Technology Magazine - May 2021 by Technology Magazine

May 2021 | technologymagazine.com

Tabled service: How AI and IoT are transforming maintenance READ NOW

BIOTECH STARTUPS

Hidden figures: Unlock the power of data visualisation

READ NOW

TAKING DEFENSE

Digital How the US Air Force is bringing Silicon Valley agility under its wing READ NOW

FEATURING:

VERIZON BUSINESS

TELIA

DIALOG AXIATA

Bringing the Community to LIVE Broadcast from London to the World

September

14th - 16th 2021 EARLY BIRD TICKETS

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

Never miss an issue!

+ Discover the latest news and insights about Global Technology...

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

The Technology Team EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

PADDY SMITH DEPUTY EDITOR

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ

VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

SALES AND MARKETING DIRECTOR

KIERAN WAITE

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

OWEN MARTIN PHILLINE VICENTE JENNIFER SMITH

SAM KEMP EVELYN HUANG MATTHEW EVANS TYLER LIVINGSTONE

CREATIVE TEAM

PRODUCTION EDITOR

DIGITAL MARKETING EXECUTIVE

WILLIAM SMITH

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIA FORTE SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH

PRODUCTION MANAGERS

JANET BRICE

ANDREW STUBBINGS PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO CRAIG KILLINGBACK

JAMES WHITE

JASON WESTGATE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN PRESIDENT & CEO

GLEN WHITE

SAP 5G Council:

Why 5G Matters In this very special webinar, we examine the incredible opportunity that 5G brings for network providers, their customers, and end-users.

Thursday 20th May

Featuring Guest Speakers From:

EDITOR'S LETTER

Small is beautiful Being big isn’t always easy, but bringing smaller companies into your orbit can re-energise your organisational outlook and culture

“Want to find disruptive energy? Be prepared to change your culture”

TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

Disruption. It’s the term multi-billion dollar companies use to describe a couple of people working from someone’s garage, yet somehow beating them at their own game. And big companies have reacted to this in a variety of ways. They’ve tried to beat them. Unsuccessfully. They’ve tried to join them. Unsuccessfully. They’ve acquired them, only to sell them at a discount when the magic dust somehow did not magically scale. Some of those garage-based disruptors have, in turn, become the world’s largest companies – and they too have found that innovation stagnates with size. So what’s the solution? More and more of the companies I talk to are actively working to encourage partnerships with smaller companies. They get the benefit of disruptive energy without the work and ultimate disappointment of trying to absorb it. They get to move on quickly when the next shiny disruptor arrives on the scene. Companies need to embrace open architecture for this approach. But that’s the easy bit. The hard bit is modelling your company to work with companies of a different scale and mindset. In many cases it’s a total cultural change. You might even call it disruption.

PADDY SMITH

paddy.smith@bizclikmedia.com

technologymagazine.com

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 10 Big Picture 12 The Brief 14 Global News 16 People Moves 18 Timeline: Cloud computing 20 Legend: Charles ‘Chuck’ Geschke 24 Five Mins With: Sophie Newbould

Digital Transformation

How IoT and AI are revolutionising predictive maintenance

U.S. Air Force

Feeling the need for innovation speed

Verizon Business

Bringing in the 5G revolution

104 80

IT Procurement

Digital transformation consulting: now and the future

Cloud & Cyber

Legacy IT, disaster recovery and the rise of hybrid cloud

Telia Inmics-Nebula Shaping the future of HR

112

BCA Marketplace

Driving a digital journey for smooth CX

CONTENTS

128 AI & Data Analytics Data visualisation: the democratisation of AI

160

Dialog Axiata

Customer-focused digital transformation

138

176

Leading the IT Procurement Transformation Leading the IT Procurement Transformation

Digital transformation from board to ward

TELUS

Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service

148

190

Biotech Startups

The Cambodian telco playing the game

Top Ten

Cellcard Cambodia

242 Unit4

Unit4 PSA, Enabling Practices of the Future

202

North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts

Winds down mainframe and moves to hybrid cloud

256

Bukalapak

Enabling SMEs and Communities to Thrive

268 214 Delaware Consulting

Guiding the digital transformation

228 BetKing

Bringing a data-centric perspective to gaming

Tuenti Ecuador

Part of the Telefonica Group Growth through market disruption

TUENTI ECUADOR

BIG PICTURE

Image credit: NASA ID: PIA24541, NASA/JPL-Caltech

May 2021

Nasa’s Ingenuity Helicopter

Jezero Crater, Mars

NASA’s Ingenuity drone pictured before a successful test flight which saw it become the first aircraft to carry out atmospheric flight from takeoff to landing on a planet other than the Earth. The flight was controlled autonomously by the drone, owing to the prohibitive distance between the two planets. technologymagazine.com

THE BRIEF “I HAVE FULL CONFIDENCE THAT YAHOO WILL TAKE OFF IN ITS NEW HOME” Hans Vestberg CEO, Verizon 

“Not all data is created equal… organisations should consider when cloud is the right option”

BY THE NUMBERS The Bitcoin price rollercoaster has continued this month:

13 April

$63588.20

18 April

$56274.40

Mark Jackson

National Cybersecurity Advisor, Cisco UK & Ireland  READ MORE

“IN JUST 15 YEARS, AWS HAS BECOME A $54BN ANNUAL SALES RUN RATE BUSINESS” Jeff Bezos CEO, Amazon 

May 2021

DID YOU KNOW? April saw three companies join the tech unicorn club in less than a week. First there was Indian social commerce app Meesho... READ MORE

… then compatriot fintech app CRED raised $215mn in a Series D round led by Falcon Edge Capital and Coatue Management. READ MORE

Finally, US chat API provider Sendbird, whose customers include the likes of Reddit and Hinge, closed a $100mn round. READ MORE

 CD PROJEKT Video game developer and publisher CD Projekt announced a $300mn profit in 2020, triple its previous record, despite lukewarm reaction to its latest project Cyberpunk 2077.

What’s the deal with the global chip shortage? Why have computer chips become so scarce? It’s all to do with a calamitous combination of circumstances put in motion by COVID-19. What are the circumstances, then? The pandemic itself initially hit manufacturers already struggling to meet the demand for chips, which are being integrated into more and more smart products. On top of that the explosion of pent up customer demand as the pandemic eases is adding even more strain. And the effect? It’s hitting consumers particularly hard, with everything from TVs to cars struggling to meet demand. The result is long wait times and price rises. Take Ford, for instance, which was recently forced to cut production on its F-150 pickup trucks for the lack of chips. What can we do? If you’re a business, very little. It’s up to governments to haul us out of this mess, as with the EU’s plan to manufacture 20% of the world’s semiconductors by 2030

 GAMESTOP The video game retailer continued to ride the wave of amateur investor interest from the likes of Reddit’s WallStreetBets subreddit, with its share price stabilising around $150 after a period of volatility.  ANT GROUP Jack Ma’s Chinese fintech giant Ant Group was forced into restructuring to become more like a bank, with tougher regulations amid a broader crackdown on tech companies by the Chinese government.  ALIBABA In another blow to founder Jack Ma, Chinese tech giant Alibaba was hit with a $2.8bn fine from the Chinese government, which said the company had been abusing its market position for years.

W A Y U P MAY 21

W A Y D O W N

technologymagazine.com

GLOBAL NEWS 3

WASHINGTON, US

NASA’s autonomous Ingenuity drone aces third test flight NASA’s Ingenuity drone, part of its Perseverance mission to Mars, has continued to break new ground, tallying up three successful flights. Its first successful flight involved taking off, a 20-30 second hovering period followed by a landing.

CALIFORNIA, US

Lidar leader Luminar recruits Tesla and Intel veterans Luminar, a developer of lidar sensors and software for use with autonomous vehicles, announced the recruitment of two veterans from Tesla and Intel respectively: Alan Prescott, who was previously Tesla’s top lawyer and Trey Campbell, previously of tech giant Intel as its Vice President of Investor Relations.

May 2021 2021

CHICAGO, US

ActiveCampaign raises $240m at a $3bn valuation ActiveCampaign, which has built what it describes as a “customer experience automation” platform has closed a $240 million round of funding which means the Series C values the Chicago startup at over $3 billion. The round is being led by a new investor, Tiger Global, with participation from another new backer Dragoneer.

GERMANY

ECB survey shows Europeans want digital euro to be private The European Central Bank (ECB) has published the results of a public consultation on a digital euro with responses citing they want it to be private, safe and cheap. The results show that what the public and professionals want the most from a digital currency is privacy (43 per cent), followed by security (18 per cent).

UNITED KINGDOM

UK Government reveals new laws to speed up 5G roll-out The UK government is proposing law changes which would boost ongoing efforts to improve connectivity for people who live, work and travel in rural areas. Under the new proposals, mobile companies will be allowed to make new and existing masts up to five metres taller and two metres wider than current rules permit.

technologymagazine.com

PEOPLE MOVES “[I am] excited about exploring the potential of quantum computers in AI generally with the company's impressive scientific teams.”

PROFESSOR STEPHEN CLARK FROM: DEEPMIND TO: CAMBRIDGE QUANTUM COMPUTING WAS: SENIOR STAFF RESEARCH SCIENTIST NOW: HEAD OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

Cambridge Quantum Computing (CQC) has appointed former DeepMind Senior Staff Research Scientist Professor Stephen Clark as its Head of Artificial Intelligence. Professor Clark formerly held roles at the computer science departments of both Oxford and Cambridge University, before joining AI leader DeepMind, a stablemate of Google under the Alphabet umbrella. His work there included investigating AI language learning as part of the company’s quest to create “artificial general intelligence”. Ilyas Khan, CEO of CQC, said: “Steve is a world class scientist of the absolute highest standing, and I am excited at the perspective and leadership he brings at this vital time of our development.” In his role, Professor Clark will investigate the possibilities of combining AI with quantum computing.

ANIKA GRANT FROM: DYSON TO: UBISOFT WAS: GLOBAL HR DIRECTOR NOW: CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER

Video game giant Ubisoft has appointed Anika Grant as its Chief People Officer, as well as a member of its Executive Committee. Her role will see her overseeing Ubisoft’s HR and people strategy, reporting directly to the CEO. Previous roles in her 19-year HR career include Dyson, where she was Global HR Director for Dyson’s Global Markets, and Uber, where she led a Global HR Business Partner team for Uber's Core Business.

ANNETTE MURPHY FROM: ZAYO TO: LUMEN WAS: EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT FOR LIT SERVICES NOW: MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR EMEA

Telecommunications leader Lumen Technologies (formerly CenturyLink) has chosen Annette Murphy to become its new Managing Director for EMEA, a role that will see her responsible for Lumen’s business and customer base in the region. Murphy has extensive industry experience, with previous roles serving at the likes of Zayo, where she was Executive Vice President for Lit Services, Geo Networks and BT Global Services. technologymagazine.com

TIMELINE CLOUD COMPUTING

Cloud computing’s history is longer than you might imagine. Here we take a journey through the ubiquitous technology’s various strata

1950s

1970s

MAINFRAME

VIRTUAL MACHINES

In the earlyish days of computing, processing power was expensive and rare. The neat solution was the mainframe, a centralised computing hub users could connect their terminals to. It allowed multiple people to access the speed and power of the grid in a cost effective manner. Sound familiar?

The extension of the mainframe was virtual machines, popularised by companies such as VMWare. Much like its predecessor, the virtual machine allowed companies to control costs without sacrificing too much in the way of performance. It also allowed for centralised record keeping and monitoring, as well as having security benefits.

May 2021

1990s CLOUD GOES MAINSTREAM Cloud started making its way into the mainstream long before the term became an industry buzzword. The emergence of Web 2.0 sent communications into the ether, while cloud storage services, principally for media files, started to take hold even in the consumer market.

2000s

2010s

CONTAINERISATION

EDGE

The ability to package code into platform agnostic containers was a breakthrough in speed and security for developers. The emergence of open-source Docker Engine in 2013 accelerated this trend and forged a path for the ubiquity of Kubernetes, which originally ran as a ‘Dockerism’.

Cloud’s nemesis has always been lag, the time it takes to shift data from one location to another – slowing down processes and applications. Enter edge computing, a go-between allowing priority processing to be computed close to the action. With industrial IoT on the rise and the emergence of 5G connectivity, cloud has moved to yet another level.

"Cloud’s nemesis has always been lag" technologymagazine.com

LEGEND

Charles ‘Chuck’ Geschke

harles, ‘Chuck’ Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Inc and who helped develop Portable Document Format technology – PDFs – died on 16th April aged 81. Geschke was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1939. His depressionera parents taught him the value of education and he became an academic, teaching mathematics at John Carroll University in the 1960s before completing a doctorate in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. He began his career at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) as principal scientist and researcher and where he formed the Imagery Sciences Laboratory. There he met John Warnock and the partnership developed a page description language called Interpress. When Xerox didn’t share their enthusiasm they formed their own company from Warnock’s garage, named after the creek running behind Warnock’s home, Adobe Creek, then becoming Adobe Systems. After dodging early buyout offers

May 2021

$2.5m

The initial investment to develop PostScript

$650k

ransom amount demanded by Geschke’s kidnappers

from the likes of Steve Jobs, the pair raised $2.5 million with the help of Warnock’s thesis advisor and turned Interpress into what became PostScript. PostScript provided a radical new way to print text and images on paper. It was built into printers, facilitating the desktop publishing boom of the 1980s and helped develop many software innovations still used today. Adobe Illustrator followed and Acrobat emerged in 1993 with a basic Reader version eventually given out for free, meaning the PDF format it offered became ubiquitous. But success had its downfalls. In 1992, Geschke survived a kidnapping. Arriving to work one morning, he was seized at gunpoint and held for four days. A suspect caught with $650,000 in ransom money led police to where he was held captive, AP reported. In 2009 Geschke received the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Obama at the White House, for “pioneering technological contributions central to spurring the desktop publishing revolution.”

The tech entrepreneur was also known for his generosity and he and his wife Nan donated millions to nonprofit organisations and universities to further the cause of education. “I consider myself the luckiest man on Earth”, he said in 2003. “An engineer lives to have his idea embodied in a product that impacts the world.” He also famously advised other entrepreneurs: “Don’t be afraid. Take a risk. Focus on the people who are going to help you achieve what you want to achieve, because you’re not going to do it alone.” Geschke was Adobe COO from 1986 to 1994, president from 1989 until his retirement in 2000. He served as board chairman from 1997 to 2017, then as emeritus board member. He was also a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an ACM fellow.

“I was the luckiest man in the world” technologymagazine.com

Bringing the Community to LIVE Broadcast from London to the World

September

14th - 16th 2021 A BizClik Media Group Brand

Featuring:

Keynote Speakers LIVE Roundtable Q&As Networking Lunch Inspirational Presentations

Over 5 Stages:

Technology Stage Digital Transformation Stage Cloud & Cyber AI & Automation Tech Expo Stage

EARLY BIRD TICKETS

Creating Digital Communities

FIVE MINS WITH...

SOPHIE NEWBOULD Sophie Newbould is the founder of Newboulds Solicitors and worked on major infrastructure projects for HM Government and commercial businesses for more than 20 years. She is a regular speaker with TechUK and the Association of Project Management.

“ I WANT PEOPLE TO GROW AND DEVELOP AROUND ME AND FOR THEM TO FEEL INSPIRED AND BE WHO THEY ARE, NOT WHO THEY THINK OTHERS WANT THEM TO BE”

Q. TELL US ABOUT WHAT YOU DO

» I lead a team of ten people, which includes

technologists, paralegals, lawyers and practice management. I then collaborate with the technology companies and our clients, as well as provide formal legal support to any unconflicted buying institutions such as the Government and regulators.

Q. WHAT’S YOUR LEADERSHIP STYLE?

» Liberal with grit. I want people to grow

and develop around me and for them to feel inspired and be who they are, not who they think others want them to be. I am a strong believer in attraction rather than promotion, honesty rather than people-please. If I can lead by example with patience, respect, inclusivity, resilience, courage, fairness and transparency, I can build a team that really wants to work with me and my practice, instead of just ticking a CV box.

Q. WHAT DOES YOUR BUSINESS DO?

» Our niche is working with technology

companies to advance business opportunities and maximise trade. We are passionate about clients getting their customer-centric solutions right and are honest and transparent with clients – we’re not afraid to state when we do not 24

May 2021

understand their product, solution, and/ or business model. When our values align with our clients, we have a magnetism that drives success because we are all supporting each others' work.

Q. HOW HAS YOUR BUSINESS CHANGED OVER THE PAST YEAR?

» The past 12 months in lockdown have

been our worst trading year in monetary terms to date. However, we continue to demonstrate our resilience and are now reaping the benefits of investment decisions made during this uncertain period: investment in people, technology, business pursuits, speaking events and networking. These investments and partnerships are helping Newboulds grow into a serious legal firm for global technology.

Q. WHAT ARE YOUR PLANS FOR THE COMING YEAR?

» We’re aiming to invest in our social legal

solutions with technology business partners and attract at least three top lawyers to

“ WE’RE NOT AFRAID TO SAY WHEN WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND OUR CUSTOMER’S PRODUCT, SOLUTION, AND/OR BUSINESS MODEL” partner and grow the corporate, employment and litigation business units. We’re also training up paralegals for qualification and hope to turn over a minimum of £500K. technologymagazine.com

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

May 2021

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

US AIR FORCE: FEELING THE NEED FOR INNOVATION SPEED WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

technologymagazine.com

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

As one of the largest organizations on the planet, the US Department of the Air Force is charting a new course in digital technology. Its top tech brass talk about the different facets of a complex transformation

he US Department of Defense, were it a commercial company, would be one of the biggest in the world. Like a container ship, its size – while staggeringly impressive – is also a handicap. Changing tack is the work of an army of personnel under the command of strong leaders. And it happens slowly. Or it used to. As far as technology is concerned, the need for agility and development speed is so pressing, the US Air Force has had to order a bigger rudder. It installed a new Chief Information Officer, Lauren Knausenberger, in August 2020 and a number of other high profile hires have joined the mission to set a new course for the 21st century. Knausenberger admits the DoD is “a little bit behind the commercial world” and occasionally stymied by old-world thinking. “I was at a conference and I heard something I hadn’t heard in a long time: ‘digital transformation is great and everything but it doesn’t really enable the war fighter’. That used to be how a lot of people felt, but we look at that attitude now and think it’s pretty humorous. The dialogue has changed and more people are realising that when it comes to future war fighting and especially future deterrence, it’s all about the digital realm.”

May 2021

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

technologymagazine.com

The power to do great things. Strengthening networks and empowering users We’re modernizing missions through integrated IT and innovative sustainment practices. Our secure, user-centric Enterprise IT solutions help transform your organization’s ideas into action. Let us provide you the power to perform at your best.

leidos.com/modernize

How innovation is transforming government Leidos is a global leader in the development and application of technology to solve their customers’ most demanding challenges.

Watch: How Leidos innovation helps transform government According to Washington Technology’s Top 100 list, Leidos is the largest IT provider to the government. But as Lieutenant General William J. Bender explains, “that barely scratches the surface” of the company’s portfolio and drive for innovation. Bender, who spent three and a half decades in the military, including a stint as the U.S. Air Force’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), has seen action in the field and in technology during that time, and it runs in the family. Bender’s son is an F-16 instructor pilot. So it stands to reason Bender senior intends to ensure a thriving technological base for the U.S. Air Force. “What we’re really doing here is transforming the federal government from the industrial age into the information age and doing it hand-in-hand with industry,” he says. The significant changes that have taken place in the wider technology world are precisely the capabilities Leidos is trying to pilot the U.S. Air Force through. It boils down to developing cyberspace as a new domain of battle, globally

connected and constantly challenged by the threat of cybersecurity attacks. “We recognize the importance of the U.S. Air Force’s missions,” says Bender, “and making sure they achieve those missions. We sit side-by-side with the air combat command, intelligence surveillance, and reconnaissance infrastructure across the Air Force. There are multiple large programs where the Air Force is partnering with Leidos to ensure their mission is successfully accomplished 24/7/365. In this company, we’re all in on making sure there’s no drop in capability.” That partnership relies on a shared understanding of delivering successful national security outcomes, really understanding the mission at hand, and Leidos’ long-standing relationship of over 50 years with the federal government.

LEARN MORE

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Lauren Knausenberger | USAF

Digitally enabled airmen The emergence of digital warfare isn’t new, but the definition is morphing from a vision of bespectacled keyboard warriors towards “digitally enabled airmen and guardians” through “global ubiquitous connectivity – having things in the cloud, able to move between different levels of classification seamlessly, having meaningful data coming from sensors all over the world, AI for machine-driven insights. At any point in time, airmen and guardians can see their entire operating picture anywhere in the world and move assets, physical or digital, to meet the mission need.” Knausenberger has three ingredients in her recipe for achieving this: digital modernisation, all domain command and control, and AI (specifically automated valuation models, or AVMs). “The rest of it just comes down to use case and tying the 32

May 2021

technology together to achieve a mission, even on the fly.” She is adamant that the path to this digital nirvana is not paved with old methods overlaid with new technologies. Nor old attitudes. For inspiration, the US Air Force is looking to adopt the agile workflow and disruptive mindset of Silicon Valley start-up culture. Enter Nic Chaillan, the US Air Force’s Chief Software Officer, whose resume is a catalogue of entrepreneurial spirit having founded 12 companies over a 20-year career (he started his first aged 16). Sensing that he could “make a difference” in a world of terrorist attacks he joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2016. Three years later, he heads up software, DevSecOps, cloud and cybersecurity for USAF. Illustrating the DoD’s historic attitude to software, the role did not previously exist.

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

“ WHEN IT COMES TO FUTURE WAR FIGHTING AND ESPECIALLY FUTURE DETERRENCE, IT’S ALL ABOUT THE DIGITAL REALM”

LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY LOCATION: WASHINGTON

LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER

Modular jets Chaillan’s history is the antithesis of the department’s size, structure and way of working. His companies were built fast and small, with all eyes on the exit strategy. “Everything,” he admits, “is different.” That meant he had to hit the ground running. Despite some progress prior to his arrival, there was still a waterfall approach to project management, a dearth of agile culture and a legacy pathway to talent requirements and acquisition. Chaillan accelerated DevSecOps to introduce a continuous engineering model where software would be delivered multiple times a day, rather than once every three to five years, in order to address issues in real time. USAF is starting to embrace its newfound technological focus and the possibilities it affords. Key to this, Chaillan thinks, is the realization that hardware and software should be decoupled to allow for rapid delivery of prototypes. Effectively, this means taking a modular approach where, for example, aircraft sensors can be swapped out to upgrade hardware without building a new jet.

EXECUTIVE BIO

CIO, US AIR FORCE

Lauren Knausenberger has been with the US Air Force in a number of guises, joining as Director of Cyberspace Innovation in 2017 before becoming Chief Transformation Officer two years later. Last August, she became Chief Information Officer. The new role is, in Knausenberger’s typically no-nonsense words, “really, really hard.” More stakeholders to manage, more complexity and problem solving across the board, for everyone, at scale. “Sometimes we’re deploying too many to too many different environments. As the CIO, I look at that and make sure we have a really robust cloud environment and that we’re putting in place the right incentives to make sure people are using that enterprise environment so we don’t have development teams that have to maintain 20 different baselines. “I have to make sure it’s global infrastructure in one place that everybody can access, so I’m looking at the whole tech stack at this point, rather than just the fun stuff at the top.”

Driving Federal IT Transformation Dell Technologies helps you prepare for what comes next, with a broad range of solutions and services that enable multi-cloud flexibility, the digital workplace, and data management and insight.

Dell Technologies and the USAF: partners in IT modernization Dell Technologies and the U.S. Air Force have a longstanding partnership. On several programs of record, Dell Technologies supports mission-oriented areas, including providing data-centric applications for platforms that the Air Force leverages in testing and operations. For example, certain high-performance jet fighters rely on Dell Technologies software that helps provide critical information about aircraft performance to the service and the aircraft manufacturer. After a test flight, data modules gathered from the aircraft’s sensors are downloaded, processed and analyzed to provide critical insights. The Air Force has also made a concerted effort to drive technology to the edge so that warfighters can gain value from their data where it lives. Dell Technologies is enabling dynamic decision-making at the edge, where collection, management, analysis, and the distribution of data is critical. Dell Technologies’ software factories are supporting some of the largest Air Force programs, like Kessel Run and Kobayashi Maru. Kobayashi Maru is a cloud-based program designed to modernize the way the Air Force (now the U.S. Space Force) interacts

with its allies. By the time Kobayashi Maru was a program, the service had a year or two of experience with the highly successful Kessel Run. According to the Air Force, this continuous user-centered approach enabled warfighters to quickly evaluate software improvements, provide direct feedback to Kessel Run developers, and rapidly iterate the software to provide maximum value and impact. Kobayashi Maru operates under the same principle: the existing software procurement process is too slow to satisfy requirements, so leverage best practices and partner with industry (in this case, Dell Technologies) to get new systems into the field as quickly as possible. The U.S. Air Force is committed to IT modernization, as exemplified by its ability to embrace change and transformation in how critical systems are procured and deployed. And Dell Technologies is committed to supporting the Air Force in its endeavors, so the service will always be ready for what’s next.

Learn more

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

May 2021

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Chaillan compares it to Lego, the modular building block toy. “The next generation jet fighters will be a mix of different ‘Lego’ blocks and reusing existing ‘Lego’ blocks so we don’t have to create everything from scratch. It’s still very early on, but this approach to software might be the difference between winning and losing. And you are going to save time and money, or you do more right with the same amount of money, which is likely even better.” It will also allow vulnerabilities in the security of particular components to be isolated and fixed, in line with Chaillan’s zero trust policy. “Security is really foundational to the success of all of this because if you move fast but the next day your source code is in the hands of the wrong people you didn’t really move fast at all. You just give free IP to your potential competitor or enemy.” Design systems As anyone who has mugged up on the history of Lego knows, the toy owes its original success to a design system that allowed

THE ALPHA OF TECHNOLOGY Success isn’t just about where you’ll go and how you’ll get there. It’s also about who you’ll team with. That’s why we combine the most innovative emerging technologies with deep federal domain expertise through cutting-edge intelligence services. darkwolfsolutions.com

Dark Wolf Solutions - Join the Pack

DARK WOLF: ACCELERATING SECURITY FOR USAF Dark Wolf Solutions is small and agile, and its partnership with the US Air Force is helping to deliver critical security faster and better than ever before. As a small company whose biggest customers are the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community, Dark Wolf Solutions is a triple-threat, specializing in Cybersecurity, Software and DevOps, and Management Solutions. Dark Wolf secures and tests cloud platforms, develops and deploys applications, and offers consultancy services performing system engineering, system integration, and mission support. The break for Dark Wolf came when the Department of Defense decided to explore software factories. Rick Tossavainen, Dark Wolf’s CEO, thinks it was an inspired path for the DoD to take. It has been, Tossavainen says, “amazing to watch” and has energized the Federal Contracting Sector with an influx of new talent and improved working environments that foster creativity and innovative ways of approaching traditional problems.

