also have a tremendous impact on things moving forward. There’s a tidal wave of change that’s coming and I firmly believe that there's tremendous potential for us to do things better and quicker, in ways that we never really thought possible before. In my opinion, we should welcome this opportunity with open arms. The way forward, for me, is artificial intelligence augmented human capabilities. So in other words, we will be using AI as a tool to help us in everyday life as well as in our working roles. And I can't wait to take things up a notch – bring it on!”

For more information about Grünenthal, visit the company’s website grunenthal.com.

EMBRACING AI

Megan highlights two resources related to artificial intelligence which have been particularly impactful for her that she highly recommends people check out.

“The first is The A.I. Dilemma, a video by the same people that created The Social Media Dilemma,” says Megan. “It is definitely worth a watch and it's eye-opening. Parts are a little bit doom and gloom, but there are some positive messages in there. It actually gives huge insight into things that are happening and why it's so important that we play a role in ensuring that AI solutions are built out responsibly.

“The second is titled 120 Mind-Blowing AI Tools. Each of these can help improve productivity, whether it’s in your professional or personal life. I've already started experimenting with some of these myself, just to see the kind of impact they can have – and it’s already helped reduce certain mundane and administrative activities that we all must do.”

Safety

Safety and cooperation: A digital aviation journey at the heart of the North Atlantic

Anna Björk Bjarnadóttir, Chief Service & Operations Officer at Isavia shares insights into how the corporation is harnessing technology and innovation to enhance its operations.

Overseeing all airports and air navigation in Iceland,

Isavia is a stateowned corporation that operates as a private entity on the market.

savia also coordinates the air traffic in Greenland and takes great pride in its important role in managing the air traffic in one of the world’s largest control areas, the North Atlantic.

Anna Björk Bjarnadóttir, Chief Service & Operations Officer at Isavia tells us how the corporation has balanced protecting safety and security priorities with introducing digital technology and innovation.

In her role, Anna primarily focuses on Keflavík International Airport (KEF) and is accountable for its licence of operation. She explains how KEF is a diverse operation, so a range of responsibilities falls within her remit – from the control tower and airport security to passenger services and airfield operations.

Anna and her team are the nexus for KEF, focusing on harnessing digital technology at the airport to enhance

operations while also collaborating with other subsidiaries of Isavia as a corporation that are responsible for different areas of the business.

“Aviation and airport operations have always relied heavily on technology,” says Anna. “But due to the high emphasis on safety and security, it has also been quite a conservative industry in many ways. For me, coming from the telco and IT industry where I've been for the past 20 years before I came to Isavia four years ago, it fascinated me how much potential there is to utilise digital technology alongside traditional airport technology.

“Safety and security are the foundation of everything we do at our airports. With airport technology on one hand and digital innovation on the other, as in other industries, those two have to merge at some point – and to greater extents.

“At Isavia, we have found that we need to address technology more holistically than before. We embarked on a journey to advance our IT technology and digitalisation as a corporation to advance our operations as a whole.

“The first important step for us happened four years ago, which was to elevate the IT and digitalisation agendas by putting a CIO on the executive table. Creating the CIO role ensured that our decision-making would always include those aspects. From there, we have been slowly involving IT and digitalisation more and more in our strategies. Today, four years later, we are in the midst of finalising our digitalisation strategy, after having finished the revamp of our entire business strategy review.”

Anna emphasises that digital innovation and technological transformation have been great enablers at Isavia in the past four years, in particular as catalysts for creating a seamless, collaborative working environment. Anna focuses on changes at Keflavík International Airport (KEF) to demonstrate the broader company strategy.

“Two of the main pillars in our new strategy for KEF have been included for the first time,” says Anna. “The first focuses on the airport community as a whole and the second involves smart solutions, including digitalisation.

“We had never really embraced the airport ecosystem or the

airport community as part of our strategy in the past, because Isavia only constitutes 15% of all employees at the airport. We are only a small part of all the staff running the airport. But as we redefined our business strategy, we soon realised how intrinsic we are in all the processes at KEF so it made abundant sense to embrace our role as an enabler, rather than just a landlord.

“This shift demanded a lot of change within our organisation and how we approached our complex chain of operations, but it has been worth it. We had to change the mindset and behaviour of the company totally –top down and bottom up.

“Our first steps within the airport community pillar of our new strategy

“Two of the main pillars in our new strategy for KEF have been included for the first time. The first focuses on the airport community as a whole and the second involves smart solutions, including digitalisation”

Anna Björk Bjarnadóttir, Chief Service

& Operations Officer at Isavia

involved changing our company culture. This might appear unrelated to the other major pillar of smart solutions, but it was the company culture shift which enabled us to embrace digitalisation and new IT technology. They are interconnected.

“We have been on a two-year journey for this cultural transformation, investing time, money and our souls into it. It has been the foundation for the radical change needed to pull the airport ecosystem together and achieve our vision for KEF.

“So far we have already seen huge changes and, most promisingly and pleasantly, positive feedback from our main partners in the airport community. Enabling the entire KEF ecosystem is fertile ground for

further innovation, progress and achievement.

“Now we have built that airport community as the foundation (and we are still in the middle of that journey) we are turning towards and finalising our digitalisation strategy within the broader business strategy as the second new pillar.

“We are incredibly fortunate to have a lot of innovative and forwardthinking people in our team at Isavia. Together we have already implemented a lot of solutions that have moved us forward with our digitalisation and IT transformation.”

Anna highlights several digitalisation and tech projects at KEF which have revolutionised the services and operations of the airport and Isavia as a corporation.

“Veovo’s Live Passenger Forecasting is a prime example,” says Anna. “We were the first airport to adopt this technology which enables live passenger forecasting when COVID-19 hit in 2020. Veovo’s solution prevents airport crowding and improves capacity planning – it was invaluable for us during the COVID-19 period when there were new air traffic patterns and changing passenger behaviours. We could no longer depend on plans that were based only on historical patterns. We needed more real-time

information to be able to change and execute capacity planning in near-real time.

“By partnering with Veovo and deploying their solution, it's helped us accelerate the return to preCOVID-19 passenger levels much faster than we anticipated.”

On the topic of COVID-19, Anna describes how Isavia spent the months of lockdowns and travel restrictions to regather, plan ahead and work on projects that would be more complex to deploy with airports operating at full capacity.

“In the years leading up to 2020, the number of passengers going through KEF grew 20% to 40% year on year,” says Anna. “By 2018 we had 10 million passengers cross our doors, which actually exceeded the capacity of the terminal.

“We were operating in what I call ‘space debt’. We had a master plan to develop and increase the capacity of the airport, but of course that halted in the first month of the COVID-19 pandemic. Fortunately, despite a massive drop in income during COVID-19, we were very fortunate to secure funding for the airport expansion project.

