Technology Magazine May 2022

May 2022 | technologymagazine.com

Technology startups INJAZAT An ‘InGenius’ Innovation Hub

SODEXO:

DIGITAL INNOVATION LEADER IN DIVERSITY, INCLUSION AND TECHNOLOGY UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS Turning Brunei into a Smart Nation

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP Serving the under-served

23 - 24 JUNE 2022 STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK, LONDON

SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY 3,000+

Participants

2

Days

4

Zones

60+

Speakers

Get tickets

Sponsor opportunities

A BizClik Media Group Event:

Watch our 2021 Showreel

Join us at TECH LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at TECH LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group TECH LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 23rd-24th June is broadcast live to the world and incorporates four zone areas of Technology & AI LIVE, Cloud & 5G LIVE, Cyber LIVE plus March8 LIVE in to one event.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

Get tickets

From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

See you on:

23 - 24 June 2022

Sponsor opportunities

Never miss an issue!

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

JOIN THE COMMUNITY

The Technology Team SENIOR EDITOR

ALEX TUCK EDITOR

CATHERINE GRAY EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

SCOTT BIRCH

PRODUCTION DIRECTORS

GEORGIA ALLEN DANIELA KIANICKOVÁ PRODUCTION MANAGERS

PHILLINE VICENTE JANE ARNETA ELLA CHADNEY

CREATIVE TEAM

OSCAR HATHAWAY SOPHIE-ANN PINNELL HECTOR PENROSE SAM HUBBARD MIMI GUNN JUSTIN SMITH REBEKAH BIRLESON JORDAN WOOD DANILO CARDOSO CALLUM HOOD VIDEO PRODUCTION MANAGER

KIERAN WAITE SAM KEMP

MOTION DESIGNER

TYLER LIVINGSTONE

DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCERS

EVELYN HUANG MARTA EUGENIO ERNEST DE NEVE THOMAS EASTERFORD DREW HARDMAN PROJECT DIRECTORS

KRIS PALMER MIKE SADR BEN MALTBY TOM VENTURO RYAN HALL

MARKETING MANAGER

DAISY SLATER

MEDIA SALES DIRECTOR

JASON WESTGATE JAMES WHITE MANAGING DIRECTOR

LEWIS VAUGHAN

CHIEF OPERATIONS OFFICER

STACY NORMAN CEO

GLEN WHITE

FOREWORD

Unearthing untold stories of tech success around the world At BizClik Media Group, we are proud to be a truly global storyteller. Our May issue takes us to some uncharted territories that include Brunei, South Africa, Thailand and Malaysia

I

n western countries, we tend to take our technology for granted.

“We look for untold stories in every corner of the planet”

Mobile phones can easily be replaced. Engineers can be summoned when Wi-Fi goes down. Laptops are affordable to many. But in certain parts of the world, where the disparity between rich and poor is greater, technological breakthroughs mean more, vastly accelerating a population’s ability to mobilise themselves and accelerate their learning; connecting them to knowledge and to business like never before.

While sometimes this can mean that certain technologies are lagging, the cultural nuances and lack of infrastructure can produce innovations that countries with more established infrastructures may not be able to achieve, and certainly not as fast.

We look for untold stories in every corner of the planet, in the hope it drives our digital community forward towards a more profitable, sustainable, betterconnected and people-powered world.

ALEX TUCK TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE IS PUBLISHED BY

alex.tuck@bizclikmedia.com

© 2022 | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

technologymagazine.com

5

CONTENTS

Our Regular Upfront Section: 14 Big Picture 16 The Brief 18 Timeline: The Internet of Behaviours: what’s next?

20 Trailblazer: Genevieve Bell 24 Five Minutes With: Jessica Nordlander

44

Digital Transformation How to strategise as a CTO

30

54

Diversity & digital innovation in the tech world

Network digitalisation accelerates industrial transformation

Sodexo

Unified National Networks

128

Enterprise IT

Preparing for quantum: next steps for enterprise

86

Cloud & Cyber

Protecting manufacturing from cyber threats

138

Make-A-Wish America Mission-critical digital transformation

96

Sinclair Broadcast Group

From local news to the developing world, Sinclair's technology serves the underserved

162

AI & Data Analytics

Fighting the great resignation with predictive analytics

In Association with:

Meet who runs the world.

TOP 100

Women

in

TECHNOLOGY

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Read now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

196

Fraport AG

Meets airport demand with digital transformation

170

G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers, Inc. Getting to the gemba with G&J pepsi-cola bottlers

184

212

Technology startups with decacorn status

at the digital frontier of customer experience

Top 10

MultiChoice

226

Children's Home Society of Florida

Facilitating elevated children’s services with technology

240 Tonik

Building Asia’s digital banking future

262

PCS Thailand

The time is now for digital transformation

274 Orbia

Advancing life around the worldwith the help of IT

290 000

Injazat

Venture Building: an ‘InGenius’ approach to innovation

000

330

Lallemand

Changing the world through microorganisms

304

atNorth Pan-Nordic

Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth DCs, on investment and growth

316

Anderson Mori & Tomotsune Full-service law firm with an exciting digital future

346

University of Malaya

Disruption, Empathy and Change: A conversation with Abu Samah

P RE SEN TS:

Discussing how to support women in STEM, build the talent pipeline and inspire the next generation of female leaders.

23rd-24th June 2022 TOBACCO DOCK - LONDON E1W 2SF

GET T I CKETS

SPONSOR OPPORTUNITIES

ED U C ATE • M OT IVAT E • E L E VAT E

Attending March 8 LIVE gives you access to three other events forming TECH LIVE LONDON FI ND OUT MORE

PART OF:

INCORPORATING:

technologymagazine.com

13

BIG PICTURE

london.msg.com

14

May 2022

MSG Sphere

Newham, London, England

MSG (Madison Square Garden) Sphere would be a next-generation venue that revolutionises the entertainment experience and brings unforgettable moments for fans – from the UK and around the world.

The Sphere would be the world’s most advanced live entertainment venue and its largest LED screen.

technologymagazine.com

15

THE BRIEF “Our culture at MultiChoice is about giving leaders the autonomy to develop their staff”

BY THE NUMBERS Players working on and innovating in quantum computing

Dr Durrel Ramrathan Senior Manager, Multichoice  READ MORE

“G&J Pepsi is a hard-working team that is deeply involved in our local communities”

40%

Startups

33%

Universities

Brian Balzer

Executive VP of Digital Technology and Business Transformation, G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers  READ MORE

“We are driven by the voice of our customers, and what they want when it comes to the maintenance of their facilities” David McGeown

Director of Transformation and Technology, PCS Thailand  READ MORE

16

May 2022

Entrust on the future of a post-quantum security landscape

In a recent industry roundtable, IT security specialists Entrust presented their findings on post-quantum security and what enterprise can expect in future Find out more about security landscape 

READ MORE

 HUAWEI Huawei’s Chief Financial Officer says the company may be emerging from a “black zone” of business disruptions due to U.S. sanctions. Huawei Technologies Ltd. reported its 2021 profit rose 75.9%

Nielsen, the media measuring company, to be acquired for US$16bn Just one week after it rejected a smaller offer, Nielsen announced it had accepted an acquisition bid of a whopping US$16bn; the company itself has an annual global revenue of around US$3.5bn.

The company, which collects viewing data, plays a big role in determining where billions in advertising dollars are spent each year.

A group of private equity investors led by Evergreen Coast Capital Corp., an affiliate of Elliott Investment Management L.P. and Brookfield Business Partners L.P., along with institutional partners, will pay $28 for each outstanding Nielsen share.

New York City-based Nielsen turned down the group’s previous offer, saying it had significantly undervalued the business.

The deal is expected to close in the second half of this year. It still needs approval from Nielsen shareholders and regulators.

 AERA Aera Technology, the Decision Intelligence company, announced it has been named a winner in the Business Intelligence Group's Artificial Intelligence Excellence Awards. Aera was recognised for its innovative Aera Decision Cloud platform  YANDEX Russian tech giant Yandex’s data harvesting has raised security concerns. Yandex, Russia’s equivalent to Google, has embedded code into apps found on mobile devices that allows information about millions of users to be sent to servers located in its home country  DIT. RUR. IPS, NOTAS Asian ride-hailing app, Grab, has recently lost its CEO, Wui Ngiap Foo, who has left the company to lead a metaverse gaming firm, Ethlas. He was Grab’s Head of Integrity and oversaw the company's identity, trust and safety functions.

W I N N E R S MAY22

L O S E R S

technologymagazine.com

17

TIMELINE THE INTERNET OF BEHAVIOURS: WHAT’S NEXT? As technology is becoming more important in the way we purchase goods, we look at the Internet of Behaviours (IoB) and where it could take us in the future IoB, an emerging strategic trend

What is IoB IoB refers to the behavioural data analysis gathered from the Internet of Things and other sources. The data can provide valuable information and insight into both the behaviour and interests of individuals. With this analysis, it is now possible to track and interpret data generated through online activities and personal behaviour.

18

May 2022

Last year, Gartner called IoB a top strategic trend for 2021 but warned that, unless IoB initiatives are designed to provide consumers with added value, the entire concept risks rejection. For it to be embedded on a larger scale, concerns about privacy and the potential invasiveness of an IoB need to be addressed.

The potential for IoB

How IoB could improve public health Many rely on the internet as a hub for health information. By mapping patterns, health companies can predict what users want from their health providers. With this data, it could then be passed on to governments and be useful in allocating budgets for public health initiatives.

How IoB has impacted the consumer industry Some big retail companies are already reaping the benefits of IoT as they streamline their inventory management.

Now, with IoB, they can improve shopping experiences and marketing strategies based on real-time data and trends in consumer behaviour. The technology can also detect suspicious behaviour and raise the alarm before anything comes to pass.

If combined with artificial intelligence (AI), the effectiveness of IoB can increase exponentially. Insights from data can be generated automatically, providing organisations with different trends and behaviours as they occur.

For wearable devices and IoB in healthcare, AI can monitor a person's activity and alert them when it's time to get moving.

4 IoB and marketing In digital marketing, IoB has already proven its worth. With data collected from different IoT devices, it becomes easier to create a finer consumer persona for a business. The technology can also enable marketers to target individuals with automated ads with personalised results.

TRAILBLAZER

A leading mind in cybernetics Genevieve Bell, Director, School of Cybernetics and 3A Institute (3Ai) at the Australian National University

D

istinguished Professor, Genevieve Bell, AO FAHA FTSE, is the Director of the School of Cybernetics and 3A Institute (3Ai) at the Australian National University, and a Vice President and a Senior Fellow in the advanced research and development labs at Intel Corporation.

Recently nominated in our Top 100 Women in Technology, Bell holds a PhD in cultural anthropology from Stanford University and is a renowned anthropologist, technologist, and futurist, having spent more than two decades in Silicon Valley.

There, she helped guide Intel's product development, as well as the company’s social science and design research capabilities, and is best known for her work at the intersection of cultural practice and technology development. An influential voice within academia, industry and government, she has a vital role in the global debates surrounding artificial intelligence and human society.

Bell is inspired by AmericanCanadian speculative fiction writer and essayist William Gibson – father

20

May 2022

Recently nominated in our

TOP 100

Women in Technology

of the cyberpunk subgenre cyberpunk – and his quote: “The future’s already here, it’s just unevenly distributed.”

Of the quote, Bell explains to dovetail.app: “It’s a lovely provocation because it means if you know how to find it, you can find the future today.”

Explaining cybernetics In her #mtpcon Digital APAC keynote, Bell explains that the term ‘cybernetics’ was coined by Norbert Wiener, a mathematician, philosopher and computer scientist, who drew inspiration from the Greek word ‘carbonates’ — a word describing the person who steers a boat. The journey that cybernetics was concerned with in 1946 (one pursued by ‘cyberneticians’) was humanity’s conquest into the digital age, as “governments, universities, and companies were all competing to take advantage of recent innovations, all over the world”, according to Bell.

In cybernetics, Bell explains that Wiener created a “world that would reflect how humans might be in control of these technical systems as they unfolded”. Bell states he “believed that, as the power of computing expanded, the world would become a whole new kind of feedback loop; not just a

Artificial intelligence is all around us ... and the future will only bring more of it. How can we ensure the AI systems we build are responsible, safe and sustainable? Ethical AI expert Genevieve Bell shares six framing questions to broaden our understanding of future technology -- and create the next generation of critical thinkers and doers.

6 big ethical questions about the future of AI | Genevieve Bell

technologymagazine.com

21

TRAILBLAZER

mechanical one, but a biomechanical one — one that would evoke computers and humans and the environment”.

On her position in the industry, Bell says: “For me, whenever I talk about the future and about technical systems, I’m hugely aware that I’m doing that in a place where humans have been making the future and making technology for at least 80,000 years.”

In this way, she illustrates a central principle of cybernetics: ‘start with the human at the centre of all of your processes’.

Understanding people and stories crucial when building technology Speaking to the New York Times, Bell says: “My mandate at Intel has always been to bring the stories of everyone outside the building inside the building — and make them count. You have to understand people to build the next generation of technology.”

In 2017, Genevieve returned to Australia and established the 3A Institute at the Australian National University in collaboration with CSIRO's

22

May 2022

Data61, with the mission of building a new branch of engineering to safely, sustainably and responsibly scale AI-enabled, cyber-physical systems.

Last year, she was appointed Director of the new School of Cybernetics at the Australian National University, which, as well as housing the 3A Institute, will build out capacity in Systems and Design.

She also presented the highly acclaimed ABC Boyer Lectures for 2017, in which she investigated what it means to be human – and Australian – in a digital world.

Other qualifications for Bell include being a member of the Prime Minister's National Science and

“humans have been making the future and making technology for at least 80,000 years”

Technology Council, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH), SRI International Engelbart Distinguished Fellow and an Officer of the Order of Australia.

Bell has co-written three books: Getting Connected, Staying Connected: Exploring South Australia's Digital Futures (2009), Divining a Digital Future: Mess and Mythology in Ubiquitous Computing (2011) and Data, Now Bigger and Better! (2015). technologymagazine.com

23

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

JESSICA NORDLANDER COO, THOUGHTEXCHANGE EXGOOGLER, MELTWATER MD AND AWARDED SWEDEN’S MOST INNOVATIVE LEADER, JESSICA IS AN ADEPT SPEAKER, A FORBES AND INC COLUMNIST AND HAS ADDRESSED EXECUTIVE MBA PROGRAMS AT TOP BUSINESS SCHOOLS INCLUDING WARWICK AND COLUMBIA.

Q. WHAT IS THOUGHTEXCHANGE?

» One of Canada’s fastest-growing

tech companies, enterprise crowdsourcing firm Thoughtexchange is an almost 100% remote-first organisation with over 150 people working from 145+ offices.

I have overall responsibility for our company operations and lead all of our internal operational functions including IT, BizOps, RevOps and legal, plus engineering and Customer Success Operations.

Q. WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?

» We have two main verticals,

US K12 school districts and large corporations. Companies like GE, SAP and Oracle/Netsuite trust us to help them involve their employees in important decisions.

Q. CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOUR CAREER HIGHLIGHTS BEFORE THOUGHTEXCHANGE?

» It was definitely being trusted with

my first international opportunity, when my previous employer, SaaS company Meltwater, transferred me from my native Sweden to lead their Dubai office that covered the Middle East and North Africa. The combination of being completely outside of my comfort zone but at the same time knowing that someone believed in me enough to let me take on such an assignment supercharged my development. It taught me that I can do hard things.

Another difficult journey that taught me a lot was when I took on my first job outside of digitally native companies 24

May 2022

“ ANOTHER DIFFICULT JOURNEY THAT TAUGHT ME A LOT WAS WHEN I TOOK ON MY FIRST JOB OUTSIDE OF DIGITALLY NATIVE COMPANIES” - as the first Chief Digital Officer at STS Education, one of the best known brands in Sweden and a global leader in cultural exchange travel. We went through a very difficult reorganisation and digital transformation journey that got me the award of “Sweden’s most innovative leader” in 2019.

Q. WHAT IS THE COMPETITIVE BUSINESS ADVANTAGE OF THOUGHTEXCHANGE?

» We have proprietary technology

that allows us to facilitate conversations between thousands of people in a way that has never been done before. It allows leaders to open up critical conversations where staff are expecting to have their voices heard and where the leader wants to tap into the intelligence of the group.

technologymagazine.com

25

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

Q. WHAT INITIALLY DREW YOU TO WORK FOR THE COMPANY?

» I stumbled across

ThoughtExchange’s one office (we are remote-first but do have an office that people can drop into in the town where our founders live) when I was on vacation. At the time, I was the Chief Digital Officer at STS and as mentioned earlier, was trying to

manage a global transformation. I felt that I had so many tools in my toolbox that helped me with the complicated parts of change, like Gantt charts and financial analysis but nothing that helped me actually understand how people felt about the changes we were proposing, and also what we had missed. Ever since the “iceberg of ignorance” conversation was started in the 80’s, all self-aware leaders have been painfully aware of their own bias and lack of access to the collective intelligence of the rest of the people in their organisation.

Q. IN TERMS OF GROWTH, WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

» We will continue our growth

journey together with the most progressive companies and leaders in North America in the next little while and then I imagine that we will start looking at the rest of the world.

We have seen double or triple digit growth every year for the last few years and I don't see any indicators of that slowing down as leaders

“ WE WILL CONTINUE OUR GROWTH JOURNEY TOGETHER WITH THE MOST PROGRESSIVE COMPANIES AND LEADERS IN NORTH AMERICA” 26

May 2022

Employee Retention Software: Attract and Retain Top Talent

Helping businesses build a culture the competition can’t keep up with using the world’s number one anti-bias enterprise discussion management platform.

continue to reinvent themselves.

Gen Z is entering the workforce right now and in a study that I read a little while ago, they consider having their ideas heard and considered as important at their workplaces as there being learning and development opportunities available. L&D is table stakes for any organisation looking to attract talent and I am certain that the ability to make your employees feel heard and tapping into that collective intelligence will be as well. technologymagazine.com

27

7 - 8 SEPT 2022

STREAMED & IN PERSON

BUSINESS DESIGN CENTRE, LONDON

SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF SUSTAINABILITY 3,000+

Participants

2

Days

3

Zones

60+

Speakers

Get tickets

Sponsor opportunities

A BizClik Media Group Event:

Watch our 2022 Showreel

Join us at SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group SUSTAINABILITY LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 7th-8th September is broadcast live to the world and incorporates three zone areas of Sustainability LIVE, B-Corp LIVE plus March8 LIVE in to one event.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

Get tickets

From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

See you on:

7 - 8 September 2022

Sponsor opportunities

WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

Diversity & digital innovation in the tech world 30

May 2022

SODEXO

technologymagazine.com

31

SODEXO

Alexandra Montgomery, Director of IT, Comfort Keepers®, Sodexo, discusses diversity, equity and inclusion, and how to become a digital innovation leader

A

s Director of IT at Comfort Keepers, Sodexo Home Care North America, Alexandra Montgomery’s efforts are focused on aligning the company’s global enterprise architecture, data and digital transformation.

“We look at it as harnessing the power of technology to truly add value and a better quality of life for our end users,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “At Sodexo, our core mission and purpose is to create a better every day for everyone, to build a better life for all. It's not only about the clients that we serve, it's rooted much deeper and truly represents how the company views its employees and partnerships as well.”

Women in technology Inspired by the concept that ‘technology offers optimism’, Montgomery’s background in sociology - which requires a person to continuously ask ‘why?’ - made her a prime candidate for the technology industry.

“Working in technology encourages people to see new possibilities, challenging what was once done to what can be done,” explains Montgomery. “I first saw a job posting to assist the IT department with traditional IT Help Desk support for a large company and looked at it as an opportunity from the beginning.”

32

May 2022

1966

Year founded

427,000

Number of employees

technologymagazine.com

33

In today’s modern organisations having a dedicated team for diversity, equity, and inclusion is more commonplace, alongside leaders committed to greater representation.

While Montgomery believes that progress has been made, she emphasises the need for such efforts to be intentional and authentic.

“In order to continue the momentum and for a culture of inclusion to exist within an organisation it needs to start with leadership and must be real and rooted in every team – not just IT,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “It’s a journey of learning and reminding others - colleagues or friends - of bias that is faced. Identifying and 34

May 2022

eliminating bias is everyone’s responsibility.

As industries evolve and firms look at implementing algorithms, organisations need to be aware of the potential for bias to creep in from AI learning that’s based on past human behaviours.”

Montgomery emphasises that mentorship is key to increasing diversity across industries. “Mentorship is critical because it creates a talent pipeline and intentional peer learning. It’s a two-way street for the mentor and mentees,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “Mentors are there to encourage and enable another person’s professional development and be a

SODEXO

ALEXANDRA MONTGOMERY TITLE: D IRECTOR OF IT, COMFORT KEEPERS LOCATION: TORONTO, ONTARIO, CANADA Alexandra Montgomery is the Director IT, Digital & Innovation North America at Sodexo, CK Franchising Inc. Alexandra supports the Home Care Segment, where she has been responsible for leading enterprise architecture, data initiatives, and other various digital transformation and innovation projects that leverage technology to enhance the lives of their clients & caregivers. Alexandra is a SoTogether Ambassador driving & supporting Sodexo’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion goals enhancing women’s individual and professional growth across the organisation. Alexandra graduated with honors from Brock University with a degree in Sociology and minor in Business Communications. In her spare time, Alexandra has a passion for mentoring girls & women early on in their career through programmes like Girls in Tech Toronto or other community initiatives to help connect them to the best opportunities.

“ Let go of perfect, say you don’t know when you don’t know” ALEXANDRA MONTGOMERY

sounding board for advice and guidance.

It's invaluable to have mentors.

“If you’re at a table where you have talent at any level and they’re not speaking up, it’s your responsibility to pause and ask for their point of view. By doing so, you’ll make people feel that much more comfortable and confident going forward, knowing their voice is appreciated.”

Montgomery continues: “The greatest and most highly motivated teams are those that are multi-disciplinary, diverse, and respectful to one another. I’m privileged and grateful to count on such amazing leaders and peers who work hard to make change happen.”

EXECUTIVE BIO

DIRECTOR OF IT AT COMFORT KEEPERS, SODEXO HOME CARE NORTH AMERICA

What if applying for a job was as simple as this ad?

It can be.

See for yourself.

Comfort Keepers (Sodexo) transforms their home care Hiring with Paradox Sodexo’s Alexandra Montgomery and Paradox’s Joshua Secrest reflect on the adoption of AI and automation in recruitment for Sodexo’s Comfort Keepers brand Born out of the desire to improve the applicant experience, the partnership with Paradox has been fundamental for Comfort Keepers in taking advantage of the opportunities in recruitment.

When your product is people, it’s really important that, throughout the experience at all levels, we are making an impact,” says Alexandra Montgomery, Director of IT at Comfort Keepers, Sodexo Home Care, North America. “So just like Alexa and Siri, we brought these personal virtual assistant solutions into our offices with the help of Paradox, but we named ours Joy.” It is this shared belief that makes Paradox the perfect partner for this project.

Joshua Secrest, Vice President of Marketing & Client Advocacy at Paradox, explains: “Our three core areas of focus are to be fast and easy to get more applicants, to automate processes to give time back to managers and teams, and to really care about the experience we are providing for our customers. It is

truly interesting to see the use of AI to supplement and support these goals.”

Paradox’s impact on Comfort Keepers’ recruitment Simply put, Montgomery says: “The differences we have seen are incredible.

At first glance, it’s the admin time and the ability to automate that have benefited our teams, but most importantly, we now have access to relevant data to pinpoint and zone in on any problems a lot quicker than we would have before with a paper process. “Paradox’s solution has changed the conversation from ‘I feel’ or ‘in my opinion’, to facts driven by data and the option to further explore the insights. And we are seeing much happier applicants because they are not only hired quicker but can complete the recruitment process on their time.”

Agreeing with Montgomery, Secrest adds: “The last couple of years have been very telling when it comes to how much staffing can impact business results. Those that are adopting and transforming fast — like Comfort Keepers — are starting to build a competitive advantage.”

Learn more

SODEXO

Innovating with technology in Home Care Under the Home Care segment within North America (Comfort Keepers), Montgomery describes the company’s dedication to research and development: “We have dedicated research, development and innovation hubs where we encourage employees to challenge existing ways of doing things.”

But innovation for Comfort Keepers doesn’t mean simply using new technology.

It is also about reviewing processes to improve the end user experiences. “In regards to data, we have embarked on our data journey and I’m lucky to work with teams who are so eager to use data to power our digital transformation and cross-sharing of information,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “Harnessing AI will allow us to automate processes, but we will only see short term gains if we do not continue to reimagine our business and redesign our operations.”

Diversity & digital innovation in the tech world

38

May 2022

SODEXO

“ Working in technology encourages people to see new possibilities, challenging what was once done to what can be done” ALEXANDRA MONTGOMERY

DIRECTOR OF IT AT COMFORT KEEPERS, SODEXO HOME CARE NORTH AMERICA

LEADERSHIP AND BUILDING A CAREER IN TECHNOLOGY What makes a good leader?

“Always keep an open door for your teams – whether that’s virtual or physical,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “Take time to build connections and celebrate wins. You are only as strong as your team, so make sure to say thank you and give kudos, they go a long way!

“One of the most important and easiest ways as a leader to ensure trust within your team is transparency; let your team know that you have their backs when they are not in the room. That you are there to support them. Each employee is unique - figure out what it is that will help make them thrive and provide your team opportunities for professional development.”

Montgomery’s best advice for someone looking to build their career “As a leader, I always ask what can I do to help

someone grow in the organisation? And what do you need from me? Your managers don’t know your goals unless you share them. Make sure it’s known and be vulnerable. Do you want to take on more responsibility? Would you like more exposure? Be intentional with your actions, take risks and find what inspires you,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “If someone is still evaluating and trying to figure out what s/he needs in the form of professional development and objective setting, that’s normal and something most people face. Don’t be shy about making those statements because you can’t assume your organisation has that insight. People have different goals. Some are very content staying in the same role, and that’s ok. But know when to speak up if an opportunity presents itself and ask for change when you need it.”

technologymagazine.com

39

SODEXO

WORKPLACE CULTURE Committed to investing in its culture, Montgomery describes it as ‘authentic’.

“Advocating for yourself is important – but so is advocating for each other,” she says.

She adds: “One of the first things that we have to do to foster culture and support women is create programmes to recognise that there is inequality.

This often starts with highlighting the different ways that people contribute to the company. There are many paths to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and overlooking some in favour of others is detrimental to employees following different paths.

“Spreading opportunities around isn’t as simple as promoting women up the corporate ladder. And it doesn’t happen by accident. It's really about working hard to nurture talent and keep doors open when someone says, ‘Hey, that interests me’.”

40

May 2022

“We believe in using forward-thinking technology solutions to improve transparency of care, reduce social isolation, and improve engagement - really harnessing the power of technology to foster connection between clients, caregivers, and family members,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “Human problems require human-catered solutions, so it is important that our partnerships are considering the needs of all users and our clients are at the heart of everything we do.”

“ At Sodexo, our core mission and purpose is to create a better every day for everyone, to build a better life” ALEXANDRA MONTGOMERY

DIRECTOR OF IT AT COMFORT KEEPERS, SODEXO HOME CARE NORTH AMERICA

One such partner for Comfort Keepers is Paradox AI. “We knew we needed to address our speed, scalability, availability and flexibility for caregiver job applicants, and we also knew that we wanted to skill up our employees in the local offices,” explains Montgomery.

She continues: “We didn’t want to burn out our office employees due to the manual administrative follow-up that happens during the recruitment process. We knew there was a better way of utilising technology that would reduce burn out and empower our employees to focus on the interview. technologymagazine.com

41

42

May 2022

SODEXO

“I love helping to solve problems, especially when it involves technology and creative solutions” ALEXANDRA MONTGOMERY

DIRECTOR OF IT AT COMFORT KEEPERS, SODEXO HOME CARE NORTH AMERICA

“This is when we came across Paradox our virtual recruiter. We can screen caregiver candidates now within seconds as opposed to days. Data has helped us understand the recruitment process and the experience that we create. In the absence of reliable data, we would never have had this visibility.

This increases both speed and accuracy in our hiring process but also leads to strategic business decisions.”

What does the future hold for Comfort Keepers At Comfort Keepers the future will be focused on automation, integrations, and improving its client experience. “We’ve built the foundation, so now it’s about turning up the volume on some of those initiatives and then, of course, the era of data continues, machine learning, and AI,” says Montgomery.

She adds: “Technology is playing a big role in the transformation and evolution of home care, this is the future and we need to embrace that.

“We are already seeing large players invest in the home care space. Industries like health care - where we were still seeing paper processes in 2020 - are now digital. I believe the industry will see rapid perception changes and the acceptance of digital tools, client centric solutions, and a big focus on the labour market.”

technologymagazine.com

43

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

HOW TO

STRATEG

Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) have a wider remit than ever before. What should CTOs be prioritising as they move through 2022 and into the future?

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

44

May 2022

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

GISEAS A

CTO

T

he role of the CTO has become vital in post-pandemic times, as technology drives transformation across every business function, bringing with it numerous operational gains, people insights and enhanced customer experiences.

With such widespread assimilation of technology, game-changing CTOs must sit alongside the CEO, and plug into the mindset required to sustain and improve profit margins, so that innovations are developed in line with the bottom line and not just ‘nice to haves’.

When asked how CEOs could work more closely with their CTOs, Mitch Berlin, Vice Chair of EY Americas Strategy and Transactions, says that digital strategy has become more of a horizontal approach: “Digital accelerators impact the entire organisation, from your finance, function, HR function all the way through production, and delivery. It's much more of a partnership between not only the CTO and the CEO, but really the CTO and all the functions, because every function can be improved through digital enhancements,” says Berlin. technologymagazine.com

45

Enabling educators.

Empowering students.

Explore how we accelerate student discovery, learning and innovation with our Digital Education 3D Experience.

EXPLORE THE 3D EXPERIENCE

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

“ The CTO needs to have a seat at the table of strategy, because they're the ones that are looking at inorganic growth or acquisitions” MITCH BERLIN

VICE CHAIR OF EY AMERICAS STRATEGY AND TRANSACTIONS

“So it's really understanding, functionby-function, what is the cutting edge technology to help you become more effective and more efficient? And then where do you want to place your bets from a capital allocation perspective?”

Berlin believes that the term ‘digital strategy’ doesn't make sense anymore, adding: “Every strategy, whether it's a

corporate strategy or a functional strategy, has to consider the use of technology in order to remain competitive. The C-suite needs to understand the technological advancements relevant to their particular part of their business, and then put the demands on the CTO, while at the same time, the CTO has to be out there as well, really understanding the cutting edge or bleeding edge for that particular type of business, and bringing that to the C-suite.

And then it's really a matter of allocating capital, in terms of where you are going to have the biggest bang,” says Berlin.

“It really comes down to how much you can spend. What is really going to make you a better competitor? So there may be great digital enhancements for your finance function, but quite frankly, those dollars technologymagazine.com

47

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

EY: CEOs will step up investment into M&A in 2022

are better spent in R&D, and look down the lifecycle because that's what's going once you've acquired and to make you a stronger integrated that asset. competitor and advance you “This means the data that commercially,” he added. comes out of that asset, how Berlin adds that to store it, safeguard it, and technology businesses, from then monetise it. Suddenly a mergers and acquisitions the CTO has become a (M&A) perspective, are being much more prominent acquired every day by nonfigure in M&A across every technology companies. organisation,” says Berlin.

According to Berlin, the CTO needs to have a seat at the Purpose-driven leadership DON SCHUERMAN CTO & VICE PRESIDENT table of strategy, because from a CTO perspective OF PRODUCT MARKETING, they're the ones that are “Many employees now PEGASYSTEMS looking at inorganic growth expect their employers or acquisitions. to fulfil a useful purpose within society “The CTO’s must partner with the CEO, and to make profit without inflicting the Chief or Head of Strategy and the environmental damage,” says Sameer Corporate Development Officer, because Vartak, CTO of Lilli, which provides there's no industry out there that's not being technology and services that enable disrupted by technology. They must ensure people with health problems to that the technology acquisition makes sense live at home.

“You need to be plugged into the entire business landscape, from the market to the buyer to the technology”

48

May 2022

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

According to Vartak, many people now want to have an impact on more than just the bottom line. For a business to succeed, the line between building value and acting on business values has never been clearer and, consequently, the importance of a CTO as a leading figure within an organisation has come into even sharper focus – particularly with technology playing such a key role in driving businesses forwards.

“While it may be easy for a CTO to focus purely on the technology, it has never been more important for them to be putting values and purpose front and centre into their strategies. For a modern CTO to be successful, they must lead by example and build a strong, purpose-driven team culture, with everyone fully unified in their passion and commitment for what they are trying to achieve as a business. With this front of mind, CTO’s will be able to positively lead their team, generate meaningful strategies that have a wider impact, and ultimately, create products and services that have the potential to make real change,” says Vartak.

According to Don Schuerman, CTO and Vice President of Product Marketing at Pegasystems, to be the best, most strategic CTO leader possible, it’s no use locking yourself away in a high, ivory tower musing on the latest cool technology dreams.

“You need to be plugged into the entire business landscape, from the market to the buyer to the technology. The best CTOs know how to connect the technology with business outcomes and be adaptable in a fiercely dynamic industry.

“Adaptability to change is a good example of this – it can either creep up on you, or hit you suddenly, and you have to be ready for both scenarios. It is essential for CTOs to understand their clients’ needs and make sure these are met by the technology, and

Are you transforming or mutating?

Patrick Tripp is SVP of Product Marketing at Cheetah Digital, who provide End-to-End Data, Marketing and Loyalty Solutions. Recent research indicates that more than nine-inten organisations now believe digital transformation is a key priority, but Tripp questions whether businesses are actually driving digital transformation, or instead suffering from ‘transformation fatigue’?

He suggests that a helpful exercise is to start by distilling the difference between ‘transforming’ and ‘mutating.’

Transform • Big vision and Common Goals • New and Improved • Agile and Robust • Efficient and Scalable Mutate • Mixed Vision and no alignment • Old and New • Clunky and Unknown • Groupthink and Rigmarole

technologymagazine.com

49

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

not be driven by the need or desire for technology itself,” says Schuerman.

Getting the right platform architecture necessary for flexibility Sandro Petterle is Chief Technology Officer at Rufus Leonard, the London-based design and technology business management consultancy, for over 30 years.

“In a world of accelerating disruption, organisations are looking for ways to rapidly create sustainable competitive advantage.

With technology enabling the efficient creation of value to customers, having the right platform architecture in place is business critical. It is the platform that

“ For a modern CTO to be successful, they must lead by example and build a strong, purpose-driven team culture” SAMEER VARTAK CTO, LILLI

50

May 2022

facilitates growth and efficiency, allowing you to more easily create new highly personalised services and expand with new partners or new channels.

“A headless, API-first, composable architecture is one way to facilitate this flexibility.

As the name suggests, a headless architecture allows you to separate the head/front-end from the body/back-end.

The benefits are well documented: it’s decoupled, composable, fast, flexible, and efficient. API-first means that your content is powered by an API, but to extend the benefit further you should split up, or compose, your functionality into separate APIs so that

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

“ When strategising, it’s beneficial to have an up-to-date knowledge of the latest tech trends as well as keeping your finger on the pulse with your Customer Success and Sales team” ALESIA BRAGA

CTO, SMARTRECRUITERS

they are independent and powered by an elastic microservices architecture.