“ We originally started working with the US Air Force about three years ago. The problem was at the time you could develop all the software you wanted but you couldn’t get it into production – you had to go through the traditional assessment and authorization process. I talked to Lauren Knausenberger and she told me about Kessel Run and what eventually came out of this was the DoD’s first continuous ATO [Authority To Operate].” The secret to Dark Wolf’s success – and its partnerships with USAF and Space Force – lies in a client-first attitude. “ We’re not looking to maximise revenue,” Tossavainen explains. “ We tell all of our employees, if you’re ever faced with an issue and you don’t know how to resolve it, and one solution is better for the customer and the second is better for Dark Wolf, you always do number one. We’ve just got to take care of our customers, and I look for other partners that want to do that. And let’s work together so that we can bring them the best answer we can.”

LEARN MORE

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

NICOLAS M CHAILLAN TITLE: CHIEF SOFTWARE OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY LOCATION: WASHINGTON

May 2021

EXECUTIVE BIO

Nic Chaillan started young. He created his first computer game aged 12 and made some money from it, enabling him to start his first company aged 16. He would go on to found 12 companies over the next 20 years, selling 185 IP products to Fortune 500 companies. So what led him to the US Air Force, a far cry from the start-up culture he was used to? “I wanted to make a difference,” says Chaillan. Terrorism was stalking the world, and the attacks had felt close to home when the capital of Chaillan’s native France, Paris, was one of the victims. He joined the Department of Homeland Security in 2016 as Chief Architect. The move would lead him to senior postings in the Department of Defense and, eventually, to his current role in the US Air Force where he is the first Chief Software Officer, not just in that branch of the military, but in government at large.

all the bricks to interlock with each other. It’s an approach that has served software developers well, according to Colt Whittall, the US Air Force’s Chief Experience Officer (another new role for the organization). “Design systems are the reason that when you’re interacting with Google or Microsoft or Shopify or Amazon, it all kind of looks the same even though you might be interacting with multiple different systems and sites on the back end. They’re applying a design system which has all the branding and style artefacts and standards and how those things interact and how things move etc. All of that is combined in the design system.” Whittall’s approach isn’t new, but its arrival in the big thinking of the US Air Force is. It allows partners and in-house to build software that fits together. Like Lego. The many threads of change weaving through the US Air Force are combining into a single tapestry. And it's the consolidation of agile working ideas shipped in from the commercial sector and built to common standards that allows for a future where innovation speed is maximised without compromising security, and new ideas flourish in an environment designed to propagate them.

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Nic Chaillan | USAF

One of the most important elements of this transformation is listening to the end user – the airmen and women, the ground personnel – whose safety and efficacy is so closely linked to the technology on which they increasingly depend.

“ THIS APPROACH TO SOFTWARE MIGHT BE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WINNING AND LOSING” NIC CHAILLAN

CSO, US AIR FORCE

“In four of five years, I’d like to see at least the 100 – maybe 500 – most widely used applications in the Air Force have consistent user feedback,” says Whittall. “That would be a game changer. It would allow us to manage the entire portfolio with another set of data that would rank the 500 most widely used systems by user satisfaction.” The US Air Force’s radical transformation is taking shape, but it still needs scale. Innovation and adoption mean nothing until they permeate the fabric of the organisation. For Chaillan, that means breaking down silos and reusing code across multiple agencies. “It’s already hard enough to compete against other nation states,” he says, “We can’t fight among ourselves. I’m not going to lie, when I joined I was a little surprised technologymagazine.com

Setting Data in Motion for Government Missions

Government agencies understand that making smarter, more effective use of their data is critical to improved fiscal stewardship, accountability, public policies, program effectiveness, and mission success. The Confluent event streaming platform, built on Apache Kafka, enables government organizations to unlock and repurpose their existing data for countless modern applications and use cases.

Confluent: data in motion Government data is vast and complex to manage. Confluent is partnering with the US Air Force to enable mission to process and react to data in real time Data in motion. That’s Confluent in a nutshell. For years, companies in the commercial and public sectors have collected and stored data, unable to unlock its potential. Confluent was formed in Silicon Valley seven years ago to set data in motion and bring insight where and when organisations need it. This transformational process is something Confluent helps a variety of clients with, not least the US Air Force, a project which sits under the wing of Public Sector CTO Will LaForest. “I would characterize the US Air Force as early adopters in government,” he says. “Confluent (Enterprise Apache Kafka) happens to be really well

“Confluent happens to be really well aligned with the needs and mission of the Air Force. They have a ton of examples where they’re handling data in motion”

—

Will LaForest, CTO, Public Sector, Confluent

Bringing technology solutions to the military aligned with the needs and mission of the Air Force. They have a ton of examples where they need to rapidly process and react to data events in real time and they need to do across globally distributed operations. We have a lot of data nerds who love this problem set, focusing on geographic data distribution. We love this sort of challenge.” LaForest feels there has been a sea change in the government’s attitude towards technology. It has started to more aggressively adopt lessons learned from the commercial sector “working to infuse some silicon valley DNA”. It has changed the way companies such as Confluent interact with the government. “They have really begun to embrace this new norm, working closely with technology companies on the cutting edge, “ he says. The difference between commercial projects and government work comes down, in LaForest’s view, to scale and scope. “Operations span the globe – land, air, sea and space – and the variety of infrastructure, security requirements, and networking available impose some tough challenges on how the data will flow. Confluent is really well positioned to address this because it’s at the heart of what we do.”

LEARN MORE

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

FOUR PILLARS OF USAF DX STRATEGY • Build a rock solid infrastructure • User experience for warfighter effect • Enable digital talents • Provide tradespace

May 2021

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

DID YOU KNOW...

LAUREN KNAUSENBERGER ON DIVERSITY Lauren Knausenberger takes diversity seriously. On the one hand the USAF CIO is “just choosing people that are really awesome and really passionate and really know their stuff” but she balances this with a deep sense of what the modern workforce looks like. “It’s absolutely true that if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. I see a lot of responsibility as the first female CIO in the department of the Air Force. I try to keep a diverse group of people. We talk a lot about making sure we can keep people included.” The Black Lives Matter movement, in particular, shunted diversity into a prominent slot in the US Air Force’s agenda. “It was important to keep a really open dialog and ask people ‘how are you feeling?’, ‘what can we do to help?’, ‘what do you need to vent about?’. I’m blessed to have a pretty diverse staff to lean on and ask. That includes women and people of color and of all different backgrounds.”

technologymagazine.com

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

One Platform. One Agent. One View. Qualys helps organizations streamline and consolidate their IT, security and compliance. The Qualys Cloud Platform and its singular Cloud Agent provides organizations a single view, for real-time security across their entire global hybrid-IT environment, from prevention to detection to response!

qualys.com/trial

KILL PROCESS QUARANTINE

UNINSTALL

PATCH OR REMEDIATE

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

COLT WHITTALL TITLE: CHIEF EXPERIENCE OFFICER INDUSTRY: MILITARY

by how much tension there is between the DoD services. It’s just not healthy. I’m pretty sure we’re not the enemy here. “So we have to break that and reuse code and adopt more open-source applications and really have that baked-in security and continuous delivery of software multiple times a day. Right now the thought we can release software 21 times a day is pretty cool – for the government. But at Google or Netflix or Tesla or whatever, that’s not good enough. We need to go to even higher numbers. If you look at the teams moving to DevSecOps right now it’s maybe five or 10 percent of what they do. We need to move the needle to 80 or 90 percent.”

“ CONSISTENT USER FEEDBACK WOULD BE A GAME CHANGER” COLT WHITTALL

CXO, US AIR FORCE

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: ATLANTA Colt Whittall is obsessed with design. His background in digital agencies, designing and building visual products and services for the private sector companies was interspersed with stints of work for government bodies, including the US Air Force. In the 1990s, he joined Deloitte, eventually building a digital agency that broke away from the consultancy. “After that ran its course I was ready to do something else,” Whittall recalls. He loaded up the family car for a ‘gap year’ while he thought about his next move. That move turned out to be with the US Air Force, where Whittall is the organization’s first CXO. “My job is to delight the customer. If you go into the commercial world that’s what they talk about. We are most definitely not a consumer products and services company. We need a different bar, one that is about efficiency, about a war fighter, one that is orientated towards the mission that we have for our software and its application. Let’s make our airmen productive, efficient and effective.”

UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

Colt Whittall | USAF

A long way to go In Knausenberger’s view, the journey is also far from complete. “We’ve made a lot of progress over the past few years with the way we acquire technology, the way we do our contracting and the way we partner,” she says. “And I’ll just be very upfront and say that we still have a long way to go.” She admits that part of the problem is to rationalise the legacy issues surrounding different types of technological application. The US military has been one of the greatest innovators of the past century, with a paradoxical inability to manage administrative technology effectively. “I used to joke that we could hit the backend of a fly from halfway around the planet,” she muses, “but,

like – whoo! – you want to deploy some business email? “It’s mostly a joke when I say that, but we do incredible things with ease and we make really easy things – things that everybody else does very well – hard.” Hard is the operative word. Focus is split between the day-to-day operational side of USAF, advocating for a change of culture and championing an innovative spirit. It’s a painstaking process requiring diplomacy, skill, knowledge and determination. And data. Lots and lots of data. The job of maneuvering the world’s largest company to face a new era of warfare is under way and in capable hands.

technologymagazine.com

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

HOW IoT AND AI ARE REVOLUTIONISING PREDICTIVE MAINTENANCE WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

The neglected art of maintenance has been supercharged by new techniques and technologies including AI and IoT, leading to new prediction capabilities

he internet of things (IoT) has myriad uses across society, whether its smart appliances in our homes or manufacturing robots on production lines. It's in the latter area that IoT’s revolutionary capacity is becoming most apparent, with industrial IoT connections currently totalling 17.7 billion. Over the next five years, the overall growth rate is anticipated to be over 200%, taking the total number of connections to almost 37 billion. It’s smart manufacturing that leads the way, making up 22 billion of the connections forecast by 2025. The perfect IoT use case Driving this growth is the simultaneous emergence of key connectivity technologies 50

May 2021

such as 5G and Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networking, the lower latencies and higher speeds of which are making complex IoT communications more readily accessible for industry. The lower latencies and higher speeds enabled by such technologies find a perfect home in the factory environment, where weaknesses such as range are less important. The exact uses of IoT in such settings are many. Whether it’s managing and monitoring equipment remotely, improving efficiency or pinpointing the exact location of items in the supply chain. One of the key areas in which IoT sensors are having the biggest impact, however, is predictive maintenance.

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

technologymagazine.com

Listen Now

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

“ IOT-ENABLED EQUIPMENT CONNECTED TO AN EDGE DEVICE CAN TRANSFER PERFORMANCE DATA OVER THE INTERNET SO THE CONDITION OF THE ASSET CAN BE MONITORED REMOTELY” KIERAN NOTTER

VICE PRESIDENT OF CUSTOMER TRANSFORMATION, SERVICEMAX

Fixed before it breaks Predictive maintenance itself is nothing new, with the analogue form of the technology involving extensive and time-consuming testing to in turn provide statistical likelihoods for when something is about to fail. A perfect example are our road networks. With the material properties of road surfaces such as asphalt by now well understood, it’s a case of comparing that with the expected volume and type of traffic to determine when a road will need resurfacing. Predictive maintenance with IoT, however, involves using sensors to detect or predict when a machine needs servicing, thus preventing costly shutdown or even a potential chain of malfunctions that could lead to widespread damage. technologymagazine.com

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

How to benefit from predictive maintenance

With IoT, machines can send alerts based on data to avert catastrophe. “IoT-enabled equipment connected to an edge device can transfer performance data over the internet so the condition of the asset can be monitored remotely,” explains Kieran Notter, Vice President of Customer Transformation, ServiceMax. “If the asset’s temperature begins to rise, vibration increases beyond a predetermined threshold, or fluid pressure increases/ decreases etc, a work order can be created and scheduled before the asset fails.” It’s because of this that we’re seeing partnerships between industrial and technological firms, case in point being

Honeywell and Microsoft, who have collaborated to pair predictive maintenance with Microsoft’s Dynamics 365 Field Service on its Azure cloud platform. Such an integration is said by the company to enable new predictive maintenance workflows for improved performance, energy efficiency and real-time data access. The Dynamics 365 Field Service features prediction, detection and resolution capabilities, in order to avoid downtime and achieved through AI and IoT sensors which provide alerts and flag potential problems. Que Dallara, president and CEO, Honeywell Connected Enterprise, said:

“THE LOWER LATENCIES AND HIGHER SPEEDS ENABLED BY 5G FIND A PERFECT HOME IN THE FACTORY ENVIRONMENT”

May 2021

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

“Honeywell’s partnership with Microsoft will deliver new value to our customers as we help them solve business challenges by digitising their operations. Working with Microsoft, Honeywell will bring solutions at scale – powered by AI-driven insights and immediate access to data – that will help our customers work more efficiently than ever before.” Increasingly we’re seeing the application of AI and machine learning to predictive maintenance, opening up new possibilities for keeping things in good repair. For instance, instead of the rigorous testing needed to produce information about when a machine is about to fail, data can be gathered over the lifetime and fed into models that learn what the limits are. It’s here that IoT comes into its own, as Przemek Tomczak, SVP IoT and Utilities, Kx Systems, explains. “Shifting data to a central processing resource - such as the cloud - for analysis can cause problems with latency, as effective predictive maintenance requires analytics to be performed at speed, on both historic and real-time data. It’s often preferable therefore for analytics to be performed at the edge.” In its Predictive Maintenance 4.0 report, PwC identified four successive levels of predictive maintenance maturity, successively involving better usage of data. “Visual inspections represent level 1 in this framework; instrument inspections and realtime condition monitoring are associated with levels 2 and 3. At level 4 big data analytics starts to drive decision-making. This is where the digital revolution meets maintenance. This level involves applying the power of machine learning techniques to identify meaningful patterns in vast amounts of data and generate new, actionable insights for improving asset availability.”

The importance of using previously untapped data was emphasised by Roman Gaida, Department Head of CNC Mechatronics Division EMEA at Mitsubishi Electric, who said: “We found we could use data for predictive maintenance or stock estimation.We worked together with EY and said [...]: ‘We have the knowledge and experience, you know how to create new designs and processes’.” That assistance resulted in new supply chain, repair and ordering systems, which Gaida estimated have resulted in 20-30% efficiency increases.

Case study: Rolls-Royce According to the Royal Academy of Engineering, “The monitoring of aircraft engines has allowed RollsRoyce to develop new services around its products, improve reliability, predict when maintenance interventions are needed, and improve long-term business forecasting. As a result, reliability across the fleet of engines has increased by 73% over a decade.”

technologymagazine.com

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

11%

According to PwC, only 11% of companies have achieved the highest level of predictive

May 2021

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

“ IT’S OFTEN PREFERABLE FOR ANALYTICS TO BE PERFORMED AT THE EDGE” PRZEMEK TOMCZAK

SVP IOT AND UTILITIES, KX SYSTEMS

The responsibility to repair While of course non-broken machinery is helpful to the bottom line, there’s a sustainability angle to this too. As the world wakes up to the importance of keeping technology out of landfills, predictive maintenance is a powerful tool to ensure machinery keeps working as long as possible. Beyond that, IoT itself is also useful for reducing waste by providing more complete knowledge of the supply chains which are such significant sources of our carbon footprints. While making consumer technology repairable is a worthy endeavour, there’s still a long way to go before industrial machines are on the same level. With the digitisation of equipment being so far reaching, it’s become harder for customers in all industries to customise and maintain their purchases. Take agricultural machines for example, which represent the double edged sword of digital transformation - new capabilities on the one hand, less control on the other. The outwardly dry subject of maintenance, then, is actually a critically important one. Thanks to new advances in predictive maintenance spurred by IoT and AI, companies are making huge strides in getting more out of their machines, for the betterment of both their wallets and the world at large. technologymagazine.com

VERIZON BUSINESS

BRINGING IN THE 5G REVOLUTION WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH 58

May 2021

PRODUCED BY: GLEN WHITE & CAITLYN COLE

VERIZON BUSINESS

technologymagazine.com

VERIZON BUSINESS

May 2021

VERIZON BUSINESS

Verizon Business’ SVP and Chief Product Officer Aamir Hussain discusses the role of 5G in the company’s digital transformation offering

elecommunications giant Verizon’s Business division was restructured in 2019 in order to provide better services for its enterprise public sector and business customers, which range from SMBs to wholesale customers. As Aamir Hussain, the company’s SVP and Chief Product Officer explains: “We combine both wireless and wireline entities, products, and customer sets together for business, and in 2020 we generated around $31bn of revenue.” The company’s success rests on its extensive investments in its own networks. “We've gone through a major transformation,” says Hussain. “We are making a huge amount of strategic investment in our network platform, solutions, people and processes. It’s now a place where partners and employees are innovating hugely on behalf of our customers. We are building a 21st century network, which is there for mobility or fixed networks. And we call that Broadband Anywhere.” On top of that, the company is spearheading the 5G revolution. “In terms of 5G, we’re making massive investments in the 160 megahertz nationwide C-band spectrum. We’re building that out to enhance our millimeter wave 5G investments and to give us the ability to provide fiber-like services to our customers.” technologymagazine.com

Nokia and Verizon’s Transformative Private 5G Solution Nokia’s David de Lancellotti, Vice President, Global Verizon Sales, discusses the close partnership with Verizon and the private 5G offering that has resulted. Nokia is a key technology partner of Verizon’s, with the two companies teaming up to offer a 5G Private Wireless Network solution, a highperformance, end-to-end enterprise network and edge computing platform. “The Nokia Verizon Private 5G Solution gives enterprises the power to manage critical assets through a simple web portal, eliminating the need for complex management systems,” says David de Lancellotti, Vice President,Global Verizon Sales at Nokia. “The Nokia Verizon 5G solution is critical for our customers because it provides them with a single, reliable, secure 5G data network.”

The utility of a private network in particular is to enable the agile connection of enterprise assets over wireless networks, enabling new possibilities and applications. “Over 260 enterprise customers have deployed Nokia private wireless solution globally in a variety of vertical segments,” says de Lancellotti. “Nokia’s 5G ‘factory of the future’ in Oulu, Finland utilises a private network that drives an 80% reduction in the time it takes to send out a specific product line.” The Verizon partnership sees both sides combining their individual strengths for the benefit of customers. “The partnership with Verizon is really the critical piece that brings this entire solution together. We excel in the technology that drives industrial-grade private wireless and brings it to the cloud, while Verizon brings deep experience in the design, building and operation of mobile networks and extensive industry experience.

“5G is more than just the next generation of products” — David de Lancellotti, Vice President, Nokia, Global Verizon Sales

Watch David De Lancellotti discuss 5G and Verizon

Looking to the future, de Lancellotti sees Nokia and Verizon continuing to lead private 5G transformation. “5G is more than just the next generation of products - It’s really about a fifth generation for people and for enterprise. We’ve been focused on private wireless for several years and have led the move to Industry 4.0. That and our end-to-end capabilities uniquely positions us to manage really every piece of a customer’s network.”

Discover Nokia Industrial-grade Private Wireless

VERIZON BUSINESS

It’s thanks to this combined offering that the company is a leader in enabling digitalisation. “We are very well positioned to be the digital transformation partner of choice for our customers,” says Hussain. “We enable the digital economy through our services, connectivity platform and solutions and we are totally focused on enabling customer digital transformation. That's what we do every day - enabling experiences and making them predictable so that our customers know what outcome they'll achieve. That means they can focus on their business while we focus on their communications suite.” The possibilities of 5G are hard to overstate, and Verizon Business is dedicated 64

May 2021

to enabling its customers to take full advantage. “We see an immense opportunity to help our customers on their journey towards the fourth industrial revolution. Everybody is wanting to connect to the cloud and build innovative applications and connectivity is a cornerstone for everything. I believe that 5G is the mechanism that helps them get there.” There are a number of concrete capabilities connected to 5G. “What we call the ‘currencies’ of 5G, a set of performance attributes for this next generation of wireless connectivity include high-speed mobility, reliability, network energy efficiency, higher bandwidth, very low latency and the ability to connect a significantly larger number of devices to

VERIZON BUSINESS

AAMIR HUSSAIN TITLE: SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS

the network. Imagine having all that in a technology that you can use to innovate in your own business.” With its mm wave 5G network, available in parts of more than 65 US cities, customers are already experiencing speeds that reach beyond a gigabit per second. “We are well positioned as the 21st century platform for innovation and growth thanks to our 5G ecosystem. That’s not only in terms of connectivity, but also providing applications through partnerships on top of that platform.” But 5G is not just a technology for the future, and Verizon Business is already working on transformative realworld use cases. “We’re involved in the automation of inventory replenishment to

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: UNITED STATES Aamir Hussain is senior vice president of business products, joining Verizon in December 2019. Aamir has nearly three decades of experience implementing global technology operations, innovation, complex infrastructures, consumer and business solutions and digital transformation. He is responsible for Verizon Business Groups holistic enterprise product families - including IoT and 5G services, networking solutions, security, advanced communications services, and managed and professional services - and will lead product management across all customer segments. A veteran international technology executive with experience in operations and technology functions within the cable and telecom industry, he is an investor, advisor and board member with a focus on the consumer and financial enterprise, wireless industry, technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) sector. Aamir has also held senior leadership roles at Liberty Global, Covad, TELUS and Qwest. Aamir sits on several startup and non-profit boards, is technical advisor to technology companies and holds 11 patents in telecommunications.

All-in-one cloud contact centER solutions Providing valued interactions to build a great customer experience with trust and empathy

Watch: Using Empathy to provide Personalisation

"We also have integration with major tech partners, including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Zoom and Amazon." Bruce Rosen, SVP, Genesys Great customer service improves brand loyalty; valuable interactions build the trust to facilitate that. “At Genesys we provide our customers with a way to manage and implement the qualities of empathy into their customer experience,” explains SVP Bruce Rosen. “We can drive a new level of personalization; our Experience As a ServiceSM offering allows every company, big or small, to deliver that personalization at scale.”

Genesys Cloud

Cloud accounts for 65% of the Genesys customer base with 85% of its business operating on a SaaS model with the flexibility to meet developing customer needs. “Our technology transformation highlights a cloud -first strategy,” says Rosen. “Our digital marketplace AppFoundry offers 400 applications that can be integrated to enhance Genesys solutions. We also have integration with major technology

partners, including Microsoft, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Zoom and Amazon.”

Hyper Personalised Experience

Built for mission critical reliability and redundancy, the enterprise grade solutions Genesys deploy help companies like Verizon in their quest for the agility to be available for customers 24/7. Reacting to changing market conditions with the ability to add new features in real time is key. “We’re also seeing a rise in digital self-service,” notes Rosen. “Genesys chatbots driven by AI and Machine Learning, as well as our predictive engagement, support companies with the ability to deliver a hyper-personalized experience for their customers with every interaction. And as we've all seen and experienced during this past year, the support of remote working from home and customer experience is now becoming the new normal.”

VERIZON BUSINESS

“ W e are well positioned as the 21st century platform for innovation and growth thanks to our 5G ecosystem” AAMIR HUSSAIN

SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, VERIZON BUSINESS

May 2021

ensure planogram compliance, and we’re adding tremendous value to manufacturing and logistics by helping large businesses streamline their operations with realtime machine vision applications. We also provide gaming companies with a platform that enables a rich, console-like experience on smartphones.” Existing trends in digital transformation have only been supercharged by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, and Verizon Business has risen to the challenge. “I really have seen five years worth of transformation in the last year, quite literally. That has also changed the behavior of our customers, our employees, and ourselves in terms of how we show up on behalf of society.” Customers are now urgently looking at how they can transform their networks,

VERIZON BUSINESS

Verizon Business’s Technology Solutions in a Digital World

as Hussain explains: “De-centralisation of resources, the densification of the network, adoption of mobility and cloud security, and virtualisation are just a few of the trends we’re seeing. Businesses now want to use more advanced communications technologies. They want to use home networks and still remain secure and they want access to all of their corporate infrastructure in the cloud. We are helping provide all of those capabilities.” Verizon Business’ work is enabled by the support of a number of key partners, slotting into the company’s conception of three product layers: connectivity, platform and solutions. “We're seeing a lot of customers move to the cloud,” says Hussain. “They're using the cloud for their communications needs. We, as a global services provider, have

the opportunity to work with partners such as Genesys for our end customer contact center needs. We also work with Cisco across our portfolio to provide networking, collaboration and calling solutions to our customers as they migrate their businesses to the cloud – taking them out of IT closet and towards the edge.” Partners are also a vital part of the company’s 5G provision, as Hussain explains. “Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson are part of our 4G and 5G networks, and we continue to build with them. We are also building private networks with them, which will help enable 5G’s industrial automation capabilities.” On the solutions side, partners include the likes of IBM and SAP. “IBM has obviously their cloud offering. They also have AI and ML platforms, and we are working with them very closely technologymagazine.com

Deploy services your customers want, when and where they need them Meet your customer’s needs and create new revenue. The open, flexible, software-defined Cisco 5G architecture will help you maximize 5G profitability and create premium connected experiences.

Learn more

Getting up to speed with Cisco's 5G architecture

Watch: Cisco - 5G Pioneers

Cisco's Bob Everson, Senior Director of 5G Architecture talks about what it's like being one of the pioneers of 5G technology and Verizon's trusted partner Founded in 1984 in San Francisco, it is the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Cisco is a market leader in advanced technology solutions for Enterprise, Service Providers and Cloud, helping their customers and partners to achieve their intended business outcomes. As Verizon builds its 5G network, Cisco continues to act as a trusted partner. However, before anything further is said about the benefits of 5G for telecom, it is important to understand what the 5G architecture encompasses. Speaking on the extent of implementation, Bob Everson, Cisco’s Senior Director of 5G Architecture says “5G is not a singular technology. For us, it's really important that we take a systems approach on the components that deliver a 5G system, but then also look at the whole ecosystem of the applications and the users, and how all that ties together.” Being a pioneer in 5G technology and applications, Cisco focuses on maximising the use of technology to improve business operations for its customers in order to

deliver tangible results. Everson states that although 5G is the future, it also makes systems vulnerable to threat. Owing to the deep-rooted nature of 5G integration, one of Cisco’s key tasks is developing a holistic approach in understanding these operations and providing solutions that predict and prevent any threat. Speaking in conclusion on the application of 5G across different operations, Everson adds that organizations will see an increasing overlap in environments between enterprise and direct consumers, so having a protected connection and an infrastructure built to last will and should be any organization’s top objective. As organisations look to the future of work and move to a more hybrid work model, service providers must ensure that their customers are well-connected with multiple levels of security and have a seamless environment to operate within.