“After setting in motion heavy construction at the terminal on one hand, we also needed to focus our attention on being

“Veovo’s solution prevents airport crowding and improves capacity planning – it was invaluable for us

during the COVID-19

period when there were new air

traffic patterns and changing passenger behaviours” able to receive all these additional passengers and aircraft movements. So closely connected to the physical infrastructure expansion at KEF was the concurrent digital development of a total airport management system.

“A total airport management concept has several components. There is the Airport Operation Control Centre (APOC), the airport operation plan,

Considering AI transformation?

Veovo customers are already doing it

Airports are complex. It takes coordination between many parties to make sure flights and passengers depart on time. Meet Veovo’s Intelligent Airport Platform, relied on by Isavia, and 140 other airports, to join up data and decisions.

Veovo’s AI powered tech gives airports a smarter and more e cient way to manage check in, security, aircraft parking, immigration and baggage reclaim. So passengers can go brilliantly.

Learn more

and other dynamics including airportwide collaborative decision-making to improve the efficiency and the resilience of airport operations.

“The total airport management concept helps us optimise the use of resources and improve the predictability of air traffic and airport operations. To sculpt the new concept, the first thing we did during

“Based on the airport intelligence we learned at Brussels Airport, they were able to assist and advise us in the analysis, planning and scoping of our APOC project with its multiple components”

COVID-19 was to merge our existing control centres – one being the security control centre and the other being the terminal operation control centre.

“We installed and implemented the new Airport Operation Control (APOC) centre to streamline how KEF works as a whole. But before deploying the change, we visited a lot of European

airports that have been at the forefront in this field such as Oslo Airport, Schiphol Airport and Brussels Airport.

“Based on the operational expertise and knowledge we experienced at Brussels Airport, we got their Airport Intelligence consultants to assist and advise us in the analysis, planning and scoping of our project with its multiple components.

Our goal is simple

Using the wealth of knowledge and operational excellence of Brussels Airport, we want to support our clients in achieving their full operational potential with a proven set of methodologies and solutions

What we do

Offering

“The implementation of the APOC project was the first step and the foundation in our introduction of a total airport management concept and it turned out to be more important than we could have imagined during COVID-19. With all the coordination of passenger testing and new elements that had to be added to the airport during the pandemic, but also on top of the challenges arising from Iceland’s notorious adverse weather conditions, we really relied on the APOC to help us forecast proactively and rise to challenging circumstances before us.”

Within the second pillar of transformation at Isavia to deploy

smart solutions, Anna adds that artificial intelligence has grown in importance to the company’s service and operations department.

“AI is still in its early days when it comes to general operations, but at the same time it’s- moving at supersonic speed, and good AI professionals are few and far between,” says Anna. “I came from an IT company before I joined Isavia and even there we found it hard to source the right talent. But we have started our AI journey with all the help we can get. Our partnership with Veovo implementing their intelligent Queue Balancer solution to optimise passenger flow and improve the transfer passenger experience

through border control is a prime example.

“Veovo’s software is AIdriven and highly intelligent in the way that it calculates the most suitable line for passengers based on factors such as wait times, occupancy and processing speed to maximise throughput while also prioritising the specific passenger categories if the queue time exceeds a given service level target, for example. For us, this is a solution at the forefront in AI and it's really exciting to see it improving operations, especially with everything back in motion after the COVID-19 period.”

Here Anna reiterates that much of the digital innovation and technological transformation at Isavia would not be possible without strategic partnerships and the close collaboration arising from them.

“Collaboration is the foundation of transformation, it’s been at the core of redefining our strategy in the past few years,” says Anna. “Ultimately, we are only a small part of the whole ecosystem of Iceland’s airports and air traffic control, so partnerships are fundamental to us. This

“by working with partners like Frequentis, we are automating the surface movement surveillance process so we can operate much more safely and efficiently in low-visibility situations than we have done before”

stretches beyond our direct strategic partners in the airport ecosystem, we need to rely on professionals from outside our network.

“As we continue our work enhancing the capacity of Keflavík International Airport, one of the biggest related projects is to upgrade our surveillance systems in conjunction with the expansion. For a large proportion of the year, we have low visibility and adverse weather conditions

at the airport, which restrict the movement of aircraft. But by working with partners like Frequentis, we are automating the surface movement surveillance process so we can operate much more safely and efficiently in low-visibility situations than we have done before.

“Frequentis already help us by integrating our space-based surveillance data sources with the ground-based infrastructure

A decade of pioneering arctic air traffic solutions

Frequentis is proud to have been supporting Isavia with the vast airspace over Iceland and Greenland, providing them with cutting-edge air traffic solutions for the last decade. We look forward to continuing this journey to redefine arctic airspace efficiency and safety together.

Partnering with ISAVIA Ohf, Keflavík International Airport for more than two decades

Insero Air Traffic Solutions

- designs, implements and delivers intelligent and cost-effective software solutions for airports and Air Navigation Service Providers.

Our solutions are built on more than 40 years of experience in digital transformation in air traffic management, developing innovative, sustainable and reliable software solutions.

Insero AviSky - One data platform, supporting remote tower, SWIM and smarter airport operations

With a single-consolidated data view across systems, Insero AviSky enables you to unlock the business potential of your data for remote tower integration, smarter airport operations and SWIM, supporting a data-driven and fully digitised future.

Insero AviCast - The new standard in ATIS/VOLMET solutions

Whether for (D-)ATIS and/or (D-)VOLMET and whether for one or multiple aerodromes, Insero AviCast is the state-of-the art solution supporting your needs into the future.

Insero SERIS - Terminal/Route Charges and Air Traffic Analysis solution

Offers advanced consolidation and analysis of flight data, air traffic density, while optimising revenue streams, digitalisation of charging processes, cost recovery including interfacing the EUROCONTROL CRCO system.

Read more about these and our other solutions at www.inseroats.com.

“Our partners Insero specialise in air traffic solutions and have really helped us in collecting, handling, editing and presenting meteorological information at Keflavík airport”

consisting of radars, ADS-B ground stations and mulitlateration, as well as providing IP-based voice communications for uninterrupted air traffic operation.

“Adjusting to adverse visibility and weather conditions is a big part of our operation and the APOC control centre helps us coordinate when they are at play. Our partners Insero specialise in air traffic solutions and

have really helped us in collecting, handling, editing and presenting meteorological information at Keflavík airport. Insero provides us with a variety of weather sensor systems that deliver incredibly reliable, real-time information, which is essential for coordinating the incoming and departing aeroplanes alongside our snow removal team. Insero has played an instrumental role in implementing an integrated

tower solution for collecting and handling all the relevant weather and visibility data for us.”

Weather and visibility data are crucial for operations at Keflavík, but beyond these meteorological insights, Anna explains that real-time data distribution across all partners in the airport community is another top priority for Isavia.