“With a cloud-based headless, API-first architecture you benefit from agility and design freedom, the ability to choose from best-ofbreed continuously, accelerated time to market, and a faster customer experience – all while only paying for what you need. This architecture is efficient as upgrades and new features can be released

technologymagazine.com

51

“ With technology enabling the efficient creation of value to customers, having the right platform architecture in place is business critical” SANDRO PETTERLE CTO, RUFUS LEONARD

52

May 2022

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP

with less effort. Allowing you to focus on the value you want to deliver to customers, now.

Plus, building your ecosystem in independent areas means you can make your infrastructure work harder for your money.

“Although the benefits are vast, this type of architecture is not for every business.

There are three common use cases: increasing ambition, driving agility, and reducing operational costs.

Providing customers and employees with the most engaging and relevant experiences CTOs are mainly responsible for businesses’ technological visions and strategies, but according to Alesia Braga, CTO at SmartRecruiters, as tech constantly evolves, so does a CTO’s wider role.

“When strategising, it’s beneficial to have an up-to-date knowledge of the latest tech trends as well as keeping your finger on the pulse with your Customer Success and Sales team. This ensures you’re providing your customers and employees with the most engaging and relevant experiences possible.

“The experience I’ve had working for different companies and in different levels of seniority has proved to be one of the biggest advantages when leading. Looking back on similar situations, understanding what worked and what didn’t, helps drive ideas for new innovative solutions.

“The pandemic has sparked talent shortages and having the ability to identify, recruit and retain talent has never been so important. This starts at the very beginning with your Talent Acquisition team, all the way through the hiring process, onboarding, and beyond. Ensuring a cultural fit and nurturing this culture within the team are the key ingredients to success for any CTO. So, in order to be a strong leader, a CTO needs to have the ultimate team behind them,” says Braga. technologymagazine.com

53

Network digitalisa accelerates indus transformation 54

May 2022

ation strial

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY technologymagazine.com

55

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

UNN’S CFO, BERND FLACK, AND HEAD OF CONTROLLING, KELLY NGO, OUTLINE HOW THE COMPANY SUPPORTS WAWASAN 2035 THROUGH EDUCATION, INNOVATION, AND MODERNISATION

E

stablished in 2018 to support Brunei’s development, Unified National Networks (UNN) looks to develop and boost the country as it follows its WAWASAN 2035 programme for a better future.

Wholly owned by His Majesty's Government of Brunei Darussalam, UNN is recognised as a government-linked company under Darussalam Assets (DA).

Supporting an active part of business development, the finance department provides valuable information for decisionmaking, sales, operations, and reporting.

Bernd Flack, UNN’s Chief Financial Officer, explains how he supports the company’s goals: “We’re here as we want to enable the young company to deal in the regulated market they operate in, find a place in the ecosystem that relates to the Brunei region and learn how to face international competition.”

Outlining the significance of the company as it looks to support Brunei, Flack says: “UNN was formed to help support a bigger initiative conducted by the Brunei government in 2004, where they looked to set up a programme to renew and enable the country for the future. The government looked to invest in the education of its population to define its economic strategy for a dynamic and sustainable economy and make sure that the country will have the right infrastructure

56

May 2022

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

57

Empowering Bruneians to imagine, create and experience what’s next.

Making every day easier through digital platforms whether for home, work or on the move. The telco that’s best for families with innovation for business success

Learn more now! www.imagine.com.bn

How imagine promoted digitalisation in Brunei during Covid-19 Suzannawati binti Suharju, Chief Executive Officer at imagine, is at the forefront of digitalising Brunei Darussalam and making it a ‘smart nation’ Established in January 2020, imagine was formed due to a change in Brunei’s telecommunications landscape, inheriting its services from imagine’s predecessor, Telekom Brunei Berhad. Imagine’s establishment came in the wake of the pandemic, posing its own sets of challenges for a newly established organisation.

Imagine works closely with Brunei’s telecommunications network, led by the Unified National Networks (UNN), an organisation 100% wholly-owned

by His Majesty’s Government of Brunei Darussalam.

Suzannawati binti Suharju, imagine Chief Executive Officer, is on a mission to make Brunei a ‘smart nation’ and make it one of the most connected places on earth through affordable and accessible services.

“We work very closely with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Transport and Infocommunications . Our collective goal is to modernise the network and improve the customer experience. The uptake of broadband in the country has increased tremendously. One of the things that we

are actively working on is to make sure that broadband and mobile services are affordable, sustainable and accessible to all. As we have branched out into the mobile space, it is now about simplifying everyday and making it easier,” she says.

CSR pillars and driving cultural change Imagine provides free data and SIM cards to underprivileged students, and has been approaching private sector companies and the public to call for data donations through the A-Dollar-A-Cheer donation platform, via SMS and the imagine website.

They were awarded the Asean Outstanding and Social Welfare Development Award for their community work with children.

At the same time, the entire telecommunications industry was in discussions with MoE (Ministry of Education) and MoRA (Ministry of Religious Affairs) to bring in over 15,000 laptops and 1,000 dongles to supply to teachers and underprivileged students in support of e-Learning during the pandemic.

Suzanna states: “Our aspiration is to be a smart nation and there are countless small micro enterprises that can benefit from using our platform.”

Learn more

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

for growth. This programme - WAWASAN 2035 - has the incorporation of UNN as one amongst other key steps to develop its telecommunication and digital infrastructure.”

As a telecommunications company, UNN supports Brunei with its programme by enabling people in the region to navigate challenges around telecommunication services, data processing, information technology and connectivity.

“Before UNN was established, there were several telecommunications companies in operation, competing based on infrastructure.

Brunei itself is a small place, so having a lot of competition meant none of the companies could invest significantly in decent infrastructure,” explains Flack.

60

May 2022

“From this, the idea was born to set up a company that delivers infrastructure services, non-discriminatory to all the participants in the market. This means the telecommunications companies can acquire our services for the same price so there is no competition created from UNN itself,” he continues.

One key company that transitioned in the telecommunications space is Datastream Digital (DST). Formerly a full-service mobile network operator and a full mobile service provider, DST is now an asset-light, customer-focused, digital-first operator.

“DST continues to build on its digital platform and will continue to build its ecosystem to provide digital services, value and

convenience as a priority to its customers in Brunei, with a set vision to grow into the region as a digital service provider,” explains Flack.

Adding to this, Kelly Ngo, Head of Controlling – who also looks to take on the role of CFO once Flack’s assignment with UNN is over – comments: “UNN is here to unify and consolidate all the infrastructure from the existing telecommunications companies. In doing so, we get to modernise and create a more cost-efficient digital platform where we provide higher speed, better connectivity, better coverage, and better service quality. In return, the consumers get the best price and can enjoy all these perks.”

This consolidation started in September 2019, when UNN officially took over all network infrastructure operated by the existing telecommunications service providers, to deliver highly resilient, quality services to the whole nation.

Digitally enhancing Brunei with UNN’s modernisation journey

technologymagazine.com

61

“ U N N W A S F O R M E D T O H E L P S U P P O R T A BIGGER INITIATIVE CARRIED OUT BY THE BRUNEI GOVERNMENT IN 2004 WHERE THEY LOOKED TO SET UP A PROGRAMME TO RENEW AND ENABLE THE COUNTRY FOR THE FUTURE” BERND FLACK CFO, UNN

Supporting Brunei’s Telco ecosystem with modernisation As an integral element of its programmes, UNN has looked at several diverse ways to digitally enrich Brunei and improve the lives of citizens and residents. It aims to tackle challenges around economic globalisation, growth in world population and the increasing use of digital technologies that put a strain on available resources.

“The market and technology are changing, and we want to respond to that,” says Flack.

“When we look at the data business, data may be the resource that is driving business now. So, we are heavily investing in data centres and related services to make sure that we can provide a professional service to the industries,” he adds.

On top of this, UNN provides infrastructure services and invests heavily in the country’s network, among other technologies. “In the past three years, we have renewed the telecommunications systems in an immense way. When we started, the network was 2G and now it is mostly 4G-based on a highperformance mobile radio access network.

We are now preparing for the launch of 5G we have driven a huge development for the country,” comments Flack.

62

May 2022

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

technologymagazine.com

63

We Create Technologies That Drive Human Progress At Dell Technologies, we never stop pushing for better.

We’re always working to innovate, improve and advance because progress happens when you relentlessly push through every challenge – and constantly move onto the next one.

Discover More

Transforming Brunei with innovation from Dell Technologies Dell Technologies and Unified National Networks (UNN) share how their partnership is enabling innovation and transforming Brunei’s technology infrastructure Dell Technologies’ purpose is to create technologies that drive human progress. With the vision to deliver a better tomorrow, Dell Technologies is always innovating, developing technology and offering end-to-end solutions to enable its customers to move forward and go further. This Fortune 500 company is working relentlessly to support Unified National Networks (UNN) in Brunei, as it strives to modernise the country’s telecommunications network.

“Before our partnership with Dell Technologies, commercial cloud was not available in Brunei.

With Dell’s support, we are now able to deliver better and more secure virtual infrastructure to our customers. Since this partnership, our commercial department has received many interesting leads from both local entities and international customers,” says Daniele Cuocci, Senior Vice President of Data Center and IT for UNN. To support both its internal and external customers, UNN collaborated with Dell Technologies to fast-track the modernisation of their network infrastructure, in alignment with the country’s WAWASAN 2035 vision.

Anothai Wettayakorn, Vice President of Dell Technologies, Asia Emerging Markets and South Asia CSB shares how Dell played a key role in

achieving this: “UNN needed to modernise their three data centres. Our goal was to digitally transform their wide-ranging capabilities to deliver next-gen Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and 5G-enabled services.”

Adding to this, Ajit Nair, Senior Director, Dell Technologies Strategic Initiatives, Asia Pacific & Japan Channels says: “We brought an important edge over other technology players in the market with our VxRail-based VMware vSAN Stretched Cluster, enabling synchronous data replication between the data centers. We are also providing end-to-end data center solutions, including Data Protection Solutions (DPS) with simplified support processes and a single point of contact.”

Wettayakorn concludes by sharing how Dell Technologies is proud to be a trusted technology partner to UNN and is committed to supporting its technological aspirations: “Our expertise in telecom solutions and in-depth knowledge of the CSP market, along with the strength of our portfolio will help deliver the desired business outcomes for customers like UNN. Our partnership will further focus on introducing software-defined networking through VMware NSX to help in the development of next-gen UNN services. This will enable them to further scale their infrastructure to better serve their customers.”

Cyber Security— are you ready to take on the next black swan?

A cyber security landscape for 2022, barring unforeseen black swans, can be anticipated and prepared for.

With the right advice and the right cyber security partner at your side, 2022’s events may catch you by surprise, but never off your guard.

Reach out to us today at contactus@t-systems.com.

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

Bernd Flack TITLE: CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & TELECOMMUNICATION

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: BRUNEI Bernd Flack has held several high-tech Senior Executive management positions in the telecommunication and information technology sector over the past twenty years.

He is currently Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and Managing Director of Unified National Networks (UNN), the leader in telecommunications infrastructure services in Brunei Darussalam. His experience in telecommunication gained Bernd interim mandates as CFO and CEO at telecommunication providers in the Sub-Saharan region of Africa.

Prior to UNN, Bernd was CEO at T-Systems Solutions for Research, responsible for solution provisioning for research institutions in aerospace and applied research institutions.

He graduated in Economics in 1979 and Information Technology in 1988. After graduating, he qualified as a software engineer. Bernd was previously appointed Chairman of the Board of “Höchstleistungsrechner für Wissenschaft und Wirtschaft” (HWW) and represented Malawi Telecommunication Ltd. as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

technologymagazine.com

67

Imagine a world where limitless connectivity means limitless possibility.

With faster connectivity, ultra-low latency, and greater bandwidth, 5G is advancing societies, transforming industries, and dramatically enhancing, day-to-day experiences.

ericsson.com/imaginepossible

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

“UNN IS HERE TO UNIFY AND MODERNISE THE EXISTING TELECOMMUNICATION AND DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES” KELLY NGO

HEAD OF CONTROLLING, UNN

He adds: “We have also transformed the fixed network. When UNN was formed, it was in the transition phase to fibre access, with a copper network in the ground but not adequate for the services required. Initially, we maintained it, but then we started to accelerate the fibre network rollout so we could deliver higher, better bandwidth and high speeds to our customers - that is a huge achievement for the country.”

Highlighting the significance of this to the country’s WAWASAN 2035 programme, Ngo says: “One of the related objectives is also to implement an ICT transformation journey, where it will transform Brunei to progress into a more digitally integrated future. So, with that, UNN plays a vital role because we are here to provide telecommunication services and to implement a cost-efficient and modernised digital platform.”

“The initiative that looks to provide a digital platform is important. The pandemic, which affected everyone, showed that we need to become more digitised. Most business activities are now done digitally or virtually, so UNN has come in to modernise the network and improve bandwidth to ensure that people are still able to work, regardless of external factors that might challenge them,” she continues. technologymagazine.com

69

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

To further support Brunei and its businesses as the world becomes more digitalised, UNN has invested in existing buildings to create tier-level data centres in the region and is in the process of setting up new ones to ensure all the needs and demands of its customers are met.

Brunei: from 2G to 4G with UNN Still an ongoing transition, UNN’s modernisation of Brunei’s network from 2G to 4G is one of the organisation's most significant achievements to date. Now, UNN is also investing in 5G and accelerating what needs to be done to modernise the transport and core network to facilitate this.

“UNN’s mission is to offer wholesale services to both national and international clients. This means that retail service providers can focus on rolling out their own products to attract those customers interested in the packages they are offering.

Previously, they would have had to build their own infrastructure, which is not practical for the market size of Brunei. That is why UNN

“UNN PLAYS AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE FUTURE OF THE NATION, AS WE ARE THE KEY DRIVER TO TRANSFORM THE NATION TOWARDS A DIGITALISED WORLD” KELLY NGO

HEAD OF CONTROLLING, UNN

comes in to consolidate all the network infrastructure,” explains Ngo. This modernisation was key to creating the base for Brunei’s economic progression, as it gives the population faster, more reliable internet access on a more modern network.

As with any project like this, Flack explains how UNN had to adapt to meet the needs of the different areas in the country: “Although Brunei is a small place, we do have rural areas that do not, or did not, have connectivity. To tackle this, we set up a programme that takes care of this part of the country, to make sure that we can provide the same services to the rural areas. Of course, we have also looked at ways to improve connectivity in more residential areas, too.”

Additionally, the modernisation programme looked at the government, education, and health network. Coming with several challenges, UNN soon realised that, through education and development, it could give back to the country. technologymagazine.com

71

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

ACHIEVING BRUNEI'S SMART NATION GOALS This year, UNN launched a Cloud Hosting Service, Infrastructure-asa-Service (IaaS). The launch marked a milestone in Brunei’s digital transformation development and aligns with the nation’s digital transformation journey towards achieving the Smart Nation goals.

“In both initiatives, we wanted to give back to the country’s economy in several ways. When we deal with international suppliers, one requirement is that they use subcontractors located in Brunei. This gives local companies the chance to develop their business,” explains Flack.

To ensure the local companies were prepared to support UNN’s network modernisation, the company, in collaboration with universities, educated them to ensure they could effectively contribute to the projects.

“15% of our business is supported by international companies, but the remaining 85% is done by local companies. When we construct towers, we rely on local companies. When we look to connect

Creating Future Business Detecon is a trusted long-term partner of the Brunei government in building a fully functioning telecommunication ecosystem with state-of-the-art infrastructure sharing business models and modernized national infrastructure assets to enable value creation and innovation.

LEARN MORE

72

May 2022

“U NN’S MISSION IS TO OFFER WHOLESALE SERVICES TO BOTH NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CLIENTS” KELLY NGO

HEAD OF CONTROLLING, UNN

households and put new cable in the ground, that is done by local suppliers,” outlines Flack.

“This is not just company policy; this underpins our commitment to contribute to the Brunei economy and enable businesses within the community to have a sustainable economy. All those companies will gain more experience and be better positioned for it.

They are all really committed to our business, too,” he adds.

Looking at the significant number of economic benefits this modernisation has brought to Brunei, Ngo notes: “Another way this transformation has boosted the economy is through the creation of jobs. As we have created more work opportunities for local contractors, they need to get more resources to collaborate with us. Many of them have taken on more teams to help them meet the work we have awarded to them.”

Despite these economic benefits, Flack explains that there are some significant challenges around the population’s reaction to this programme: “We have, from timeto-time, faced situations where people have tried to damage the network. This not only impacts UNN, but it also impacts the customers in the country, so we work technologymagazine.com

73

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

ONE-STOP METAL SOLUTION THAT GIVES YOUR STEEL A LASTING LIFE UNIK Galvanizing has been serving the diverse needs of industries ranging from construction, oil and gas, telecommunications, and many more for over 10 years in the highly specialized field of galvanizing.

LEARN MORE

74

May 2022

“ W H E N W E CONSTRUCT TOWERS, WE RELY ON LOCAL COMPANIES. WHEN WE LOOK TO CONNECT HOUSEHOLDS AND PUT NEW CABLE IN THE GROUND, THAT IS DONE BY LOCAL SUPPLIERS” BERND FLACK CFO, UNN

together with the government to make sure these incidents can be stopped. Not only do we lose time and incur costs when this happens, but we also lose confidence from those customers that are affected. To combat this, we need to create awareness around the impact on the country if the network is damaged.”

DRIVING BRUNEI'S GROWTH UNN aims to be a pioneering digital platform, a trusted partner driving growth and innovation for all industries, supporting a skilled and unique Bruneian smart nation that is competitive and collaborating globally.

Cultivating the right partnerships for UNN’s modernisation journey Key to UNN’s modernisation journey is its long-term partnerships with external companies. With over 280 registered partners, UNN has developed a process to ensure prospective partners will be able to meet the needs and expectations when it comes to digitally enhancing Brunei. technologymagazine.com

75

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

TECH ONE GLOBAL LTD SILVER 76

May 2022

“ A N O T H E R W A Y T H I S TRANSFORMATION HAS BOOSTED THE ECONOMY IS THROUGH THE CREATION OF JOBS” BERND FLACK CFO, UNN

“Becoming UNN’s partner is related to deep knowledge and working experience.

Our partner strategy relies on at least two to three different suppliers that provide specific services to us. We investigate what their capabilities can offer us, and we try to ensure these services would fit for us over a long period of time,” explains Flack.

Among others, one significant partner is T-Systems International, which has supported UNN with its cyber security

portfolio. Keith Lim Chung Chir, Senior IT Architecture and Strategy Manager, and Head of Cyber Security, comments: “UNN is collaborating with internationally acclaimed and established service providers, like T-Systems, to tap on their knowledge, expertise, experiences, and resources to redesign and implement a strong infrastructure and cybersecurity framework suitable for a local context.”

“One such collaboration is the use of the SOAR, whereby Security Operations Centre (SOC) analysts from both UNN and T-Systems are able to plan, manage, track, and coordinate the response to incidents in real-time,” he adds.

By using the built-in live stream functionality, SOC analysts from both companies can collaborate on investigations simultaneously based on technologymagazine.com

77

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

78

May 2022

KELLY NGO TITLE: HEAD OF CONTROLLING INDUSTRY: INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY & TELECOMMUNICATION LOCATION: BRUNEI

EXECUTIVE BIO

real-time information on new or existing cases, tasks, and indicators of compromise.

Outlining another key player in UNN’s modernisation journey, Mona Chin, Cloud Infrastructure Lead, says: “Implementation of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) in UNN Data Centres is delivered by Dell Technologies.

The new hyper-converged infrastructure

by Dell and strategic partnership with VMware allowed UNN to launch our first commercial cloud service hosted in Brunei Darussalam. UNN has become the first Bruneian Certified Cloud Service Provider with Dell Technologies which enables IT transformation.”

This collaboration has enabled UNN to develop a more robust ecosystem and provided them with a multi-cloud strategy.

UNN Cloud, supported by Dell, has the capabilities to accelerate innovation to achieve the organisation's ambition to become the most advanced cloud service provider in Southeast Asia.

Kelly Ngo, as the Head of Controlling in Unified National Networks (UNN), ensures that the business stays compliant regarding all financial policies and regulations.

An experienced professional with more than 15 years in telecoms, Kelly is known for driving business, maximising operational excellence, and delivering financial performance.

Before UNN, she held management positions in Brunei’s telecom industry. Most recently, she was leading the finance department of a Bruneian Mobile Net provider.

In her capacity she successfully delivered projects, such as ERP system implementation, related to performance improvement.

Kelly holds a university degree in “Business and Finance”.

She is based in UNNs headquarter in Bandar Seri Begawan.

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

THE BEST RUN

80

May 2022

“BECOMING UNN’S PARTNER IS RELATED TO DEEP KNOWLEDGE AND WORKING EXPERIENCE” BERND FLACK CFO, UNN

With such a robust mission and vision, it comes as no surprise that UNN has a whole host of companies looking to support them as they modernise Brunei’s networks.

“Ericsson is another major strategic supplier to UNN for significant parts of the fixed and mobile core that underpins UNN’s fixed and mobile service portfolio,” explains Chris Phan, Deputy Senior Vice President of Network Strategy and Technology.

He adds: “This includes the introduction of the Ericsson IMS core to modernise UNN’s voice service infrastructure, and the introduction of Ericsson’s BSS to modernise UNN’s IT infrastructure and support the improved customer experience.”

Having supplied UNN with Microsoft licensing for internal use and cloud use, Tech One has helped the organisation achieve 100% Microsoft compliance, elevating UNN’s standing as Microsoft Solutions Provider, through Microsoft SPLA Agreement.

“Tech One is recognised for providing quality support and after-sales service, bringing value to UNN's Microsoft ecosystem. UNN has worked together with Tech One since the establishment of Enterprise Infrastructure, and we will continue to work together into future transformation,” comments Yusrin Hadi, Senior Enterprise Infrastructure and Computing Manager.

When looking for guidance and support in commercial and digital areas, UNN turns to Detecon. “Due to their broad and professional expertise, Detecon has supported some of our projects towards success – including some of the key projects: the wholesale service penalty concept, customer experience, BSS transformation, DCIT sales and services etc. This is evident technologymagazine.com

81

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

of Detecon’s commitment to knowledge transfer and support of locals in achieving a higher benchmark of excellence,” explains Kim Wah Ang, Vice President of Customer Service Management.

As previously stressed by Flack and Ngo, giving back to the economy in Brunei is essential to UNN’s mission. The organisation therefore partners with local companies such as CommVerge Solutions and UNIK Galvanizing.

Juniper Networks provides UNN with equipment for its new IP/MPLS and CG-NAT network through its partner, CommVerge Solutions. In doing so, Juniper Networks has enabled UNN to build a new 100G Core IP/ MPLS and CG-NAT network in the three data centres.

Enabling Enterprises to derive value from Advanced Data Analytics through machine learning and artificial intelligence.

82

May 2022

“ U N N I S C O L L A B O R A T I N G WITH INTERNATIONALLY

UNN IN NUMBERS:

ACCLAIMED AND

3,000km+

ESTABLISHED SERVICE

Over 3,000km of fibre

PROVIDERS”

18 fixed exchanges and 61 serving points connecting over 93,000 homes

BERND FLACK CFO, UNN

With a refreshed experience-first IP/MPLS network from Juniper, this partnership will bolster UNN’s efforts to create a modernized and efficient telecommunication backbone that will support the government’s five-year masterplan towards transforming Brunei into a Smart Nation.

Adding to this, Hamdani comments: “The new IP/MPLS network is also aggregated to 8 other exchanges (or sites), which greatly expands capacity, replaces obsolete equipment, and consolidates multiple IP/ MPLS networks.”1To ensure its network has a robust physical infrastructure to support UNN’s network roll-out and restoration, the organisation looks to UNIK Galvanizing as a major supplier. “It has provided us a constant and reliable supply of materials such as tower strengthening and poles, enabling us to perform strategic planning for our end customers and manage all stakeholders’ expectations,” says Dk Hjh Martini Pg Hj Abdul Rahman, Vice President of Delivery, Field, Rollout and Power.

As the telecom business relies heavily on its data and insights drawn out of that data, Flack explains UNN relies on its partner, GlobeOSS, and its advanced digital analytic solution: “Rich data extraction paired with the right domain knowledge and the right machine learning algorithm are a powerful combination. Various models can be used like clustering, regression,

300+

Connectivity services serving over 300 local entities Over 560 mobile base-stations carrying 4G/3G and 2G service to 90% of populated areas and connecting roads

150+

Over 150 AP locations providing nationwide WIFI

300+

More than 300 roaming partners worldwide

120%

Mobile penetration more than 120%

80%

Broadband penetration

more than 80%

technologymagazine.com

83

UNIFIED NATIONAL NETWORKS (UNN)

84

May 2022

time series, graph, deep learning, R-Script, Python scripts etc. GlobeOSS’ team builds, trains, validates, experiments, and deploys successful AI models.”

Serving all telco sales companies, UNN acts as the Bruneian provider of wholesale mobile, fixed, converged communications, and data solutions. It serves all sales companies, providing them a great connection and keeping them secure online.

Imagine – a company transformed in response to a nationwide development in the telecommunications industry - is aiming to ensure that Bruneians can maximise their options in the ways they communicate with each other and the world.

Imagine champions freedom, flexibility, simplicity and transparency through mobile, broadband, and bundled products and services. The company wants customers to have the power to stay connected in new ways and supports UNN as it helps Brunei transform.

Also key to the modernisation of the ecosystem is Progresif, one of Brunei’s most innovative telecommunications companies providing residential to enterprise-grade mobile, data, and fibre solutions to Brunei.

“Progresif wants its customers to experience the joys of a connected, inspired, and progressive life. The company is developing creative solutions, innovative pricing plans and uncompromising service to make communications easy, to give our customers the freedom to do more, learn more and achieve more,” comments Flack.

Finally, Ishajaya Technology, UNNs partner for ERP Systems, supports the company with decision making, as Flack outlines: “Jointly we are maximising operational efficiency and transparency – while building a solid foundation for future growth with Ishajaya’s solutions for automated and integrated business processes. Their services help UNN to improve decision making with real-time insights to mobilise our workforce, and more. UNN extends with Ishajayas’s support of our SAP functionalities step by step.”

With these important partners assisting UNN as it supports Brunei with its initiatives for economic growth and continuously rising living standards, Ngo is certain the company will be a key driver for the region, concluding: “UNN will be a contributor to the future of the nation because we will always be one of the key drivers to try and help the country to transform digitally and also be able to help the people, and the businesses to be able to perform their job in a more efficient and effective way.”

technologymagazine.com

85

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

86

May 2022

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

PROTECTING MANUFACTURING FROM CYBER THREATS As technologies converge and help industries scale up, Technology Magazine asks how vulnerable manufacturing is to the growing cyber threat level WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

2

022 has seen an increase in the automation of security threats, increasing risks for remote workers and bringing in more nation-state attacks on national infrastructure. With COVID forcing rapid change, cyber security transformation has unfortunately been left behind in many cases and, as technology evolves and businesses adopt new tools, organisations must now mature security strategies to guard themselves against sophisticated threats.

Cyber attacks in manufacturing on the rise Mark Cravotta is Chief Revenue Officer at Keeper Security, cyber defence specialists in zero-trust and zero-knowledge security.

According to Cravotta, over the past couple of years, the manufacturing industry has undergone a swift and significant transformation in the digitalisation of its practices. Whilst this is positive in many regards - particularly when it comes to improving the efficiency of the sector’s operations - businesses have become far more exposed to the risk of a data breach, due to an increased level of interconnectivity in a network of intelligent devices.

technologymagazine.com

87

Get reliable network coverage and security protection, fast.

A modern network must be able to respond easily, quickly and flexibly to the growing needs of today’s digital business. Must provide visibility & control of applications, users and devices on and off the network and Intelligently direct traffic across the WAN. Be scalable and automate the process to provide new innovative services.

Support IoT devices and utilize state-of-the-art technologies such as real-time analytics, ML and AI. And all these must be provided with maximum security and minimum cost.

This is the power that brings the integration of two cloud managed platforms, Cisco Meraki and Cisco Umbrella. This integration is binding together the best of breed in cloud-managed networking and Security.

cisco.com

cisco

CiscoSecure

CiscoSecure

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

“ Globally, password security issues are involved in over 80% of all data breaches” MARK CRAVOTTA

CHIEF REVENUE OFFICER, KEEPER SECURITY

“According to our 2021 UK Cybersecurity Census Report, over the last 12 months, the UK manufacturing industry has experienced, on average, 30 cyber attacks per organisation. With this number expected to rise in the coming years, IT decision makers and business leaders must prepare now to mitigate the risk of being breached and reduce the threat of global supply chains ultimately grinding to a halt.

The best way to achieve this? Cravotta believes that it's a combination of

investment and education, particularly when it comes to password and credential hygiene.

“Globally, password security issues are involved in over 80% of all data breaches and yet, three in five IT decision makers within the UK manufacturing industry don’t believe that their employees understand the cybersecurity implications of poor password hygiene. This must change, starting with awareness courses for all employees.

In addition to protecting passwords, the industry must also protect machine secrets (database credentials, API keys, digital certificates) that are embedded in applications and most software-centric environments.

Businesses within the manufacturing sector must invest in making sure that technologymagazine.com

89

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

Dell Technology’s EMEA Advisory and Cyber Lead Elizabeth Green discusses building trust in the digital economy:

Building greater trust in the digital economy

“ In the wake of a targeted, sophisticated cyberattack, air-gapping manufacturing ensures that the data most critical to resuming operations can continue” ELIZABETH GREEN

EMEA ADVISORY AND CYBER LEAD, DELL TECHNOLOGY

their defences are airtight, by identifying vulnerabilities and finding an immediate solution to them.

90

May 2022

Protection even in a catastrophic data-loss event Billions of dollars are spent each year on preventing cyber-attacks. Yet, despite significant investment, businesses still need to consider "when" and not "if" they will face an attack.

These are the thoughts of Elizabeth Green, Dell Technology’s EMEA Advisory and Cyber Lead, who believes that every organisation needs a holistic cyber resilience strategy that includes the ability to withstand and recover from such attacks, with manufacturing being no exception.

In Dell’s Global Data Protection Index, it was found that 89% of UK IT decision-makers were concerned existing data protection solutions wouldn't meet all future business challenges. A further 72% lacked confidence

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

that they could recover business-critical data in the event of a destructive cyberattack or data loss.

“Edge computing and IoT is a reality for many manufacturers and this only stands to accelerate with the rollout of 5G. The resulting amount of distributed data produced in factories, remote locations, and other manufacturing sites means that manufacturers are fast becoming 'data businesses',” said Green.

This means there are many more areas where criminals have the potential to cause damage. One of the most regularly proven methods of protecting an organisation's ability to recover from a cyber-attack is to isolate critical data and operations off the network, according to Green.

“For manufacturing, an offline, air-gapped copy of data is physically and logically isolated from the production network, protecting critical data sets from production where attacks occur. Machine learning can help identify suspicious activity, allowing the recovery of known good data,” she said.

Subsequently, manufacturers can maintain the availability of their sites, saving them from downtime and disruptions to production flow.

“In the wake of a targeted, sophisticated cyberattack; air-gapping manufacturing ensures that the data most critical to resuming operations can continue while complete recovery procedures continue.

By keeping critical operational data stored safely in cyber recovery servers, manufacturers can boot up production machines and restart production, even when hit by a catastrophic data-loss event.

“With manufacturing continuing to innovate at an exciting pace, it is essential to consider how to best safeguard, protect, and recover the business if necessary,” said Green.

What Does ‘Air Gap’ Mean?

An air gap is a security measure in which computers, computer systems or networks are not connected in any way to any other devices or networks. This is used in instances requiring airtight security without the risk of compromise or disaster.

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services “Breaches are inevitable no matter how impenetrable you believe your defences to be,” says Paul Keely, Chief Cloud Officer at Open Systems, which provides clouddelivered security solutions with managed detection and response capabilities, as well as unique integrations and ML models of the Microsoft security stack.

“Eventually, bad actors will get through your perimeter and will attempt to move laterally from system to system in search of valuable data. Fortunately, breaches can be effectively contained and their impact minimised, if you’ve taken the right precautions.

“For instance, simply having firewalls on all employees’ local machines makes it much harder for a breach to spread. Attackers will be further frustrated if your organisation follows basic cyber hygiene practices, such technologymagazine.com

91

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

as keeping security software up to date, running devices in low privilege and using multi-factor authentication,” said Keely.

The risk level is extremely high, according to Keely, without Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, which employ “comprehensive 24/7 monitoring to identify and mitigate cyber-attacks as early as possible in the cyber kill chain”.

92

May 2022

Customised malware for manufacturing Tom Kellermann is the Head of Cybersecurity Strategy at VMware, a cloud computing and virtualisation company based in California, with a revenue of US$11.77bn last year.

Kellerman states that Industrial Control Systems and the manufacturing sector are at the epicentre of a cyber insurgency: “Malware customised for manufacturing infrastructures will continue to be a hot commodity on the dark web as it has the potential to cause disruption on par with that of the Colonial Pipeline attack last year.

Beyond material losses and production downtime, there’s a ripple effect of damage on stakeholders that puts bad actors in a powerful position to claim ransom or extort an organisation,” he said.

According to Kellerman, cyberattacks will shift from being an IT problem to a supply chain - and potentially national - security risk, and the consequences of

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

“ Malware customised for manufacturing infrastructures will continue to be a hot commodity on the dark web” TOM KELLERMANN

HEAD OF CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY, VMWARE

having insecure industrial systems can be devastating.

“The status quo is no longer enough as a defence for advanced attacks. Instead, manufacturers need to prioritise vulnerability management and rapid response solutions to better prevent and stop attacks in motion, within seconds of detection.

“Manufacturers should look to adopt an approved application list alongside multifactor authentication and network firewalls.

Application control is the cornerstone

of proactive defence against destructive attacks.

So, when evaluating any application control solution, it’s important to ensure that continuous availability is front and centre and that the unique challenges associated with these systems have been considered in the design and implementation of the solution. This includes supporting legacy systems that have limited CPU resources available and ensuring CIP standards and government regulations are met,” said Kellerman.

Additional measures towards better defence Cybercriminals and nation-state backed groups alike target critical infrastructure organisations in order to cause widespread disruption of a country’s ability to operate, as well as for the financial motivations.

technologymagazine.com

93

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

“ With such high stakes, the manufacturing industry must get proactive, and act as if this is a ‘when, not if’ situation” STUART TAYLOR

SENIOR DIRECTOR, FORCEPOINT’S X-LABS

94

May 2022

INDUSTRIAL CYBER SECURITY

Distribution facilities like electrical grids or gas pipelines are often targeted as a high reward option, especially if they’re after a ransomware payout, according to Stuart Taylor, Senior Director at cybersecurity Forcepoint’s X-Labs division, who deliver modern cybersecurity by proactively safeguarding critical data and IP. Despite the great steps forward made by the manufacturing sector, like all kinds of industries in regards to digitisation and the rise of IoT, this now means operations are often much more interconnected than they once were.

“This has made for huge efficiency and management gains, but it’s also opened up more equipment and IT systems to potential targeting. Companies must remain on the defensive. To truly protect these assets, they should cut off remote access from the Internet wherever possible. If access is no longer needed, close those ports and connections.

“Air Gap-critical machinery wherever possible. Keep on top of system patching, and reinforce any existing multi-factor authentication with biometrics or additional password protection. Security providers and vendors also have a huge duty of care here, whether it’s advising organisations on steps they should be taking or offering a more aggressive backend security approach for managed services clients,” he said.