Learn more today

VERIZON BUSINESS

“ I really have seen five years worth of transformation in the last year, quite literally” AAMIR HUSSAIN

SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, VERIZON BUSINESS

to create the revolutionary industry of the future that allows our customers to be nimble and really helps them in their digital journey. We bring the network, we bring our security, advanced communications, IoT, and other things, and IBM provides the applications. We do the same thing with SAP. SAP has some fundamental vertical solutions in the retail and manufacturing segments that we combine as part of our 5G network and provide really innovative solutions to our customers.” 72

May 2021

Another trusted partner is Mutualink. “Working together, Verizon and Mutualink can instantly provide interoperability to any public safety stakeholder and bridge voice, video systems, data, alarms and sensors (including body cameras and fixed sensors) to enable real time collaboration and 360 degree situational awareness to

VERIZON BUSINESS

support our Verizon Frontline Responders,” says Hussain. “Verizon recently announced Verizon Frontline as a continuation of our commitment to public safety - Verizon has supported first responders for our entire 21 year history, leading the way on priority voice calls, virtual segmentation and network reliability. With well

over 10 years of commitment to first responders, Mutualink has led the public safety communications industry in the innovation of solutions for interoperable communications, and created the only platform available today that allows for the instant sharing of voice, video and data regardless of device or network.” technologymagazine.com

VERIZON BUSINESS

MUTUA

May 2021

ALINK

technologymagazine.com

VERIZON BUSINESS

“We enable the digital economy through our services, connectivity platform and solutions” AAMIR HUSSAIN

SVP AND CHIEF PRODUCT OFFICER, VERIZON BUSINESS

May 2021

VERIZON BUSINESS

Aside from assisting its customers with COVID-19 disruption, Verizon Business has also embraced the changes it has wrought internally. “I started in Verizon in December of 2019, says Hussain. “And we went to work 100% from home in March of 2020. I haven't been back to the office since. Despite that being unthinkable a year or two ago, we've been very effective and have learned how

to carry on with advanced communications and virtual meetings. We’ve figured out how to be much more effective working from home. That means additional communications with employees, and making sure that we are doubling down on emotional intelligence.” That experience has informed the solutions it offers customers. “We’ve begun to offer all kinds of secure technologymagazine.com

5G: partnering to innovate Ericsson’s 5G technology and your networks deliver unprecedented speed and flexibility, carrying more data than ever before. Our 5G is made for innovation.

VERIZON BUSINESS

work from home solutions. If we had taken that solution to a customer two years ago, they would have thought long and hard about adopting it. Now, our customers are driving us to create more and more solutions.” Looking to the future, the company will continue to be guided by a number of key and unchanging principles. “The first is digital experience and putting the customer first. Second is simplification. The third is about focusing on life cycle, managing what's out there, not just building it and sending it out, but also enhancing it over time. Last is 5G leadership. 5G is our future. It helps us create leadership on many fronts - not only providing high-speed connectivity, but also creating new applications and experiences

that can use the capabilities of 5G.” Hussain emphasises that even despite its successes, Verizon Business is only at the middle point of a continuing journey. “We’ve built a great network. We have a great team, we have great processes, and now we need to enable others to come use us as a platform to innovate for their own businesses and their own solutions. That is key to our success. We are forging large partnerships, and we feel that we have the assets, we have the tools, we have the capabilities and the platform for us to innovate together with our partners and customers.”

technologymagazine.com

LEGACY IT, DISASTER RECOVERY AND THE RISE OF HYBRID CLOUD WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

May 2021

CLOUD & CYBER

We investigate the reasons behind growth in the hybrid cloud market, as companies adopt the technology to integrate and protect legacy systems

he ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated pre-existing movement towards the cloud. According to PwC, cloud spending rose 37% to $29bn during the first quarter of 2020. Thanks to trends motivated by the pandemic (not least remote working), the question for companies is increasingly not whether they should move to the cloud, but how best to go about it. The cloud dilemma Typically, cloud models are divided into public and private models. The latter involves a cloud exclusively for use by the company in questions, regardless of whether it is located on premises or via a third party provider. The benefits of a private network dedicated to a single organisation include higher levels of security and control as well as more flexibility, with the potential to perfectly adapt systems to a company’s operations. Such close control technologymagazine.com

The Website and Magazine for Global Sustainability Executives Join now for notifications about the upcoming launch and never miss an issue...

COMING SOON JOIN THE COMMUNITY

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities in Sustainability

CLOUD & CYBER

is often vitally important in industries with tight regulations to follow. The downsides, of course, are that everything must be done in-house. Enter public cloud. Here, companies can rely on the expertise of the world’s largest companies and their offerings, whether it’s Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform or any number of others, with all cloud resources ultimately owned and operated by the provider. Relying on such services moves capital expenditure to the operational expenditure of software-as-a-service solutions, unlocking highly scalable and reliable capacity and removing the responsibility to design your own systems. The hybrid approach What most companies will settle on, however, is a hybrid of the two. A hybrid cloud approach is less disruptive to move to than embracing public cloud, meaning that legacy on-premise IT systems can be more easily kept and integrated into the new system. Hybrid cloud need not be seen as a compromise, however. Indeed, adopting a hybrid approach can have a multiplicative effect, with suggestions that hybrid cloud could deliver 2.5 times the value derived from a single platform. “Hybrid cloud integrates public cloud, on-premises and private cloud services to create a single, secure, flexible, cost controlled IT infrastructure,” explains Narsimha Rao Mannepalli, Executive Vice President, Head – Cloud Infrastructure and Security Solutions, Infosys. “This offering allows you to get the most out of your existing IT investments while gaining access to additional resources when necessary. Having the ability to seamlessly move your applications and data between these two

“Having the ability to seamlessly move your applications and data between these two environments allows enterprises to optimise business’ cost, security, performance and availability” NARSIMHA RAO MANNEPALLI

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, HEAD – CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE AND SECURITY SOLUTIONS, INFOSYS technologymagazine.com

“A hybrid approach allows companies to respond to the increased complexity of the IT environment in a seamless manner” 84

May 2021

environments allows enterprises to optimise business’ cost, security, performance and availability requirements. It enables enterprises to use an easily scalable public cloud for more dynamic workloads, while leaving sensitive and controlled workloads to a private cloud or on-premises data centre.” A hybrid approach, then, allows companies to respond to the increased complexity of the IT environment in a seamless manner. According to an IBM report, “Hybrid cloud permits public clouds, private clouds, and on-premises IT to interoperate seamlessly across all three standardized technology interfaces: Linux, Open Container Initiative, and Kubernetes.” As a result, the hybrid cloud market itself was valued at $52.16bn in 2020, and is expected to reach $145bn by 2026, growing

CLOUD & CYBER

at a rate of almost 20% per year. One of the key benefits of a hybrid approach is the aforementioned ability to link or upgrade legacy systems with cloud services, for instance to leverage increased computing power for existing problems or, crucially, to back them up should the worst happen. Disaster resilience through the cloud Companies face threats through a number of avenues, from cyber attacks to natural disasters or data centre accidents. Emboldened by COVID-19 and remote working, ransomware attacks in particular have become commonplace. Hafnium, for instance, exploits flaws and stolen passwords to gain access to

attackers, while video game developer CD PROJEKT RED suffered an attack that forced it to cut off access to internal resources, severely hampering the release of updates for its latest game. While authorities eventually catch up to attackers (as we saw with the disruption of the EMOTET malware), technologymagazine.com

CLOUD & CYBER

PRIVATE VS PUBLIC CLOUD According to IBM, the three elements of hybrid clouds are best in different areas: Public clouds are well suited for many front-office workloads Private clouds are well suited for many of the mission critical workloads where the benefits of cloud are desirable - but the security and assurance of a private environment is key And traditional IT environments are suited for workloads that don’t inherently take advantage of cloud benefits - and demand the dedication of computing resources

May 2021

CLOUD & CYBER

“ Hybrid cloud is a popular solution among enterprise grade businesses, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution” IAN SHEEN

EMEA CONSULTING LEAD - STRATEGY AND TRANSFORMATION, TELSTRA PURPLE

it is imperative for businesses to protect themselves - with cloud backups being one of the key tools. Hybrid cloud means it's possible to split an IT environment, with one live copy in a private cloud or on premises and another backup in the cloud. It also means more sensitive data can be sequestered further from danger. Alibaba says of its cloud offering: “For organisations that have particularly sensitive data or applications, such as client billing information or intellectual property crucial to the business, a hybrid cloud enables them to place this most sensitive data on private servers which cannot be accessed through the Internet. Less confidential data or applications, which are usually more copious in volume, can be placed in the public cloud and benefit from the large storage capacity public servers provide.” It’s this flexibility and agility that is hybrid cloud’s abiding strength, as Ian Sheen, EMEA Consulting Lead - Strategy and Transformation, Telstra Purple, explains: “Hybrid cloud is a popular solution among enterprise grade businesses, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. There are many nuances and restrictions that affect everyone differently. However, one of the

main advantages of the hybrid cloud is its ability to offer high performance, flexibility, and agility in a constantly evolving environment. Hybrid models can be quickly and efficiently adapted to fit individual needs and ultimately help organisations shed existing rigid practices. It is vital businesses remain as flexible and agile as the cloud itself, to reap the advantages offered by these solutions.” It's clear that a hybrid approach is a less disruptive means of accessing the cloud hence its status as far and away the most popular form of cloud computing. By combining the public cloud’s access to increased computing power and natural resilience with the offline nature of private or on-premise solutions, businesses can embark on the cloud revolution in as flexible way as possible.

technologymagazine.com

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Shaping the Future of HR WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

May 2021

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Telia Inmics-Nebula’s HR Director, Kirsi Kantele discusses how HR has a pivotal and very active leading role within Telia Inmics-Nebula

he past year has been a challenging one for companies globally. Not many enterprises could say the experience has been positive, as massive upheavals have seen numerous businesses struggle to ride the tidal wave of change. However, managing the digital transition, new technology and creating a culture of learning and transparency, is something that Kirsi Kantele, HR Director of Telia InmicsNebula, embraces. Despite the challenges due to COVID19, she believes the digital transformation of Telia Inmics-Nebula was not only, in her words, ‘surprisingly straightforward’ but has also brought benefits to staff, customers and the working environment. Kantele, who’s strong background in employment law and management has provided her with essential tools for her profession, explains, “I think that many lawyers are quite analytical and structured in their approach and I guess that applies to me as well. I have a strong background in legal HR which is how I started my career in Telia as an employment counsel - so I’m very familiar with the legal issues in the HR field.” It is this pragmatic and clear-headed stance that has contributed to the company’s digital transition being such a success, although Kantele points out that prior to the pandemic, Telia Inmics-Nebula Kirsi Kantele, was already well developed in terms of a HR Director, flexible working environment. Telia Inmics-Nebula

May 2021

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

50%/50%

gender balance in top management is Telia Company’s aim by

2025

in terms of inclusion and diversity

She says, “In the new normal of working, innovation, social connections and communication can be viewed as a challenge, but I see that there is constant development in technology to help with these issues (for example Microsoft break out rooms) and changes in ways of working.” Technology, Kantele points out, has been massively instrumental in paving the way for remote and virtual working experiences. “Many of the things that we might have thought were not possible to do in a virtual setting, went surprisingly well this past year,” she says. “For example, the collaborative workshops and onboarding of employees (the kinds of things you usually do face-to-face) were handled very successfully virtually.” The day-to-day connections have been a tougher challenge, as innovation and 92

May 2021

creativity are often the result of dynamic working relationships in a socially connected setting. Though Kantele points out that these issues are far from insurmountable. “Of course, there are complications when you think about the social connections, innovations and collaborations. You really need to work harder to support them,” she says. “We adopted a practical hands-on approach by starting wellbeing breaks for employees. These are essentially 15 minute breaks so staff can get their exercise in the afternoons, and also teams can have social coffee breaks. These small changes enable the social connections with others to be maintained. Encouraging a sense of belonging and connection is very important but I also think technological developments are continually addressing these issues.”

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

KIRSI KANTELE TITLE: HR DIRECTOR COMPANY: TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

EXECUTIVE BIO

Direction and leadership The importance of having the right people and partner assets in place to meet the future demands, but also to shape the future, are aspects that are essential to Kantele in her position as HR Director. Human capital, she says, is part of the value chain - and critical to customer satisfaction. “People function as part of the value chain in delivering the services or products to the customer, and even if we don’t usually have direct contact points with the customer, it's important that we envision that result in all our procedures. We must appreciate that added value to different stakeholders – the customer, as also to our people, owners and society.” She continues, “I try to be as open and transparent as possible in my leadership. It's essential to have openness and trust.

Kirsi Kantele leads the HR function in Telia Inmics-Nebula. Telia Inmics-Nebula employs over 500 people. Kirsi has over 10 years of experience in HR with a focus on change management as well as employment law and industrial relations. Kirsi’s passion is to help the business succeed through people agenda as well as to coach and empower people to succeed in their work and careers. Kirsi has been with Telia for ten years. Before joining Telia, Kirsi worked in the legal services sector and as a judge in a district court. Kirsi holds a Master’s degree in law from the University of Helsinki and an Executive Master’s in Management degree from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Introducing Surface Duo

https://www.martinrobertcook.com/

May 2021

Microsoft: inspiring women in tech Microsoft in Finland’s CMO Janina Backlund understands the value of diverse teams that represent the customers served and reflect audience needs Microsoft is partnering with Telia in Finland to deliver an evolving customer experience; one made up of rich H2H (human-to-human) interactions. “We need to stay relevant with our customers with the right message on the right channel and at the right moment,” says Microsoft Finland’s CMO Janina Backlund.

“We need to stay relevant with our customers with the right message on the right channel and at the right moment” —— Janina Backlund,CMO, Microsoft Finland

Value-Based Marketing How our values are communicated is key, says Backlund: “You can’t simply copy/paste value messages; they need to be authentic so you go to market in a way that matters to the audience you want to engage with.” Surface the Women Microsoft has been running its #SurfaceTheWomen campaign for three years now; in tune with Telia’s aim to have 40% of its leadership roles allocated to women by 2023. “Gender equality is a conversation that needs to progress. Diversity and inclusion are written into our DNA at Microsoft,” explains Backlund. “These are core values grounding the way we develop our technology which needs to be accessible for everybody. Microsoft’s offering needs to represent the diverse audiences we aim to serve. This extends all the way to the teams we recruit; which must represent those same customers. It’s difficult to create innovations that are actually meaningful for our end users if we don’t make sure the teams developing them are diverse and value inclusion.”

Watch: #SurfaceTheWomen 2021

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

This is possibly an overhang from my legal background in that I like to keep an eye on the small details - and make sure there is always good consistency as much in leadership as there is in operations.” Kantele believes management roles have been challenged by the new work from home mandates, because hovering in the background is no longer an option. “In many ways working from home is more efficient because it allows for a better balance between work and social life. I think working remotely puts a positive pressure on leaders too. It means they must have good and efficient processes in place and it encourages transparency in terms of targets. It puts focus on leadership issues. That should be seen as a positive thing.” On digital transformation Kantele is a firm advocate of technology, and says in order to adopt digital practices successfully, companies must start with an open mind from the top level. “It's important to have the kind of culture that embraces digitalisation and different types of technologies,” she says. “And to create that kind of culture, it's essential that the top level management lead by example and be curious of the different possibilities technology can offer us. For example, HR can smooth the transition with training and capabilities. But the next stage is how digitalisation changes the way we work. That’s a big thing that really needs support and focus for teams.” She continues, “For example in Telia InmicsNebula, we have a process in terms of planning ahead - we ask what kinds of changes are we facing in the future through technology? When we move into a more digital world. In that way, we have planned well so we know what we will need and support required.” 96

May 2021

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Shaping the future with HR

“Often, it's not only a technology change but a whole set of processes and ways of working that are changing” KIRSI KANTELE,

HR DIRECTOR | TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Paljon tehoa töihin. Kaikenkattavaa tietoturvaa.

Application Firmware Kernel Hypervisor Chipset

May 2021

Kaikki mitä yrityksesi tarvitsee Laite ja palvelut täydellisesti paketoituna – valmiina käyttöönotettavaksi suoraan paketista. Useampia mahdollisuuksia, parempi hallinta, enemmän turvaa ja laaja portfolio.

Korkeimman tason tietoturvaa

Tietoturvapäivitykset neljäksi (4) vuodeksi •

Pidä yrityksesi tiedot suojattuna tietoturvauhilta

Knox Suite -lisenssi vuodeksi (12 kk) Kaikki yhdessä paketissa

• • •

Taattu jatkuvuus

Joustava Samsung Dex³ –ympäristö

Tutkitusti¹ tietoturvallisimmaksi arvosteltu mobiilialusta Helpot ja nopeat asennukset, yrityksen tarpeiden mukaisesti räätälöityinä Kokonaisvaltainen laitehallinta

Enterprise edition -laitteita on saatavana kahden (2) vuoden ajan² •

Yrityksen toiminnot voidaan varmistaa laitteiden yhtenäisen elinkaaren ansiosta

MS-synkronointi tekee työskentelystä joustavaa • • •

Liitä puhelin tietokoneeseen langattomasti Käytä puhelimen sovelluksia tietokoneen näytöltä Siirrä tiedostoja laitteiden välillä helposti ja nopeasti

¹ Lähde: Gartner, Inc. A Comparison of Security Controls for Mobile Devices, tammikuu 2019. Tutkimuksessa oli käytössä Samsung Knox ja Knox Platform for Enterprise. ² Tuotteen elinkaari alkaa tuotteen maailmanlaajuisesta lanseerauksesta. ³ DeX toimii valikoiduissa PC-tietokoneissa ja käyttöjärjestelmän on oltava Windows 7, 10 tai Mac OS 10.13 tai uudempi. Microsoft-lisenssiä saatetaan vaatia.

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

Communication, groundwork and teamwork are the keys to success, Kantele says. “Enquiries into how ways of working have changed and how we can plan ahead are critical. Often, it's not only a technology change but a whole set of processes and ways of working that are changing and of course competencies need to be gained, as well as other competencies where time is freed up by technology - so we need to plan ahead and decide where those changes happen.” Strategic partnerships Telia Inmics-Nebula is strategically partnered with both Microsoft and Samsung. Kantele describes both relationships as essential particularly in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. “They [Microsoft and Samsung] are very important to us. Microsoft and Samsung offer us a strong foundation for digital services and modern, digital workplace solutions and to our customers.” She says the level of support offered to both Telia Inmics-Nebula and its customers by its partners, has been critical to the company’s successes over the past year particularly.

DID YOU KNOW...

WOMEN IN TECHNOLOGY

100

Telia Inmics-Nebula is a company with a strong ethic when it comes to diversity and inclusion. Kirsi Kantele, who has worked in technology for the past decade, says many improvements have been made in the field of diversity, but that more work needs to be done. She says, “Diversity and inclusion are very important values for us. From Telia’s perspective, Telia Company has an ambition to have a 50/50 gender balance in top management by 2025 at the moment it is 40%.

May 2021

“When it comes to numbers, Telia Company has at the moment 40% women in leadership positions but there is still work to be done to promote equal opportunities for women in the fields of technology. When it comes to gender balance, we are going forward in a good way. But like I said, it’s important to continue to make these things visible. We must keep it on the agenda and make sure the opportunities continue to move forwards.”

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

“ People function as part of the value chain in delivering the services or products to the customer” KIRSI KANTELE,

HR DIRECTOR, TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

“Customer expectations in this kind of environment is one that supports employee productivity, employee satisfaction and has a focus on security. We are very focussed on data security and our IT assets. Microsoft workplace solutions combined with our services enables us to offer customers services that help them improve employee productivity and customer satisfaction. “The technology creates seamless communication across all locations and maintains better security of the data and the assets too.” The teleco’s strategy is to grow as a managed service provider, explains Kantele. “We are an enabler for modern work, with a strong focus also on end user support. The core of our strategy is valuing our people. Our aim is to be the home of experts in IT services. “It’s a very important part of how we provide the IT services to our customers – such as the end user support,” she says. “It is important to make things always a little bit smarter, simpler and key to this is digitalisation. I could use our HR change journey as an example because for us, becoming one company and being part of the Telia family has created a lot of possibilities. “We changed our HR systems to a common system used in Telia – this change contained a lot of synergies, possibilities to analyse data. We laid the groundwork for even better data-driven decision making. This enabled us to focus even more on transformational leadership issues such as performance management, leadership and competence development.” Customer-centric approach It is this strategy that has driven the Telia Inmics-Nebula customer journey. “This is something we aim to do for our customers also,” points out Kantele. technologymagazine.com

101

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

“Enabling them through technology is what matters for each business or function. I think that is the core of what we want to make possible for our customers. “The pandemic caused a huge change for us and for many of our customers. It meant working from home in order to keep safe. We were able to support our own employees as well as employees of our customers to make this transition. Our End User Support made great strides in supporting our customers, and our own employees. That was evident when they won the Service Desk of the year award in Finland for the second time. Our partners also played a key role in this success.” The question of security for customers as well as within Telia Inmics-Nebula is a priority for the company, which has created innovative solutions that monitor security. Kantele says, “Cyber security is part of our everyday life and the services we offer to our customers. Cyber security threats are rapidly growing due to Covid-19- related work changes. Company employees are working mostly remotely and devices and systems used are not always optimised for that purpose. The use of cloud systems has increased, but quite often these solutions are being used on basic settings. This opens up different kinds of security threats too. “We have developed a new offering to check customers' environments with several different kinds of health checks. This enables us to understand what must be fixed and also fix security related issues there may arise. We have also strong managed services offering to maintain and continuously develop our customers cloud systems. Working practices and COVID-19 The past 12 months has led to what are now seen as irreversible working practices globally. 102

May 2021

“ I think working remotely puts a positive pressure on leaders too. It means they must have good and efficient processes in place and it encourages transparency in terms of targets” KIRSI KANTELE,

HR DIRECTOR, TELIA INMICS-NEBULA

Kantele believes the working from home mandate won’t change dramatically as the pandemic passes. “I think it's highly likely that we will resort to a hybrid way of working,” she says. “Part of our work will be carried out remotely, because it's efficient and preferred by many people. But there will also be occasions where face to face processes will occur. A combination of both these working realities will be very positive.” She adds that the pandemic will have lasting reverberations on the mindset of

TELIA INMICS - NEBULA

employees too, in their independence when it comes to work. “Self leadership has developed. And this will continue to increase. Working remotely has meant that people have had to find their own ways of being productive. They have had to create a balance between working from home and getting their job done. “I think that a big leap in digitalisation has occurred. We see a lot of possibilities regarding how we can run everyday activities

remotely. Sometimes these revelations can be quite small. “For me personally, I noticed how efficient and collaborative workshops can be when everyone attends via Microsoft teams. Or, in personal life how well yoga classes can be organised virtually. A sense of community can be achieved virtually as well.”

technologymagazine.com

103

IT PROCUREMENT

Digital transformation consulting:

NOW and the FUTURE We understand the work of consultants in digital transformation and gain insights from a roundtable of consultants as to their priorities over the coming years WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

104

May 2021

he reasons why companies seek the expertise of consultants are many and various. In the current age of digital transformation, all businesses are expected to technologise, to varying extents. When that expertise doesn’t exist in house, retaining a consultant is an obvious step. “Consultants offer organisations instant skills that are currently in need and scant supply, used to transform any business,” says Marc Lueck, CIO EMEA at Zscaler. “Rather than building up their own knowledge internally, which can be time consuming, organisations want to succeed in their transformation efforts on the back of other people’s success by bringing in somebody who has the required experience and can take a more neutral approach.” That expertise can avert the common mistake of digital transformation for the sake of it. “Too many business leaders prioritise technology over strategy, and do not have a clear understanding of the outcomes that digital transformation can and should drive,” says Ash Finnegan, digital transformation officer, Conga. Businesses and

THE EXAMPLE HEADLINE CAN MIX WIEGHTS The standfirst may look better in a different weight? Perhaps you could embelish the interview Name Surname, CEO ant poritas debisci llanim doluptam autvoluptur WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

“ Mix and match the size. Keep the style consistent within the same article” NAME SURNAME JOB TITLE, COMPANY NAME

technologymagazine.com

105

Digital Transformation. Made real every day. Find out how big advances in AI have made it easier than ever to unlock the power of data, create value, insights and a new level of intelligent security. From Individuals, to small organizations, to the Global Fortune 100, AI and machine learning are improving businesses and lives everywhere.

Learn More

IT PROCUREMENT

“CONSULTANTS OFFER ORGANISATIONS INSTANT SKILLS THAT ARE CURRENTLY IN NEED AND SCANT SUPPLY” MARC LUECK

CIO EMEA, ZSCALER

consultants must be careful, however, to develop a close working relationship, or the same problems could arise. “It is crucial that the workforce is involved in these discussions, as they will be the ones seeing the business through the revenue cycle. Only then will business leaders have a clear understanding of how and where change needs to occur and what the next stage of their digital transformation journey should be – rather than leaving it to guesswork or trial-and-error.” There is a certain mutuality to the relationship, with businesses benefitting from new technology and consultants expanding their knowledge, as Anne-Marie Malley, UK consulting leader at Deloitte, explains: “Consultants will work on a significant number of digital transformation projects during their

career. Each time, they will pick up new insights and tools to inform their next client project, which will provide new opportunities and results for the next organisation they work with. Working between industries in particular can be a benefit, as consultants can share 'best practice' behaviours from other sectors to improve innovation and the effectiveness of digital transformation initiatives.” How businesses have responded to the pandemic The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has brought the work of consultants into sharper relief. As Conga’s Finnegan explains: “COVID19 changed things significantly, as business leaders rolled out some of the most complex transformation programmes overnight, in order to keep their companies up and running. It proved what we have always known about business – embracing change and innovation is key to survival. Digital transformation can future technologymagazine.com

107

Automation in Covid-19 Research from Deloitte has highlighted that 68% of business leaders used automation to respond to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the acceleration of digital transformation initiatives, further research carried out during the first lockdown highlighted that 41% of consumers found it difficult to access the goods or services they need online during the lockdown period.