“Keflavík airport is such a diverse workplace, with so many parts of the value chain having to work together,” says Anna. “We're all working with our specific data and we haven't done enough to merge those insights to date. If there are different datasets telling different stories, not only can this be complicated, but in an airport setting it can become dangerous.

“As such we have worked to adapt our central data warehouse to form the core of the airport operations, so we can expand it to be the transparent data source for the whole airport, promoting end-to-end, seamless visibility.”

To learn more about Isavia, visit isavia.is.

ADDED VALUE

Organic career development

In the early days of her career, Anna was enrolled in a fine art academy and wanted to be a painter. But she changed direction to study sports science since she had been a sports fan and competed in them for her whole life.

“I happened to find myself in business accidentally,” shares Anna. “I’ve been there for the past 30 years, and I’ve always embraced organic career progression rather than a planned approach.”

Human interaction as underlying motivation

“My philosophy is based on human interaction,” says Anna. “That's why I'm so absorbed by the cultural transformation journey that we’re exploring at Isavia. I'm fascinated by exploring what makes people tick and helps them achieve their goals. And It’s the common denominator and passion which I’ve always nurtured in my career – it keeps me going. How do teams work? Why don't they work? How do we meet obstacles along the way?

“I was a leadership and management consultant for many years, working with several different companies spanning multiple sectors and industries. All these businesses had different problems they wanted to solve, but when I look back, the main challenge underneath them all was human interaction – whether this was related to communication, collaboration or management.

“I firmly believe that human interaction is the key to success and must be the foundation before we can begin to work on other priorities like digitalisation or innovation.”

Events

Anna is thrilled to be attending the Passenger Terminal Expo 2024 in Frankfurt, Germany.

“I really look forward to meeting my colleagues in the industry at PTE 2024,” says Anna. “The aviation industry is incredibly generous with sharing experience and insights in the spirit of cooperation, and I can’t wait to attend.”

EMPOWERMENT THROUGH EMBRACING NEW IDEAS

TO DRIVE BRAND PARTNERSHIP: TRANSFORMATION

Laricea Ioana Roman-Halliday, former Head of Marketing - Dorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis at Boohoo Group, on catalysing the company’s innovative customer engagement strategies in partnership with Branch.

ounded in 2006, Boohoo Group

PLC is a leading British online fashion group home to a portfolio of 13 brands.

Stemming from the vision of Mahmud Kamani and Carol Kane, Boohoo Group is one of the fastest-growing fashion businesses in the world. The group is passionate about producing fabulous clothes for everyone, everywhere. Its broader mission? To become a global leader in fashion e-commerce in a way that respects its people, customers, suppliers, stakeholders and the world around us.

Laricea Ioana Roman-Halliday, former Head of MarketingDorothy Perkins, Burton and Wallis at Boohoo Group joins us to discuss how the companies she was looking after transformed its engagement strategies when it transitioned some of its major brands from brick-and-mortar outlets to e-commerce platforms.

In particular, we focus on Laricea’s experience when she oversaw the new app development for Dorothy Perkins, one of the biggest household names in British fashion, working closely with

Branch as an intrinsic strategic partner on the project.

In her role, Laricea headed up the marketing for Wallis, Burton and Dorothy Perkins – three major UK household brands which Boohoo Group bought from the Arcadia Group in 2021 for £25m.

“Shortly before I started at Boohoo, all the physical locations for the three brands I oversaw had been closed down and the focus switched to their online presence while becoming strictly e-commerce players,” begins Laricea. “So the biggest task I had as Head of Marketing was not about awareness because they were already household names. Instead, the top priority was to remind people that we still exist. Many shoppers assumed these brands disappeared and that was the most challenging thing from a marketing perspective.

“Usually when you join a brand, the focus is driving awareness and sales. But here, we needed to get customers back into consideration mode, re-establish a relationship with existing loyal customers in a new context without physical locations and also attract new customers in a fast-paced, competitive fashion industry.

“I joined Boohoo in January 2021 when the group was very much transitioning towards an appfocused approach and diversified channels, while also trying to consolidate the whole measurement

“IT BECAME CLEAR THAT AND WOULD SHOP MORE BUSINESS CASE TO DRIVE

and attribution aspects of the company. Meanwhile, we were trying to consolidate the brands in terms of partners and knowledge sharing.

“Before, there wasn’t much cooperation between brands because they used to function on their own, which is fair enough since they have completely different target audiences. But the beauty of Boohoo Group is the fact that we have a brand for everyone.

“So we started on a great journey of

THAT APP USERS WERE A LOT MORE ENGAGED MORE OFTEN, PRESENTING A COMPELLING DRIVE MORE DOWNLOADS OF OUR APPS”

bringing them all together, sharing more knowledge and making apps the absolute focus for all of them.”

Laricea explains how this transformational journey hinged on moving away from established ways of operating at Boohoo Group, in particular by placing less emphasis on high-profile partnerships with big names in the industry and leaning into discovering fresh, cost-effective ways to drive new audiences. Embracing digital innovation and technological transformation

were crucial components of this endeavour and Laricea highlights creating the new Dorothy Perkins app as demonstrative of this major strategy shift for the company.

“We started talking more and more about products and app growth as the central point of our brands,” recalls Laricea. “We looked at the data and customers who had the app spent on average seven times more than customers who didn't. It became clear that app users were a lot more engaged and would shop

more often, presenting a compelling business case to drive more downloads of our apps.

“When I first joined, there was a lot of focus on traditional approaches like partnerships and offline events for the brands I was looking after. There wasn't a lot of innovation in digital strategy, but there were promising deployments of paid search, paid social and affiliates even if there wasn't a lot of focus on them.

“The first thing I did was look at the data in terms of what was performing well in relation to the clear business KPIs of driving sales, increasing customer consideration and becoming top of mind for our target audiences.

“So in terms of driving sales, we were spending a lot of the budget on paid social channels. However, the channels that were actually driving sales were affiliates and paid search. We turned the budget upside down, significantly cut paid social and invested it into affiliates. As we looked more and more towards affiliates, we also started utilising proper tracking attribution, taking into consideration one of the biggest issues in fashion: returns.

“Product returns is the hottest topic since the COVID-19 pandemic because people were unable to physically go to shops and try clothes on. Customers started ordering two or three items online

in multiple sizes, sending back the ones that didn’t fit or they no longer wanted.

“This trend poses a huge problem when it comes to marketing efficiencies, because if you look at the channel to gauge how it is performing and you only take into account media costs, you only know how much it costs you to run the campaigns. You would get a very skewed picture of what's working and what's not working.

“So in this instance, social media looked like it was performing well since it was driving sales at volume because the pool of people we targeted was so large. However, when we started taking into account

returns and the other costs involved, social media was a money-losing exercise.