It seems that no organisation, however big or small, is immune to cyber threats, with barely a week passing by without another story of a business suffering the severe consequences of a cyber incident.

“With such high stakes, the manufacturing industry must get proactive, and act as if this is a ‘when, not if’ situation.” technologymagazine.com

95

WRITTEN BY: BLAISE HOPE PRODUCED BY: JAMES BERRY

FROM LOCAL NEWS TO TH

SINCLAIR' SERVES THE U

96

May 2022

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

HE DEVELOPING WORLD,

S TECHNOLOGY UNDERSERVED technologymagazine.com

97

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

98

May 2022

Sinclair was a key pioneer in developing NextGen Broadcast technology that is revolutionising the broadcast world, advancing a technology and sharing it where others could not

S

inclair Broadcast Group officially started as one television station in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1971.

Now it is one of the largest media providers, operating almost 200 television stations across the United States, is the largest U.S. local sports and tennis broadcast provider, and has a diversified business, including the manufacture of TV and radio transmission antennas and pioneering broadcast technology that it is bringing to the world.

Sinclair has built a reputation as a leader in broadcast technology and media evolution, serving multiple local US markets with linear and digital content, and paving the way for service to rural parts of the developing world. Its pioneering work on the NextGen Broadcast standard has made it possible for the new IP-based TV transmissions to engage with new 5G technology standards directly reaching mobile users worldwide.

“We started as one independent station that was built by Julian [Sinclair] Smith, the founder of the company. We now own or operate over 185 stations across the country in 86 markets, almost all of which are network affiliates. This includes ABC, NBC Fox, CBS, CW,” says Chris Ripley, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We cover about 40% of the country with many top local news franchises attached to each Example of one of those markets.” an image caption technologymagazine.com

99

“ Our thesis is that local news and sports are the most durable types of programming” CHRIS RIPLEY

PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

Del Parks, a veteran of the company and its President of Technology, explains how the founder started Sinclair. Julian Smith and a small group of shareholders had formed a broadcast trade school in 1958 (Commercial Radio Institute, known as CRI), the same year that he applied to build an FM radio station. Smith saw that FM radio had better quality and better signal propagation to cover markets than AM radio.

“Julian Smith started this company with an FM radio station, which he built in 1964,” says Parks. It was a big gamble. “In the

100

May 2022

United States, in the 1960s, AM radio was king, even more so than TV.” “The FM station was broadcasting in stereo when stereo pretty much didn't exist,” says Parks. “So, he built the equipment himself including consoles and multiple accessories. He was also running the technology school, which is where I met him. I started at the school in 1970 while he was building the TV station. So, some of the students pitched in and helped him build it.”

The company then built its Baltimore studio and another one in Pittsburgh in 1976, then another one in Columbus, Ohio in the 1980s. Acquisition of key stations and television groups throughout the country followed, as Sinclair grew to gain its status as a Fortune 500 company in 2021.

Five years ago, the company entered the sports broadcasting market, acquiring Tennis Channel. In 2019, the group established itself as the major regional sports program provider when it acquired the Fox Sports regional sports networks, which it rebranded as “Bally Sports.” As the largest regional sports broadcaster in the United States, Bally

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

CHRIS RIPLEY TITLE: PRESIDENT AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER COMPANY: SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP INDUSTRY: BROADCASTING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MARYLAND, US Christopher S. Ripley has served as President & Chief Executive Officer since January 2017. From April 2014 to January 2017, he served as Chief Financial Officer. Prior to Sinclair, Mr. Ripley was a managing director at UBS Investment Bank’s Global Media Group and served as head of the Los Angeles office where he managed, advised and structured various financings and merger and acquisition transactions in the broadcast and entertainment sectors. Prior to UBS, Mr. Ripley was a principal in Prime Ventures and an analyst at Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette.

Mr. Ripley graduated from the University of Western Ontario, Richard Ivey School of Business, with a Bachelor of Arts in Honors Business Administration.

technologymagazine.com

101

Linear roots, digital growth.

Your evolution starts here.

ltnglobal.com

IP technology is transforming the television industry. However, determining the best IP transmission solution is often challenging. The right IP solution needs to deliver operational consistency in content distribution while also enabling audience growth and new revenue streams.

Sinclair has always been a pioneer in adopting new technologies that elevate the viewing experience. For Sinclair, leveraging the power of IP to distribute live sports content to viewers across platforms and devices while ensuring optimized viewing quality and efficiency was critical. In addition, ATSC 3.0 and NextGen TV transform how viewers consume content bringing a host of new immersive and interactive experiences. NextGen TV also creates more complexity for media companies that have to simulcast in the current and new broadcasting standards.

Sinclair selected LTN Global’s powerful and intelligent transport network to overcome the complexities in ATSC 3.0 deployment and simplify the live stream distribution workflows.

LTN Global delivered the technology solution that met Sinclair’s business needs without compromise. The LTN transport network ensures that every single link delivers live feeds accurately, seamlessly, and with ultralow latency to any destination.

Following the successful launch of the first commercial ATSC 3.0 deployment in May 2020, LTN Global has become the preferred transport network partner for Sinclair Broadcast Group and its subsidiary, ONE Media 3.0, as the companies look to bring the most significant broadcast technology upgrade to new TV markets across the United States.

LTN Global provides the technology solutions that bring the fragmented broadcasting ecosystem together, driving the technology innovation that will revolutionize how we consume live content.

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

Sports broadcasts about 5,000 live professional baseball, hockey and basketball games annually. Sinclair is seeking the same success as the growth of its television broadcast division as it joins hands with approximately 45 US-based teams. The sports play does not stop there.

“Our thesis is that local news and sports are way more durable than entertainment programming, which has become ubiquitous, and for a smaller company like ours within the media landscape, we could carve out a niche there, and have truly exclusive content,” Ripley says. “We did that by acquiring Tennis Channel and immediately began plans for increasing its distribution. It's now going global. It operates in eight countries now, including the UK, where it launched in August 2021.”

The growth of any company isn’t accomplished alone. Over the years, Sinclair has developed a significant partner ecosystem that has allowed the company to diversify and enter new areas rapidly. Those companies have been critical to Sinclair’s success and include: Televes, Fincons Group, Saankhya Labs, Rohde & Schwartz, DigiCap, and LTN Global.

DAVID SMITH TITLE: EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN COMPANY: SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP INDUSTRY: BROADCASTING

EXECUTIVE BIO

David Smith has spent over a half century in the broadcasting business. From the beginning, he has focused on all its interrelated facets from enhancing transmission capabilities to the content distributed over the channels. His vision that "content is just digital bits" forms the company's guiding principle to enhance its video offerings and enable the future of datacasting. Building on the business founded by his father, he remains the controlling shareholder of the family enterprise turned Fortune 500 Company.

104

May 2022

“ We have people on staff that are very serious technical patent people, electrical engineers and big picture industry planners who think about all these things in an effort to drive the future value of the broadcast industry” DAVID SMITH

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

From Local News to Developing World, Sinclair’s Technology Serves the Under-Served

Competition Through Diversification and Niche Dominance By some metrics, Sinclair is relatively small within the media landscape currently dominated by tech giants like Google, Amazon, Apple, Disney, and Paramount.

However, Sinclair, through its focused strategy, is pushing a huge range of agendas focused on direct-to-consumer content delivery.

“We are a very diversified company,” says Ripley. “The three big divisions are Broadcast, the Regional Sports Networks and Tennis Channel. But we've got other assets - some broadcast-related, like an antenna manufacturer, and some wholly unrelated, like a funeral home company.

We have a basket of these other assets, which we call our investment portfolio, that amounts to about US$1.4bn.”

“We operate two data centers currently one in Seattle and one in Baltimore - but we are in the process of a major transformation.

We're moving much of our on-premises systems to the cloud,” says Parks. “The idea for centralisation really is not centralisation, it's really content sharing.” It serves as the forward-thinking growth infrastructure for all current and future content distribution.

An Entrepreneurial Mindset at Sinclair’s Core The people at Sinclair drive a constant search for market gaps and innovations. They approach the company as entrepreneurs, with visions and missions that push them to find more profitable strategies.

“I think we're entrepreneurs to the core.

If you go back and look at the history of the evolution of technology and the broadcast technologymagazine.com

105

PARTNER OF YOUR FUTURE DISCOVER MORE

UNLOCKING NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES FOR MEDIA AND BROADCAST COMPANIES Fincons Group supports Media and Broadcast companies as they transform their business models to stay ahead of the curve.

Unlock new opportunities with the power of digital transformation by teaming up with a forward-looking, proven partner.

With over 2000 employees worldwide and 39 years of experience, Fincons is an awardwinning IT family company, spread out across Europe and the US, with offices in New York, Los Angeles, and Austin.

Fincons provides a broad range of business consultancy services and solutions to various vertical sectors but stands out for its innovative drive in Media and Broadcasting, where the Group delivers Tier-1 clients solutions across the whole supply chain covering Rights Management, Programming, Data-driven production, Metadata management, Asset management, Advertising, Digital services, OTT, NextGenTV. Fincons delivers these services via a flexible Smart Shore sourcing model that combines on-site subject matter experts, such as Project Managers, Business Analysts and Solution Architects, with technical and business process experts working from the Delivery Center in Bari, Italy. All resources

are highly skilled in the latest technology and have solid technical skills on market leading solutions such as Comcast Technology Solutions, Irdeto and Mediagenix.

Always at the forefront of pioneering projects, Fincons’ offering has recently been enhanced with a new proprietary solution, AllRights, just launched at NAB Show 2022 in Las Vegas, that provides innovative and disruptive Rights Management to help media businesses face the changing and competitive market landscape by unlocking new opportunities to easily leverage their content.

Fincons is committed to innovative initiatives including the launch of HbbTV in Europe, beyond pilots and live projects on ATSC3powered solutions in the US, by following activities from the earlist phases of concept definition, design, audience engagement, through to UX optimization. Every step of the way, Fincons’ focus is on enabling new audience interaction and monetization models based on content and advertising to help broadcasters leverage their assets and remain competitive.

Come and discover more about Fincons Group and how we can help you achieve your business objectives!

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

“ We have people on staff to drive the future value of the broadcast industry” MARK AITKEN

SENIOR VP OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

industry, especially the transmission side of the equation, we're really the leader in the industry,” says David Smith, the company’s Executive Chairman.

David took the company with its couple of stations founded by his father and grew it to the titan it is today. While entrepreneurial and tech-focused, Sinclair has retained the 108

May 2022

benefits and traditions of a family company.

Smith carefully adds to that family by taking on people equally focused on an entrepreneurial vision for long-term growth and not constrained by “how things have always been done.”

Smith emphasises his approach by noting, “We have people on staff who are very serious, technical patent people, electrical engineers and big picture industry planners who think about all these things in an effort to drive the future value of the broadcast industry. This value is based on its ability to have a piece of the spectrum, through which we can deliver all different kinds of services and products to the country, to the individual, to the government, anybody who needs it. You have to think of us – the broadcast industry – as a gigantic highway.”

MARK AITKEN TITLE: SENIOR VP OF ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY COMPANY: SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP INDUSTRY: BROADCASTING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MARYLAND, US Mark A. Aitken has served as Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology since July 2011 and prior to that, he served as Director of Advanced Technology.

Aitken is responsible for representing the group’s interests in regulatory, technical and standards issues within industry-related organisations and before regulatory agencies both in the US and internationally. Mr. Aitken has been involved in the broadcast industry’s migration to advanced services since 1987, from his participation in the FCC’s Advisory Committee on Advanced Television Services to his current involvement with the Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC). Mr. Aitken was the primary architect in the formation of ONE Media, and a driver of key ATSC 3.0 breakthrough technologies.

He is a member of the NAB TV Technology Committee which is focused on the broader technical issues facing the broadcast industry. Mr. Aitken is the author of many papers dealing with innovative RF product developments, advanced

digital broadcast systems designimplementation strategies, and holds patents for various RF devices and Next Gen systems. Mark is a member of the AFCCE, IEEE and SMPTE, as well as an active participant in NAB, ATSC and other industry organisations. He is a recipient of the 2008 “Broadcasting and Cable” Technology Leadership Award, 2013 recipient of the ATSC “Bernard Lechner Outstanding Contributor Award”, 2018 awardee of “Future’s” Industry Innovator Award” and the “2018 NAB Television Engineering Achievement Award”, and serves as a member of the Board of ATSC, ATBA and Saankhya Labs.

A responsive partner for ATSC 3.0 innovation and development

For the past 20 years DigiCAP has used advanced software and clould development to make television and telecom systems easier to use, less costly, and more profitable.

DigiCaster, DigiCAP’s ATSC 3.0 air chain, was introduced in 2017 and is now deployed throughout South Korea and in half of ATSC 3.0 markets in the US.

LEARN MORE

Cultivating partnerships for the future of TV with Sinclair Sinclair’s Mark Aitken and DigiCAP’s Sang Jin Yoon on the pair’s partnership and how, together, they will make their mark in the future of TV Sinclair Broadcast Group is one of the largest and most diverse television broadcasting companies in the US. It aims to make a significant mark in the television industry with the development of ATSC 3.0 technology, which offers 4K resolution and HDR content for over-theair broadcasts.

To help with this, Sinclair recognises the need for sound, strategic partnerships.

This is why it enlisted the help of Korea-based DigiCAP, providers of digital media transport technologies, and content protection and rights management solutions.

Commenting on the partnership, Sang Jin Yoon, Senior Vice President at DigiCAP, says: “Sinclair has helped us to fire up our receiver business, which enabled us to establish a supply chain of components, as well as manufacturing, and those devices are now ‒ with the advent of COVID ‒ used for distance learning.”

“It’s been a great partnership. But, by working with DigiCAP, we’ve taken a

standard and put it into action when it comes to ATSC 3.0 technology,” adds Mark Aitken, Senior VP of Advanced Technology at Sinclair.

The significance of this technology is why DigiCAP were keen to support Sinclair as it works on ATSC 3.0., as Yoon explains: “We bring our experiences in the mobile environment to the partnership which we believe fits well with Sinclair’s direction. We developed content protection technologies for mobile devices and also streaming services; Sinclair is our first customer as we enter the broadcast market.”

Both Sinclair and DigiCAP are open to collaboration based on trial and error.

Reflecting on this, Aitken concludes: “What’s great about the relationship is that we don’t mind putting impossible problems on the table and then solving them. This flows out of our walls and into DigiCAP. In years to come, this industry will be reliant on close personal relationships built on trust, where you have the ability to ask difficult questions and work through problems.”

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

DEL PARKS TITLE: PRESIDENT OF TECHNOLOGY COMPANY: SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP INDUSTRY: BROADCASTING

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MARYLAND, US

112

Delbert R. Parks, III has served as President of Technology since March 2022, holding various operations and engineering positions with Sinclair for the last 50 years. In his current position, he provides the vision, resources and leadership to coordinate all Sinclair’s technology activities and ensure these efforts support the company’s current and future business goals. Prior to his current role, Mr. Parks was the company’s Chief Technology Officer since 2014, and Senior Vice President and Vice President of Operations and Engineering from 1996 to 2014. Mr. Parks is a SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) Fellow and is a member of the Society of Broadcast Engineers. He is on the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Area Council, Boy Scouts of America. Mr. Parks is also a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel who held various commands during his 26-year reserve career.

May 2022

Pulling an Industry into the Future with NextGen Broadcast “Historically, the television broadcast highway was essentially unusable as it relates to anything on a mobile basis whatsoever,” says Smith. “So this new standard for the United States and other parts of the world provides absolute mobility, and it is a world-class standard that will provide the broadcast industry with the opportunity to do other things that it's never been able to do, therefore really expanding the value of the broadcast industry.”

“ It is a world-class standard that will provide the broadcast industry with the opportunity to do other things that it's never been able to do” DAVID SMITH

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP technologymagazine.com

113

Ready system analyzer

Learn more

YOUR GO-TO METER FOR ATSC 3.0 SFN ROLL OUTS: REMOTE CONTROL: Full remote control and measurements

 DETAILED STLTP ANALYSIS.  SFN DRIFT MEASUREMENTS.  TRANSMITTER IDENTIFICATION (TXID).  GPS ENABLED DRIVE TESTING

MYCLOUD:

Over-the-air free updates, configuration, and measurements synchronization.

GSERTEL AND TELEVES LEAD THE ATSC 3.0 TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE As ATSC 3.0 quickly ramps up, broadcast Operators search for key partners that can swiftly develop professional tools to manage and control their DTT network site deployments. Sinclair has found in Gsertel the perfect ally when it comes to state-of-the-art portable field spectrum analyzers.

Gsertel is the measuring equipment subsidiary of Televes, a technological corporation with more than 60 years of experience designing and manufacturing broadcast distribution equipment in Europe, providing now dedicated technical support in the ATSC 3.0 roll-out in the United States.

The Gsertel Hexylon field spectrum analyzer has been chosen by Sinclair for its versatility and realtime precision on any signal measurement required.

The Gsertel engineering team´s flexibility allows for new features to be developed promptly as the ATSC 3.0 roll-out calls for new demands.

Hexylon is intended for professional users requiring advanced features and precise measurement accuracy, analysis and diagnose of TV and radio signals. Designed with the premise of an intuitive tool, Hexylon is not just a portable meter with a touch screen, but rather a new way of measuring network signals, developed on the basis of a multi-touch screen. With Hexylon, the content becomes the user interface and everything flows in an intuitive way through gestural commands.

Gsertel and Televes are fully owned subsidiaries of Televes Corporation www.gsertel.com

www.televes.com

televes.usa@televes.com (720) 379-3748

Javier Ruano Televes USA General Manager

The future of ATSC 3.0 is already here. Javier Ruano, Televes USA General Manager, is very clear on the starring role of both Gsertel and Televes in this scenario.

“We need to persevere, to continue to provide dedicated and exquisite local support and knowledge to our network Operators, and our advanced technology will take care of the rest. Good things are ahead for broadcast networks in the US and we expect to be a key partner in the ATSC 3.0 and SFN roll-out process”.

And in that near future is evolving the RCS+Gprobe tailor-made SFN monitoring solution, that can be integrated onto any ATSC 3.0 Operator NMS platform for real-time network monitoring and reporting.

Smith is talking about Sinclair's contribution to landmark innovation - ATSC 3.0, also known as NextGen Broadcast. It essentially enables broadcasting to be an integral piece of the 5G telecommunications ecosystem. The project is led by Sinclair’s Senior Vice President of Advanced Technology, Mark Aitken.

“We've invested tens of millions of dollars helping to develop the NextGen Broadcast standard, and no one else in our industry was willing to do that,” says CEO Ripley, “but that's the sort of entrepreneurial spirit and technology focus that we have, the expertise we have with guys like Mark [Aitken] and Del Parks and their teams that enabled us to do that.

116

May 2022

“It was that long-term vision, which caused us to be able to take that leap and invest in the future for which the rest of our peers had no appetite,” notes Ripley.

The technology repurposes the 6 MHz channel that television stations around the world use to transmit their signal. Developed by the Advanced Television Systems Committee - an international standards setting body - with substantial input from Sinclair ATSC 3.0 - also known as NextGen Broadcast utilises the existing infrastructure to do so much more than linear video programming to a fixed TV set in the home. Using the same “language” of the Internet - Internet Protocol or IP - broadcasters can now use their

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

“It was that long-term vision, which caused us to be able to take that leap and invest in the future for which the rest of our peers had no appetite” CHRIS RIPLEY

PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

channels to enhance traditional programming significantly, reach mobile devices for the first time, hyper-localise content and advertising, combine over-the-air content with streaming content and distribute wholly new forms of non-video data. This brings the modern, fully mobile world, to old broadcast setups using technology already in place.

“It's never been used for anything other than typically delivering network television or news or entertainment to the television in your house,” says Smith. “Now we have the ability to talk to cars, telephones, anything that's mobile, any place, anywhere in the United States and we're working toward getting the adoption of the standard into all devices, into cars and mobile devices into everything that's capable of receiving over-the-air television signals.

“The incremental value to our local TV stations by expanding to mobile viewers and targeting programming and advertising alone is worth the investment before you even get to all the new businesses created by this technology,” says Smith. “[It gives] the ability to talk to mobile devices, and being in the news business and the weather business, it gives us the ability to tell people, ‘Hey, there's a hurricane and there's a tornado. There's whatever coming in your neighborhood, get undercover’,” he says.

“We're the only ones that can do that because

we're on the ground live, real-time and have that ability to connect two devices.”

Smith says this technology can save lives from extreme weather events, hazardous spills, police emergencies or any other critical events since the broadcast tech is one-to-infinite – everyone can receive the message simultaneously with no buffering, pixelation or lost signals. The broadcast tech can’t be overloaded.

“That's what we do. We're in the business of serving everybody that isn't rich,” says Smith. “A local television station covers a radius of typically 45-50 miles. We are able to touch everybody inside that radius, which is millions and millions of people across the country. We do that every day with a new broadcast standard.

“We're going to be able to build that out, so you won't have to be sitting in your house to watch us. You'll be able to watch us everywhere you are.”

Journeying to the Technology to Connect People Mark Aitken worked for a small company, COMARK Industries, at a time in the TV industry when videotape was replacing film and the UHF spectrum was just beginning to be used by independent broadcasters. In 1979, COMARK’s founder, Richard Fiore Sr., started a partnership with technologymagazine.com

117

R&S®THU9evo PAVE THE WAY FOR SUSTAINABILITY WITH A FUTURE-READY SOLID STATE TRANSMITTER.

Designed to optimize energy efficiency & minimize maintenance cost while offering the most proven transmitter in the market, accompanied with an extensive service support that ensures seamless operations.

Learn more

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

“ You won't have to be sitting in your house to watch us. You'll be able to watch us everywhere you are” DAVID SMITH

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

David Smith and began manufacturing television transmitters. Those were the old analog days when people just had a square box monitor in their living rooms to watch a linear TV programme. The world changed in 1995 when the United States began converting from analog to digital broadcasting - the so-called ATSC 1.0 standard. Suddenly, we had the promise and flexibility of a digital standard. But how best to exploit it?

“It made great HD pictures, but there's more than pictures in the minds of entrepreneurs and what you can do with the spectrum,” says Aitken. “We were already thinking about - how do we get into these small devices? How do we address a population of devices besides the TV set in the living room? Cell phones were around, people were now communicating, holding conversations and beginning on a personal level to communicate and flinging data to one another.”

After several years of trying to get the US to accept the European digital standard as an alternative to the more limited US version, Sinclair saw its attempts fail due to political factors, industry alignment, and a lack of vision.

“The vision of TV broadcasters was always about better TV, better pictures, better technologymagazine.com

119

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

sound. So if your vision is better pictures, better sound then HDTV is king and you view the world one way,” says Aitken.

“If you're trying to address a universe of devices that don't yet exist, you have a very different view of the world.”

The company has continued to focus on a more robust digital standard that would enable this future vision. Sinclair pushed the industry to develop and adopt a new standard. That became the new ATSC 3.0 standard and was officially approved by the Federal Communications Commission in 2017. Ripley notes that the existing TV standard is not nearly as efficient as the new one. The new tech, making use of the one-to-many efficiency of IP broadcasting, is more advantageous than the oneto-one distribution of the traditional broadband business. And importantly, the new IP-based standard can do so much more than just TV programming.

“When you think about it, the best use cases are data that a lot of people want,” says Ripley. “Video is a good example of that because a lot of people watch the same videos. But then cars need a lot of information on a regular basis, especially as they become more autonomous and they generally need the same information, especially in a certain geography. So it's way more efficient to send it out once to all devices as opposed to one-to-one to every device.

“On top of that, in terms of just the spectral efficiency and ability to be received below noise levels, the technical performance of the NextGen standard versus any sort of multicast mode in 5G, demonstrates it has a much much greater spectral efficiency.”

“An example of that is LTE Multimedia Broadcast Multicast Service (MBMS), 120

May 2022

technologymagazine.com

121

MULTIPLY YOUR NETWORK CAPACITY WITH

DIRECT TO MOBILE BROADCAST

Saankhya Labs 5G Broadcast is an innovative broadcast based datacast solution that enables the broadcast of content to various devices including mobile devices. Saankhya’s solutions include transmitters, receiver devices and an intelligent data distribution software.

The data transmission innovation enables ubiquitous coverage of broadcast signal that can be received on mobile devices powered by Saankhya’s multi standard receiver chipsets which supports the latest ATSC3.0 broadcast standard.

GET CONNECTED

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

“ We've always leveraged our size and our editorial strength to deliver a service to the people that we serve, and technology is extremely important to that” CHRIS RIPLEY

PRESIDENT & CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

which not many carriers use, but it is available in normal cellular. These types of unicast services have a huge data overhead compared to ATSC Broadcast. That means if you're using LTE MBMS, you are only able to use a fraction of your bandwidth to actually carry the data.”

Sinclair plans to provide a hybrid experience combining NextGen Broadcast and traditional broadband delivery technology in one seamless experience.

“At least from an entertainment perspective and from a content perspective, that's going to be the main mode of operation and then having to be available on a direct consumer basis is a big push for us,” says Ripley. “Gamification is also another big push.

We believe in the convergence of media and gaming. So think video gaming, but also sports betting, I think social gaming is all merging and we want to be on the forefront of that trend.”

Acceleration of Industry in the Most Underserved Areas A couple of decades ago, newspapers kept local government in check, but the landscape is different now as local newspapers have declined. Sinclair considers itself the heir of that legacy.

“What we do in local news is very important, and that then transcends into digital, into our websites, into our mobile apps and then extending that out to regions,” Ripley says. “We've always leveraged our size and our editorial strength to deliver a service to the people that we serve, and technology is extremely important to that.” technologymagazine.com

123

The company believes NextGen Broadcast will allow them to be even more focused on delivering more local news to local communities.

“It's leveraging all our local TV station assets: local programming and local news with reporting “boots on the ground” on a nationwide basis,” says Aitken. “We're ideally positioned to leverage those assets that are going into local news and bringing those all together.

“Newspapers are suffering and failing in large quantities by virtue of the fact that they're still doing what they did a hundred years ago, that's just a fundamental design problem. They haven't adapted to the marketplace,” says Smith.

“This new technology will allow the broadcast industry to do essentially the same thing as everybody else from a delivery perspective. And remember: there's nobody that does what we do in the marketplace. Local television is the primary source of all news in the marketplace because we're live in real-time delivering everything that's going on, that's relevant in our view to the people. That's what we do.”

This technology, instead of implanting several million separately addresses phone numbers in cars or other gadgets, allows information to be distributed straight to a device without needing separate phone numbers, relying on IP addressing instead.

Sinclair, through its ONE Media division and Indian partner Saankhya Labs, is involved in proving out this NextGen Broadcast technology in India. “That's one of the focuses of this trial that we have in Bangalore. The wireless carriers are very interested in this one-to-many offload feature because their networks are so congested. And so they can do a seamless offload from a cellular unicast network to an NextGen 5G broadcast network,” says Ripley.

124

May 2022

“From a consumer perspective, you don't know that you've switched networks, but now all of a sudden you're offloaded from a one-to-one network in 4G or 5G to a oneto-many network in broadcast land using a different piece of the spectrum that's low-band, generally in the 600-700 MHz range. It's a nice complement in terms of offloading data types, where there's a lot of people who want the same thing.”

The alternative distribution system is well received in India where hundreds of millions of people have little to

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

“There's nobody that does what we do in the marketplace.

Local television is the primary source of all news in the marketplace” DAVID SMITH

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

technologymagazine.com

125

SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

“ This technology will be universal.

The only issue is what day and how fast, that's all” DAVID SMITH

EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, SINCLAIR BROADCAST GROUP

126

May 2022

no connectivity. It goes through the broadcasters as the company puts transmitters on cell towers.

“This solution [was used] for things like e-learning, obviously video consumption, which is really big on mobile devices in India. This is a really powerful technology that can be way more efficient and costeffective,” Ripley says. “It's being tested in big cities, too, where congestion on mobile networks is really the target, but then you get out into the rural areas where you've got a lot of people that really have very, very poor service to the internet.”

The technology enables a population of a billion-plus users to access the same or similar content broadcast at a lower cost.

“That's a big drive over the next 12 to 18 months and it also fits in with this wireless technology because it will open up new ways to use the wireless technology. Most of our business today is done through other people's distribution points,” says Ripley. “We distribute our local sports through pay-TV – through cable and satellite – and we do over-the-air.

But only 15-20% of the people actually use the over-the-air signal. They generally get it retransmitted through cable and satellite.

“NextGen Broadcast will get to over 75% of the country [USA] by the end of this year. Approximately 5 million TVs will be sold in the US this year that are NextGen ready. And then we've got all this activity in other countries like India, where we're doing a huge trial in Bangalore with the local public broadcaster there.

“We hope to get into mobile devices as this market matures. Then you've got Jamaica, Brazil and Korea, which are actually looking at rolling out mobility within the 5G Broadcast deployment, so there's a lot going on internationally that we help support. Domestically, we've sort of hit escape velocity on this technology.

The next stop for the speeding technology is mobile devices and personal devices here in the US.” NextGen Broadcast is on the road to becoming the premier global digital standard. It has significant advantages over the European, Japanese and Chinese standards and is compelling as countries like Brazil and India look to upgrade their content distribution technologies.

“It is set to become a significant global standard – probably not every country, but large, significant countries will adopt this standard because it is a much more efficient use of the spectrum, it is all IP-based, it unlocks the spectrum from a mobility perspective and it has massive cost advantages over traditional cellular networks you can imagine coming down the pipe and that really helps the underserved,” says Parks.

“This technology will be universal. The only issue is what day and how fast, that's all,” Smith says.

technologymagazine.com

127

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

PREPARING QUANTUM NEXT STE FOR ENTERP

128

May 2022

G FOR M: EPS PRISE Quantum adoption is closer to reality than we think. What should IT leaders be doing to prepare their organisations for these new capabilities?

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

I

nvestment in quantum technologies will grow from US$412mn in 2020 to US$8.6bn by 2027, according to research firm IDC. Organisations that get started now will have a significant competitive advantage over those that continue to wait until quantum computing is a proven technology.

Nevertheless, the complexity of quantum hardware and software development are forcing organisations to invest significantly in elite quantum expertise just to explore quantum-possible use cases for their potential business value.

Gordon Davey is Cloud Services (Microsoft) General Manager at SoftwareONE, a leading global provider of end-to-end software and cloud technology solutions.

Davies said: “Quantum technologies within enterprises are expected to take off over the next five years, with forecasts estimating that the market will eventually be worth anywhere between $500mn to $29bn, according to IBM. The development of quantum computing is speeding up, and technology firms are partnering up with businesses to work on bringing out the first commercial applications.

A great example of this is Goldman Sachs, who recently assembled a ‘full team dedicated to quantum computing’, and JP Morgan, who is now looking to implement the use of quantum computers as well.

Additionally, Willis Tower Watson has also partnered up with Microsoft to develop the potential of quantum computing.”

Computing at the speed of light Richard Murray is Co-Founder and CEO at Orca Computers. According to Murray, today’s computers and data centre architectures have enabled the current digital revolution, which has impacted – and continues to impact – all industrial sectors. technologymagazine.com

129

ADVERT PAGE MEDIA SALE

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

“ It’s clear that pioneers like Psiquantum will have universal quantum computers available in a few years” DAVID WILLIAMS FOUNDER & CEO, ARQIT

“As Artificial Intelligence technology continues to develop, autonomous robotic control and manufacturing will increase the volume of data collected, which will require faster processing to deliver real time insights to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of industry. This will be the next digital revolution and will require a different approach to computing moving away from traditional architectures,” says Murray.

“Quantum computing is described as a revolution in the future of computing.

Put practically, quantum computers allow the growth and scaling of computational power: pressing on beyond Moore’s law, with the potential for significantly less energy consumption,” said Murray.

The single photon or ‘photonic’ approach to quantum computing – as is being pioneered by London based quantum company ORCA computing – has its own set of advantages. Not only are the systems computationally very fast (being powered by light), they also operate at room temperature, and so ORCA’s systems can be built without cryogenic cooling systems - the challenging and expensive ‘golden chandelierlike’ infrastructure, which is otherwise synonymous with quantum computing. technologymagazine.com

131

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

QCI FRAMEWORK A straightforward path to quantum

PHASE 1

PHASE 2

Identify Expectations

Explore Quantum Option

• Goals • Needs • PoC process

• QPU hardware • Quantum-ready classical • Software development • Compare to Qatalyst or other ready-to-run quantum software

Evaluate Current

• Applications • Use Cases • New Opportunities

Define Quantum Opportunities

Define Quantum Infrastructure

Accelerating and Simplifying Quantum Exploration: Expertise and ready-to-run Quantum systems

132

May 2022

PHASE 3

PHASE 4

Quantum Testing

Initial Quantum

• Evaluate hybrid • Evaluate pure quantum • Evaluate quantum classical • Tune problems • Tune problems • Identify plan and first production steps

• 1st hybrid runs • Pure quantum runs (if practical) • ID potential for quantum advantage / value

1st use cases

Measure Quantum Potential

Appropriate uses cases applied to best approach

First Production Quantum Results

technologymagazine.com

133

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

Quantum Computers, Explained With Quantum Physics

Accessibility is part of their philosophy at Orca, with a number of libraries and tools that allow nonquantum specialists to explore and include quantum subroutines into machine learning code.

“We’re preparing to take advantage of the step change in computer power which will become available to solve some of the world’s most important problems,” said Murray.

“Organisations need to future-proof their data by protecting it now”

David Williams is Founder & CEO at Arqit, who supply a unique quantum encryption Platform-as-a-Service that makes the communications links of any networked device secure against current and future forms of attack – even from a quantum computer.

ANDREW SHIELDS Prior to this, David was HEAD OF THE QUANTUM the co-founder and CEO of TECHNOLOGY DIVISION, Avanti, a start-up company TOSHIBA EUROPE that pioneered the use of Ka band satcoms to deploy a fleet of fourLegacy encryption is no high throughput geostationary telecom longer fit for purpose satellites, serving EMEA. The company Quantum is being hailed for the added counted the British Government as its security it could bring to networks. This would largest customer, for very high resilience, be achieved through quantum encryption, high security communications services. which could potentially prove unbreakable, “Legacy encryption is no longer fit for even from other quantum computers. purpose. The quantum threat greatly 134

May 2022

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

accentuates this. It is clear that pioneers like Psiquantum will have universal quantum computers available in a few years.

“Most solutions brought forward are flawed. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has confirmed that the PQAs (post-quantum algorithms) they have been studying are ‘not a suitable drop-in replacement’ for RSA (RivestShamir-Adleman – an algorithm used by modern computers to encrypt and decrypt messages), with all implying huge disruption. One of the three shortlisted algorithms, Rainbow, has already been demonstrated to be non-secure. QKD (quantum key distribution) is impractical and not secure at scale,” said Williams.

The only method of encryption that is demonstrably secure and already standardised is symmetric encryption, according to Williams.

“The world should focus on how to use symmetric encryption in new ways,” he said.

Quantum security a vital part of the new economy The arrival of quantum computers will make quantum security a vital part of the new economy, according to Andrew Shields, Head of the Quantum Technology Division at Toshiba Europe.

“Even though we may still be a handful of years away from quantum computers entering the mainstream, hackers are already using scraping and harvesting techniques to gather encrypted data that they’ll be able to break into once they gain access to the power of a quantum computer. This means that organisations need to future-proof their data by protecting it now, especially if it’s information that remains sensitive for a long time, such as genomic or financial data,” said Shields.