108

May 2021

proof a business for unexpected outcomes.” As well as future proofing, digital transformation may be key to the post-COVID-19 economic recovery. “Lockdown measures made technology platforms vital to keep teams working, supply chains running and customer services in full operation,” says Malley. “As a result, digital transformation initiatives are fundamental for business growth and they will be a critical catalyst for business recovery in the next few years.” While undoubtedly challenging for businesses, there are potential positives based on the ways organisations respond, as James McElhone, a Partner in Consulting at EY explains: “Investing in digital transformation has the potential to accelerate new and better ways of working. This was the case well before COVID. However, the impact of the

IT PROCUREMENT

says Erik Brenneis, IoT Director at Vodafone Business. “What really makes 5G a force to be reckoned with is its role as an enabler: a tool to make those more imaginative digital projects a reality. It will underpin growth and power change for businesses in the years to come. For example, AR and VR go far beyond what we see in the consumer space, and with 5G it can allow businesses to build 3D models and environments that have application in everything – from staff training to product testing and even remote surgery.” Then there’s the issue of cybersecurity, which has only become more in focus for businesses thanks to recent events such as the Hafnium attacker. “From a security perspective we will see companies begin to look for technologies that help them overcome the challenge of de-perimetrisation,” says Lueck. “Applications have moved to the cloud and staff in many organisations are now working from anywhere – so how can these employees

global pandemic meant that some businesses were left exposed by their lack of action to implement new systems, tools and processes and at risk due to the impact on cash flow of needing to undertake investment that was unforeseen and unplanned. This experience has brought to the fore the need for businesses to invest in future technologies, become more agile and use technology to adapt for the future.” Adapting to the post COVID-19 economy That future will require new approaches and new technologies to maximise digital transformation as the world emerges from COVID-19. One technology whose advent was obscured by the pandemic is 5G. “5G has to be the most important technology for businesses to adopt within the next five years,”

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION INITIATIVES ARE FUNDAMENTAL FOR BUSINESS GROWTH AND THEY WILL BE A CRITICAL CATALYST FOR BUSINESS RECOVERY IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS” ANNE-MARIE MALLEY

UK CONSULTING LEADER, DELOITTE technologymagazine.com

109

IT PROCUREMENT

“ INVESTING IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION HAS THE POTENTIAL TO ACCELERATE NEW AND BETTER WAYS OF WORKING” JAMES MCELHONE PARTNER IN CONSULTING, EY

110

May 2021

IT PROCUREMENT

Emerging technology research EY’s latest Digital Investment Index surveyed over 1,000 executives with technology decision making responsibilities, finding that 62% of executive’s surveyed agreed that they must radically transform their operations over the next two years to incorporate more emerging technologies, including IOT.

be supported when it comes to connectivity and security? Zero Trust based concepts provide an answer to those challenges.” Even in the new normal, however, some expect existing focuses on incremental improvements to prevail. “The most important technologies will be those that help to streamline business processes, drive revenue operations and improve customer experience in the years to come,” says Finnegan. “Revenue operations are among the most important of all businesses processes, but they are often poorly implemented. To overcome these disparate processes and siloed departments, businesses must implement technology that transforms their revenue operations.” technologymagazine.com

111

DRIVING A DIGITAL JOURNEY FOR SMOOTH CX WRITTEN BY: JANET BRICE

112

May 2021

PRODUCED BY: KRIS PALMER

BCA MARKETPLACE

technologymagazine.com

113

BCA MARKETPLACE

The digital transformation at BCA will put the customer in the driving seat from virtual auctions to online buying

or most people buying a car is an aesthetic experience, from the colour to the smell of the leather interior and purr of a finely tuned engine. Zeroemission and safety may also be practical considerations, but there is no denying the power of the look and feel of a car for consumers who place the purchase of a vehicle just below buying a house. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic which put pay to the traditional buying of an automobile from a showroom or auction - Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners, predicts a bright future for the used car industry as he works to sync up the physical and digital world to provide a smooth customer experience. BCA, formerly British Car Auctions, now has to balance how they accelerate forward with their digital transformation without losing that aesthetic experience for the customer. The company specialises in multi-channel auctions of second hand cars, vans and trucks from leading European vehicle vendors. From dock to defleet - BCA touches more than 3.5 million vehicles a year working with OEMs, fleet operators and dealers to provide the backbone of the UK's automotive supply chain. Founded in 1946, BCA sits alongside WeBuyAnyCar.com and cinch - all within the Constellation Automotive Group.

114

May 2021

technologymagazine.com

115

Teagle outlines how the company will move forward offering its customers a seamless online experience while harnessing the power of new technology to provide those personal touches which makes buying a vehicle so important. “We will be doing everything we can to sync the physical and digital world to provide the ultimate customer experience,” said Teagle speaking from his office in Farnham. He is optimistic about the car industry as we move out of the pandemic. “Car sales will start to rise as people seek the safety and convenience of a vehicle to avoid the crowds on public transport.” 116

May 2021

Technology creates the physical experience Teagle, who hit the ground running when he joined BCA, just prior to the start of the pandemic in November 2019, comments on how the company’s digital journey will focus on a post-pandemic future with face-toface video, the expansion of omni-channel technologies along with robots and Artificial Intelligence (AI). “If we look a few years ahead we will be able to experience being inside a vehicle without physically being in there,” predicts Teagle. “A customer will also be able to get that feeling of driving a vehicle without actually doing it and this experience is not far off.

BCA MARKETPLACE

ROBERT TEAGLE TITLE: GROUP CIO COMPANY: CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP INDUSTRY: DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY

EXECUTIVE BIO

“When you think about the fact that so many people are looking online for purchasing more products, there is no reason why vehicle sales can't continue to grow and we will continue to do as much as we can to sync up the physical digital world. “People like to touch, they like to get in a car and consciously take it for a test drive. So what we are trying to do is offer as much of that as we can, through the digital experience which will come in the shape of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and imaging technology,” said Teagle who pointed out they have not quite arrived at this end state but this will

Robert has 25 years’ experience in Technology roles across Europe, Middle East, Africa, Asia and North America. He specialises in industries with a heavy focus on delivering an enhanced Customer Experience through the use of Digital Technology. He has worked across Retail, FMCG, Education and Automotive sectors. Robert is currently Group CIO, Constellation Automotive Group, prior to this he was Group CIO/CDO for Americana, based in Dubai, UAE, and previously held senior Technology roles at Pearson, Starbucks and started his career at Accenture. Robert holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration, he lives in Oxfordshire, UK.

Why a leading UK automotive group turned to AI to safeguard their business As cyber-criminals ramp up the speed and scale of their campaigns, human defenders – and the signature-based tools they rely on – cannot keep up. A leading UK automotive reseller has adopted a new approach to security that leverages self-learning AI to detect and respond to threats Handling over 11 million vehicles a year, Constellation Automotive Group operates businesses across almost every area of the automotive industry in the UK, including British Car Auctions (BCA), cinch, and WeBuyAnyCar, a well-known vehicle buying service in the UK operating from over 350 branches nationwide. With the sudden and unforeseen transition to remote working last year, the cyber-threat landscape changed overnight. Critical operations and data previously handled on the premises now traversed home environments and an ever-growing number of virtual collaboration tools and cloud environments. Attackers were quick to step up their game, and it became clear that traditional security solutions reliant on static rules and signatures could no longer keep up. Recognizing the shortfalls of legacy tools, the group’s businesses had already taken a

new approach to cyber defense. The security teams implemented AI technology from cyber security company Darktrace across critical parts of their digital estate. The AI acts as a digital immune system, learning ‘self’ for everyone and everything in the business, and identifying subtle deviations from normal behavior that indicate a cyberthreat. “Darktrace added another level of sophistication to our defenses with AI and machine learning,” explains Robert Teagle, CIO at BCA. It offered the security team not only accurate, real-time detection of the full range of cyber-threats – from spear phishing and SaaS account takeover to ransomware and data loss – but autonomous response, which contains threats at machine speed, before damage can be done. As organizations start planning their return to offices, the threat landscape continues to evolve. With 97% of cyber security professionals concerned about AI-augmented cyber-attacks, it is clear we are entering a new era of threat. As cyber-criminals look to take their attacks to the next level, the onus is on defenders to stay ahead of the game with adaptive, autonomous cyber defense.

Learn More

BCA MARKETPLACE

BCA Marketplace - Seating customers in the driving seat from virtual auctions to online buying

“ When you think about a digital transformation it's almost like a snowball rolling down the hill. Once you start, you can't stop it halfway down, you have to keep that level of change going.” ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

120

May 2021

evolve as the platform continues to mature over time. Cars under the virtual hammer One online experience which has taken off during the pandemic is BCA’s auction platform which pre-COVID did 70 per cent of sales physically. “One of the best examples of platform modernisation is our buyer platform that underpins our UK remarketing auction business. When the pandemic began, we obviously had to shift a 100 per cent of those sales digitally as the physical auction centres were closed. “What we're trying to do is mirror that physical experience from arriving at an auction centre, collecting your catalogue, looking around those vehicles, the process of bidding on a vehicle, paying for a vehicle and to then collecting it. “Pre-COVID the digital technology we had in place

BCA MARKETPLACE

supported some of these activities, but not all. So we needed to change that to support the post-COVID world and took our cues from other B2C industries and looked at ways of enhancing the user journeys. “Although the changes have been brought about by the pandemic it is also partially because of the digital experiences customers receive in retail, travel or healthcare as they are raising the bar. “From an auto industry perspective, I think we have to kind of meet the customers as well in that same way. It’s important we continue to adapt but we're not going to be 100 per cent digital as the physical side is going to continue and dealers will continue to exist. “I think people will still want that physical presence, but we have to work out how the digital world can sit side-by-side and then what digital experiences and opportunities exist in the auto world that can enhance the customer experience,” he said.

SUSTAINABLE MOTORING

DID YOU KNOW...

This includes the following: • Improvement of online images of each vehicle • Making it easier to find vehicles with a better search engine

As we enter the dawn of a new era of motoring with the electric vehicle (EV) revolution, BCA is putting sustainability at the top of their agenda. The UK government’s pledge to ban the sale of all new non-electric cars, including gasoline, diesel and hybrid vehicles from 2035, highlights the drive to end the nation’s contribution to Climate Change by 2050.The Road to Zero strategy will see the evolution in all vehicles from using ultra-fast wireless charging to the repurposing of car batteries. With the electrification industry estimated to be worth over £6bn (US$7.8bn) by 2025, the next decade presents a massive opportunity.“The future of sustainable motoring is at the top of our mind at present,” said Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners. “We're already working on servicing the needs of our customers with the right charging infrastructure to support hybrid and electrical vehicles and investigating the use of alternative fuels for larger vehicles in the B2B space. “There's no doubt with the government targets that have been set, alternative fuels will be just one facet of that, as we’re also looking at areas such as different ownership models and car sharing. Working with our partners across the automotive space will be front and centre of looking at how the move to sustainable monitoring is going to go and helping our customers make that move,” he said.

technologymagazine.com

121

BCA MARKETPLACE

“ People like to touch, they like to get in a car and consciously take it for a test drive. So what we are trying to do is offer as much of that as we can, through the digital experience which will come in the shape of Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and imaging technology.”

ECOSYSTEM WHICH DRIVES CHANGE The digital transformation of BCA is not a journey they have embarked on alone. A tapestry of partners include: • Darktrace • Softcat • Salesforce

ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

“Although we talk about our business being a B2B business, what we're now looking at offering is a much more B2C experience as the comparative experience for our buyers will be retail e-commerce platforms. Then behind that, you need to have the right infrastructure in place to ensure you can adapt quickly, scale as needed and deliver what the business needs - moving into a private or public cloud infrastructure enables us to do that,” he said. The Constellation Automotive Group is made up of a number of different divisions: • Consumer-to-business - WeBuyAnyCar • Business-to-business: • BCA UK offering an auction service, refurbishment and stores

DID YOU KNOW...

• Improve the bidding process which now allows proxy bidding • Simple online payment process • Click and collect which helps book transport and delivery tracking

“Our partners across software and hardware services are critical for us enabling us to meet our objectives,” said Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners. “We look for partners that have the same ambition as us to drive that digital transformation and we think about our partners as an extension of our IT team.”Darktrace is BCA’s key security partner to provide cyber defence within their estate. Softcat works with them as a key IT service partner by helping across both the end-user and enterprise technologies. “Salesforce also plays a critical role in our CRM contact centres and our customer service functions and MuleSoft with our integration platforms. BT, is our telecoms and network partner, supporting all of the infrastructure across our sites in the UK and then Cloudshift helps us to be the Salesforce implementation partner and help to drive forward our Salesforce transformation project. “There's no way we could be as successful as we have been without having these key partners,” said Teagle.

technologymagazine.com

123

BCA MARKETPLACE

“The future of sustainable motoring is at the top of our mind at present.” ROBERT TEAGLE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

• BCA Automotive which is the vehicle transporter fleet • BCA Logistics which is the single-plated vehicle movements using plated drivers • BCA Europe which is the remarketing and transportation services within 13 countries • Business-to-consumer - which provides used cars to the consumer market, cinch

DID YOU KNOW...

WHAT IS CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP?

124

Constellation Automotive Group encompasses some of the UK and Europe’s most successful automotive companies, WeBuyAnyCar, BCA and cinch. Robert Teagle, Group CIO of Constellation Automotive Group, BCA owners, explains the relationship.“The rebrand from BCA Marketplace to Constellation Automotive Group, is recognition that although we have a strong brand in BCA the make-up of the group is such that we needed a different brand to signify all the different group activities, such as the divisions and brands mentioned previously. It’s to make a clear recognition that the group is made up of a number of market leading brands beneath it, as well as allowing for our future growth.”

May 2021

“All of the divisions that we have in the group are focused on the automotive value chain which offer a wide range of services to consumers and businesses,” commented Teagle. Competitive advantage BCA is uniquely positioned to help their customers right through the automated value chain from factory door to vehicle end of life. “We've got the solutions and services to support all parts of that journey. We offer best in class products to help with those, whether that's an OEM or manufacturer fleet company, dealers and finance companies,” pointed out Teagle. “We make sure that the automotive market is moving and the value chain is well supported so we can continue to leverage the different parts of the group and sync everything together,” commented Teagle. Pandemic jump starts digital journey Teagle joined BCA a few months before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, giving him a short amount of time to do his initial assessment and put an action plan into place. He is responsible for all the technology across the group and when the country went into lockdown he had to ensure all employees had the right digital capabilities from laptops, tablets, mobile phones and access to collaboration platforms to do their jobs. “Firstly we had to accelerate the rollout of that technology to ensure everyone was

BCA MARKETPLACE

digitally enabled and could continue to do their role, he said. “A lot of this was already in place but not for everybody if they were going into the office or workshop every day. “Secondly, it was to look at the areas of the business and technology that were being impacted or needed to change as part of the response to COVID-19. As part of the action plan we had a number of areas that we were looking to address as part of our transformation such as CRM and adapting our products. But we quickly had to establish how we needed to accelerate them to fit in with the requirements from a pandemic perspective. “For example, we knew we had to transform our CRM processes and technology. We knew that they had to be accelerated because that would be a key enabler for us as part of the pandemic timeframe. It forced us to look at areas we hadn’t identified as part of our action plan, but we knew we would have to rethink as the pandemic was so disruptive. Examples include, moving our payment processes online, looking at areas like

open banking, which we didn't have on our roadmap, that could significantly impact the customer experience. “Thirdly, it is looking at all the pressures and demands that a digital transformation plan has on the underlying infrastructure and architecture as transactions and activities move online. Having a robust, resilient, scalable infrastructure is key to success. Doing that complete assessment in light of COVID was critical. “At the beginning of the year we created our three-year strategy which takes into account our original action plan, coupled with all the lessons we've learned from COVID and the subsequent changes and additions we need to support digital transformation.” Teagle pointed out what has amazed him during the past year is the speed of change which he says has been “unpredictable and challenging”. “The amount of change and the speed that we've had to deliver in such a short space of time has really been a game changer. It's a team effort to be able to do that but it technologymagazine.com

125

BCA MARKETPLACE

GROUP CIO, CONSTELLATION AUTOMOTIVE GROUP

126

May 2021

BCA MARKETPLACE

goes to show what we can deliver and what we're capable of delivering to meet the business goals.” Snowball effect of digitisation Teagle reinforced the fact that BCA is focused on digitising as much of the journey as possible for the benefit of vendors, buyers and employees but admits the industry is going through a radical change. “When you start to digitise a process, like the buyer example, you realise there are many connected processes that also must be digitised. For example, if you've transacted fully online, then your customer service function needs access to that transaction, the related transactions and your account details, to ensure that any questions that the buyer might have they can answer, again digitally or via selfservice. It's not only the digital transactions that you have to look at but all these related processes. “When you think about a digital transformation it's almost like a snowball rolling down the hill, once you start, you can't stop it halfway down, you have to keep that level of change going. It's going to be always constant particularly as technology changes and customer demands change. “It’s going to be a continual evolution of all the different parts of our business with probably no stone unturned as we make this journey over the next 12 to 24 months. I think that gives us a great opportunity to move the business forward, move technology forward and drive the transformation and empower the business to be more successful,” he said.

technologymagazine.com

127

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

DATA VISUALISATION:

THE DEMOCRATISATION

128

May 2021

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

A blur of numbers is transformed into useful, readable insights thanks to remarkable advances in data visualisation WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH

ata visualisation is transforming how we see data – literally. The mantra of ‘no such thing as too much data’ has led the corporate world to mine as much data as possible, at the cost of readability by the decision makers: humans. The solution – data visualisation – means personnel can see trends in real time without the need to retrain as data scientists. Whether it’s macro data for the board, or granular insights at department level, data is becoming more accessible. When it can be channelled towards specific needs, too much data ceases to be an impenetrable quagmire and becomes a truly democratised asset. Trend spotting But why is data visualisation so important? Andy Cotgreave is technical evangelist at Tableau. He thinks it all leads to decision making. “Imagine looking at a large table of numbers to do with your organisation,” he muses. “Would you be able to spot trends? Or outliers? Or clusters of opportunity? Now, imagine exploring that data visually. First, as a bar chart, then a line chart, then a scatterplot. In an instant, insights and opportunities emerge. “Data visualisation is an extremely powerful tool for businesses, because it uses the power of our cognitive system to see and understand numbers better. The ability to rapidly gain insight equips departments across organisations to make better, faster, and more informed business decisions.” technologymagazine.com

129

The Website and Magazine for Global Cyber Executives Join now for notifications about the upcoming launch and never miss an issue...

COMING SOON JOIN THE COMMUNITY

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities in Cyber

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

“ MANY BUSINESSES MAKE DECISIONS BASED ON GUT INSTINCT BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE THE EVIDENCE NEEDED TO INFORM SUCH DECISIONS AT THEIR FINGERTIPS” ZANDRA MOORE

CEO, PANINTELLIGENCE

Gut instinct That’s a view backed up by Zandra Moore, CEO at Panintelligence. “A large percentage of businesses make decisions based on gut instinct still, because they don’t have the evidence needed to inform such decisions at their fingertips,” she says. “By implementing data visualisation the information required to justify such conclusions is now available at our fingertips, in an easy to consume way. Data visualisation allows us to utilise both parts of the brain to make more Cornell University found graphs were informed decisions, and trusted 97% of the not rely too heavily on time versus 68% for gut instinct.” words and numbers

97%

Moore also contends that data visualisation has the potential to break down a traditional “top-down” decision-making process. “By democratising data, and training everyone in a business to interpret complex data sets, you allow a majority to be involved in the decision-making process. Those on the front line will be able to communicate exactly how the impact of decisions will affect them and others, leading to more positive outcomes for everyone with an organisation.” Democratisation But not everyone agrees with this view. Rebecca Kelly is a technical evangelist at KX. For her, there is a danger that accessibility is technologymagazine.com

131

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

conflated with democratisation. “Access without the appropriate tools to read and analyse cannot be called democratisation,” she says, and notes that many drag-anddrop dataviz UIs are self-curated. That means the role of data scientists, far from being diminished, is perhaps more important than ever. “These tools are actually the data scientists' jet-pack for getting their analyses in front of senior management and should be considered a vital tool in any data scientist’s toolkit,” she says. “There is a growing understanding that insights garnered from data analysis are only as effective as your ability to communicate them and action change. Self-serve UIs that are in use throughout the organisation are not a threat to the data scientist position – in many cases, the data scientists are the people who created

“THESE TOOLS ARE ACTUALLY THE DATA SCIENTISTS' JET-PACK FOR GETTING THEIR ANALYSES IN FRONT OF SENIOR MANAGEMENT” REBECCA KELLY

TECHNICAL EVANGELIST, KX

132

May 2021

these screens and democratising insights in this way showcases the power and benefits of an effective data science team.” Magic bullet? Data visualisation should not be seen as a magic bullet. That’s the view of David Lloyd, head of data and insight at Wunderman Thompson UK, who thinks there it is dangerous to put too much faith in numbers that might not tell the whole story. “Problems lie in how data visualisation is sometimes implemented in businesses,” he says. “If done in a siloed organic fashion, it can create headaches as

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

dashboards sprout up everywhere that give to the user or lack relevance. Data different answers to what are ostensibly visualisation can be abused in many the same questions. ways, often to fit an agenda rather than an “Businesses can overdo it too – objective truth; as the saying goes investing millions in a vast array of ‘if you torture data long enough it reports which are underutilised, will confess to anything’.” miss the mark with business users or are inflexible to move at the Getting DV right The human brain can process pace of business. The quality of Lies, damn lies and data. It can’t be an image in just the visualisation itself can also that bad? Everyone Technology 13 milliseconds (source: MIT) be a huge problem. Done well it Magazine spoke to for this piece felt should be representative of the the role of data scientists was at the truth, highlight the right story, be visually core of successful data strategies, and data engaging and easy to understand. Done visualisation is a key part of relaying those data badly, it can be misleading, impenetrable to humans.

13ms

technologymagazine.com

133

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

Data visualisation solutions What does data visualisation do? Lots of things, and the different needs of businesses and departments require different solutions. Rich Pugh, chief data scientist at Mango Solutions, says, “Recent advances allow us to create solutions across these purposes more effectively than ever before, which is really changing the way we think about data visualisation and reporting, reducing manual processes and creating more usable data visualisation systems. We have a number of initiatives at the moment to create data visualisations across these themes that just wouldn’t have been possible five to 10 years ago. Exciting times!”

THEME

DESCRIPTION

EXPLORATION

Identifying trends and patterns in data that may not be obvious

Standard dashboarding tools with “drill down” capabilities

DECISION

Focused visualisations that support a specific decisionmaking process

Bespoke dashboard or web app

INFORM

Performance metrics communicated via a simple dashboard

Bespoke dashboard

EVIDENCE

Reproducible visualisations to support an important decision (e.g. drug submissions)

Code-based solutions

COMMUNICATE

Visualisations that are suitable for broader consumption (e.g. via ppt deck)

SOURCE: RICH PUGH, CHIEF DATA SCIENTIST, MANGO SOLUTIONS

134

TECHNICAL SOLUTION

May 2021

Export from the above and metadata to track provenance

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

“ DATA VISUALISATION CAN BE ABUSED IN MANY WAYS, OFTEN TO FIT AN AGENDA RATHER THAN AN OBJECTIVE TRUTH” DAVID LLOYD

HEAD OF DATA AND INSIGHT, WUNDERMAN THOMPSON UK

Adam Mayer, senior manager at Qlik, reckons getting visualisation right is the secret. “By creating visualisations that do not just present data, but tell a clear and compelling story, businesses can explore, explain and express critical information and encourage employees to make data-driven decisions. Organisations that get data visualisation right will see more evidence-based decisionmaking, which leads to improved business performance and outcomes.”

Process mining Data visualisation has improved massively over the past few years, with a focus on clearer output and easier customisation. The results are beginning to bear fruit, and automation – process mining – is the new horizon for corporate data, according to Simul8 CTO Frances Sneddon. “While the use of big data analytics throughout industry has been steadily gathering momentum, process mining has more recently emerged as the essential tool that can bring disparate data together in a way that will revolutionise organisational management,” she says. “Combining large quantities of event logs tracked across various workflow systems, from CRM to ERP, services technologymagazine.com

135

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

136

May 2021

AI & DATA ANALYTICS

“ PROCESS MINING HAS MORE RECENTLY EMERGED AS THE ESSENTIAL TOOL THAT CAN BRING DISPARATE DATA TOGETHER IN A WAY THAT WILL REVOLUTIONISE ORGANISATIONAL MANAGEMENT” FRANCES SNEDDON CTO, SIMUL8

management or BPM, process mining offers the opportunity to analyse all data in one place, producing a helicopter view of the whole system. This affords very precise analysis to help better optimise workflows. “Taking this to the next level, combining sophisticated modelling software with process mining technology allows users to build instant models using data from common business systems. Importing transactional logs from enterprise resource planning, workflow management and other information systems, it’s now possible to automatically mine the data to build an instant, visualised simulation of a current process, ready for experimentation. “From operational changes to largescale transformation – it has never been faster to experiment with changes to maximise process efficiency through data visualisations such as these. It enables routine, confident decision-making.” technologymagazine.com

137

TELUS

Leading the IT Procurement Transformation WRITTEN BY: LEILA HAWKINS PRODUCED BY: CAITLYN COLE/GLEN WHITE

138

May 2021

TELUS

technologymagazine.com

139

TELUS

140

May 2021

TELUS

Mariam Saad, Director of Procurement, IT & Technology Services at TELUS, discusses the importance of digital transformation and partner ecosystems

Mariam Saad, Director of Procurement, IT & Technology Services at TELUS

ne of Canada's largest telecommunications companies, TELUS, is leading the way in terms of digitally transforming its operations using advanced technologies to drive efficiencies. In 2020 the organisation won the Digital Transformation Award under the AI-fueled Digital Transformation category from IT World Canada (ITWC). This award was presented to TELUS in recognition of its industry-leading innovation for AI chatbots and robotic process automation (RPA) solutions. While TELUS became a national Canadian brand in 2000, its history dates back to the late 1800s when Alberta Government Telephones was founded to provide telephone lines for people in the western province. When the company was reorganised, it became part of the newly established TELUS Corporation, and sales of TELUS shares were the largest initial public offering in Canadian history up to that point, raising $896 million. Following a merger with BC TELECOM, and acquiring Clearnet, TELUS is today one of Canada's largest technology companies and a leading national telecoms provider. But as Director of Procurement in IT & Technology Services Mariam Saad tells us, now they are focusing on growing several new verticals including home security, agriculture, and health. Saad has a background in sales. After studying international business and marketing she completed a leadership technologymagazine.com

141

TELUS

" Bringing our data into the Google Cloud Platform will enable us to clean the data, create actionable insights for teams, and integrate the data flow right across the organisation" MARIAM SAAD

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, TELUS

certificate in the Executive MBA programme. She spent the first 10 years of her career in sales, specifically in IT sales, working for Compuware and Upland among others. Then she was headhunted by mining company Rio Tinto, who were looking for someone with commercial and business skills - Saad was a perfect match. This led to working in procurement, and after 6 years at Rio Tinto she joined TELUS, initially as their Strategic Sourcing Manager for IT software and hardware. Within five years she moved up to her current role as Director of Procurement, IT & Technology Services, TELUS. "At TELUS, my role in procurement has been heavily weighted towards transformation of our overall capabilities," Saad says. "From a day-to-day delivery 142

May 2021

TELUS

MARIAM SAAD TITLE: DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: TELUS Having studied business and completed a Certificate at the McGill Executive MBA programme in leadership, Saad's career led to her working in the three top industries in Canada: IT, natural resources and telecoms. Currently, Saad actively supports the Montreal Women's Network, and sits on the board of Business Development Committee for WBE. Saad is a mentor to numerous supply chain and procurement professionals, and is a mentor for MOSAIC, a multilingual non-profit organisation dedicated to addressing issues that affect immigrants and refugees in the course of their settlement and integration into Canadian society. Additionally Saad is the proud mother of Maya, 13, and Michael, 7.