“But with the other channels like affiliates and paid search, this was not the case. So I moved the budget around and I looked at social media from a different perspective. We shifted the focus of social media from driving sales to increasing awareness and consideration at the top of the funnel, reminding people that we’re still here.

“Once we started doing that, we realised that we had a lot more space to grow because our cost per acquisition had gone down massively by taking social media out of the equation.”

Laricea emphasises how the crucial lesson from a digital perspective was Boohoo needed to look at other business metrics apart from media costs which factored in aspects like physical product returns. This catalysed and empowered further transition from traditional channels to new digital channels, particularly with paid search and affiliates.

“For instance, with affiliates, it was the only channel where we would pay them after the 30-day limit for returns,” says Laricea. “Affiliates rose to prominence as a channel where we could safely invest money knowing that we were actually seeing true conversion costs, because if someone returned a product within 30 days, we knew we

weren’t paying the affiliates for that conversion. As a group, we started consolidating and improving our deals while simultaneously improving our measurement and tracking of affiliates and paid search, which yielded fabulous results and massive growth.”

Laricea explains that marketing departments operate in a context of budget cuts and rising expectations, so while the progress with affiliates and paid search was promising there was more work to do innovating Dorothy Perkin’s digital strategy –which led Laricea and her team to focus on the company brand’s apps and work closely with Branch.

“In the past five years, people have

“BRANCH HAS BEEN FUNDAMENTAL IN OUR INITIATIVE TO INCREASE NEW APP DOWNLOADS AND INCREASE APP USAGE FOR THOSE PEOPLE WHO ALREADY HAVE IT DOWNLOADED”

drifted away from established digital channels like social media where the conversion rates are tumbling but costs are spiralling higher,” says Laricea. “So we started looking for fresh ideas and new strategies and this is where

our strategic partnership with Branch began.

“My appreciation for the importance of apps emerged from my previous role at a gambling company where everything took place in the app. But at Boohoo, Branch stepped in with some enlightening educational pieces on the advantages of growing your app organically to drive sales and revenue. This entails having the right infrastructure, tracking data deeply and connecting the app to related endeavours like social media strategy – among many other complex factors.

“We started working with Branch initially on optimising our social

media strategy where they helped us develop it as a consideration channel. But our partnership has blossomed from there and Branch has helped us refine our approach to tracking events, driving people towards downloading the app and running campaigns using web-to-app smart banner adverts on our websites. We have seen some tremendous responses in the process.

“Branch has been fundamental in our initiative to increase new app downloads and increase app usage for those people who already have it downloaded. They helped us refine the UX, for instance, by changing the user journey so that when they receive an email from us, rather than go into a browser, they are taken straight into the app because we knew they would spend more and be a lot more engaged. Branch enabled us to track all of these journeys through deep linking – from clicking on an email to getting to the app, or from clicking on social media to go into the app store. This helped us track and truly understand the impact of our campaigns.

“The partnership with Branch evolved into something bigger when we faced budget cuts in the marketing department and needed to explore innovative, organic approaches.

“The conversations started turning towards new ways to develop and grow the Dorothy Perkins app,

seeking ways to drive sales within it and on mobile phones. We knew our audience for Dorothy Perkins spent a lot of time on mobile devices, so it became the clear target device for us.

“This started the discussion in Branch around organic growth and working smarter with our channels. We rolled this sentiment into all the channels we have. Beyond the app, mobile website and social channels the next natural step was email.

“We've got a huge database of very loyal users, who we wanted to keep onboard, and we wanted to engage more with them. But a lot of them did not have the app. Creating banners within emails was a no-brainer. It’s an easy step to take but if you don't have deep linking and you're not able to track its usefulness dwindles. So we started working with Branch on the email side of our engagement, to create a deep link from our emails to the app.

“For the loyal users who already had the app, we focused on the customer journey. So if they clicked on an email banner that said dresses under £30, they would be taken straight in the app to the section of dresses under £30. By working with Branch we created a seamless user experience, rather than a broken one I myself often see as a customer where I'm clicking on an email banner that is taking me to the app – but it's taking me to the homepage rather than a relevant page.

“A seamless user experience with email was again, another tactic that we deployed with Branch that worked fantastically well to get people to download the app but also to nurture our relationships with loyal customers.”

Another piece of the puzzle for Boohoo’s transformation of its marketing and digital engagement strategies was to focus on SEO, according to Laricea.

“We tapped into the power of SEO, a new frontier for Boohoo Group,” says Laricea. “We worked with Branch to track SEO as a fixed cost investment, with the goals of having better visibility and measuring down funnel events. A refreshed approach to SEO drove more app downloads and brand visibility, but we also realised in the journey that SEO opens up new audiences in a very cost-effective manner. Obviously, it doesn't happen overnight. But we hired a dedicated team for the brands that started working on an SEO strategy, which has already shown some excellent results in a short time.”

After transforming several in-house marketing strategies and channels with Branch, Laricea relays how the focus then turned outwards to influencer marketing.

“We had never been able to track influencer marketing before,” admits Laricea. “There was very little control over how it performed or

how it worked, and we relied on the influencers to provide us with data –but these were not always the most useful insights.

“By working with Branch and again creating deep links, we started amplifying the brand with influencer partnerships. However, the difference was we now had an accurate measurement and attribution system in place while also driving a high ROI.

“For instance, we shifted the approach to influencer posts with links to a certain outfit. We designed the process to take people either straight to the mobile web showing the actual outfit, the relevant part of the app or the app store if they did not have it downloaded.

“We also ran several campaigns with influencers encouraging people to

download the app through bio links which was very helpful.”

But the strategic partnership with Branch was not limited to digital strategy, it expanded into Dorothy Perkin’s offline channels as well, reiterates Laricea.

“We wanted to bridge the gap between offline and online channels,” explains Laricea. “Historically, we used a lot of traditional channels, for example, out of home, magazines and the press. Before working with Branch, we would never have been able to measure the impact of offline channels or go beyond them as a pure awareness or consideration endeavour.

“However, they encouraged us to start including QR codes to bridge

“THEY (BRANCH) ENCOURAGED US TO START INCLUDING QR CODES TO BRIDGE THE ONLINE/OFFLINE GAP WHICH, WHILE A SEEMINGLY SIMPLE IDEA, WAS AN INCREDIBLY RELEVANT AND EASY WAY FOR US TO

GET PEOPLE TO DOWNLOAD THE APP”

the online/offline gap which, while a seemingly simple idea, was an incredibly relevant and easy way for us to get people to download the app. But with the deep linking innovation Branch helped us deploy, we knew exactly how many people encountered specific offline campaigns and converted into new app users.

“It was a very clean but also costeffective way of driving our digital channels and assets.”