“The future of this technology is truly exciting” RICHARD HOPKINS

FELLOW OF THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF ENGINEERING AND AN IBM DISTINGUISHED ENGINEER

What is quantum computing and why is it appealing?

“Today’s classical computers manipulate individual bits, which store information as binary 0 and 1 states. Quantum computers tap into quantum mechanical phenomena to manipulate information. To do this, they rely on quantum bits, or qubits. Unlike a bit that must be a 0 or a 1, a qubit can be in a combination of states. Researchers have shown that these complex states potentially give quantum computers a unique capability to be able to speed up or solve certain problems that conventional computers cannot handle.”

Richard Hopkins, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and IBM Distinguished Engineer

technologymagazine.com

135

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

Shields does, however, believe in the commercial viability of Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) technology for organisations and governments to build quantum-secured networks.

“QKD harnesses the properties of photons to generate and distribute secret keys needed for cryptographic applications, but until recently faced several challenges that prevented it from effective real-world deployment. Now though, systems such as

Path2Quantum (P2Q) framework “Enterprise leaders acknowledge they must address quantum computing’s promise to disrupt for fear of falling behind their competition, but are concerned about the large time/cost investment, as well as hardware vendor lock-in. Our path to quantum framework empowers organisations with a simple and straightforward path to explore quantum value with low risk and investment.” - Robert Liscouski, CEO of Quantum Computing Inc.

136

May 2022

Toshiba’s have been refined to overcome stumbling blocks to the technology through innovative capabilities such as high key rates, longer transmission lengths, multiplexing and active stabilisation,” he said.

QKD deployments are already being seen across the world, particularly in sectors regularly handling highly sensitive information – such as smart manufacturing, healthcare and finance.

“Such organisations recognise the potential scale of the quantum security threat and are acting now to combat it.

What’s crucial is that other industries followsuit, and quickly,” said Shields.

Quantum pioneers, IBM, leading the charge for widespread adoption Richard Hopkins is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an IBM Distinguished Engineer. He maintains that quantum computing is not an easy skill to learn, so the barriers of entry should be lowered to enable as many people around the world to access these new techniques.

“I’m very proud that IBM decided to use open-source and open access to build the ecosystem of developers, scientists, educators and professionals that are needed across different industries to be ready for this next generation of computing,” said Hopkins.

In 2016, to accomplish global adoption, IBM was the first company to put a quantum computer on the cloud. The IBM Quantum Experience has since built up an active community of more than 400,000 users who run more than 4 billion quantum circuits (the quantum equivalent of running a conventional program) per day, on real hardware and simulators.

In 2017, IBM was the first company to offer commercial universal quantum computing

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION

“ We’re preparing to take advantage of the step change in computer power that will become available to solve some of the world’s most important problems” RICHARD MURRAY

CO-FOUNDER AND CEO, ORCA COMPUTERS

systems via the IBM Quantum Network.

The Network now includes more than 175 organisations, including Fortune 500s, startups, research labs and education institutions.

Together, members of the IBM Quantum Network and IBM quantum experts are researching and exploring how quantum will help a variety of industries and disciplines – including finance, chemistry, and artificial

intelligence, among many others.

“The future of this technology is truly exciting – it’s likely that, by 2023, we’ll see applications of quantum computing that will solve practical problems better than classical computers. We call this Quantum Advantage,” said Hopkins.

The Quantum Accelerator programme, announced at the end of 2021, is where IBM’s specialised quantum industry consultants and researchers are working with major corporations on a threeyear plan.

“The programme builds the skills and experience they will need and identifies initial use cases that could lead to commercial advantage. We expect to announce some household names joining it soon!” said Hopkins.

technologymagazine.com

137

Missioncritical digita transformatio WRITTEN BY: JESS GIBSON

138

May 2022

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

I wish to meet a unicorn Charlotte 5 hematologic disorder

al on technologymagazine.com

139

I wish to have adaptive ski equipment Piper 7 nervous system disorder

140

May 2022

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

Teresa Duran describes the exciting digital developments, partnerships, and culture shifts marching the Make-A-Wish America mission forward

S

ince the onset of the pandemic two years ago, it seems as though every company — big or small — has had to radically overhaul its business to stay on top of the game. This means that you’ve likely heard the phrase ‘digital transformation’ bandied around a lot recently.

The phrase describes a period of change focused on developing and using technology within an organisation, streamlining processes, speeding up responses, and enhancing capabilities. This is the exact process currently underway at the 59 individual US chapters that collectively form the nonprofit Make-A-Wish America.

Whether partnering with tech companies to improve provisions for clients and consumers or expanding existing departments and leadership teams to develop full-stack, in-house tech, different companies are navigating their digital transformation journeys according to what they need to succeed.

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

142

May 2022

“ Make-AWish is going through the largest business transformation in its history — and for me, that's my sweet spot” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

For Make-A-Wish America’s well-versed Chief Information Officer (CIO), Teresa Duran, this process is nothing new, and rather than filling her with trepidation, the challenge instead invigorates her.

“This is my third time leading a complex technology department. And when an opening arrived at Make-A-Wish, I was extremely excited to join,” Duran smiles, her genuine enthusiasm palpable. “Number one, the inspiring Make-A-Wish mission itself. Number two, because Make-AWish is going through the largest business transformation in its history — and for me, that's my sweet spot. I am very passionate about technology and how it will enable any company to reach new heights.”

Today, we see the beginnings of this flourishing, symbiotic partnership: Teresa Duran’s experience, skill, and strategic prowess being utilised by one of the foremost charitable organisations in the world, while Make-A-Wish America is, in turn, providing a meaty challenge worthy of Duran’s talent.

TERESA DURAN TITLE: CIO INDUSTRY: NONPROFIT, CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION LOCATION: SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, UNITED STATES Teresa Duran is a 3x CIO, recognised for advising and leading companies through transformational change and modernisation efforts across corporate and nonprofit sectors. At Make-A-Wish, she is responsible for all technology services, including emerging technologies, business applications, product innovation, infrastructure engineering, communication services, product development, data warehousing, security, and risk management.

technologymagazine.com

EXECUTIVE BIO

COMPANY: MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

143

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

“ These wishes give children and their families a sense of hope” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

I wish to meet monkeys Xavier 5 kidney transplant

A mission that is worth fighting and fundraising for Because so many people are aware of the existence and purpose of Make-A-Wish, it almost feels as though the organisation has always been leading the way with its noble cause. Make-A-Wish, however, is only 40 years old, and it has a heart-warming origin story that demonstrates the simplicity of the organisation’s message and aims.

The inspiration for the children’s charity struck in 1980 with 7-year-old Christopher Greicius in Phoenix, Arizona, who was bravely battling leukaemia. Learning of his dream to one day be a police officer, his community came together and granted him his wish for the day.

“A handful of people were involved in thinking about making this child's wish come true and then created this whole

experience around it. Afterward, they talked about how to fund something that would enable this for more kids,” Duran explains. “So, our mission is to create lifechanging wishes for children with critical illnesses. And the biggest misconception about our mission is that it’s a child’s last wish, when in fact, the wish experience can be a game-changer and an important part of the healing process for wish kids.

technologymagazine.com

145

MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA IN NUMBERS:

42

years old National Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona

59

chapters across the US

1:3

For every wish granted, there are 3 more wishes that need financial support

15

wishes granted per day

20

Every 20 minutes, a child is diagnosed with a critical illness

146

May 2022

I wish to be a professional gymnast Avary 7 leukemia

Children do not need to have a terminal prognosis to be eligible for a wish. Most of the children survive and thrive past their illness.”

While this fact may surprise some, there’s a reason behind fulfilling the wishes of children battling a critical illness who go on to lead full and happy lives, as well as those who receive an end-of-life-prognosis.

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

“These wishes give children and their families a sense of hope. It’s wonderful to hear repeatedly how these life-changing wishes help them through that difficult time and how it’s helped children accept their treatment processes and provide an escape for the entire family.”

“Chris’ wish sparked the energy around this beautiful mission,” says Duran.

Creating cohesive, centralised chapter technology to stay true to the mission When it comes to Make-A-Wish America’s digital transformation, Duran emphasises the importance of developing a cohesive, standardised, and centralised system capable of managing the entire fundraising and wish-granting processes for the different US chapters. technologymagazine.com

147

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA “We currently support and serve 59 different chapters around the US, and our systems and processes are extremely fragmented — there are 59 different ways to manage our information. And we're on very antiquated technology that is not mobilefriendly,” says Duran.

Make-A-Wish America's digital transformation aims to resolve these issues and develop a centralised system to manage data and analytics related to the overall wish journey. Luckily, the organisation has the very experienced Duran to guide the process.

“Leading that modernisation effort is something that I've not only done many times before, but I also know what it looks like on the other side — how digital transformation enables the growth of the organisation,” she says. “At Make-A-Wish, what I'm most excited about is being able to do this for such a meaningful mission.”

Duran continues: “We work closely with the chapters to provide a sense of equity

whenever we can. We don't just grant the wishes — there's a whole process around it that we build. And a lot goes into making those wishes happen, particularly regarding the 24,000 volunteers across the US, without whom we could not continue this mission.

The reach that we have and the level of commitment in our communities are both pretty incredible — this transformation process is really about enhancing and leveraging those aspects and the ability to work together to strengthen our relationships with our donors and wish families.”

What is it that stimulates these sorts of changes and makes them successful?

“Another thing I love about MakeA-Wish is its people-first culture.

Everything is about what we do for our mission, what we do for our wish kids, and what we do for our employees.”

“One of the reasons I am so energised to be here is to focus on prioritising our

This Is Make-A-Wish®

148

May 2022

“ That special case really sparked the energy around this beautiful mission” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

I wish to have an outdoor experience Sabrina 5 leukemia

technologymagazine.com

149

1980 1980: Chris Greicius’ wish to be a police officer is granted.

His wish inspires the creation of Make-A-Wish

1981: First official wish granted to Frank ‘Bopsy’ Salazar Story in NBC Magazine leads to formation of multiple US chapters

1983: Make-A-Wish Foundation of America is incorporated First presidential wish granted by President Reagan

1988: International awareness of the foundation’s mission is raised

1993: Make-A-Wish International formed

2000

1985: Chapter expansion across the US

1990 1990: Make-A-Wish’s 10th birthday - 10,000 wishes granted so far

1996: The Make-A-Wish America website, wish.org, goes live

2000: Wishbone logo is changed to a swirl and star logo

2010 2018: Brand refresh unveiled

2020: 40th anniversary of the first wish

150

May 2022

2020

2010: First World Wish Day is celebrated around the world.

Over 198,000 wishes granted

2022: Introduction of Make-A-Wish America’s digital platform, Galaxy

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

“ Galaxy is a way for us to reach new heights, taking our 59 disparate systems and bringing them into one enterprise system” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

strategy and making sure that we are providing flexibility to our colleagues. Our national office is 100% remote, and we offer flexible schedules to suit individual lifestyles because it's not just about attracting talent, it's about retaining it,” continues Duran.

“I also really can't speak more highly of our CEO, Richard Davis, and our employees, from the talented Technology department to our National and Chapter employees dedicated to the success of Galaxy.

These business and digital transformations are a significant undertaking and are more successful if you have a strong leadership team and culture.”

Developing a digital innovation framework Part of the nonprofit's modernisation process has been creating digital technology unique to Make-A-Wish America – the Galaxy platform – which aims to expand the scope and ability of the organisation to generate donations.

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

I wish to go on a Los Angeles food tour Joshua 12 leukemia

“These business and digital transformations are a significant undertaking and are more successful if you have a strong leadership team and culture” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

152

May 2022

Make-A-Wish America: mission-critical digital transformation

technologymagazine.com

153

Harnessing technology to make wishes a reality.

Microsoft Tech for Social Impact and Microsoft Surface are proud to help Make-A-Wish use technology to fulfill its mission of granting life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses.

Learn More

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

“Galaxy is a way for us to reach new heights, taking our 59 disparate systems and bringing them into one enterprise system — it's just helping us find ways to have this connected vision. The Galaxy initiative includes adopting Salesforce to increase collaboration, fundraising, and revenue to grant more wishes,” says Duran.

Change is always tricky when it comes to embedded systems at decades-old organisations. “I've done this many times, so I can give not just a sense of confidence and articulate the level of change to expect, but

“ We have a very successful strategic partnership with Microsoft” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

I wish to go to Morgan's Wonderland Gio 6 nervous system disorder

also to acknowledge the change's impact, to say this is all normal; it's a journey and not something that will happen overnight.”

Another integral aspect of Make-AWish America's digital transformation is the partnerships that it has developed with tech giants such as Microsoft, Accenture, TEKsystems, and Salesforce.

“We have amazing strategic vendor partners that have been completely invaluable. They've helped provide not just the surge of capacity, but also streamlined how we do everything — from the

“ Accenture is an extended part of our team” TERESA DURAN

CIO, MAKE-A-WISH AMERICA

architecture of our systems to what milestones we should hit, to helping scope the pace of change,” says Duran. “These partnerships have helped us increase how we can connect with donors and utilise emerging technologies, helping us do all we can to achieve our mission. I don't think you can succeed in these initiatives without strong strategic partnerships and creating a culture of trust and working as one team.”

“We have a very successful strategic partnership with Microsoft, which supported our initiatives to centralise and modernise identity and access management to Office 365, cloud and data strategy, Surface deployment, and strengthen our cybersecurity controls,” explains Duran. “That move was essential during the pandemic and is critical to our Galaxy initiative.”

While Microsoft and Salesforce are relatively recent partners, Accenture is a longstanding partner of Make-A-Wish America that has provided incredible value. Accenture has been Make-A-Wish’s digital transformation partner since its first initiative implementing NetSuite Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), ensuring that the technology would work as hard to support Make-A-Wish’s mission as its dedicated workforce.

Accenture brings global experience and expertise in digital, cloud, and Salesforce implementations, as well as deep insights from its Nonprofit Practice. The company 156

May 2022

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

I wish to build an airplane Kyer 8 gastrointestinal disorder

technologymagazine.com

157

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

158

May 2022

harbours great care and support for the Make-A-Wish mission to grant more wishes to children with critical illnesses, helping at every step to achieve their strategic goals and provide constituents with a deeper, personalised experience. “[Accenture has] played many crucial roles and not just in the more technical aspects: they’ve also been instrumental in providing change management, training, and programme management leadership, too,” she says. “Accenture is an extended part of our team because there's a lot of policy when embarking on mass business process changes.”

Duran has also had a long-standing relationship with TEKsystems, which provides critical IT talent management solutions and full-stack technology services.

The future of Make-A-Wish America and the digital world There’s much for the Make-A-Wish America

MAKE-A-WISH INTERNATIONAL IN NUMBERS:

520k

wishes granted worldwide

39

affiliates serving

50

countries spread across

5

continents

43k+

volunteers worldwide

technologymagazine.com

159

MAKE - A - WISH AMERICA

I wish to be a professional skateboarder Angel 6 vascular malformation

160

May 2022

team to be excitedly anticipating in 2022 — it’s going to be a big year for the organisation.

Despite Duran being cautious — a firm believer in adopting an “underpromise and overdeliver” approach to future endeavours — she anticipates an “action-orientated year” featuring the development of an enterprise CRM, a detailed product growth map, more partnerships, and a wider focus on ESG strategies with like-minded partners.

But, mostly, Duran is excited for the new avenues that evolving technology will open up for Make-A-Wish America: “You see corporations and new partnerships evolving in the Crypto/ NFT and metaverse space. And when you look at the younger generations and where trends are growing, it's something that we have to pay attention to, as well as their payment preferences, how they want to connect— it's all digital. We need to make sure we're finding new and creative ways to meet their needs.”

“Many nonprofits are accelerating growth just by trying new ways of fundraising. I can see more digital events, such as a gala in the metaverse with people dressing up their avatars, each doing something creative. I see additional gaming fundraising opportunities as a viable avenue, too — it's a multi-billion-dollar industry!”

Although the road ahead for the next 6-12 months is likely “going to be a little bumpy” as the changes are embedded and adopting the new system takes place, Teresa Duran and the Make-A-Wish America team are excited for their digital future to be fully realised.

If you would like to help us grant more wishes, please go to https//wish.org.

technologymagazine.com

161

FIGHTING THE

RESIGNATION

GREAT

WITH

As employers grapple with challenges brought about by the Great Resignation, could predictive analytics be the key to solving these problems?

WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY 162

May 2022

ANALYTICS

PREDICTIVE

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

C

OVID-19, and the subsequent restrictions that came with it, caused a number of people to reassess what is important and question if they are happy in their role. In the wake of the pandemic, many organisations are now grappling with issues around staff retention, particularly as the Great Resignation manifests itself in workplaces across industries.

Many prospective employees are now looking for greater flexibility affording them a better work-life balance. To respond to the changing needs, businesses and leaders are responsible for identifying ways to incentivise potential employees to not just join their teams, but to remain in them long-term.

“Businesses must accommodate increasingly varied, complicated employee needs, integrating hybrid working to draw on the benefits of both physical and virtual workspaces,” comments Eliane Lugassy, CEO and Co-Founder of Witco, an app provider enabling the most ideal work experience, enabling people to perform at their best.

The Great Resignation has created a healthy employee market with a wealth of opportunities, meaning employers have to be more creative if they want to attract the right talent. Predictive analytics may be the key to overcoming challenges faced by employers as they look to onboard new team members.

“Leaders cannot adequately understand the needs of present and future employees without data and the communication tools to act on it,” explains Lugassy.

“Communication breakdowns through lockdown reminded us that, for hybrid working models to work, we must make the most of the time we have together in the office and respond as appropriately as we can to a remote team in order to keep them onside. If we are to do this successfully, we must use technology to understand and respond to changing workspaces,” she adds. technologymagazine.com

163

In Association with:

Meet who runs the world.

TOP 100

Women

in

TECHNOLOGY

NEW ISSUE OUT NOW Read now

A BizClik Media Group Brand

Creating Digital Communities

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

“ PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS WILL MEASURE AND ADAPT THE PHYSICAL WORKSPACE TO DELIVER AN OPTIMUM ENVIRONMENT FOR PRODUCTIVITY REGARDLESS OF HOW COMPLICATED WORKING PATTERNS BECOME” ELAINE LUGASSY CEO & FOUNDER, WITCO

Creating stronger employee retention with predictive analytics With the ability to model resignation trends, predictive analysis can lead to a stronger employee retention strategy by providing employers with deeper insight derived from different data sources.

“Machine learning will allow businesses to analyse the information they gather from

surveys and meetings with employees.

Predictive analytics will measure and adapt the physical workspace to deliver an optimum environment for productivity regardless of how complicated working patterns become. This might mean monitoring which days are busiest to help coordinate employees for collaborative work.

It might also mean modelling resignation trends to pinpoint a common source of discomfort in the workplace,” says Lugassy.

Technology is being applied in all subsections of business; now more than ever, it is crucial for it to be utilised in HR as part of the overall digital transformation strategy, as Lugassy outlines: “Mining data about current office use will inform how we prepare for the office of the future.

Digital transformation has familiarised technologymagazine.com

165

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

The Great Resignation: Why Millions Of Workers Are Quitting

“ SIMPLIFYING THEIR DATA ARCHITECTURE BY IMPLEMENTING A SMART DATA FABRIC CAN PROVIDE ORGANISATIONS WITH A SINGLE, UNIFIED, AND ON-DEMAND VIEW OF DATA” CHRIS NORTON

MANAGING DIRECTOR, INTERSYSTEMS UK&I

businesses in almost every sector with the power of technology to foster a transparent, collaborative working environment.”

“In a volatile and uncertain business landscape, predictive analytics will be key to ensuring that companies and their employees are aligned ‒ both now and in the future,” she continues.

166

May 2022

Creating the right IT system for data A vital hurdle to overcome in the Great Resignation is an unconnected and incompatible IT system, as Chris Norton, who is Managing Director, InterSystems UK and Ireland, a software company for database management, explains: “The first step in tackling this is bridging data from disparate data sources, allowing better business value while enabling them to obtain new insights and better business decisions.”

An enterprise data fabric, a new architectural approach, speeds up and simplifies access to data assets across the entire business, providing consistency across a choice of endpoints spanning hybrid multi-cloud environments.

It accesses, transforms and harmonises data from multiple sources, on-demand, to make it usable and actionable for a wide variety of business applications.

“Simplifying their data architecture by implementing a smart data fabric can provide organisations with a single, unified,

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

and on-demand view of data, enabling businesses to gain an enterprise view of what is happening in real-time, ensuring decisions are based on timely and trustworthy data,” comments Norton.

He adds: “Adopting a smart data fabric approach to data management sets the wheels in motion for an organisation's digital transformations, providing them with comprehensive, accurate, and timely information to make informed decisions and develop new initiatives”, which could be key in attracting new talent.

Changing data collection strategies for improved insight As more people reflect on their lives and reassess their careers, it is more critical than ever that employers make the right

The global predictive analytics market size is expected to grow from US$10.5bn in 2021 to US$28.1bn by 2026, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.7%.

technologymagazine.com

167

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

decisions as they look to deliver fulfilling workplace experiences to retain and hire talent.

Commenting on this, Phil Pringle, Employee Experience Strategist at Qualtrics, an experience management company, explains: “Organisations need to embed modern listening strategies to gather insights that reveal what employees are thinking and feeling to inform the action they take, as opposed to just running traditional pulse surveys that only offer surface-level scores on employee engagement.”

One key way to gather more insights is to change the ways employers obtain

The Great Resignation was a term initially coined in the US, marking the period between April 2021 and present day where the share of nonfarm workers quitting their jobs has been at some of the highest levels recorded by the American bureau. In all, nearly 33 million people have left their positions over this period, or over a fifth of the total U.S. workforce.

168

May 2022

information from their employees, especially as some are more comfortable with directly voicing their opinions than others. By switching up their strategies, businesses may gain more insight and data to create more reliable analyses.

“They need to go beyond annual pulse surveys or collecting operational data from IT around things like service usage, average handle time, and first-call resolution.

Instead, employers need to get smart in the way they collect, understand, and act on experience data (X-data). X-data provides insight into mindset and sentiment, by looking deeper at things like emotion and

AI AND DATA ANALYTICS

“ ORGANISATIONS NEED TO EMBED MODERN LISTENING STRATEGIES TO GATHER INSIGHTS THAT REVEAL WHAT EMPLOYEES ARE THINKING AND FEELING TO INFORM THE ACTION THEY TAKE” PHIL PRINGLE

STRATEGY DIRECTOR, QUALTRICS

emotional intensity, to paint a more complete picture of the employee experience,” outlines Pringle.

He concludes: “This practice assesses the entire employee journey — going all the way from the candidate’s hiring and onboarding experience to their exit interview. With experience data, employers can gain a better understanding of what people are experiencing day-to-day and what changes need to happen to create ideal working environments where people feel connected, able to perform, and can develop their career. It’s X-data that ultimately equips business leaders with the insight they need to stem the Great Resignation.”

technologymagazine.com

169

GETTING TO THE GEMBA WITH G&J PEPSI-COLA BOTTLERS WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

170

May 2022

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

technologymagazine.com

171

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers’ Brian Balzer on the company’s drive to give back to the community and vision to reach Gemba through technology and innovation

F

ounded by two exceptional women, Nell Gross and Esther Jarson, G&J Pepsi is the largest family-owned and operated Pepsi franchise bottler. In 11 locations across Ohio and Kentucky, G&J Pepsi is a market leader, offering Pepsi-Cola, Mountain Dew, Dr Pepper, Tropicana Fruit Beverages, Starbuck’s Frappuccinos and more.

Headquartered in Cincinnati, the company has ~1,600 employees working to serve the five million consumers in its market, spanning from central Ohio to Kentucky and over to West Virginia.

Brian Balzer, Executive VP of Digital Technology and Business Transformation, is proud to be part of G&J Pepsi and the communities it serves: “We are in the heart of bluecollar America in what we call ‘the bible belt’, an area of farmers, miners, manufacturers – hardworking Americans.

We have some of the highest share markets in the country and the number one Mountain Dew market in the world. And I have got to tell you, this is Pepsi country!”

Not only is the community dedicated to G&J Pepsi and its products, but the company itself looks for ways to give back to those that have supported them and made them so successful. Balzer comments: “G&J Pepsi is a hard-working team that is deeply involved in our local communities.

A couple of our slogans are “National Brands,

172

May 2022

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

173

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

Getting to the Gemba with G&J Pepsi-Cola Bottlers

“Using technology advancements and innovation has been a critical component of our transformation”

Local Products” and the direction of the “Nationally Great, Locally company and leading Even Better”, and we live the transformation to by them. We invest in outpace G&J Pepsi’s our local communities, competitors. The volunteer here and are executive also looks at committed to supporting ways technology can those around us. We provide the best tools for donate thousands of the company’s workforce hours and products to and bring real benefits our local communities to its customers – all of BRIAN BALZER to support those around which is part of Balzer’s VP, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY & us in need every single role leading G&J Pepsi’s BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, G&J PEPSI-COLA BOTTLERS year. It’s a huge part of transformation journey. who we are and why our “The pace of communities support G&J Pepsi. It’s also technology change continues to escalate. why we have such long-tenured employees, Unfortunately, this pace of change will where it’s not uncommon to celebrate never be slower than it is today, and it’s our people who have worked with us for 30, 35, job to navigate that and bring to life those and 40+ years.” developments that will impact our business Working in the business and technology partners in the best way,” explains Balzer. development section of the company, “Using technology advancements and Balzer is responsible for strategically guiding innovation has been a critical component 174

May 2022

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

of our transformation. We use technology as a competitive advantage in the marketplace and measure ourselves against peers and competitors,” he adds.

TITLE: VP, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY & BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION INDUSTRY: CONSUMER GOODS LOCATION: CINCINNATI US In his role as VP, Digital Technology & Business Transformation, Balzer is passionate about developing talent, leading transformation across all business areas, and using technology to advance the company.

In addition to this, he seeks to create value in numerous unique ways and simplify user experiences. He firmly believes in the benefits of collaboration, continually striving to improve, and generating a positive culture - in fact, they are the keys to G&J Pepsi's success as a team!

EXECUTIVE BIO

Getting to Gemba To begin this journey, Balzer looked at the importance of this change, analysing the business benefits, and then relayed this to his leadership team.

“This involved everything from building and implementing an ERP strategy by establishing a digital thread across all P&Ls of the business via Microsoft Dynamics 365, to establishing a data management strategy and using tools like PowerBI and Dataverse to bring business insights to our business partners, and even being 100% in the cloud by utilising SaaS solutions and the Microsoft Azure environment,” says Balzer.

He continues: “We now fully utilise the entire Microsoft ecosystem of tools: Microsoft Teams for collaboration, M365, Azure, D365 and the Power platform to bring about rapid development, solutions and RPAs to automate work that was once manual. At the heart of this journey, it’s about simplifying the application footprint, and using the native integrations of the Microsoft ecosystem, to create a digital thread connecting all areas of the business together in a unified manner. It improves maintenance, drives cost out and improves the user experience.”

With a lean technology team, G&J Pepsi has been able to quickly align itself with this strategy to combat the different challenges it faces. Balzer believes having this team front and centre lends itself to the success of the company’s strategy: “Some of the brightest and highest-paid people are in the tech industry. I don’t want the company spending dollars on using those resources

BRIAN BALZER

“ People are super passionate about Pepsi, our brand, our products and delivering those products to consumers who also love our products” BRIAN BALZER

VP, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY & BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, G&J PEPSI-COLA BOTTLERS

for back-office IT. I want the business to spend dollars using those brilliant minds to solve business problems and bring about creative solutions to our workforce. That’s where we really began making progress in terms of digital transformation and bringing

value to G&J Pepsi. It’s exciting to see our strategy working.”

G&J Pepsi also has a unique philosophy when it comes to technology and digital transformation: the company wants to reach Gemba through technology. Gemba is a Kaizen Six Sigma Production Philosophy that emphasises the importance of leadership having a clear understanding of what is happening at every level.

“Getting to Gemba means, “getting to the real place”, the place where the problems are or where the work is done. It’s critically important that we never put a great technology on a bad process,” explains Balzer.

“So, pulling in our business partners up front to be a part of the solution is important.

Before we deployed Dynamics 365 last year for our Sales and Service teams, we ran through over 150 different business technologymagazine.com

177

178

May 2022

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

processes and identified over 200 business problems. The business helped us lay these processes out and identify the issues they faced every day. We understood where rework takes place, where errors occur, where manual intervention is required and more. With the help of our business partners from the very beginning, they were on the hook for helping us develop a solution that met their needs. They were on the hook for creating success. And they were on the hook for bringing value to the rest of the organisation,” he continues.

G&J Pepsi had an Equipment Move Order process that took roughly 4 days and required manual entry of duplicative data across multiple systems. This was over 170K manual touchpoints annually, all error-prone due to human data entry.

After the Gemba sessions, Balzer states: “We were able to layout a new process and automate it within 45 seconds in Dynamics 365. Think about that. Work that once took 4 days, now takes 45 seconds!”

The G&J Pepsi On-Premise Sales teams were able to improve their market position by 4 share points and finished 2021 at a 450 index compared to the competition.

With this innovation and comprehensive strategy, Balzer reflects on how G&J Pepsi’s digital transformation journey has already started to provide its customers with real, tangible benefits: “We’re actively partnering with Microsoft to use Azure IoT in the field.

We must deliver chilled juice products to our customers that must remain within a specific temperature range that is required

by FDA regulations. We have deployed technology with sensors in the coolers that monitor temps, transmit that to Azure IoT and then allow us to monitor, report and alert a driver of potential issues. The technology means that we have reduced technologymagazine.com

179

Empower everyone to innovate Are you ready to accelerate your digital transformation?

Achieve your digital transformation goals by making the data in your organization available to everyone. With Power Platform, everyone–from the citizen developer to the IT professional–can add business value by quickly and securely developing apps based on their needs. Combine Power Apps with Power BI, Power Automate, and Power Virtual Agents to turn insights into actionl–one seamlessly connected platform that empowers everyone to innovate.

Integrate your data

Simplify app development

Build apps without risk

Realize value fast

One platform, unlimited opportunity

Take the next steps Analyze with Power BI

Power BI

Power Apps

Act with Power Apps Automate with Power Automate

Power Automate

Power Virtual Agents

Assist with Power Virtual Agents

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

“ We need partners who are willing to bring us along, teach us and are a fit for the culture we use”

the number of issues with shipping and customers can be sure they will get our products at the quality they expect.”

Adding to this functionality, G&J Pepsi “developed a Microsoft PowerApp solution on the drivers' phones so they can report any issues and track temps in real-time, as well. To my knowledge, there’s nothing in the industry like this. We’ve built an entire DevOps, Data and ERP organisation

BRIAN BALZER

VP, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY & BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, G&J PEPSI-COLA BOTTLERS

technologymagazine.com

181

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

specifically around the Microsoft ecosystem of tools and this is how it’s changing our business”.

Collaborating with Microsoft and RSM to guarantee success With its philosophy revolving around reaching Gemba, partnerships are crucial to G&J Pepsi during the digital transformation of its operations. When selecting these partners, G&J Pepsi makes sure the companies have the right technical capabilities and talent on their teams to deliver solutions that meet the business needs.

As well as being technically compatible, Balzer explains that values are also crucial: “They need to be a good cultural fit, willing to collaborate with a G&J Pepsi technology team that is hands-on. We ultimately are responsible for supporting and developing on the platform based on the needs of our business partners. As such, we need partners who are willing to bring us along, teach us and are a fit for the culture we use. Culture is a critical component to our success as an organisation and those we bring in need to fit into it.”

“We have collaborated with fantastic partners like Microsoft and RSM to help us navigate our new innovations and utilise platforms to bring to market changes to our frontline workforce. One of the biggest initiatives we undertook was using the Microsoft PowerPlatform to innovate on.

We were able to go to market very quickly in a Low Code/No Code environment with limited resources in a manner that enabled our business partners to do their jobs more efficiently with the apps we deployed on the platform,” he adds.

Now, G&J Pepsi can use these new tools and data to bring to light opportunities, demonstrating where they may have 182

May 2022

G&J PEPSI - COLA BOTTLERS

“It’s our job to build a native, integrated digital thread, connecting every facet of the company together” BRIAN BALZER

VP, DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY & BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION, G&J PEPSI-COLA BOTTLERS

missed in sales and where they can profit the most with specific products in target markets or segments.

Having been with G&J Pepsi since the beginning of its transformation journey, Microsoft provides the company with its Power Platform and PowerApps, as it rolled out these capabilities in a beta environment.

“We’ve also partnered with Microsoft to help develop their AI capabilities within the platform and they have invested in us many times to bring about greater functionality like in their mobile Service tool. Microsoft is truly the underlying ecosystem that drives our digital strategy, our ERP strategy and enables our team to go to market with solutions quickly,” comments Balzer.

RSM – a leading provider of audit, tax and consulting services – assisted G&J Pepsi with the implementation of its D365 Sales and Service tools, a critical component to the company’s transformation. Balzer explains: “RSM’s expertise and partnership

were critical to the adoption of the solutions throughout G&J Pepsi. They brought about a unique strategy of working side-by-side with us and our business partners, receiving feedback, assisting us with developing functionality based on a streamlined process, instituting a Solution Verification process, and then iterating based on the feedback.”

With a sound partner network and a clear strategy to continue its transformation and ERP journey, G&J Pepsi is excited about the future. “It’s our job to build a native, integrated digital thread, connecting every facet of the company together,” concludes Balzer.

technologymagazine.com

183

As more companies enter the technology space, we take a look at some of the most successful startups having gained unicorn status WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY

O

nly the most successful privatelyowned tech startups obtain coveted ‘unicorn’ status - reaching a valuation exceeding US$1bn. According to CB Insights, there are 1,000 unicorns around the world as of March 2022. Popular former unicorns include Airbnb, Facebook and Google.

Spanning the FinTech, gaming and even space industries, the technology unicorn 184

May 2022

market comprises companies located across the globe, disrupting their industries with new innovations. Many of these startups have proven their worth, becoming decacorns aka unicorns with valuations above US$10bn, of which there are over 30.

Here, we look at the top 10 technology startups across the globe that have gained elusive decacorn status.

TOP 10

Technology startups with decacorn status

technologymagazine.com

185

TOP 10

10

Epic Games Valuation:

US$28.7bn Epic Games is a leading interactive entertainment company and provider of 3D engine technology.

Epic operates Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games with over 350 million accounts.

The company also develops Unreal Engine, which powers leading games and is also adopted across industries such as film and television, architecture, automotive, manufacturing, and simulation. With its Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, and Epic Online Services, the company provides an end-to-end digital ecosystem for developers and creators to build, distribute, and operate games, as well as other content.

“ Epic operates Fortnite, one of the world’s most popular games with over 350 million accounts” 186

May 2022

09 Nubank Valuation:

US$30bn Nubank is the largest fintech bank in Latin America, with its headquarters in Brazil. The company was founded to simplify financial life with transparency and security. The company itself says it has a “young and innovative spirit” as it develops simple, secure and digital solutions for finance.

Founded in 2013, the company gained its unicorn status after only four years. Among many of its services is Nubank rewards, a rewards programme that offers customers discounts on services, travel and entertainment.

TOP 10

“Databricks serves more than 5,000 organisations worldwide”

08 Revolut Valuation:

US$33bn Headquartered in London, Revolut is a fintech company founded in 2015. The company offers accounts featuring currency exchange, debit cards, virtual cards, Apple Pay, interest-bearing ‘vaults’, commission-free stock trading, crypto, commodities, and other services. With over 18 million personal users in over 35 countries, Revolut aims to help customers make the most of their company with everyday spending, savings and investments.

