Technology - September 2023

DATA UPSKILLING: Alteryx & McLaren Racing datathon accelerates data skills

HOW TECH IS. TRANSFORMING. THE SPORTING WORLD.

From enabling better insights to improving fan experience, insights from technology companies can prove the difference between winning and losing

AI IN SPORT: How IBM served up AI Wimbledon innovations

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AWARDS

The Global FinTech Awards 2024 will be celebrating the very best in Fintech with the following categories:

Digital Banking Award

–PayTech Award

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Digital Currency Award

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FinTech Award

–InsurTech Award

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Sustainable FinTech

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FinTech Technology Award

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FinTech Consultancy Award

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Future Leader Award

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Executive of the Year Award

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Project of the Year Award

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Lifetime Achievement Award

COVER IMAGES: Getty;

F1 Grand Prix of Belgium, Dan Mullan

Day Fourteen: The ChampionshipsWimbledon 2023, Clive Brunskill

Technology a powerful tool in the world of sports

Providing a better experience to fans and organisations, Technology Magazine this month looks at the impact technology is having on the sporting world

In today’s world, technology and sports are increasingly intertwined. The ability to collect vast amounts of data and translate it into insights and improvements can make all the difference between winning and losing, in both the business and sporting worlds.

As both sporting and technology organisations increasingly look to gain benefits – from improved decision making to better fan experiences –Technology Magazine this month looks at the impact technology is having on the sporting world. From solutions to help athletes train better and enable fans to follow their teams in new and innovative ways, to powerful AI-driven tools as seen at Wimbledon this year, the relationship between sport and technology has come a long way. Join us this month as we explore the ways in which technology is transforming sports and entertainment – and look at how the relationship could change in future.

MARCUS LAW

marcus.law@bizclikmedia.com

“The ability to collect vast amounts of data and translate it into insights and improvements can make all the difference between winning and losing”

UP FRONT

128 AI/ML

How IBM served up AI-powered fan tools for Wimbledon

THE TOP 100 COMPANIES IN TECHNOLOGY READ NOW

COMPANY REPORTS

38 AMERCAREROYAL Transformation drives AmerCareRoyal to an industry leader

68 VOLT.IO

Building a global network of real-time payments

88 CENTRAL CO - OP

How Central Co-op is creating a sustainable society for all

114 M1 LIMITED

M1 Limited: Taking a customercentric approach to transformation

138 MBZUAI

MBZUAI procurement building a bright future for AI in the UAE

150 OCINET

How OCINet and GE HealthCare are transforming healthcare

166 LIFELABS MEDICAL LABORATORY SERVICES

Create healthier lives and enable patient data accessibility

180 FRACHT USA

Digital transformation a brave new world for Fracht US

196 RENTOKIL

Strong data core underpins

Insight & AI at Rentokil Initial

214 NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

National University and its digital transformation evolution

230 KING SAUD MEDICAL CITY

Digital health & AI advancements at King Saud Medical City

MORE CONDUCTIVITY, LESS COMPRESSION:

THE ADVANTAGES OF CARBON-BASED THERMAL GAP FILLERS

Sheet CF210A features double sticky surfaces and ultra high Thermal Conductivity at 21W/m-K based on ASTM D5470.

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We offer a comprehensive selection of products designed for superior thermal management, EMI shielding, and protection against environmental factors. At Fujipoly America®, we are dedicated to providing top-tier engineering service and support. Our team of experts is always ready to address your inquiries and assist you in finding the perfect solution for your specific application.

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BIG PICTURE

Microsoft and Meta expand AI partnership

Redmond, Washington

At this year’s Microsoft Inspire, Meta and Microsoft announced support for the Llama 2 family of large language models (LLMs) on Azure and Windows. Llama 2 is designed to enable developers and organisations to build generative AI-powered tools and experiences.

“Meta and Microsoft share a commitment to democratising AI and its benefits and we are excited that Meta is taking an open approach with Llama 2,” John Montgomery - Corporate Vice President, Azure AI wrote in a blog post. “We offer developers choice in the types of models they build on, supporting open and frontier models and are thrilled to be Meta’s preferred partner as they release their new version of Llama 2 to commercial customers for the first time.”

TIM BERNERS - LEE

Tim Berners-Lee, Inrupt CTO & creator of the World Wide Web

WRITTEN BY: AMBER JACKSON

The inventor of the World Wide Web and one of Time Magazine’s ‘100 Most Important People of the 20th Century’, Sir Tim Berners-Lee is one of the most influential figures in the technology world.

In 1980, Berners-Lee joined CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, where he worked as a software engineer. It was here, in 1989, that he formulated the blueprint for the World Wide Web.

On March 12, 1989, Berners-Lee drafted a proposal titled “Information Management: A Proposal,” outlining the fundamental concepts of the World Wide Web. This proposal introduced the ideas of hypertext, URLs, and HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol), which form the backbone of the web as we know it today.. This document outlined the idea of a global hypertext system that could easily connect and access information through linked documents. This proposal laid the foundation for what we now know as the World Wide Web.

“Most of the technology involved in the web, like the hypertext, like the Internet, multifont text objects, had all been designed already,” BernersLee described in an interview with The American Academy of Achievement. “I just had to put them together. It was a step of generalising, going to a higher level of abstraction, thinking about all the documentation systems out there as being possibly part of a larger imaginary documentation system. But then the engineering was fairly straightforward.

“It was designed in order to make it possible to get at documentation and in order to be able to get people –students working with me, contributing to the project, for example – to be able to come in and link in their ideas, so that we wouldn’t lose it all if we didn’t debrief them before they left. Really, it was designed to be a collaborative workspace for people to design on a system together.”

“Most of the technology involved in the web had all been designed already”

Three decades after inventing the web, Tim Berners-Lee has some ideas on how to fix it WATCH

In addition to his vision for the World Wide Web, Berners-Lee developed the first web browser, WorldWideWeb, in 1990. This browser allowed users to access information stored on various servers by navigating through hyperlinks. To encourage others to adopt his groundbreaking technologies, BernersLee made them freely available, setting the stage for an open and collaborative internet environment. In 1991, he posted the first web page ever, providing a platform for people to access information on the nascent web.

Today, Berners-Lee is the co-founder and CTO of Inrupt.com, a tech start-up which uses, promotes and helps develop the open source Solid platform. Solid aims to give people control and agency over their data, questioning many assumptions about how the web has to work.

Solid technically is a new level of standard at the web layer, which adds things never put into the original spec, such as global single sign-on, universal access control, and a universal data API so that any app can store data in any storage place. Socially Solid is a

movement away from much of the issues with the current WWW, and toward a world in which users are in control, and empowered by large amounts of data, private, shared, and public.

Berners-Lee is the Founder and Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the international standards forum for technical development of the Web, and the Web Foundation whose mission is that the World Wide Web serves Humanity. He co-founded and is President of the Open Data Institute in London.

He is also a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Computer Science and AI Lab (“CSAIL”) where his research group works to re-decentralize the web.

In 2004, Berners-Lee was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to the global development of the internet. He was also awarded the Order of Merit, one of the UK’s highest honors, in 2007. Furthermore, he received the Turing Award in 2016 for his invention of the World Wide Web, solidifying his place in history as one of the most influential technologists of all time.

“It was designed to be a collaborative workspace for people to design on a system together”

JACEK

SIADKOWSKI

CEO, Tech to the Rescue

We sit down with Jacek Siadkowski, on the role of AI as a tool for social good and how the tech industry can be a changemaker in today’s world

Q. WHAT IS TECH TO THE RESCUE?

» Across the business world, AI is having a profound effect on how organisations operate, grow, and evolve by unlocking new efficiencies. At Tech To The Rescue, we see the potential for these same tools to be applied to the world’s pressing social and environmental challenges. Tech To The Rescue is a global platform connecting non-profits and technology companies. We select digital projects in the social sector and find companies willing to implement them pro bono or low bono. Currently, over 1,200 companies and 840 NGOs from five continents are part of the community and over 300 impactful projects have been launched, including over 100 collaborations under #TechForUkraine umbrella. Our vision is to build a world where technological resources are commonly used by non-profits, changemakers, and institutions, and building pro-bono digital solutions is a standard practice in the tech industry.

Q. HOW CAN AI BE USED AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL GOOD?

» As the global tech community debates the potential impact of AI, Tech To The Rescue ran a Generative AI for Good hackathon uniting over 500 tech experts and enthusiasts worldwide. The hackathon highlighted the potential of generative AI to address social and environmental issues from breaking

down language barriers for millions of refugees and asylum seekers to driving inclusive employment by automating the creation of cover letters, which can help eliminate biases that arise from a manual process, for example. AI also has huge potential when it comes to addressing environmental challenges, AI can be used to analyse large sets of environmental data to detect deforestation and predict natural disasters. In merely two days 40 different solution prototypes were created by hackathon participants - this level of development wouldn’t be possible without AI. We need to encourage more collaboration amongst tech experts, enthusiasts, and non-profits to drive these innovative tools and solutions to make a difference in people’s lives.

“Our vision is to build a world where technological resources are commonly used by non-profits, changemakers, and institutions, and building pro-bono digital solutions is a standard practice in the tech industry”

1200+ Tech companies from 61 countries

250+ Projects in 28 countries

Q. WHAT IS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW AI CAN BE USED TO TACKLE A REAL-WORLD PROBLEM?

» Across the world, refugees and asylum seekers struggle with language and cultural barriers, the ability to express themselves and communicate their needs, as well as access key information regarding their rights, available resources and seek assistance. At our Generative AI for Good hackathon, Socialbee, a leading German nonprofit, chose a winning project designed by a team from a software company - Miquido. Their AI tool is aimed at breaking down language barriers for millions of refugees and asylum seekers worldwide. The tool autotranslates complex legal documents into more straightforward language using

“The potential of AI advancements to positively impact societies, particularly those most under-served is a fascinating topic to consider”

#TechForUkraine –support NGOs in helping Ukraine

generative AI, fostering a more inclusive and accessible society. This is just one example showcasing how AI can do good for society, advancing inclusivity and championing a more equitable society.

Q. WHAT ARE YOUR PREDICTIONS FOR THE FUTURE OF AI AS A TOOL FOR SOCIAL GOOD?

» By harnessing the power of generative AI and fostering strategic partnerships, the tech industry has shown that it can become a real changemaker in today’s world. As we continue to support such initiatives, the future holds tremendous promise for a more inclusive, fair, and sustainable society for all. The potential of AI advancements to positively impact societies, particularly

those most under-served is a fascinating topic to consider. The strides we can make in just a few months are astounding, but the key to driving real change is to focus on addressing issues that directly affect people’s lives. One initiative that is making a significant impact in this regard is our Tech To The Rescue movement. Companies, and hence their employees, can access opportunities to make a positive difference and become impact investors. It not only helps the world, it also strengthens company’s culture, supports impact and sustainability goals and most importantly - brings satisfaction to employees involved in the projects. We can work towards creating a better world for all with collective efforts.

The Portfolio

SPORTS &. TECHNOLOGY. PARTNERSHIPS.

Technology

Magazine looks at 10 of the top tech companies helping transform the sporting world - from enabling better insights to improving fan experience

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

In today's world, technology and sports are increasingly intertwined. The ability to collect vast amounts of data and translate it into insights and improvements can make all the difference between winning and losing, in both the business and sporting worlds.

As both sporting and technology organisations increasingly look to gain benefits from improved decision makingdecisionmaking to better fan experiences, Technology Magazine looks at 10 of the top partnerships that combine the best in both worlds.

10

A partner with the PGA Tour, Dell Technologies provides a range of sol utions from creating virtual courses for the Birdies for the Brave program and amazing fan experiences to driving the game forward with IoT analytics. The Dell Technologies Fan Experience allows attendees to take golf to the next level by integrating technology. Having featured everything from robotic arms to "golfing on the moon”.

Dell also partners with the McLaren Technology Group to maximise speed and agility across its organisation, bringing deep technology to McLaren Racing, and McLaren’s esports program, World’s Fastest Gamer.

ZOOM

As the Official Unified Communications Platform of Major League Baseball, Zoom’s platform is powering new elements of MLB games and broadcasts.

Zoom’s products have also been integrated across the DP World Tour’s digital landscape through Virtual Town Halls, Partner Town Halls, Zoom Rooms and, for our fans, the Zoom Virtual Clubhouse. The DP World Tour uses Zoom technology to connect teams, streamline operations and innovate. And last year Zoom extended its reach into Formula 1 with a new partnership with Oracle Red Bull Racing: announcing it would become the official unified communications provider to the reigning world champions.

TCS

Tata Consultancy Services uses its sports sponsorships to build relationships and use its technology and passion for innovation to enhance event experiences.

Through its title partnership with the Jaguar TCS Racing Formula E team, TCS helps the team leverage data to predict race outcomes and optimise performance.

TCS is also involved with a number of marathons and running events around the world, such as the London, New York City, and Mumbai marathons.

CAPGEMINI

According to Capgemini, sport provides a platform to demonstrate its expertise in achieving true impact and value through innovation.

Capgemini is playing an active role in supporting new projects that are helping World Rugby in its efforts to transform the sport: from vital technological solutions at the Rugby World Cup France 2023, to creating a more inclusive pathway for female leaders in rugby. Furthermore, its partnership with Peugeot Sport plays a key role at the heart of the FIA World Endurance Championship programme, driving transformation with advanced digital tools and analytics to enhance the performance of the team.

GOOGLE 06

Google has a major multi-year partnership with McLaren Racing, as a new Official Partner of the McLaren Formula 1 Team and the McLaren MX Extreme E Team. The partnership will bring the best of Google products to McLaren to provide a more seamless technology experience across devices.

In 2021 Google became the Official Trends and Fan Insights Partner of the WNBA and the presenting partner of the WNBA Playoffs. The tech giant, one of the first WNBA Changemakers — a partnership and sponsorship program designed to help the league overhaul its business — has been a long-time sponsor of the league.

NTT 05

Through technology and innovation, NTT is shaping the future of sports by enabling revolutionary experiences for athletes, fans, and sporting organisations.

NTT is an official partner of Major League Baseball, the oldest of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada. NTT and MLB share a vision of using technology to help organisations and communities achieve their goals in the Smart World digital era and create impactful customer experiences.

And as an Official Patron and IT Provider of The Open since 2013, NTT DATA delivers technology and business solutions to the world’s oldest golf event and one of the four major tournaments held annually in professional golf.

ORACLE 04

Oracle Cloud applications and secure infrastructure have a proven track record in sports technology innovation, driving peak athletic performance.

A title partner of the Oracle Red Bull Racing Formula One team, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) helps race engineers use Monte Carlo methods to simulate billions of potential scenarios and outcomes, improving the accuracy of their predictions and sharpening their decision-making.

Oracle has also been named the official cloud technology partner of the Premier League, with Oracle to provide advanced player performance data and statistics for use in both domestic and international broadcasts.

SAP 03

SAP simplifies business operations for its sports partners, enabling leagues, teams, and organisations to become more efficient, profitable, and successful.

As one of the most successful professional sports clubs in the world, German record champion FC Bayern relies on SAP SuccessFactors to run its HR and improve the employee experience.

SAP technology is also helping the Mercedes-Benz EQ Formula E Team drive performance, both on and off the track, through the implementation of intelligent experience and data management.

And, since 2012, SAP has partnered with the National Basketball Association (NBA), Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), and NBA G League to leverage data and analytics through NBA.com/stats, powered by SAP HANA, to transform the fan experience.

Some of the world’s leading sports organisations are leveraging AWS to elevate fan engagement, produce insights from performance analytics, create enhanced live broadcasts, and deliver smart venue experiences — all the while enabling more flexibility, lowered costs, and increased return on investment.

Through its partnership with the NFL, AWS helps schedule-makers create a fair and balanced schedule every year. As soon as the Super Bowl ends, the NFL starts running an algorithm to analyse over 100,000 potential season schedules until it finds the optimal one, leveraging over 4,000 Amazon EC2 Spot instances to do so.

AWS also partners with Formula One. During each race, 120 sensors on each car generate 3GB of data with more than 1,500 data points being created each second. F1 uses Amazon SageMaker to train deep-learning models with 65 years of data to provide fans with statistics, predictions, and insights into the splitsecond decisions made by teams and drivers streamed in real-time.

AWS also works with the NHL to debut advanced new stats, and with the Bundesliga in Germany, using AWS AI/ML, analytics, compute, database, and storage services to deliver a better fan experience.

Adam Elman Head of Sustainability EMEA Google

Musidora Jorgensen Chief Sustainability Officer Microsoft

Nick Jenkinson Managing Director Verto Solutions Ltd

Susan Spence VP, Sourcing Procurement & Accounts FedEx VP,

Geraint John VP, Interos Resilience Lab Interos

Kate Rosenshine Director - Global Azure Technology Sales Microsoft

Aravind Narayan Global Director - Sales Strategy & Execution Refinitiv (LSEG)

Sam Clarke Chief Vehicle Officer Gridserve

IBM and Wimbledon: Know everything but the outcome

IBM

IBM has a number of partnerships with sporting organisations, from golf and tennis to the NFL, showcasing the power of IBM Cloud and Watson to millions of fans around the world.

The Masters manages a huge volume and variety of data – more than 30 different data points in a single swing of the club – using a data fabric architecture built with IBM Cloud. Tournament data is captured, routed, analysed and transformed into realtime insights found on the Masters app.

The Masters uses several different AI capabilities to transform raw data into meaningful insights for the digital experience. The process is fully automated, helping the Masters Digital team quickly produce digital content.

Wimbledon also works closely with IBM Consulting to provide fans with AI-generated insights and world-class digital experiences. Its AI Commentary is a new feature for 2023 that adds spoken AI-generated narrative to video highlight reels. This is achieved by utilising the large language models and generative AI services accessible through watsonx, which have undergone additional training on the specific domain and data of Wimbledon to produce relevant, reliable narrations of match highlight reels.

Another new feature for 2023 is the AI Draw Analysis, which utilises the IBM Power Index and Likelihood to Win predictions to assess each player’s potential path to the final.

For more than 30 years, IBM has partnered with The Masters to bring the beauty and drama of the Tournament to life through the award-winning Masters app.

TRANSFORMATION DRIVES AMERCAREROYAL TO AN INDUSTRY

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

TRANSFORMATION AMERCAREROYAL INDUSTRY LEADER

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

Formed by a number of acquisitions, we highlight the path, challenges, and success of disposables and supply chain leader ACR’s digital transformation

Since it was formed with the initial platform in 2014, AmerCareRoyal (ACR) has been on an incredible journey building scale and breadth to become an industryleading platform.

Its products are consumed in every part of the North American foodservice industry,

including large international restaurant chains, emerging regional organisations, local neighbourhood eateries, cafeterias, and institutional feeders, and the broadline and supply distributors that serve them all. Major brands like Five Guys, Tim Horton’s and Yum Brands, and hundreds of other brands that operate and distribute to restaurants trust

ACR as a single-stream resource for over 6,000 disposable products used to keep their businesses humming.

“We’ve transformed from a regional player to a leading national supplier of disposable products across 20 categories in the food service industry,” comments Brett Barnello, ACR’s Chief Operating Officer. “We have

unmatched infrastructure and product breadth. We have over 6,000 product SKUs. We’re roughly a billion in revenue today, and we have an aspirational growth plan to triple that to be at US$3bn in five years or so.”