TELUS

TELUS Health’s IT Procurement Transformation

" We've built very strategic partnerships that have allowed us to build the fastest, highest quality network in the world" MARIAM SAAD

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, TELUS

144

May 2021

standpoint I support IT software, cloud, and the technology business." The organisation has a clear goal: to become a software-first, cloud native organisation. Within procurement, key strategic aims are to reduce purchase order cycle time, and drive end-to-end integration across all TELUS platforms. To do this they are leveraging automation, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, all of which are helping them accelerate their digital capabilities. Saad explains that this digital transformation is delivering four major benefits: reducing time, reducing risk, leveraging more innovation, and creating more actionable insights. "I would say the benefits are reducing time to source, reducing risks, leveraging more innovation

TELUS

and driving incremental value. in a digital format, in language Also bringing our data into the that is readable by both humans Google Cloud Platform will and machines. Typically run on a TELUS became a enable us to clean the data, create blockchain, they can also contain national Canadian brand in actionable insights for teams, and an algorithm that automates the integrate the data flow right across performance of the agreement the organisation." itself - in procurement and supply but its history dates back to the late "Reducing the time it takes chain, they are increasingly used to get the relevant data is our for inventory management and the biggest challenge" Saad adds. To automation of payments. address this they are deploying a range of The aim of these tools, Saad explains, is to advanced technologies like NLP, machine do the administrative work to enable their learning, advanced analytics and AI. teams to focus on leveraging relationships Deploying AI tools with hyper automation with suppliers, as well as innovation. is particularly important, to enable them While their priority is to develop their to automate tasks, and to aid end-to-end core competencies and enhance in-house visibility from suppliers. capabilities, only using third parties when Another important tool is smart necessary, their partner ecosystem is contracting. Smart contracts are written crucial to advancing the business, as

2000

1800s

technologymagazine.com

145

TELUS

Saad says, "we've built very strategic partnerships that have allowed us to build some of the fastest, highest quality networks in the world." Several of these have won awards, including Best Customer Service Strategy for their partnership with Samsung Electronics, and being named Cisco’s Cloud Partner of the Year for Americas-Canada. Along with important partnerships with IBM, AWS, and Microsoft, in February this year TELUS announced a 10-year partnership with Google Cloud. "This will help us accelerate our digital transformation journey to become a software-first company cloud native organisation" Saad says.

146

May 2021

" I really take pride in driving our team members, allowing them the autonomy to select and take on their own projects" MARIAM SAAD

DIRECTOR OF PROCUREMENT, IT & TECHNOLOGY SERVICES, TELUS

TELUS

"We have these partnerships because they are mutually beneficial, and they really have a high degree of collaboration with a focus on a multi-year relationship and consistent business results. They enable our business customers to streamline their IT and network operations. These partnerships are crucial because they help us deliver on our priorities." As part of this partnership, both companies will generate new industry solutions and strategies to drive growth in telecoms, healthcare, home security and agriculture. Their focus on agriculture is a great example of innovation. Launched in November last year, TELUS Agriculture has the ambitious aim of digitally transforming the global food system. Using advanced data analytics and AI, the goal is to streamline operations and improve food traceability. "TELUS is redefining the way healthcare and agriculture are delivered by increasing collaboration efficiency between healthcare providers, and providing consumers with fresher, healthier food, by creating systems that allow people to trace the origins of their food, which can lead to better nutrition and ultimately, health outcomes" Saad explains. Despite forming relatively recently, TELUS Agriculture already supports more than 150 million acres of agricultural land, with a team of over 1,200 experts across the Americas, the United Kingdom, Europe, China, and Australia.

It's certainly something that sets TELUS apart, as Saad says, "other telecom companies here in Canada focus on media for example, but our focus is really on helping Canadians by delivering healthcare, We are helping Canadians live healthier lives by applying innovative technologies to revolutionise healthcare. For agriculture, we are on a mission to tackle one of the most signifcant social challenges of our generation—feeding the world—while improving the quality and safety of our food by leveraging technology innovation and human compassion and home security, and in the future we will continue to invest in these key industries. That's how we'll become the leading company in these sectors."

technologymagazine.com

147

TOP TEN

148

May 2021

TOP TEN

BIOTECH STARTUPS

Technology Magazine takes a closer look at 10 of the leading startups in biotechnology making innovative waves in the industry WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

arnessing cellular and biomolecular processes to develop technologies and products, biotechnology processes have been used for over 6,000 years in the production of food products. While biotechnology is still used in this way, modern day biotechnology strives to combat significant challenges in society including debilitating and rare diseases, and reduces our environmental impact. In this Top 10, Technology Magazine takes a look at 10 of the top biotech startups making innovative waves in the industry.

technologymagazine.com 149

TOP TEN

TreeFrog Therapeutics CEO: Kévin Alessandri

Backed with funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program, TreeFrog Therapeutics is a stem cell startup company. In its efforts to provide millions of patients with access to cell therapies, TreeFrog Therapeutics has developed C-Stem, an endto-end 3D scalable solution to dramatically reduce treatment costs. Alongside its strategic partners, TreeFrog Therapeutics’ ambitions are to secure production and quality, fasten clinical development and facilitate access in the market.

“ TreeFrog Therapeutics has developed C-Stem, an endto-end 3D scalable solution to dramatically reduce treatment costs” 150

May 2021

SparingVision

CEO: Stephane Boissel Focused on the discovery and development of genomic medicines to address serious ocular disorders, SparingVision’s lead product is its breakthrough therapy for retinitis pigmentosa (RP), a retinal disease affecting almost two million people around the world. SparingVision’s SPVN06 product uses “a gene therapy-based approach agnostic of mutated genes,” and is delivered via a single subretinal injection to prevent the degeneration of photoreceptors. So far SparingVision has raised €44.5mn in funding.

TOP TEN

“Beam Therapeutics is developing a new class of precision-genetics medicine”

Poseida Therapeutics CEO: Eric Ostertag

Leveraging its gene engineering platform technologies, Poseida Therapeutics is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company that strives to bring better treatments to patients with serious diseases. Poseida Therapeutics’ fourgene engineering platforms include piggyBac, CAS-Clover, Gene Delivery, and CAR-T Tools to provide a safer, more durable, and more efficient suite of treatments. Poseida Therapeutics became public in July 2020, and is a spinout organisation from its parent company, Transposagen, an early leader in the development of gene engineering technology.

Beam Therapeutics CEO: John Evans

DNA has four types of bases: adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T). The human genome consists of more than three billion pairs (adenine and thymine, and cytosine and guanine). If point mutation occurs in the genome, proteins can become dysfunctional or missing altogether which causes diseases. Beam Therapeutics, a pioneer in the use of CRISPR base editing, is harnessing its groundbreaking technology to “make permanent, specific edits to single bases in DNA and RNA, without cutting the strands.” In doing so, Beam Therapeutics is developing a new class of precision-genetics medicine by “combining precision targeting of the genome with precision control of editing outcomes.” technologymagazine.com 151

READ NOW

Technology Magazine is proud to launch a celebration of women in Global Technology. Brought to you in association with:

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities in Technology

TOP TEN

05 GRAIL

Nouscom

CEO: Marina

Udier-Blagovic Led by successful entrepreneurs with prior experience in developing innovative candidate vaccines for infectious diseases, Nouscom’s platform technology is based on recombinant Adenovirus isolated from non-human great apes (GAd) and Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara (MVA). Evaluated in more than 4,000 adults, newborns, and elderly healthy subjects, as well as those with chronic infectious diseases, Nouscom states that the vaccine therapy has shown to be safe and effective, and will continue to leverage its expertise and experience to further develop its therapies.

CEO: Hans Bishop Combining science, technology and population-scale clinical studies, GRAIL’s mission is to detect cancer early in patients. Through continuous collaboration, high intensity sequencing, and modern data science, GRAIL is working to create vast datasets to develop evidence that supports its products. Such projects include the development of a blood test which combines high-intensity genomic sequencing and complex computational algorithms to find cancer-specific patterns to detect multiple types of cancer.

TOP TEN

BioSplice (formerly Samumed) CEO: Cevdet Samikoglu

Since its founding in 2008, BioSplice (formerly Samumed) has had a unique operating philosophy based on building a broad technology platform for modulating regenerative pathways to improve patient health. To address degenerative diseases, one of BioSplice’s primary signaling pathways is the Wnt pathway, which regulates the self-renewal and differentiation of adult stem cells. “The ability to modulate the Wnt pathway, and thereby recover and restore the health of diseased tissues, presents significant opportunities in regenerative therapeutics,” says BioSplice.

“ To address degenerative diseases, one of BioSplice’s primary signaling pathways is the Wnt pathway” 154

May 2021

Ginkgo Bioworks CEO: Jason Kelly

Believing that biology is “the best manufacturing technology on the planet,” Ginkgo Bioworks collaborates with its partners and ecosystems, to automate and scale the organism engineering process, providing engineers with the ability to prototype thousands of biological designs. Ginkgo Bioworks’ five areas of expertise include strain improvement, enzyme discovery, new product development, biosecurity, and mammalian cell engineering. “The interesting thing to program in the 21st century isn’t going to be computers it’s biology,” says Tom Knight, Co-Founder of Ginkgo Bioworks.

TOP TEN

Passage Bio

CEO: Bruce Goldsmith

Passage Bio, a genetic medicines company that develops transformative therapies for the treatment of rare monogenic central nervous system (CNS) disorders. Putting patients at the centre of every decision made, its vision is to become the premier genetic medicines company that dramatically and positively transforms the lives of patients. To achieve this, Passage Bio is in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Gene Therapy Program (GTP), gaining access to cutting edge capabilities and innovation in genetic medicine research. Passage Bio has three lead product candidates, as well as three ongoing discovery programs, and options to license eleven additional programs from the GTP. Passage Bio purposefully focuses on rare, monogenic CNS as it believes its genetic medicine approach provides “distinct technical advantages based on decades of research by GTP.”

“ Passage Bio purposefully focuses on rare, monogenic CNS” technologymagazine.com 155

Bringing the Community to LIVE Broadcast from London to the World

September

14th - 16th 2021 A BizClik Media Group Brand

Featuring:

Keynote Speakers LIVE Roundtable Q&As Networking Lunch Inspirational Presentations

Over 5 Stages:

Technology Stage Digital Transformation Stage Cloud & Cyber AI & Automation Tech Expo Stage

EARLY BIRD TICKETS

Creating Digital Communities

TOP TEN

“ Cyclerion Therapeutics [is focused on] unlocking the full therapeutic potential of the NO-cGMP pathway”

158

May 2021

TOP TEN

Cyclerion Therapeutics

CEO: Peter Hecht With its team of determined experts to develop innovative medicines, Cyclerion Therapeutics is a clinicalstage biopharmaceutical company, focused on “unlocking the full therapeutic potential of the NO-cGMP pathway,” addressing the broad range of serious central nervous system (CNS) diseases. At the forefront of CNS drug development, Cyclerion Therapeutics’ systems biology approach combines genetic and proteomic data to identify CNS diseases. Its approach identifies dysfunctional NO-sGC-cGMP signaling

as the common pathophysiologic thread for both neurodegenerative diseases and neuropsychiatric diseases. “In diseases associated with deficits in the NO-sGC-cGMP pathway, CY6463 [a sGC stimulator] has the potential to address the underlying pathophysiology by restoring appropriate endogenous signaling and maintaining the precise spatial and temporal control that is the hallmark of this signaling pathway,” says Cyclerion Therapeutics.

technologymagazine.com 159

DIALOG AXIATA

160

May 2021

DIALOG AXIATA

WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

Dialog Axiata: Customer-focused digital transformation WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK technologymagazine.com

161

DIALOG AXIATA

Sandra De Zoysa

162

May 2021

DIALOG AXIATA

Sandra De Zoysa of Dialog Axiata is presiding over an ongoing digital transformation to better understand, serve, digitise and delight the customer

ince its foundation in 1993, Sri Lankan mobile operator Dialog has gone from upstart underdog to the country’s leading communications brand. Dialog– a part of the Axiata Group, a panAsian telecommunications conglomerate operating in seven countries– grew its position throughout the decades by outperforming the competition in a few key areas which have formed the keystone values underpinning everything the company does. “People come first, but technology is a close second,” says Sandra De Zoysa, Group Chief Customer Officer at Dialog Axiata. “We believe that people come first– our customers and employees and regardless of what area of the business you are involved in– be it engineering, legal, marketing, or any other – all employees need to find a way to connect back to the customers we serve.”

“ People come first, but technology is a close second” SANDRA DE ZOYSA

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, DIALOG AXIATA

De Zoysa, who has been a part of the team at Dialog Axiata since 1997, has played an instrumental role in delivering on that ethos for more than two decades. We sat down with her to discuss her insights into leveraging the latest technologies, strategies and operational practices into a customer experience that will ensure Dialog Axiata continues “to be not only the most valuable brand, but the most loved brand in Sri Lanka.” Digital Transformation from Top to Bottom “Our digital transformation journey started over five years ago. This initiative was envisioned by Axiata and then passed down across the whole subsidiary group,” explains De Zoysa. Axiata gathered together the senior leadership teams responsible for its brands in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal, for a series of workshops and seminars that not only laid out a roadmap for the coming years, but helped to instill a unified digital mindset that its executive teams are continuing to disseminate throughout their organisations. “Looking back on those workshops five years later, they helped us so much,” recalls De Zoysa. “As a team, we had a cohesive vision and tackled the project in sync. We all knew what we were supposed to technologymagazine.com

163

DIALOG AXIATA

Sandra De Zoysa | Dialog Axiata

“ We're really in sync with Axiata in terms of our goals and approach… We all learn from one another’s challenges and failures, because we're all part of the same ecosystem, which is really wonderful” SANDRA DE ZOYSA

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, DIALOG AXIATA

164

May 2021

do. We all knew what we had to achieve. We understood our budgets and how to spend it. And we all had the same level of understanding and knowledge of how to set about the process.” Throughout Dialog’s own digital transformation, De Zoysa reflects that both Axiata and the other brands within the family have been an immensely valuable resource, as they have learned from one another’s failures and challenges, shared information and technology, and collaborated on creating market leading standards for customer experience. “We're really in sync with Axiata in terms of our goals and approach. The relationship between Dialog, Axiata and the other companies within our organisation is so close that sometimes you forget you're talking and working with people in other countries and markets because it all feels so collaborative and cooperative,” De Zoysa says. “We share innovations and technologies throughout Axiata. If something

DIALOG AXIATA

works at Dialog, it will likely be tweaked a little bit and then implemented somewhere else in the group. It is as good as plug-andplay, which reduces the workload and time to market. At the same time, we all learn from one another’s challenges and failures, because we're all part of the same ecosystem, which is really wonderful.”

SANDRA DE ZOYSA TITLE: GROUP CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: SRI LANKA

1993

Year founded

$120.1 bn Revenue

2,717 Number of employees

EXECUTIVE BIO

Service From the Heart At the core of Dialog Axiata’s approach to delivering truly seamless, enjoyable customer experiences is the company’s core ethos of “Service From the Heart”. “It stands for approaching every customer interaction with passion. It stands for being sincere and putting the customer first, not just paying lip service to the idea,” says De Zoysa. “We've really worked hard over the years on this culture transformation initiative.” The idea of not only talking the talk, but walking the walk, is one that’s deeply important to De Zoysa. One of the more unique ways in which she and the whole Dialog leadership team are backing up this commitment can be found in the “Contact Us” section of their site. “If you go on our website, you can find the contact information for our CEO, the CMO, many of the people on our leadership team,

Sandra De Zoysa is the Group Chief Customer Officer of Dialog and the Chairperson of the Digital Customer Experience Expert Working Group for Axiata. She serves on the board of Dialog Business Services in the capacity of a Director. She is a Founding member and a Director of SLASSCOM, the national IT-BPO chamber of Sri Lanka and a founding member and past Vice President of Sri Lanka Institute of Service Management. She is also on the Customer Advisory Board of CX Network, IQPC UK. Sandra’s experience spans over 30 years in the Mobile Industry during which she has been the recipient of AX50– Ambient Experience Leader 2020, CX Leader of the Year 2019 & CXPA Global CX Impact Award Winner 2015. She is a Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and a visiting lecturer at the University of Colombo School of Computing since 2009 and a Mentor and Keynote Speaker/ Presenter/ Panelist and Juror at Global CE/DX/Telco Forums/ Conferences & Awards

Scripting the Convergence of CX in Telecom

With Startek’s digitally enabled CX solutions, global telecom businesses are redeﬁning loyalty through the power of omnichannel engagement. Leverage our expertise to revitalize your CX journey for maximum retention & brand growth.

Write to enquiries@startek.com to learn more about leveraging CX for growth.

instagram.com/startekglobal

twitter.com/STARTEKGlobal

facebook.com/STARTEKGlobal www.startek.com

linkedin.com/company/startek

DIALOG AXIATA

“ Service From the Heart means approaching every customer interaction with passion and sincerity” SANDRA DE ZOYSA

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, DIALOG AXIATA

and me,” De Zoysa says. “My mobile number can be accessed. You can call and, if I'm not sleeping, there's a good chance I will answer and be able to talk to you about whatever is troubling you in case there is a lapse in service. It's our way of putting our money where our mouth is, and really walking the walk. I don't think there's much point in saying that you're a customer-centric business if your customers can't actually reach you.” Dialog has invested heavily over the years in training staff throughout the business to fully embody the ethos of Service From the Heart, constantly reworking and developing processes in order to “cut away barriers technologymagazine.com

167

THE WORLD IS NOW UNIFIED ON A SINGLE PLATFORM Locobuzz is a SaaS platform that converges technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics to provide a complete Digital Customer Experience. We help brands forge stronger relationships with their customers and increase their lifetime value.

Learn More Today

DIALOG AXIATA

Dialog 5G

between us and our customers, and work to find solutions– even when there are difficulties and trouble.” De Zoysa adds that, “There's a lot of education involved, focused on instilling cultural change, rewiring our employees to really embrace the Service From the Heart ethos, as well as bringing them along with us on our journey as we digitally transform the business and Sri Lanka through our technology and processes.” Leveraging Technology Technology is a powerful tool at Dialog Axiata, one that De Zoysa stresses must work in tandem with and in support of the core of the business: people. “Technology plays a very vital role for us,” she explains. “We are leveraging a multitude of technologies to support our staff to work better and more efficiently. We want to use these technologies to

make life easier for the people within our organisation. If we can make the employee experience frictionless, they can get on with better serving the customer.”

“ We work to gently educate our customers and nudge them towards more efficient digital and social channels” SANDRA DE ZOYSA

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, DIALOG AXIATA technologymagazine.com

169

DIALOG AXIATA

DID YOU KNOW...

PARTNERING FOR SUCCESS

170

Partnerships are also of paramount importance to De Zoysa and Dialog as a whole. “We have very strong ties with our long term business partners who together with us ensure our business success,” she explains. “They are all part of our wider Dialog family, who help in managing our customer channels efficiently.” Dialog manages its contact center in collaboration with its key partner, Startek. “They ensure that our customers are connected to our brand,” says De Zoysa, adding that, “Locobuzz is our social media contact management solution provider. They help us manage all our social channels on a 24/7 basis. Zilione is a Sri Lankan company that Dialog has worked with for well over two decades, and their Customer point of sale management keeps the customer experience across the country connected efficiently in order to handle all our customer experience transactions with ease. Dialog has worked with Verint in the contact management space for over two decades and helps Dialog Business Services with voice logging and associate quality management as well as a robust workforce management solution.” During COVID, Dialog is first to deploy Verint Speech Analytics to process and analyze customer interactions to drive CX and Operational Efficiency. Together with its extensive network of partners, Dialog continues to grow and improve the range of digital channels it uses to connect with its millions-strong customer base.

May 2021

DIALOG AXIATA

“ In this post-COVID, work-from-home era, data is like oxygen. Without connectivity, you're in deep trouble” SANDRA DE ZOYSA

CHIEF CUSTOMER OFFICER, DIALOG AXIATA

technologymagazine.com

171

Dialog Axiata’s Customer Engagement transformed by ZILLIONe

SRI LANKA

MALDIVES

FIJI

D IN

USTRY EXPE

RT I

AUSTRALIA | SINGAPORE

Re-Imagine your customer experience with our insightful solution based on the trusted Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform that empowers employees, transforms products & services, optimizing operations through Digital Transformation. Let us help accelerate your Customer Engagement journey.

LEARN HOW TO TRANSFORM YOUR BUSINESS

DIALOG AXIATA

From an external point of view, Dialog employs a wide range of customer channels to ensure that people can access the services they need, whenever, wherever, and however they prefer. Though a lot of these preferences are linked across generational lines, with “millennial customers preferring self service and digital channels, as opposed to older customers who would rather speak to someone on the phone or face to face,” De Zoysa adds that “more and more, we're seeing people from older generations realise that it is in fact faster to use a self-service channel to pay your bill. We try to make sure

DIALOG AXIATA

Boundless Customer Engagement for Telecommunication Firms: Lower Costs & Improve CX

Dialog Axiata is the first in Sri Lanka to deploy Verint Speech Analytics, driving CX and operational efficiency. Are you listening and responding to your customers’ interactions? verint.com

174

May 2021

DIALOG AXIATA

that, whatever channel you want to use, is available to you. And then of course we work to gently educate our customers and nudge them towards more efficient social and digital channels.” These digital channels have proven to be particularly essential during the COVID-19 pandemic, but De Zyosa adds that, as the crisis passes, she expects its effect on the digitalisation of Sri Lankan society to remain. “In this post-COVID, work-from-home era, data is like oxygen. Without connectivity, you're in deep trouble,” she says. “During the pandemic, the program has been all about engagement, looking at how we continuously build engagement between our employees and our customers– looking at how we keep that flame alive during times like these when physical engagement is no longer an option.”

Staying on Top As Dialog Axiata enters Q2 of 2021, De Zoysa is excited to continue building on the company’s relationship with over 16mn Sri Lankans as part of her role as the company’s “custodian of customers,” concluding that, “We want to continue helping our customers adapt to a digital lifestyle and help them carry on experiencing those benefits long after the pandemic has passed.”

technologymagazine.com

175

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

FROM BOARD TO WARD WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR

176

May 2021

PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

technologymagazine

177

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

178

May 2021

Sandip Kumar of Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service talks transformation, innovation, change management and the future of digital healthcare

Sandip Kumar, Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service

n a time of generational change across the healthcare sector driven by advances in everything from telemedicine to the artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics - the COVID-19 pandemic has kicked the sector into overdrive. For Sandip Kumar, the inaugural Executive Director of Transformation and Digital at Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service, it’s been a time of unprecedented opportunity. Kumar, who joined Gold Coast Health close to the tipping point of the crisis, reflects that the most important thing now is to preserve the industry’s momentum. If that can be done, then Kumar and his contemporaries have the chance to make some truly transformative changes to the way technology is leveraged into a better standard of patient care. “In the midst of the pandemic, we turned the 'should dos' into 'must dos', and now we need to figure out which of those innovations are truly sustainable in a business as usual sense,” he says. “If we maintain that relentless ambition to adopt new and better ways of working at the scale we have done, we're set to do big things in 2021.” Guiding the Transformation Kumar’s role, he explains, involves spinning a lot of plates. “It's a really exciting role,” he enthuses. “I have four core streams that I technologymagazine

179

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

Sandip Kamur

oversee: the Transformation Advisory division, the Transformation Office, the Digital Services branch, and the Health Funding and Clinical Coding Branch.” The Transformation Advisory Branch places a small, interdisciplinary team of dedicated advisors alongside both clinical and nonclinical staff to identify and solve the kind of complex problems that can arise in a system as complex as a modern healthcare organisation with around AU$1.7bn of annual OpEx. “It's a very new model, which I designed when I started here and just recently implemented,” says Kumar. “Watching the doctors, nurses, allied health, digital advisors and other consultants all working together to gather up all the different problems that arise across those functions and look at all the different ways of solving them is really interesting.” The approach, Kumar adds, is allowing Gold Coast to not only identify problems that before might have seemed unsolvable, but to 180

May 2021

approach solving them in new, more innovative and lateral ways. “We're not just solving analog problems with analog solutions, but looking at how technology can help solve problems, as well as whether we can apply different clinical models, or new ways that non-clinical staff can interact with this space,” he explains. “It really works.”