To achieve this, the company is building the world’s first truly global financial ‘superapp’.

07

Databricks Valuation:

US$38bn AI and data company, Databricks, was founded in 2013 and is the world’s first (and only) lakehouse platform in the cloud. Databricks combines the best of data warehouses and data lakes to offer an open, unified platform for data and AI. With its AI-enabled technology, Databricks serves more than 5,000 organisations worldwide, including ABN AMRO, Condé Nast, H&M Group, Regeneron and Shell. These companies rely on Databricks to enable massive-scale data engineering, collaborative data science, full-lifecycle machine learning and business analytics. technologymagazine.com

187

TOP 10

TOP 10

05 Canva

Valuation:

US$40bn

06 Instacart Valuation:

US$39bn Founded in 2012, Instacart is an American company operating a grocery delivery and pick-up service in the United States and Canada. Offering its services via a website and mobile app, customers can order groceries from participating retailers, while also having the option to track their delivery once it’s en-route.

The company's enterprise technology also powers the ecommerce platforms of some of the world's biggest retail players, supporting their whitelabel websites, applications and delivery solutions.

Graphic design platform, Canva, is on a mission to empower everyone in the world to design anything and publish anywhere.

Launched in 2013, the company operates in 190 countries, 100 languages and has created over seven billion designs with the help of over 2,000 employees.

The graphic design software helps users to design presentations, social media graphics, and more with various layouts, images, photo filters, icons, shapes, and fonts.

TOP 10

04 Klarna

Valuation:

US$45.6bn Swedish fintech company, Klarna, was founded in 2005 to make it easier for people to shop online.

Klarna is the leading global payments and shopping service, providing smarter and more flexible shopping and purchase experiences to 147 million active consumers across more than 400,000 merchants in 45 countries. The company offers direct payments, pay-afterdelivery options, and instalment plans in a one-click purchase experience that lets consumers pay when and how they prefer.

“ Klarna is the leading global payments and shopping service” 190

May 2022

03 Stripe

Valuation:

US$95bn Stripe is a financial service and software-as-a-service company that primarily offers payment processing software and application programming interfaces (APIs) for e-commerce websites and mobile applications.

Founded in 2009, Stripe builds economic infrastructure for the internet so that businesses of all sizes can use software to accept payments and manage their business online. Combining a payment platform with applications that put revenue data at the heart of business operations, Stripe looks to give businesses the tools and technology to build better.

02

TOP 10

SpaceX

Valuation:

US$100.3bn

Founded by famous entrepreneur and Tesla owner, Elon Musk, in 2002, Space Exploration Technologies - or SpaceX - is an American aerospace manufacturer and provider of space transportation services. Musk founded the company with the goal of reducing space transportation costs. SpaceX is the first private company to successfully launch, orbit, and recover a spacecraft, and the first private company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station. The company is developing a satellite internet constellation named Starlink to provide commercial internet services. In January 2020, the Starlink constellation became the largest satellite constellation ever launched. Also in development is Starship, a privately funded, fully reusable, super heavy-lift launch system for interplanetary spaceflight.

Starship is intended to become SpaceX's primary orbital vehicle, once operational.

technologymagazine.com

191

23 - 24 JUNE 2022 STREAMED & IN PERSON TOBACCO DOCK, LONDON

SHAPING THE BUSINESS OF TECHNOLOGY 3,000+

Participants

2

Days

4

Zones

60+

Speakers

Get tickets

Sponsor opportunities

A BizClik Media Group Event:

Watch our 2021 Showreel

Join us at TECH LIVE LONDON Showcase your values, products and services to your partners and customers at TECH LIVE LONDON 2022.

Brought to you by BizClik Media Group TECH LIVE LONDON, the hybrid event held between 23rd-24th June is broadcast live to the world and incorporates four zone areas of Technology & AI LIVE, Cloud & 5G LIVE, Cyber LIVE plus March8 LIVE in to one event.

With a comprehensive content programme featuring senior industry leaders and expert analysts, this is an opportunity to put yourself and your brand in front of key industry decision makers.

Get tickets

From keynote addresses to lively roundtables, fireside discussions to topical presentations, Q&A sessions to 1-2-1 networking, the 2-day hybrid show is an essential deep dive into issues impacting the future of each industry today.

Global giants and innovative startups will all find the perfect platform with direct access to an engaged and active audience. You can’t afford to miss this opportunity.

See you on:

23 - 24 June 2022

Sponsor opportunities

TOP 10

ByteDance Tokyo Office Navigation

194

May 2022

TOP 10

“ One of its most notable platforms is TikTok, the world’s leading platform for short-form mobile videos”

ByteDance Valuation:

US$140bn Headquartered in Beijing, ByteDance is a Chinese internet technology company operating a range of content platforms to inform, educate and entertain people. One of its most notable platforms is TikTok, the world’s leading platform for short-form mobile videos.

Founded in 2012, the company also offers other platforms such as: Douyin for mobile video in China; Toutiao, a Chinese content discovery platform; Help, a social media platform; and Xigua

Video, one of China’s most popular video applications.

As of June 2021, ByteDance hosts 1.9 billion monthly active users across all of its content platforms. Committed to finding ways to have a positive impact on the community and planet, ByteDance has a ‘Tech for Good’ initiative, where the company works with nonprofits to provide the tools and guidance to raise awareness for the causes across its various platforms.

technologymagazine.com

195

Meets airport demand with

196

May 2022

FRAPORT AG

Digital Transformation WRITTEN BY: TOM SWALLOW PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

technologymagazine.com

197

FRAPORT AG

Fraport AG’s CIO, Dr. Wolfgang Standhaft, discusses the pandemic response and how the industry’s leveraging digital transformation to manage airport operations

I

n the travel sector, whether operating as an airline provider or managing the terminal, there’s minimal room for error.

Over the years, digital technologies have plugged airport gaps to make the experience of travelling as hassle-free as possible, while maintaining critical safety measures for both customers and staff.

With tight restrictions on high-traffic environments, airport operators face many challenges, including security, the tracking of clients in and out of airports for safety, consistency of maintenance at a rapid pace, and the logistics of boarding and departing aircraft, as well as consumer comfort.

Based out of Frankfurt, Germany, Fraport AG is one of the leading airport operators, commanding approximately 30 different sites across Europe, the Americas, and parts of Asia. The firm also possesses a 50% stake in multiple other airports, which together were responsible for around 182 million passengers in 2019 and 86 million in 2021. The group oversees the day-to-day processes from retail and hospitality—both in the air and on land—to maintenance and repair, ground handling of aircraft, and many other areas to ensure passenger satisfaction.

Across the airports that Fraport AG operates, it has applied more than 1,000 tech applications across the globe to guarantee a safe service delivery, particularly during the take-off and landing of aircraft.

“In order to do this, you need a variety of systems from the management of the apron

198

May 2022

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

199

to make sure that all the starting and landing aircraft find the right positions, the right stand - in order to let the passengers get out, to let the airports refuel and clean, load and unload the aircraft,” says Wolfgang Standhaft, Chief Information Officer at Fraport AG. “And at the same time, you have to make sure that there is no collision between the vehicles running around the airport.”

200

May 2022

Standhaft also stresses the number of alternative activities that take place around the airport, such as the management and maintenance of more than 80,000 parking lots and thousands of digital devices within its ecosystems. These all require reliable, sophisticated IT solutions to be implemented before airports can begin optimising certain processes.

FRAPORT AG

DR. WOLFGANG STANDHAFT TITLE: S ENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

“ We heavily reduced our headcount, and now we have to optimise our processes” DR. WOLFGANG STANDHAFT

SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, FRAPORT AG

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: GERMANY The company’s Chief Information Officer, Dr. Wolfgang Standhaft (internally the Senior Executive Vice President), leads digital development at its airports with over three years in the position. Before joining Fraport AG, Standhaft worked for Heidelberg Cement and REWE Group in leading IT positions.

Earlier in his career, Standhaft was involved in consultancy and software development for a large prime-share software manufacturer.

Standhaft’s prior work experience led him to his current role at Fraport AG, which he believes is closely linked, and he has since worked to improve the efficiency of the airport solutions, as well as optimise processes on the land-and-air side of operations, maintenance of facilities and ground-handling.

technologymagazine.com

201

Strategically Managed IT Services: the Winning Digitalization Formula Why do it yourself if others can do it better, faster, and more efficiently?

This, in a nutshell, is what “managed services” are all about. Due to the speed with which digitalization is changing the game, it’s now vital to work with a capable strategic IT services partner.

Digital expertise has become a major innovation driver across industries. Digitalization completely changes the dynamics of processes, products, and services. From a strategic perspective, it’s also becoming more and more important for companies to integrate IT into their core business. Yet most IT departments are now chronically overworked.

Without external support, they’re unable to satisfactorily execute mission-critical tasks.

But it‘s also vital to choose the right partner for IT services. Three main prerequisites need to be met.

The first is comprehensive expertise on technologies such as cloud computing, analytics, artificial intelligence, intelligent automation, and cybersecurity, all of which are required throughout the digital value chain. The second is an internal change process. And third, the partner must take an innovative and strategic approach to cooperation that transcends the conventional division into internal and external entities.

The Evolution of Managed Services It may seem surprising that managed services themselves are evolving, but it’s a logical consequence of digitalization. Even tried-andtested kinds of managed services need to be

brought up to date. It’s no longer enough simply to work through sets of services defined by service level agreements. The KPIs of digitalization have also changed. In the case of strategic managed services, now the IT service provider is directly integrated into the client’s organization, sharing responsibility for defining complex technical and business activities while contributing its experience and innovations. Within the scope of this partnership, the provider helps link performance, efficiency, and quality metrics to steadily increase the value of the business.

CGI very flexibly defines and modifies this cooperative approach on a case-to-case basis.

Experience gained from a large number of successful projects helps it find the best possible solution, again and again. In every case, companies are enabled to modernize their activities and structures and meet the prerequisites for success.

Of course, these insights only generate benefits if they’re applied in practice. A “wait and see” approach doesn’t accomplish anything, and wanting to “jump in the water without getting wet” can also paralyze a company. Those that truly want to be modern, flexible, and agile have to dare to try new things and take appropriate action.

Ralf Bauer, Senior Vice President BU Germany Central & South, CGI

Strategic Managed Services for Successful Digitalization In this video, Ralf Bauer, Senior Vice President of CGI Germany‘s Central and South BU reveals why strategic, cooperatively, managed services are so important for companies’ further development and growth. He describes the dynamics of digitalization, its implications for the role of IT at companies, and why it can no longer be managed with in-house resources alone. The required combination of IT expertise and agility must come from the outside in the form of cooperatively managed services – and be seamlessly integrated. For this to work, it’s essential for companies to adapt their management culture.

A new cooperative model now binds companies and service providers together much more tightly than has been in the rule in the past. It optimizes performance, efficiency, and quality metrics to magnify businesses’ value.

Follow CGI

Find out more cgi.com/de

Fraport and CGI CGI is helping Fraport implement far-reaching intelligent automation solutions. Bot technology is being deployed to optimize processes, boost efficiency, and free employees in operational roles of the need to perform repetitive tasks so they can focus on activities that generate greater value.

FRAPORT AG

Fraport AG is digitally transforming airport operations

Updating legacy technologies creates airport flexibility Like many players in the airport sector, Fraport has experienced a few unprecedented years - ones that have been somewhat detrimental to its global operations. However, as reported by many other sectors, the silver lining of the past two years is that COVID-19 has only sped up the digital transformation process, which Standhaft states is one of the focal points for the organisation, post-COVID. “We had to go to some saving rounds in terms of reducing cost and headcount. And we want to make sure that, moving into the future, we keep maximum flexibility due to all the uncertainties our time brings, in order to make sure that we maintain the highest level of operations moving forward,” Standhaft says.

He also explains how technical debt has influenced the company’s decision to adopt new technologies and set up IT solutions 204

May 2022

1924

Year founded

22,514

Number of employees

FRAPORT AG

“ In order to stay flexible, we decided to move to leading-edge technology. So we are working on 5G usage on campus and exploring the internet of things” DR. WOLFGANG STANDHAFT

SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, FRAPORT AG

to migrate to the cloud. “Technical debt in our words means that many of the complex systems were developed 10 or sometimes 15 years ago, though, they were done from an IT standpoint in an on-premise development world, running in our own data centre and built on our own databases.”

“This means if we want to go for a more interactive setup of our systems and processes, for example, we can combine data for a comprehensive data assessment together with airlines or together with other partners on the cargoes. We have to face the fact that the environment that was used to develop many current systems now has to be transformed into state-ofthe-art platforms.”

“In order to stay flexible, we decided to move to leading-edge technology. So we are working on 5G and actively exploring the internet of things (IoT). In particular, we are focusing in many areas on one of the technologies, which we internally define as a potential game-changer—artificial intelligence (AI).”

AI will play an important role in many of Fraport’s continued optimisation tasks, such as the distance and time for passengers between connecting flights, the use of monitoring tools to ensure that luggage makes it to its owner, and maintaining the flow of movements within the airport.

Standhaft says: “I think in the next five to 10 years, this will significantly change the shape of the whole application landscape, not only for our airports but also for the majority of airports around the world.”

AI will enable intuitive airport monitoring Delving into some of Fraport’s current solutions, the company’s Frankfurtbased airport leverages intuitive systems for tracking baggage around the site technologymagazine.com

205

FRAPORT AG

and managing noise pollution through continuous monitoring activities. Standhaft provides two examples of how technology is currently operating in these areas.

“Like all the airports, we had a problem with the so-called left-behind index of baggage,” Standhaft says.

“We put something into our baggage handling system, which takes photos of all the luggage and is able to identify, for example, each black trolley during its journey. By doing so, we are able to monitor if some baggage is on its way to the wrong

206

May 2022

“ In many areas, we are focusing on just one of the core technologies, which we internally defined as a potential game-changer— artificial intelligence” DR. WOLFGANG STANDHAFT

SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, FRAPORT AG

FRAPORT AG

plane, redirect it, and make sure it catches the right train to the passenger.”

The second area of development was its noise monitoring system. “I know from colleagues all over the world that they have also had issues with noise monitoring,” says Standhaft.

Frankfurt airport is one that is surrounded by residential areas, which causes issues for the airport if not properly monitored and maintained. “It's our task as an airport operator to analyse the noise. Does it come from a truck passing by the house of this

person? Is it an aeroplane which maybe creates too much noise? Or is it something else?” Such questions are the remit of the Frankfurt team when there are complaints from nearby residents.

To monitor noise across the Frankfurt site, Fraport has installed 40-something microphones and recording systems throughout the area. AI is responsible for continuously recording the data from the devices and maintaining a database of entries, which currently consists of some 500,000 noise cases.

STATISTIC The automated baggagehandling system at Frankfurt Airport ensures efficient movement and redirection of cases across the site to make sure that passengers receive their baggage upon arrival. In 2018, 28,949,770 items of luggage passed through the system, of which 595,588 were bulky items.

technologymagazine.com

207

FRAPORT AG

“If this is done with a high rate of recognition by a machine, an algorithm like we implemented, it reduces the volume of work for staff so they can focus on the important things,” Standhaft explains. “We currently experience a correct recognition rate of +60% in an early stage of the project.”

Culture shift Perhaps the sensitivity to noise is a result of a cultural shift, much like Fraport has witnessed as a result of COVID-19. He, meanwhile, has embraced the culture shift and stretches this across Fraport AG’s four key pillars within the IT department: strategy, organisation, enablement, and mindset.

Airports have also been influenced by consumers in that more contactless services are provided throughout airports to reflect COVID-reduction considerations.

This is one of the areas in which Fraport is looking to develop its systems, having already experienced the benefits of using the internet of things (IoT) and AI to establish touchless services throughout airports.

“People do not want to touch surfaces unless it's absolutely necessary. So next to artificial intelligence, we are also working together with partners on biometrics to make travel through the airport as touchless as we can provide it.” This feeds into the company’s ‘mindset’ pillar, as it builds understanding of the needs of travellers particularly during the pandemic - while also implementing solutions that adhere to any future changes or long-term mindset shifts.

“Before the crisis, we hadn’t broadly dealt with artificial intelligence or biometrics, and now people in the organisation are keen on this approach, be it standalone or with partner solutions.”

Those who have travelled since the beginning of the pandemic will have 208

May 2022

“ We keep the maximum flexibility due to all the uncertainties our time brings” DR. WOLFGANG STANDHAFT

SENIOR EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT, FRAPORT AG

experienced the ‘enablement’ aspect of the organisation’s digital transformation, especially through the use of IoT, as airports encourage the use of digital boarding passes, digital passenger locator documentation, and COVID-19 vaccination passes.

The group is also working closely with its staff on the ground to simplify the aircraft turnover process. “We are also in close collaboration with our colleagues and trying to support them when it comes to mobile devices to optimise, load and unload planes,”

Standhaft says. Assessing the needs and the capacity of its team, Fraport takes into account the ‘organisation’ as a whole. Not only is the company developing solutions for its ground teams, but it has also made considerable changes to its working structure.

Digital transformation was accelerated by the onset of COVID-19 and employees were forced to work from home where possible, which is something that the company advocates as it now allows its teams to work flexibly. technologymagazine.com

209

STATISTICS The 81-km system is capable of conveying 20,500 baggage items per hour, carrying each item at a maximum speed of five metres per second—the average being 2.5m.

210

May 2022

FRAPORT AG

A strategy for digital airport transformation The final pillar that was mentioned by Standhaft was ‘strategy’. This is where all of the technical innovations come together for Fraport, along with a multitude of partnerships, including SAP, Microsoft, and other national and international partners.

Standhaft says: “We have well-established outsourcing partners we are working with, and we are currently in the process of setting up new ecosystems that we will roll out for international partners in the application arena where we have not focused before.” He also explains what the future looks like for the organisation, following the devastation of the pandemic.

“We are looking forward to forming this new ecosystem in order to get more support for the speedy rollout of new technology in the best interest of the airport.”

“We heavily reduced our headcount, and now we have to optimise our processes,” he says, as he discusses Fraport’s strategy for future airport development.

“It's about all the things we discussed so far: new technology, getting more agile, getting closer to the customer, but in order to focus on the main things, the key thing for airports is to ramp up after the crisis, which fortunately we’re already seeing in early-2022.”

Now, the industry is in a critical period of recovery: Fraport’s IT team is supporting its internal and external customers through digital transformation and allowing them to ramp up their operations, helping welcome more and more travellers at optimal capacity.

“The ramp-up is supported by everybody in the IT organisation. That means we have as many stable, well-running systems that we can provide, which supports the increasing number of passengers that we expect to see in the course of 2022.”

technologymagazine.com

211

AT THE DIGITAL FRONTIER OF CUSTOMER E XPERIENCE WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: STUART IRVING

212

May 2022

technologymagazine.com

213

MULTICHOICE

Dr. Durrel Ramrathan, Senior Manager, Operational Performance, Quality Analytics and ML at MultiChoice, drives value by focusing on customer experience

I

n his role of Senior Manager, Operational Performance, Quality Analytics and ML, Durrel Ramrathan leads the analytics and machine learning teams within operations at MultiChoice Group Ltd, Africa’s biggest pay TV provider.

As a data-driven business, his team enhances the organisation’s data maturity, with decisions based on feedback gathered from customers to improve the MultiChoice product landscape and make it reflective of what customers actually need.

With a relentless focus on customer experience, Ramrathan and his colleagues have ensured what they do is customer-centric by creating an ecosystem supported by artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), enabling customers both internally and externally.

As with any pay TV provider, subscription is key, and a vital component of retaining subscribers is a seamless customer experience.

Customer experience a competitive difference for MultiChoice At MultiChoice, there is a big focus on purpose-driven leadership. This trickles down through the different teams to create a culture that drives innovation. Ramrathan insists that innovation's not something that you can give a framework to, all wrapped up in a two-day workshop, as some would suggest: “Our culture at MultiChoice is about giving leaders the autonomy to develop their

214

May 2022

MULTICHOICE

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

215

MULTICHOICE

At the digital frontier of customer experience

“ Our culture at MultiChoice is about giving leaders the autonomy to develop their staff” DR. DURREL RAMRATHAN SENIOR MANAGER, MULTICHOICE

staff and give them that space to make not just big innovations, but also small ones, too”.

Formerly of IBM, Ramrathan is from a consulting background, where he learned that, historically, the customer experience is generally relegated to a certain department, whose job is to drive it out. But, according to the AI and Analytics Leader, customer experience activities are, in fact, everyone’s responsibility: 216

May 2022

“Everything that you do in an organisation impacts a customer in some way or form. Everybody should be measured on customer experience.”

“One of our main competitive advantages is the customer experience.

People are comparing the experience they get across every industry nowadays.

So the experience I get when going to a bank is something that I will compare to an experience I get with MultiChoice. If I come to us and it's two steps and I'm able to join, then go to a bank and it's 10 steps — people are comparing those experiences.

“I think some companies are still trying to identify how they set up their organisation to work from that perspective. Because traditional organisations are not set up like that. They are set up to work in certain silos. Starting with experience and driving backwards is something that will take most companies significant amounts of time to achieve,” he says.

MULTICHOICE

DR. DURREL RAMRATHAN TITLE: SENIOR MANAGER: OPERATIONAL PERFORMANCE, QUALITY ANALYTICS AND MACHINE LEARNING LOCATION: CITY OF JOHANNESBURG Dr. Durrel Ramrathan is a Senior Analytics and AI leader, with in-depth experience designing and implementing cognitive solutions. Durrel has an extensive consulting background, driving a number of large-scale advanced analytics solutions, as well as first-of-their-kind cognitive application implementations. In addition to pioneering AI in the industry, Durrel has contributed extensively to the academic field through research and publication in the attainment of his PhD. Durrel currently leads Customer Operations Analytics and AI competency, within MultiChoice which has an intense focus on crafting innovative solutions to improve and evolve customer experience.

EXECUTIVE BIO

technologymagazine.com

217

Harness the power of Cloud and turn insights into value.

Deloitte collaborates with Clients transforming people, processes, and technology to rapidly scale Cloud capabilities.

Fused with Advanced Analytics, we enable Clients to adapt their ways of working, embedding a culture of agility and innovation to leverage sustained business value from actionable insights.

Accelerate your Cloud journey. Partner with Deloitte.

Contact Ryan Norris

Contact Quentin Williams

Director – Deloitte Analytics

Associate Director – Deloitte Analytics

Deloitte and Multichoice partner to harness data insights reaching new heights in pay TV Deloitte’s Ryan Norris and Quentin Williams join Multichoice’s Debra Goosen to discuss the quest to turn Multichoice into an insight-driven company Deloitte started their journey with South Africa’s Multichoice in September 2019, with a shared vision around making Multichoice a data, analytics and insightdriven organisation. With a cloud based data and analytics platform and innovations such as warehouse automation, they are achieving things in the pay TV space that are world-leading.

Ryan Norris and Quentin Williams are two of the Deloitte Africa Analytics leaders.

Together, they work with Debra Goosen, Lead: Analytics Innovation at Multichoice, who sets the vision and course of the current programme, as well as ensuring execution against the enterprise data strategy.

Goosen is pleased that Multichoice achieved a balance between governance versus squad autonomy: “What we’ve established is an architecture community in order to set up those guardrails, and an important component or construct of

that is the representatives from across the data and analytics community, engaging and participating in that architecture community forum.”

The Vibranium Programme The idea behind Vibranium originates from Marvel’s Black Panther. Much like Wakanda is a city of scientific advancement, Vibranium symbolises the powerful insights that data (the Vibranium ore) can provide, in terms of getting closer to the customer and their needs.

Williams adds: “Deloitte is on the journey with Multichoice. With Vibranium we had to look at the process and the approach, ensuring that every aspect of Vibranium is value-driven, not just insight-driven.”

Norris remarks: “We have a shared culture and ethos, so we clicked right from the beginning. It’s one of the largest programmes from an analytics perspective, with 140+ analysts within Multichoice, from data engineers and data scientists to principal business analysts and scrum masters,”.

Williams reveals that it is possible to get the best of both worlds: “Excellence and flexibility can go hand-in-hand. They’re not mutually exclusive. You can be agile and you can still deliver excellent outcomes.”

Learn more

MULTICHOICE

Since Ramrathan’s team helped to co-create a single, unifying purpose to change the norm for a better future, the business has seen a massive increase in productivity and innovation.

“We've seen much better collaboration within the department and with others too.

Focusing on enabling people and building them up reaped very tangible benefits. We make people aware that we’re on their side and we’ve got their backs,” says Ramrathan.

Awarded for NLP (natural language processing) chatbot In 2021, Durrel Ramrathan and his team collected an internal Innovation of the Year Award for their work on Africa’s ‘AI Agent Assist’ (T.U.M.I), selected in the Customer First category by MultiChoice Group.

T.U.M.I stands for The Ultimate Master of Information and is MultiChoice’s latest AI customer service chatbot, available 24/7 to answer customer queries about products and services. It also enables our service agents to respond to customer queries quicker. It interacts with customers online in a text-based conversation in real time, using advanced natural language capabilities; which means it can understand different variations of questions to help customers resolve their queries.

An NLP-based chatbot, the AI Agent is a computer programmed-AI that communicates with a customer via textual or sound methods. According to Ramrathan, the chatbot wasn’t just one of the ‘question and answer’ types that you commonly see online.

“I think the real innovation here was to ensure that the chatbot contextualises and tries to understand what the customer is talking about, powered by information we already know about them.

220

May 2022

MULTICHOICE

“So if a customer returns and has already raised specific issues, it's able to implement that within the dialogue and help a customer get to a resolution much quicker,” says Ramrathan.

By creating the ecosystem that a customer can operate in, Ramrathan states that the queries are resolved much quicker.

“The outcome of this was an improvement in customer satisfaction. We've also seen a large deflection away from traditional channels. So we migrate customers to digital channels to get their queries resolved. By keeping customers engaged, they feel that they've been given the attention that they deserve,” he added.

Ramrathan acknowledges that the work on the AI Assistant was a team effort, requiring lots of collaboration across the organisation. The difficulty came with the use of natural language processing (NLP) components.

“Generally, those are quite tricky when you use them in real-life situations and deal with customers, because you don't really know what will happen for sure, you can only account for a certain amount of scenarios.

The team did lots of work to get the AI to a certain level where we were comfortable for it to engage with customers,” he added. “(The award) was great for the team, for them to be recognised in this way [by the organisation],” says Ramrathan.

According to Ramrathan, linking these kinds of AI projects to customer experience is crucial, as many tech projects fail because stakeholders can’t link them to the sort of value that they're trying to drive: “Whenever we tackle a problem — and specifically with this innovation — we start by considering the experience we want to drive for customers.

So we started building backwards from that. I think that's why this innovation was technologymagazine.com

221

MULTICHOICE

so successful and why it ended up getting selected. I think with our intense focus on bringing in that customer experience lens, we overlay that over our analytics and machine learning initiatives,” says Ramrathan.

The MultiChoice technology ecosystem Explaining how MultiChoice delivers a superior customer experience, Ramrathan says it’s because of the close working relationships of customer operations, technology and business planning teams who ensure they are prepared for any changes that may arise within the Group, and help mitigate the impacts.

“And then you get insights from our various tools to improve these customer journeys, while helping to identify key impact areas,” he adds.

Staying ahead of the game is of particular importance since Ramrathan and his team deal with customers who have immediate issues that must be resolved in real-time.

“By utilising the insights created for my analytics teams, the ML team is able to identify gaps in areas where they can alleviate internal and external problems. This is why our machine learning teams actually have a high success rate for projects that they implement,” says Ramrathan.

By working as one ecosystem to compound the value that the teams deliver, the analytics products and machine learning products can evolve to support the customer experience while continually improving it. In this ecosystem, they can gather all customer information together so that when a customer interacts with MultiChoice, the business can draw on all past predictive models and behaviours 222

May 2022

“ We start with the experience we want to drive for customers” DR. DURREL RAMRATHAN SENIOR MANAGER, MULTICHOICE

MULTICHOICE

to determine payments, churn, viewing preferences, and other types of insight — all collated into one holistic experience.

“This means a customer won’t have a fragmented experience when they interact with us. It’s a seamless experience and helps inform the next best action for the customer,” adds Ramrathan.

If a customer is contacting MultiChoice, they usually have an issue, according to Ramrathan, so he believes that by turning

this experience into something that's valuable to the customer, they get what they want and the company gets the issue resolved, but the customer might also get longer term value from the interaction.

“This also incorporates new technologies, whether it is our AI Assist or we’re using AR/VR and so on. They can be a major competitive advantage if used well, to address a customer issue and build that trust,” says Ramrathan.

technologymagazine.com

223

MULTICHOICE

How to leverage data to feed decision makers One of the key issues when dealing with data is its complexity.

“We always need to have a clear understanding of the strategic objectives of the business and how we use the data we have as an asset to drive growth. Using that data to give us the correct insights that will ultimately lead to making decisions, which will benefit our customers,” says Ramrathan.

In reality, Ramrathan explains, business people don’t really care how you acquired the data or what you had to do in order to process it.

224

May 2022

“What they care about is that they have a problem, and they need the relevant insights to help resolve the problem. My team needs to be able to make a recommendation, but we also know that we need to keep our engagements focused,” he says.

Ramrathan adds: “You must grab their attention and maintain that attention, making them curious to understand what provides value and impacts the business drivers.”

The business translator and motivator While Ramrathan’s job role is undoubtedly to deliver analytics and machine learning

MULTICHOICE

“ By keeping customers engaged, they feel that they've been given the attention that they deserve”

capabilities to improve the customer experience, he believes that his role at MultiChoice is also to be the business translator between the analytics function and the business function, to ensure his team delivers business value.

He says: “I think most importantly, I must be a motivator for my teams, to ensure they're high performing, enabled and fulfilled as individuals. We are all just human beings and we must listen to our staff as intently as our customers.”

DR. DURREL RAMRATHAN SENIOR MANAGER, MULTICHOICE

technologymagazine.com

225

FACILITATING ELEVATED CHILDREN’S SERVICES WITH TECHNOLOGY WRITTEN BY: CATHERINE GRAY PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

226

May 2022

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

technologymagazine.com

227

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

228

May 2022

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

Empowering families in the provision of nurturing care, Marcus Johnson, Children’s Home Society of Florida’s CIO, discusses where technology plays a role

L

ooking to give parents and families the tools to cultivate nurturing and safe homes for their children, Children’s Home Society of Florida (CHS) ultimately wants to end the need for foster care as we know it through early intervention.

By reaching families before crises occur, CHS helps them stay safe and strong together, giving children more chances to thrive. A dedicated team of 1,300 professionals work together to support the children of Florida under a common goal: to create a world where all children have the tools and support they need to realise their full potential.

Part of this inspiring team is Dr Marcus Johnson, a retired Army Veteran and CHS’ passionate CIO. Although he does not directly interact with the families CHS serves, Johnson is driven by his team’s goal to make the lives of those staff on the frontline easier, giving them more time to focus on the children.

“I am laser-focused and heavily motivated to help our staff fulfil their responsibilities as efficiently and productively as possible. I want nothing more than to empower every member of the CHS organisation with reliable tools which, in turn, lead to improved services for those children and families that I myself do not interact with,” explains Johnson. technologymagazine.com

229

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

230

May 2022

JOHNSON: ARMY VETERAN AND TECHNOLOGIST

DID YOU KNOW...

He continues: “I want to provide all CHS leaders with trusted data, the right data, and in real-time so that they can make the right decisions at the right time, and trust their conclusions. Our organisation is involved in hundreds of programmes that are positively impacting the lives of hundreds of children every day. We must be able to tell that story, so we must have the right systems and tools in place to do that. One of the first things I did after taking on the mantle of CIO was develop a Vision and Mission Statement for the IT Department.”

Now, the IT department is focused on empowering CHS to carry out its mission as a leading provider of Child and Family Services through the coordinated and

From 1987 to 2007, Johnson served in the United States Army. He originally enlisted in the Army as an Infantry Medic but reclassed two years later as an Aeroscout Observer. In 1994, Johnson was accepted into the US Army Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as an Officer in the Signal Corp (Information Technology).

Johnson retired from the Army in 2007 holding the rank of Major.

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

“ At the moment, within the child-welfare industry as a whole, frontline professionals are overburdened with outdated and, in some cases, obsolete technology”

MARCUS JOHNSON TITLE: CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER INDUSTRY: NON-PROFIT ORGANISATION

MARCUS JOHNSON

CIO, CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

EXECUTIVE BIO

efficient implementation of innovative, high-quality IT systems and services.

The team also looks to make IT and technology at CHS a strategic enabler for all of its operations and activities, enhancing its ability to help children realise their full potential by transforming the organisation into one that is agile, forward-thinking, and highly efficient.

One thing Johnson does stress is that, although technology is a priority, it never supersedes the people who are fulfilling the CHS mission: “It is first about the people, then the process, and then the technology.

Technology is the enabler” “At the moment, within the child welfare industry as a whole, frontline professionals are overburdened with outdated and, in some cases, obsolete technology. It breaks my heart to hear the stories about our staff working harder than necessary, especially when the work they are doing could mean the difference between life and death – our children deserve the best.

“While this is a challenge throughout the child welfare system, at CHS, leadership

LOCATION: ORLANDO, FLORIDA Marcus Johnson serves as the Chief Information Officer for Children’s Home Society of Florida (CHS) – the state’s largest and most reputable organisation devoted to serving Children and Families. Johnson has more than 30 years of strategic leadership experience, including 20 years with the United States Army.

Prior to CHS, he served in Executive IT leadership positions in state and local government as well as a nonprofit organisation. He has also served in critical IT leadership roles with SeaWorld Parks and Entertainment and a Drug Addiction Rehabilitation Organisation on top of fulfilling several IT strategic transformation initiatives throughout Central Florida. Marcus is an award-winning author with three books published and holds a Doctorate Degree as well as an MSA in Information Systems. Marcus and his wife, Julee, have been married for 32 years and have three children.

technologymagazine.com

231

Business Grows Here What do more than 29,000 of the fastest growing companies know that you don’t? Companies like Lovesac know that whether you’re making a million, or hundreds of millions of dollars, NetSuite is THE business system for growing companies.

Learn more

"We started as a beanbag company in my parents’ basement, and the next thing I knew, we were one of the fastest growing furniture companies in the world."

- Lovesac Founder Shawn Nelson Shawn poured 25 years into making Lovesac work, with the simple idea that your furniture should evolve with your needs and last a lifetime.

As the company began to find its footing, Lovesac's growth spurt magnified challenges that jeopardized its success. There wasn’t a single place to access the information coming from the systems that ran the critical parts of its business—supply chain, inventory, order management and fulfillment, commerce, finance.

Now, it’s all tied together in NetSuite, the world’s #1 cloud business system.

With new complexities, like building virtual showrooms, diverse supply chains and sophisticated order fulfillment, NetSuite gives Shawn and Lovesac the visibility and control he needs to meet the demands of today's and tomorrow’s customer expectations.

Shawn’s entire business is built around the idea of modularity and flexibility, and he thinks NetSuite fits that ethos too. What’s more, NetSuite has grown right along with Lovesac. Shawn says: "Our furniture is designed for life — it’s built to last and infinitely adaptable, just like NetSuite."

Learn how NetSuite can be the last business system you’ll ever need.

Get your free product tour today at NetSuite.com/Lovesac.