Reflecting on her experience working with Branch and the partnership more broadly, Laricea lauds the positive collaborative relationship forged between the two companies.

“It is an absolute pleasure to work with Branch,” beams Laricea. “We would put innovation calls in place

which were separate from our weekly performance calls. They would come up with the most amazing ideas in terms of what we could do next. They are super innovative and our partnership with Branch had a huge business impact. As a client, we were always incredibly open-minded to new ideas because that’s part of who we are at Boohoo Group. We could depend on Branch to provide innovative suggestions for where to go next.”

So what does the future hold for Boohoo Group in the years to come?

Laricea stresses the importance of artificial intelligence within the fashion industry.

“Using AI to create an even better user experience for shoppers will be key,” predicts Laricea. “AI will be invaluable for enhancing customer relations,

whether that’s by answering their questions in detail, improving product descriptions or refining the returns process.

“I’m particularly excited by the prospect of AI helping to tell the rich stories of the products we offer to our customers. Many of our clothes have beautiful processes behind them, such as hand-drawn designs and ethical production methods, which we’re incredibly proud to share. But we have millions of products and AI could help us tell the history of the products, more efficiently and effectively.

“I also think AI will help enhance the shopping user experience by providing videos showcasing products as they’d fit on various body shapes, to see how that item of clothing looks on different people. There's a burgeoning trend for diversity in the fashion industry and AI could be a powerful tool in perpetuating this worthwhile progress.

“Lastly, I think for the fashion industry in the next couple of years there is exciting, innovative potential in harnessing the power of AI for on-site and in-app improvements. We should aim to improve the user journey, but also enhance our marketing campaigns – to make them better, more interesting, with more variety and personalisation at their very core.”

For further information about Boohoo Group, visit boohooplc.com.

KEEPING A FINGER ON THE PULSE

Fashion is a fast-moving industry and Laricea loves staying on top of the latest and greatest trends.

“Podcasts are an excellent way to keep up with industry developments and I highly recommend the Business of Apps, Marketing in the Madness and The eCommerce Customer Experience which are all fascinating, insightful listens,” says Laricea. “Business of Apps is a fantastic podcast, anyone interested in apps like me should give them a listen. Marketing in the Madness helps listeners keep abreast of the latest developments and discussions, helping them constantly improve and innovate as marketeers. The eCommerce Customer Experience covers all sorts of interesting topics relevant for people working in the e-commerce industry.

“I also follow Adweek and their webinars are all available on demand, which are exceptionally useful and you can watch them at your own pace and convenience.

“Beyond these more professional resources, I also love reading The Week because it gives you a very objective point of view on current affairs.”

HEALTHY BODY AND MIND

“I use the Calm app to meditate three times a day, even if they’re only short spells of five minutes,” says Laricea. “Meditation is very useful as a way of resetting, especially when we all lead such busy lives. A brief meditation or breathing session can be enough to see the world with a completely different view.

“I exercise at home using the Joe Wicks Body Coach and Les Mills apps. These are both super convenient and affordable, so if you don’t have a lot of time or budget you can still exercise and keep fit.”

SHARING KNOWLEDGE

Laricea wrote A Brand’s Purpose… Less Unicorn, more Zebra? during the COVID-19 pandemic. The book looks at businesses that have failed but then turned things around and thrived by starting with a purpose: redefining their brands.

“With A Brand’s Purpose, I was making the point that you can be very successful as a company without it costing the earth,” says Laricea. “And for every book sold, there’s a tree planted!”

Providing a one-stop shop for home contracts

Ambre Exposito, Chief Operations Officer & Chief Resilience Innovation Officer of Selectra on the technology and strategy behind the company’s comparison service spanning several verticals.

started as two friends and today the company around the world.

electra provides a comprehensive home contracts comparison service for its B2C customers, from energy and telecom packages to insurance, finance and subscription services – alongside a growing B2B provision.

Prioritising personalised and effective advice, Selectra takes tremendous pride in helping people navigate the crowded marketplace for household contracts, informing its customers of the latest offerings and, importantly, saving them money in the process.

Ambre Exposito, Chief Operations Officer & Chief Resilience Innovation Officer of Selectra joins us to discuss the company’s ambition to become the leading platform to compare and subscribe for home contracts.

Selectra’s business model is free to end customers and commercialisation arises from service providers paying commissions on successful transactions, explains Ambre.

“Our customer needs are incredibly diverse across all our verticals and our goal is to provide the best advice we can and orientate them to the best offers,” says Ambre. “Predominantly, we serve B2C customers, but we also have a B2B department. Our value chain has two major strengths differentiating us from competitors and our success arises from the simplicity of our value chain.

“First, we attract a large volume of inbound lead generation through our SEO and SEA strategies which has allowed us to grow year on year. Our second strength is our service and it has two sub-layers: we take our informative role incredibly seriously and we strive to save money for the customers we serve. When people come to us with queries or problems it is our priority to ease pain points and resolve issues effectively, while lowering their costs in the process.

“A lot of people are still really afraid of changing suppliers or not being

with the historical suppliers, so what we try to do is inform customers of the realities of the markets.”

Ambre and her team focus on taking the sales dynamic of Selectra and innovating operations, not in terms of the lead generation side but instead exploring how to monetise the capacity of lead generation.

“To do this we keep our mission in mind,” says Ambre. “As mentioned, this is to inform the customer, solve their pain points and save money. Another aspect is to support the transition to a more sustainable future by finding providers who offer renewable energy, for instance.

“Underlying our mission and sustainability priority is a trustful connection with our customers. Sometimes there might be vendors who offer excellent commission potential, but we always ensure that they are competitive for our customers and meet our values before we then consider the economic implications of their arrangement with us.”

As Chief Operating Officer, Ambre oversees the sales operations and business development dynamic of the company with more than 350 colleagues in her team divided across the company’s main verticals. Ambre oversees the structure and strategy behind the sales of these teams to help them work effectively and efficiently.

In tandem, Ambre is the Chief Resilience Officer of Selectra. This side of her role arose from a discussion with Xavier Pinon, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Selectra, related to the rapid growth of Selectra in recent years and the employee demographic. As a relatively new company with strong year-on-year growth and a young, talented and internationally-minded employee base, Ambre identified a limiter on the development and growth at Selectra. Colleagues were enthusiastic and had excellent ideas, but they lacked the mechanisms or structures to introduce these fresh perspectives in a context of rapid growth. So Ambre successfully suggested building an

innovation department to develop an innovation strategy.

“In September 2022, I launched the innovation department business unit within the company,” says Ambre. “It started with a simple employee feedback mechanism and has grown organically from there. With these ideas and feedback in mind, we developed an innovation strategy for Selectra and decided to onboard two promising projects which we believe will change the future of the company.

“We are currently in an exploration mode where we test hypotheses for success with considered metrics,

“Underlying our mission and sustainability priority is a trustful connection with our customers”

Ambre Exposito, Chief Operations Officer & Chief Resilience Innovation Officer

before transitioning into an exploitation mode where we then deploy the new projects.”

The first innovation project at Selectra is exploring a shift in the company’s current business model. Lead generation is fundamental to Selectra’s commercial success but with constant new developments in fields like SEO or artificial intelligence and related customer drivers, the company must be agile and proactive on this frontier.

“If leads don’t arrive, we don’t survive,” summarises Ambre. “We cannot entirely depend on our SEO ranking since the algorithms could change drastically in the coming years and have a huge impact on sales.”

Ambre highlights the example of the recent energy crisis which meant the cost of acquisition per customer and the spiralling costs of the products

themselves meant the sales for this vertical plummeted.

In light of this, the innovation department at Selectra pivoted towards exploring and developing cross-selling functionality in the sales teams. The energy team turned its attention to other related products such as additional sales, so even if the sales of energy products were low the incoming revenue increased elsewhere.

The second innovation project at Selectra related to inbound calls, explains Ambre.

“Like many companies, we have struggled with being understaffed even in the sales teams,” says Ambre. “This dynamic combined with the huge volume of inbound calls we receive from customers or potential customers meant we were missing sales opportunities.

“But in the past two years, we have made a concerted effort to redefine our inbound calls strategy so we now address nearly all of our inbound calls.

“The transformation of our inbound call strategy did not stop at significantly lowering the rate of missed calls, it extended and developed beyond this to include increasing the retention rate and customer loyalty levels.

“We have developed several initiatives based on customer interviews, so

our strategies are deeply rooted in a customer-centric approach. By doing so we are developing our brand even further, to become the go-to company for all things related to household contracts and subscriptions – not just today, but with an eye on tomorrow as well.”

Beyond these two projects, Ambre stresses the increasing role of artificial intelligence within the innovation department at Selectra.

“Predominantly, we love doing things by ourselves,” says Ambre. “We are not the type of company that will externalise our evolution. But if we see new technologies or ways of operating outside Selectra, we ask ourselves how we can do it better in a relevant way for our brand and mission. Sometimes this entails partnering with companies to work together on these dynamics but build them in a way that is specific to us –for instance with AI.”

Selectra is developing an AI-driven solution called Coach which is focused on the compliance side of the business.

“It’s a great tool to assist our compliance department so they operate comprehensively and extensively,” says Ambre. “AI is hugely important as it assists us with ensuring perfect compliance but also in related areas like training, improving customer relationships and even seemingly small but incredibly

“At Selectra, the integration of more AI models is streamlining our processes and creating new opportunities”

important details like the tone of our phone calls.”

Here Ambre introduces her colleague Alexandre Bouju, Tech Lead for CRM and Telephony of Selectra, to elaborate on the use of AI at the company.

“At Selectra, the integration of more AI models is streamlining our processes and creating new opportunities,” says Alexandre. “Many processes have

been redefined and expanded to explore new possibilities.

“A significant breakthrough for us is gaining access to high-quality transcriptions of our calls. Large Language models (LLMs) then assist us in leveraging this new content to implement various validations for quality purposes.

“Our quality department agents now work more efficiently, allowing them

Alexandre Bouju, Tech Lead for CRM and Telephony

“I have been at Selectra for eight years and Zoho has been a fundamental partner during my time here and will be into the future”

to focus on what they enjoy most in their roles: providing advice and making a real impact on the quality of our work.

“Additionally, we utilise trained models to predict the volume of calls we'll receive throughout the day, enhancing our team planning strategies.

“Furthermore, we are actively developing a virtual agent whose role will be to welcome our customers and inquire about the reason for their call. The intention behind the

call is promptly transcribed and categorised, ensuring that the call is directed to the appropriate department. This not only enhances customer satisfaction but also improves our conversion rate.

“In conclusion, the repercussions of the revolution in the field of AI have a direct impact on our processes, their cost and their scope of action.”

On the topic of partnerships, Ambre highlights the crucial importance of Selectra’s Customer Relationship

When value is hard to find, Zoho makes it easy

want

Management (CRM) platform, provided by Zoho.

“I have been at Selectra for eight years and Zoho has been a fundamental partner during my time here and will be into the future,” says Ambre.

“Zoho’s platform is crucial to our operations as a central database but also a facilitator for our agents – it is a wonderful source of information and opportunities which helps us thrive.

“We are a relatively young company as are Zoho, which works very well for us. We like to work with people who are also in the development phase since we can collaborate organically on new features and they

can adjust to our business needs. We love that flexibility from Zoho. But more than this, with well-established companies that have grown beyond the development phase you can be trapped by their provisions and also the elevated costs that come with them. With Zoho, we have a valued partner that we know we can grow with, securing tremendous value at an affordable price. Partnering with Zoho has been a super smart choice and we have a special relationship with them.”

At Selectra, partnerships have been important to the company’s internal operations and technology, but also in relation to the providers its customers ultimately choose. Here Ambre introduces her colleague

“In France, the energy market has suffered various successive crises forcing us to reinvent ourselves and our approach to provider partnerships,” says Camille. “For instance, the global COVID-19 pandemic froze all French moves for several months and then, more recently, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine caused great instabilities in the energy supply markets. This had the direct impact of suspending the acquisition of new customers for most eligible energy suppliers in France.

“Selectra was able to overcome these difficulties thanks to an increasingly

Camille Servanton, Commercial and Business Director of Selectra to explain more.

Camille Servanton, Commercial and Business Director

“We offer our customers a more complete and therefore more relevant contract subscription service with extensive coverage in the contracts market which directly benefits from our robust partnership strategy”

efficient SEO (natural referencing) acquisition and the fact we have always had a strategy of working closely with all our energy suppliers and other contract providers – which has left doors open for us, unlike many of our competitors.

“We offer our customers a more complete and therefore more relevant contract subscription service with extensive coverage in the contracts market which directly benefits from our robust partnership strategy.”

Wrapping up our conversation, Ambre reflects on her journey with Selectra where she started as a Junior Manager, rising to the positions of Chief Operations Officer and Chief Resilience Officer today. In those nine years, scaling the company has required energy and intention, alongside a developing leadership style that has grown with the company, explains Ambre.

“From a human side of the business, it can be challenging to scale through

different growth phases,” says Ambre. “People, skills, tools, data and structure are essential to any company. But when you scale, you must adapt these dynamics to prepare you for the next stage because you are heading into the unknown. These moments offer huge opportunities for people to adapt and grow when they transition through these phases, and it is about recognising their strengths during the changes. It can be challenging from a human perspective, but with the right management and leadership style from the top of the company at Selectra, we have been able to make our people feel part of the story and trajectory of the company by wielding sympathy, empathy and clear communication about where we are going and why.

“It has been a beautiful journey to see Selectra evolve in terms of expanding into new verticals and global geographies, developing our customer service provision but especially in terms of the people we have here – it has been incredibly rewarding.”

For more information about Selectra, visit selectra.com.

ADDED VALUE

Teamwork and collaboration

Ambre emphasises that the growth, transformation, innovation and success at Selectra would not be possible without the hard work and dedication of all the teams across the company. One of her major sources of pride during her time at Selectra has been the high retention rates for hiring at the company.

“Underpinning the scalability and growth of Selectra has been the people, but also the unifying mindset and values we enshrine in how we operate – humility, excellence and kindness permeate how we work every day,” says Ambre. “It’s great to work in such an environment where ideas and contributions are welcomed with open arms. We learn from each other and by building together, we move forward together.”

Wanderlust

For Ambre, travelling has been an incredibly insightful and educational experience. She celebrates how Selectra has supported her travels with flexibility and trust.

“Travel is like oxygen for my brain,” says Ambre. “Whether you think about how it refines your empathetic social skills and cultural awareness, helps you build bridges and make connections or even serves as a space to foster creative thinking and find fresh new ideas, I deeply value the opportunity to travel and explore.

“Travel is my hobby, but it is so much more than this, and I recommend people embrace it for the self-knowledge and growth it provides.”

WHEN COMPASSION FOR MEETS PASSION FOR INNOVATION

Madalina Burghelea, Head of Advanced Analytics at Daiichi Sankyo Europe on the fundamental role of data strategy at the company.

FOR PATIENTS INNOVATION

DAIICHI

SANKYO IS A GLOBAL PHARMACEUTICAL COMPANY PROVIDING INNOVATIVE SERVICES AND PRODUCTS ACROSS THE WORLD, WITH SUBSIDIARIES IN MORE THAN 25 COUNTRIES.

ith corporate origins in Japan and a heritage of more than 120 years of scientific expertise, Daiichi Sankyo draws on its rich legacy of innovation to help improve patients’ lives.

Joining us from Daiichi Sankyo Europe is Madalina Burghelea, Head of Advanced Analytics, Specialty Medicines, who shines a light on the role of leading-edge data strategy in the company’s innovative approach to discovering, developing and delivering medicines for those who need it most.

“At Daiichi Sankyo in Europe we care for every heartbeat,” begins Madalina. “Our goal in the Specialty Medicines division is to protect people from cardiovascular disease through our expertise in providing innovative medicines and to help those who suffer from it. As well as our commitment to providing medicines for a diverse range of patients, we support the clinical community and healthcare ecosystems across Europe to ensure that, jointly with medical professionals, we are able to help those who are affected by cardiovascular disease today.

“I lead the Advanced Analytics team at Daiichi Sankyo Europe, which is responsible for the implementation of state-of-the-art Artificial Intelligence solutions at our division. Our goal is to use technology to solve business questions and deepen our understanding of the customers we serve, so they can best serve their patients. Our holistic team starts with a simple business question and ends with operative outcomes, using Machine Learning, GenAI or any other technologies.

“I initially joined Daiichi Sankyo Europe as a Business Analytics Translator

“HERE AT DAIICHI SANKYO EUROPE, WE VALUE COLLABORATION AND WE HAVE EXCELLENT RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN THE DIFFERENT TEAMS IN THE COMPANY, DEFINED BY A FEELING OF TRUST”

and I have built the entire Advanced Analytics team and framework from scratch. Much of the time I have felt like a startup founder. One of my greatest motivations has been the fact that our work will actually make a difference in the lives of many people who suffer from cardiovascular disease. This is a great privilege and I remind myself of it every morning when going to work.”

Daiichi Sankyo Europe is the European subsidiary of Daiichi Sankyo, the second-largest pharmaceutical company in Japan with a global presence. Madalina describes the company culture as one in which all employees can maximise their potential, with ample opportunities to learn, grow, develop and effectively contribute to the company’s success. In her niche of the business, Madalina is sometimes even reminded of a startup mentality, where innovation, agility and ambition are actively encouraged.

“My team and I are allowed to develop exciting new projects, with the freedom to pinpoint what is working and what might not be working so well, suggesting solutions openly,” says Madalina. “So for instance when we think about Data Governance, in the beginning, it was not a topic that fell under my responsibilities. But I was able to contribute to our Data Governance strategy and it has since become one of the most beneficial projects for the business. This was possible because the company allowed me to start new projects and allowed me to take projects outside of my initial responsibility.

“Here at Daiichi Sankyo Europe, we value collaboration and we

have excellent relationships between the different teams in the company, defined by a feeling of trust. We share and reuse as much wisdom and insights as we can. This is very important for us, not only from the cost perspective but from the collaboration perspective as well.”

So how have Madalina and her Advanced Analytics team deployed innovation in the data strategy at Daiichi Sankyo Europe?

“I am a firm believer that in order to have a successful data strategy we need to balance Data Offence (business value) with Data Defence (stability and scalability),” explains Madalina. “Innovation must happen in both, simultaneously, otherwise we will lose our balance.

“In Data Offence, we work with our stakeholders on innovative ways to engage with their customers and meet their needs. We are personalising customer engagements with the data we have available and we strive to understand and serve their preferences. This goes from channel engagement to content personalisation and beyond, supporting production of the right amount of medicines or summarising market insights with Generative AI.

“On the other side, in Data Defence, we have introduced state-of-theart Data Governance and Data Architecture frameworks in the organisation like Data Mesh, to make sure that Data Defence is equally innovative and supports business needs. We have also

introduced state-of-the-art platforms to support our work and deliver optimal results.

We are using Generative AI to continuously improve our speed and documentation quality. We continuously automate our models, and this is how we can keep working on more and more business questions.

“It is all about balance: if you only have innovation in Data Offence (the business use cases) but you still rely on traditional methods and frameworks, soon you will have a mismatch of speed.

“The risk here is if there is too much focus on the business case or value, but the technology or data elements lag behind, the imbalance between the two priorities only worsens over time – eventually becoming a blocker for innovation, scaling and growth.”

Elaborating on Daiichi Sankyo’s holistic approach to data governance and data mesh, Madalina reiterates the inherent interconnectedness between new technologies and data strategy.

“When I joined Daiichi Sankyo, I was responsible for the AI strategy,” says Madalina.

“Since then, the first task I have

taken on was to introduce Data Governance to the organisation. Without Data Governance there can be no scalable innovation and AI.

“I realised that standard or traditional approaches of introducing Data Governance have failed so far and therefore I had to find a new way: gamification.

“Gamification has worked very well as an engagement strategy and convinced me that building more educational games is a promising way to go. It connects education with a reward for the parts of the

organisation that have implemented data governance or have implemented AI products.

“I thought ‘Why not? Why can't we use gamification to improve our Data Governance?’ The first instance involved three Lego boxes, a (data) catalogue of pieces in those boxes and an analytics task: build a given figurine. This simple exercise illustrated how in under one minute you could build a figurine, if you used the Data Catalogue. During this game, players also understood who the Data Owners and Data Stewards are and their roles. This

was an incredible way to learn and understand why Data Governance is important. This has been followed by the real-life appointment of Data Owners and Stewards across the organisation and building the very first version of our own Data Catalogue.

“I am very proud that, later on, my team continued this process and introduced Data Mesh at Daiichi Sankyo Europe. We have built some of the very first data products and soon our AI models will benefit tremendously from this work: we will be able to automate our models and have them re-run in three hours instead of three weeks.

“One of the data products I’m particularly proud of is our Customer Engagement platform. Here, the main use case we were working on was trying to optimise how we engage with the customers in each of the European countries we operate in. What is special about this solution is that we moved from a very decentralised approach to a more central approach.

“Now, let's say we have a new country that comes on board, we can fully reuse the entire experience of what has been built already at the other offices or regions because we have developed a central repository of information and insights. This has helped to promote collaboration and the sharing of best practices between the countries tremendously,

“GAMIFICATION HAS WORKED VERY WELL AS AN ENGAGEMENT STRATEGY AND CONVINCED ME THAT BUILDING MORE EDUCATIONAL GAMES IS A PROMISING WAY TO GO”

while also increasing how quickly we can onboard new countries at Daiichi Sankyo.

According to Madalina, forging a strong data culture was an imperative foundation for the emerging deployment of AI and other technology projects at Daiichi Sankyo Europe. But it would not have been possible without the emergence of Advanced Analytics Translators at the company, pivotal colleagues who act as intermediaries between the Data Science Team and broader business units or stakeholders.

“A strong holistic Data Culture is crucial for any AI application,” explains Madalina. “Sometimes there seems to be a gap between the AI teams and the rest of the organisation. In my experience, it is critical to bridge this gap if you want successful AI products.

“Often the challenge is the Data Scientist does not know what is needed and the Business Stakeholders

don’t know what is possible. That is the gap we must cover!

“The solution we found to be most effective was to build so-called Advanced Analytics Translators –links between the business need and the technical possibilities. I was a Translator myself, and I can tell you it is a very challenging role. You are actively translating between two parties and you need knowledge from both worlds.

“When I worked as a Translator, what I found works best is giving many examples of other solutions in comparative situations. For instance, we would discuss several case studies where AI is being used, in situations relevant to different departments. Eventually, this leads to greater awareness and lateral thinking where they start asking their own organic questions about AI, relevant to their roles. It fosters a creative process, encourages fresh ideas opens up new possibilities.

“At Daiichi Sankyo Europe we have built a dedicated Translator organisation, with Translators in each of the countries we operate in. This ensures that the local organisations develop AI knowledge organically. The Translators act as a gate to and from the local organisations to the central Data Science team. Additionally, the Translators educate on what AI can do for the organisation and advocate for Data

Literacy and even Data Governance.

“Furthermore Data Culture starts with Data Literacy. Here, we used gamification again to help our endeavours. We have built quizzes addressing the most uncomfortable questions we received so far, including: Will AI take my job? When will AI replace Business Intelligence? How do you manage your data? Etc.

“This helped address the most common misunderstandings or fears and created a high level of psychological safety. This new level of understanding of technology is what allowed us to continue to think about data holistically.”

Looking ahead to the future, Madalina describes how AI will be crucial to the company’s operations, growth and plans in the years to come.

“Currently, AI is at the base of our customer engagement across the different affiliates at Daiichi Sankyo Europe – and that is here to stay!” says Madalina.

“Personalisation and content are also areas where AI already brings a lot of value.

“We are constantly finding new ways to use Generative AI, from optimising our technical work and documentation to generating market insights for optimisation or content

creation for events. That will indeed transform our work. We have a very competent team with great expertise to develop on these new technologies.

“We will continue to use innovative ways and gamifications to introduce AI technologies in many areas of our organisation. In the past, we have created games to illustrate the countries where AI products exist and where Data Governance is in place. This created a high engagement and allowed us to recognise the efforts of the local organisations.

“We will continue to balance Data Offence and Defence: we will work on new business questions, but we will also automate and improve our processes. Only then we can develop a scalable and stable foundation.”

Wrapping up our conversation, Madalina reflects on what she’s

learned while building the Advanced Analytics team at Daiichi Sankyo Europe and highlights the importance of championing diversity at the company.

“I am very proud to say that I currently lead one of the most diverse teams in the company: almost everyone comes from a different culture,” beams Madalina. “This is one of our core values in the team. And it does not stop with cultures: a lot of us come from backgrounds that have nothing to do with AI or even computer science. But we are all linked by the passion we have for data and AI.

“I am very supportive of women in tech leadership positions and this is why we try to find and develop more and more females into these roles.

After having dealt with the process myself and knowing firsthand how

difficult it can be sometimes, I try my best to support other women.

“Also, such a diverse team needs a different leadership style, where every opinion counts. Our Agile ways of working are at the core of the team: we believe that self-organising and self-managed teams are the present and future and deliver the best results. We encourage initiative and give space for people to develop and grow. Our Agile processes actively support this approach.

“Having been an entrepreneur myself, I can safely say that Daiichi Sankyo Europe is a company in which someone with a start-up mentality can achieve a lot: with courage and determination, every single person can step up and take responsibility for the success of the team. This is how we have built one of the most successful teams I have ever had the opportunity and privilege to lead.”

Learn more about Daiichi Sankyo Europe at www.daiichi-sankyo.eu.

ONE FOR THE READING LIST

“I was recently recommended a very good book that changed my perspective: What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith,” says Madalina. “I believe as leaders we must constantly change and adapt, now more than ever. To adapt to the changes in the Generative AI world we must challenge the way we think and embrace diversity. My team is a model for me: a very diverse way of working, where everyone feels accepted, bringing out the best of us.

REFLECT REGULARLY

Madalina believes in proactive reflection among leaders as a means of professional- and self-development.

“I highly recommend doing regular internal and external retrospectives of ourselves as leaders and asking ourselves

what is behind a different point of view: it could be one of our biggest development opportunities.”

EVENT SCHEDULE

Madalina is thrilled to be attending several industry events in 2024. In particular, she is excited about the NEXT Pharma Summit in Dubrovnik on May 14-15, 2024.

CONNECTION ENCOURAGED

Feel free to reach out to Madalina on LinkedIn to discuss:

• AI trends and frameworks

• New approaches to Data Governance and Data Strategy

• Data Mesh and Data Products experiences

• Leading diverse teams

• Agile Ways of working

Connect with Madalina