As Jeff DeSandre, ACR’s Chief Information Officer, describes, what is particularly notable about the organisation is that it is greater than the sum of its parts.

“If you add up the nine acquisitions that we’ve made to form ACR, they equate to less than our current revenue,” he explains. “The work that’s being done here allows for synergising. There is a large portion of organic growth that’s part of this acquisitive growth and I think that’s pretty interesting that the sum of the component parts is less than what we are today.”

The COVID-19 pandemic and unprecedented supply chain challenges

The COVID-19 pandemic caused welldocumented disruption on a global scale, with ACR’s supply chains no exception. ACR leverages domestic manufacturing and international sourcing, which amounts to a truly global supply chain, so it was greatly impacted by the pandemic.

However, as Barnello points out, the company’s supply chain issues were not solely pandemic-induced. In fact, ACR was already grappling with growing pains in the pre-pandemic period. As Barnello states, these challenges involved stitching a number of small business units together and linking those and creating synergies.

“The pandemic was another in a series of this unprecedented global supply chain disruption and how we fare and manage through that,” he explains. “Then, the challenge was to not only survive the day-

Jeff DeSandre and Brett Barnello of AmerCareRoyal

EXECUTIVE BIO

BRETT BARNELLO

TITLE: CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER

COMPANY: AMERCAREROYAL

INDUSTRY: FOODSERVICE

LOCATION: US

Barnello has over 25 years of Supply Chain experience in consumer businesses. He is a proven leader with a consistent record of organisational success through sustained results-oriented focus and innovative processes, products, and services. He develops, motivates, and builds organisations and partners with colleagues with a relentless focus on business imperatives.

Extend your team with Programmers you can trust

Development backlogs are unique combinations of company goals, requirements, and constraints. As a company's needs change, our flexible engagement models adapt, and we back our work with an industry-unique Happiness Guarantee.

How Programmers.io is creating trusted partnerships

Kip Kugler, SVP of Sales, explains how Programmers.io’s unique skill set leaves the company well-placed to deliver firstclass customer service to clients

For Programmers.io, an on-demand provider of software development professionals, commitment to great customer service starts at the very top.

“Anshul Choudhry, our Founder, is extremely passionate about doing the right thing,” says Kip Kugler, SVP Sales. “If customers aren’t happy, they don’t have to pay. We may have eight or nine months of great work together but, if something doesn’t feel right in month 10, we won’t invoice and we’ll make a plan to fix it.”

“To this point, I haven’t had any customers leave because they’re unhappy.”

Programmers.io boasts unique skills

Programmers.io specialises in assisting the tens of thousands of US companies using IBM iSeries (AS/400), while also working on at least 50 other programming languages.

The lack of college students learning legacy languages means there exists a distinct shortage of workers – which is where Programmers.io comes in. A key priority for modern-day CIOs in terms

of future-proofing, Kugler explains, is deciding whether or not to migrate away from iSeries. He continues: “iSeries is so reliable and consistent that we say to people ‘we’ve got the workforce and we’ve got the ability to help you stay there longer – you don’t have to take that risk yet.”

AmerCareRoyal benefits from Programmers.io expertise

In recent years, Programmers.io has worked closely with AmerCareRoyal, a producer of disposable supplies that uses a unique legacy ERP system built on iSeries.

Kugler explains: “The issue for AmerCareRoyal is finding the relevant workforce. It’s not just about knowing the legacy programming language, but also the specific ERP – and we have that skill set.” The pair have worked together on countless projects relating to warehouse and pricing metrics, purchase order functionality, and vendor and order management.

“It’s a collaboration, but we see ourselves as an extension of their team,” adds Kugler. “We guarantee a budget-friendly environment with unique skills that are hard to find.”

to-day of the pandemic, but actually also on a separate track start to think beyond the pandemic and how we come out stronger and more stabilised.

“We knew everyone would come out of the pandemic at the same time, but some would be worse off than others. For us, our goal was to be stronger and have corrected systems and processes and different people capability.”

ACR’s transformation

As DeSandre describes, ACR’s transformation began with the transformation of its leadership team,

with an end goal of creating a solid bedrock upon which to build.

“I had to make sure that the foundation was right. That meant no noise, and making sure the table stakes worked,” DeSandre explains. “It’s like the gutters on a house. No one notices them if you put new gutters on, but they do notice if they don’t work.”

As a result, ACR worked with OpenSystems on a fully-managed, SASE (secure access service edge) SD-WAN solution. “That was a foundation, and was one less piece of noise that I had to worry about,” DeSandre explains. “This technical foundation afforded us time to focus on

other key digitisation drivers including master data.”

As DeSandre explains, security is a continuous consideration. “We live and breathe considering security. We have to focus on that on a regular basis,” he comments. With this in mind, ACR worked with OpenSystems’ Ontinue service, its managed detection and response (MDR) division, to help find problems in real-time. Its AI-Powered MXDR expertly blends the best of MDR, as well as assessment and prevention.

From there, DeSandre worked on developing ACR’s API layer, working with

VAI – its ERP supplier – and its S2K platform. “Even though our ERP system may not be from one of the big suppliers, the architecture of the system, and the amazing partnership of VAI, has really enabled us to take deficiencies that might be in any ERP system and react really quickly.”

“The flexibility that comes with the S2K platform is really a differentiator for us, because it allows us to continuously optimise, especially in the warehouse, which is really important.”

The final piece was a trusted managed services partnership which afforded ACR strong technical resources which can be

Avatria, Celonis and Emporix enable efficiency gains for ACR

With the cloud-native Digital Commerce Platform and Commerce Execution Platform, Emporix, Avatria and Celonis are working with AmerCareRoyal to drive increased efficiency and deliver better business outcomes — decrease costs, increase customer satisfaction and set the stage for innovation.

Learn more

Avatria

Celonis

Emporix

Avatria, Celonis and Emporix drive efficiency for ACR

With the cloud-native Digital Commerce Platform and Commerce Execution Platform, Emporix, Avatria & Celonis are helping AmerCareRoyal drive better outcomes.

With its leading cloud-native Digital Commerce Platform and Commerce Execution Platform (CXP), Emporix enables wholesalers, distributors, manufacturers, retailers and brands to utilise insights and ultimately deliver better outcomes.

“So many commerce systems were built more than two decades ago: before the millennium and even before the cloud itself,” explains Eberhardt Weber, Emporix’s Founder and CEO. “We decided to build a new cloud-native and API-first commerce platform from the ground up, with a focus on enterprise businesses in B2B and also sophisticated B2C business models.”

Emporix worked with its preferred integration partner in North America, Avatria, on implementing the Digital Commerce Platform for AmerCareRoyal, a leading supplier for disposables used in the catering, janitorial, sanitation, industrial, hospitality and medical industries.

“AmerCareRoyal had been a customer of Celonis and they were working heavily with their business process mining capabilities to identify bottlenecks and streamline their

processes,” Weber explains. “Now, together with Celonis, Emporix has developed a new product called Commerce Execution Platform (CXP)” CXP helps organisations optimise outcomes by leveraging up- and downstream process insights to guide and drive the orchestration of multi-step scenarios.

Celonis, the global leader in Process Mining technology, was central to AmerCareRoyal’s ongoing process transformation initiatives. Now, Celonis’ process intelligence facilitates the end-to-end orchestration that has made the Commerce Execution Platform indispensable for AmerCareRoyal.

When Weber introduced the platform to Jeff DeSandre, AmerCareRoyal’s CIO, he says he immediately realised that he is a visionary.

“That’s why we decided to start together with AmerCareRoyal for this new product,” Weber explains. “And then they realised that they were looking also for a B2B platform for their customers, so more like a self-service portal. This is where Avatria came in, because they customised and integrated this solution based on our digital commerce platform.”

After Avatria completed the initial implementation, they began to transition to ACR resources, shifting to an advisory role.

EXECUTIVE BIO

JEFF DESANDRE TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER

COMPANY: AMERCAREROYAL INDUSTRY: FOODSERVICE

LOCATION: US

Jeff DeSandre is an accomplished technology executive with more than 15 years of experience in leading complex IT organisations. He currently serves as the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at AmerCareRoyal, a food service company, where he is responsible for the strategic direction and delivery of technology solutions that support the company’s business objectives.

In his role as CIO, DeSandre has a proven track record of transforming IT organisations and driving innovation through the use of emerging technologies. He has successfully led large-scale digital transformation initiatives, resulting in significant improvements in operational efficiency and customer experience.

Prior to his current role, DeSandre held several senior leadership positions in technology at companies within the consumer goods space. DeSandre holds a Bachelor’s degree from the College of New Jersey. He sits on the advisory board for UCX.

scaled up quickly. For this ACR partnered with ProgrammersIO (PIO), which provides high quality global development resources. “PIO provided us very technically sound resources to support the S2K platform. The level of commitment and quality of their work is outstanding. They are a key part of our IT team,” says DeSandre.

With this foundation established, ACR could set its sights on future projects. Since the transformation got underway, ACR has worked on three major projects: Unity - its ongoing integration project; Spotlightwhich focuses on commercial optimisation; and Rubik – its Supply Chain continuous improvement initiative.

As Barnello explains, Project Rubik is part of ACR’s transformative initiative around its supply chain and back-end operations.

“Rubik started with network design and optimisation as well as inventory management, and how we could become more efficient coming out of the pandemic,” he describes. “We had higher inventory levels, low service rates, and we had high back orders as well as splits, in terms of a customer receiving something from a different location on the same order and not at the same time - which was causing customer pain and complexity.”

As part of the strategy, ACR worked with its partners to develop a sustainable roadmap. “We put together a large crossfunctional team that involved IT, Sales, Finance, and Operations and then executed that plan.”

Supply chain partners

As Barnello describes, ACR has worked with partners across its supply chain, including

Understanding your environment to provide superior protection.

Ontinue driving the next evolution of MDR with AI

Ontinue Chief Product Officer Tom Corn discusses how the company leverages AI in managed detection and response to deliver a distinctive solution

Driven to define the next evolution of Managed Detection and Response (MDR) for its partners all around the world, Ontinue ION AI-Powered MXDR expertly blends the best of managed extended detection and response — as well as assessment and prevention — into a service specifically designed for Microsoft security customers.

“We specialise in customers who are leveraging a lot of Microsoft security technology,” comments Tom Corn, Ontinue’s Chief Product Officer. “We have a unique process that isn’t just about reactive detection and response, but about constantly improving companies’ security posture, in what we call a proactive reactive service.”

When outsourcing security to MDR players, understanding the client’s control stack poses challenges. While MDR providers may offer expert security support around the clock, the crucial factor is their comprehension of the client’s unique environment. To go beyond basic alerts, effective investigation and response necessitate a deep

understanding of the company’s assets, architecture, and operational constraints.

As Corn explains, Ontinue was started by a group of data scientists with the idea of applying AI to MDR in a unique way. “We are doing something quite different here, where we’re applying AI to understanding the customer and the environment we’re defending, their operational constraints, and how the defenders have to work in their environment. This allows us to solve that problem of how to understand the environment quickly, deeply, and then localise the solution for a customer.”

Ontinue has also innovated with its interaction model. “We started with the premise that the world doesn’t need another management console,” say Corn. “Instead, Ontinue built its interface into Microsoft Teams, so customers and Ontinue defenders collaborate in a shared channel, taking advantage of Teams capabilities they’re already using during the workday. By doing this, we look, feel and act like a true extension of our customers’ teams.

“We’ve specialised more deeply in customers who are using the Microsoft security stack. This has allowed us to do very deep things that you just don’t see from other places because we’ve really specialised.”

GAINSystems and 3GTMS transportation management systems.

GAINSystems is ACR’s planning partner that it utilises for supply and demand planning efforts, he explains, in a partnership over a number of years.

“Not only are they being used for our planning software and all of the inventory and operating policies that go along with that, but they’re also moving into network design as well,” Barnello comments.

“We are seeing tremendous value in a single partner that has both the planning capability and the operating policies as well as the ability to help us design and run simulations and optimisation.”

3GTMS, meanwhile, has provided ACR with visibility across its transportation network. “What they’ve really done is given us the visibility and the data to be able to effectively manage our outbound freight and understand where we’re winning and losing and then really to chase that down,” Barnello adds.

Importance of data and data visibility

When it came to looking at ACR’s data strategy, DeSandre emphasises the importance of a clean stream of master data which can be easily accessed in near-real time. This is where ACR’s partnership with global process mining technology leader Celonis came into play.

“Our work with Celonis really is at the heart of our data strategy, to the point now that we’re really moving towards having all of our data in one place within Celonis. Today, we’re just starting to tap that potential and I think the executive team is just starting to really understand the power of having that data model.”

Fast Forward to the Future of Supply Chain Decisions

Drive faster, smarter decision making everywhere inventory matters. GAINS helps businesses move forward faster with greater agility, resilience, and confidence, even in disruptive times. The GAINS AI-driven cloud platform guides supply chain decision makers to the outcomes that optimally balance the tradeoffs between freeing working capital, lowering operating costs, and meeting service goals for global manufacturing, distribution, retail and aftermarket/maintenance companies.

GAINS: Navigating supply chain volatility with ACR

As a leader in supply chain design and planning, GAINS focuses on putting its customers first and moving them forward faster. Jeff Metersky, the VP of Solution Strategy at GAINS, guides and directs the overall strategy of the GAINS supply chain solution.

Supply chain volatility shifts priorities

With decades of experience providing supply chain solutions and services, Metersky knows that traditional supply chain design and planning strategies no longer fit volatile business environments. They lack the flexibility to plan for disruptions and continuously optimise inventory.

“Supply chains are no longer predictable and stable. They have become fragile and exposed due to increased variability and the rise in global disruptions,” Metersky says. “Businesses can no longer rely on the same techniques because our environment has changed – the focus cannot be on cost alone. Today’s decisions need to balance the trade-off between cost and service to mitigate risk and drive performance.”

“Using GAINS’ solutions, companies will be able to navigate uncertainty in their supply

chains, enabling much greater adoption of designs instead of making them academic exercises. Designs will become more pragmatic so that companies can fully understand their impact and increase the likelihood of adoption.”

Partnering with AmerCareRoyal to enhance supply chain decision making

GAINS has been on a journey with AmerCareRoyal (ACR) to automate and transform its operations. Consequently, ACR has grown rapidly – doubling in size – as they continue to acquire new businesses.

“Due to their partnership with GAINS, ACR has achieved rapid results, optimised inventory across their network, managed volatility, and become more resilient by being open to continuous improvement and looking for new ways to improve performance,” Metersky states. “This strategy achieves their desired outcomes and provides a scalable foundation on which they can embrace volatility and serve their customers well”.

Jeff Metersky, GAINS’ VP of Solution Strategy, explores how better supply chain decisions are moving AmerCareRoyal forward

VAI ERP Gives AmerCareRoyal and Others a Competitive Advantage

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VAI provides you with an ERP without limits by integrating business processes across your organization.

An example of this success comes through ACR’s work with Emporix and Avatria on implementing a new Digital Commerce Platform, which enables its customers to utilise insights and ultimately deliver better outcomes. The product is known as the 1ACR portal.

“We just went live with our new portal, and I’m happy to say that we don’t have a point-to-point interface. Any information that we already know is clean, and is in Celonis, is being syndicated to our portal, which makes us very unique. We really are starting to get to a point where

our transactional data is able to be syndicated and used in these different systems.”

As DeSandre explains, the ultimate goal is to achieve a single version of the truth with a low amount of manipulation.

“There are still some shortcomings with not all required data being tracked in our master data as part of our ERP,” he adds. “To correct for this and enable change as ACR continues its evolution we have amended our ERP to support non-native master data allowing our ERP to serve as a system of record where necessary.”

A bright future for ACR

For ACR, which continues to grow through acquisitions, the message for the future is one of continued partnership. And through its projects - Unity, Rubik and Spotlightthe transformation will continue to evolve.

“I don’t think it stops,” Barnello comments. “This is really a jumping off point for us. We’ll continue to refresh the network as we continue to acquire new businesses, new geographies and new customers. We’re turning to using data and the digital transformation on our spend cube and in our procurement space as well.”

As DeSandre concludes, the future will see ACR continue to drive innovation across its ongoing transformation projects.

“I really do feel like we’re at a point of almost best of breed in our supply chain capability. But on our commercial processes, our pricing strategy, how we process rebates, bill backs, how we deal with the commercial aspects of our customers, I do think that we’re probably still about a year or two away from being a best of breed there. So I think that’s going to be a lot of our focus.

“We have really strong leadership now, and so the future for me is really about continuing the great work that we’ve been doing for the last three years,” he concludes. “It’s going to be about pulling it all together and continuing driving our supply chain optimisation projects in Rubik as well as our commercial optimisation projects in Spotlight.”

Getting in the right mindset for security transformations

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

Staffing issues in the cybersecurity workforce are well known. (ISC)2 research estimates the size of the global cybersecurity workforce at 4.7 million people, but warns the industry faces a worldwide gap of 3.4 million cybersecurity workers.

And with reports suggesting that organisations are being too slow to patch security concerns, implementing DevSecOps can be a solution to organisations looking to tackle security issues.

As Deloitte explains, DevSecOps fundamentally transforms cyber and risk management. Short for development, security, and operations, DevSecOps automates the integration of security at every phase of the software development lifecycle, from initial design through integration, testing, deployment, and software delivery.

“The purpose and intent of DevSecOps is to build on the mindset that everyone is responsible for security with the goal of safely distributing security decisions at speed and scale to those who hold the highest level of context without sacrificing the safety required,” describes Shannon Lietz, co-author of the “DevSecOps Manifesto.”

As Larry Maccherone, DevSecOps Transformation Architect at Contrast Security told Tech LIVE Virtual in June, taking a fundamentally different approach that creates a good sense of trust between security and development groups can actually move the needle in reducing cybersecurity risk.

“In the world of application security today, we tend to beat people up with it. We tend to not actually trust them and help them become worthy of that trust, especially the security group in relation to the development group.”

Taking a new approach to security can help avoid resistance and even resentment from cybersecurity teams, according to DevSecOps expert Larry Maccherone

LARRY MACCHERONE

TITLE: DEVSECOPS

TRANSFORMATION ARCHITECT

COMPANY: CONTRAST SECURITY

INDUSTRY: CYBERSECURITY

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Dev[Sec]Ops Transformation

Architect at Contrast Security, Maccherone currently sees a huge opportunity for the concepts he helped developed with Build-Security-In a decade ago to finally take hold with the recent emergence of DevOps, which he thinks of as a natural successor to agile development because it further breaks down silos.

Organisations need to move away from a gatekeeping approach to security

When scaling DevSecOps transformation in the enterprise, Maccherone argues that organisations need to move away from a gatekeeping, confrontational approach to application security. The first challenge in pulling this off is to get the mindset right.

“Today in some security teams, there is this approach of the ‘beatings will continue until morale improves’,” Maccherone says

As a result, this process can build up significant resistance and even resentment among development teams.

“Basically they’re trying to find problems in somebody else’s work,” Maccherone says. “This doesn’t scale with the accelerating pace of development. So that’s a common problem with this gatekeeping policing auditing approach to application security.

Dev[Sec]Ops Transformation at Scale: Larry Maccherone, Contrast Security Tech

“That’s one problem that almost everyone recognises. But I actually think there’s some more harmful attributes to this approach, that are actually more significant.

“And it’s the fact that this approach just can’t keep up. It’s soul-crushing work and it’s time consuming. When I started at Comcast, there were roughly the equivalent of 40 full time people essentially doing this cajoling, gatekeeping work all day long.

“The problem is that there’s a high turnover rate in the first 90 days that people come into a job that has this because it’s very, very difficult and it’s not a lot of fun. And the worst part about it is that the people that stay past those 90 days are the ones that maybe enjoy calling someone’s baby ugly all day long.

“That does not lead to a good, healthy group that has to interact with developers all the time. It’s confrontational and enforcing policy is confrontational. And that’s also not fun and doesn’t feel good to everyone.”

This, Maccherone explains, can result in less effective operations. “At best, you often get a checkbox-like response. What’s the minimum I can do to get you to go away? And that usually means it’s not very effective. They’re not sensitive to the context that they’re running in. They’re not adapted to modern approaches to development. If you only enforce the ones that are appropriate, then that seems arbitrary. And the developers start to think, if they don’t have to do some of these policies, why should they have to do any of the others?

“But if you tried to enforce all of it, it would be too much information. It’s depressing, as a solution, and it doesn’t work.”

As a result, organisations can take a new approach, enabling true DevSecOps.

“DevSecOps is about empowering engineering teams and collaborating with engineering teams,” Maccherone explains. “But that isn’t enough. It’s not even enabling them because you can lead a horse to water. That’s the enabling part. But you can’t make them drink.

“I don’t want them to be made to drink. I want them to be able to lead themselves to water and drink. Empowering is the right word here to take ownership of the security of their products. You can’t have DevSecOps without DevOps.”

Implementing a culture of DevSecOps

This, Maccherone explains, involves implementing a culture of flow feedback, of experimentation and of learning. Better collaboration between development, security, and operations teams improves an organisation’s response to incidents and problems when they occur.

“This is the real definition of DevOps and it and if you aren’t actually buying into these concepts, you’re not really doing DevOps in my mind.”

Ultimately, this process aims to continue to provide value, delivering security at speed,” Maccherone concludes. “We can never forget that roadmaps have to have to be maintained, they have to be met and we have to keep delivering software. We can’t stop the presses too, to do some security.

“We have to hopefully accelerate security in the long run,” he adds. “I don’t like to talk about policies, I prefer to talk about practices because the policy is something somebody says you must do.

“Practice is what you actually do. And so I want people to adopt practices. I want development teams to adopt practices, to identify a list of practices that you want to encourage, and ultimately empower engineering teams to adopt.”

“Today in some security teams, there is this approach of the ‘beatings will continue until morale improves”

LARRY MACCHERONE DEVSECOPS TRANSFORMATION ARCHITECT, CONTRAST SECURITY

VOLT: BUILDING A GLOBAL NETWORK OF

Real-time payments

AD FEATURE

WRITTEN

BY:

LOUIS THOMPSETT

PRODUCED BY: JAMES WHITE

payments

Volt Founder and CEO, Tom Greenwood, discusses his growth as an entrepreneur and the company’s aim of building a global network of RTP providers

Nobody can achieve success in any field, let alone financial technology, without possessing a flair for innovation. This is how Tom Greenwood, Founder and CEO at Volt, was able to cultivate a career in fintech leadership which has stretched for over 20 years.

It was in 2013 when Greenwood “saw the very early signs of embedded finance” at IFX Payments, a company he co-founded in 2005. Building a product at IFX called ibanq, a banking-as-a-service (BaaS) platform, this was one of the first in the industry to flirt with embedded finance. Greenwood oversaw ibanq’s strategy and build, which today processes over US$15bn annually.

Founding IFX alongside CEO Nick Williams, Greenwood – as Chief Operating Officer – oversaw business operations and strategy, regulatory, legal and compliance; significant functions of the business.

At the time of its founding, IFX Payments actually pre-dated fintech; it functioned as a foreign exchange, hedging and treasury risk management platform. Greenwood’s product, therefore, helped shift the course of IFX’ corporate identity into a new age of fintech.

From IFX to Volt

With ibanq flying high and a well-established product by 2018, although most might have been – Greenwood was not settled.

VOLT FOUNDER AND CEO, TOM GREENWOOD

Tom Greenwood

VOLT

FOUNDER AND CEO

Possessing a drive to continue innovating, Greenwood had been studying the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) – which, back in 2018, established Open Banking as a regulatory requirement for financial institutions, marking the dawn of data sharing and payments between banks and authorised third-party providers.

“After reading about open banking in PSD2, I knew that real-time accountto-account payments could be hugely disruptive to the Visa and Mastercard duopoly,” Greenwood says.“It gave me an idea that, ultimately, I couldn’t let go of.”

In the end, following his calling for further innovation, Greenwood parted ways with

Why are we still using an alien card object, and an overseas scheme, to move money across five intermediaries?

TOM GREENWOOD FOUNDER & CEO VOLT

IFX to establish Volt, which he had already started doing preliminary planning work on, including feasibility and prospect analysis.

Now four years on from its founding in 2019, Volt has just closed US$60m in Series B funding led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), setting it on a path to continue its exceptional growth rate.

Being Founder and CEO of Volt

With this latest round of funding in the bag, Greenwood admits he is happy with the company’s progress so far, although “there is still a long way to go” in Volt’s plans for even greater growth.

is

is

and product innovator with a focus on new generation real-time payments infrastructure and open banking. He is responsible for managing strategic relationships, developing strategy and planning, and driving international expansion.

technology

Tom

Founder & Chief Executive Officer at Volt. The Company

a

developer

Tom previously founded IFX Payments in 2005, a multi-billion dollar turnover fintech business operating across Europe and the Middle East.

It’s this drive for continued scaling that keeps Greenwood hungry. “I enjoy the journey, and the problem-solving, pushing the boundaries to ensure we see opportunities that others don’t,” adds Greenwood.

Although there are challenges to being a CEO, such as figuring out “where the pieces go in the jigsaw puzzle we’re building”, Greenwood enjoys the challenge that being a founder and CEO brings.

“I get restless if I’m not having an impact,” notes Greenwood. “As CEO, you have to do the blue-sky thinking and strategy building. There’s a journey element to what we’re trying to achieve. Completing these journeys is something I take great satisfaction from.”

However, for Greenwood, being CEO is more about the team than himself. “When

someone joins the company in a junior role, seeing them two years later unrecognisable from when they arrived gives me great pride.”

Admitting he won’t be at Volt his whole life, the ability of the company as a collective to nurture and grow new staff is something that gives Greenwood gratification.

Of course, being a Voltologist means “building the best products to beat the competition”, and achieving personal growth comes through overcoming challenges.

Greenwood says: “It’s about how we as an ecosystem can work together to challenge one another, to think outside the box and to problem solve, to break new ground and define our destiny through meaningful collaboration.”

Volt has been applying its workplace culture to achieve success too. “We’ve exceeded expectations in the four years we’ve been operating. We’ve attracted world-class talent from some of the largest payments companies in the world.

“We are a performance-orientated team of performance-oriented people, who live by a performance-oriented culture. But that’s never at the expense of ego. We expect openness, collaboration and humility.”

Volt: Disrupting the financial services establishment

Leveraging a positive workplace culture with innovation, growth and teamwork at its core, Volt has been able to disrupt the industry with its real-time payments (RTP) offering.

From day one, we’ve believed in replicating the multi-card acquisition strategy that companies have implemented

TOM GREENWOOD FOUNDER & CEO VOLT

GREENWOOD ON THE COST EFFICIENCIES OF REAL-TIME PAYMENTS

Real-time payments (RTP): The benefit it offers is in the name itself – sending and receiving money instantly. While the perk of speed is the first thing that springs to mind whenever someone says RTP, it’s worth noting that cost efficiencies are a big attraction in RTP adoption because it lowers the cost of payment acceptance and eliminates chargebacks.

Greenwood says: “If you were to imagine in 1955 the best and the simplest way to implement payments – before the advent of cards? RTP and account-to-account is exactly it.

“Why are we still using an alien card object, and a third party scheme, to move money across intermediaries, when an API call moves money directly from your bank account to wherever you want to send it.

“It’s the way that payments should have always been. It eliminates the cost and time of processing through intermediaries, and the costs of chargebacks and fraud, and is technologically superior in every way.

“So, not only do RTP providers offer speed, but they are more secure and cost-effective too.”

As put by Greenwood: “The technology powering Visa and Mastercard was imagined and implemented in the 1950s and 1960s. We have nothing but respect for the businesses both have built, but their technology is ripe for disruption.”

Greenwood’s claim is by no means baseless. With the US Federal Reserve recently launching FedNow, its federal, centralised RTP service for businesses, the US economy has been slated to receive a timely boost.

This is not the only RTP service on offer in the US either, with private options also available to consumers (Zelle, The Clearing House). RTP is worldwide too; Faster Payments operates in the UK, SEPA Instant is the EU standard, UPI in India and Pix for real-time payments in Brazil.

Different RTPs for different markets, these services are inherently domestic and fragmented. Where Visa and Mastercard have seen success, as Greenwood puts it, is in their ability to form “single proprietary global networks, which are centrally controlled and privately owned”.

This is where Volt comes in. “Whilst fragmentation is a challenge for RTP adoption, it’s also an opportunity. We’re positioned in the RTP space to do what Visa and Mastercard did for debit and credit cards.”

Aiming to build a global network for RTP everywhere, Volt hopes to bring each domestic RTP offering into a global network. Each RTP provider “fundamentally has the same expertise and each does the same thing”, adds Greenwood.

Volt: Building a global network of RTP providers

However, building a global network of RTP providers is somewhat different from the

accomplishments of Visa and Mastercard, in fact – as a by-product of open banking – RTP offerings bypass everything these behemoth card providers offer.

Greenwood notes: “RTP is a next-gen payments system based on API calls to account-based payment instruments. These allow you to initiate a payment, circumventing card schemes in real time from one bank account directly to another.

“Because open APIs and account-based payment instruments weren’t possible before, card networks have acted as a layer scheme that built interoperability between bank accounts.

“But there are typically four or five intermediaries between those bank accounts. Your data and money flow through each of them. That’s why it takes days for your money to arrive when paying by card.”

Using the example of Pix in Brazil, Greenwood remarks that a “28-day card settlement became two seconds, costs

were reduced by 80% and chargebacks were eliminated” when consumers shifted to RTP to complete transfers.

It’s no wonder Greenwood calls RTP an architectural revolution in the world of payments. And for Volt, the mission is to continue “building an orchestration layer, connecting RTP to a single point of access, to a single protocol, making each RTP network interoperable and accessible globally”.

Volt is already some way to achieving this aim, integrating with aforementioned Faster Payments in the UK, SEPA in the EU and Pix in Brazil.

With Series B funding now secured, Volt is on track to expand its ‘network of networks’ by integrating with the newly-launched FedNow in the US, NPP in Australia and UPI in India.

We are a performanceorientated team of performanceoriented people who live by a performanceoriented culture

TOM GREENWOOD FOUNDER & CEO VOLT

“We’re building the future of payments,” remarks Greenwood, “Our global RTP network, the world’s first, leverages domestic RTP implementations and harmonises them to the same point of access with a single infrastructure accessible to all.”

Volt: Diversifying services in a global RTP network

Still in the process of building a global network of RTP providers, Volt hopes to offer a full suite of services enabling payment teams to solve practical business problems, managing payments effectively and efficiently across the value chain.

As Greenwood puts it: “Building an RTP network and cross-border services is one revenue stream, but cash management,

payouts and disbursements are others. Additional value-add products allow us to build a diversified revenue strategy, by geography and by product.”

Beating the competition to create a global RTP network

Evidently, Volt is not the only player looking to build a global RTP network. Regardless, Greenwood feels his company’s unique product strategy, centred around orchestration, will be key to Volt as it aims to take a significant market share.

“In Europe, we partner with several connectivity partners, which allows us to benchmark performance and optimise conversion for payment success,” says Greenwood. “From day one, we’ve believed

in replicating the multi-card acquisition strategy that companies have implemented for many years.

“Payments is increasingly a performanceoriented business. Saving a merchant 2% on conversion performance makes a huge difference to their bottom line. We’ve always had an approach to orchestration, which card companies have been doing for many years.

“We took the best learnings from the cards environment and thought carefully about not reinventing the wheel. How do we replicate and build on these 30 to 40 years of learnings in RTP?

“Doing so not only allows us to build a performance-oriented platform that delivers the best conversion and payment success outcomes for merchants; it also gives us security and redundancy in everything we do.”

The age of network creation in financial services

The advent of RTP payments, expedited as a result of open banking legislation, has given Volt a platform to deliver a network of globally integrated RTP providers. It is

not the only beneficiary of open banking, as more ecosystems emerge across the sector in partnerships between banks, fintechs and insurers.

In an age of network creation and ecosystems in financial services, Greenwood says it’s important to treasure the synergies of working in partnership while understanding you’re “in a competition on certain fronts”.

He adds: “What’s important for us is platformisation and problem-solving. You’re not going to solve all of the problems yourself. Any business needs to identify its area of expertise, ensure it’s doing that well, and leverage great partnerships.

“This is key to building a global platform that solves problems. A business owner must always ask: What is the pain point we’re addressing? Who are we helping? Why is this important? These are the key ingredients to building a successful business.”

For Volt, the problem it’s solving is clear, as it continues its mission of building a global network of RTP providers.

We’re building the future of payments, and we’re building the world’s first global RTP network

TOM GREENWOOD FOUNDER & CEO VOLT

DARK DATA: How AI and ML can solve unclassified data issues

AI and machine learning can be used to tackle data problems, allowing light to be shone on organisations’ dark data

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

Today’s world has seen a massive explosion in data. While only three of the 10 most valuable enterprises were actively taking a data-driven approach in 2008, that number has risen to seven out of 10 today.

According to research by Accenture, every day, the world produces five exabytes of data. By 2025, this is set to rise to a rate of 463 exabytes per day. But with the everincreasing quantities of data, arriving in increasing volumes and with more velocity, organisations increasingly face the challenge of dealing with dark data - defined by Gartner as the information assets organisations collect, process and store during regular business activities, but generally fail to use or other purposes.

This month Technology Magazine hears from Ian Wood, former UK Head

of Technology at Veritas, who spoke at Tech LIVE Virtual on the dangers of dark data and how organisations can shed light to gain visibility.

“Dark data simply means data that has not been classified,” Wood explains. “We’re not saying it’s bad or good data. We’re not saying it’s valuable data, or that it’s invaluable. Frankly, we are saying we don’t know what it is. Lurking in dark data could be the most sensitive or critical data to any organisation, due to the fact that they haven’t got effective classification, and an effective means to monitor and understand their data.”

AI and dark data

AI augments our everyday lives in increasingly varied ways. Using machine learning, AI enables us to automate tasks, all powered by big data.

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“I’ve not done a digitalisation presentation in the last 10 years where we have not used the phrase ‘data is the oil of the 21st century’,” Woods describes. “It is ultimately the fuel that’s fueling the fourth industrial revolution that we live in today. Peter Sondergaard coined that from Gartner quite some time ago. And data is absolutely the fuel to AI and data is the fuel to digitalisation in everyday view.

“We have equated data to oil, and looking at the current oil price, the price of data is pretty valuable and therefore maybe that’s why so many of us store data indefinitely.”

However, the challenge is that data in an organisation can easily become cluttered. “As humans, we are data hoarders. We hang on to all of our data. We hang on to perhaps my tax return that I did in the early 2000s, because we think it’ll have some value in the future. We see organisations hanging on to the menu that they had in the canteen in 2001 probably has no real value to that because they just think that the more we store, the more we can mine, the more value you can have.”

IAN WOOD

TITLE: FORMER UK HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY

COMPANY: VERITAS

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

An experienced, dedicated and passionate technical sales leader, Ian Wood’s 20+ year IT career has spanned several diverse roles at international software companies from field based technical sales, technical sales management and overlay sales management through to global head of solutions and product marketing.

Dark Data: Ian Wood, Veritas Tech LIVE Virtual 2023

Dark data: sustainability and data privacy challenges

Dark data poses a range of challenges to organisations across the world. In the UK alone, 6.4 million tonnes of CO2 is attributed to dark data - representing around about 1.5% of the region’s total emissions.

“Simply having all this data stored and run from a day to day life is wasting a very, very valuable energy resource that is not only important to the climate today, but also quite costly as well,” Woods asserts. “It has a cost implication, and it has a social implication to making sure that

we’re more effective and responsible in storing data.”

And with data privacy becoming increasingly important, organisations must be careful to avoid falling foul of regulators.

“We’ve increasingly seen that regulators are starting to gain teeth. Many organisations are experiencing fines if they’ve mistreated data and they don’t adhere to the GDPR or data privacy regulations around the world. You can imagine that if an organisation has a lot of dark data, what you can’t see, you can’t manage. So there’s a real implication to the risk of data treating it responsibly.”

“We can predict where data resides in an organisation and ultimately shine a light on dark data”

IAN WOOD FORMER UK HEAD OF TECHNOLOGY, VERITAS

Clearly, organisations need to be able to get a better view of where their data is. AI and machine learning can be used to make the whole process more effective, through enabling better data discovery.

“Instead of just using AI to win a chess game or predict when my family may need new toothpaste, we can point out AI and machine learning at solving data problems so we can use this to manage dark data,” Woods asserts. “Ultimately, data discovery is one of the first areas in which we can use ML/AI to help discover data assets and then to put it through an engine to help classify.

“When data is cluttered, it’s frankly very difficult to make data decisions. So in this instance, we are using AI within Veritas to discover data sources. We are then using that to put it through a classification engine to predict what data resides in an organisation and ultimately classify where it resides, who has ownership, what the type of data files are, perhaps even identify where malware can reside inside files and data, and ultimately shine a light on dark data so that organisations can make data decisions.”

How Central Co-op is creating a sustainable society for all

WRITTEN BY: TOM CHAPMAN

PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

Paul Lockwood, Head of Procurement at Central Co-op, outlines the importance of sustainability in his own department and across the entire organisation

Central Co-op can trace its history all the way back to the mid-19th century, when the modern co-operative movement was just taking off.

Today, it exists as the second-largest co-operative in the UK, having assumed its current form following the merger of Anglia Regional Co-operative Society and Midlands Co-operative Society back in 2013.

At the heart of Central Co-op’s operations is its retail offering, consisting of more than 250 convenience stores across the nation. On the other side of the business is the funeral division, comprising 180 funeral homes, a crematorium, three stone masonry outlets and a coffin factory. And that’s without even mentioning the organisation’s property arm, responsible for buying, selling and maintaining thousands of buildings.

Many of Central Co-op’s core values remain the same as those established around 175 years ago but, in 2021, the company unveiled its new purpose: to ‘create a sustainable society for all’. This ethos now stretches right across the business, impacting decision-making and actions at every level of all departments.

That includes in the field of procurement, which is headed up at Central Co-op by Paul Lockwood, who joined the company in February last year.

“Within that new strapline there are numerous themes,” explains Lockwood.

Paul Lockwood, Head of Procurement at Central Co-op

“There’s the environment and sustainability; there’s self-funding; there’s inclusion; and there’s self-help, as well.

“You may think when you join Central Co-op that you’re joining a movement, but actually what you join is a social movement, which makes for an interesting dynamic. It’s amazing how, more than 150 years after the first co-ops were started, their core values are still just as relevant today.”

Energy crisis accelerates

Central Co-op’s solar strategy

It certainly hasn’t been a straightforward start to life at Central Co-op for Lockwood, who

“It’s amazing how, more than 150 years after the first co-ops were started, their core values are still just as relevant today”

PAUL LOCKWOOD HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, CENTRAL CO-OP

became Head of Procurement just a couple of weeks after the global energy crisis escalated thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

However, as the saying goes, in the midst of chaos there is also opportunity. That opportunity for Central Co-op came in the form of accelerating its investment in solar power, an important future-proofing strategy that had long been discussed.

Solar panels were installed at two convenience stores by the end of July; within a further eight weeks, Lockwood and his team had tended and contracted a provider to roll out solar panels at no less than 180 stores by end of 2023.

PAUL LOCKWOOD

TITLE: HEAD OF PROCUREMENT

COMPANY: CENTRAL CO-OP

LOCATION: ALREWAS, ENGLAND

Paul Lockwood has worked in the field of procurement for more than 20 years, including in both the public and private sectors. For six years, Paul headed up procurement at BNP Paribas Personal Finance, before moving to Dignity in 2019 to lead the company’s procurement transformation programme. Last year he joined Central Co-op to look after GNFR for the entire retail and funeral business. Over the past 18 months, he has overseen the rollout of solar panels across 180 stores and modernisation of the organisation’s ceremonial fleet. Paul has a proven track record in delivering year-on-year savings and process improvements through the application of innovative business techniques and by optimising operating and delivery models.

Inspired PLC: Energy procurement, cost control and net-zero leader

Through expert insight and tailored advisory services, Inspired PLC empowers businesses to manage their energy costs, consumption and net-zero strategies.

Inspired PLC are a leading technology-enabled service provider supporting corporate businesses to control energy costs and transition their journey to net-zero carbon.

Energy is a significant overhead and now a board-level concern for UK organisations. Inspired PLC provides the expert insight and tailored advisory services to help businesses manage their costs, optimise energy consumption and reduce their carbon emissions.

Inspired PLC also helps clients to prove their net-zero and ESG credentials to their investors, customers and other stakeholders.

“We know that reaching netzero is a massive challenge

for any organisation, but with the right support and advice, businesses can achieve these goals in a commercially and operationally beneficial way,” says Alex Mackey, Account Director at Inspired PLC.

“Our purpose can be summarised as helping businesses manage their journey to net-zero and responding to the climate emergency whilst controlling their costs.

“Our solutions create clear and actionable long-term plans to help realise these goals.” All businesses need to understand how to effectively control their 4Cs; cost, carbon, consumption and compliance.

Co-operatives, owned by members, aim to positively impact their communities, including the environment. They typically have large and diverse portfolios, so energy and carbon make up a key operational cost. Energy and sustainability is often seen as

an area of complexity, but it is also an area of opportunity to look to reduce impacts on the environment wherever possible.

Inspired PLC is assisting cooperatives to formulate a strategy to best manage these energy risks through innovative and collaborative procurement solutions, while exploring every avenue to reduce consumption and ultimately carbon emissions, helping to further those goals to have positive impacts on their community.

Mackey concludes: “In light of the mounting challenges businesses encounter in addressing sustainability and ESG concerns, it is crucial for them to engage expert advisors who can demonstrate to their stakeholders a comprehensive plan to effectively manage costs, achieve carbon neutrality, and enhance their ESG performance.”

Moreover, in May the company opened a new shop in Staffordshire which, for the first time, had panels pre-installed.

“We’re just over a third of the way through that journey and we’re very fortunate to have an executive and board who want to kick on with the investment,” says Lockwood. “We’ll have payback in less than three years based on our current commercial model which, for us, is unheard of.

“For me, it’s brilliant as well because it’s something I’ve always been passionate about.”

Praising Central Co-op’s key partner on the project, he adds: “The supplier we’ve had, SolPV, has been amazing and really hit the ground running.

“Now, the exec is asking me ‘what’s next?’, which is exciting and it’s great to be challenged like that.”

PAUL LOCKWOOD HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, CENTRAL CO-OP

“For us as an organisation, investing in a green funeral fleet is massively important, and there’s also an expectation from the public”

Bidding to become self-sufficient

Creating a sustainable society for all covers numerous aspects but, as Central Co-op’s solar efforts suggest, a significant proportion of the strategy relates to energy usage and becoming more selfsufficient in this space.

In the relatively near future, it is hoped the organisation will be producing 100% of its own power, which is evidently a big ask. Nevertheless, things are most certainly heading in the right direction.

2014 Year founded

7,000+ Number of Employees

£961.4mn Revenue

Lockwood forecasts that the solutions currently being put into place at convenience stores will produce around 30% of the energy needed in a supermarket setting. Within that, simple steps have been

taken such as investment in more efficient freezers and putting doors on chiller cabinets.

“It all contributes,” Lockwood goes on. “It’s all very well producing green electricity, but it’s no good if you’re then burning it off really quickly.”

That all-important co-operative team spirit is truly coming to the fore from an energy perspective, with the launch of a new consortium including Central Co-op and a host of independent co-ops. The goal is to collaborate on the purchase of utilities, while sharing knowledge and investment opportunities.

“This is a journey we’re going on together,” says Lockwood. “We’re trying to share that

good information between ourselves to help each other on that journey.

“There has always been co-operation, but last year – with the energy crisis and cost-ofliving crisis – created a need to do more, and it has been fantastic. Coming together and sharing resources will help us to be more sustainable, not just as individual societies but as a movement.”

Energy strategy extends to colleagues

Crucial to Central Co-op’s values is looking after its people, to the extent that its investment in renewable energy capabilities has also been extended to colleagues.

“It’s great investing in our stores,” continues Lockwood, “but part of what we do as an organisation is invest in our colleagues.”

After receiving various enquiries, Central Co-op reached an agreement with its solar provider to extend the commercial terms of their deal to staff, giving them the option to purchase clean energy infrastructure such as panels or EV chargers.

“For us, it’s about putting options in front of our colleagues and leaving the decision up to them,” says the procurement chief. “It’s quite a unique scheme, but it’s something we had the ability to do.

“So far, we’ve had about 200 colleagues show interest and it’s only been going for a few weeks. It definitely helps as well that we’re offering them a trusted provider with a quality product that is going to last.”

Funeral fleet going green

Despite the industry’s obvious traditions, Central Co-op has been careful not to overlook green aspirations in its funeral business, too. This process has begun with its fleet of vehicles, which can cost upwards of £120,000 apiece – making for a complex and expensive transition.

“What we’re doing is quite cutting edge for the industry and it’s an exciting time for us”

PAUL LOCKWOOD HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, CENTRAL CO-OP

“It’s a significant investment,” Lockwood explains. “For us, we had an ageing fleet and we had reached a crossroads, so you could say it’s been a case of right place, right time.”

In looking to go green, Lockwood’s team went through an exhaustive procurement tender exercise, before finally identifying the Ford Mustang Mach-E as its limousine and hearse solution. The new fleet is due to be rolled out over the next 12 months.

Investment has also been made in charging infrastructure courtesy of a new partnership, and will evolve as the fleet expands: “For us as an organisation this is massively important, and there’s also an expectation from the public. This investment has been really popular with our colleagues as well.

“We are a traditional business, but we have to evolve. When we’re talking about helping the environment, we need to look at every aspect of what we do.

“I think what we’re doing is quite cutting edge for the industry and it’s an exciting time for us as a business. There are bigger providers and bigger competitors out there who are maybe not as far down the road as we are in this space.”

‘Amazing’

partners across Co-op’s business

Clearly, a vast operation like Central Co-op cannot function without crucial input from partner organisations.

“We’ve been fortunate to have some amazing partners,” says Lockwood. “One of the things we talk about with regards to partnerships is trying not to just have a transactional relationship. We want to put in effort across the business – not just in procurement – to drive value and sustainability.”

One such example of a fruitful partnership is with Lyreco, which has spent time trying to

Central Co-op is the secondlargest co-operative society in the UK Central Co-op employs around 7,700 people across divisions including retail and funeral services Central Co-op’s history can be traced back to the modern co-operative movement of the mid-19th century

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“One of the things we talk about with regards to partnerships is trying not to just have a transactional relationship. We want to put in effort across the business – not just in procurement – to drive value and sustainability”

PAUL LOCKWOOD HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, CENTRAL CO-OP

understand the motivations of Central Co-op and its colleagues. As a provider of supplies and workplace solutions, the firm introduced a bio-hygiene cleaning product which has proved to be a roaring success in terms of cost reduction and environmental benefits.

Technology-wise, Central Co-op recently implemented a purchase-to-pay solution provided by Zycus, a pioneer in cognitive procurement software. Positive impacts have already been seen in various departments through the automation of processes which were previously paperbased or required manual inputting.

Lockwood adds: “We’re trying to create a core of suppliers who we work with and, instead of us just going to them, we want it to be a two-way street, giving them the opportunity to talk about what they can do.

“For us, with our suppliers, whether it’s in the retail business, property business or funeral services, that’s a common approach we’re trying to roll out at the moment.”

Central Co-op has also entered into a partnership with Inspired Energy, a consultancy which is helping various co-ops with the process of buying utilities.

Lockwood continues: “Their insight so far with regards to the environment has been massively powerful. They’re helping us future-proof ourselves as an organisation which, in essence, involves buying smartly and buying with the right people – but also looking at who we are in terms of sustainability, which is at the heart of what we do.”

Looking ahead

With eyes on the future, Lockwood believes macro-economic factors and the growing importance of sustainability must remain key considerations in the procurement space.

The war in Ukraine has, of course, had a profound impact on the supply chain and forced companies to rethink their suppliers.

“We are living through turbulent times,” Lockwood concludes. “What’s going on in Ukraine has been utterly horrendous and there has been a huge knock on effect throughout the world.

“One of the things I’m looking at and considering is the ability to source locally because shipping goods over from the Far East is more expensive. Sustainability’s massive as well, so local sourcing is important when we start looking at our carbon footprint.

“I think for us, working in procurement, we’re probably going to find more challenges and demands in understanding who our supply base is in more detail and measuring their impact on the environment.”

Alteryx & McLaren Racing datathon accelerates data skills

With the need for data skills on the rise, initiatives like Alteryx’s SparkED programme can help upskill employees with the ability to use data analytics

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

skills

With the ever-increasing advancement and adoption of technology, consumers and businesses are generating more data than ever before. As technological progress continues, the demand for data skills is rising.

As strong data capabilities become more important, employers are looking for professionals with skills in the architecture, retrieval, and analysis of large sets of data.

For many executives, data analytics can be the difference between being beaten by the competition or making the informed decisions that lead to success. And according to a McKinsey survey, when asked where the greatest need to address any skills shortages exists, most respondents named data analytics.

As a result, businesses must rethink their strategy when it comes to talent acquisition and retention. This new approach must start with upskilling knowledge workers and employees with the ability to use data analytics in their roles.

Through its SparkED programme, data analytics platform Alteryx aims to empower all learners to question, understand and solve problems with data, in every field of study and in preparation for any industry.

A partner of the McLaren Racing, earlier this year the two organisations hosted a unique Datathon at the McLaren Technology Centre, inviting students from universities across the UK to compete in a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to analyse real-world data from the McLaren F1 team. Students qualified through a series of individual ‘escape room’ challenges, with finalists participating in the data analytics Grand Prix event and getting a behind-the-scenes tour and look at the historical collection of McLaren Racing cars.

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LIBBY DUANE ADAMS CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF ADVOCACY OFFICER, ALTERYX

As Libby Duane Adams, Chief Advocacy Officer at Alteryx, explains, data analytics is now a required job skill. One of Alteryx’s Co-founders, her role today is about advocating for data analytics and being comfortable and familiar with data.

“McLaren is one example of a very public and global brand that knows the importance of data analytics,” she explains. “They drive their cars that way. They train their drivers that way. They run the business that way.

Data is in HR, it’s in marketing, it’s in supply chain, it’s in logistics. It is literally across any enterprise.

“This kind of an event brings awareness to the next generation that’s happening now of why data analytics is now a required job skill. These skills that these learners are developing are going to help them not only in their college career - but also in that first job landing - to be able to say that they’re developing knowledge and their data analytics talent.”

Helping build data and analytics skills

As Jason Belland, VP at Alteryx explains, the SparkED education programme is designed to help customers meet the market’s need for data skills.

“We do three things. One is we work directly with learners, so some of the learners that you’re going to see here today, to help them upscale both on analytics education, technology agnostic analytics education, as well as on tool specific Alteryx education,” he explains.

“McLaren is one example of a very public and global brand that knows the importance of data analytics”

LIBBY DUANE ADAMS

TITLE: CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF ADVOCACY OFFICER

COMPANY: ALTERYX

INDUSTRY: DATA ANALYTICS

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Libby Duane Adams is the Chief Advocacy Officer and Co-founder of Alteryx. Prior to Alteryx, she was a leading sales representative for the media, advertising, telecommunications and automotive industries at Strategic Mapping, a provider of spatial analytics and mapping software.

The programme also works with colleges and universities globally to help advance data skills. “We’ve got about a thousand universities that we’re working with globally in 50 countries right now to help them infuse analytics education into their curriculum, as well as doing work with student groups and others around the core curriculum to make sure that every student is graduating with education in analytics.

“The third thing we do is we work with our global customers, including McLaren and many others to help connect them with students and enable students to seek opportunities in analytics across those companies.”

Addressing the data skills gap

As Adams explains, initiatives like the datathon can help address the data skills gap. As more people with these skills enter the market, this will have the effect of speeding up businesses’ analytic transformation. “When you have an employee or future employee who starts on day one and is already productive in one part of their job, you’re investing in teaching them your business. You’re not investing in teaching them software because they’ve already come in with these skills.

“You’ve also brought somebody in who already understands analytics from a learning perspective. That helps

“The energy around data and analytics has really been fueled by what’s happened over these last couple of years”

LIBBY DUANE ADAMS CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF ADVOCACY OFFICER, ALTERYX

JASON BELLAND

TITLE: VP, GLOBAL SPARKED EDUCATION PROGRAM

COMPANY: ALTERYX

INDUSTRY: DATA ANALYTICS

LOCATION: UNITED STATES

Vice President of Alteryx’s Global SparkED Education Program, Jason Belland joined the business in 2022 after spending seven years at Salesforce, most recently as VP Education Cloud GTM.

them jumpstart the analytics within the organisation and those processes. As your current employee base sees this talent coming in, it helps them enable that onboarding of that new employee. And it all ramps that digital transformation that so many of our customers are working on now.”

“It’s about the skills, and the technology, and understanding how to use the tools, but also having that digital transformation or the data analytics mindset coming in,” Belland adds. “The folks that are going through our programme aren’t just learning data skills. They’re learning about analytics, how to ask the right questions, how to question and solve problems with data.

“So now you’re coming into an organisation not only knowing the tools, but actually asking really interesting questions that help organisations who’ve invested in technology actually start to affect change across the organisation and take an analytics approach across functions within the business.”

Data skills to be needed across every enterprise

“Globally, I have the privilege of speaking to business leaders everywhere,” Adams comments. “The energy around data and analytics has really been fueled by what’s happened over these last couple of years. Because that was a global impact, business

“The folks that are going through our programme aren’t just learning data skills. They’re learning about analytics, how to ask the right questions, how to question and solve problems with data”

JASON BELLAND VP, GLOBAL SPARKED EDUCATION PROGRAM, ALTERYX

Alteryx SparkED Expands its Data-Analytics Education Program

About Alteryx

Alteryx provides the leading Analytics Cloud Platform, enabling everyone to discover high-impact insights with AI-powered analytics automation.

More than 8,300 customers globally rely on Alteryx to democratise analytics across use cases and deliver highimpact business outcomes.

leaders are saying that they are doing more and we will continue to do more with data.

“We see the growth of analytics and the requirements of these skills growing across every enterprise. With SparkED we want to take the number of learners that we’re impacting and really exponentially scale that. It’s not just learners that are in the classroom, whether that’s a higher education programme or in secondary education, but also those learners that didn’t have the privilege of learning data analytics early in their career.”

Data analytics used to be reserved for just a few in the company that were data ready. But data analytics in a true datadriven organisation has to be able to be serving every decision. “Whether it’s

HR, supply chain finance, operations, information security teams, marketing, sales, and so on, every one of those teams has to be able to think with data, and solve with data,” Adams concludes.

Today, no one is excused from understanding data. “It’s not just a business degree, or a data analytics degree, or a finance, or an accounting degree,” she adds. “Because when you’re a nurse, you’re going to be looking at data. When you are an engineer, or a marketing major or business major, you’re going to be looking at data. So we have to make sure, over the next couple of years, that the awareness of data analytics skills can continue to scale across these programmes, and that’s our mission.”

M1 LIMITED: TAKING A CUSTOMER-CENTRIC APPROACH TO TRANSFORMATION

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: NAZEEF RABIU-IDREES

Singapore operator M1’s CDO Jan Morgenthal and the need to take a customer-centric approach

Since the launch of its commercial services in 1997, M1 Limited has achieved many firsts. It was one of the first operators to be awarded one of Singapore’s two nationwide 5G standalone network licences, the first operator to offer nationwide 4G service, as well as ultra high-speed fixed broadband, fixed voice and other services on the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network (NGNBN).

Today, as a subsidiary of Keppel Corporation, M1 offers a wide range of mobile and fixed communication services to consumers, while delivering an extensive suite of services and solutions to corporate customers including symmetrical connectivity solutions of up to 10Gbps, managed services, cloud solutions, cybersecurity solutions, Internet of Things and data centre services.

A highly competitive market, Singapore today has four different MNOs in the market with a number of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs).

“For a city state which has got slightly over five and a half million people, there are quite a lot of operators trying to get their mobile and their fixed line offerings out there in the market,” explains Jan Morgenthal, M1’s Chief Digital Officer.

This role of CDO, he explains, is more involved than a traditionally more strategic position. “I’m actually overseeing the entire

in its ambition to become a digital powerhouse

“We are continuing to work to deploy more 5G use cases here in Singapore: we want to show more the true value of 5G and how we can actually embark on it”

JAN MORGENTHAL CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, M1

IT department, meaning everything from IT strategy down to pulling up the arms and sleeves of the teams going into IT ops.”

About four years ago, M1 wanted to move from being a typical legacy telco operator towards a fully digital operator. “They actually wanted to really put apart their entire heart in the business support system (BSS) and operations support system (OSS), and embark on the journey to gain a competitive advantage. One of those ways is actually through gaining a technological advantage. For me, the technology re-haul was at the heart of the digital transformation. We have a consumer and an enterprise

JAN MORGENTHAL

TITLE: CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER

COMPANY: M1

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

LOCATION: SINGAPORE

Jan Morgenthal is a seasoned digital executive with a remarkable track record in leading and transforming digital initiatives across the telecommunication and financial industry. Currently serving as the Chief Digital Officer at M1 Limited in Singapore, he is at the forefront of driving hyper personalisation and shaping the digital landscape of one of Singapore’s leading telecommunication companies.

Before joining M1 Limited, he held the position of Director Digital at a blockchain fintech company, where he played a pivotal role in leveraging blockchain technology to revolutionise financial services. Prior to this tenure, Morgenthal served as the Head of Digital at Deutsche Telekom, one of the world’s largest telecommunications companies. In this role, he led the digitalisation

business, but our entire consumer business is already more than 95% now in the cloud. So actually we have moved almost everything now, except for a couple of legacy items, and some parts which we are not allowed to put into public cloud infrastructure. But everything else will be just going fully into the cloud and that’s clearly what we will close by next year.”

In its transformation, what M1 is doing, Morgenthal explains, is taking a very customer-centric approach, as part of an ambition to become a digital powerhouse.

“We want to be a fully digital operator, but also to offer made to measure offerings, and expand our enterprise business which is a key area for us,” he says. “We also want to follow up our regional

growth plan. Globally we are not as big as other telco groups – but we want to play smart.”

An example of this smart approach comes through M1’s 5G rollout. As Morgenthal explains, when it came to approaching its 5G rollout, M1 decided to think a little differently – not even embarking on a non standalone (NSA) journey.

“To offer the best latency and connectivity for customers, we didn’t embark on an NSA journey and went straight for standalone (SA) 5G.

“Our 5G SA is a joint venture with one of the local mobile operators, with support from the Infocomm Media Development Authority, and I believe that placed us in a unique situation.”

Jan Morgenthal Emphasizes Customer-Centricity in Digital Powerhouse Aspiration WATCH

Building the world’s first maritime 5G M1’s enterprise business has been particularly focused on working on smart 5G solutions. Last year it announced an

ambitious project with the aim to provide 5G SA offshore coverage for the southern coast of Singapore.

In collaboration with the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), M1 is providing a 5G network to trial, develop and deploy new maritime 5G use cases, in what is the world’s first public and largest maritime testbed at sea.

“We are building the first maritime 5G,” Morgenthal comments. “The whole southern waterfront of Singapore is the busiest water street in the world.”

This solution has been particularly beneficial following the COVID-19 pandemic, in what has turned into a win-win for all parties. “If the seafarer felt

JAN MORGENTHAL CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, M1

“As we embarked on a digital transformation, we were also looking for partners who are of the same mind”

sick during COVID-19, there was no way for them to anchor in Singapore, and come in on land, because there were of course strict regulations.

“That is a clear 5G use case, where you need to have low latency and other benefits, and it’s actually a win-win situation for all of us. The port authority is happy that they can provide something to the ships, the seafarers are happy, and we are also happy because we found a good use case.”

The use of 5G connectivity includes telemedicine to enable crew welfare at sea, delivery drones, maritime surveillance, and autonomous vessels, as well as remotely controlled task-based robots, such as ship inspection and autonomous firefighting robots, that are used for more dangerous and labour-intensive tasks.

“It’s nice that you can talk to a doctor or nurse, but there comes the point where

you need to get the medicine to the seafarer, for example. So we worked with a partner, which is building these drones, to perform the last mile delivery so that we can deliver items – medicine in this case – from the Singapore main island towards the boats, all using our 5G network.

“That is something which we can build not in a matter of years, but within weeks. Because we are a little bit more nimble than some of our competitors, we can act much faster and smarter to deploy solutions and provide a win-win-win situation for everyone.”

AWS and Amdocs: Working with partners who share a similar mindset

As Morgenthal explains, M1 works with a number of partners such as Amazon Web Services and Amdocs on M1’s digital transformation.

“As we embarked on a digital transformation, we were also looking for partners who are of the same mind.

“Even though we are maybe rather a small operator in Singapore, for these big players in the industry, they see us actually as the digital innovator in our business, in Singapore and the region. When something is working out here in Singapore very well, then it’s also a good showcase for them to go to our neighbouring countries and show them. That’s actually what both of them are definitely giving back to us.”

Morgenthal adds that it is important for M1 to have partners who are market leaders and have a strong track record, not just in innovation but also joint execution leveraging the power of public cloud.

“For a city state which has got slightly over five and a half million people, there are quite a lot of operators trying to get their mobile and their fixed line offerings out there in the market.”

JAN MORGENTHAL CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, M1

“I also want to have those partners which share a similar cultural approach to M1. We need to open our eyes and actually foresee the future, as best as we can, and plan for it. Because I think one thing is very clear: in 10 years, telcos won’t be the same, and I think we need to shape our future by ourselves.

“That’s what I also like about Amazon Web Services and Amdocs, because both of them share a strong focus customercentricity and desire to fundamentally re-invent on behalf of the customer by leveraging technology. I want to work with partners that have a similar view on what is actually needed for pushing the next boundary of digital transformation.”

The aim to be a fully cloudnative digital operator

For M1, the future involves the continued transformation of moving from a traditional legacy operator towards a cloud-native digital operator. “We embarked six months ago upon our enterprise transformation. So that’s clearly something which, especially in my heart, I will still drive this digital transformation until the end of 2024, with the aim to also have a fully cloud-native setup also for our enterprise businesses.”

Having successfully trialled the 5G maritime rollout, M1 will also be working to deploy further 5G usecases in the immediate future.

“We are continuing to work to deploy more 5G use cases here in Singapore: we want to show more the true value of 5G and how we can actually embark on it. 5G will dominate more of the B2B space, but we’re also offering and getting more into the B2B2C space, so that our consumers can

actually see the real benefits of 5G, and why they actually start using 5G.”

Central to this, Morgenthal explains, is about maintaining a customer-centric view.

“If we kept the same service product portfolio which we had five years ago, then obviously the consumer will ask, ‘what is in it for me?’

“That is clearly something where we need to work on, to give our customers the right offerings. For consumers, it is something we need to take into consideration. In the past, most telcos lost touch with their

customers. And that was an opportunity for the hyperscalers to actually move into that space and actually create content and services, based on the connectivity layer.

“Today, most telcos, including what we are doing at M1, can actually now again, offer such services to our end clients. In the past we lost touch as an industry, and we need to become much more customer-centric again.”

“We have a consumer and enterprise business, but our entire consumer business is already more than 95% now in the cloud”

JAN MORGENTHAL CHIEF DIGITAL OFFICER, M1

HOW IBM SERVED AI-POWERED FAN FOR WIMBLEDON

SERVED UP FAN TOOLS WIMBLEDON

For this year’s Wimbledon tournament IBM developed exciting new features, leveraging foundation models and generative AI to enhance the fan experience

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

Getty; Wimbledon 2023, Clive Brunskill

When, before this year’s final, an AI tool predicted that Spanish 20-yearold Carlos Alcaraz would beat seven-time Wimbledon champion Novak Djokovic to the Wimbledon title, the announcement was met with some scepticism.

The prediction drew wide ranging criticism, from users on social media to former tennis pros: including seven-time Grand Slam winner John McEnroe, who when commentating for the BBC said he was ‘astonished’ by the prediction.

But, with Alcaraz defeating Djokovic 1-6, 7-6(6), 6-1, 3-6, 6-4 to become the first player to beat the Serb on Centre Court since Andy Murray in 2013, it was AI’s bold

prediction that turned out to be the winner of the day.

The AI predictor tool is just one feature Wimbledon partner IBM brought to this year’s tournament, aimed at further improving the fan experience at SW19. Called IBM AI Draw Analysis, the tool used AI to define how favourable the path to the final might be for each player in the singles draw. A player’s draw favourability was indicated with a rating along a scale, based on factors including the player’s match-ups against potential future opponents and how the player’s position in the draw compares to competitors.

To learn about this and the other AI tools Wimbledon introduced at this year’s tournament, Technology Magazine was invited to tour IBM’s technology bunker at the All

England Club and speak to Kevin Farrar, the company’s UK Head of Sports Partnerships, on the technology behind the tools and what it means for the fan experience.

AI-powered

tools aimed at extracting insights from data and improving fan experience

As Farrar explains, IBM’s AI Draw Analysis builds on a number of years of work with Wimbledon aimed at extracted insights.

Its Power Index, launched two years ago, combines advanced statistical analysis and the natural language processing of IBM Watson to mine millions of expert opinions and performance metrics, quantifying each player’s momentum from tournament to tournament, and match to match.

“Two years ago, we rolled out the IBM Power Index, which is the measure of a player’s form and momentum in the lead up to and during a tournament,” Farrar explains.

“We’ve had some really good reactions to this from fans here at Wimbledon”

KEVIN FARRAR

UK HEAD OF SPORTS PARTNERSHIPS, IBM

Getty; Wimbledon 2023, Clive Brunskill

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KEVIN FARRAR

TITLE: UK HEAD OF SPORTS PARTNERSHIPS

COMPANY: IBM

INDUSTRY: IT

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

Kevin Farrar has responsibility for managing the client relationship for all the services that IBM provides to The Championships as part of its role as the official IT provider to the AELTC. He also has responsibility for the IBM marketing and innovation programme for the partnership with Wimbledon.

Until Summer 2021 Kevin was also responsible for managing the IBM sports rights relationship with the RFU, where IBM were the Official AI and Analytics Partner.

“Unlike the ATP and WTA rankings, which are in a 52 week rolling window and don’t allow fans to see what’s happening now, our Power Index updates every day.

“From there you can start to put this data into a leaderboard, and you can start to see who is flying up a leaderboard and if they might be a player to watch. It shows where potential upsets could be in the tournament and that’s used for this likelihood to win percentage.”

For this year’s tournament, the team at IBM thought to extend that capability across the whole draw, enabling further insights to help tennis fans uncover anomalies and potential surprises in the singles draw.

“When the draw comes out before the tournament fans are often looking to see how favourable or difficult their favourite player’s draw is going to be and how fortunate to be in

IBM AT THE MASTERS

For over 30 years, IBM has partnered with Augusta National to bring increasingly cutting-edge technology consulting and technical expertise to millions of Masters fans. The Masters uses several of IBM’s different AI capabilities to transform raw data into meaningful insights for the digital experience. The process is fully automated, helping the Masters Digital team quickly produce digital content. For example, the new AI Commentary feature uses large language models and text-to-speech capabilities to instantly add spoken commentary to more than 20,000 video clips served up on the Masters app.

130 million - the number of documents used to train IBM’s AI commentary model

the draw where they landed. So what we’ve got now is a new tennis stat to actually quantify that. We’ve got a favourability rating that we are putting against each player for the whole tournament and then a further rating done round by round. So then you can actually go in and see if a player has a favourable round or if they come up against a potential hurdle.

“It’s adapting all the time, so it’s a very visual way of looking at it which is very

engaging to see as the tournament unfolds, seeing how that plays out, and we’ve had some really good reactions to this from fans here at Wimbledon.”

IBM AI Commentary provides fans with a more insightful experience

Another major AI-powered tool at this year’s Wimbledon was IBM’s AI Commentary feature, which brought generative AI commentary to all highlights

“We are teaching the large language model the language of tennis”

KEVIN FARRAR

UK HEAD OF SPORTS PARTNERSHIPS, IBM

videos on the tournament’s official website.

The latest developments come off the back of work by IBM to produce AI-generated highlights packages by using crowd noise and contextual data to determine the most exciting points of a match. IBM first pioneered the use of AI to curate video highlight reels in 2017, using gesture recognition and crowd noise to help build highlights videos.

To develop the new feature, experts from IBM iX, the experience design arm of IBM Consulting, worked with The All England Club to leverage foundation models from watsonx, IBM’s enterprise AI and data platform, to train the AI in the unique language of tennis.

Work began with watsonx.data, a data store that connects disparate data sources and allows developers to filter the data

for things like profanity, hate speech or personally identifiable information. For AI Commentary, the team drew source material from nearly 130 million documents.

The data was then used to train a large language model chosen from watsonx.ai, a next-generation studio for building and training generative AI models for business use cases. The IBM team then fine-tuned the model, adding the specific domain expertise of Wimbledon, including the use of unique Wimbledon nomenclature, such as “gentlemen’s draw” rather than “men’s draw.”

“We are teaching the large language model the language of tennis, we are making sure it knows what a forehand is, a backhand is, and then also training it in the language of Wimbledon,” Farrar explains. “It’s just the

little nuances like that and then we tune the model, making sure things like player names are being pronounced correctly.”

The final model boasts three billion parameters, and the team will continue to monitor its performance using governance tools, ensuring the model performs as expected.

As Farrar describes, technology could enable further possibilities for AI-powered commentary in future, using computer vision to provide richer experiences for fans.

“This is just based on the stats at the moment. But if you were to weave computer vision to this as well, that enables you to analyse what the players are doing. It’s using 17 different limb movements to determine things like shot detection, but also things that go on around the court that the stats

“These tools are actually not replacing the commentators that we know and love, but making matches like the juniors, the seniors, and wheelchairs accessible to fans in a new way”

KEVIN FARRAR UK HEAD OF SPORTS PARTNERSHIPS, IBM

IBM and Wimbledon: Know everything but the outcome.

wouldn’t pick up, such as a shot between the legs or how many times a player bounces the ball before they serve, or how slowly they are walking back to the chair.

“All of those things could be used to add colour and texture to the commentary.”

The introduction of the AI commentary is a step towards making commentary available in an exciting way for matches outside of Wimbledon’s Show Courts, which already have live human commentary, all with the goal of making the tournament more accessible to fans.

“These tools are actually not replacing the commentators that we know and love, but making matches that aren’t as accessible like the juniors, the seniors, wheelchairs, accessible to fans in a new way.

“These are fantastic features that fans can experience for themselves and it’s all just helping the club and their ambitions of growing a global fan base and engaging the fans in new ways.”

WATCH NOW

MBZUAI PROCUREMENT BUILDING A BRIGHT FUTURE FOR AI IN THE UAE

WRITTEN BY: SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

Mansour Al Blooshi, Head of Procurement at Abu Dhabi’s Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI), on delivering AI’s future talent

There are many routes to becoming a procurement leader, but Mansour Al Blooshi may have taken one of the more unusual career paths to the profession.

The world of procurement found Mansour almost by accident while he was working at Etihad Airways as a member of

the airline’s renowned cabin crew. Before that, he was a professional football referee in the UAE league.

“Being a referee taught me three valuable lessons that I bring to procurement,” says Mansour, now Head of Procurement at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI).

“Fairness, patience, and clear decisionmaking are crucial both on the football pitch and in procurement.

“No two days are the same in procurement. It is a routine job, but not a routine scenario.”

Few readers would argue with that statement, especially as the role of

procurement has evolved significantly in the decade that Mansour has been building his career and credentials. His rise has been even more impressive given he admits to never having heard the word ‘procurement’ until that chance discussion with an Etihad Airways’ manager.

Mansour explains that he learned quickly through hard work, following his mentor’s direction, and “never making the same mistake twice”.

He spent a couple of formative years in the Etihad Airways’ procurement team before moving to Masdar Institute (later merging with Khalifa University) in 2015 where he spent four years. He joined MBZUAI in 2020, commencing as Head of Procurement in August 2022.

Working at the world’s first graduate, research university dedicated to artificial intelligence (AI) presents its own unique challenges – not least because it was a startup pioneering high-level curriculum in computer science, computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and robotics.

Then there was the dreaded pandemic to contend with, too. But that did not

stop MBZUAI producing its first master’s graduates in December 2022 and again in June 2023. The Class of 2024 will see the university’s first Ph.D. students graduating.

MBZUAI was founded in 2019 and provides a purpose-built, high-tech, and eco-friendly campus. Currently, MBZUAI has 283 students from 41 countries. Its diversity makes it a unique and welcoming institution and benefits the work it undertakes.

From a procurement perspective, the task was even more significant given that MBZUAI funds every student via a full scholarship – covering course fees, accommodation, flights, and even providing a generous ‘stipend’ allowance.

“Being an AI university, our main suppliers are naturally in the IT field,” Mansour says.

“We started the IT infrastructure with Emircom, then we developed our High Performance Computing (HPC) data centre with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) and Alpha Data.”

Emircom and Alpha Data are both Abu Dhabi-based technology companies and Mansour says the university is keen to work with local, homegrown suppliers and partners where possible.

“Fairness, patience, and clear decision-making are crucial both on the football pitch and in procurement”

MANSOUR AL BLOOSHI HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, MBZUAI

MANSOUR AL BLOOSHI TITLE: HEAD OF PROCUREMENT COMPANY: MBZUAI

Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (MBZUAI) was established in 2019 as an open invitation to the world. Against a backdrop of global artificial intelligence (AI) talent shortages, the university is providing a worldleading pipeline of AI specialists to support the UAE’s innovation trajectory.

MBZUAI is supporting the UAE to find solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges with transformative research in areas such as healthcare, education, and climate.

According to CSRankings –MBZUAI ranks in the top 20 globally in AI, computer vision, machine learning, and natural language processing, ahead of many respected peer institutions.

However, there is also a greater focus on sustainability when it comes to commercial evaluation of suppliers.

“Sustainability is one of the major goals we are trying to achieve within the Abu Dhabi Government, not only the university,” Mansour says.

“This is a long-term goal, but today if I make even a small change then in 10 years that might make a difference, and we may reach our 2050 goal.”

One of the first sustainability initiatives instigated by Mansour was the removal of plastic water bottles. He then set about creating a sustainability policy for

procurement, setting out what suppliers need to do to meet MBZUAI’s requirements.

“We made sustainability worth between five and 10 marks for our evaluation of suppliers, so that’s around 20 percent of the commercial evaluation,” Mansour explains.

“From IT to kitchen supplies, we look for products that are recyclable, sustainable, and do not impact the environment. We need to make sure that God-given resources are protected.”

Less than 12 months old when Mansour started at MBZUAI, he soon discovered the procurement team was processing by hand because they were ‘between’ digital systems.

More than 50 faculty members have been appointed to date; 56 percent of whom come to Abu Dhabi from the world’s top 100 AI institutions

Mansour admits that the system does have some challenges, and he works around that by creating some bespoke systems and processes to make sure he stays on top of closing open POs especially, so that they do not have a negative impact on his annual budget.

Of course, challenges are all part of the fun when it comes to procurement, and this variety is what appeals to Mansour.

“No two days are the same in procurement,” he states. “It is a routine job, but not a routine scenario. Educating people about procurement, helping them understand procurement, makes me feel good.”

That is a good thing, as Mansour’s team is expanding and becoming

MANSOUR AL BLOOSHI HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, MBZUAI

“Sustainability is one of the major goals we are trying to achieve within the Abu Dhabi Government, not only the university”

more specialised. The procurement department continues to go from strength to strength with its procurement strategy in place. They are supported in simultaneously handling contracts, vendor

management and quality assurance. Mansour adds that it has taken a lot of effort and resources, but those investments will pay dividends as the procurement team delivers greater efficiencies.

Training leaders in AI

As well as providing master’s and Ph.D. degrees for the brightest computer science minds, MBZUAI also runs regular executive and professional training programs for leaders in both government and the private sector.

These courses provide leaders and managers with knowledge about AI and

“No two days are the same in procurement. It is a routine job, but not a routine scenario”

MANSOUR AL BLOOSHI HEAD OF PROCUREMENT, MBZUAI

how it can be best used to positively impact business and society. The university’s oneof-a-kind Executive Program (MEP) has successfully trained three cohorts consisting of more than 120 UAE leaders in AI so they can begin implementation in their home organisations. Through their exposure to elite, global AI researchers and heads of industry, private and public sector leaders in the UAE are growing into a powerful AI ecosystem — an essential ingredient for long-term success with the technology.

MBZUAI believes that leadership’s buy-in towards implementing AI is a critical factor to successful digital transformation

and adoption in industries across the UAE and the world.

Mansour is excited to be working for one of the global leaders in AI and believes the institution’s future is bright.

“We have all the resources when it comes to talent. We have brilliant ideas,” he says proudly.

“I believe that the UAE can be central to the future of AI both in the region and the world. MBZUAI is the paradise of AI.”

HOW OCINET AND GE HEALTHCARE TRANSFORMING

WRITTEN BY: MARCUS LAW

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

AND HEALTHCARE ARE TRANSFORMING HEALTHCARE

Managing huge quantities of imaging data, OCINet is working with GE HealthCare to enable better experiences for patients and hospitals in Ontario, Canada

The world of healthcare is experiencing a rapid transformation. As organisations look to embrace digital tools, the possibilities are endless: from enabling care closer to home to reducing costs and decreasing patient wait times.

Formed in April 2022 with the consolidation of three diagnostic imaging repository programmes, the Ontario Clinical Imaging Network (OCINet) was created to execute Ontario’s medical imaging digital health strategy.

Building on efforts from the past decade, OCINet enables the secure storage and retrieval of image records, supports hospitals and independent health facilities (IHFs), and connects radiologists, referring physicians, and specialists with their patients’ images province-wide.

“In the early 2000s, there was an organisation in Canada called Canada Health Infoway, which had the mandate to digitise healthcare and bring value through technology,” explains Shafique Shamji, OCINet’s President and CEO. “They created a blueprint of how to digitise healthcare in the next century. Imaging was a large part of this, primarily because imaging tends to be a leader in digitisation and technology and innovation in general within the healthcare space.”

“GE HealthCare has been a very strong collaborator for a long time, and they understand the market extremely well”

SHAFIQUE SHAMJI PRESIDENT & CEO, OCINET

DAVID VEENEMAN

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS

COMPANY: ONTARIO CLINICAL IMAGING NETWORK (OCINET)

Veeneman works in partnership with healthcare providers in Ontario in the delivery of Diagnostic Imaging Repository services, shared Picture Archive and Communication Systems (PACS), and the Provincial Emergency Neuro Image Transfer System (ENITS).

With 28 years of healthcare experience both locally and abroad, Veeneman brings direct clinical experience from a wide array of healthcare environments ranging from large multi-facility academic/research centres to rural medical aid stations.

Throughout his career, Veeneman has been at the forefront of transformational change through enabling technology and has successfully transitioned several large-scale multi-facility initiatives from the project phase to sustainable operational models.

As Shamji describes, one of the recommendations for imaging from that blueprint was to centralise images and make them available regionally. “The Ontario government took that to heart, and in 2010 started the four imaging repositories in Ontario.”

The main objective was to increase speed in the imaging process, ultimately providing a better experience for patients.

“When you go to the hospital and you get an image taken, if there is something detected you have to go see a specialist who often works at a different hospital. If there’s a suspicion of cancer, you go to the cancer centre for example.

“If they have your images available to them, you get treatment much faster,” adds Shamji. “In the old days, they would have to repeat that image. You would have to wait for availability for that image to be taken and then wait for the reading.

“As you can imagine, when you’re going through something that traumatic, the anxiety level is quite high, and there is a high human impact. So, for the patient, this was a phenomenal transformation because that specialist had access to that image and could actually read it and bring a diagnosis a lot sooner.

“That was the idea: to reduce repeat imaging to help patients and to make these systems available centrally and not require local hospitals to make those significant investments.”

Meeting needs with health services becoming more centralised

Fast forward to 2018, changes in patients’ behaviour were becoming apparent as services became increasingly centralised. “We began noticing that the patients within the province were moving a lot more than they were in the past,” Shamji explains.

SHAFIQUE SHAMJI

TITLE: PRESIDENT & CEO

COMPANY: ONTARIO CLINICAL IMAGING NETWORK (OCINET)

Shamji has over 25 years of experience in Technology, Business, Healthcare, Software Development, Telecommunications, and Information Services. Shamji was previously the EVP and CIO at The Ottawa Hospital; Chief Operating Officer at Macadamian Technologies, President of Privasoft Corporation, and President of Time iCR in Ottawa, which was acquired by Rogers Communications where Mr. Shamji served as the Vice-President of Professional Services.

Shamji has also spent several years in the US where he was Chief Operating Officer of TeleHub Network Services in Chicago; President of LD Exchange in California; and Vice-President of Network Services for Fidelity in California. Prior to that, Shamji held several senior level positions in Toronto with AT&T Canada, Unitel Communications and Nortel.

GE HealthCare helps OCINet to deliver technology innovation

In a collaboration spanning 15 years, GE HealthCare and OCINet work with expertise and mutual trust to solve problems and create innovative solutions

GE HealthCare is focused on providing hospitals with new technologies and innovations to help them deliver a world that has no healthcare limits. As John Insko, Chief Commercial Officer for GE HealthCare’s Solutions for Enterprise Imaging (SEI) business, explains, its work with the Ontario Clinical Imaging Network (OCINet) is no exception.

“We’ve worked with OCINet for over 15 years and have had the opportunity to grow together – building experiences and thought leadership,” Insko comments.

The collaboration between GE HealthCare and OCINet started in 2005 with the building of the DIRs, and today, the repositories hold 185 million exams. With sights now turning towards consolidating these repositories, the long-standing relationship between these two organisations has enabled a healthcare transformation.

“OCINet is a tremendously important customer to us,” adds Mike Hamilton,

President of GE HealthCare in Canada. “We’ve had a longstanding relationship with them in the area of digital imaging repositories, and we’re excited to continue to be part of this digital imaging repositories evolution in Ontario.”

“One thing that’s really special between GE HealthCare and OCINet is the fact that we’ve had extraordinary continuity of resources on our teams on both sides,” Hamilton explains. “When you’ve worked so closely with a collaborative partner like OCINet, there’s an incredible level of expertise, mutual trust and openness to solve problems and create solutions as one team.”

GE HealthCare will continue to support OCINet’s strategic goals, particularly around connected, convenient, patient-centred care. As Insko concludes, GE HealthCare will help OCINet continue to evolve and incorporate other specialties into the digital imaging repositories, exploring cloud and AI-enabled technologies. “As to the future, we’re excited about our ability to continue to evolve this and continue to utilise these learnings and technologies.”

“As services became more centralised, specialists were merging into these centres. And so, patients started travelling to these often very hard-to-find specialists.”

As a result, patients’ health records needed to follow them, and centralisation was the way to go. This is where OCINet comes in: managing all these repositories. Today, these Diagnostic Imaging Repositories (DIRs) hold 185 million exams.

“We have merged into three repositories instead of four. Eventually, the mandate for us is to merge all of them into one DIR, because the technology is now available to do that and do that at scale.”

As David Veeneman, OCINet’s VP of Operations, explains, this goal to merge into one DIR is an exciting strategic move.

“Two of those three were already based on GE HealthCare’s enterprise archive, and the third one was on another vendor’s product. So, we were at a point where that product needed to be substantially upgraded, both software and hardware.”

This, Veeneman adds, was used as an opportunity to align technologies across the province. “This is a significant enabler for us because now converging the entire province, not yet to one DIR, but to one common vendor and to one common technology

stack. This has presented a huge opportunity for us to start stitching those technologies together, and to transition to a common patient-matching algorithm across three DIRs to create consistency from an end user experience, and from a patient-matching experience.

“We’re not a big company; we’re 40 people strong,” comments Veeneman. “So to be able to align on a singular technology stack creates a huge synergistic opportunity for us. Upgrading that to cloud services, going from a single vendor solution, it is going to be materially simplified, a common database, common patient

“When you’re dealing with 12 petabytes of data, and almost 200 million exams, you need a vendor you can trust”

DAVID VEENEMAN VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS, OCINET

The OCINet offices in Markham, Ontario

matching. All of these things become really complicated when you try and consolidate and integrate all of that data from multiple sources into a different solution.”

With the centralisation of imaging, an opportunity became apparent to help hospitals centralise other systems including PACS. From there came the concept of the shared Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS). Today, OCINet offers shared PACS to over 40 hospitals in Ontario.

“One of the things that the industry realised,” Shamji explains, “is that if we’re centralising imaging and the availability of images through repositories, that’s pretty closely related to what a hospital does on a regular basis with their PACS, the picture archiving and communication system to read those images.

“And the same value statement could be made in that not everyone should be investing heavily in these very large enterprise systems.”

OCINet’s collaboration with GE HealthCare OCINet has a long-standing relationship with GE HealthCare. “GE HealthCare has been a very strong collaborator for a long time, and they understand the market extremely well, specifically the Ontario market and how that system works,” Shamji describes. “They understand the idiosyncrasies around funding, around capabilities, around integration, around the non-for-profit healthcare system that we run in Ontario. And that makes a difference because anybody who doesn’t understand it will try and implement something that won’t work because it’s very different from the US-based for-profit healthcare system.”

“The collaboration with Ge Healthcare goes all the way back to when we started building the DIRs in 2005,” Veeneman comments. “What’s unique about Ge HealthCare) is the commitment to the DIRs, and to the province of Ontario in particular. A lot of people think of the DIRs as vendor neutral archives (VNAs), and that is certainly a core component of the DIR. But the DIR in itself is not an off-the-shelf product. It’s made of multiple technology stacks because we’re not just archiving data, we’re distributing that data, and we’re providing an image view into that data.

“Success is directly tied to the collaboration that we get from our vendors. And there have been a lot of strong vendor collaborations along the way, but I would say none are as strong, as long or as big as our work with GE HealthCare.”

As Veeneman explains, GE HealthCare’s Edison Datalogue has enabled OCINet to integrate the imaging archives from 18 different PACS vendors, in what has been a major accomplishment.

“Each vendor does their business just a little bit differently but being able to bring that data in from those organisations in a fashion that allows those organisations to decommission their local archives, that’s a huge benefit. That is a benefit from an operational sustainability perspective, it’s a benefit because it returns those funds back to that organisation to allow them to reinvest them in delivering patient care instead of infrastructure.

“It’s also a benefit because, quite honestly, with the magnitude of data that we’re storing, we’re able to do that with an enterprise-grade system that has full image replication across two disparate data centres in a way that a lot of hospitals just can’t accomplish. So, Edison Datalogue has enabled that level of complete image redundancy in a way that data availability and data loss are not even factors any more for us. So that’s been a huge win for us provincially.”

OCINet’s collaboration with GE HealthCare is vitally important, Veeneman adds. “For us, the notion of swapping out vendors every couple of years is an untenable situation. When you’re dealing with 12 petabytes of data, and almost 200 million exams, you need a vendor you can trust.

“The other aspect to this is we have enabled 80-90% of the hospitals in the province of Ontario to decommission their local archives. So, we need a product and a vendor that we can count on long-term. Just like any client, we’re going to have bumps along the way. You’re going to have service disruptions, you’re going to have issues with technology, and you need to know that you’re working with a vendor

“To be able to align on a singular technology stack creates a huge synergistic opportunity for us”

DAVID VEENEMAN VICE PRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS, OCINET

that’s got your back. We’ve lived through those bumps in the past, and we know that that relationship exists with GE HealthCare. And that can’t be underestimated. This is not a collaboration or a solution that we would hand over to the latest and greatest startup. The value of the collaboration and the trust that we’ve built with GE HealthCare over the years is definitely something that allows us to deliver to the province on this trust that’s been handed over to us.”

The future role of AI

The opportunities presented by AI have created a lot of interest in countless

industries across the globe, and healthcare is no exception. As Shamji explains, with OCINet managing such enormous amounts of data, the organisation meets one of the core requirements for proper AI: big data.

“We manage almost 12 petabytes of data. That, by definition, is big data. So we have one of the core components required to actually implement a strong AI capability. The corollary for that is that the value of AI is likely at the point of care, the highest value. There are other values of AI when it comes to sort of population health analytics, for instance. But in terms of providing care and where you can actually use it the most, it’s really at the point of care. We’re trying to figure out what is the best use of AI with the data that we have, as much as public policy and legal requirements allow.

“Right now, I don’t think anyone’s particularly there yet with enterprise-grade AI capabilities for imaging, but I think we’re pretty close. What I’d like to start to do is try and get our foundation in place so that we can make full use and take full advantage of AI when it’s ready for these large enterprisegrade capabilities,” Shamji adds. “That’s why there has been such a large push towards centralising all of the DIRs and bringing all of that data into one single repository. Whether it’s cloud-based or local at that point, there is value to both. Ultimately, we’re focused on centralising so that we can take advantage of AI capabilities.”

“In the old days, you would have to wait for availability for that image to be taken and then wait for the reading”

SHAFIQUE SHAMJI PRESIDENT & CEO, OCINET

Create healthier lives and enable patient data accessibility

WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW

PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

Discussing the company’s product strategy and partnerships enabling data security is Mike Melo, VP Shared Service Technologies and CISO at LifeLabs

It was once expected that healthcare professionals were the bearers of all knowledge relating to patient information. But, with an increasing presence of digital technologies in the medical profession, individuals are now able to take this into their own hands and discover more about their own physical wellbeing for the better.

This is the core mission of LifeLabs, Canada’s leading provider of laboratory diagnostic services, which is responsible for crucial patient data pertaining to their health. Responsible for critical stages of the healthcare process, LifeLabs as an organisation is responsible for carrying out important blood and ECG tests for patients across Canada and is an integral stakeholder in their medical journeys and vice versa.

The company is the largest medical diagnostic firm in Canada with operations in Ontario, British Columbia – and in Saskatchewan – providing crucial services to the Canadian population. Having spoken to one of the company’s executives, we learn the relevance of its services in relation to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic as it was instrumental in a number of ways.

“We were on the front lines of COVID-19 testing, supporting our government partners, helping airlines keep flying and even provided testing services to the NHL. Our labs have completed over five million COVID-19 tests. We’re making a significant impact, and we’re proud of it!,” says the company’s VP Technology Shared Service and CIO Mike Melo.

Conversing with Melo to uncover more around cybersecurity, the organisation has undergone a major overhaul with its CISO at the forefront of bringing together its IT and cybersecurity teams to harmonise their approaches. The focus on cybersecurity is a result of LifeLabs offering more and more services to its customers to allow them to take more control over their medical needs.

“We offer digital access to medical health records with better insights into what you can do with your health and really empower users to take this into their own hands and make great choices.

MIKE MELO VP OF IT SHARED SERVICES AND CISO, LIFELABS

“ONE OF OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES WAS CREATING A VIRTUAL REMOTE ACCESS ENVIRONMENT FOR OUR STAFF, ESPECIALLY DURING COVID-19”

That’s one of the reasons I came to LifeLabs, as I wanted to be a part of that journey and transform the digital healthcare space,” says Melo.

As the company evolves, more possibilities are opening up for patients, which requires particular attention to securing and protecting their data in the digital realm. As explained by Melo, the organisation is dedicated to providing high-quality healthcare services that come directly to the person. LifeLabs is offering more patient-centric services, much like its MyVisit solution – allowing phlebotomy experts to come directly to them – and also

MIKE MELO

TITLE: VP OF IT SHARED SERVICES AND CISO

COMPANY: LIFELABS

LOCATION: CANADA

Mike Melo is the Vice President of IT Shared Services and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at LifeLabs. Melo has truly made an impact with his invaluable contributions and exemplary leadership in senior IT roles. He has demonstrated remarkable expertise and dedication to ensuring the highest information security and technology excellence standards.

Melo was recently recognized as the Member of the Year in the CISO Division by the CIO Association of Canada (CIOCAN) while playing a pivotal role in driving innovation and safeguarding sensitive data. With his extensive knowledge and experience, Melo has elevated the IT landscape at LifeLabs, setting new benchmarks for excellence.

EXECUTIVE BIO

Collaborating with Netskope to secure the modern enterprise

Security must modernize to successfully keep up with cloud transformation and the needs of a hybrid workforce. Netskope sees and understands these changes and works with you to protect people and data anywhere they go.

We’re building a world where Identity belongs to you

Okta is the World’s Identity Company. Our Workforce and Customer Identity Clouds enable secure yet flexible access, authentication, and automation that transforms how people move through the digital world and puts Identity at the heart of business security and growth.

CrowdStrike protects healthcare systems from cyberattacks, so you can focus on delivering quality patient care

CrowdStrike sets the standard for cybersecurity in the cloud era. The CrowdStrike Falcon® platform protects and enables the people, processes and technologies such as LifeLabs and top Fortune 500 organizations that drive modern enterprise, delivering superior protection, better performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.

LifeLabs and other leading organizations around the globe are rapidly adopting a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) architecture to safeguard data wherever it moves, support digital transformation efforts, and realize better efficiency and return -on-investment from their technology.

Netskope is already a widely acknowledged expert and innovator in CASB, SWG, ZTNA, Firewall-as-a-Service,

and other components of the Security Service Edge (SSE), which describes the security services needed for a successful SASE architecture. Among more than 2,500 worldwide customers, Netskope today serves more than 25 of the Fortune 100, and 5 of the world’s 7 largest healthcare providers.

As the leading independent Identity partner, we free everyone to safely use any technology anywhere, on any device or app.

The most trusted brands trust Okta to enable secure access, authentication, and automation. With flexibility and neutrality at the core of our Okta Workforce

Identity and Customer Identity

Clouds, business leaders and developers can focus on innovation and accelerate digital transformation, thanks to customizable solutions and more than 7,000 pre-built integrations.

CrowdStrike a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyperaccurate detections, automated protection

and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

CrowdStrike secures the most critical areas of enterprise risk — endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data — to keep organizations ahead of today’s adversaries and stop breaches.

CROWDSTRIKE: WE STOP BREACHES

offering ECG monitoring. Not only will this empower patients, but provide simpler, faster, and more flexible access to healthcare services.

“There’s been a lot of evolution over the five years I’ve been with LifeLabs. I would say the company has really focused on becoming customer-centric and how to make it easier for a customer to get access to, one, the services that they need, and two, their health care information,” says Melo.

During COVID-19, the company had to undergo a rapid transition to more data driven, digital healthcare, which is a response that is likely to allow better support as well as prevention of critical conditions in the future. However, in doing so the team recognised the need for a robust cybersecurity approach to ensure that patient data remains secure for all.

Why is cybersecurity so crucial in the healthcare sector?

Following the journey of LifeLabs really highlights the significance of cyber as a construct in the medical industry. Upon joining the team, the team experienced an attack on its system, provoking the need for a dedicated CISO. These types of attacks come in abundance across the sector.

“LifeLabs focused heavily on rebuilding stakeholder trust after the event. We embarked on this new transformation to not only ensure we were appropriately managing PHI and evolving the ways we managed and secured patient health information, but also looking at how to innovate in the cybersecurity space,” says Melo.

The key aim here, as also mentioned by the CISO, is to become a true leader of Canada’s healthcare sector with zero-trust protocols embedded into everything it does.

“I think we’ve done that over the past four years, since I began leading the charge in cybersecurity,” he says. “We have evolved. We enhanced rigorous governance surrounding the security culture within the organisation. And it’s not just within the security practice, it brings accountability and responsibility to all of our users.”

As the old cliche goes, “teamwork makes the dream work”

Much of this exercise involves team building, which is where Melo’s role really takes shape with backing from the company’s President and CEO, Charles Brown. Aligning being a key theme for the organisation, Melo was responsible for developing an approach to team building that allowed both the cyber operations and the IT teams to collaborate as one. This involved first understanding both sides of the coin and then determining a process that meets the needs of both.

So with teams aligned and data now a critical component of healthcare cybersecurity operations, where is it secured?

The LifeLabs approach – enforced by Melo and team – is a cloud-based one, which seems to be a no-brainer for the company.

As alluded to, cloud creates a simpler, more flexible environment for secure data actions with many of the most recent cybersecurity developed in line with cloud services. When providing this insight, Melo explains that organisations should not simply jump into the cloud environment without careful research and a supportive approach.

“There’s definitely some pros and cons that need to be weighed up when you’re looking

at what type of workloads you’ll be moving to the cloud, and equally important, how you’re going to secure them,” says Melo.

Cloud and on-prem infrastructures are very different in nature. It’s not a lift and shift model, especially from a cybersecurity perspective. You need a purpose-built programme, standards, and structure when operating in the cloud.”

Melo also notes that if cybersecurity was not a critical conversation today, the results of inactivity may have seen LifeLabs in a different position from a commercial perspective.

Interception of cyber breaches is a crucial act of social demand, but also a key part of sustaining growth for the business.

Working with its partners in cybersecurity, such as Okta and CrowdStrike, the company has the support of these leading firms to drive the company forward in its cloud journey; enabling LifeLabs to identify the most imminent threats and defend its accounts.

“I’m proud of the partnership ecosystem that we’ve built at LifeLabs. It’s really helping us define success and what healthcare cybersecurity can look like,” says Melo.

“We leverage various technology organisations, but there are a few that become true partners in our journey in our cybersecurity initiatives. Some of those partners, such as Netskope, CrowdStrike and Okta, have really allowed us to provide better access for our employees, our customers, and ensure that their information is secure as we transform our organisation to a cloud-focused infrastructure and delivery model.

“These are very prominent leaders in their own regard, and they're very cloud focused. They help us in our cloud journey initiative

and, at the end of the day, they provide some of the fulcrum pieces of our security technology stack. They're the ones who are helping us identify threats, defend our account access, ensure that we are, you know, managing and governing various access to all of these new incredible products.”

One of its crucial partners, Netskope, was brought on board to help govern access to software-as-a-service (SaaS) products used by the company. The team works closely with Netskope to reduce the threat landscape surrounding edge applications.

“We’ve done a lot of work with Netskope to govern access to SaaS products; being able to ultimately undergo decryption at scale to gain proper visibility of what’s egressing our environment; understanding what threats are out there, because now we have the visibility to see them and analyse them,” Melo says.

“One of our biggest challenges was creating a virtual remote access environment for our staff, especially during COVID-19. There was a massive demand for remote access to most organisations and traditional VPN models just weren’t able to keep up. They weren’t built with the bandwidth requirements and capacity in mind.”

Netskope is a critical partner for enabling LifeLabs’ zero-trust approach and provides the company with low-latency and secure connected services, which is aligned with the overall goal of stable data sharing.

“Stability is critical for our success as we are a hybrid organisation and we’re able to have security policies that essentially follow the user and not the traditional means of following a corporate asset,” Melo explains.

“I think that our journey with Netskope has been one of our greatest successes and our ability to adapt and evolve over the past four years, our cloud journey and also our hybrid remote work journey.”

The future of the company is secure and over the foreseeable months cloud and cybersecurity will be the main focus points for the business. Melo and his team are also embracing the impending integration of AI in its processes and leveraging tools like ChatGPT in more mainstream applications.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION A BRAVE NEW FOR FRACHT

WRITTEN BY: SEAN ASHCROFT

TRANSFORMATION NEW WORLD US

International freight forwarder

Fracht US has digitally transformed, improving life both for the company and its customers, says Darwish

Adi, VP of IT

In what must amount to one of the best-ever summaries of the business of freight forwarding, Darwish Adi, VP of IT of Fracht Group – United States says: “Basically, we’re a travel agent for cargo.”

He adds that, while people can get themselves to the airport, onto a plane and then through customs, cargo cannot.

There is far more to outsourced logistics than this, of course; there are quite literally thousands of moving parts in logistics at any given time.

Indeed, third- and fourth-party logistics providers (it’s the same thing as freight forwarding) have evolved significantly even over the past few years, with the pandemic prompting a faster pace of change.

Early in the pandemic Fracht – like all logistics providers – was faced with a shortage of capacity and rocketing prices. It was a tough time, Adi recalls.

“As a freight forwarder it gave us a huge challenge,” he says. “I mean, it’s embarrassing to go to customers and say that the same container you moved last week for $2,000 now will cost you $18,000.”

But latterly, he says, things have improved.

“Availability is up and prices are down. Capacity is improving, ports are less congested and the consumption is there,” he says, with a grin.

In today’s post-pandemic world, Fracht’s core business remains “our ability to

DARWISH ADI VICE PRESIDENT IT, FRACHT US

efficiently and safely move Freight around the world” but Adi adds that “what we are able to offer customers is changing”.

He says: “I would say that more recently we’ve come to be in the business of delivering information, alongside the product themselves.”

This change has been because Fracht US has undergone a digital transformation, which gives it better visibility of its

operations, and gives peace of mind to its customers, who want to know exactly where shipments are and if there are any problems.

“Customers depend on us to be aware that they have received orders from their own customers,” says Adi. “With that knowledge, we’ll start to prepare for when the product is actually produced, so that we can prepare for it and deliver it to their customer.”

“Basically, we’re a travel agent for cargo”

He adds: “So it starts with us being aware of our customers’ orders, and moves on to us arranging for the movement of such goods. Then we track it, and keep a record of where that product is in the world, at any one point until it is delivered to its destination.”

Along the way, plenty can happen to a shipment; the world has seen enough evidence of this over the past three years to last us a lifetime.

But over and above pandemic-fuelled disruption, there are the everyday problems that have always existed.

“Ships can miss a call in a particular port, or call to a port that wasn’t part of the schedule,” says Adi. “Keeping track of containers and

DARWISH ADI

TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT IT

COMPANY: FRACHT

LOCATION: TEXAS, UNITED STATES

An IT executive with 24+ years exhibiting success leading global teams with demonstrated ability to deliver business value through the use of technology tools and methodologies. An experienced professional in the logistics, oil, and gas, and transportation industries. Excel at interpreting business strategies and devising plans to deliver solutions and services that are architecturally sound and user friendly. IT enterprise development leader and systems integrator capable

EXECUTIVE BIO

AN END-TO-END CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PLATFORM FOR LSP CUSTOMERS

Enhancing customer experience and supply chain management for freight forwarding companies & customs brokers at Logixboard

Logixboard is a platform dedicated to enhancing customer experiences for the clients of LSPs. Their goal is to offer LSP clients improved visibility and selfserve insights through a comprehensive platform that unifies all workflows.

“It’s about working out how we help these customers gain new business and attract new customers,” Julian Alvarez, the CEO and Co-founder of Logixboard said. “How do we help them expand into their existing customer base by delighting them and offering them a better service than other competitors?”

HELPING CLIENTS OPERATE MORE EFFICIENTLY

LSPs spend a significant amount of time and effort providing visibility to their clients regarding the whereabouts of their goods. Managing this involves a maze of phone calls, emails, spreadsheets, and manual tasks. That’s where Logixboard helps streamline the entire process, leveling up how communications and steps are managed. “We’re able to take all the data that a freight forwarding

company has, complemented with third-party data, and put that online so that their customers can access it in real-time.” explains Alvarez.

Logixboard aims to empower operators to focus on high-impact tasks that drive the business forward, leaving the repetitive and automatable tasks to their digital solutions.

One of these successful collaborations has been with Fracht, a partnership that naturally clicked from the beginning. “It’s been a phenomenal partnership. In our two years of working together, Fracht has played a crucial role in shaping our product roadmap,” Alvarez shares.

Looking ahead, Logixboard aims to bring any and all underlying systems together into one seamless customer experience. “We envision providing a single, unified customer experience,” Alvarez reveals, “a single pane of glass where clients can effortlessly manage their entire supply chain in one place.”

The next 12 months hold exciting growth as Logixboard works relentlessly towards this vision.

Darwish Adi, Highlights How Fracht US’s Digital Transformation Benefits the Company and Customers

goods is a big part of it. Customers look to us to provide that visibility.”

They also look to Fracht US to help validate invoices from carriers for services rendered.

Adi says that Fracht US also excels in “project cargo”.

He explains: “Let’s say the project is the building of an electricity generating plant. If we win the business, all of the equipment that it takes for it to become a plant becomes our responsibility to deliver.”

Many of Fracht’s customers are large, well-known global organisations, such as Siemens GE, Coca-Cola, Molsen and Coors. It’s these larger organisations that have a need to move many thousands of containers of products in any given year, but Fracht also

“Recently we’ve come to be in the business of delivering information, alongside the product themselves”

DARWISH ADI VICE PRESIDENT IT, FRACHT US

works with smaller, lesser known companies that are big players in their own markets.

Adi gives a large dairy product producer as an example. The US-based business produces cheese, lactose, whey protein and sweet whey.

“It supplies prepared and grated cheese around the world to customers and their dealers,” explains Adi.

He adds: “Our digital transformation has allowed such customers to find better ways to manage their own customers. One of their customers might be Pizza Hut in Vietnam, and they will need to rely on the cheese products to arrive when expected.

“Using our data, Our customer can let Pizza Hut know when to schedule everything, all the way down to forklift operators.”

Adi says technology has given Fracht US and its customers “a better-controlled distribution process”, which he adds “allows our customers to feel less stressed because they can watch orders being fulfilled for their own customers”. It has, he says, added value for Fracht customers.

Although Adi says Fracht is well advanced on its transformation journey, he points out that the process of change can never stop.

“All the core components of the transformation are in place, but in truth software never stands still, and the moment you stop enhancing and improving is the moment the software starts to degrade.”

Fracht’s transformation predates the pandemic; it already had its eye on using technology to support its customers for a while.

The initial steps it took made it easy for me when I came on board two years ago, in terms of coming to understand its goals, and to put a strategy forward that allows us to achieve those goals.

Adi’s journey to Fracht started 30 years ago, when he began writing programmes for a local warehouse company. People were impressed with his work and asked for more, and this allowed him to migrate from the warehousing side to the transportation and logistics side.

“Over the years, I’ve been introduced to many sides of the business in order to support various technology integrations,” he says.

This led to more leadership roles for him within the technology space, always for the logistics industry. “So although I am a technologist, my entire career has been in logistics,” he says.

He says the most challenging part of the job are “the ever-changing regulations in our industry”, and adds: “You’re shipping between the US and Europe, or US and Asia, and navigating all the regulations and staying on top of all that is the challenge.”

But he has many good people around him, and Adi and his team have been able to hit greater heights since Fracht US digitally transformed its operations.

“It’s made a tremendous amount of difference to us as a company,” he says. “For example, rather than mostly spending our time on data entry – and trying to keep up with the mountain of documentation that comes with each shipment – we now are managing a lot of this behind the scenes, electronically system to system.”

Adi says that when he first joined the company two years ago, the number of employees more than doubled.

He adds: “The impact of the transformation is visible not just by the numbers of

Fracht has moved over 300,000 TEUs and more than 10 million kilos via air freight every year for the past decade

A CargoWise One® Optimised Customer Portal and Dashboard Solution

Our proprietary solution requires no custom configuration, it is as easy as creating a user login.

You can be up and running in days with full historical and real time updates across all modules.

DARWISH ADI VICE PRESIDENT IT, FRACHT US

employees but also by the amount of throughput they are able to process.

“For example, our Atlanta office didn’t necessarily increase its staff much but the goods that they move has more than doubled, and that was possible because we had the technology needed to process everyday records.

“Technology has given our people extra time to spend with customers and this allows them to better manage exceptions, rather than having to manage each and every shipment.”

Adi continues: “We don’t want to look at 250 shipments that are in-flight at any given moment. We only want to look at the five that are facing a potential delay. This allows us to offer a better service to our customers.”

Adi is immensely proud of his team.

“They inspire me,” he says. “They’re exceptional individuals. We have some really strong leaders, and watching them day in, day out – producing products, connecting people and solving problems for our business – makes me want to do my role even better. It makes me want to support

“Customers depend on us to be aware that they have received an order from their own customers”

“Digital transformation is allowing us to tap into markets that we haven’t traditionally served”

DARWISH ADI VICE PRESIDENT IT, FRACHT US

them, and showcase them to the world as individuals who do what it takes to support our business and our customers.”

And those customers are beginning to change, thanks to new markets opened up by the transformation

Adi says: “It is opening doors for us, and allowing us to tap into markets that we haven’t traditionally served, especially in terms of how we can serve industries that need to rely less on traditional energy sources. So we’ve got into solar panel distribution, and are supporting our customers in that now.

“I would say we’re growing very strong in that space – of delivering solutions for companies that are responsible for enhancing the use of solar systems for generating electricity.”

Same travel agent. Different cargo.

PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

WRITTEN BY: TOM CHAPMAN

STRONG DATA CORE UNDERPINS INSIGHT & AI AT RENTOKIL INITIAL

With its acquisition of American industry heavyweight Terminix last year, Rentokil Initial officially became the largest pest control company on the planet. What many people may not know, however, is that Rentokil’s core functions stretch to so much more than that.

The ‘Initial’ side of this FTSE 100 firm provides hygiene services for office washrooms and washrooms in public places, an important yet taken-for-granted task. Elsewhere, subsidiary company Ambius –as its name suggests – takes care of office ambience, specialising in plants, while Rentokil Initial also has a dental waste disposal business.

Put together, these individual businesses generate an abundance of data to be analysed and deliver crucial insights that, in turn, influence Rentokil Initial’s decision-making, ultimately leading to more efficient processes.

The man responsible for this part of the operation is Andy Graham, Head of Data and CDO for Europe, who took up his position last year.

One of the big initiatives launched by Graham since his arrival last year is to drive standardisation and improvements in data health via a new framework that governs the management and control of data. This is at the root of the company’s ability to enable a step change in the value it achieves from its data assets.

Andy Graham, Head of Data and CDO for Europe, explains his three-step strategy to drive greater value and efficiency from the organisation’s data assets

ANDY GRAHAM HEAD OF DATA AND CDO FOR EUROPE, RENTOKIL INITIAL

“As with all large organisations, the quality of data is part of what we’re dealing with,” says Graham. “It’s one of those problems that you need to keep on top of because,

if you don’t, it will keep coming back to bite you. You need to find a way to make it a business-as-usual problem that you gradually eradicate from the organisation.”

Borrowing ideas from banking

Graham’s data strategy involves borrowing ideas from his days in the banking sector with HSBC, which he says was like “working for a country” given its size.

“In banking, you have this concept of critical data elements (CDEs), which is used very much from a regulatory point-of-view,” he adds. “I used to be heavily involved in dealing with this kind of problem, so I took that idea and switched it around so it was more focused on data quality.”

“Data quality is one of those problems that you need to keep on top of because, if you don’t, it will keep coming back to bite you”

Rentokil constantly monitors the quality of its data based on a number of key business KPIs, allowing the business to spot anomalies as soon as they arise and take action.

“It’s like a continuous improvement process, and playing a part in that is business process, technology and education,” says the CDO. “We are able to monitor the health of our data using a wide variety of KPIs and have even got countries competing with each other using league tables.

“We have a ‘whole hearts and minds’ campaign going on where we are instilling the virtues of why data quality is important to every person. It’s about getting people to understand it, believe in it, and not think of it as a technologist’s problem.”

ANDY GRAHAM

TITLE: HEAD OF DATA AND CDO FOR EUROPE

COMPANY: RENTOKIL INITIAL

INDUSTRY: DATA

LOCATION: UNITED KINGDOM

EXECUTIVE BIO

Andy Graham is Head of Data for Rentokil Initials European Region and an experienced thought leader in the world of data, having published a number of books including a best seller in this field. Before joining Rentokil Initial, Andy ran data architecture for HSBC’s Commercial Bank and drove the GDPR implementation for the whole group. Prior to this he worked in Senior leadership roles for IMS Health (now called IQVIA), Sybase, Hummingbird and even spent a decade running his own data consultancy firm. Andy started his career at Business Objects where he was one of its founding UK members.

A three-pronged strategy

Rentokil’s European data strategy has three core pillars:

1. Data health

2. Data controls and understanding

3. Insights

All three pillars are interlinked as good data health comes from well-controlled data, and getting value from analytics and insight requires high-quality data.

“Insight is a real route into growing revenue, shrinking costs and improving customer experience if used in the right way,” Graham explains. “We can use data insights to manage the productivity of our technicians, which means we provide a better service to our customers while improving our bottom line.

“We have a whole ‘hearts and minds’ campaign going on where we are instilling the virtues of why data quality is important to every person”

ANDY GRAHAM HEAD OF DATA AND CDO FOR EUROPE, RENTOKIL INITIAL

Moreover, we can use it to understand how the adoption of a new business process or technology is going.

“When I talk about ‘control and understanding’, it’s a case of understanding how our world works and improving the decisions we make from a data point-of-view.”

Though the strategy remains in its infancy, Graham is clearly enthused by its trajectory: “We’re probably in the foothills because we’re only a year into this, but we can see Mount Everest in the backdrop and we’re moving towards it. I can see things have definitely progressed dramatically from where I started. There’s a lot of excitement and a lot of activity.”

90+

Becoming a more efficient operation

Concerted efforts are ongoing within Rentokil Initial to create a more coordinated organisation for reporting, analytics and insight.

The first step, according to Graham, is obtaining better visibility of the demand that exists from a data and insight perspective, as well as striving for commonality in the processes being carried out across Europe and beyond.

“The better understanding we have,” Graham continues, “the more coordinated and efficient we can be. We have resources at a group level, regional level, and country level, and it’s a question of ‘what’s the best way of dealing with our business challenges?’.”

Rentokil Initial operates in more than 90 countries

VASS & Rentokil Initial: partnering for digital excellence

James Lees, UK & Ireland Account Director at leading digital solutions company VASS, helps clients to achieve their digital goals & make the Complex Simple

VASS is a leading digital solutions company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. The VASS network of 4,700 professionals spans across 26 countries, helping customers drive commercial success through digital adoption and execution of innovative and scalable projects, Making the Complex Simple.

James Lees is the Account Director at VASS, in the UK and Ireland. A crucial element of his role is helping customers supercharge their teams to achieve their digital goals.

“In essence, I help customers unleash the full potential of their digital goals and drive business success; with a blend of technology, skilled resources and expert knowledge.”

As Lees sees it, fundamentally the benefit of working with

VASS is that customers are not just hiring a software engineer or architect, they are unleashing the power of VASS’s extended team of experts and decades of experience and thought leadership.

VASS helps Rentokil

Initial outperform its competitors by leveraging a data-driven approach

VASS and Rentokil Initial started their partnership in 2022, where VASS operates as an extension of Rentokil Initial’s team.

“We help Rentokil Initial achieve their digital and data goals better, quicker and more efficiently,” explains Lees.

“Eventually, Rentokil Initial will be able to eradicate the challenges their team has with data quality to gain more insight into their customers’

experience, which is critical to their digital strategy.”

By providing the awardwinning digital team with the best technology, skilled resources and knowledge required Rentokil is able to scale and reach further expansion opportunities in Europe, as explained by its Head of Data and CDO for Europe Andy Graham.

“VASS is really helping to drive us forward in the data and insight space and, without them, we would be slowed down dramatically,” Graham says.

Both company’s strategy and culture align as they strive to innovate both business and technology and have a passion for making sure the customer experience is the best it can be.

Despite perhaps appearing slightly contradictory, there also exists a desire to provide people with the ability to self-serve, which Graham relates to the early days of his career in IT. He admits to being staggered that many of the problems that existed 30 years ago when he joined Business Objects –then a small, French start-up – are still present today.

90%

Rentokil Initial’s local service teams across the world cover over 90% of global GDP in 92 of the world’s 100 largest cities in North America, Europe, APAC and the rest of the world

“We were all about empowering the end user with the ability to ask questions of the data without having to engage with the IT function,” says Graham. “This removal of barriers opens up a huge jump in productivity and avoids IT becoming an insight bottleneck.”

“Technology has obviously moved on and evolved, but those core problems are

still there. Trying to provide that self-sufficiency while also stopping duplication is a challenge that we’re doing our best to work through.”

A new approach to data governance

Graham’s experience in IT architecture means he was well-accustomed to dealing with data governance matters by the time he joined Rentokil Initial.

There were, of course, plenty of controls in place prior to his arrival, but he has since worked to shift checkpoints and instill a more proactive mindset across the organisation.

“In my old work we’d have these governance meetings where there’d be a thin red line you couldn’t cross unless

Strong data core underpins Insight & AI at Rentokil Initial

58.6K+

As of 2022, Rentokil Initial employed around 58,600 people across the globe

all the boxes had been ticked and everything had been approved by architecture,” Graham adds. “I think you learn fairly quickly – that’s all great in theory but, when push comes to shove and there’s a lot of business pressure on getting something done, that’s the wrong approach.”

Instead, Graham believes governance controls should be applied at every stage of a project’s progression to help things move in the right direction: “You need to guide and advise them, be that trusted advisor on these projects rather than going all judge-and-jury on them. I’m trying to take that kind of approach and change the conversation so this subject is thought about and talked about in everything we do.”

“Insight is a real route into growing revenue, shrinking costs, and improving customer experience if used in the right way”

ANDY GRAHAM HEAD OF DATA AND CDO FOR EUROPE, RENTOKIL INITIAL

“We are doing all kinds of exciting things in the data space, including with AI and machine learning, but this all starts with getting the basics right”

ANDY GRAHAM HEAD OF DATA AND CDO FOR EUROPE, RENTOKIL INITIAL

Potential for partnerships

Clearly, Rentokil Initial works alongside a huge variety of partners across the entire organisation.

Graham’s own experience of collaborating with other businesses is fairly limited given the relative recency of his appointment, but he revealed some exciting plans were in the pipeline.

“Recently, we’ve been actively working with an organisation called VASS, which has been helping us to gain more capabilities than we had before when it comes to insights,” he says. “It’s a case of their people providing us with the resources, skills, and experience that we just don’t necessarily have in the European region. VASS is really helping to drive us forward in the insight space and, without them, we would be slowed down dramatically.

“If we have the same conversation in a year’s time, there will be a lot more going on; there are plenty of opportunities out there and we’re doing a lot behind the scenes.”

A positive outlook

Looking ahead to the next couple of years, Graham’s outlook for Rentokil Initial, and, in particular, the data space, is exciting with huge opportunities.

He has high hopes that his aforementioned three-pronged strategy will be well and truly embedded in the daily routine of Rentokil’s European cohort – “part of the DNA”, as the CDO puts it.

Given the growing discussion on the subject, it would almost be remiss of Graham not to mention artificial intelligence and machine learning: AI is increasingly being integrated into the working practices of countless businesses across the globe, and Rentokil is no different.

“We are doing all kinds of exciting things in the data space, including with AI and machine learning, but this all starts with getting the basics right,” Graham concludes. “If you have strong data foundations in place, you can build upon it. For example, if you take the supermarket industry and especially the big multinationals, if you have common codification and names for the different parts of the building, you can understand the types of pests, time of year and location, and start to really identify patterns. You can then spot factors that allow us to make more informed recommendations, which lead to greater success and efficiency in the customer experience and our ability to manage pests.

“Then, if you take that up another level, we are starting to introduce AI. Recently, we purchased an Israeli company with some really innovative AI technology that allows the identification of pests via cameras. If you mix this in with the hundreds of thousands of connected devices we have installed on customer sites, we will have millions and millions of data points being streamed into us on a daily basis. We end up being able to say with certainty that it was the Black Rat, in the Kitchen by the waste bin.

“Ultimately we are becoming an innovation-led, data-driven company. This leads you right back to the data and the criticality of getting the data right.”

National University and its digital transformation evolution

WRITTEN BY: MAYA DERRICK

National University’s CIO, and Deputy Chief of Staff and VP for Strategic Institutional Research & Planning discuss the institution’s digital transformation

When everything’s said and done, this will be just about a 100% overhaul of everything. This is the view of National University’s CIO Patrick Pendleton as the institution reflects on its ongoing digital transformation. Although it’s come a long way over the past seven years, there’s no sign of slowing down.

National University’s transformation started with bringing in a new learning management system (LMS) and building systems internally at a time where there weren’t many EdTech solutions readily available. Difficult in terms of support and ongoing cost, the institution moved towards a package systems approach, where an independent software vendor (ISV) programme was purchased which would then be integrated. Starting with a learning management system, Pendleton explains how an enterprise resource plan (ERP) was brought in before their current process of building a new student information system was implemented.

“It’s really the programmes, the initiatives and all the efforts that go on across the institution that clearly drive the need for technology,” he explains. “And you know, for technologists it doesn’t get any better than this. There’s so much going on, there’s so much opportunity and being able to see the impacts of your efforts is very rewarding.

Digital transformation

driving student success

“We are bringing the human side to our implementation of technology,” adds Angela Baldasare, Deputy Chief of Staff and VP for Strategic Institutional Research & Planning. “One of the things that I’m proud of is implementing our framework for student success, which is called the loss-momentum framework.”

The framework, she explains, focuses on the student’s view of their journey through higher education, so teams like Baldasare’s can identify opportunities to prevent student loss and subsequently build student momentum throughout that journey.

“We’ve gathered thousands of inputs from our students, faculty and staff on these opportunities. What we’re doing now is mapping those across the student journey.

PATRICK PENDLETON

TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP FOR STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING

Patrick Pendleton’s career spans multiple industries – starting in financial services at American Express. From there he worked in semiconductor manufacturing before becoming the CIO at Internet domain registrar and web hosting company GoDaddy. Following stints as VP at PetSMART and EdFund - the latter of which he was also CIO - Pendleton moved to LifeLock in 2010 and served as CIO for three years, before taking on his current role as SVP and CIO at National University. In his current role, Pendleton translates the needs of the students into a digitally-driven solution.

“For technologists it doesn’t get any better than this”

PATRICK PENDLETON CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP FOR STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

We’re looking for the themes we’re validating with additional data, and all of that goes into how we inform, what we bring to life, and what we focus on in the digital experience, as well as how we build out our student success strategy.”

National University’s ability to extract rich data from its learning management system is impressive – with the majority of its student populations’ mainly learning online, the amount of data that originates from their learning allows technologists at the university to unlock endless opportunities to support them.

Pendleton highlights: “If you think about the journey of a student, they spend a significant amount of time working on their assignments and studying within the LMS. There is so much data that originates from their activities.”

One solution Pendleton worked on was with LMS Brightspace, provided by D2L. By tracking attendance points – activities that

Patrick Pendleton CIO, and Angela Baldasare, VP

Discuss National University’s Digital Transformation WATCH NOW

INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

ANGELA BALDASARE

TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP FOR STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING

A nationally-recognised leader in institutional research, analytics and business intelligence, Dr. Angela Baldasare brings more than two decades of experience of building and leading teams that are using analytics to improve outcomes in education and promote social good. Dr. Baldasare currently serves as Deputy Chief of Staff and VP for Strategic Institutional Research and Planning at National University, which is one of the largest nonprofit Minority Serving Institutions in the U.S. In this role, Dr. Baldasare strategically employs data and transformational technology to support student success. Previously, Dr. Baldasare held several roles at the University of Arizona, including served as the assistant provost for institutional research.

“The partners are really what makes it happen”

PATRICK PENDLETON CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP FOR STRATEGIC

Expert Help Whenever You Need It

Make your learning solution sing with a partnership experience tailored to your needs. We’ll work with you to bring your strategic vision to life.

qualify as attendance for the student – the university is able to track their progress and match this with outcomes to better support the student.

“We’ve created a number of early warning devices within the LMS – like a button that a faculty member can press to say they’re concerned about a student and suddenly we can focus some attention towards them. So when we talk about digital transformation, that’s really the core of some of the things that we’re doing that directly relate to the student.”

Transformation at the core of NU National University’s move to Brightspace also changed the way students study, allowing a conversion from hardbound books to digital resources within three months. A monumental feat, the shift allowed students to be set up and ready to learn successfully ahead of the commencement of class.

“We are in the middle of a data explosion where we have figured out that there’s gold in those hills, so to speak”

PATRICK PENDLETON CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP FOR STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

1971 Year founded

6,000 Academic staff

40,000 Students

“I think it’s platforms like Brightspace that enable us to be able to do that,” Pendleton applauds. “They allow better outcomes, better persistence, and better graduation rates, all the things that we look at in this industry as measures of success.”

And although a top priority for the university, student success can be measured by more than retention and graduation rates.

“The richness of the data from Brightspace combined with our other data and all the work that we’re currently engaged in to build out an additional sets of data, I think are really important,” Baldasare says, adding their scalable natural language processing work with unstructured data –including student phone calls, texts, emails – give a live view of what’s happening with the students.

“We have opportunities to build momentum and identify that in real time and at scale. There are some things like our larger predictive models of student success that will really help us I think in even a more comprehensive way moving forward to enhance all of the good work that we’ve already been doing with Brightspace and in our student information system.”

“We have opportunities to build momentum and identify that in real time and at scale”

PATRICK PENDLETON CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP FOR STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

Brightspace’s place in NU’s growth “When we first started talking to D2L, I remember sitting in their headquarters with CEO John Baker, and we talked about our mission and what we do to serve students. And we listened to Baker talk about how he felt about students and what their mission was. There was such an alignment there,” Pendleton shares.

Noting it as one of the best professional partnerships he’s witnessed in his career, National University is benefitting from the brand’s broad experience in research and development.

“Brightspace has grown appreciably from when I first looked at it compared to what we have today,” he adds. “They focus on the data and exposing the data that is within the LMS. We get all the telemetry from a student out of Brightspace. Now we’re getting really rich insights coming directly from the LMS. We commingle that with other data sources that the student generates within our systems, and we get a holistic view of the student. We understand them, and believe we better support them by understanding them through data.”

And although Brightspace plays a large part in National University’s digital transformation, the institution has worked with other partners to aid the student experience for both the students themselves and the masses of faculty members that support them through their educational journey.

Baldasare states that, as part of their transformation and merger, teams at National University have had the complex job of re-architecting all student and institutional data behind the scenes. “We are working on a full scale data modernisation project with the help of Deloitte, and we are also working on some holistic predictive models of student

success with CML Insights. And Qualtrics is our partner on the unstructured data project sentiment analysis.”

“The work with Qualtrics is beyond fascinating,” Pendleton adds, also alluding to a new not-ready-to-announce new student information system.

“The partners are really what makes it happen. We are in the middle of a data explosion where we have figured out that there’s gold in those hills, so to speak. Everybody has data, but it’s extracting

the value out of that data. Some of the work that Angela and her team are doing is very exciting in that. That is the big changemaker for us in the near future.

The future of National University and its digital transformation

“From my lens the next 12 to 18 months is us really digging in and executing on the strategic plan,” Baldasare follows. “We have three pillars of our strategic plan, the primary ways through which we will achieve our

NU – A ROUND UP OF ACHIEVEMENTS

With seven schools and colleges, 40,000 students, and over 220,000 alumni, NU is one of the largest private nonprofit universities in the U.S

Veteran-founded in 1971, 25 percent of NU students are affiliated with the military

NU is one of the largest private nonprofit Minority Serving Institutions in the U.S., two-thirds of NU students and graduates are racially diverse

Largest conferrer of graduate degrees to diverse students in the US – with over 50% women –and the #2 conferrer of doctoral degrees overall

A top provider of credentials for beginning teachers in the U.S. and #1 for California education graduates

Ranks

universities nationwide for the number of master’s degrees in psychology earned by BIPOC students

2nd among all

Around 80% of NU students take the majority of their classes online

In the last year, US$77m in scholarships were awarded to students

FOR STRATEGIC

INSTITUTIONAL RESEARCH AND PLANNING, NATIONAL UNIVERSITY

mission – next generation education, whole human education and value rich education –where both technology and data will fit in the execution.”

“I think about next generation education, which speaks to our responsibilities as educators to continually improve - to evolve the art and science of teaching, learning and student success. And so a huge anchor in that pillar is student success science.”

She highlights how effective use of data brings people, process and technology together to understand what works for individual students and their unique circumstances.

“That’s how we get to wrapping our students in whole human education, that we’re caring for them and treating them as the whole humans that they are with complex and busy lives. And that’s how we create an educational experience that’s stacked with value from start to finish.

“Technology allows us to help students build, especially in an online environment, the experiences that creates that rich foundation for them. So that’s what I’m looking forward to, is working with the people, the process and the technology to bring that all together.”

“Next generation education, which speaks to our responsibilities as educators to continually improve”

PATRICK PENDLETON CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER, DEPUTY CHIEF OF STAFF AND VP

Digital health & AI advancements King Saud Medical

advancements at Medical City

WRITTEN BY: HELEN

ADAMS

PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

Rayed Althukhais, Director of Digital Excellence at King Saud Medical City, tells us about how AI and digital healthcare are transforming KSMC

King Saud Medical City (previously known as Shemaisi Hospital) is one of the largest public district general hospitals.

In 1956, it had a level one trauma centre in Riyadh and was one of the largest territory care centres in Saudi Arabia, with the capacity for 1,500 inpatients.

In 2020, the first digital operating theatre opened in Riyadh with a robotic surgery and in 2023 the hospital launched its first HIS system.

Today, King Saud Medical City is known for its emergency department and having the largest referral centre in Saudi Arabia for orthopaedic surgery and neurosurgery.

Rayed Althukhais is Director of Digital Excellence at King Saud Medical City.

“My responsibility within the in-house and offshore development as well as the integration between internal and external systems,” he explains. “I’m part of the CAP advisory report and the Technical Committee of Digital Transformation in King Saud Medical City.”

Althukhais is also acting as a Programme Director and Portfolio Manager, he is also overseeing the mobility and the business support programmes. He’s proud that the hospital has decided to modernise.

In 1956

it had a level one trauma centre in Riyadh and was one of the largest territory care centres in Saudi Arabia, with the capacity for 1,500 inpatients

“We have a legacy system that needs to be in commission,” says Althukhais. “Our requirements, such as realtime recording of patient history and better patient health analysis, are not available.”

King Saud Medical City is utilising AI to support systems capable of assisting the healthcare provider, all with the aim of creating a better patient experience.

AYMAN ALROBY ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS, KING SAUD MEDICAL CITY

“I’m part of the CAP advisory report and the Technical Committee of Digital Transformation in King Saud Medical City”

AYMAN ALROBY

TITLE: ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS

COMPANY: KING SAUD MEDICAL CITY

Mr. Alroby, a highly experienced IT leader with extensive expertise in the healthcare sector. In his current role as the Associate Executive Director of Systems and Application at KSMC, Mr. Alroby manages the digital, solutions, and applications that are essential for the organisation’s success.

Throughout his career, Mr. Alroby has held several key positions in the healthcare industry, including as a Consultant in Health Affairs at the Ministry of Health. He has also served as the Head of IT-PMO and Head of Analytics at King Saud Medical City, IT Director at King Saud Medical City, and eHealth Center Director.

Mr. Alroby’s expertise in IT strategy, planning, and implementation has led to a proven track record of success in improving healthcare services and procedures. He is known for his dedication to innovation and his ability to leverage technology to drive positive change in the industry.

Overall, Mr. Alroby is a highly respected IT leader with a wealth of experience and a commitment to achieving excellence and innovation in healthcare. His contributions to the field have been significant, and he continues to drive positive change through his work.

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Through automation and integration, IQVIA’s HIS solution has become a guiding light for care providers, empowering them with reduced efforts, enhanced decision-making, and seamless connectivity. As we strive for our 2030 vision, this agile platform stands as a reliable partner in our digital transformation journey, leading to improved services and greater patient satisfaction.

Ayman Alroby, Associate Executive Director of Systems and Applications King Saud Medical City

King Saud Medical City systems

HIS System is an element of health informatics, used by King Saud Medical City. This focuses on the administrative needs of hospitals, including:

• System handling

• Data related to activity

• Healthcare providers and the healthcare organisation providing integration

OnBase is an enterprise content management platform from Highland Software, which allows the hospital to organise, manage and optimise content processes and automation.

“We are planning to utilise robotic processing, automation and generative AI into our field as much as possible”

AYMAN ALROBY ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF SYSTEMS AND APPLICATIONS, KING SAUD MEDICAL CITY

Rayed Altukhais, Director of Digital Excellence at KSMC, on KSMC’s AI Transformation.

WATCH NOW

RAYED SAAD ALTUKHAIS

TITLE: DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL EXCELLENT ADMINISTRATION

COMPANY: KING SAUD MEDICAL CITY

Mr. Altukhais, a highly accomplished IT professional and the current Director of Digital Excellence Administration at KSMC. With a strong background in IT strategy and planning, Mr. Altukhais has held several leadership positions throughout his career, including Head of IT Strategy and Planning and Head of Ancillary Systems at KSMC.

Mr. Altukhais is recognised for his expertise in system analysis, workflow design, and project leadership, making him

a valuable ally for organisations seeking to achieve their digital transformation goals. He is a visionary IT leader who is committed to driving excellence and innovation in the industry.

Overall, Mr. Altukhais is an exceptional IT professional whose contributions to the field cannot be overstated. His track record of success and leadership make him an ideal partner for any organisation seeking to stay ahead of the curve in today’s fastchanging digital landscape.

AI in digital healthcare

“IBM Maximo Manage is a fully integrated enterprise asset management (EAM) platform that uses advanced analytics tools and IoT data to improve operational availability, extend asset life cycles and optimise performance,” says Althukhais.

Pyxis is an automated medication dispensing system, which is supported by centralised medication management to HIS.

“Rapid is an AI application which helps with stroke cases, by using AI to analyse CT images. This helps the hospital to identify a stroke at an earlier stage, which allows the team to act and be ready to support a stroke patient.”

Over the next 12 months, King Saud Medical City has a big expansion plan in mind.

“We will improve the digital workplace, digital experience concentration and digital experience monitoring”

RAYED SAAD ALTUKHAIS DIRECTOR OF DIGITAL EXCELLENT ADMINISTRATION, KING SAUD MEDICAL CITY