Learn more about Lovesac at lovesac.com technologymagazine.com

233

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

“ The more we can automate, the more we can stabilise, the more we can improve efficiencies in backoffice tasks, the more time that our staff can spend with the kids” MARCUS JOHNSON

CIO, CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

234

May 2022

has made a decision that we need to change, we need to transform, we need to improve our service delivery across all spectrums. And we need the data, in realtime, that tells our story and the impact we are having on the lives of those we serve.

We can do this today, but it is extremely cumbersome and taxing on staff to do so,” adds the CIO. Using technology to provide greater services to children Through the hard work of the IT department, CHS has been able to improve efficiency and productivity while reducing the burden on the frontline. While there has been progress in a reduction in administrative tasks thanks to the introduction of new technologies within the organisation, there is still much more work to do.

“This is huge, because creating a stable technology infrastructure builds a strong workforce that is better equipped to keep children safe and families on a path to success,” explains Johnson.

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

Just last year, the C-Suite and Board Leadership at CHS approved an intense technology transformation initiative for the organisation, kicking off a complex threeyear IT transformation roadmap.

“Marcus’ vision and the IT transformation roadmap will enable our workforce in the delivery of high impact services to children and families,” says Andry Sweet, Children’s Home Society of Florida’s President & CEO. “CHS prioritises technologies that support our front line professionals to spend more time face-to-face with families and less time on the red tape and paperwork that can overwhelm and lead to burnout.”

“CHS is buried in manual processes and functional inefficiencies; our roadmap will alleviate those shortcomings. In the end, my mind keeps going back to our children, who deserve the best we can provide – anything less than the best technology available will only come back on the kids,” comments Johnson.

“We look for partners that support our work to keep more families safe, strong and together” MARCUS JOHNSON

CIO, CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

“The last 6 months have been intense for the IT Department. We’ve reorganised our IT Department, downsized our server fleet by 30%, implemented a three-tier security system across our entire infrastructure, and implemented a remote management and monitoring toolset across our ecosystem,” he adds.

By improving the people-processtechnology solutions, the IT department is driven by the shared goal to strengthen technologymagazine.com

235

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

the frontline at CHS. Johnson and his team have realised the power of automation technology as it looks to lower the burden of many of CHS’ employees.

“We also understand the value of building evidence in our sector to replicate

practices that have the highest impact in changing life trajectories, and sharing those findings with others in our field to better serve even more families across Florida and the nation,” says Sweet.

“The more we can automate, the more we can stabilise, the more we can improve efficiencies in back-office and front line tasks, the more time that our staff can spend with the kids. As we automate and streamline our business and case management applications, the end result will be a more cost-effective business management function resulting in more dollars being spent on the front line as opposed to home-office overhead,” explains Johnson.

“We are working towards an IT ecosystem that is seamless and as automated as we

IT AND SECURITY MANAGED SERVICES OUR “EYES ARE ON” 24X7!

ION247 is an IT and Security Managed Services Provider.

We provide an enterprise set of IT and Security “Outcomes” to Mid-Enterprise multi-location organizations, including vertical expertise in Real Estate/Management, Non-Profit, Finance/Insurance, and privately held healthcare.

Our “Cloud First” approach allows us to rapidly scale while placing value on best practices and security.

CONTACT US

236

May 2022

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

can possibly make it; one where the data architecture between systems just works, in real-time. As we come to a close of our year one goals, we are entering the next phase of implementing even more groundbreaking solutions,” he continues.

ANDRY SWEET TITLE: PRESIDENT & CEO INDUSTRY: NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION LOCATION: ORLANDO, FLORIDA Andry Sweet has more than three decades of experience in child welfare and behavioural health, and specialises in system transformation for Florida’s children and families. She previously worked in state government with the Department of Children and Families office overseeing system of care improvements for children that were later adopted in statute.

Sweet joined Children’s Home Society in the early 2000s, overseeing the transition of child welfare services from government to the private sector. She led innovative work at CHS, including the development and replication of Community Partnership

EXECUTIVE BIO

Technology achieving groundbreaking results Back in 2015, CHS realised the true potential of technology with the development of its CaseAIM solution, which had a direct and significant impact on the children the organisation serves.

“CaseAIM was developed as the next step in child welfare – the necessary step – to change the way the work is done to better serve Florida families and improve outcomes for kids. As more kids were entering foster care and staying in longer, we knew why: case manager turnover,” comments Johnson “Each turnover in case management creates a chain reaction that, on average, increases a child’s stay in foster care by 4.5 months. A three-year analysis has yielded undeniable results for this visionary approach. CaseAIM impacted turnover – in some areas, turnover dropped by 30%.

The effect on outcomes for kids was even more groundbreaking.”

To fully understand the impact of this new technology, the Florida Institute for Child Welfare conducted an independent study and found that, with CaseAIM: • Children spend nearly 100 fewer days in foster care • Children are more likely to achieve permanency within 12 months • Children experience fewer placement moves • Children experience fewer case manager turnover events.

Schools in Florida. She has held leadership positions for a variety of community boards, including the Heart of Florida United Way Council of Agency Executives, and the Children’s Cabinet of Seminole and Orange Counties. She was the chair of the Evans Community Partnership School Cabinet.

She is currently the Vice Chair of the Board of Children’s Home Society of America.

technologymagazine.com

237

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

Marcus Johnson, Children’s Home Society of Florida

Harnessing partnerships for CHS’ digital transformation To support CHS as it continues with its comprehensive and complex digital transformation journey, the organisation turns to a number of strategic partners that understand the value of CHS’ core mission and help them successfully implement new technologies.

“We look for technology and systems partners that support our work to keep more families safe, strong and together.

These partners understand the frontlinefirst approach to strengthen the workforce and create more stability for children. As a nonprofit, we also look for partners that understand our responsibility to be good stewards of every dollar,” explains Johnson.

Needing to dramatically improve efficiencies in its back-office and business management functions, CHS turned to Oracle, a leading computer software company, to expand from the basic NetSuite 238

May 2022

module to a total ERP solution that includes payroll, grants, contracts, CRM and more.

“This ERP Solution will consolidate multiple applications and silos that have developed over the years into one seamless platform. It will also remove numerous manual processes, improve data integration, and give us real-time data that doesn’t take hours to produce. Oracle is fully supportive of the CHS mission and understands our frontline primary responsibilities. They have accommodated numerous desires from

CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

“ I am laser-focused and heavily motivated to help our staff fulfil their responsibilities as efficiently and productively as possible” MARCUS JOHNSON

CIO, CHILDREN’S HOME SOCIETY OF FLORIDA

CHS. Since November 2021, they have invested hundreds of hours with us – at no cost to CHS – understanding our business, while coaching and conducting demos and desk-side discussions with key leaders and functional managers,” says Johnson.

Another key player in CHS’ ecosystem is ION247, a cloud-computing IT management,

backup, infrastructure, consulting, data and cybersecurity company, which has been supporting CHS since mid-2021.

Seeing value within the company, CHS realised ION247 could help identify where there were gaps in its IT infrastructure, which was particularly important in drafting its digital strategy, as Johnson explains: “An IT Assessment that ION247 completed over the Summer of 2021 brought to light several gaps and risks for CHS – some more urgent than others. From that IT Assessment, a three-year IT Roadmap was developed for CHS, including specific initiatives and best estimate cost projections to complete the three-year-plan. Two of the areas that the assessment addressed were a low IT maturity grade (Gartner's IT maturity model), coupled with a struggling infrastructure.

From those results, we modified the IT Department structure while bringing ION247 on as a Partner to provide a service as our Infrastructure Managed Service Provider.”

“ION has consistently been there for us as we experience significant infrastructure problems requiring an emergency response.

ION fully understands our mission – the lead Managing Partner in ION is personally invested, based on his own life experience as someone who adopted children himself. Without these partners, executing our digital transformation would have been difficult. Both Oracle and ION are invested in us and our mission. And as our work continues, we are looking to engage more passionate supporters, partners and donors,” he concludes.

technologymagazine.com

239

BUILDING ASIA’S DIGITAL BANKING FUTURE

240

May 2022

WRITTEN BY: JOANNA ENGLAND PRODUCED BY: JOE PALLISER

TONIK

technologymagazine.com

241

TONIK

Greg Krasnov, CEO and founder of Tonik, describes the journey that’s created one of Asia’s most successful digital banks

G

reg Krasnov is no stranger to entrepreneurship. Indeed, the CEO and founder of Tonik has more than 20 years of experience in the field of consumer finance and originally entered the marketplace as a private equity manager working in Europe.

Today, he heads Tonik, an all-digital bank that was launched in the Philippines in 2021, notable for being the first of its kind - also referred to as a ‘neobank’ in Southeast Asia.

Its consumer products range from deposits and payments to debit cards and loans.

Krasnov takes up the story of his journey: “In the early nineties, I was doing consumer finance deals in Central Europe for the private equity funds that I was working for.

It was Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania. They were all spiking on the middle class development, and that led to a really rapid evolution of retail banking, especially consumer finance. So, that was when I first experienced the sector. I then proceeded to build and sell one of the largest consumer finance banks in Ukraine called Platinum Bank. We became a number three consumer lender in the country. You know, sold it to a local group in 2013, and was backed by international private equity funds and IFC.” The move proved to be a canny one as it resulted in Krasnov moving to Asia, where he discovered fintech, launched a couple of startups, and moved into banking.

242

May 2022

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

243

Building Asia’s digital banking future

“It's been a long journey,” he says, "but through that journey I've realised one thing: that when the middle class starts developing in a country, it typically happens at around 3,000 to 5,000 GDP per capita.

Then the disposable income growth is disproportionate to the overall income growth, and that disposable income becomes the engine for fueling this real hockey stick with consumer finance, when 244

May 2022

people trade in their current income for getting the goods.”

Krasnov believes this lending trend is on an upwards trajectory in Southeast Asia, and that fintech is powering the drive because it enables businesses to reach customers faster and more cheaply. Another trend is the more prevalent availability of credit scores. Customers that haven't been lent to previously and are new to banking, are now exploring their options.

TONIK

GREG KRASNOV TITLE: FOUNDER AND CEO INDUSTRY: DIGITAL BANKING LOCATION: THE PHILIPPINES

“The potential is enormous because of the population of a place like the Philippines – namely 111 million people – where 70% don't even have bank accounts and 95% have never taken a bank loan, which represents an enormous potential,” says Krasnov.

Tonik and digital transformation Because Tonik launched in 2021, it hasn’t experienced the challenges of legacy and

EXECUTIVE BIO

Greg is the Founder and CEO of Tonik, the first neobank in the Philippines.

The neobank operates on the basis of its own digital bank license by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) and is backed by top international venture capital funds. Prior to Tonik, Greg co-founded and chaired multiple other successful Asian fintech companies (FORUM, Credolab, FLOW, Solarhome, AsiaKredit) and a consumer bank in Emerging Europe (Platinum Bank). At the beginning of his career, he spent 10 years in Private Equity - Leveraged Buyouts at Bank of America (London) and Innova Capital (Warsaw). A regional fintech thought leader, Greg was recogniszed as Director of the Year at the Asia FinTech Awards 2021 and one of the Top 12 Fintech Leaders in 2021 at Singapore Fintech Association (SFA). He was also recognized as Financier of the Year in Ukraine at the National Awards 2011.

Bridging real life to digital.

At BPC, we are bridging real life to digital by equipping our clients with the right technology to create payments services that fit right into the customers’ lives. Real life needs of people who make payments or do business transactions converge into digital services. Is it a traditional card payment, mobile wallet or an instant payment, is it initiated via a mobile, through an agent of embedded into an app via an API? It no longer matters; everyone wants it fast, easy and secure, and not having to think about it.

We have been doing this for 25 years, for more than 350 clients in over 100 countries, using the model that best fits the business objectives – be it in house, managed services or complete outsource.

SmartVista Solutions • Digital Payment & Banking • Instant Payment & National

Infrastructure • Commerce & Payment

Processing • Smart City & Digital

Ticketing • Financial Inclusion &

Agency Banking • eGovernment Solutions • SaaS / Cloud payment services

Smart does IT. info@bpcbt.com bpcbt.com

BPC and financial inclusion in the Philippines and beyond BPC, is one of Philippines’ leading payment systems providers. We spoke to Eugene Gutierrez BPC’s Senior Vice President, to find out more about BPC’s efforts to bring the Philippines at the forefront of digitalisation.

For almost a decade, BPC has been a key partner to organisations in the Philippines that have a core payment service as part of their offerings. Eugene Gutierrez, tells us why the company is playing a key role in the digital transformation of financial institutions within the country and the wider region.

He says, “BPC, as a global payments company, has endeavored to focus on bridging real life to digital; which means designing solutions that solve consumer and business challenges. To do so, we apply an “ecosystem approach” to work with our customers and partners, on their vision and strategy, supporting financial inclusion globally.

“Over 110 million Filipinos, for decades, have been challenged with low banking penetration in ASEAN. However, the pandemic has had a positive impact on increasing financial inclusion in the Philippines.” says Gutierrez, who points out that the Central Bank - BSP has seen a spike in the opening of bank accounts in order to receive cash assistance from the government.

Eugene Gutierrez SVP, BPC

Digital and mobile trends will continue to evolve in the banking and payment space.

Gutierrez notes that historical barriers that made eradicating financial inclusion difficult in the Philippines, are being quickly removed. “These are driven largely from the needs of an agile, more tech-savvy, population who want financial payments, banking convenience, speed, and use personal financial analytics at their disposal,” he says.

Him and various banking clients believe the future of banking in the Philippines is overwhelmingly positive. “Digital and mobile trends will continue to evolve in the banking and payment space.

However, with an impressive velocity in digital adoption that is capturing the world’s attention, the harsh reality is that “Cash is still King” in the present-day Philippines and continues to be the dominant payment method.”

He concludes, “but the convergence of those forces of consumer demand for modern financial services and the efforts of Philippines’ financial institutions that provide these services to all segments of the Filipino society will eventually prevail and will help to improve the lives of our citizens in this new digital financial era.” info@bpcbt.com bpcbt.com

TONIK

incumbent-based institutions. Instead, it has instantly been able to cater to the demands of an increasingly digital marketplace.

Krasnov explains: “We were the recipients of the first digital bank licence from the central bank in the Philippines. That was actually the first digital bank licence to be ever granted in the region here, and we already launched on that, so we've been operational now for a year. That actually makes us today the first and only so far operational digital bank licensee in Southeast Asia.”

The process has not been without its challenges, however, because the remit of the bank was so new. “We've faced challenges regarding the fluidity of the regulatory regime because our licence was a pilot one. We work together with a regulator to create the regulatory framework for what a digital bank licence should look like.”

Krasnov says there have also been obstacles to overcome with infrastructure.

As the very first, fully operational, purely cloud-based bank in the Philippines, lots of coordination was required in terms of the regulatory framework which saw regulators working with Tonik’s launch team to ensure the systems were sound. “A lot of technological work went into it with our vendors to make sure that that infrastructure is completely bulletproof and beyond bankgrade, so the people feel safe keeping their money in the cloud, as it were,” he explains.

Launching Tonik during a lockdown While operating digitally and not having the burden of switching from a legacy system to an agile, digital platform, Tonik did have to launch in the midst of lockdowns that were particularly strict throughout Asia. That alone has brought its own challenges, as a number of the bank’s marketplaces haven’t been 248

May 2022

2018

Year founded

500-600

Number of Employees

“ We have a unique opportunity to build a very profitable operation. We think that, if we do our job right, then probably sometime next year, we should be hitting overall bank profitability” GREG KRASNOV

FOUNDER AND CEO, TONIK

visited by the team in the year it has been fully operational.

“Up until last month I hadn’t actually been to Manila in two years. I've been operating out of Singapore,” says Krasnov. “I haven't been to Chennai (India) either, and Chennai is where we do all of our R&D. We have 150 people there now.”

In Manila, growth has been even more sharply marked, with the operation expanding from just five employees to 300 employees within 12 months. Despite the lack of in-person contact, the challenges have been managed and overcome with excellent results, proving that digital operations can be just as effective as faceto-face management.

“It's been an interesting challenge to build the business completely digitally and completely virtually. Until last month, I hadn’t met half of my management committee members. I had no idea how tall they were, for example. It's a really interesting way of building a business, but we're born in the cloud, right? We're literally built from scratch this way and that gives us a real big advantage going forward.”

Krasnov jokes that the entire process has had a façade of unreality about it – and likens the bank’s journey to that of virtual technologymagazine.com

249

TONIK

Accelerate with Mastercard® Fintech Express

SPEED

SCALE

ACCESS

Grow your business with a tailored service to obtain a global license for issuing prepaid, debit and credit cards.

Get Started

250

May 2022

FLEXIBILITY

“ We're running very fast in terms of growing our loan portfolio, both from the point of view of getting already existing products scaled, as well as introducing new products so we can broaden up the funnel.

That's really our biggest focus in the next 12 months" GREG KRASNOV

FOUNDER AND CEO, TONIK

reality. “We were actually joking with my guys that, you know, here we are for two years, playing 12 hours a day in this video game called Tonik Bank. You know? That's basically what it is, right? You're just sitting on the computer and you have different characters come on and it's a very engaging digital game.”

The culture of a purely cloud bank With such little in-person interaction, managing the cultural expectations of a bank that has expanded so quickly has not been an easy task. But Krasnov is certain that, as the world opens up more in the receding months of the pandemic, the cultural environment of Tonik will flourish.

“We pay a huge amount of attention to culture. The fact that we've been working remotely actually caused us to double- and triple-down on things because it becomes a lot more important that your fighting unit is a cohesive one.”

Krasnov believes cohesion is created by culture and shared values. Tonik has five corporate values that are representative of its position as a technology company, as well as its position as a bank. It focuses on typical banking values like reliability, teamwork, honesty – three values that are more from the banking world. But added to those are also the values ‘street smart’ and a ‘sense of humour’.

He explains: “You cannot be innovative without being street smart and having a sense of humour. So basically, we built a culture where people that join us, will stay with us. They're driven by the need and the desire to create something new, to build something, to be part of that something.

We're looking for risk takers. We're looking for people who are not afraid to grab the ball and run with it.”

To ensure cohesive teamwork, the management of Tonik is acutely aware that communication and familiarity are key in technologymagazine.com

251

“ Trust is an interesting issue and there are a couple of elements to it.

One is from the deposit side. When you keep your money in the cloud, people want to know that the money is safe" GREG KRASNOV

FOUNDER AND CEO, TONIK

building an entity that moves forward with purpose. As such, much work goes into devising ways to help the team get to know each other better.

“A huge amount of work goes into ensuring the staff are working well together, in terms of engagements to bring people together, to have them get together. We have this thing called happy hour water coolers. Because we all work in different places, it's kind of been hard to bring people together, but you still need to integrate. If you don't integrate, then you can't create.”

Tonik innovation and motivations Krasnov is aware that the interpersonal relationships that are developing in his teams will ultimately be responsible for breeding an environment that nurtures growth and enables the bank to scale.

“When you innovate, you have two vectors running against each other, namely the corporation vector and the conflict vector, and the corporation vector is actually created by people being in the same room and sharing the values and the history and the relationships with each other. So when you don't have that, then conflict will overtake and you'll basically 252

May 2022

not get the innovation happening. So, you need to be carefully balancing that, and part of the function of leadership in the digital environment is making sure that you can balance those two vectors, even in the digitally challenged environment.”

Tonik and the Metaverse With a number of leading banks all entering the metaverse, it would seem likely that

TONIK

Tonik Bank – which is already operating on an entirely virtual level – will also make that augmented reality move; it’s a step Krasnov is certainly not averse to. “I would quite welcome that, because one of the things we noticed early on in this kind of Zoom world is we are really missing body language.

When you have human communication happening, psychologists say body language is 90% of the message. When you have

no body language, it's horrible, and this is exacerbated if it's a low-trust environment of new employees coming in who haven't been team built together.”

Although there are no solid plans to enter the metaverse yet, Krasnov and his team insist on one stipulation. “We mandated that video must be always on when you're on the Teams call, and we follow that religiously. So from that point technologymagazine.com

253

TONIK

“ People are very eager to try out and adopt digital solutions, and I think that's been a nice backbone for us, one that's also been, of course, reinforced by the lockdown” GREG KRASNOV

FOUNDER AND CEO, TONIK

254

May 2022

of view, I would welcome instruments that enable into the digital environment more body language because they just create a smoother communication capability.”

Tonik and unsecured lending opportunities The Philippines is an emerging market, and as such, there are many opportunities for digital operators to tap into markets crying out for new opportunities. The bank is currently addressing the $140bn retail deposit and the $100bn unsecured retail lending opportunities that are available in the Philippines.

“Let's start with the lending market, because the consumer lending market is where we make the money. That's our monetisation. The deposits are just the raw material for the lending that we do,

TONIK

right? When you make something out of something, that something is money and the money is the savings that you take from your consumer.”

Krasnov says that on the lending side, the market that Tonik is operating on is deeply underpenetrated, with only 4% of Filipinos being able to borrow from the incumbent banks. Instead, the culture of lending is interpersonal and 70% of Filipinos that borrow, borrow from each other. Today, the banking total asset class in the banking system for unsecured consumer finance is about $10bn.

Krasnov says: “If you add mortgage and cars, that's another like $15bn, and that's particularly nothing. So, the unsecured alone, it should be like $50 to $100bn if you just run per capita columns to other

economies of similar level of development.

So, even compared to neighbours, you know, Indonesia and Vietnam, which are similar, like three and half, 4,000 GDP per capita, the Philippines should already be 40 to 50 billion, and it's only 10.”

Ultimately, he asserts, current banks don't understand how to lend to new bank clients. They don't understand how to credit and assess them – and so, they stay away.

“They're happily taking the low margin corporate business that is very well secured and they don't want to take that incremental risk. And they don't really have the knowhow to build those scorecards and use the alternative data, to use those really kind of low-cost processes that make it possible to lend a $500 ticket within 60 seconds with high probability of return. It takes quite a bit

technologymagazine.com

255

TONIK

of science, quite a bit of trial-and-error and a lot of know-how – and none of that knowhow really exists in the Philippines’ banking sector today. It just hasn't gotten there yet.”

It’s a frustrating situation for customers when an alternative lending platform isn’t available – but that’s where Tonik stops the very big gap in the market – and it’s taking full advantage of its digital identity by drawing on a huge number of talent pools.

“In Europe, for example, we've had a lot of migration of this know-how from consumer finance banks in Western Europe to Central Europe, and then from Central Europe, you know, further to Eastern Europe. Whereas in the Philippines, you just don't have the same kind of level of expertise migration. So, we've put together a team and actually, you know, we use the skills wherever there are good skills in the world. Our data science team was built in India because you just don't find skilled consumer finance data science people in the Philippines today. We look for skills where we can find them.”

Building trust in a new marketplace As much of the lending in the Philippines is person-to-person rather than bank-to-person, the lack of marketplace trust in financial institutions runs high. Overcoming that challenge is an uphill task, points out Krasnov.

“Trust is an interesting issue and there are a couple of elements to it. One is from the deposit side. When you keep your money in the cloud, people want to know that the money is safe. Thankfully, Tonik is regulated by the Central Bank in the Philippines and deposits are insured by the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (PDIC). So, that helps address a lot of the customer's concerns, because they know that up to roughly $10,000, their deposits are insured by the government.”

256

May 2022

The majority of Tonik’s depositors are not from the wealthy classes. Instead, they are middle-class people with a deposit ticket of about $2,000, which guarantees they are covered by government insurance. Krasnov says trust also has to be earned from a technology point of view – especially in an age when cybercrime is rife, and hacking is an almost daily occurrence.

“The infrastructure that we're running is on a completely new level of IT security to a typical bank app or traditional bank in the Philippines. We've gone through some certifications, which again we're the first bank in the Philippines to obtain that level

of certification for our app security and IT security. We're working with Mastercard on some solutions that are quite unique for the market as well, where people's money is very, very safe. We can consistently communicate that to the consumer, and I think the fact that we've been able to grow our deposits as much as we have shown that they really understand what we do and appreciate what we do,” he says.

The high mobile penetration and young population of the Philippines is also an opportunity for entities like Tonik, because the next generation of spenders are keen to make use of the latest technologies. “The

average age is 24 for a Filipino. It's a very young population and is therefore almost entirely digitally native. The Philippines is the number one Facebook market in the world.

Its average Facebook time is four hours per day per user.”

Krasnov points out that this means moving from one bank – or one technology – to another is an easy transition. In fact, they have embraced the digital banking culture.

“They’re very, very fed up with going to the bank branches. Traffic is horrible. It's very, very hot. Nobody wants to have to go to a bank branch and then spend like three hours standing in a queue. People are very technologymagazine.com

257

TONIK

eager to try out digital solutions and adopt digital solutions, and I think that's been a nice backbone for us, and that's also been, of course, reinforced by the lockdown.”

Strategic partnerships with BPC and Mastercard Currently, Tonik has strategic partnerships with Mastercard and BPC, and they are delivering a virtual card to customers immediately upon onboarding – Mastercard can be used at any point of sale that it’s accepted online. Krasnov describes the collaboration as a ‘wonderful’ relationship.

“We're actually, I think, one of the first banks in Southeast Asia to achieve Mastercard principal status before we even got our bank licence, because typically they start you off on a lower band and then kind of graduate it up to principal. But in order to roll out some of the features that we wanted to have in our MVP, we really needed principal.”

In terms of BPC, Tonik partners with them because they are a good processing operator.

The bank uses their Hungarian processing centre because, although they are a global company, Asia is their biggest marketplace.

Tonik products and services Currently, Tonik's retail financial products include deposits, loans, savings, accounts, payments, and cards on a highly secure digital platform. The product strategy runs in three product groups – namely, lending, savings and payments.

“Within savings, there are three very differentiated products. We have Stash term deposits and Group Stash. Stash is a savings account that's for a specific purpose, so you can create multiple stashes. Just think how at home you'll have multiple envelopes to stash money into, so that's exactly what we're replicating. You can put a picture of 258

May 2022

your kids or a picture of that motorbike you really want, or you know, that Paris vacation or whatever it is, and really create an emotional connection.”

The Group Stash, which is a variation of the individual savings Stash, has been created to reflect the cultural preferences of the Philippines when it comes to saving money.

The product enables communal saving so

TONIK

first digital bank in the Philippines to do a term deposit in a purely digital environment.

In most banks in the Philippines, customers would need to go to a branch to avail the term deposits and sign papers. “We're actually making it super easy, and it takes you like 10 seconds to set one up. That's our highest interest rate product, and it pays up to 6% deposit interest,” he says.

The deposits are, essentially, the raw material for Tonik’s loans. Underlying that is a payment capability called TSA, or Tonik account, with a number of different payment options for paying in and paying out. This has been integrated to more than 10,000 cash in, cash out points across the country.

“We're integrated to all the banks in the Philippines basically through the interbank payment system. Obviously, the cards, payment system, et cetera, et cetera. So customers have a broad variety of payment options. We're in the process of adding other payment options such as bills pay, and as I mentioned, digital goods, so that will be rolling out in the course of this year. That's not our core business, but it enhances the stickiness and enables the customer to do more things with us, and as they do more things with, we hope they get more comfortable and therefore eventually avail either on the deposit or the loan.”

that families and friends can save together towards a specific goal. This, says Krasnov, has taken off very well and now provides more than 10% of Tonik ’s deposit balances.

But more importantly, it creates virality because when Tonik users open a Stash, they invite their friends and family to participate with them in the group savings activity Krasnov points out that Tonik was also the

Gamification and its role in banking Gamification is a growing area in the APAC region, with more and more fintechs using gaming tools to create incentives to encourage customers to engage more with their products. While Tonik isn’t specifically using these tactics at the moment, it isn't something they’re ruling out in the future.

“We don't do as much gamification as other entities. We rely on a very different approach technologymagazine.com

259

to branding. The Philippines is one of the most emotional nations in the world and that's psychologically proven. Consumers in this region respond to emotional attachment.

A second insight is that they hate the banks because the banks are all gold and marble, and not very down-to-earth or consumerfriendly. So we used this as part of our branding campaign and started a hashtag movement, explicitly saying, ‘Guys, we want you to love us’.

You know, love us, like #DumpYourExBank, basically #NeobankingRomance.

“Our language is very flirtatious, very friendly. Kind of young, fresh. We call our 260

May 2022

customers luv and huns. We celebrate monthsaries with them when we send them our statements. We sign our emails and texts with XOXO Tonik. That's not something that people are used to from their banks. But at the same time, a Filipino consumer has proven to be very receptive to this kind of fresh, close and comfortable message.”

Krasnov puts this receptiveness down to the cultural nuances of Filipino culture. He believes the Philippines is a very class-driven society for historical and political reasons.

There's a lot of suspicion towards big

TONIK

“ When you innovate, you have two vectors running against each other, namely the corporation vector and the conflict vector, and the corporation vector is actually created by people being in the same room and sharing the values and the history and the relationships with each other” GREG KRASNOV FOUNDER AND CEO, TONIK

institutions and average, unbanked citizens often believe that the products offered by financial institutions are not for them, because they are not rich. Tonik is breaking the mould in that regard.

The future for Tonik In terms of new products on the horizon, Krasnov says savings will be a key area for development as well as the lending arm of the bank and asset creation.

“We're running very fast in terms of growing our loan portfolio, both from the point of view of getting already existing

products scaled, as well as introducing new products so we can broaden up the funnel.

That's really our biggest focus in the next 12 months,” Krasnov says.

“Getting those lending products to the market, scaling and balancing out our assets and liabilities so that we can actually start making money.

We're in a fortunate position because we can achieve fantastic product level profitability on these lending products.

We have a unique opportunity to build a very profitable operation. We think that if we do our job right, then probably sometime next year we should be hitting overall bank profitability.”

As far as he is concerned, all is well on track and Tonik is looking towards a bright future in the region, because incumbents simply aren’t moving quickly enough to take advantage of the changing marketplace and new customer expectations.

“Traditional banks in emerging markets are very slow to change themselves.

They don't have the tools and the imagination to even execute on it [digital transformation] if they wanted to. So, I think it's going to create an interesting world in the next decade or two with digital contenders like ourselves.”

He adds: “There will be, of course, many more digital contenders, complete with different cost structures, that will be able to compete away a lot of the margin from the big banks, the traditional banks. It's going to be an interesting transformation, where the market share of the digital contenders will grow rapidly, whereas attrition banks' market share will decline.”

technologymagazine.com

261

262

May 2022

PCS THAILAND

THE TIME IS NOW FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

technologymagazine.com

263

PCS THAILAND

264

May 2022

PCS THAILAND

David McGeown, Director of Transformation & Technology, PCS Thailand, on how overhauling processes will create stronger colleague and client relationships

A

s Director of Transformation and Technology at PCS Thailand, David McGeown found his way into the property industry “quite by chance”, he says.

With his work on SAP projects for a company called Centrica – the owner of British Gas – coming to an end, McGeown came across a job advert for a change management and training professional at OCS Group. Since taking on that role in 2008, McGeown has been a part of the OCS Group – almost 15 years.

Primarily operating as a security and cleaning company, PCS Thailand helps customers to keep their properties secure and keep them clean. Founded over 50 years ago, PCS Thailand started out as an independent business. It joined the OCS Group in the early 1990s.

McGeown explains: “Our services essentially include anything that you can think of that ensures a building runs efficiently and allows people to operate within the property in whatever capacity they use it for. PCS Thailand is the second biggest business under the OCS Group.

We operate in twelve countries – the two largest countries being the UK and Thailand.

The group employs around 80,000 people, 30,000 of which are here in Thailand.”

PCS Thailand’s core mission is to deliver the best experience of the built environment for its customers and their users. “So it’s really about living our customer values effectively,” says McGeown. technologymagazine.com

265

PCS THAILAND

David McGeown, Director at PCS Thailand

“ Before, our processes were paper-based, but now we have moved forward to more technology-based processes” DAVID MCGEOWN

DIRECTOR OF TRANSFORMATION & TECHNOLOGY, PCS THAILAND

He adds: “We are driven by the voice of our customers, and what they want when it comes to the maintenance of their facilities.

We make sure that our teams live and breathe this approach.”

PCS Thailand’s digital transformation strategy Committed to delivering better outcomes through technology for its customers and frontline colleagues, PCS Thailand’s overall 266

May 2022

digital transformation strategy is, therefore, a sum of two parts.

“From a customer perspective, our strategy is all about providing real insight into the services that we deliver,” says McGeown.

He adds: “We aim to make sure that we can deliver on the quality of service that we offer, and that we can also verify that we are meeting the obligations that we have with our customers.

“We also want to provide our customers with greater insights into their own facilities and how they are performing, enhancing their operations with our technology offerings.”

By harnessing its people-centric systems, PCS Thailand will provide its customers with real time insights into who has and hasn’t turned up for work, as well as the ability to monitor asset performance “Take air conditioning for example,” says McGeown. “We help our customers to make sure that their air conditioning is functioning

PCS THAILAND

DAVID MCGEOWN TITLE: DIRECTOR OF TRANSFORMATION AND TECHNOLOGY LOCATION: BANGKOK David has spent 14 years with OCS in various technology and transformation roles across a wide range of Group companies and functions. This has enabled him to develop a deep understanding of how technology can support our business.

David’s focus is to ensure that change is embedded and PCS utilises best in class technology, delivering tangible benefits to PCS, our employees, and our customers.

EXECUTIVE BIO

technologymagazine.com

267

and is ensuring building conditions are maintained through the use of technology and insights. This gives our customers effective and timely information.”

From a colleague's perspective, PCS Thailand is looking to remove the burden of administration.

McGeown explains: “Over the years, PCS Thailand has ended up with some clunky processes that are hard to navigate and very

PCS Thailand is the second biggest business under the OCS Group It operates in 12 countries — the two largest being the UK and Thailand. The group employs around 80,000 people, 30,000 of which are here in Thailand

paper-based – this is often the nature of an environment where labour is cheaper than technology.

“We’re at a point now, and COVID-19 has driven this, where we can’t continue to add bodies to processes to support growth, we are going to have to find new ways of doing that through technology. So a big part of our digital transformation strategy is to systemise as many administrative processes as possible.

For example, in a couple of months time, we will be offering our employees the ability to receive their payslips online.”

McGeown reflects that this may not sound like a huge leap forward, but for PCS Thailand, the transition to such technology will save time for its managers who currently drive to each individual site to deliver printed paper copies to thousands of people.

PCS Thailand and its collaboration with SAP The staff are at the core of the company’s digital transformation strategy, as McGeown technologymagazine.com

269

PCS THAILAND

“Technology will continue to meritocritise, making it more affordable and therefore realistic for the FM industry here in Thailand to adopt” ANN BELL

CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, PCS THAILAND

explains: “We employ 30,000 people in Thailand which equate to roughly 75% of our cost base, so they are our primary service.”

He adds: “It is therefore critical for us to manage our primary service delivery resources to enable growth and efficiency.

SAP SuccessFactors, although it’s an HR programme, will touch every single person that works for PCS Thailand, from our operating officer down to the cleaners and security guards on the frontline.”

With this implementation, PCS Thailand can migrate mountains of paperwork into systemised processes. In doing so, PCS Thailand can provide its colleagues with access to their own data for the first time ever.

“They’ll be able to update addresses, bank details, and access letters for proof of employment and payslips with ease,” says McGeown. “They will even be able to access the new HR system via an application called ‘Line’ – similar to WhatsApp or Telegram. Line is very widely used in Thailand. So we’ve built integration, to tools that our frontline colleagues use in their day-to-day lives.”