“ We need to make sure we're not bringing technology from 1998 into 2021” SANDIP KUMAR,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TRANSFORMATION AND DIGITAL, GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

SANDIP KUMAR TITLE: EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR INDUSTRY: HEALTHCARE

Working in tandem with the Transformation Advisory, the Transformation Office is the power behind the vision the advisory provides. “It’s a team that's focused on figuring out how to deliver change,” says Kumar. “They're executors; trained product managers that know our system, know our methodology, know how to work with our executives, know how to work with our clinical leaders, and know how to execute projects that create meaningful change.” The two functions, working side by side, form an impactful model that Kumar has spent a significant portion of his career developing. Now, he adds, “it's amazing that I've got the chance to implement it.” Kumar is a relentless driver of change. The new methodologies he’s implemented are proving to be some of the foundational steps on the road to Gold Coast Health achieving the kind of meaningful transformative goals that have been set for it.

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: AUSTRALIA Sandip Kumar has served as the Executive Director for Transformation and Digital at Gold Coast Hospital and Health Service since August of 2020. He has previously held consulting and advisory roles at the Queensland Treasury Corporation and QSuper Group. Collectively, he brings 12 years of experience in management consulting, corporate finance, and strategy roles to the job. He is the first person ever to hold the title at Gold Coast Health, and has broad responsibilities encompassing the digital transformation of the organisation and its operations, as well as the direction of its key partner relationships. Kumar leads several multi-disciplinary teams, delivering high-level strategic guidance for the developing relationship between Gold Coast Health and its digital capabilities. He holds a Bachelor of Business from Queensland University of Technology, and a Graduate Diploma of Chartered Accounting.

Be What’s Next. Embracing the Digital Economy in Health. Find out what Australia’s digitisation opportunity means for Health.

Download today

Telstra Health and Gold Coast Health: delivering virtual care

Embracing the Digital Economy in Health. Find out what Australia’s digitisation opportunity means for Health.

Download today

Watch: Telstra Health and Gold Coast Health

Founded in 2013, Telstra Health works to improve lives by delivering digitally-enabled care to its communities by providing software products, solutions and platforms to governments and healthcare providers throughout Australia.

can monitor patients’ blood pressure, pulse oximetry, temperature and weight remotely. These baseline metrics are then combined with a virtual appointment in which the clinician can follow-up with the patient to discuss and provide results.

Be What’s Next. Embracing the Digital Economy in Health.

Telstra Health was chosen as a key partner “We’ve found that our service has helped to of Gold Coast Health Services, providing dramatically reduce readmission rates, and their virtual health consultation platform enabled early discharge, which means that as a way to deliver patient care remotely. patients get to be at home sooner,” enthuses “Traditionally, you might go to see a Spencer, who also notes that, “The overarching specialist at a hospital and, after a five monitoring aspect can also help people who minute conversation, be sent home,” Jamie readmission get back into hospital Find outneed what Australia’s digitisation Spencer, Regional General Manager opportunity sooner,means which can a huge difference formake Health. Business Development at Telstra Health in some cases.” says. “Someone living in rural Queensland Spencer, who works closely with Sandip Kumar, might drive for up to four to six hours for Download today Gold Coast Health’s Executive Director of that five minute appointment. Now, rather Transformation and Digital, emphasises that than people having to make those long the relationship between Telstra Health and journeys to see a specialist, we can provide Gold Coast is far more than that of vendor that consultation to people in their own and client. “We’re looking for a real partner, homes, in a way that leads to a richer not just a customer.” conversation, which results in better feedback and, ultimately, a better standard of care.” Telstra Health’s virtual care technology adopts a twofold approach. First, using Bluetooth connected devices, clinicians

Find out more

“Our digital transformation program agenda has a number of established goals,” he explains. “Number one is to be best-inclass for clinical demand management, both internally and externally. Then, we're also looking at clinical teaming and innovation, value-added corporate non-clinical functions, and becoming a digitally-enabled health service, which where our D24 roadmap comes into play.” The Road to D24 Gold Coast Health is splitting its digital roadmap, D24, across six key areas: virtual healthcare, data and analytics, digital liberation, digital assets, change management and digital literacy, and its ecosystem of essential technology partners. “Virtual healthcare is focused on cultivating our ability to deliver care that isn't contingent on the physical placement of the patient and the clinician,” Kumar says. “It’s everything that doesn’t require a faceto-face interaction in a clinic; It's telehealth, remote patient monitoring, population healthcare campaigns - all of that.”

184

May 2021

Secondly, Kumar is driving the exploration and adoption of more data analytics capabilities than ever before, in order to help Gold Coast Health not only understand information and make better decisions, but to generate valuable insights into where the organisation is headed. In order to fully unlock the potential of advanced data analytics, Gold Coast Health is trading heavily on one of its closest and most-valuable partners. “The founders of Healthcare Logic used to work for Gold Coast Health,” remarks Kumar. “They had this concept for a tool that visualised data in a meaningful way that clinicians, rather than just data analysts, could understand and use to make decisions.” Over the course of a partnership so close that Kumar says they might as well be “joined at the hip”, Healthcare Logic has developed its platform into an internationally recognised data visualisation and analytics tool, and Gold

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

Coast Health has been with them every step of the way. “Healthcare Logic is a tool that helps people really understand their business. It helps clinicians understand who's on their waiting lists, whether there's a supply vs demand deficit, theatre efficiency, and so on,” Kumar says. “They provide us with real insight into our business, and we provide them with feedback that helps them evolve their product and take it to the next level.” Kumar is quick to emphasise just how essential the efficiencies that Healthcare Logic’s marquee product, Systemview, are to meeting growing demand for patient care. “Our demand is far outweighed by our supply. Every minute of lost productivity in clinical time is another minute that someone isn't getting cared for, and Systemview helps us ensure we're helping as many people as possible as best we can,” he says.

“ Every minute of lost productivity in clinical time is another minute that someone isn't getting cared for, and Systemview helps us ensure we're helping as many people as possible as best we can” SANDIP KUMAR,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TRANSFORMATION AND DIGITAL, GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE technologymagazine

185

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

Recover Reform Revitalise

SystemView by Healthcare Logic is the global technology breakthrough Health Services have been looking for. We deliver an end-to-end multi-site command centre with high-frequency data feeds across Surgery, Beds, ED, Outpatients and Medical Imaging. Book a demo now and find out how we can deliver real insight and improvement to your Hospital performance management. healthcarelogic.com

LEARN MORE

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

“ If we maintain our relentless ambition to adopt new and better ways of working at the scale we have done, we're set to do big things in 2021” SANDIP KUMAR,

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF TRANSFORMATION AND DIGITAL, GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

Beyond data analytics, the D24 roadmap is focused on a concept Kumar refers to as Digital Liberation. “It’s a really interesting facet of D24,” he says. “What that means is we're trying to liberate our staff from the need to do mundane tasks, which frees them up to do more high-value work,” something he admits is easier said than done. “If you're a clinician, we obviously want to liberate you from having to spend four days filling out rosters, or hours every day filling out forms, but we also want to liberate our admin staff.” The fourth area of D24 involves making intelligent choices about Gold Coast’s Digital Assets. “We have ageing buildings and ageing infrastructure, both physical and digital, and we want to make smart decisions about how

Lumina and GCHKP “At the Gold Coast Health, we have all the necessary components to really be something different in the technologydriven healthcare world. On site we have a university hospital, which is public. We have a globally-renowned university literally 100 metres down the road. Go 100 metres down the road in the other direction and you have a nationally renowned private hospital. And right beside it, we have an emerging opportunity in the form of a health and knowledge precinct. That's a space in which we're looking to create a truly innovative digital healthcare hub. “It's a mixture of state and privately owned assets, and what we're looking to do in that space is use it as an anchor to bring digital healthcare innovators of all sizes into our proximity for high-tech industry development, research collaboration and jobs of the future.” technologymagazine

187

GOLD COAST HOSPITAL AND HEALTH SERVICE

188

May 2021

to maintain and sustain them in the long term,” he laughs. “We need to make sure we're not bringing technology from 1998 into 2021.” The fifth stream is, Kumar admits, one of the most essential. Any technological shift, he explains, needs to be met with the right change management strategy. As a result, Kumar is placing a great deal of his focus on ensuring that he cultivates the necessary degree of digital literacy that will allow Gold Coast Health’s staff to embrace digital transformation. “One of the biggest challenges that all CIOs will have to face is not which innovations to adopt, but how to make sure that their staff are ready and able to digest them,” he says. “There's no point serving lamb to a vegetarian.” Lastly, Kumar stresses how important it is for any digital transformation team to realise that they can’t do everything alone. “We need strong technology partners to help us deliver our digital strategy, think more broadly, and adopt new tools, techniques and resources.” Maintaining the Momentum Kumar has a long, ambitious road ahead of him, but he isn’t daunted. If anything, he wants to pick up the pace. “My keystone objective for this year is that we maintain the level of ambition to innovate that we showed in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis,” he explains. “The willingness and the drive to change is the part that matters most. From board to ward, here at Gold Coast Health, we're completely committed to innovation and digital health. We really look forward to not only driving it ourselves, but partnering at the hip with the organisations who are willing to go on this mission with us.”

technologymagazine

189

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

190

May 2021

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

THE CAMBODIAN TELCO PLAYING THE GAME Cambodia’s only locally owned telco, Cellcard, is pushing into esports and 5G. CEO Ian Watson gives us the rundown on the company’s latest progress

WRITTEN BY: PADDY SMITH PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

ellcard is the only telco in Cambodia that’s 100% Cambodian owned. Not only is it proud of its homegrown heritage, it’s part of the company’s identity, outlook and market position. “The Cambodian set of family values is at the core of everything we do,” says Cellcard’s CEO Ian Watson. “The European companies have strong brand association, but we always say you can’t be selfgoverned on the outside unless you’ve got Cellcard DNA on the inside. And every year we give a lot back to the customers. We’re approaching millions of dollars in promotion, prizes and giveaways over the past couple of years, and we’ve signed Cambodian talent to endorse Cellcard, and we’ve installed 5G telemedicine – free voice and data calls to doctors, nurses and medical staff – to help with Covid.” technologymagazine.com

191

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

“ We’re stronger together, encouraging joy and the main thing is pride” IAN WATSON

CEO, CELLCARD CAMBODIA

192

May 2021

And Covid isn’t the only adversity to have struck Cambodia in 2020. The country also suffered fatal floods. Yet Cellcard is committed to youth engagement. “We’ve suffered a lot this year in terms of the flooding and we’ve produced a new song celebrating the strength and resilience of the people out there. We’re stronger together, encouraging joy and the main thing is pride.” That youth engagement goes beyond marketing, though. Watson admits Cellcard was late to market with 4G LTE, but is determined it will be first to achieve full 5G coverage in Cambodia. And that’s not all, because the company has spotted a new opportunity: e-sports.

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

IAN WATSON TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER COMPANY: CELLCARD CAMBODIA

EXECUTIVE BIO

INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATION Ian Watson is widely known in the telecommunications industry as a leading evangelist and thought leader for 5G and Digitalisation. He was awarded for 5G Asia CEO of the Year in 2018 and is regulary featured in major business and ICT industry publications including The CEO Magazine, Asia Outlook, The Silicon Review, Global Brands Magazine, and others. He is also a regular keynote speaker at major industry events such as Mobile World Congress, Telecom World Asia, 5G Asia, and TM Forum. Ian has been CEO of Cellcard and CEO of the Royal Group ICT Division since 2012 following his successful turnaround of Cambodia’s leading specialised bank, Wing Money.

He actively drives collaboration and synergies across the ICT operations in readiness for a digitalised economy. The ICT Division consists of Telecom, Specialised Banking, an Internet Service Provider, Cambodia’s leading Broadcasting company, and a Digital TV Platform all of which has enormous potential for transformation and growth. Prior to his leadership role at Wing Money, Ian had located to Cambodia to establish Refresh Mobile, the first provider of virtual commerce platforms. This was after a successful career in telecommunications, including being Chief Operating Officer of Iris Wireless for five years and senior leadership roles with Orange in global markets for six years. Ian is an MBA graduate and resides both in Cambodia and the UK.

Becoming a road builder of the digital economy

Learn more Learn more

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

Cellcard Mobile World Congress 2021

196

May 2021

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

“Sixty per cent of the Cambodian population is under 30,” Watson says. “So you have this segment that can drive a lot of revenue for telcos. We realised from the research and industry trends that esports was becoming a huge phenomenon in Cambodia. So we said, what can we do to bring this to the youth? And the answer is in the network: consistency, low latency. It’s not just about the price: it’s about the consistency, quality and everything else.” Cellcard has launched Play Game, an online gaming platform. “And we’re getting it right. We want to say: we’ve got this. Is it relevant to you? And if it’s not, we go back to the teardown. Bring it down and build it back up. Did Watson look to other territories before launching Play Game on home soil? “Yeah, we looked at competitive benchmarking, and what worked in other markets around the world. But really the key for us was to undertake very detailed market research: what do they do, where do they eat, what do they eat, who do they eat with. Who is who in the gaming community. And what we tried to do was build a community of esports and gamers and make that relevant to their current

“We’re getting it right. We want to say: we’ve got this. Is it relevant to you?” IAN WATSON

CEO, CELLCARD CAMBODIA technologymagazine.com

197

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

1997

Year Cellcard was founded

600

Approximate number of employes currently working for Cellcard

4G LTE

In 2017 Cellcard rolled out the country's fastest and widest 4G LTE network

In 2020, Cellcard rolled out Cambodia's first 5G use case - a telemedicine service across four key health facilities in Phnom Penh to help cope with the Covid-19 pandemic

IAN WATSON ON CULTURE GROUP We’ve been working with Culture Group out of Singapore for about 18 months now. It’s a strong fruitful partnership where they can really focus on what’s new and trending in other markets and help bring it to Cambodia. There is so much potential, we are only limited by our imaginations and resource capacity to implement. We have an amazing youth strategy and a massive set of programmes to deliver with Culture this year and next.

198

May 2021

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

lifestyle. So when they come home at night they’ve got a consistent network, a good choice of games and it’s easy to pay. “And we’re looking at venues, we’re looking at special venues, forums, building gaming arenas and everything else, but also we’re looking at the mental health awareness. You can’t just game for 24 hours, you’ve got to have a break, go and have a cup of tea. I’m a big gamer myself and sometimes you get sucked into these big gaming tournaments. So it’s very important to us to be part of the lifestyle but it’s more important to understand how gaming fits into someone’s overall lifestyle.” And what about hardware? Watson says there are territory-specific reasons why mobile gaming is at the forefront of Cambodia’s esports scene. “One of the benefits with mobile gaming is you haven’t got to buy a huge PS5 or Xbox. These things were trading at about $1,200 before Christmas Eve. And the iPhone is about the same price, but it’s got so much more functionality. So we need to make sure people can rely on Cellcard to be a trusted partner. It’s all about the trust and relevance.” That means security is “critical”. “The mobile phone is becoming an intrinsic part of your life. It’s the custodian of all your records, your photos. It’s the way you communicate through email, the way you pay your bills. So data privacy and data security is paramount to us. Even though there are no data privacy laws in Cambodia, we give people assurance that we won’t share their data with any third parties.” What about partnerships? “We engage with all the big players – people like Tencent – right down to the boutique technologymagazine.com

199

CELLCARD CAMBODIA

Your Trusted Research Partner in Cambodia Since 2002, Indochina Research is one of the MOST PREFERRED research partners in Cambodia by providing innovative and best-in-class quality research insights and outputs Learn more

#IReallyLuv #37ABC, Street 271, Sangkat Phsar Doeum Thkov, Khan Chamkarmorn, Phnom Penh, Kingdom of Cambodia

200

May 2021

“ We engage with all the big players – people like Tencent – right down to the boutique places” IAN WATSON

CEO, CELLCARD CAMBODIA

places coming up with new games and content. We’re not part of some huge group so we have to work twice as hard to get these big players to deal with us because our competitors are in a number of countries around the world and we’re not.

But the way we engage with the youth and the gaming sector is what makes them want to work with us. Because our approach is based around the brand values and it’s a breath of fresh air for these people to deal with us on a dayto-day basis. They know we’re going to drive engagement. The quality of our network is very important to us, so in terms of latency and everything else, when people do come on the network to play games it’s a very very good experience.

technologymagazine.com

201

NCAOC

Example of an image caption

202

May 2021

NCAOC

North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts winds down mainframe and moves to hybrid cloud Anthony Whitmore explains the two key priorities for the NCAOC as it decommissions its mainframe and scales up its hybrid cloud network WRITTEN BY: DOMINIC ELLIS PRODUCED BY: MIKE SADR

nthony Whitmore has lived a unique ‘double life’ at North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts (NCAOC), and the Chief Technology Officer is now tasked with managing two divergent priorities in 2021. Having worked at NCAOC for 32 years, he left in 2017, only to come out of retirement and be re-appointed CTO, as NCAOC made a strategic decision to outsource application development. With this second tenure, IT stakes have been raised. As a statewide 100- county migration to the cloud gets underway, mainframe decommissioning will begin. “We must continue to manage this legacy mainframe over the next three years as we build out more counties, every few months, to our new case management system,” Whitmore explains. “We’re going to be managing two business continuity efforts, one gradually decommissioning and the cloud gradually increasing.” By winding down the mainframe, NCAOC benefits from cost avoidance on its current infrastructure which can be applied to technologymagazine.com

203

NCAOC

STRATEGIC PARTNERS • Presidio, a leading US IT solutions provider, is NCAOC’s Value Added Reseller. • NCAOC is partnering with CISCO with the design of the hybrid Cloud, based on SD-WAN (Software Defined Networking Architecture). It is assisting NCAOC’s team in the rollout of the network infrastructure across the state –replacing 10,000 devices across the state this calendar year. • Texas-based Tyler Technologies – the largest provider of software to the US public sector – provides metrics enabling NCAOC to have a better understanding of how people are using its case management system, e-filing and licensing, and access to justice. • Microsoft has greatly assisted NCAOC designing its identity and access system, which is in the implementation phase. It will allow NCAOC to have more automated user accounts, and drive account creation. Identity and access will allow NCAOC to have federated identity services capability with its business partners.

204

May 2021

SaaS rollout and engagement. “We won’t be purchasing a 100-county infrastructure – this way it’s more scalable and cost effective. Some of our applications are still based on mainframe and we want to get off it, for cost effectiveness and resource management. Five counties will be cloud based by the end of the year.” Key strategic partner Tyler Technologies, the largest provider of software to the US public sector, was chosen as application hosting vendor, and the Texas-based firm has been selected as NCAOC’s case management vendor too. “We had to create a technology strategic plan, to see how we get to be where we need to be for this new cloud hosted integrated cloud management system. There were lots of transformations, and we designed the network to support hybrid cloud.”

NCAOC

ANTHONY WHITMORE TITLE: CTO COMPANY: NCAOC INDUSTRY: TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: NORTH CAROLINA, USA

With 2020 spent in the design phase, implementation is about to start. The statewide rollout for an initial application replacement will complete in April and a second statewide application replacement effort will complete in the May time frame. At that point some mainframe services will gradually be wound down. The bulk of application replacement will occur with sub-sets of counties being migrated to the new ICMS starting in July of 2021, with an incremental number of counties being migrated through 2023-24. Each county rollout will allow for mainframe service decommissioning. The new hybrid cloud network aims to be completed by October, covering 250 sites across North Carolina. “Hybrid will provide us with a more robust, resilient, scalable and secure network infrastructure, as the case

EXECUTIVE BIO

Anthony Whitmore is a skilled IT strategic governance and project management leader. With over 20 years of service as a manager and most recently as the director of infrastructure operations, he currently serves as the Chief Technology Officer for the North Carolina Administrative Office of the Courts. Overseeing a multi-year transition from on-premise data and service applications to cloud-based hosted technology, Mr. Whitmore is dedicated to the NCAOC eCourts mission of expanding access to justice across North Carolina.

Helping clients achieve business outcomes @Distruptor speed. We are a Digital Systems Integrator providing customers the secure cloud environments that form the backbone of digital transformation. We guide you from initial assessments, strategy and consulting – to implementation and deployment – to managed services that run IT for you, topped off with a suite of flexible financing and consumption options to simplify procurement.

ADVERT DIAMO PLATI

The backbone of public sector IT transformation

Presidio: Keeping North Carolina safe

SPREAD OND OR INUM

From cloud to physical and virtual IT infrastructure, Presidio is the digital integrator of choice for America's busiest public sector organizations.

The pandemic has led to many activities now becoming virtual-first, and this includes judicial services. This led to the North Carolina Administrative Offices of the Court partnering with Presidio, a digital systems integrator to implement a SaaS case management infrastructure and telejustice capabilities. Originally brought in to consult on the NCAOC’s incumbent third party solutions framework, Presidio used the opportunity to really integrate with the court’s infrastructure on a consultancy level and evaluate their vendor partners, so the NCAOC could make the best decisions for their preferred infrastructure moving forward.

Speaking of the challenges faced, Presidio VP of Digital Solutions Rob Kim breaks it down to two important factors – funding and talent. Presidio works with public sector organizations on the legislative level in order to justify government spending and fund issuance, as this is a critical step in ensuring that projects see the light of day. Another is the constraint around the talent needed to support newer digital and cloud native technologies in addition to prioritizing investments in training for the current IT resources to manage and maintain the digital solutions that are deployed. Understandably so, public sector IT departments are busy

'Allowing integrators like Presidio handle the operations also means that organizations can now go back to focusing on their priorities.' prioritizing traditional infrastructure needs over IT or cloud operations as this isn’t their sole focus. What a company like Presidio really does is it adds a layer of expertise to an existing infrastructure along with the right ‘service approach’, which means supporting the organization from a grassroots level all the way up rather than trying to sign them off with a cookie-cutter solution. Allowing integrators like Presidio handle the operations also means that organizations can now go back to focusing on their priorities.

Learn more today

NCAOC

1965

Year Founded

10,000 Number of Employees

208

May 2021

NCAOC

“ Hybrid cloud will provide us with a more robust, resilient, scalable and secure network infrastructure.” ANTHONY WHITMORE CTO, NCAOC

management system moves to a paper-less system,” he said. “The projects on the books right now are going to take us well into 2021, potentially into 2022.” Microsoft is another key partner, as NCAOC moved from an on-premise email system to O365 across the state. “We completed that effort in 2019, moving to cloud-based email, and replaced all of our difficult file-based infrastructure with Cloud storage – OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams. That was a foundational technology to integrate with the case management system.” Acceleration into eCourts era The Office365 migration proved fortuitous as it allowed NCAOC to respond quickly to COVID-19 and provide teleworking capability, although the acceleration did present legislative challenges. “The pandemic threw us into ‘e-Courts’ quicker than we anticipated. The adoption rate for video conferencing, to replace typical court processes and some of the legal aspects, has accelerated our effort, and we’ve seen over 1,000% increase in video. We’re probably not going to revert some of our processes back to in-court, because of the efficiencies and effectiveness of video conferencing. “We deployed infrastructure in response to COVID-19 that was originally destined for the ICMS – the Integrated Case Management System rollout, which saw us replace desktops with 3,000 laptops, giving core personnel the ability to work from home,” Whitmore said. With an eye to the future, and the new case management system, they are now a ‘mobile workforce’, enabling them to work in the courtroom or at home. Through federal COVID funding, NCAOC purchased infrastructure that technologymagazine.com

209

NCAOC

Anthony Whitmore: Customizing products to meet North Carolina’s AOC requirements

“ We’ve seen over 1,000% increase in video. We’re probably not going to revert some of our processes back to in-court, because of the efficiencies and effectiveness of video conferencing.” ANTHONY WHITMORE CTO, NCAOC

210

May 2021

enabled creation of more immersive courtroom proceedings, encompassing cameras, large monitors, with integrated speakers and microphones, to allow the judge, prosecution and defense to talk to remote witnesses and defendants. “We have the courtroom AV infrastructure in place but don’t plan to implement it until the latter part of this year, and intend to expand wireless,” he said. “Currently we offer it in the courtroom only and will expand it across NCAOC offices to provide a more mobile experience. In the future, wireless will allow us to incur cost savings by reducing switchport counts.” As a CISCO partner, NCAOC also has Webex in place, which offers another

NCAOC

benefit when moving from in-court appearances to video conference solutions. Whitmore added that NCAOC is looking at online tools to monitor digital courtrooms, to be proactive and predictive, and know when devices are about to have issues. NCAOC has also worked with partners in the Executive Branch and public safety, to test and integrate their respective video solution infrastructures, negating the need to transport prisoners to the courthouse. There is also opportunity to partner with local police departments across the state. Heightened security and risk management With cloud technologies, and in adhering to state statute, security initiatives are paramount. “We brought on a new

Chief Information Security Officer, Risk Management Officer and Privacy Officer, and adopted a Security Governance structure based on national standards – and that’s allowed us to create our security framework to be able to support service level agreements with Tyler Technologies and Microsoft, and other Cloud business partners,” says Whitmore. “The security office has been expanded with other personnel; I want to make sure they’re capable of auditing and monitoring our operational security, to ensure our network ops and infrastructure teams are compliant with all policies, and all our vendors are compliant with our procedures too. We put a strong emphasis on Risk Management to make sure we’re technologymagazine.com

211

NCAOC

“ The pandemic threw us into ‘eCourts’ quicker than we anticipated.” ANTHONY WHITMORE CTO, NCAOC

212

May 2021

NCAOC

NCAOC STRUCTURES • There are 3 branches of government in North Carolina – Executive, Judicial and Legislative • NCAOC is the administrative arm of the Judicial Branch • NCAOC supports all 100 counties in North Carolina

compliant internally and externally. NCAOC has also purchased AWS storage infrastructure where we will be piloting some NCAOC-owned and managed storage infrastructure and an application.” “We are going to have to evaluate our field support resources, because we’re moving to paper-less court system and with the new technologies, we are going to need to assess our ability to support 100 counties across the state.” A third party program management team is tasked with managing all risk, to ensure data conversion that we’re migrating off the mainframe is being carried out on time and customized with Tyler applications. “We attempt to mitigate risk by hiring the external project managers, so everything is seamless,” said Whitmore. In the meantime, training is being stepped up, predominantly online. “We started the e-Citation last year and will continue to train officers this year. It will take magistrates six months to be familiar with e-Warrant applications, and training will be mostly online through Tyler.”

technologymagazine.com

213

DELAWARE

214

May 2021

DELAWARE

GUIDING THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: HARRY MENEAR PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

technologymagazine.com

215

DELAWARE

216

May 2021

DELAWARE

Christophe Derdeyn, Partner at delaware Singapore, talks digital transformation, automation and cyber security for the post-COVID world

Christophe Derdeyn

he combined influences of the COVID-19 pandemic and Industry 4.0 are having a transformative effect on the ways in which businesses organise, operate and evolve around the world. The global transition to cloud, as well as the increased pressures of a multi-industry shift to remote work brought on by the pandemic, are prompting enterprises to reevaluate their approaches to technology and innovation, manage change, and break down existing siloes in order to unlock the agility and resilience they need to survive and thrive in the new normal. “In Singapore and beyond, we are seeing more and more customers developing a preference for best in breed over one size fits all solutions. One organisation will never be able to cater to all the needs of all customers; companies need strong partnerships,” says Christophe Derdeyn, Partner at delaware Singapore. At a time when adopting an end-to-end view, from operations and sales to IT and logistics, is more critical than ever before, delaware Singapore is stepping up to be the partner that its customers need to truly take advantage of everything that the digital age can offer them through its specialised SAP and Microsoft Cloud-focused offerings. “We focus on mid-market customers, who don't typically have an end-to-end IT platform just yet. They may have an accounting technologymagazine.com

217

DELAWARE

Delaware: SAP-powered digital transformation

system, a system that manages production, another one that handles warehousing, and so forth,” Derdeyn explains. “We help these organisations achieve an end-to-end view of their operations by implementing the SAP ERP platform across all those previously siloed areas of the business.” delaware: a Different Approach Founded in 1981 in Belgium, delaware has grown into a fast-moving global consultancy that guides organisations all over the world through their digital transformation journey, using the ecosystems of its key partners, SAP and Microsoft. “We are a two ecosystem company which focuses on solutions based on SAP and Microsoft. What we do within those two ecosystems is very similar; we focus on the core ERP and all its supporting systems, from warehousing to logistics to analytics, robotics, RPA and so on,” Derdeyn explains. “We are very specialised in our focus on the 218

May 2021

solutions provided by SAP and Microsoft, and we help our customers become more efficient at operating their back offices using these solutions.” delaware employs more than 2700 professionals and SAP experts throughout its 28 offices spread across 14 countries. Derdeyn was part of the team that set up the company’s Southeast Asian operations back in 2011, which has since grown into a trio of offices located in Malaysia, the Philippines and Singapore. One of the key factors that makes delaware unique among its competitors is the way its various sub-segments are structured. “We are a global company, but one of the things that is different about us is how we are organised,” Derdeyn tells me. “We are a very flat organisation with a lot of self-steering mechanisms. We're not a typical corporation with a central headquarters in one location that directs what the other business units do; we have a lot of different local entities

DELAWARE

“ WE ARE SEEING MORE AND MORE CUSTOMERS DEVELOPING A PREFERENCE FOR BEST IN BREED OVER ONE SIZE FITS ALL SOLUTIONS”

CHRISTOPHE DERDEYN TITLE: PARTNER INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES LOCATION: SINGAPORE

CHRISTOPHE DERDEYN

PARTNER, DELAWARE SINGAPORE

delaware 5.0 in Singapore At a global level, delaware’s strategy and offerings are redefined every five years, with each new iteration reaffirming the company’s goals, mission and capabilities. “Every five years, we come together to develop the next iteration of this strategy. Today, we're in delaware 5.0, which steers the company at a global level,” says Derdeyn. “The more mature a delaware entity is, like our home market of Belgium, for example, the more of the global delaware 5.0 plan that

EXECUTIVE BIO

working together towards a common goal.” This non-hierarchical approach to organisation allows different divisions of delaware to better cater their offerings to their own markets, something which works hand in hand with the company’s position as a privately-held entity. “We believe in long-term relationships with our customers. Because we are privately held, we are not defined by ‘quarterly thinking’, which is very common in the market today,” Derdeyn explains. “Our thinking is focused on developing strong, long-term relationships with our customers, and we do that by making sure that we always deliver.”

As a Partner at delaware Singapore, I partner with customers to explore opportunities for improving their processes through next-gen information management and moving toward the intelligent enterprise through SAP S/4HANA implementations. By providing insights into how other companies in their industry are transforming their processes, I help our clients to develop an effective strategy towards transforming their ERP and information management technology. With more than 20 years of experience across enterprise technology as a technical consultant and strategic advisor, I have extensive expertise in operational process optimisation, particularly through many years working with shared service enablement. Although every organisation is unique, I believe there are many best practices that are valuable for improving processes across a variety of industries and organisations.

DELAWARE

Accelerate your S/4HANA Move Maximize the value of your SAP data

•

Reduce manual efforts for system analysis, data validation, Data Transition

•

Minimize business disruption with NZDT & process continuity

•

Reduce TCO by archiving /decommissioning data to the cloud or the storage of your choice

•

Integrate SAP data with cloud innovations and data lakes

LEARN MORE

DELAWARE

will be executed. Singapore is a relatively young entity within delaware, which means we've needed to make some choices.” At a global level, delaware 5.0 spreads the company’s services across seven different industries: both food and discrete manufacturing, automotive, aerospace and defense, chemicals, pharma, retail, and utilities. In Singapore, Derdeyn and his team are choosing to focus on delivering best in breed services to three key verticals. delaware Singapore has selected SAP core ERP with Microsoft Azure as a supporting cloud platform as its main offering, with a focus on the food manufacturing, discrete and hightech manufacturing, and retail industries. delaware Singapore also focuses heavily on information management consulting across multiple industries throughout the market. “About 40% of our business is related to information management, and a large portion of our client base is in the public sector,” says Derdeyn. “That covers the management of information and documents within an organisation in any shape or form. Whether you need to access your documents in a certain way, or need to store them in a compliant fashion, or require anything involving workflows, approvals,

CHRISTOPHE DERDEYN

PARTNER, DELAWARE SINGAPORE

FOCUS DIGITECH

“ WE HELP OUR CUSTOMERS ACHIEVE AN END-TO-END VIEW OF THEIR OPERATIONS BY IMPLEMENTING THE SAP ERP PLATFORM ACROSS ALL THE PREVIOUSLY SILOED AREAS OF THEIR BUSINESS”

LEADING-EDGE CYBERSECURITY INSIGHTS To make a network safe, you need to understand everything that goes on within it. A significant source of cyber threat to modern organisations stems from unseen devices connecting to the network, which leave a potential back door for threat actors to exploit. When it comes to ensuring its customers have the best possible visibility into their networks in order to keep them as secure and safe as possible, delaware regularly turns to its trusted partner, Focus Digitech. “Focus Digitech has been a partner of ours for a long time,” Derdeyn explains. “There's their hardware business, which has been around for about 30 years, and then they also have their cybersecurity business, which provides very specific tools to ensure that organisations can gain reliable insights that allow them to improve their cybersecurity approach.”

technologymagazine.com

221

DELAWARE

digital signatures – all these aspects which are essential, especially to heavily regulated industries like banking, insurance, utilities or heavy industries like oil and gas, where documentation is of paramount importance. delaware helps its customers manage those documents.” The other key areas of business for delaware Singapore involve customer service, including the management of all customer engagement between “our customers and their customers”, from marketing and sales automation to e-commerce platforms, and – in addition to customer-facing services – value added solutions. “These are more niche solutions which are intended to extend the other platforms that we focus on. They tend to be smaller in scope but can have significant added value in terms of how a company operates,” Derdeyn explains, adding that these value added solutions span cutting edge automation-focused technologies, like the automation of SAP’s security services and the implementation of robotic process automation (RPA).

222

May 2021

DELAWARE

1981

Year founded

€365M Revenue (2019)

2700 Number of employees

technologymagazine.com

223

FOCUSED ON CREATING PROSPERITY FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD THROUGH SECURE, SUSTAINABLE AND INTELLIGENT TECHNOLOGY SOLUTIONS Your system is only as secure as the weakest link. This may be an adage, but it still holds true. Cloud offers agility, elasticity, better security, and other benefits. It is therefore even more imperative that you ensure you secure your Cloud systems. Our customers list the following as their top Cloud Security concerns: • • • • •

Misconfiguration of cloud security parameters making cloud resources vulnerable Data Privacy / Confidentiality / Sovereignty & Residency concerns which have legal and regulatory implications (PDPA, GDPR) Privileged Credentials leakages and Confidential Data leakages Insecure APIs / Interfaces causing application breaches Malicious insiders with privileged access exposing cloud resources to external parties

While there can never be zero risk, organisations need to adopt a Zero-Trust policy with systems and processes in place to de-risk their business security exposure.

THREATS

BUSINESS

PROTECTION

CHALLENGES

Know your enemy

Regulatory & Litigation

Risk Transfer (Cyberinsurance)

Silo-ed & complex tools

Understand your weakness

Reputational Loss

Reduce probability of successful breach

Expensive Expertise & Skills

Reinforce defences

Customer Flight & Investor Confidence

Minimise recovery costs if breached

Asymmetric warfare

DESIRED OUTCOME Reduce Attack Surface

Ensure Business Continuity

Secure Business Value

Rebalance Odds in your Favour

LEARN MORE

DELAWARE

SAP intelligent Robotic Process Automation | delaware Singapore

Securing the New Normal “One of the things we saw during the pandemic was that, because so many more people were working remotely, there was also a much higher prevalence of cyber threats,” recalls Derdeyn, noting that all threat types, from malware and phishing campaigns to state-sponsored hacking all became more common. The shift to remote work over the past year has prompted a huge rise in the number of cyber attacks worldwide. Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky estimates that, last year, remote workers experienced a 242% jump in cyber attacks on remote desktop protocols compared to 2019. For organisations with an end-to-end SAP integration, Derdeyn explains, fully understanding the kinds of cyber risks they are facing and remaining consistently compliant can represent a challenge for

many enterprises. “SAP releases support and patches on a very regular basis. Applying these updates typically requires a lot of very specialised security knowledge of SAP's solutions, as well as a lot of work on behalf of your system admins,” he says. One of delaware Singapore’s most powerful added value solutions, he continues, effectively automates that process, while providing greater visibility into extant cyber threats. “We can essentially automate the entire process. We provide a dashboard with an overview of the customer's current

“ WE ARE NOT DEFINED BY QUARTERLY THINKING” CHRISTOPHE DERDEYN

PARTNER, DELAWARE SINGAPORE

technologymagazine.com

225

DELAWARE

S4/HANA MIGRATIONS MADE SIMPLE WITH DATAVARD

DID YOU KNOW...

One of the things that is happening in the SAP market right now is the ongoing release of SAP S/4HANA, the latest generation of its ERP system,” says Derdeyn. “S/4HANA first hit the market in 2015, but SAP platforms have a very long lifecycle, so the previous generation is very slowly easing towards its end-of-life in 2027. It's only 2021, but an ERP platform is typically of such magnitude and is intertwined with so many different business processes that converting from one generation to another is typically not a straightforward process.”

226

A classic SAP migration – called a brownfield – involves a technical database conversion. While the process is common throughout many industries, and generally quite an achievable task, Derdeyn warns that it has some downsides. “If you are moving to a new platform and you had heavily-customised your old one, a brownfield migration means

May 2021

that all that customised code gets carried over to your new platform,” he explains. “It's not really a fresh start. It could take a long time, be difficult to manage, or result in periods of downtime that your company just cannot afford – from several days to even a week.” When delaware looks at finding alternate migration strategies for its customers, the company believes in selecting the right tools. Datavard, a key partner of delaware, is providing those tools as part of a collaborative project the two companies are engaged in to migrate a Singaporean customer to SAP S4/HANA. “By using the tools that Datavard provides, we can ensure that, instead of having a downtime of several days for the migration – which our customer simply cannot afford – they won't experience downtime of more than 10 hours,” Derdeyn says.

DELAWARE

vulnerability status, which allows them to make a more informed decision about which vulnerabilities they need to close up and which ones they feel comfortable leaving as they are,” he adds. “It's about helping our customers understand where they want to be on the curve, and what level of risk they can allow themselves.” Delivering on the Potential of RPA Successfully implementing automation into an enterprise’s ERP can be the difference between speed, agility and resilience, and the loss of thousands of hours inputting data manually. Derdeyn explains that, at delaware Singapore, they take two approaches to incorporating automation (specifically RPA) in their customers’ ERPs. “We have created about 50 different common business scenarios for SAP. We offer these scenarios in small accelerator packages to our customers, who can then plug them in and immediately start automating particular processes. These accelerators apply to the more run-of-themill scenarios which have a big common

“ ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS FOR DELAWARE IS THAT OUR CUSTOMERS FEEL AS THOUGH WE HAVE MADE A DIFFERENCE FOR THEM” CHRISTOPHE DERDEYN

PARTNER, DELAWARE SINGAPORE

denominator across lots of companies,” he says. “We also engage in very particular use cases where customers might have very unique problems, and in those cases we can also work with those customers to map out the process they want and solve that more niche challenge.” The Road Ahead Over the coming years, delaware Singapore plans to continue leveraging its unique business model and specialised array of best in breed services to build long-lasting, beneficial relationships with Singaporean companies as they progress through their digital transformation journeys. “One of the most important things for Delaware is that our customers feel as though we have made a difference for them,” Derdeyn says. “Our key objective this year is to make sure that I can say that I have four to five new, happy customers that we can talk about proudly and who are hopefully talking proudly about their collaboration with us.”

technologymagazine.com

227

BETKING

BRINGING

A DATA-CENTRIC PERSPECTIVE TO

GAMING WRITTEN BY: WILL GIRLING PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

228

May 2021

BETKING

technologymagazine.com

229

BETKING

230

May 2021

BETKING

Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics, outlines the company’s digital transformation story, which is placing data and CX at the core of its roadmap

Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics

fficially entering the African gaming market in 2018, BetKing is a company where entertainment and the latest digital technology have been fused with a highly customercentric, data driven approach to produce an exceptional platform with its sights set firmly on the future. Now with operational bases in Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia, BetKing offers its services on a variety of sports, both real and virtual, and continues to explore innovative new methods for achieving one of its primary objectives: bringing fans closer to the sports and games they love. To find out how one aspect of its digital journey, data, is helping to push the company into exciting new territory, we spoke with Ian Thomas, VP of Data and Analytics. A graduate of both Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Thomas’s formidable career includes 20 years’ experience working in data and analytics at some of the world’s largest tech companies. He joined BetKing in mid-2020 on the promise of a fresh challenge. “The company attracted me because it provides the opportunity to build a data and analytics function from scratch. BetKing is a very rapidly growing company with a real thirst for data,” he explains. As a seasoned veteran of the industry, Thomas’s experience, particularly as a ‘DataIQ 100 2020’ listed data and analytics leader, has technologymagazine.com

231

BETKING

Ian Thomas | BetKing

proven invaluable as BetKing prepares for its next phase of development. In particular, his aversion to “overburdening people with process” and planning for future scalability have been crucial to the company’s transformation strategy. When Thomas talks about scalability he isn’t just referring to data volume, but rather thinking in more holistic terms: if a process relies on manual elements, how can it be automated? How can teams be built to optimise their capabilities? “Those kinds of issues are really important, as well as conscientiously thinking about our responsibility and place in society. BetKing is very mindful and respectful of the role that it plays in the markets and communities we operate in,” he adds. This places data management far beyond simply being a technological concern and elevates it to being a core enabler of cultural bestpractice. In keeping with this, the company is shifting from passive to proactive data 232

May 2021

management, which has resulted from an increased emphasis on compliance and legislative requirements, as well as the company’s growth.

BETKING

Thomas’s vision for data management at BetKing is to create a “common foundation for helping people to access and share data and insights.” This requires a flexible approach that many older and/or larger companies in the gaming industry could not achieve easily because of their legacy technology, processes and organisational structures. BetKing, an agile, digital native organisation, is unencumbered by similar restrictions. “Larger organisations can struggle with fragmentation in their data, with siloed teams often competing for who can provide the definitive view of business performance,” he says. “Instead of that, they need to build a common data foundation that democratises access to data while providing a level playing field for insights.” BetKing has taken stock of gaming’s transformation over the last two decades and opted not to follow the “preconceived notions” of how it operates. This impulse to break new ground is indicated by the company’s decision to target Africa, a historically under-served market. “The African territories in which we operate have some very significant differences to the UK and Europe in terms of player behaviour. There aren't many established businesses that understand that.”

IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

TITLE: VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS INDUSTRY: BETTING & GAMING LOCATION: AFRICA

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ BetKing is a very rapidly growing company with a real thirst for data”

IAN THOMAS

I help companies turn data into action and results, from day-to-day marketing decisions all the way up to senior leadership. I've enabled teams across Microsoft and Publicis Groupe to unlock product and marketing innovation through data, working with some of the largest, most complex datasets in the world. My experience encompasses all parts of the data value chain: Data collection, data management and governance (including GDPR compliance), analytics and reporting, data visualisation, and automated decisioning and Machine Learning/AI. The effective multidisciplinary data teams I've built have drawn on the talents and energy of diverse individuals to deliver value with data, ensuring consistently high employee satisfaction and low turnover. I'm passionate about using data to drive impactful, customer-centric Digital Marketing, CRM and Advertising. I've built a Machine Learning-based system for Microsoft to deliver the right message to the right customer at the right time, in the right channel.

Azure. Invent with purpose.

Microsoft Azure lays platform for BetKing’s gaming success Watch: Microsoft and BetKing partnership

Adrian Gatt, Microsoft’s iGaming Business Development Manager, and Eva Angelopoulou, Data and AI Specialist, explain how it supports the sport betting site’s growth Microsoft is not simply the supplier of BetKing’s tech infrastructure, but also provides guidance and support for important stages of its digital transformation, including migrating to the cloud, and utilising tools and services such as Synapse Analytics, Azure Databricks and Azure Data Factory. The Microsoft account team’s relationship with BetKing and the team behind their platform began in Summer 2019, while before that time BetKing worked primarily with Microsoft partners, said Adrian Gatt, iGaming Business Development Manager. Eva Angelopoulou, who is responsible for Azure and its Data and AI technologies, said: “Initially we migrated the whole infrastructure onto Azure, to ensure agility with minimum maintenance and administration, and they maintained their own on-premise data center as Disaster Recovery site. In the second phase, we moved that over as well.” Microsoft provided BetKing with technical guidance, governance and best practices, and involved a team of Azure engineers

to ensure a smooth transition. “We have invested a lot of effort in streamlining the support experience and discussed their concerns with regards to regulation and potential hybrid approach to cover data sovereignty needs, as iGaming is a highly regulated industry,” she added. Gatt said its primary focus is to support the organisation as it goes through its M&A cycle, and enhance the platform’s monitoring. “We are making sure the customer’s Azure platform is more resilient in view of expansion into new markets, helping modernise applications and infrastructure, develop and infuse AI into their platform, and enhance Azure skills of BetKing’s technical team through our skilling initiatives,” he said. “BetKing now has a cloud-only Azure set up but this is an ongoing journey, with more cloud services and continuous modernisation of applications and infrastructure.” Microsoft ensures that all capabilities that can bring value are recommended and adopted. Consultative services are also a part of Microsoft’s armoury.

Invent with purpose

BETKING

DATAIQ 100: TRACKING DATA’S MOST INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE

236

May 2021

DID YOU KNOW...

Thomas calls his inclusion on the 2020 edition of the DataIQ 100 list “a great honour.” While acknowledging the value he’s been able to create for businesses, Thomas still cites the positive impact he’s made in the lives of individuals, from customers to team members to stakeholders, as his proudest career achievement. The biggest challenge in terms of digital transformation, he posits, is not necessarily the acquisition of technology so much as the cultural investment that gives it a foundation.

BetKing’s entrepreneurial spirit and collaboration with a strong network of registered agents combined with its large online user base makes for a unique customer landscape. Thomas states that this customer profile has been partially generated by using Google Analytics, an important component of BetKing’s digital transformation. “Our roadmap consists of continuing to build a horizontally scalable platform, both from a technology and from a data perspective. We really need to start expanding that concept to create a more heterogeneous data management environment.” Referring to an automated system that integrates disparate databases into a unified interface, ‘heterogeneous’ databases will be important as BetKing seeks to optimise its user experience (UX). “Data

BETKING

“ Larger organisations usually have one big team that manages all of their data and insights. Instead of that, they should be taking a democratised approach” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

from the front-end of our application stack should be treated no differently from the data we get from our backend BI (business intelligence) environment. We want to be able to expose that information at high volume to our growing data science team and build a range of value-added models against it.” The resulting opportunities could include recommenders, predictive monetisation features, and enhanced fraud detection/problematic player recognition capabilities. These new features will also fit into BetKing’s broader development plans, not least of which is a significant market expansion to new territories and product areas. Although exact details are currently being kept under wraps, Thomas indicates that entertainment broadcaster MultiChoice Group, one of Africa’s most prominent companies in the sector, will play a key role. “[MultiChoice has] broadcast rights for premiership and other top-league football in Africa,” an important asset for a continent whose primary consumer betting interest is focused on that sport. “BetKing’s goal is to deliver an integrated entertainment experience straddling the consumption of sports content and live games and placing bets on them,” he adds. “A lot of our product investment and expansion over the next 12 to 24 months will be focused on that area.” BetKing’s growing maturity in leveraging data across all levels of the company affords one of its biggest opportunities for growth. Thomas reasons that unlocking this information will improve decision-making, help BetKing understand its customers better, price its products appropriately and create a better experience overall. “Operating in Africa creates some unique challenges,” he says, “a lot of which has to do with the rapidly changing state of internet technologymagazine.com

237

BETKING

access. Bandwidth is still a major challenge for many of our players, so we have to offer low bandwidth versions of our products to drive engagement.” BetKing’s ability to meet customers’ needs was put to the test at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw the cancellation of major sporting events and put a strain on its business model. Undeterred, the company quickly launched a range of virtual sports betting products, thus resolving the issue and diversifying its product portfolio simultaneously. “Since professional football has come back, our 238

May 2021

“ Our business has not just bounced back to where it was before COVID, it's actually grown significantly” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

BETKING

business has not just bounced back to where it was before COVID, it's grown significantly.” In many ways, BetKing’s steady and assured COVID-19 response is emblematic of its business overall: it is secure in its market, its brand is popular with its customers, and knows the metrics by which it will measure future success. For Thomas, this ongoing journey of refinement will be dependent on a highly data-centric philosophy, which will not only solve the problems of today but anticipate the innovations of tomorrow. “BetKing is building

DID YOU KNOW...

MICROSOFT One of BetKing’s key partners for a long time has been Microsoft. Not simply the supplier of BetKing’s tech infrastructure, the software giant has provided guidance and support for important stages of its digital transformation, such as migrating to the cloud. Thomas explains: “My team and I have been moving fast as we can towards more of a platform as a service (PaaS) approach to infrastructure. We're making use of things like Azure Synapse, Azure Databricks, and Azure Data Factory to create that kind of modern approach. “More recently, we’ve been implementing a data lake so that we can start housing unstructured data on a large scale. Microsoft has been very supportive in providing advice and architectural consulting to help us make smart choices and build that infrastructure out in a scalable way.”

technologymagazine.com

239

BETKING

240

May 2021

BETKING

“ Trying to evolve [the data team and platform] simultaneously is at the heart of the challenge we’re tackling right now” IAN THOMAS

VP OF DATA AND ANALYTICS, BETKING

self-serve dashboards and reports to place insights directly into peoples’ hands on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. People need to understand how the questions they have can be answered with the data that's available, and the more we can do to help them become self-sufficient the more that data-driven decision-making will take hold across the organisation.” This democratised approach – with a central team providing the data, tools and expertise to enable the day-to-day use of data to support decision-making across the business – is at the heart of Thomas’s plans to build out his team and the company’s data platform in 2021. “Trying to evolve those two things simultaneously is at the heart of the challenge we’re tackling right now. That opportunity is really exciting because we can act fast, the demand is there, and our CEO [Byron Petzer] is leading the commitment.”

technologymagazine.com

241

UNIT 4

UNIT4 PSA, ENABLING PRACTICES OF THE FUTURE WRITTEN BY: LAURA V. GARCIA PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

242

May 2021

UNIT 4

technologymagazine.com

243

UNIT 4

244

May 2021

UNIT 4

Unit4 PSA Smart Cloud Collaboration platform for better workflow, faster decision making, and an agile workforce empowered to focus on what matters

nit4 PSA’s ecosystem of powerful teams and partnerships are perfectly aligned to make for an exceptional people experience that drives customer success for Professional Services, so you can offer a better way to work that makes for a better place to work. Manav Singh, General Manager and Scaleup Leader for Unit4 PSA, explains how Unit4 PSA aims to enable practices of the future through disruption. “For me, disruption is all about honing in on a true customer ambition and creating a simple path to execution. A lot of people focus on customer problems and in my view that always results in incremental improvements. Pure disruption is to be able to leap from the incremental and creating something truly game-changing – and for this to be meaningful it needs to align not to current problems but future ambitions of customers. As a scaleup leader, this is what I always like to have as my goal and to take away the noise of what I hear as issues to be solved but rather focus on the why and the desired end state of my customers.” To that end, Unit4 PSA remains unrelentingly focused on:

Manav Singh General Manager and Scaleup Leader

• Evolving operating models to be more remote and in line with the new reality • Seamless data flows and intelligence to ensure full transparency and ease of decision making technologymagazine.com

245

UNIT 4

MANAV SINGH TITLE: GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER INDUSTRY: SOFTWARE LOCATION: NETHERLANDS I am a scale-up leader embarked on a current mission to create a globally leading business, enabling professional services organizations to optimize their project and peopledriven business by deliverin a leading practice management suite supporting the end to end proces from opportunities to cash. I am energized to bring an innovative technology to market enabling professional services organization to execute their business flawlessly.

EXECUTIVE BIO

“ Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

UNIT 4

UNIT 4 | Know Your Customer

• Empowering practices to proactively assess customer needs and formulate propositions • Meaningful automation, ensuring your valuable people are spending their time on the right priorities • Innovating new and sustainable business models such as value-based pricing All this delivered in a single solution built within Microsoft Dynamics CRM making sure that end customers are always at the centre. By leveraging the Microsoft platform not only do we rationalize the IT landscape for practices but also make sure that practices unleash the true potential of a platform that they have already invested in The secret to Unit4 PSA’s success is that Singh himself remains married to a winning framework rooted in the belief in his people and the strategic alignment of

business partners. It’s old-school thoughts done in a new age way, with heart, passion, and conviction. And his customers are better for it. Redefining PSA to help practices Pivot, Strengthen, and Amplify To achieve operational excellence, you must address the following four key areas: Executing profitable projects, optimising resource utilisation, billing with precision, and winning more business. Unit4 PSA gets you there, despite our ever-changing world. Practices built for the future create an environment that allows their people to focus on what matters most – delivering customer value. By leveraging technology, companies can remove non-valueadd administrative tasks and streamline workflows, and empower their people, technologymagazine.com

247

UNIT 4

providing all the information employees need to be successful at their fingertips. Remote-work and a global pandemic pose epic challenges, but Singh and his “team of teams” are up to the task. Engineered for flawless execution and customer success, Singh sticks to old principles, but like vinyl records, and hipster trends, he has made the old new again by understanding and leveraging their true value. A unified platform focused on optimising front-end operations with automated setups, seamless data flow and integrations, and built-in intelligence ensures that practices are focused on delivering value to customers 248

May 2021

timely and profitably. With a clear view of current operations, practices plan for the future by making sure they have the right resources and strategic customers. All this within a simplified IT landscape. Built on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Power platform, Unit4’s PSA Practice Management is a full end-to-end solution built for professional services to standardise work, from sales, automation to onboarding your customer, project management, expenses, invoicing, financial transactions, and human competence management. Singh explains, “We help practices manage their end-to-end process from the point an

UNIT 4

SOFTWARE Industry

We operate in 20 countries

Tailor-made

For Accountancies, Consultancies, IT services and Engineering practices

GLOBAL PARTNER NETWORK

opportunity presents itself until the point that they invoice the end customer. We cover everything from managing an opportunity, creating projects, staffing people, measuring utilisation, booking time, managing expenses, approvals, and so forth, all the way until invoicing the end customer. “All of that in a single solution that is built on Microsoft technology which has its own advantage of making sure that we don't have any legacy technology. Being ERP independent also has the added benefit of delivering faster time to value. That is, essentially, what we offer. But, in actuality, we’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your

business pivot. We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before.” Team of Teams “The magic is in the combination of a clear goal, energised and empowered people, and creating a safe space where it's okay to make mistakes. I think that’s what fuels a productive and effective organisation. And from there, you amplify and scale,” says Singh. “When it comes to decision-making, a traditional team gums itself up, creating a choke point. And at the pace at which the world moves today, what you need is a ‘team of teams’, a segregated autonomous unit. You give these teams the autonomy to make decisions and execute on visions. If you do that right, then the only factor you need to bind these teams together is a common goal.” Unit4 PSA enables practices to realise the power of this construct. With its Smart Cloud Collaboration, Unit4 PSA delivers a single solution leveraging Microsoft Power Platform with seamless integration to O365, Power BI and Azure toolsets – making information and intelligence available to all fringes of a practice and empowering individuals to make the right decisions at the right time. As Singh says, “There needs to be a common-sense of consciousness. Everyone needs to understand what the aim is so that day-to-day, they can make the right decisions and ultimately get you to your goal. This engrains a sense of agility, and an ability to pivot and react to changing conditions dynamically, and delivering a resilience that a traditional way of working does not give you.” ITK: In The Know Solutions Group With customer in over 20 countries, Unit4 PSA's success is supported with a robust technologymagazine.com

249

UNIT 4

SAVE 30% ON SERVICES FOR A LIMITED TIME

TECHNOLOGY THAT INSTANTLY TELLS YOU WHO ON YOUR CONSULTING TEAM IS WORKING WHERE AND TILL WHEN. NO GUESSING REQUIRED. We’re different than most software partners. We’re not just an IT Consulting firm, we actually use Unit4 PSA Suite (Professional Services Automation) software ourselves. We’ve been in your shoes. We know how to leverage tech to transform (and improve) how you work. It’s helped us win more business, optimize resource utlization, bill with precision and have more profitable projects. www.itksolutionsgroup.com

CLICK HERE TO CLAIM YOUR DISCOUNT

UNIT 4

ecosystem of strategic global partners. ITK stands as a shining example of the close collaborations that make up Unit4’s rich global partner ecosystem. “Our partners are very important to us, and ITK is a great example of a very successful partnership that we highly value. They are very true to their name and bring a bounty of industry practice that make them not just a technology partner but a trusted advisor. That’s really where their experience shines. “We have a very close collaboration with our partners, ITK being one of our key ones, and we are always on the same page in terms of how we are addressing the market, what can we do for them, and how we can make them more successful. “So that relationship really works very, very closely. The interesting thing is that all our partners are not just software partners; they’re

“ We’re in the business of pivot, strengthen, and amplify. We help your business pivot. We will strengthen what you already have, and we will help you amplify your business as you've never seen before” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

users. ITK is an IT services firm, and they use PSA to manage their own practice. So they’re not only advocates for us but can showcase the value that PSA brings. They can speak to some of the challenges that they faced and how we helped them to manoeuvre them.” When it comes to selecting partners and ensuring mutually beneficial relationships, Singh prefers quality over quantity. “Otherwise, you spread yourself out too thin, and you’re not able to provide them with the right level of focus and attention that they need, and it really doesn’t help you to mutually grow. So our technologymagazine.com

251

UNIT 4

philosophy is to focus on the right partners. “This means that we're going to have fewer partners, but the partners that we are going to have will be equally invested in our vision as we are. This allows us to throw all of our weight behind those select partners and make sure they are successful, and together, we’ll drive market penetration and make them the face of the region. “You have 120% of our support, and we will make you successful. In return, all we ask is that you be as equally invested as we are in delivering on the vision we have for the business and the product.” It’s a nice, intimate circle of partners, backed by the right people, empowered for success. Advantage: Transforming the Way You Work Advantage stands as another example of a carefully selected partner. Singh shares his

“ For me, the strongest relationships are built when people want to collaborate with you rather than need to collaborate with you. Being open, honest, and genuine have always been key pillars for me to achieve this” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

Transform the way you work with Advantage and Unit4 Transform your business with a Professional Services Automation solution with Advantage, the UK partner of choice for Unit4 PSA implementations. For more info, call us on 020 3944 8381

252

May 2021

UNIT 4

thoughts on why they were selected and the value they bring. “As an established player in the world of Dynamics for over 20 years, Advantage has helped to provide Small and Midsize Businesses (SMBs) with the resources and intelligence required to make informed, timely and strategic decisions to help their business prosper. As one of the only Microsoft Gold Partners providing CRM, ERP, and IT Managed Services all under one roof, they really can help to transform your business.” “Adding Unit4 into the mix only strengthens their offering. As project managers themselves, they understand the complexities and issues that your team may face on a day-to-day basis

and can offer a deeper understanding of the ways to solve your pain points.” “Our partners are our lifeline, and Advantage is a perfect example of how our product can enhance their offering. Advantage brings a wealth of industry knowledge and technical expertise across a variety of technologies and overlaying Unit4 PSA on top of all that brings it all together in a seamless way. They really are true to their name and are giving businesses across the UK the 'Advantage Edge'. “We work very closely with all our partners and felt Advantage were ideally placed to help us strengthen our proposition in the UK market, and we really are on the same page in technologymagazine.com

253

UNIT 4

addressing the market, what we can do for our potential customers and how we can give them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. “So that relationship really works very well and very closely together. The key thing with Advantage, and indeed all of our partners, is that they are users of the product, they aren't just talking the talk, they are walking the walk, which means any issue you are likely to face has already been seen, addressed and a solution found." Justin Bown, the Sales Director at Advantage concurs with this view. "It really is a gamechanger for us internally as it has significantly helped to reduce costs and time with our projects. And from our customers perspective, it really helps to bring all of those disparate systems together under one roof." Hunger. Persistence. Authenticity. Unit4 PSA has created a team that is passionate and aligned towards a common goal – enabling next-generation practices to thrive in the new business reality. But it’s not done yet. Unit4 holds fast to the belief that improvements are never done, and business should never remain static and continues to move at the speed in which today’s challenging business environment requires. The other key component of a successful “team of teams” is ensuring they consist of the right people with an alignment on personal goals and expectations. In order to clearly communicate goals, Singh says his construct consists of three areas, “First, I give them a crystal clear picture of what we want the end state of the business to be. How big do we want to grow? What regions do we want to capture? What customers do we want to target? And how are we going to get them?” All components of a standard business plan, Singh points out, but the difference is in the clarity and execution. 254

May 2021

“ I’ll show up a hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me” MANAV SINGH

GENERAL MANAGER AND SCALEUP LEADER, UNIT4 PSA

UNIT 4

With an unrelenting focus on the end goal, and teams of teams all pointing towards the bullseye, Singh then sets a schedule, prioritises, and measures the efficacy of solutions. Those that are considered to be successful are amplified. Those that aren’t are scrapped before moving on to the next idea. It’s a systematic, quantified process that allows them to arrive at the best possible solution— A perhaps simple yet powerful concept that optimises outcomes. “I want them to be hungry and to do things because they want to do them, not because I told them to. So, let’s mutually agree on what’s

important for you and for the company, and let’s consider that the floor because there is no ceiling. “The second thing I ask for is persistence. Nobody comes to work to fail. Nobody will drive to their office and say, you know what, today I'm going to do a poor job and aim to fail at what I do. However, things will rarely work out the way you want them to. There will always be problems, either you don't have the right people, or you don't have the right budget, or you have a global pandemic. There are a gazillion things that could happen. You have to keep persisting and not let the challenges bog you down.” “If you're using half your concentration to look normal, then you're only half paying attention to whatever else you're doing.” — Erik Lehnsherr Cringing at the analogy, Singh references a quote from Erik Lehnsherr, otherwise known as Magneto, from the X-Men comics. Despite its perceived “cringyness”, however, it’s perfectly apropos to his thoughts on the importance of authenticity. “The third thing I ask from an individual is for them to be genuine. Bring me your unfiltered self because you cannot unleash your true self or your true potential if you’re expending your energies on hiding your innate inner traits. I’ll show up a hundred per cent, and I want you to show up a hundred per cent with me,” Singh says. “The world is not static. It’s dynamic, and as things change, you must be able to pivot. To avoid becoming extinct, your business must evolve at pace with the changes. You must redesign your business models to meet the challenges of the day, that’s what teams of teams is for, and that’s what Unit4 PSA is for.”

technologymagazine.com

255

Enabling SMEs and Communities to Thrive WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND

256

May 2021

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

BUKALAPAK

technologymagazine.com

257

COMPANY NAME

Bima Tjahja VP of Growth and Data

BUKALAPAK

As Bukalapak takes off in Indonesia, we talk to the company’s VP of Growth and Data, Bima Tjahja about company culture and the magic of data

ima Tjahja is a numbers man. As a Vice President of Growth and Data for Bukalapak - an Indonesian E-commerce and business services company that was founded in 2010, his work with the swiftly expanding startup is a mixture of mathematics and behavioral science. Bukalapak is an online marketplace that enables small and medium enterprises to utilize essential online services and has expanded to support smaller traditional family-owned businesses throughout Indonesia. Positioning itself as a facilitator of services between supplier and customer, Bukalapak has achieved extraordinary success by actually helping small businesses thrive, rather than bulldozering through them, large corporation style. Tjahja, who has led the marketing efforts of the company and helped compile its strategy, is understandably proud of Bukalapak’s success. But his background, which started off in software engineering, seems a far stretch from his current role.

During his 12-year-stint in Australia, the self-confessed data whizz moved into the banking sector and became a data scientist, where he honed his skills on the cutting-edge of cybersecurity. examining fraud detection, money laundering, and criminal behaviors. Now, as the leader of a team that examines the business relationship between data and marketing, he says his time spent in cybercrime has been incredibly valuable. “When I worked at Commonwealth Bank in Australia, I led a data science team that specializes in fraud detection, which is very far from my current role. How does a guy that used to manage data science teams to detect credit card fraud, money laundering end up working in marketing? Well, it’s really all about data and behavioral science,” he says. “As the VP of growth and data in Bukalapak, there are two parts to my role. There is the growth part and the data part and traditionally, these disciplines are not technologymagazine.com

259

combined into one department.” However, Tjahja explains, by looking at growth strategies as demand generation, these two areas of business are inextricably linked. Bukalapak facilitates commerce between suppliers and what is commonly known as mom-and-pop shops - which essentially are small family-owned businesses that make up the backbone of Indonesia's economy. By providing a service that enables businesses to expand their offerings to customers and help them to deliver better service, Bukalapak is generating better business practices and encouraging the use of technology at the heart of community businesses. Tjahja says, “my team is responsible for generating demand, so most of our products 260

May 2021

are either B2C or C2C products. Essentially we match-make between suppliers and sellers so that our customers can come in and find the things they want, and we also inspire them to buy or to use things that

“ The point is that every action tells you something about a customer and demand for goods or services. And reading and analyzing data is unbelievably valuable” BIMA TJAHJA

VP OF GROWTH AND DATA, BUKALAPAK

BUKALAPAK

BIMA TJAHJA TITLE: VP OF GROWTH AND DATA COMPANY: BUKALAPAK LOCATION: INDONESIA Bima Indrajati Tjahja is a welltrained leader with expertise in Data, Growth, and strong experience in the cybersecurity-related field

they weren't using before because they had no idea of the value. This encourages them to expand their offerings to customers by providing online purchases; they could purchase online, for example, but the growth side is essentially responsible for generating demand.” Part of Tjahja’s role is also to combine online experiences with marketing. To examine customer behaviors, preferences and generate strategies, the team devises ways to market products to Bukalapak’s network of customers. “We use promotional campaigns and gamification to keep customers engaged with the platform,” he explains. “They are not really games in the ordinary sense but we create games in the purchasing experience so that clients become more engaged with the platform.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

Bima started his career as a software engineer and data scientist at Freelancer.com, Australia. Supporting his role today as an expert in Data, he previously served as the Senior Manager at the Bank of Commonwealth of Australia in Sydney to specialize himself in Fraud Technologies, including, fraud detection, money laundering, and criminal behaviors. He was awarded a Bachelor of Engineering from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT), Melbourne, Australia with honors, and currently, Bima is serving as the Vice President of Data & Growth at Bukalapak.

COMPANY NAME

A single application for the complete DevOps lifecycle DevOps tools shouldn’t create more problems than they solve. Bring your tools together in a single application for unparalleled collaboration, visibility, and development velocity with GitLab. Learn More

BUKALAPAK

“ In the West, you would simply run social media campaigns and contact influencers to get the word out. But in Indonesia, community and more specifically, community leaders are the key to doing business” BIMA TJAHJA

VP OF GROWTH AND DATA, BUKALAPAK

Following the data In terms of predictive analytics though, data is king, says Tjahja, who explains why his background in cybersecurity has stood him in good stead. “I look after performance marketing where every view and every click means something. That is very data-driven in terms of experimentation on certain things and certain behaviors. “Back in the Commonwealth Bank, I studied customer behaviors a lot. When you look at fraudsters and you examine genuine customers transacting on the platform, a lot of the detection comes down to logical consumer behavior. You can instantly recognize when a transaction is out of the norm - for example, how did someone use their credit card they have logged in in a totally different area of the city from where they last used it? “That’s an obvious example - but the point is that every action tells you something about a customer and demand for goods or services. And reading and analyzing data is unbelievably valuable.”

Bukalapak HQ in Jakarta, Indonesia

BUKALAPAK Founded in 2010, Bukalapak is an E-commerce, supply chain facilitator that matches suppliers with mom and pop enterprises and other SMEs in Indonesia. The system enables small businesses to access new products and make use of the latest convenient online services, as well as supporting enterprises in the local economy. Currently, Bukalapak partners with more than 13.5 million SMEs alongside 100 million registered users.

In fact, Tjahja is so convinced about the value of data, that he champions the use of it in every department - and wants to make sure every employee understands its value. “I always remember, in one of my past roles, I was told in no uncertain terms that there was information our senior-level staff had, that was not the concern of employees further down the ladder. I’ve always felt that attitude is incorrect. If we are all working for the same cause, it’s very important that every member of my team understand the challenges I am facing - and the company is facing. That way there is more of a chance to find solutions.” technologymagazine.com

263

BUKALAPAK

Leadership culture Nurturing an agile and flexible mentality is also essential to Tjahja, who is fully behind Bukalapak’s company philosophy of inclusion. “When it comes to hiring, first and foremost I like to have a good mix of people that are essentially smarter than me in their areas of expertise. It’s important that they know their job well so that my job is more about unlocking their potential and providing them with opportunities, rather than just directing them. If you hire people who can challenge you and push the boundaries of what they do, then you stand a much greater chance of driving innovation.” The hiring process and what TJahja looks for in his team members is also an example of making the most of Bukalapak’s human capital. “My philosophy for hiring boils down to four keywords,” he says. “Trust - I need to be able to trust my team members to carry out their work and innovate. Transparency - because everyone should be aware of what our goals are and where our challenges lie. I don’t believe in withholding information. 264

May 2021

As a leader, it's also my job to be open with my staff so that they feel they can be open with me.” Empathy for his staff is another essential part of managing a successful team. “It’s really important that your people know that you have their back when things go South. They must trust that you won’t toss them under the bus or hang them out to dry when things happen. Everyone has different challenges and difficulties in their life. It’s important to remember that.” Finally, vision is the fourth component. “Having an innovative team that can visualize and contributes to the direction of the company is so important - and must also be encouraged,” he says.

“When it comes to hiring, first and foremost I like to have a good mix of people that are essentially smarter than me in their areas of expertise” BIMA TJAHJA

VP OF GROWTH AND DATA BUKALAPAK

Bukalapak community Valuing their people is a trait that spills into the Bukalapak business model, which, despite its state-of-the-art technologybased platform, is heavily invested in its community of customers. Tjahja explains, “In Indonesia, the business culture is very different from the west. When I was in Australia, I experienced a business environment that had a lot of trust in big government institutions. “Your life is basically centered around your bank - from bills and rent to savings and financial transactions. But in Indonesia, there is a natural distrust for big corporations. The population generally is very supportive of small businesses and

communities, which is why mom and pop shops have become the lifeblood of our economy.” Tjahaj says that this unique business environment, therefore, presented several marketing challenges for Bukalapak. “In the west, you would simply run social media campaigns and contact influencers to get the word out. But in Indonesia, community and more specifically, community leaders are the key to doing business. It sounds very untechnical, but in order to reach our customers, after exploring several other avenues and realizing they weren’t going to work, we hired teams of reps to go and visit the communities we wanted to do business with. technologymagazine.com

265

BUKALAPAK

266

May 2021

BUKALAPAK

“Essentially we match-make between suppliers and sellers so that our customers can come in and find the things they want. This means they get a wider variety of products to sell, can make use of convenient online deliveries, and can offer their local customers better service” BIMA TJAHJA

VP OF GROWTH AND DATA, BUKALAPAK

“We spoke to the community leaders, people who are influential in their locales and showed them our offerings. Once they gave the products their seal of approval, other businesses in the community were keen to come on board.” With that in mind, we create many approaches in doing our business. Hence, we are not only focusing on Marketplace, but also we focus on our O2O Business, Mitra Bukalapak. These lines of business are focused on supply chain management, as our business presence is to bridge all of our users with the principal and to provide our customers with more products and services, and harness the power of technology to boost their offerings to their customers. It is this respect for small businesses that sets Bukalapak apart from other global trading platforms that have disrupted the small business layer in other countries. A marriage of partnerships Working with strategic partners as closely as they work with their community of business customers, is essential for success, explains Tjahja.

“Don't go at it alone, is another core philosophy for our business. It’s important to do our part - but we shouldn’t try to do everything. We work with a great bunch of partners - such as Microsoft and we use their services to make sure that we can do things better. “Back in the day when you talk about data platforms, people tended to just go open source and build things themselves if they needed something done. But it's counterproductive and expensive and it delays the market delivery times. So, it slows up business. By working with expert partners, we are able to make use of their vast data wealth and knowledge, without having to create something for ourselves. And that is an incredible advantage. “For example, Microsoft’s cloud platform provides a lot of our data services banking. We also rely on our tech partners with their ton of experience in the data world. So, why would we try to build our own database system when we can partner with the best? Our partners allow us to enable things to do things faster.”

technologymagazine.com

267

TUENTI ECUADOR

GROWTH THROUGH MARKET DISRUPTION WRITTEN BY: WILLIAM SMITH

268

May 2021

PRODUCED BY: CRAIG KILLINGBACK

TUENTI ECUADOR

technologymagazine.com

269

TUENTI ECUADOR

Chief Executive Officer of Tuenti Ecuador, Gerardo Suarez Napolitano, on how the company’s startup culture and COVID-19 resilience is delivering growth

erardo Suarez Napolitano is Chief Executive Officer of Tuenti Ecuador, a subsidiary of telecommunications giant Telefonica. He took the role in 2014 before it launched as a separate business unit of Telefonica in June 2015. “Tuenti was launched as a result of the company’s need to create a digital unit focusing on millennials and centennials,” says Suarez Napolitano. “We assembled a team of highly skilled young professionals with mixed backgrounds, bringing them together in a start-uplike environment.” The brand had a strong sense of purpose since the start. “Since day one, our value propositions have centered around being easy to understand, easy to purchase, and easy to use. One of our key assets was to build strong, simple, data-centric offers that add key value for our customers. That includes music through Spotify, Data roll over, Free voice chat, and an instant prize roulette when you buy a combo.” The company’s culture matches its youthful and dynamic customer base. “Ever since we launched Tuenti, we made sure that every member of our team knew exactly where we were, and most importantly where we wanted to be,” enthuses Suarez Napolitano. “Tuenti was

270

May 2021

created as a startup culture - everyone takes care of their own business and everyone must be two steps ahead of their boss.” Suarez Napolitano encapsulates that ideal in his motto: “Perfection is the enemy of progress. We strongly encourage a collaborative approach among the different teams, making it easier to receive feedback, support, and quick responses when any team member needs it.” In line with its innovative startup culture, the company’s mobile app serves as the principle gateway through which it interacts with users. “App Tuenti is the main touchpoint between the brand and our customers, with an active user base amounting to 55% of our clients,” says Suarez Napolitano.” In late 2020, the

“ PERFECTION IS THE ENEMY OF PROGRESS” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

TUENTI ECUADOR

Gerardo Suarez Napolitano technologymagazine.com

271

TUENTI ECUADOR

Discover Tuenti: Ecuador’s simple but powerful Telco solution

“ WE ASSEMBLED A TEAM OF HIGHLY SKILLED YOUNG PROFESSIONALS WITH MIXED BACKGROUNDS” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

app was relaunched with a completely redesigned user experience and interface. “This new experience tailors to our customer’s every need. Its main features include an easy to visualise product layout, a brand-new intuitive subscription model, 272

May 2021

as well as multi-functional self-care services that bring it all together.” It’s via initiatives such as the app that the company has achieved huge success in the Ecuadorian market. “We rely on four main pillars in order to successfully maintain a high-paced growth rate. Product market fit, irreverent communication, a millennial-to-millennial sales force, and a completely digital customer service. This in turn has led us to go from 0 clients in June of 2015, to an outstanding 65% CAGR, reaching 1.3 million clients a little over 5 years later - awarding us 11% of the Prepaid Market Share in Ecuador.“ Supporting its work are trusted partners such as Amdocs. “Amdocs provides us with a comprehensive cloud-based business/operations support systemas-a-service solution,” says Suarez Napolitano. “They serve as a single point of accountability, relieving Tuenti from the

TUENTI ECUADOR

need to manage complex cross-vendor integrations and ongoing operations and seamlessly scaling up to support our rapid growth.” Amdocs’ solution is the perfect match for the needs of an agile, digitalfirst brand such as Tuenti. “For example, following a major earthquake a couple of years ago, we needed to respond with free usage to support our community. Amdocs

was able to promptly implement the necessary promotions.” Like all companies worldwide, Tuenti’s operations have been affected by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Thanks to its digital basis, the company was well positioned to weather the storm. “Since before the pandemic, Tuenti’s operation model was far ahead of the industries’ technologymagazine.com

273

leads a winning digital brand, powered by Amdocs

Everything

you need

to setup and run

your digital brand in as quickly as 3 months -

with Amdocs Digital Brand Platform Learn more at amdocs.com or contact us

TUENTI ECUADOR

GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER INDUSTRY: TELECOMMUNICATIONS LOCATION: ECUADOR Gerardo Suárez Napolitano is an executive with over 25 years experience in several commercial assignments in Latin America. He worked in massive consumer product companies like Procter & Gamble in Venezuela, Argentina and Empresas Polar in Venezuela. Over the last 15 years, he has been working in the telecommunications business with Telefónica where he was Commercial Director in Venezuela, Sales Director of Telesp in Brazil and Commercial VP in Ecuador. In October 2014, he was appointed as Ecuador Tuenti CEO launching the brand in June 2015 as a separate business unit of Telefónica. Gerardo is an Industrial Engineer by UCAB - Venezuela, Finance Magister by Unimet - Venezuela and Telecom Business Master by Catalunya University in Spain.

“ WE STRIVE TO BECOME THE LEADING TELCO BRAND FOR THE YOUNGER GENERATIONS” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

EXECUTIVE BIO

standards. With flexible schedules, international relations, optional WFH days, and family fridays, we learned to collaborate in a semi-remote environment from early on. This made the new normal not seem so new to us, as we were able to quickly adapt and maintain operations at all times.” So effective has the company’s response to the pandemic been, that it plans to maintain some of the changes COVID-19 has forced. “One of our biggest

“ WITH FLEXIBLE SCHEDULES, INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, OPTIONAL WFH DAYS, AND FAMILY FRIDAYS, WE LEARNED TO COLLABORATE IN A SEMI-REMOTE ENVIRONMENT FROM EARLY ON” GERARDO SUAREZ NAPOLITANO CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, TUENTI ECUADOR

276

May 2021

TUENTI ECUADOR

2015

Year Founded

$40.3 M Revenue

Number of Staff

66%

CAGR Sustained growth between 2015 - 2020

11%

Prepaid Market Share

TUENTI ECUADOR

Tuenti Talks 29 de octubre Transformación Digital

278

May 2021

TUENTI ECUADOR

accomplishments through the pandemic was being able to quickly coordinate and transfer all of our customer service staff out of the office and into their homes. As the global crisis comes to an end, we are certain that we will not fully transition back to our office spaces, but rather follow in the footsteps of leading innovative companies with a work from anywhere model.” Looking to the future, Suarez Napolitano is clear that the company is not resting on its laurels. “There is no slowing down for Tuenti. We strive to become the leading telco brand for the younger generations, maintain our current growth rate, and strengthen our market position as the third biggest telco brand in Ecuador.” Accomplishing those ambitions requires

continuing down its customer-centric path. “We must continue to digest our customers’ needs, and prepare new and better features that best fit our client base - both during and after the pandemic.”

technologymagazine.com

279

Listen Now