But the benefits of SuccessFactors is not limited to those on the frontline: from a management perspective, it provides a huge amount of visibility into who has turned up for their shift, in near real-time, as well as exactly how many job roles are filled and where the organisation's recruitment gaps are.

270

May 2022

“We will be able to operate much more efficiently when it comes to recruitment with SuccessFactors,” says McGeown.

He adds: “From the point of being recruited to being on the frontline, working for us, we can make that a much quicker process. We are really going to liberate our HR teams from the burden of administration so that they can truly act as an effective human resource function.”

Another way that PCS Thailand is harnessing SAP’s solutions is through its Simpler Office, using SAP’s intelligent robotic process automation (IRPA) tool. Simpler Office is designed to reduce PCS Thailand’s administrative processes behind the frontline, which include finance.

McGeown explains: “It doesn’t necessarily impact our frontline colleagues, but adds a burden to the overall business which means we can’t deliver as quickly and efficiently as we would like to for our clients.

“So we are looking to automate as many of our back office finance processes as possible, and SAP is really enabling us to do that because it allows us to shortcut what would have previously been a very cumbersome and onerous project implementation process. This is something that we are soon to go live with and a great example of how we are accelerating our process improvement and process efficiency.”

PCS THAILAND

ANN BELL TITLE: CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER LOCATION: BANGKOK Ann Bell has been with PCS for just under a year. Prior to joining PCS Thailand, Ann had been with Tesco Group for 32 years, where she was most recently stationed in Bangkok as the Chief Operating Officer for Tesco Lotus. She brings an outstanding wealth of knowledge and experience to PCS Thailand, along with an effective, results-oriented, cheerful, and empathetic leadership style.

EXECUTIVE BIO

technologymagazine.com

271

PCS THAILAND

Implementing IoT with Neos Looking for ways to unlock opportunities to effectively interlink its people and technology processes, PCS Thailand experimented with various products and services that you can get off the shelf, but found that, “when it comes to delivering on changing customer demands, these solutions are quite limiting. There is a lack of interoperability in the IoT world,” says McGeown.

Struggling to find a system that incorporated the various elements that it needed, PCS Thailand turned to an existing partner – Neos. “We already use Neos for our service delivery and they have a fantastic capability in terms of platform design, development, and application build,” says McGeown.

He adds: “We are working with Neos to build a fully interoperable IoT solution that allows us to bring our people, our processes, and our technology together to deliver a much more comprehensive, efficient and insightful service to our customers, adding real value.”

I AM Consulting helps PCS Thailand effectively implement its large scale projects Described by McGeown as “a breath of fresh air”, I AM Consulting has been helping PCS Thailand with its implementation of SAP SuccessFactors.

McGeown explains: “They provided us with a really comprehensive proposal for the implementation, and what really stuck with me was their willingness to not only discuss what they could do for us but what wasn’t within their remit. They also provided us with a detailed outline of how they would implement the solution, and how they would work with us as an organisation.”

He adds: “There was no shooting for the stars and over-promising, they were clear and confident on what they could do, and equally as clear and confident on what they couldn’t.”

272

May 2022

Glocomms have transformed IT Recruitment for PCS Thailand In delivering the PCS Transformation and Technology strategy the importance of specialist IT project is critical to their success.

McGeown explains: “Glocomms (part of the Phaidon International Group) have played a fundamental role in mobilising our projects. As a strategic staffing partner, they have enabled our projects to move faster and more efficiently, by providing individuals with expertise we were lacking.”

He adds: “I have known Kenny Lee, of the Glocomms team, for a number of years and I knew he would: a. understands the specific

PCS THAILAND

challenges PCS face, b. the importance of the projects our IT teams lead, c. be able to provide me with an efficient service. No matter how challenging the role, he was able to help – his service provided a level of accuracy missing from alternative agencies.

The next 12 to 18 months for PCS Thailand For the next 12 to 18 months, McGeown will be focusing his efforts on ensuring that PCS Thailand’s new payroll solution is successfully implemented through SuccessFactors this July.

“From a core HR perspective, we are going live with SuccessFactors in July which, in the first phase, will involve moving the payroll of

30,000 people from one system to another, as well as implementing a best in class time and attendance solution. I expect multiple processes to be operated by IRPA Bots and have a decent amount of customers moved onto our IoT platform by the end of the year,” says McGeown.

He adds: “We would then expect to fall into a steady-state of onboarding and serving customers, as well as enhancing our offerings and continuing to chip away at our conversion to IRPA for our back-office functions.”

technologymagazine.com

273

274

May 2022

ORBIA

Advancing life around the world with the help of IT WRITTEN BY: GEORGIA WILSON

PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO

ORBIA

Steph DeRuyck, CIO Dura-Line and Global VP at Orbia, discusses the company’s approach to ESG, customercentricity, and digital transformation

P

assionate about solving complex challenges, Orbia is a community of companies bound by a shared purpose - to advance life around the world.

Some of the key challenges that Orbia strives to solve include data access, clean water access, energy-efficient solutions, and products to address medical conditions such as asthma.

In the past 65 years, Orbia has evolved significantly through its investments in strategic growth. Today it operates in 50 countries, employing more than 22,000 people worldwide, making the company well-positioned to create a liveable and lovable planet for everyone.

Speaking fondly of the organisation she works for, Steph DeRuyck, CIO Dura-Line and Global VP at Orbia, says: “We have a remarkable ambition: to advance life around the world. Our brand story is also really interesting. Our company name is Orbia, and if you break that down, the ‘orb’ part is Latin for a spherical globe, while ‘bia’ is a word from Greek mythology, meaning ‘The personification of force’. When you combine the two it can be viewed as a force for the world. I believe this is fitting for our purpose to advance life around the world.

276

May 2022

technologymagazine.com

277

STEPH DERUYCK TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT AT ORBIA, CIO AT DURA-LINE INDUSTRY: UTILITIES

EXECUTIVE BIO

LOCATION: MINNEAPOLIS, UNITED STATES

278

Steph DeRuyck is the CIO of Dura-Line, leading the company’s IT function and also serving as the Global VP of Infrastructure across Orbia. She brings over 20 years of business and IT experience in the Agriculture, Financial Services, and Retail industries.

Prior to joining Orbia in 2020, Steph held various leadership positions at Cargill and Target. Steph has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Liberal Studies from the College of Saint Benedict/St. John’s University.

May 2022

ORBIA

“We have a remarkable ambition to advance life around the world” STEPH DERUYCK

VP/CIO, ORBIA/DURA-LINE

“Another interesting thing about our company is that we don’t have a traditional logo. Instead, we use what we call an ‘Impact Mark’, which continually measures our impact on people, planet and profit. Our Impact Mark offers a transparent gauge of our performance as a business, and we have specific indicators to measure annually how we are progressing our goals on sustainability, talent, diversity, innovation and investments.”

Orbia and its SDG commitments When it comes to the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Orbia is committed to 12 of the 17 total goals.

DeRuyck says: “We’re committed to sustainability and positively impacting the environment and communities around us.

We have a number of different social and environmental initiatives that are geared toward our commitment to the SDGs. These initiatives address important issues like alternative energy, sanitation, connectivity, and access to clean water and healthcare.”

One of Orbia’s recent sustainable solutions reports highlighted that 66% of its revenue directly or indirectly contributed to SDGs. DeRuyck says: “A few examples of our top contributors are precision irrigation solutions that allow farmers to reduce water consumption significantly with

ORBIA

Orbia: Advancing life around the world with the help of IT

“Orbia is committed to sustainability and positively impacting the environment and communities around us” STEPH DERUYCK

VP/CIO, ORBIA/DURA-LINE

280

May 2022

our Netafim business group, the water infrastructure solutions that Wavin produces to transport clean water, and the conduit from Dura-Line that provides vital high speed internet connections to information around the world.”

Reducing carbon emissions at Orbia A key commitment for Oriba is the reduction of its carbon footprint.

“We are committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2050,” says DeRuyck “We are striving to achieve this by setting science-based targets and making investments to accelerate decarbonisation. “ Orbia is contributing to the transition toward a low carbon economy through both decarbonisation operations and by offering products with lower carbon footprints.

Examples of how our products contribute to lower carbon footprints include Wavin’s innovative solutions for temperature control and ventilation which reduce the carbon footprint of residential buildings.

Last year Vestolit also reduced the carbon footprint of its portfolio by developing a PVC that is free from fossil fuels.

Another great example is Orbia’s development of the world’s first bicycle path, made of 90% postconsumer recycled plastics.

22,000+ Number of employees at Orbia

1953

Year that Orbia was founded

$8.8bn Company revenue

technologymagazine.com

281

ORBIA

Increase the productivity of your company with digital collaboration tools At Microsoft, we support you to continue your adoption journey to the cloud with Office 365 E5, which is the suite of cloud-based productivity applications that is combined with advanced voice, analysis, security and compliance services.

If you wish to receive additional information you can contact us: mwmexico@microsoft.com Download the free e-book: The People-Powered Workplace: Reimagine the Employee Experience

282

May 2022

“Not only is this a great product,” says DeRuyck, “but it has also allowed for faster installation, and delivered 80% fewer greenhouse gas emissions during the construction phase compared to traditional construction.”

Orbia is also conscious of its carbon footprint in IT, harnessing sustainability metrics to assess not only its fleet of assets but also its data centre energy consumption.

DeRuyck says: “We have projects underway to reduce both our technology debt and our carbon footprint.”

Orbia is doing this through: • Data-centre consolidation • Hyper-converged infrastructure • Recycling programmes for its assets when they're at the end of their life Ensuring vendors and partners are committed to sustainable products and services.

“ Our mix of partners complete our ecosystem whenever and however they are needed” STEPH DERUYCK

VP/CIO, ORBIA/DURA-LINE technologymagazine.com

283

“ Our agenda is ambitious and we can’t solve it alone” STEPH DERUYCK

VP/CIO, ORBIA/DURA-LINE

284

May 2022

ORBIA

business plan also ties into that, as well as our goals and objectives.”

Another crucial element of Orbia’s IT strategy is its commitment to customer centricity.

“Everything we do starts with the customer,” DeRuyck says. “We work back from that. Each business group operates autonomously but is united under the umbrella of Orbia’s mission, and so of course customer centricity is at the heart of what we are doing. And this shift in approach can be seen across IT globally.”

“At Orbia we have been working to fix the fundamentals, such as modernising infrastructure, transforming ERP, building cyber solutions and enabling digital innovation,” she says “We are also shifting toward commercialising some of our digital services, and are moving toward a more customer-centric IT function to create a seamless digital experience for our customers.”

Orbia’s Global IT strategy As an IT function at Orbia, DeRuyck explains that her team leads with strategy - an important part of our strategy is that we serve as trusted partners.

“We deliver effective, efficient, and secure solutions, and ultimately enable digital transformation,” she says. “Our

Orbia consolidates its data Orbia thinks of data as a strategic asset.

“With this mindset we implement governance across Orbia in a way that harmonises data through common architecture patterns,” says DeRuyck. “It also allows for flexibility at a local business level, to ensure that we create business driven insights.”

Blending self-service analytics and more traditional KPI-driven dashboards, Orbia is investing in a data hub and lake concepts.

“We favour cloud analytics platforms to make sure we're taking advantage of advanced analytics and machine learning capabilities,” says DeRuyck.

She adds: “Over the past year or so, we've established a data and architecture centre of excellence which brings all of our business groups and functions together so that we technologymagazine.com

285

ORBIA

can align on data governance and architecture.

“We're also fixing the fundamentals, through enhanced data security, the way we ingest data, and the design patterns we have around our overall data governance. But it's not all about the basics. Other things we are proud of are our advanced analytics pilots, which use machine learning for use-cases around pricing and raw materials.”

Orbia transforms its ERP Orbia is also transforming its ERP environment.

“We have a highly customised ERP environment,” she says “As you can imagine this results in disconnected business processes across Orbia.”

info@turnberrysolutions.com

Focus Forward Turnberry is a national provider of Business and Digital Transformation solutions. We help our clients maximize their investments in consulting to solve the most complex business and technology problems.

For more information, visit turnberrysolutions.com

286

May 2022

“ Part of our IT strategy is to be a trusted partner; to deliver effective, efficient, and secure solutions, and ultimately enable digital transformation” STEPH DERUYCK

VP/CIO, ORBIA/DURA-LINE

DeRuyck says that to improve this, it is transforming its ERP landscape “by implementing a business model-led approach to standardise and modernise its ERP.” She adds: “We are using industry templates to create a lean core and are standardising technologymagazine.com

287

288

May 2022

ORBIA

Orbia cares about its people “Orbia really cares about its people. As much as we care about advancing life around the world, we care about our people, our teams, and the safety of our teams, everything from physical safety to emotional safety offering guided meditation sessions as an example,” says DeRuyck.

integrations and master data governance.

We’re also increasing our leverage of cloud hyperscalers for microservices and custom development”.

Orbia and its partnerships Partnerships are important to Orbia.

“Global IT’s agenda is ambitious and we can’t solve it alone”, says DeRuyck.

She says: “Orbia has many large enterprise partners, including Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, TCS, and T-Systems helping us advance our strategic agenda.

But we also have niche partners, such as Slalom Consulting and Computex.

“Our mix of partners complete our ecosystem whenever and however they are needed. We like to think of them as partners instead of vendors. We see them as collaborators in these spaces.”

Orbia and Microsoft “Microsoft has been a key partner, especially through the pandemic, as we rapidly deployed digital collaboration

tools. They are also a partner of ours as we look to continue our cloud adoption journey,” explains DeRuyck.

Orbia and ThreeBridge (now Turnberry) “ThreeBridge recently went through a joint venture in which they rebranded to Turnberry Solutions. They have been a partner of ours by helping us build out some capabilities where we are not yet mature. Turnberry Solutions has provided a lot of resources for project management and they have been especially helpful most recently with some data and architecture capabilities.

“One thing we really appreciate about Turnberry Solutions is their flexibility.

They are nimble and able to pivot quickly. They are open to converting their contractors to full-time employees in the organisations they support, so I think that is a differentiating model.”

technologymagazine.com

289

VENTURE AN ‘INGEN APPROAC INNOVATI

290

May 2022

INJAZAT

BUILDING: NIUS’ CH TO ION WRITTEN BY: JESS GIBSON

PRODUCED BY: BEN MALTBY

technologymagazine.com

291

INJAZAT

Injazat’s Vice President & Chief Venture Builder, Nour El Ansari, lists the ingredients for innovation in his InGenius Ventures’ digital and tech incubator

C

urrently, we are traversing a bright, exciting age of technological advancement.

From traditional tech giants and their wide-ranging solutions enabling digital transformation to utilising tech for conservation, connectivity and education worldwide, an abundance of creativity is spilling over and colouring almost every single industry – even those deemed traditionally Luddite-like.

An industry-recognised market leader for digital transformation, cloud services and cyber security, Injazat is enthusiastically and strategically invigorating the industry via several global tech partnership networks, and co-creating digital platforms and services. As such, this Middle-East technology leader – located in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE – has turned its attention to partnering with up-and-coming ventures creating out-of-the-box technology platforms and businesses with both Governments and Private Corporates.

This core, driving focus of empowerment through end-to-end digital solutions has led to Injazat’s newest creation, InGenius Ventures, for which the parent company’s Vice President, Nour El Ansari, is the Chief Venture Builder.

“I joined in April 2020, in the digital business building department, as it was named then,” says El Ansari of his start at Injazat, which coincided with the 2020 global pandemic.

292

May 2022

Nour El Ansari Vice President, Injazat technologymagazine.com

293

INJAZAT

Venture Building: an ‘InGenius’ approach to de-risk Blue Ocean innovation

“I have spent almost a year working on the strategy and the transformation of Injazat, accelerating its shift from an IT outsourcing company to a real technology company that is able to provide its clients with a full digital transformation enabled by cloud advanced applications and cyber security, but also to help them challenge their current business models through venture building. And this is where we have created and named InGenius Ventures.”

InGenius Ventures: tech-enabled disruptive businesses with a human focus With a wide range of expertise across business, technology and digital solutions – not to mention prior experience of founding ventures and developing innovations – El Ansari is the perfect man to lead Injazat’s dedicated Venture Building activities.

Born in Morocco, he went on to study engineering in France, spending the vast 294

May 2022

“ One of the most exciting journeys is when we co-create with our partners and try to go beyond basic digital transformation to discover adjacent opportunities for their business” NOUR EL ANSARI VICE PRESIDENT, INJAZAT

INJAZAT

NOUR EL ANSARI TITLE: VICE PRESIDENT INDUSTRY: CLOUD, AND CYBER SECURITY LOCATION: UNITED ARAB EMIRATES

EXECUTIVE BIO

majority of his career thus far in Paris, where he married and started a family.

“My background is as an engineer from TELECOM Paris, so basically in technology, I like to think of myself as a generalist engineer. I'm very passionate about technology,” El Ansari explains.

It was after living and working in France for a while that El Ansari really started “leveraging [his] engineering background for the sake of having a business impact”, working for the renowned management consultancy BearingPoint, and then co-founding a startup in Paris with his wife that provided platforms funded and incubated by the French Chamber of Commerce.

First, working in management consulting provided El Ansari with the “corporate advisory capabilities, delivery toughness and the experience of transforming and setting up new businesses and strategies for large telecom corporations and government executives”.

Then, through his early venture-building experience – which buoyed his “startup spirit” – El Ansari displayed passion for what he deems “disruptive tech”, otherwise known as technology that aims to change the game through the alteration of traditional business models. In short, the process deepened his profound desire to develop end-to-end digital technologies that have an impact “beyond the surface level”.

This process also gave El Ansari experience of the entire startup journey, from initial conception to a “real, funded startup” with a dedicated team by his side: “That was where I really tackled all the issues related to building a company – recruiting people, managing a team, thinking about the journey from an idea to a real funded startup.”

While he definitely had an impact with his first startup, it wasn’t until El Ansari started

Nour El Ansari is passionate about the Digital Era and what advanced technologies can bring to us! His current mission is inventing and building impactful ventures for the UAE and MENA region.

He is convinced that Digital Technologies - when used the right way - can have an unprecedented positive and global impact on communities, organisations’ and nations’ prosperity.

Usually described as a results-oriented professional, his motivation is to discover, learn and create value by solving complexity and subsequently leading execution with impactful teams.

While his focus now is on Digital Ventures, he comes from management consulting, engineering and entrepreneurship backgrounds.

Across the EMEA region, Nour El Ansari has led strategy, innovation and transformation projects, serving major telecom operators, governments and technology players. In addition, he has founded a Paris-based Digital Venture to pursue his deep interest for the Digital Platforms Economy.

GELLIFY Middle East has a unique business model that is accelerating innovation by driving under the same company a venture capital fund of +100M$, a 60+ category-defining technology companies startups portfolio, and a “Gellification” program that makes “Air” and “Liquid” startups and corporate ventures gradually “Solid” on the market.

Thanks to our fusion of innovation and digital expertise, we also partner with corporates and governments to manage their internal digital transformations, while sustaining the right balance between human and technological transformational components. By leveraging the competencies and the experience of our best-in-class entrepreneurs and investors, our firm can bring a new value-based approach to consulting and venture building collaborations.

Corporate Services for 21.1+ M$/y

Innovation Advisory & Digital Transformation Services projects value

Portfolio of 60+ startups

Validated Technology and Business Model Startups

300+ employees 14,000+ subscribers Innovators Community

KICK-START YOUR INNOVATION JOURNEY NOW

VC fund of 100M$+

B2B Tech Startup Venture Capital Fund

INJAZAT

“ InGenius Ventures is a venture builder, which is significantly different from a startup studio or a startup accelerator because the aim of a venture builder is to build assets for the group, to have control and real impact through the ventures that we own” NOUR EL ANSARI VICE PRESIDENT, INJAZAT

working as Injazat’s Chief Venture Builder – a position he gained after joining Injazat through his connections in Abu Dhabi – that he realised the scope of meaningful, influential change that could be achieved with a larger network as a base.

And it’s in this environment that the InGenius Ventures’ story began.

“InGenius Ventures is a venture builder, which is significantly different from a startup studio or a startup accelerator, because the aim of a venture builder is to build assets for the group, to have control and a real impact through the ventures that we own,” explains El Ansari, keen to highlight how startups and ventures differ.

“One of the most exciting journeys is when we co-create with our partners and try to go beyond basic digital transformation to discover adjacent opportunities for their core business, which is a way for them to diversify whether they are in healthcare, in government, in oil and gas, and so on. In that journey, we play the role of the technology investor, partner and venture-building specialist.”

There are multiple stages in venture building: the first of these is the Explore stage that starts with a “pool of ideas”, which technologymagazine.com

297

INJAZAT

DID YOU KNOW...

INGENIUS VENTURES

298

InGenius Ventures activities are naturally heavy on Healthcare and on Smart City capabilities and started industrialising venture building with many of our partners in healthcare, in smart mobility, in advertisement, in construction, across Abu Dhabi, the UAE, and in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, mainly.

– Malaffi is the first health information exchange in the MENA region, developed as part of the strategic Public Private Partnership (PPP) between the Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DOH) and Injazat.

In 2021, Malaffi connected 100% of the Hospitals in Abu Dhabi – Since 2018, Injazat has been working with UAE Civil Defense and the Ministry of Interior to revolutionise the nation’s ability to respond to emergency events. In line with the countries' 2021 Vision, making the UAE one of the safest countries in the world, Hassantuk uses smart monitoring

May 2022

equipment, alerting and control systems to make and keep more than 150,000 buildings across the UAE secure.

– In 2021, InGenius Ventures launched with UAE leaders in Oil and gas platforms building, a venture dedicated to employing AI to transform methods of oil and gas asset management, extending to even renewable asset-management operations.

– Awards – Injazat won three in 2020: - Hewlett Packard Enterprise: Service Provider of the Year 2020 - FORTINET: MSSP Partner of the Year 2020 - Tahawultech.com Future Enterprise Awards: Cloud Services Provider of the Year 2020 – 2022: The UAE National Cyber Security Council and UAE-based technology company Injazat have signed an MoU aimed at improving coordination and response time to potential cyber-attacks in the country.

INJAZAT

funnels suggestions that are prioritised via “a matrix of criteria” to help “de-risk investments” for the company and its partners; then comes the secondary data research, where a range of methodologies are utilised to highlight market potential and any challenges that need overcoming; this is followed by the design and validation phases, which include “building an investment proposal on a theoretical basis, using data that can be bought or researched, as well as a practical dimension, such as running a Proof of Concept to measure market traction on the venture idea so that the investment case can be revamped based on real data”; next is the build and recruit phase, which is fairly self-explanatory; and the final part of the process is growth and expansion, achieved via symbiosis between InGenius and the venture partner.

“This is the future because health should be connected and health should be pivoted in a preventive manner. Our group, with the capabilities of AI components, can help people take care of their health in a predictive way – as the English would say, ‘prevention is better than cure’!”

NOUR EL ANSARI

VICE PRESIDENT, INJAZAT

The most notable part of this process is the fact that InGenius Ventures accompanies the venture throughout the entire journey, whereas many others will exit following the ‘build phase’. In essence, InGenius is an investor and isn’t just there to extract shortterm profit; it’s there to cultivate talent and develop impactful, long-lasting businesses. technologymagazine.com

299

Developing a digital ecosystem In order for Injazat and InGenius Ventures to have the type of impact envisioned

by El Ansari and his team, developing digital ecosystems is essential. This means identifying a range of partners and investors from across different sectors, as well as from across both the public and private spheres.

Such an ecosystem would enable InGenius to link its chosen ventures with governmental departments, as well as to the technology and platforms accessible via its partners, this would enhance the venture builder’s ability to bounce initial ideas through the various stages of innovation – from design and validation, through to the 300

May 2022

building and growth phases – extending the venture’s longevity in addition to the overall positive impact.

El Ansari wants the development of digital ecosystems to be connected to, and accelerated by, government leadership, providing an example of how this may work in the future: “Health tech is presenting a huge potential, and I think that the digital ecosystem of healthcare will accelerate once it's led by the government and supported by the private sector. The scheme I see there is a hyper-platform that can host other platforms.”

“Another example is Advanced and Autonomous Mobility in which, unless the

INJAZAT

“The goal is to improve many dimensions of our purpose, to have a purpose that is around people and businesses, around safety, peace and the environment, too. I personally call them ‘The Four Ps’, for People, Peace, Planet, and Progress” NOUR EL ANSARI

VICE PRESIDENT, INJAZAT

government takes the lead, the friction between regulation and private operations’ newness may indefinitely slow down any deployment progress. Proof of this can be seen when looking back at aviation developments, which were based on accelerated military innovations. The reason it happened so fast is that military innovations are government-driven and born in a quasi-unregulated realm of urgency…”

An open-innovation approach teamed with collaboration “My day-to-day job is to oversee a portfolio of ventures that we source from different channels, including our strategic partners

that are already technology clients for us, but also from new partners that could be future co-investing venture partners,” says El Ansari.

To obtain a rounded digital ecosystem, El Ansari champions an “open-innovation” approach to collaboration and partnerbuilding – and here, he uses a kitchen analogy to demonstrate what he means by this.

“In what we call the ‘InGenius Kitchen’, we take an open innovation approach, which is based on sharing a pool of ideas from our teams and from our teams’ networks that could make sense to one of our partners.” In other words, each idea or solution is like an individual ingredient coming together in a proverbial pot to build a full venture recipe that may or may not work.

When it comes to choosing what to work on, El Ansari states that the decision hinges on whether ventures have the following three elements: a human design perspective, a business design one, and a tech design technologymagazine.com

301

INJAZAT

one. All three are required for long-term partnerships, which links back to El Ansari’s interest in complex industry disruptions, from HealthTech to Smart Cities.

“We are part of a group that is probably a regional or global leader in AI and cloud – Group 42. And AI is now impacting a lot of industries that we want to play in,” enthuses El Ansari, before outlining how this will look in future. “Among the few things that I personally see on the horizon – and that I'm really excited about – is the potential of health tech, which is something that everyone knows, but I think the digital ecosystem of healthcare will be accelerated once it's led by the government and supported by the private sector.”

He adds: “This is the future because health should be connected and pivoted in a preventive manner. Our group, with the capabilities of AI components, can help people take care of their health in a

302

May 2022

predictive way – as the English would say, ‘prevention is better than cure’!”

Another key partnership for Injazat is Gellify, who the company has partnered with for the last few years.

“They present a few characteristics that are close to our new company, Injazat 4.0, as we call it. Gellify presents a condensed level of talent, high adaptability, as well as being another kind of VC-backed venture builder, startup accelerator and investor. They also developed consulting and advisory capabilities that are key in helping us crack some of our challenges, whether with our transformation or other areas. So they play a key partner role,” explains El Ansari.

“We have what we call delivery partners and venture partners. This encompasses best-in-class consultancies, as well as established technology companies,

INJAZAT

research companies, and obviously, companies from the realm of startups.”

In terms of future partnerships, El Ansari states that both Injazat and InGenius Ventures are looking to diversify this portfolio of partner companies, perhaps by working more closely with different government departments, as well as tech companies.

Mission possible: pioneering with purpose and bridging the innovation gap between the corporation and start-up models At Injazat, InGenius Ventures’ overarching mission is to build ventures with a significant impact on society, in terms of both businesses and individual citizens, in-line with the country’s leadership trajectory.

“The goal is to improve many dimensions of our purpose, to have a purpose that is around people and businesses, around safety, peace and environment, too. I personally call

them ‘The Four Ps’: People, Peace, Planet, and Progress,” smiles El Ansari, summarising his goals – which are many and wide-ranging.

The core pillar of this, though, is the human element; El Ansari feels that InGenius can generate untold societal benefits from really emphasising its purpose in the space between corporations and startups.

“Venture building is a job by itself, because it comes at the intersection of two worlds: corporations and start-ups. We are not an innovation department in an established corporation, and we're not a startup living in an accelerator. Instead, InGenius Ventures makes the link between the two,” he establishes.

As such, El Ansari is excited by the future of technological innovation, imagining the applications of AI in road safety and vehicle tracking, and how blockchain may end up impacting more than the financial world.

“I think that the way we manage transactions will be deeply transformed by blockchain.

The way the cinema industry works could also be completely changed by blockchain, with a cryptocurrency not only transforming the way we finance the next blockbuster, but also transforming the way cinema tickets and platforms like Netflix work,” predicts El Ansari, his brain evidently ticking away with the burgeoning possibilities forming in his mind.

“So the major disruptor for Netflix would be a blockchain that's distributing access to watch movies directly to people from productions. Which movies would have been financed through an ICO, and this is something that we're talking about – but the day it happens, the cinema industry will never look like before because its investment budgets will be multiplied and the way we consume it will change.”

technologymagazine.com

303

Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth DCs, on investment and growth 304

May 2022

WRITTEN BY: İLKHAN ÖZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: LEWIS VAUGHAN

technologymagazine.com

305

ATNORTH

atNorth CEO Magnús Kristinsson talks about their DC expansion into new markets and the investments and underlying vision that has driven AN’s evolution

A

tNorth was established back in 2009, and from its inception it has championed an entrepreneurial driving spirit.

“We basically consider ourselves to be a startup company,” says Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth, “and in December 2021, we were acquired by Partners Group, which is one of the largest private market firms in the world. What this means for us is that we will need to find a new balance between the institutional and the startup spirit, as this move opens up many opportunities for us.” atNorth is the largest colocation Data Centre (DC) operator in Iceland, recognised for its high-density computing technology coupled with its dedication to sustainability.

The DC company is headquartered in Reykjavik and already has several operations across Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and the United Kingdom - despite its early start-up ethos, its acquisition by Partners Group has bestowed atNorth with access to a completely different level of funding, set to further fuel its quickening expansion and growth.

This is the quid pro quo that sustainabilityfocused and start-up-spirited DCs must make when such large investment is the key consideration. In fact, such a move provides opportunities to achieve goals that may have seemed long out-of-reach, but presently have become a reality that will, in all likelihood, see atNorth achieve goals that were not even possible for the DC company just a few short years ago.

306

May 2022

2009

Year Founded

50+

Number of Employees

$53mn

Revenue in USD

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

307

ATNORTH

“Our partner ecosystem is essential to us,” says Kristinsson, “since we are not a big organisation. We have a supply chain of key partners that we work with, and we would not be able to build our DCs, nor service our customers, without it.”

Another one of atNorth’s key partners is Systemair, who they have been working with since 2019 and who provide their DCs with cooling systems and solutions in Iceland’s very cold climate.

Kristinsson is an engineer and has been working in IT since the beginning of his career. Back then, he was a part of Advania - the company that eventually acquired atNorth in 2011. At the time, atNorth was a very small data centre, started by some pioneers that had already realised that DCs in remote locations such as Iceland - where the cold climate could be utilised and there was an abundance of renewable energy was a great idea, but the business model was just not working.

“We then turned it around and made it into a very successful data company,” says Kristinsson. “At the time, I ran it as a business unit within Advania. But in 2018, I stepped in as full-time CEO, and the growth journey of atNorth really took off.

Although I’m the CEO of atNorth, based out of Reykjavik, I spend a lot of time in Stockholm, where we’re building our first DataCentre outside of Iceland.

The first atNorth site, which they acquired back in 2011, is built in an old printing facility.

Given the size of the data and the footprint that they have today, it was a very small site with a capacity of approximately 3MW. Very soon after that, in 2014, they expanded into a new ’Megasite’ where they have access to 80MW running at 100% renewable energy, built on approximately 18,000 SQM of DC space. In 2020, atNorth 308

May 2022

started the construction of their first data centre outside of Iceland, in Stockholm. The inauguration ceremony of the DC was held in the first week of March, this year. atNorth has been and will continue to expand into areas outside of Iceland, providing ‘more compute for a better world’, as its slogan goes. Its ambitions are recognised throughout the global DC industry, and it occupies a strategic position

ATNORTH

MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON TITLE: CEO LOCATION: KÓPAVOGUR, CAPITAL REGION, ICELAND

“ Everything is changing in the world of digitalisation” MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

EXECUTIVE BIO

Magnus has been the CEO of atNorth since January 2018.

From 2010-2017, Magnus was MD of Managed Service for Advania, but atNorth was then a part of Advania’s Managed Service business. Before that Magnus worked for Vodafone in Iceland. Magnus holds a M.Sc. in Engineering from Technical University of Denmark (DTU) and a B.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Iceland. Magnus was born in Sweden 1976. A fact you may not know is that Magnus was a football referee in the Icelandic top division for years and has refereed in the Finnish, Danish and Norwegian leagues.

technologymagazine.com

309

ATNORTH

“ Our partner ecosystem is essential to us” MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

in the DC space, having an early vision that would eventually see its successes recognised and its potential endorsed by the approaches of investors and partners from all over the business world.

“Since our inception, we’ve basically been focusing on high-density workloads,” says Kristinsson, “as well as aiming for low latency requirements, workloads in HPC (High Performance Computing), Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning and Natural Language Processing.” atNorth’s uniqueness doesn’t arise from one particular USP (Unique Selling Point) like many other DCs - or even companies in general, for that matter.

“I think that what makes us different from other DC companies rests on a whole set of attributes. One of the most important, of course, is our fundamental sustainability focus. All our DCs are built out of materials that are as sustainable as possible. We use renewable energy only, and our DCs are designed with energy-efficiency in mind from the outset. On top of this, our market focus is on workloads that need high rack density and use a lot of electricity.

“One of the main things that sets us apart is that as operators, we are born in IT and don't come from real estate, as many DC operators do. That means that flexibility and the creativity to bring a project to fruition is a central part of our thinking. We also understand that time-to-market is key for our customers, so we are strongly solutions-focused. We not only provide housing for computers - as many other DCs do - but we actually build the computer clusters for our clients, and if needed, we operate them as well.” atNorth partly provides traditional column high-density racks, but also low-density, too, with all the required ancillary services and, given their flexible nature, can even do buildto-suit projects on their own campuses. Many of their customers, especially those that are using a lot of electricity for computational workloads, want mixed-tiering, which essentially means mixed-redundancy.

They may want lower redundancy for the computational workloads for instance, and higher redundancy for net and storage, and atNorth can, and do provide this service.

On top of all of this, atNorth is able to procure, build and operate the computer clusters that their customers would typically host in their DCs. “We are highly flexible,” says Kristinsson, “and are able to cater solutions for very specific client needs all across the spectrum.” technologymagazine.com

311

ATNORTH

Magnús Kristinsson, CEO of atNorth DCs, on investment and growth

Flexibility is more central to DC companies than is obvious at first glance, especially when it comes to those who cater for fit-outs and customised or madeto-order services such as those provided by atNorth. This flexibility and diversity of needs can be from a physical or digital point of view. Mixed-latency requirements is just one example of how bespoke a client's requirements may be. This flexibility may present in many forms, and a DC company that possesses it, along with its parent attribute, creativity, is far more likely to achieve a certain level of success. The important point is that a client's needs in the DC space can be as varied as business culture itself.

The current demand for atNorth’s services is higher than they’ve ever seen before. This means that they are building-out, based on the same principles, in highly flexible and modular data centre buildings.

312

May 2022

ATNORTH

“ The future of the Industry will be marked by major growth in Sustainability, AI, deep-learning and High Performance Computing” MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

“We already have two DCs in the SouthWest and are currently very busy expanding our DC footprint, building a new site in the North of Iceland,” he says. “Sustainability is at the core of our value proposition; our data centres in Iceland are built on completely renewable energy. There is no other entity even on the grid in Iceland, which is exceptional. I think it's the only country in the world where you can find such conditions and although we already have access to all this renewable energy, we have still been designing our Data Centres so that they use even less energy than all other DCs do. We also select all the building materials very carefully, with the objective of reducing the carbon footprint of our buildings.”

We run on

100%

renewable energy

technologymagazine.com

313

“ We use renewable energy only, and our DCs are designed with energy-efficiency in mind from the outset” MAGNÚS KRISTINSSON CEO, ATNORTH

314

May 2022

ATNORTH

With ever-expanding connectivity demand and supply, big data, the push caused by COVID lockdowns, and an expeditiously evolving technological environment in general, the DC industry is quickly becoming one of the most in-demand technologies in the world.

Then there is the concern about a seeming internal tension between such energy needs and a rising consciousness of the need for environmental protection and cultivation.

“Everything is changing in the world of digitalisation,” says Kristinsson.

“Our customers need to engage with partners that can provide them with the flexibility to cope with the rapidity of these developments, but also with the increasing demands that they have for sustainable solutions.”

Asked what the next 12 to 18 months look like for atNorth, Kristinsson says: “We will be very busy onboarding new customers, due to accelerating demand, while also fitting out new spaces for our existing customers and finding and constructing new sites for our DCs.” In-line with this ever-increasing demand, atNorth is seeking to even further expand with a 50MW megasite in the Nordics, that will use 100% green electricity from renewable sources, making it one of the most sustainable and costefficient wholesale data centres ever built.

Kristinsson concludes: “The future of the Industry itself will be marked by major growth in Sustainability, Artificial Intelligence, Deep-Learning and High Performance Computing which is the main driver of demand in our space.”

technologymagazine.com

315

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

FULL-SERVICE LAW FIRM WITH AN EXCITING DIGITAL FUTURE

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER 316

May 2022

technologymagazine.com

317

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

Yoshihide Hojo, Chief Security Officer and Legal & IT Tech Strategy at Anderson Mōri & Tomotsune, discusses their innovation-led business transformation

I

t’s been a tumultuous time during the pandemic, with many industries experiencing shutdowns and massive disruptions of the supply chain. With prices rising, Anderson Mori & Tomotsune - one of Japan’s largest full-service corporate law firms - has been there to support global clients, quickly identifying the key issues and providing appropriate temporary solutions throughout the state of emergency. This process included assessing the value of solutions and developing new ways to stay competitive in an evolving business and economic environment. Additionally, the firm underwent its own inward-focused transformation, restructuring to handle some of the rapidly emerging, extraordinary demands that occurred during the pandemic.

2022 marks the 70-year anniversary of the firm. It is continuously striving to provide services that best meet the needs of clients by utilising accumulated experience and knowledge, as well as through strong relationships with the top, trusted law firms around the world.

Handling new legal challenges in an uncertain world Yoshihide Hojo is Chief Security Officer, Legal & IT Tech Strategy at Anderson Mōri & Tomotsune. Having been with the firm for 7 years, Hojo explained how the pandemic caused the largest decline in international flows the company had ever seen, putting it under the pressure of rapid anti-globalisation.

318

May 2022

Example of an image caption technologymagazine.com

319

“Businesses experienced the shutdowns, the massive disruption of supply chains, and now we are experiencing the rising input prices.

“As a full-service corporate law firm supporting global clients in international and cross-border projects, AMT had to quickly identify the key issues, support and promptly provide appropriate, far-sighted advice for each phase where clients were responding emergencies, seeking temporary solutions to meet new demands, re-assessing their value and developing new strategies to stay competitive in the new business and economic environment.

320

May 2022

"While tackling our own rapid change and transformation, we needed to sort information and form our structure to support our clients facing new legal issues.

We needed to be inward-focused and also client-centric at the same time,” said Hojo.

Turning to technology and a new digital strategy AMT had to respond to the emergency, scaling up initiatives of the digital strategy it used to map in one- to three-year phases in a matter of weeks.

“In a very short period of time, we rolled out online communication tools firm-wide,

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

YOSHIHIDE HOJO TITLE: CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER / LEGAL & IT TECH STRATEGY LOCATION: JAPAN Yoshihide Hojo is the Chief Security Officer / IT Strategy Manager at Anderson Mori & Tomotsune, working in the legal industry for over 10 years, holds CISSP and other industry certifications, and leading innovation in cybersecurity and tech strategy for over 20 years. As companies face complex challenges in a time of change, the importance of innovation to reassess value and build new strategies to meet needs and demands is growing. Under these circumstances, he is leading the firm’s technology and security strategies, working as a team AMT to provide the best legal services to clients.

“ We needed to be inward-focused and also client-centric at the same time” YOSHIHIDE HOJO

online marketing tools to keep our digital channels, other tools to improve process efficiency and to escalate digital operations within our firm,” said Hojo.

And to accommodate the rapidly increased volume of remote work, AMT also doubled and tripled the capacity and capability of the VPN (virtual private network) and VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure).

Hojo added: “We also adopted the SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solution to optimise our global network for such workload changes.

EXECUTIVE BIO

CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER / LEGAL & IT TECH STRATEGY, ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

322

May 2022

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

“ Every change in the business environment involves some risks” YOSHIHIDE HOJO

CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER / LEGAL & IT TECH STRATEGY, ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

"As rapid changes in operations and system environments can introduce new risks, we also needed to strengthen our cybersecurity capabilities - such as monitoring, analysing, resilience - and expand cybersecurity measures to protect the new components added as we widely adopted work-from-home.”

Hojo explained that when it comes to innovation, AMT must think of the ultimate benefit to their clients, focusing on what they actually want.

“As we often see the client in a stressful or time sensitive situation, we start the process of innovation by asking: how can we deliver the best possible experience to our clients by leveraging our strengths through our legal services?”

First, the company starts with the big picture and then focuses on more specific processes.

“We analyse and visualise specific processes by using business process modelling, etc. Then, with the keywords such as problem solving, logical thinking, agility, collaboration, technology adoption, we develop a solution that leads to the end-toend client experience.

"Since innovation cannot be successful with technology adoption alone, we also place great importance on the consideration of the elements of people and culture in technologymagazine.com

323

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

our innovation efforts. Such as the preferred approaches and tools in a particular industry, client, or legal area.

"For example, we have been providing solutions to automate and streamline processes by using automation tools, such as a solution that semi-automates the generation of a set of documents required for a specific process, such as a company registration, etc.

"By providing and utilising these technology solutions, we are able to speed up complicated and time-consuming tasks, and our lawyers can spend their time on the areas that lead to better quality of our services and greater client satisfaction. I believe that these efforts provide new value and satisfaction to our clients, leading to AMT's continued growth in this uncertain time.”

Fight ransomware with AI Darktrace is the only technology that interrupts ransomware autonomously, without causing costly shutdowns.

When it comes to security, leave nothing to chance.

Learn more at darktrace.com

324

May 2022

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

“ In the legal sector, the culture of law itself has been a major barrier to successful technology adoption” YOSHIHIDE HOJO

CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER / LEGAL & IT TECH STRATEGY, ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

DARKTRACE AI AND ML AIDS AMT CYBERSECURITY EFFORTS “Darktrace is one of our valued tech partners that has played an important role in key areas of our cyber security strategy since pre-pandemic times.

"With its unique AI and ML algorithm engine, we’ve been able to identify any level of unusual activities within our networks which enabled us to cover not only the cyberattack including zero day and targeted attacks, but also internal threats.

"Thanks to Darktrace’s advanced and effective approaches and learning capabilities that create a bespoke understanding of our business, we have been able to operate our security measures well fitted to AMT's environment, people, data, and business operations. This has allowed us to adapt quickly to even the rapid changes during the pandemic without lowering the level of our cybersecurity operations,” said Yoshihide Hojo.

Starting with the big picture view with legal practices and firm operation Hojo speaks of innovation efforts, but he believes the firm is at a tipping point and needs to look at the longer-term impact of technological change on the business.

“In the legal sector, the culture of law itself has been a major barrier to successful technology adoption, since law was built with rules and regulations. These barriers made it difficult for technologists to understand what the firm exactly needed and how to integrate solutions in the best way."

AMT has been working as an interdisciplinary team of lawyers, paralegals, KMs and technologists, to look into the detail of each legal task and seek opportunities for technology adoption to improve the speed, efficiency of the process, and accuracy of the outcome.

“Working as an interdisciplinary team enabled us to include cultural factors into those processes as well. Although we are just getting started on our challenges and have a long way to go, based on what we've seen so far, I think these approaches and initiatives are driving increased client satisfaction and firm business opportunities,” said Hojo. technologymagazine.com

325

500

Professionals

10

Locations

70

Year History

AMT has been working and experimenting with AI and ML for different tasks such as document review and translation. But, as the pandemic became a catalyst for innovation, people moved toward digitalisation and AI, resulting in explosive data growth.

“Under these circumstances, the use of AI and unstructured data analysis was inevitably promoted, expanding beyond e-Discovery to areas such as cybersecurity, compliance and beyond,” said Hojo.

“We just started building our foundation for innovation. We’ve learned a lot in the steps we’ve taken. We continue to explore the possibilities of emerging technologies,” he added.

In terms of evaluating and implementing solutions to automate and enhance 326

May 2022

processes, AMT uses their interdisciplinary team, selecting the participants who are familiar and have expertise with the relevant process to form a team.

“We develop a good list of evaluation criteria and take the necessary time to conduct the trial. Evaluations focus on the functional aspects and also costeffectiveness and user experience from the solution.

"And the most important phase is the post-deployment. We emphasise ongoing efforts to integrate the solution into business processes, measure the effectiveness, learn and educate how to sustainably utilise them in our business operations, and encourage the use of technology,” said Hojo.

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

PREMIER QUALITY

OUR PHILOSOPHY

Our Lawyers take great professional pride in their work. As a fundamental principle, we continuously strive to deliver premier quality legal services on each and every client assignment. To achieve this, AMT professionals are dedicated to four maxims: the pursuit of excellence, steadfast effort, maintaining quality and constant improvement.

FULL-SERVICE

CLIENT FIRST

As a truly integrated, full-service, commercial law firm, we meet the legal needs of our international clientele by combining the depth of resources of approximately 500 lawyers with expertise across a wide spectrum of legal disciplines and an array of legal jurisdictions.

Our client ethos is to focus on building long term bonds with our values clients, rather than seeking short-term relationships or gains. We strive to become your trusted advisor and put your needs first.

CROSS-BORDER International and cross-border projects are our forte. Utilising our offices in Japan and outside Japan, as well as our extensive overseas network of trusted law firms, our cross-border practice is robustly expanding abroad in new and developing markets, as well as more established, mature jurisdictions.

ACCUMULATED KNOWLEDGE As a large, leading law firm in Japan, we have accumulated a wealth of practical knowledge, insight and know-how, which has been developed over many decades of legal practice. Our clients benefit from this database of experience, including tried and tested solutions, which we continually update and fine-tune.

technologymagazine.com

327

328

May 2022

ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

“ We are still in the middle of our digital and business transformation journey” YOSHIHIDE HOJO

CHIEF SECURITY OFFICER / LEGAL & IT TECH STRATEGY, ANDERSON MORI & TOMOTSUNE

Improving services as a client-centric business AMT has many ongoing and upcoming projects, including ones for document management, document search and review, knowledge management and data analytics, a collaboration platform, information governance and the ever-changing realm of cybersecurity.

“The goal of these projects is not only to introduce new tools and services, but also to create new value through their integration. So we are working to achieve this goal in stages with ideas from different teams,” said Hojo.

Putting the customer first is already at the centre of the firm’s strategy.

“By learning how technologies and data can create new efficiencies and values, provide insights, manage risks, and create the future of law, and by collaborating with each team, we believe that they will lead to a highly customised experience for our clients,” said Hojo.

Digital Experience (DX) has also helped AMT to re-shape their cybersecurity, as Hojo explains: “Every change in the business environment involves some

risks. Successful digital and business transformation requires a cybersecurity strategy that is optimised for them.

It is critical to understand both DX and cybersecurity, and find a way to develop actionable strategies that complement each other. AMT has been working to develop such strategies and plans since prepandemic times.

Putting DX and cybersecurity together as a strategy, and redesigning and rebuilding cybersecurity measures that perfectly covered the complexity of the new hybrid business environment, wasn’t easy for Hojo.

“We are still in the middle of our digital and business transformation journey, and halfway through a cybersecurity re-shaping.

I‘m truly grateful to our talented teams at AMT and our valued technology partners for making sure we are getting where we need to be,” he said.

technologymagazine.com

329

LALLEMAND

CHANGING THE WORLD THROUGH MICROORGANISMS PRODUCED BY: TOM VENTURO 330

May 2022

WRITTEN BY: ALEX TUCK

Many people do not realise that various products they use dayto-day rely on microbiological processes vital for their production Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc. technologymagazine.com

331

Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc.

332

May 2022

LALLEMAND

Marco Petruccelli is the CTO and CIO at Lallemand, a global leader in the development, production and marketing of yeast, bacteria, other microorganisms, and specialty ingredients

L

Late 19th Century Year Founded

4,700+ Number of Employees

Bioscience Industry

allemand has existed since the late 19th century, when it was founded in Montréal by a young immigrant from Alsace: Fred Shurer. His name proved challenging for the locals to pronounce, so he was nicknamed ‘Lallemand’ – French for ‘the German’. Shurer would keep the iconic nickname and later go on to bestow it on the company.

In 1923, Shurer started producing baker’s yeast in the Préfontaine Street plant in Montréal – still in operation today – to supply the North American baking industry.

A privately held company that specialises in the development, production, and marketing of microorganisms, such as yeast and bacteria, and their derivatives, Lallemand provides microbiological solutions for dozens of different industries, from human and animal health and nutrition to baking, oenology, brewing, food ingredients, probiotics, and biofuels.

Fundamental trends supporting Lallemand’s growth are stronger than ever, including consumers’ desire to: • Reduce antibiotic intake (Animal Nutrition, Health Solutions, Pharma) • Reduce their energy footprint (Biofuels) • Seek differentiation and enjoyment in food (Baking, Brewing, Oenology, Distilled Spirits) • Include more plant-based protein in their diets (Bio Ingredients) • Use fewer chemical preservatives (Specialty Cultures) • Reduce exposure to chemical fertilizers and pesticides (Plant Care) technologymagazine.com

333

LALLEMAND

Lallemand - The Art Of Yeast

Overseeing a rapid digital transformation Marco Petruccelli is the Chief Information Officer and Chief Technology Officer at Lallemand. He has been overseeing the digital transformation of the company over the past two years, in large part accelerated by the global pandemic.

According to Petruccelli, going through the last years with the pandemic has highlighted the importance of microorganisms and their increasingly essential role within the environment, our food and our health.

“The overall pandemic has not hindered us. It's only accelerated us, following on various customer trends that became even stronger, such as an increasing consumers’ desire to eat healthier and reduce antibiotic intake,” says Petruccelli.

A truly global player Emerging trends have brought Lallemand’s work into sharp focus, with an attention to the overall energy footprint, and consumer 334

May 2022

Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc.

LALLEMAND

“ WE HAVE TO CONSTANTLY BE LOOKING AT EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES AND NOT BE SCARED OF THEM, BUT INSTEAD EMBRACE THEM”

MARCO PETRUCCELLI TITLE: CTO & CIO LOCATION: MONTREAL, CANADA Petruccelli holds an Executive MBA from UQAM in Quebec, a Program Management Professional designation, various technology and process optimisation certifications and earned his bachelor’s degree from Concordia.

In February 2020, Petruccelli joined Lallemand as Vice President, Chief Information & Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Lallemand, he was an Associate Partner at IBM leading a Business Transformation Team leveraging Cloud technologies focused on the Canadian market. Previously, Petruccelli was Vice President, Cloud Business Transformation for McKesson Corporation focused on their businesses within North America & Europe. He also led Infrastructure teams for McKesson Canada optimising their People, Process & Technology areas leading to his new global opportunity.

MARCO PETRUCCELLI

EXECUTIVE BIO

CTO AND CIO AT LALLEMAND

“ IT'S NOT THE TYPICAL DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WE'RE GOING THROUGH, BUT IT'S REALLY A BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION” MARCO PETRUCCELLI

CTO AND CIO AT LALLEMAND

desire for differentiation and enjoyment in food, partially stimulated by frequent global lockdowns and baking show spin-offs leading to a plethora of baking worldwide.

For those looking to reduce the amount of meat in their diet, there’s also increasing demand for plant-based protein options.

The company is popularising microorganism products to improve plant productivity and vitality without releasing undesirable pesticide residues into the environment, aligning with consumers’ desire to buy healthier foods.

Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc.

“A lot of our products, outside of what could be considered the standard yeast applications, are focused on key scenarios that our modern world is looking towards.

We hope to help our world be a better and healthier place,” he says.

We have a lot of new business requirements in today’s new world that are being addressed with a lot of new tools and processes, all at the same time. Expectations are extremely high, and we have been supporting our business successfully through today’s new business demands” Petruccelli states.

Digital transformation is providing the digital backbone and becoming a true business enabler for every company in today's world - and Lallemand is no different, according to Petruccelli.

“It's not the typical digital transformation we're going through; it's really a digital transformation that is catalysing a wider business transformation. It’s a significant change impacting Lallemand users. technologymagazine.com

337

Changing the world through microorganisms

338

May 2022

LALLEMAND

“OUR IT ORGANISATION IS A KEY STRATEGIC COMPONENT TO THE SUCCESS OF OUR BUSINESS” MARCO PETRUCCELLI

CTO AND CIO AT LALLEMAND

Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc. Photo by Ned Smith

“At the same time, we've been a steadily growing company for decades. In that sense, nothing has really changed other than things just going even quicker. Our internal business customers are asking for more modern and optimised solutions to help them become more productive. They are constantly searching for improved ways of doing things at lower costs. We need to ensure we’re delivering new solutions that meet their expectations. The speed of change is far greater than ever before, and our team is up for the challenge and we’re having fun at the same time.

“I’m tasked with making sure that we remain agile to meet our changing business demands and can pivot as needed, remaining innovative and failing fast. The important part is we're moving forward as a company and leveraging technology in the most optimised fashion,” Petruccelli says, outlining his role in such a critical transformation.

Lallemand has over a hundred sites globally, present on all continents and found in 100+ different countries. As a very multicultural organisation, Petruccelli says that they follow the important philosophy of “think global and act local”.

“In the morning, we could be talking to our users in Europe, South Africa, or South America, then in the afternoon, we could be assisting our users in North America, and in the evening, we can see ourselves working with our business colleagues in Australia.

We're interacting with our businesses the way they require, and it's not a one-size-fitsall scenario,” says Petruccelli. technologymagazine.com

339

LALLEMAND

Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc. Photo

by Daniele Tomelleri

Operating jointly as both CIO and CTO In an increasingly common pairing of responsibilities, Petruccelli sees his roles as CIO and CTO as complementary to each other, yet very distinct: “You can't lose focus on either one. As CIO, I try to ensure that we're really focused on day-to-day operational excellence, from an internal technology perspective, as well as from an operational process and strategic value perspective, leveraging the technologies and the tools that we have in place, while maximising our IT team’s abilities,” he says.

“In my CTO role, it’s about not settling for the status quo, reflecting on the ever-changing nature of technology. We must constantly be looking at emerging technologies and not be intimidated by them. In the past, some technologies were deemed to be too complicated or too costly. We now need to be 340

May 2022

looking at things in a different manner, because those emerging technologies are not only going to be key to our new upcoming technology ecosystem, but they’re what’s going to help us serve our business and become more efficient.

“Just a few years ago, our industry was still in a debate around the safety of public Cloud services – an interesting debate that I'm glad to see is gone. I regularly research the market to understand which technologies would provide additional value and operational efficiency versus which are mere buzzwords that don't really apply to us. Some are also marked as ‘interesting’, but it may not be the right time for us.

Back to his joint role at Lallemand, Petruccelli added: “My two roles are very complementary, but they’re also a reflection of two key strategic focuses that need to be considered at all times,” says Petruccelli.

TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION AND USAGE Ultimately, the outcome of IT projects depends on the adoption and usage. We work hard to bring the human aspect into all IT deployments, as we are changing how people do their day-to-day jobs.

– Olga Tymoshenko, Change Management Advisor

“ IT'S ABSOLUTELY KEY THAT EVERYONE UNDERSTANDS HOW THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE TO THE COMPANY'S OVERALL GOALS” MARCO PETRUCCELLI

CTO AND CIO AT LALLEMAND

Benefits of migrating to the Cloud and new technologies “COVID forced us to rethink the way we work. February 2020 is when I joined and, in my interview, I remember discussing with the executive team the importance of implementing Microsoft 365, but the benefits of the overall platform were not clear then.

“Two weeks after my start date, the pandemic hit and we were forced to significantly accelerate our 365 implementation plans. We completed the project in roughly nine months. The business benefits of the implementation of new applications like Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint, Planner etc. have been a game changer for us, especially to have this capability available throughout the pandemic. We have had our virtual office available for everyone 24/7,” he says. technologymagazine.com

341

LALLEMAND

Petruccelli explained that video calls with each other and Lallemand’s customers significantly reduced the business impact of not being able to travel to each other's location and actually made them more efficient.

“Without the possibility of leveraging public Cloud services, this would have taken years to get in place resulting in a big business impact. Cloud services truly saved us,” he adds.

Since the introduction of public Cloud technologies, there’s been significant efficiency and improved productivity for the Lallemand users.

“We are working towards having the data we need in real time at our fingertips, rather than waiting for information for days or weeks at a time. The importance of data analytics moving forward will be in providing key data in real-time to make better business decisions and to better support our business,” says Petruccelli.

When discussing new technologies such as AI, ML, and RPA, Petruccelli adds that the company’s 50 to 60 different plants worldwide – some of which have been around for 100 years – would greatly benefit from these automation improvements: “These types of emerging technologies would further enhance the efficiency of our production plants,” he said. For example, one of the projects Lallemand started roughly about a year ago is all about Industry 4.0 and leveraging these capabilities globally.

“The goal of our Industry 4.0 initiative is to develop a production data analytics platform that delivers actionable insights and empowers our colleagues; from operations to management to data scientists, with the tools they need to identify process flaws, improve production and resource management, or simply spend less time finding the data they need,” says Petruccelli.

342

May 2022

Being cloud-based and relying on open standards, the platform will act as a single pane of glass for Lallemand’s global yeast and bacteria plants’ production processes, enabling advanced analytics and machine learning for proactive factual decisions.

“The platform was initially deployed at our Préfontaine plant in Montreal, and now it serves as a testbed for new features and sites,” he continues.

Another example of migrating to the Cloud and adopting new technologies is the implementation of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM platform, which went live within Lallemand in February 2022.

A bouquet of microbes growing on Petri dishes Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc. Photo by Daniele Tomelleri

This initiative gave the Lallemand sales team access to key strategic information in an easy-to-consume, visual dashboards with key customer information and the entry to predictive technologies that assist in more efficient management of sales opportunities.

“We don't need to be in the office any longer to get our data. We can be on the road in any country, in the fields or vineyards or in our plants, and still have access to our interactive dashboards containing all our vital customer information. We can have meaningful and relevant conversations with our customers, improving overall closing of sales, and increasing our selling velocity,” says Petruccelli.

HUMAN TOUCH At Lallemand, we believe that success comes from cooperation. Relationships with our colleagues, partners and customers, the network of trust that we built over years – all contribute to our development and innovation success.

When introducing new technology, we have to smartly balance the added value that technology can bring with the importance of in-person contact.

– Olga Tymoshenko, Change Management Advisor

technologymagazine.com

343

344

May 2022

LALLEMAND

“ THINK GLOBAL AND ACT LOCAL” MARCO PETRUCCELLI

CTO AND CIO AT LALLEMAND

Partnerships and continuing down the digital transformation path Our trusted ERP partner Synergex has been a crucial ally for Lallemand for over 35 years. Petruccelli adds: “In my point of view, they’re the essential definition of what a true strategic business partner really is. They’ve supported our ERP system for decades.

When we started with them, we had one location and that has absolutely ballooned to over 100 different locations with high complexity, all being supported by Synergex on their Synergy ERP platform.

“Their team of developers are essentially part of our team. I don't see it as ‘them and us’, we're one team. Their developers are part of our daily stand ups, contributing to our day-to-day ERP advancements. They understand our business challenges and they bring their expertise and agility from their business to help us come up with solutions that minimise the impact on our business.”

Lallemand is two years into the transformation path. According to Petruccelli, one of the key enablers of this transformation has been solidifying the IT organisation from a people perspective.

“We feel we've done a great job at bringing in additional key skill sets, while expanding our IT organisation into additional key global regions which has been vital to our success.

We currently have our four IT global hubs in Canada, France, Brazil and South Africa, with additional strategic help in the UK and Australia. Our fantastic global team supports all areas of the world in a very efficient manner,” concludes Petruccelli.

Photo credit: © Lallemand Inc. Photo by Daniele Tomelleri technologymagazine.com

345

DISRUPTION, EMPATHY AND CHANGE: A CONVERSATION WITH ABU SAMAH WRITTEN BY: İLKHAN ÖZSEVIM PRODUCED BY: KRISTOFER PALMER

346

May 2022

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

technologymagazine.com

347

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

Asiah Abu Samah, Director of ICT at the University of Malaya, talks about the challenges of digitalisation, modernising processes and the role of empathy

T

he University of Malaya (UM) was the first university ever established in the country, from the merging of two colleges back in 1949 in the prehistory of the internet, working its way up to be ranked 65th in the QS World University Rankings and taking its position as the top research university in all of Malaysia. It is technical, scientific and fundamentally IT driven.

“Someone once mentioned that a student can live without water,” says Asiah Abu Samah, Director of ICT at the University of Malaya, “but they cannot live without Wifi.”

That is how much the internet and wifi has become essential to daily life, especially in this COVID-era where the adoption of digital technology has accelerated in all areas.

“I‘ve grown with the university,” says Abu Samah, “so have seen its development from early on. I’ve been a part of its initial push for automation, data collection and systems upgrades, but now the entire purpose of our IT systems have fundamentally changed owing to our response to the disruptions caused by the pandemic.”

Abu Samah highlighted that the previous role of IT at UM was mainly concerned with the planning and development of IT support and services (including application systems development) in-line with the university’s needs, but following such globalto-local catalysts, it has evolved into a more consultative and strategic role. IT has become

348

May 2022

Asiah Abu Samah University Malaya

technologymagazine.com

349

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

University of Malaya from Above

“A STUDENT CAN LIVE WITHOUT WATER, BUT THEY CANNOT LIVE WITHOUT WIFI”

integral to all aspects of university at their highest life, and so now operates rate yet, as UM was forced to advance the best to operate almost entirely approaches to UM’s online by the fallout. ever-expanding needs Abu Samah says: “We so that it may move and were quite prepared as a adapt as an institution in team in terms of handling the globally-connected these requirements, be digital environment. it for the people who She says: “Due to the would support the IT ASIAH ABU SAMAH DIRECTOR OF ICT, challenges to our norms systems, or in terms of UNIVERSITY MALAYA and expectations, the establishing and honing world is not as it was. The the infrastructure, and pandemic has driven us to a place where even when reaching out to the remotelearning will become ever more borderless, reluctant in the university’s community. and since everything is online in terms of The pandemic has taught us to expect information, the potential for this to become the unexpected in relation to demand for universal is definitely there.” services, as well as the importance of being UM’s first computerisation project able to act quickly. Institutions need a began back in 1996, and kept incrementally scalable and efficient emergency plan to developing and expanding until 2017. continue providing uninterrupted services And then, due to COVID, the process of in situations like this. Moving forward, in digitalisation was propelled to transform the line with UM’s strategic plan, technological 350

May 2022

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

ASIAH ABU SAMAH TITLE: DIRECTOR OF ICT INDUSTRY: EDUCATION, IT LOCATION: MALAYSIA Graduated from Leeds University, UK in 1992 with Bachelor of Science, Combined Studies in Accounting and Data Processing. She joined the University of Malaya’s IT Centre in 1993 and is now her 28th year in the organisation. Her area of contribution and experience ranges from Application System development, ICT security, Data Centre management, Network services, Multimedia services, IT governance and Staff development.

This consistent development in such areas has led UM to pursue continuous digital transformation. Her ideal goal is to form a Smart Sustainable Campus focusing on human driven IR 4.0 concept of process improvement.

EXECUTIVE BIO

gaps will be filled through the reskilling and upskilling of talent in the institution. ICT has now become our strategic backbone and our level of utilisation has reached more than 95% of our major activities.”

This unbroken online presence of UM systems comes with its own set of challenges.

“In 2015, we came face-to-face with a DDOS (Denial-of-service) attack. The whole network was affected and became painfully slow for about a week,” says Abu Samah. As you can imagine, the onslaught of complaints about connectivity issues were stupendous, and the impediment to other online operations even more so. Through the years we have also had our fair share of experiences in facing other types of cyber security issues.

“Our challenge is that our security team is managed by a very small team who are trying their best but are generally overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the workload. Out of these experiences and with the right planning and response, we strive to further develop a multi-level security monitoring system to help pre-empt and mitigate such problems in the future.”

UM implemented multiple monitoring tools at the Gateway and Data Centre level. Abu Samah says: “In addition to the Intrusion Prevention System, we also have web application firewalls, Anti-DDOS, have overhauled our coding structure in all our application systems and have further improved our NS protection (Network Security) and much more. We now have around 8 to 10 types of tools to assist us, but we still find that this isn't sufficient, and can be improved further to fulfil the need for constant monitoring.

We are gradually looking into more systematic types of automation to help alleviate the monitoring loads towards a smarter environment.”

Transforming SecOps towards Security Automation and Zero Trust Network Access

READYCARE Professional Services arm for consultancies, deployment, assessment, support, and managed services. We deliver best-of-breed industry leading Cybersecurity Solutions to address enterprise security operation challenges.

Learn more

352

May 2022

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

“WE ARE AND HAVE TO BE CREATIVE IN TERMS OF GETTING THINGS DONE” ASIAH ABU SAMAH

DIRECTOR OF ICT, UNIVERSITY MALAYA

Abu Samah also recognises that potential cyber threats are always growing. “Our whole IT team is stretched to its limit to ensure that UM’s services run smoothly. They are always on standby. We also engage the SOC (Security operation Centre) to help us monitor during and beyond office hours. The tools in place are very important, no doubt, but what’s just as crucial is that the people overseeing our security systems are just as resilient in responding to these, sometimes verypersistent cyber threats.”

Spurred by post-pandemic development, the University now plans major changes to cater for wider modes of learning. After the easing of COVID restrictions, the university began its initiative to expand its remote learning programme, as lockdown had acted as a kind of lab, providing insights into alternative education methods, and bringing about the realisation that viable remote learning was demonstrably possible. UM now offers courses through both the remote and

hybrid learning modes and is seeking to further expand them.

Asked about the challenges that UM faces in terms of digitalisation, Abu Samah says: “We are actually trying to be responsive in an environment that is very sticky. There are processes which virtually glue us to the ground, as we have to abide by certain procedures which limit our flexibility, and so it’s really a great challenge for us to respond to environmental stimuli as fast as we would like to.”

To add to this tangled web, there were also many Supply Chain disturbances that UM faced whilst simultaneously trying to undergo its digital shift. “We faced many problems at this critical point,” says Abu Samah, “especially when purchasing IT peripherals which require ordering from overseas. This was mainly due to the lockdowns and related shortages. We acknowledged the obvious problem but could only mitigate the situation by making everyone aware of the delivery waiting-times. The situation was global, so it was felt across the board, and we know of cases where vendors faced order backlogs of up to 52 weeks.”

It must be understood that the growing global movement towards automating, digitising, interconnecting and modernising institutions is a conundrum that takes on technologymagazine.com

353

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

354

May 2022

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

“WITH THE RIGHT PLANNING AND RESPONSE, WE HOPE TO DEVELOP A MULTI-LEVEL SECURITY MONITORING SYSTEM TO PRE-EMPT AND MITIGATE SUCH PROBLEMS IN THE FUTURE” ASIAH ABU SAMAH

DIRECTOR OF ICT, UNIVERSITY MALAYA

very different forms according to where those institutions are located. Many variables play a part in forming the outcome, from socioeconomics, to culture and geography.

UM has come a long way since its humble beginnings in terms of digitalisation, but there are still tensions between old and new ways of doing things which require continuous resolution for ultimate success.

“We are operating in a very disruptive environment,” says Abu Samah. “The old, conservative strategies have to be continuously reviewed. We want to push for more growth, but there is always the challenge of disconnected gap between strategies. Within an organisation there are many interrelated factors that impact the way they all operate together. So, for example, there's a business strategy, there's a financial strategy, a human resource strategy and a digital transformation strategy. In this kind of disruptive environment, the goal is to realign and reinvent all of these strategies so that we can move as an institution.” Abu Samah believes that this challenge is one that can be overcome by continuous engagement with all parties involved. technologymagazine.com

355

ICT has now become our strategic backbone and our level of utilisation has reached more than 95% of our major activities.

356

May 2022

UNIVERSITI MALAYA

“WE ARE OPERATING IN A VERY DISRUPTIVE ENVIRONMENT, WHERE STRATEGIES HAVE TO BE CONTINUOUSLY REVIEWED” ASIAH ABU SAMAH

DIRECTOR OF ICT, UNIVERSITY MALAYA

Malaysia’s commitment towards a more sustainable, resilient and inclusive development future framework started in 2015. The implementation of SDGs in Malaysia are aligned with the national development plan, which utilises the government’s development budget. “Since that time, our development budget application has been reshaped to meet SDG requirements,” says Abu Samah. “ESGs gradually came into the picture later, and we noticed that ESG requirements are part of the criteria for applying for grants from international bodies.

Sustainability activities have been there on Campus all along as there are research groups working on SDG related activities. Since COVID took hold and began disrupting all of our key processes at UM, sustainability considerations have been gaining momentum. Things such as electricity savings, general energy efficiency and waste reduction increasingly became part of our sustainability considerations.”

Even before COVID, UM itself had been participating in the UI Green Metric World University Rankings for sustainability and is doing really well, ranking 32nd in the world.

Abu Samah says: “We are going for better waste and water management, more renewable electricity and greater carbon credits. More sustainable practices are coming into the picture for UM.” The greatest sustainability challenges at UM are also subject to budget availability, or ‘funding constraints’. Abu Samah says: “We

are, and have to be creative in terms of getting things done. You don’t necessarily always need major capital to start off and explore the initial scope of a sustainable project, and sometimes it's really just about awareness and the willingness to cooperate. From my perspective, a multilevel approach is the most effective approach to help reap success.”

Asked about her ideal vision for UM, she says: “If I had free rein in what I do, I’d like to change two fundamental aspects that I think would greatly benefit us. Firstly, I’d like the organisation to be more agile and adaptive (lean management). Agility helps an organisation to respond faster to the continuously changing environment, as is happening now. Secondly, it would be to create an environment with a greater ethos of empathy. Empathy is not just about reshaping yourself to others' expectations, but it's actually about trying to make them understand what you are trying to convey to them. People are more receptive if you are able to present your position, in terms of ROI (Return On Investment), and ROI is not just about monetary gain, but needs to be translated into long-term potentials. To do this, we need a good mix of people from multiple backgrounds who can see things from different perspectives, to lead and appreciate the value of what’s being done and what we are trying to do next.”

technologymagazine.com

357

E D UC ATE • M OT I VAT E • EL EVAT E

PRESENTS:

23rd-24th June 2022 TOBACCO DOCK - LONDON E1W 2SF

G E T T I C K E TS

PART OF:

S PO N S O R O P PO RT U N I T I E S

INCORPORATING: