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A NEW YOU How your AI double could help double up on the workload

CROWNING ACHIEVEMENT We speak to the luxe jeweller with an all-female board

LOOSE MEANS WIN Letting your employees off the leash to be more creative could be better for your business

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AWARD-WINNING BUSINESS JOURNALISM • APRIL 2019

A new deal for the future of work

SPECIAL REPORT

The way we work is changing – for both employers and employees.

But will it be for the better?

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How technology can engage employees and boost the bottom line OPENING SHOTS JOANNE FREARSON

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EW TECHNOLOGY has been changing old working practices since business began. But although tech is more commonly applied to improve the customer experience or make services more efficient and workers more productive, could it also help when it comes to improving another common business drag-factor – that of limited employee engagement?

Disengaged workers cost a lot to companies. A study from Britain’s Healthiest Workplace in 2018 found loss of productivity is a growing issue in the workforce in the UK – on average, employees lost 35.6 days of productive time per year, compared with 23 days in 2014.

Over the years, technologies have been developed to help improve engagement for employees in different ways – enabling them, for example, to collaborate on projects and share files, run polls, chat and make

35.6 The number of days of productive time lost per employee per year in 2018, according to a Britain’s Healthiest Workplace study

NASA uses augmented reality technology to help employees run projects on the International Space Station

video calls in real time. Unsurprisingly, online collaboration tools have become pretty popular among organisations over the years. Most companies today use a engagment platform, such as Slack, Flock or Workplace by Facebook, to some degree to help their employees communicate more efficiently and improve productivity.

Online collaboration tools have yielded some impressive results. Consumer credit firm TotallyMoney’s employee turnover fell from 64 to 23 per cent since it started using Peakon, another engagement platform, three years ago. Meanwhile, US property manager Colliers-Wisconsin cut meetings

from 90 minutes to 30 by using automatic workflow processes.

Companies are also turning towards gamification software to train and reward staff, and keep them motivated while they are learning. Research last year by online learning platform TalentLMS found that 87 per cent of those surveyed said they were more productive, with 84 per cent saying they were more engaged and 82 per cent happier at work.

As technologies get more sophisticated, augmented and virtual reality devices are also starting to be used to help employees work together. NASA has been using

Why pinpointing your best next action leads to business success D O YOU ever feel you’re so swamped with just trying to get work done that you don’t have time to think beyond your daily task list? According to Workfront’s State of Work report, you’re not alone – 65 per cent of UK knowledge workers regularly feel this way.

Arguably, even more of us have been there and know the feeling only too well, especially during peak seasons. We feel stress in our bones, a feeling like we’ll never catch up.

In his book Done Right: How Tomorrow’s Top Leaders Get Work Done Workfront CEO Alex Shootman suggests a remedy for this problem that I have found incredibly useful: step back from all the busyness for a moment and focus on your “best next action”.

This concept helps workers systematically achieve milestones on their way to reaching their key initiatives and extraordinary goals.

To begin thinking about your best next action, you need to get to basics. “Planning tends to be an expansive process,” Alex says.

“You usually start from a simple point – the definition of a strategic objective – and then try to encompass every possible eventuality and option along the way. But the better

“By focusing on your next best action, you will reach the level of success you’re seeking” – Jada Balster

model is contractive. Break your extraordinary goal into key initiatives, milestones, and best next actions.” He also advises teams to get a clear sense of who does what, when it will be done, and what “done” looks like.

Once you’ve pinpointed those things, find your best next action. To do this, ask, “What’s the one thing we’re going to do within the next two weeks that will take us closer to a milestone?”

By focusing on the one thing you should do within this short timeframe, you can strip away extraneous tasks that ultimately don’t give you the results you’re looking for.

If you can find – and execute – your best next action week after week, you’ll eventually end up where you want to be. It’s like using your headlights to get to your final destination at nighttime. You don’t have to be able to see the whole journey ahead of

Microsoft’s augmented reality system HoloLens – which overlays the real world with digital content and displays using a VR headset – for a few years now, helping ground-based project managers collaborate with astronauts on the International Space Station, as well as planning for the next Mars Rover mission scheduled for 2020.

The construction industry has also picked up on the potential for AR, and has been using it to share design plans and architectural models of buildings and resolve issues in real time.

The good news for companies looking at ways to increase employee engagement is that it’s an obvious, and potentially inexpensive, way to improve the bottom line.

The Engaged Company Stock Index, which tracks the long-term results of organisations with high levels of customer, employee and community engagement, has found companies in this portfolio outperformed the S&P 500 by 37.1 percentage points since October 1, 2012.

So when organisations look at digital transformation as a whole, it might be a good idea to pay particular attention to technologies that can empower their own employees.

you, you just have to be sure that you’re going the right way moment to moment, the whole time.

So forget trying to do it all. In fact, question whether you actually should do it all. Ask yourself how much you can cut so that you cut everything down to what matters. As the author James Clear writes, “We often assume that productivity means getting more things done each day. Wrong. Productivity is getting important things done consistently. And no matter what you are working on, there are only a few things that are truly important.”

By focusing relentlessly on your best next action instead of worrying about all possible solutions you might try, you will reach the level of success you’re seeking. Best of all, you’ll start to feel like you are in control of your work instead of your work being in control of you.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Jada Balster (inset, left) is vice president, marketing at Workfront @jadabalster www.workfront.com

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Lightening the workload with a new you JOANNE FREARSON

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OPHIE HACKFORD, futurologist and co-founder of data and AI firm 1715 Lab, was asked to speak at a conference last year – but was then told she was going to be replaced by a robot.

“I got this email last year,” explains Hackford. “It essentially said, hi Sophie, we were very excited getting you to speak on stage but we decided to get Sophia, the robot, to speak instead, so I can’t pay your fee. Thanks very much, goodbye.”

Hackford wasn’t overly disappointed at the prospect of being rejected in favour of an “improved” android version of herself, however. “I was quite interested in how it made me feel. Of course the question about jobs will probably be one the most popular questions [about the role of AI in] work over the next few years,” she says. “It might be alittle counterintuitive because I realised my exact job was being taken by a robot – a robot that shares my name.”

It is a question Hackford gets asked a lot, she reveals. And answering it, she believes that, while certain employment categories will be under threat from new

Could we end up working with AI replicas of ourselves, asks futurist Sophie Hackford technologies, what people should really be focusing on is upskilling.

She sees the world of work changing drastically, and believes avatars such as her own will increasingly be used in the workplace. AI companies such as Soul Machines, she points out, are already using technology to come up with digital versions of us. She thinks that, in the future, these chatbots will be sent into negotiations to make choices and decisions on our behalf.

“Our thoughts are being processed as much by computers as they are our own cortex,” she says. “It forces us to ask, what is intelligence? Do we have the monopoly on it? Do we mind if we share that with something else? Where is that blurring happening between human beings and machines?

“A lot of the intellectual, decisionmaking tasks are going to be outsourced to avatars or digital ambassador versions of us,” predicts Hackford, pointing out

APRIL 2019 Publisher Bradley Scheffer Editor Joanne Frearson Production editor Dan Geary Head of production Maida Goodman

Sales director Paul Aitken Project managers Adam Robins, Thomas English, Richard Keane

that human behaviour, as modelled by – satellite data is already being used to algorithms, is already happening and predict areas such as consumer confiis becoming increasingly accurate. dence. For example, she explains, satellite “Avatars will be used at work. I will ask imagery from the car parks of US departmy digital avatar to collaborate with ment store JCPenney predicted the yours in a particular project. There is a retailer was going to close stores after MIT project called Borrowers Identity, data showed a fall in cars visiting [where] you can borrow the identity of branches. someone super-smart like Einstein to “Everything can be monitored from solve a particular problem on your space,” says Hackford – who previously behalf.” worked for Singularity University at the Hackford thinks that the future could NASA research park in Silicon Valley. hold the possibility of fully autonomous “The question of course becomes, what companies, run by algorithms, which do you want to know? What do you want people can buy skills and services from. to know about your customers? What There are big questions as to what this do you want to know about your staff? could actually mean, however. “If you What do you want to know about your are a director of a company you have colleagues? Certainly, what do you want rights like freedom of speech,” she says. to know about your competitors? These “Will we give those same rights to the sensors are giving us incredibly interestalgorithms that run those ompanies?” ing new powers to manage risk, not just She also suggests that avatars could from space but lots of different help out in other ways – heads of places.” states or CEOs, for example, could Hackford believes these are use them in succession planning technologies that could comto help the next person along with pletely transform our lives in the the role. “This is a really interestnear future – one in which vering concept we need to think sions of ourselves won’t just help about quite deeply,” she says. out in the workplace, but conSatellites are another area tribute to many different aspects Sophie t hat could be af fected of our lives.

Hackford

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The luxury jeweller that’s breaking the glass ceiling It’s rare these days to have an all-female leadership team, but House of Garrard, a jeweller that’s produced pieces for British royals since Queen Victoria’s reign, is one company that does.

Business Reporter pays a visit to find out more

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’M SITTING in the boardroom of the Mayfair showroom of luxury jeweller House of Garrard, with Joanne Milner, CEO and Sara Prentice, creative director.

The pair are just two members of an all-female leadership team at the brand. And with women still very much under-represented in senior positions in UK businesses, House of Garrard is certainly still an exception. Although the FTSE 100 is on track to reach government-backed targets of 33 per cent by 2020, the FTSE 250 is falling short.

But Milner stresses that this wasn’t an intentional outcome. “I don’t have an all-female leadership team because I went out to find an all-female leadership team,” she says. “I have the best people in the job. I don’t think there should be gender bias either way – it should be the best person for the job.

The diversity point to me is less about being all female or all male. It is more about the diversity of skills.”

sustainability and “measurable impact”. “That will become a bigger part, I hope, of every business,” says Milner

Learning from your workmates

Diversity comes in many forms When it comes to recruiting, House of Garrard does not have a one-size-fits-all approach. “In so many businesses, people surround themselves with mirrors of themselves,” Milner says.

“It is that lack of diversity that is an issue. It is that which is missing in many businesses.”

Milner prefers to hire people in various stages of their careers, who can offer perspectives from different viewpoints. “There is diversity in age as well,” Prentice says. “Particularly in the craftsmanship area, where you have all those traditional techniques from the older level of craftsman, then you have the new guys coming in with the technology and the ideas to work with CAD [computer-aided design] and other innovations.”

Milner points out that fewer millennials are going to university, preferring instead to go directly into t he work force. T h is younger workforce expects different things to previous generations, with more of an expectation of a greater work-life balance. “People are working longer, and in many cases starting work

House of Garrard CEO Joanne Milner (below) believes greater diversity gives businesses a greater talent pool from which to draw

younger,” she says. “The ethos of work life balance has changed quite rapidly over a short period of time.”

The idea of what a workplace should be has evolved over the years, says Milner, and there are differences in how generations first started their careers. Milner recalls a working environment dominated by presenteeism when she was a graduate, with employees working late for little reason, or leaving desk lamps on and suit jackets over the backs of chairs to make it look like they had been.

Things are different now, though.

“There has been a big shift in that, all for good reasons,” Milner says. “[It’s about] what it means to be committed and loyal. [But] that is one of the

challenges as well – that loyalty has to be earned – much more with the younger workforce than in the past.

“People will move around quite quickly – if you want longevity in your workforce, you have to listen to what is important to people and how you match it.”

To help staff get motivated and value where they work, House of Garrard also supports sustainable and charitable initiatives, which are close to people’s hearts – the company is a member of the Positive Luxury initiative, which awards its Butterfly Mark to luxury brands that commit to

To keep the workforce inspired, training is a big part of staff development at House of Garrard. Around 70 people work for the luxury jeweller, and Milner encourages staff to learn about the different aspects of the business, to give them a broad knowledge of and more of a con nec t ion to t he company.

Given the brand’s long and illustrious history, they have a lot to learn.

House of Garrard was appointed Crown Jeweller by Queen Victoria in 1735, and has created tiaras that are still worn at state occasions, as well as the sapphire cluster engagement ring worn by the Duchess of Cambridge.

The last Thursday of every month includes a “Lunch and Learn” session in the boardroom, an open-door event where anybody in the company can learn about other areas of the business.

“You get a better understanding of what each department does,” says Prentice. “You are not isolated or sitting in your own little bubble – you understand what [other employees] are doing and have a comprehension of how the business works in the various teams.”

The jeweller also sponsors staff members to take professional qualifications in whatever field they are working in, whether it’s accountancy, HR, gemology or anything else related to the business. “You have to be conscious of making sure they are getting the training that they want,” Milner says.

“If you are investing in [an employee’s] career, you are getting the benefit of that, and you also get their loyalty. A lot more people are deciding not to go to university, and they need a way to get those professional qualifications. Studying alongside working could well be become a much bigger thing.”

An apprenticeship scheme is also offered, to give younger potential employees a route into the

jewellery trade that lets them earn while they learn. Milner sees this as a far better way to get good candidates than an unpaid placement. “[We’re] trying to make sure people can get into work without having to work for free for a year, which I find wrong,” she says.

Everyone feels valued Milner’s philosophy is that the C-suite shouldn’t be dominated by particular people, but that everyone’s voice should be valued and listened to. “If you feel like the person next to you is your competition, then that actually works against you,” she says.

“It is no longer deemed negative if you are nurturing to your team. That is a nice change – that actually caring is not bad, it is a good thing. You don’t have to put on your tough work face.

You can just be you. That is a really positive move.”

Milner sees her role as CEO as more that of a custodian responsible for protecting the future of the brand.

“You need to leave it in a better shape, ready for a better future,” she says. “To do that, you need your workforce.

“A lot of people would think this is the less exciting side of running a business – to be a custodian of a brand to make sure you are in a strong place for the future. But it is to make sure you have a workforce that has strong depth of talent, that you are not too top-heavy, and that you have younger people who are ready to grow with the brand.”

A lot of the training at House of Garrard is aimed at making sure staff members are ready to deal with what clients might demand of the company in the future. “There will be an embracement of more new technology that enables different ways of working,” Milner says. At the moment, for example, the company is using WhatsApp to communicate with its customers.

But regardless of how technology comes into the equation, both Milner and Prentice agree that the future of work at House of Garrard will be centered on making sure the workforce remains diverse, well trained and nurtured, and that employees see themselves as ambassadors of the brand.

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Digital sustainability: the leadership challenge T

HE ACCELERATION of disruptive technologies has put organisations on a continuous transformational journey, one where both the pace and breadth of change are unprecedented.

There has always been change, but until now it has been evolutionary, allowing organisations and workers time to adapt to new conditions so that the status quo was not materially threatened. Today, the rate of change and scope of innovation are fuelling disruption in a revolutionary way. For example, 25 years ago, it took time for organisations to adopt the offshoring of IT, even though it was recognised as a highly cost-effective strategy. Eventually the draw of operational savings, a readily available, low-cost/educated workforce, and increasing quality standards meant offshoring couldn’t be ignored. Companies such as Infosys, Wipro, and TechMahindra grew rapidly to become formidable offshore providers of various services.

Today, such “lift-and-shift” companies are offering a new form of service that generates even greater value for their customers: digital transformation. By leveraging the rapid growth and advances in such critical areas as telecommunications, RPA, AI, big data, design thinking and no-code/low-code apps development, these companies are offering operational savings at another level while offering top-line competitive edge.

Through a contemporary lens, the idea that outsourcing was once viewed as such an existential change now seems quaint. Global spending on the technologies and services that enable digital transformation is expected to hit $1.97trillion by 2022, according to IT market intelligence firm International Data Corp. But at the same time, data from PMI

“One way to get ahead of digital disruption is to encourage it” – Sunil Prashara, PMI

and Forbes Insights’ The C-Suite Outlook show that, while nearly 80 per cent of organisations have undergone a significant transformation using disruptive technology, only about 25 per cent of those initiatives are yielding the tangible benefits against their original goals.

This figure around benefits is too low. Yet no leader can allow him or herself to be oblivious to digital disruption. To achieve digital sustainability – the capacity to adapt to and benefit from the change brought by advances in technology – leaders must continuously future-proof their organisations.

Gartner predicts that by 2020, at least 50 per cent of all new business applications will be created with high-productivity toolsets, such as low-code and no-code application development platforms. This is just one example of disruption. Indeed, leaders are realising that even disruptors themselves are being disrupted – either they adopt and adapt, or they will be marginalised.

One way to get ahead of disruption is to encourage it. A CEO at a major telecoms company carved out and funded “innovation cells” with the goal of “inventing propositions to disrupt core services.” While funding such initiatives seemed counterintuitive, the CEO viewed it as one way to future-proof his company. If the innovators came up with a viable proposition, he could morph the company accordingly. If not, he could proceed with some degree of confidence that the current business model was sustainable.

For all the anxiety generated by talk of digital disruption and what it means for the workforce, there is no question jobs will be created. But the types of jobs will be different, as will the required skill-sets. And those skills

aren’t as technology oriented as one might think. The people who will come to the forefront are creative. They understand business processes, are technically savvy but also understand customers’ needs, are strong in relationship building while being analytical and challenging – in other words, they are pragmatic problem-solvers.

Companies will continue to value the ability to execute. But technological skill is now table stakes. Indeed, this shift is reflected in the PMI Talent Triangle®. The new professional reality demands a combination of technical and project management skills, leadership skills and strategic and business management skills, as well as the ability to learn and keep pace with technology.

To inspire stakeholders and motivate teams, leaders will not only need intellectual and technical prowess, but they must also tap into emotional intelligence qualities, such as empathy, self-awareness, and motivation.

Data from PMI’s The Project Manager of the Future revealed the top six digital-age skills, which included expected entries such as data science, security and privacy knowledge, legal and regulatory compliance, and the ability to make data-driven decisions. But that list is rounded out by an innovative mindset and collaborative leadership.

As PMI noted in its recent report Pulse of the Profession: The Future of Work: Leading the Way with PMTQ, the essentials of project success remain the same: engaged executive sponsors, projects aligned to organisational strategy, and control over scope-creep. What will continue to evolve are the skillsets that enable these project and execution essentials.

To increase their chance of achieving digital sustainability, organisations are changing

their decision-making bodies to be more technology focused. That does not contradict the notion that the skills needed are not technology oriented; rather, it recognises that the appropriate technological knowledge and insight are critical. As a result, organisations are increasingly creating and hiring for chief digital transformation officers and data scientists, for example, to boost the skills of the legacy employee base that may not have the knowledge and context necessary to navigate digital transformation.

Accenture found that while 60 per cent of business leaders had increased AI investments in 2017, only 3 per cent said they would invest significantly in training and reskilling programmes through 2020. Frankly, this number doesn’t surprise me. Companies essentially have three choices: invest in their current workforce – with no guarantee of a return on that investment; acquire the talent needed to get to the next level; or engage outsiders who have the expertise and insight to help employees and organisations achieve excellence. Forwardthinking companies are doing a combination of all three, as well as investing in the next generation of talent.

As digitisation, automation, AI and other technologies put organisations on the inexorable journey of transformation, companies must not lose sight of the fact that they must transform in a way that will be sustainable.

They must not be swept away by the force of transformation, but instead harness it.

INDUSTRY VIEW

Sunil Prashara (left) is president and CEO of the Project Management Institute.

For more information, please visit www.pmi.org/uk

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How technology is set to transform financial services T HE FINANCIAL services industry has gone through enormous transformation during the past few years, not only in terms of regulation but also in terms of technological advancement. There are lots of innovations that have redefined not only the industry, but also the world of work in this crucial sector.

Mobility and connectivity are opening up new avenues for the business of financial institutions.

New possibilities More than any other industry, the financial services sector has moved further towards digital in a bid to tackle increasing customer expectations, changing regulations and heightened operational costs. Regulators have increased their demands from the industry, and have started to adopt sophisticated tools to monitor individual institutions’ activities and the overall action in the industry. Moreover, banking institutions have long been using artificial intelligence to detect payments fraud; now they are tapping into AI’s ability to identify abnormal behaviour to detect practices of market abuse.

Customer intelligence Eliciting patterns of consumer behaviour was once based on traditional methods such as surveys and focus groups. Nowadays, with the advancement of technology, businesses harness the power of data derived from multiple channels to unlock key information that will help them understand what clients really want by deploying big data analytics. Clients and prospects generate huge and diverse data across a variety of channels, and financial institutions will sift through available data to discover trends, patterns and other insights that matter most to them. Customer intelligence is seen as a key indicator of profitability and this necessitates firms to have a robust

technological infrastructure in place to get more intelligent about their customers’ needs.

Increased automation

Experts foresee that organisations will increasingly rely on the full spectrum of automation to carry out various laborious processes and improve the overall efficiency of the business, mitigate risks, and enhance innovation and, ultimately, growth.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is well on its way to invading the modern workplace, and organisations need to devise a proper workforce plan that takes into consideration all the transformations in the way work is done, as well as effective strategies that would minimise negative disruption. Above all, organisations need to orientate their workforces to the new state of affairs by clearly defining roles and responsibilities, and setting measurable goals for the new ecosystem to ensure its success.

“At Tickmill we have a strategic plan in place to deal with all these changing forces, and we are building the right infrastructure to leverage emerging technologies in a bid to streamline business processes and refine clients’ experience,” highlights Duncan Anderson, CEO of Tickmill UK Ltd, an FCA UK-licensed Forex and CFD provider. “Forex traders are more sophisticated than ever today, because they also use AI and automation to make trading decisions and execute trades, therefore we strive to provide products and services that create value and maximise satisfaction for also this new growing breed of traders. At the same time, we are equipping our workforce with the right skillset to be able to smoothly adjust in the new reality.”

INDUSTRY VIEW

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How letting employees off the leash will make working better for everyone

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CREATIVE MINDSET in the workforce can help a company come up with new ideas and approaches and compete in a competitive market environment. But how does an organisation inspire its employees to come up with groundbreaking ideas that give it an edge?

“Creativity and our ability to problem-solve kind of diminishes as we get older,” says Sally Elliott, surface strategy lead at Microsoft. “Somehow, as we go through the education system, it is almost kind of booted out of us. As we start to get into the workplace and into formal education, more processes come into play.”

It is important for employees to be able to regain that creativity, explains Elliot, as innovation and problem solving increasingly become core skills in the workplace. A report by McKinsey has predicted that, by 2030, demand for higher cognitive skills such as creativity and critical thinking will have increased.

Technologies such AI will help improve employees’ creative functions, believes Elliot, as the data AI generates can be used to gain an insight into what is going on in their organisation. It can help firms understand why certain products are not working, or where to develop portfolios, and as AI can take up the slack performing more routine tasks, time is freed up for employees to work on other things. “It really is going to open up numerous opportunities for people to think

about how [they] can be more creative and problem solve,” she says.

Elliot believes having an AI strategy will soon be vital for companies – she points to research

by Microsoft which found that organisations already on that journey are outperforming other organisations by 5 per cent in factors such

as productivity, performance and business outcomes.

The environmental factor But technology is not the only thing that can make workers more creative – the workplace environment itself can also be a contributing factor. “Gone are the days where you come into a single office and sit at your desk from nine to five to do your job,” says Elliot. “It is much more about how you work with others, and how you collaborate.

“You need inspiring workplaces to be able to do that. It is not just making sure we have interesting meeting rooms – it is about making your whole workplace an inspiring place to be.”

She thinks restrictive workplace design that inhibits people from working in different ways stifles creativity. A study by Microsoft Surface showed that 41 per cent felt uninspiring workplaces were a major obstacle to creative working, while 34 per cent cited a stressful atmosphere, and 28 per cent a lack of appropriate spaces.

Out of the box Elliot does not favour cubicle-based working, where people can only get together in meeting rooms. Although she thinks open plan has its place, it can also distract employees – if someone wants to come over and have a chat, it can be distracting for people working nearby.

“If you are going into your office every day and you sit in a row with a bunch of people and you put your headphones on, that is a bit of blocker,” she says.

The best way to create an office environment where employees can be more creative and productive, Elliot believes, is through culture – and this should start from the top. She feels senior that leaders should be nurturing their staff to make them feel like they can take breaks when they need to, or get up and walk about and have a change of scenery or work flexibly.

“All of that again starts to foster creativity, and allows people to come up with ideas when it is more relevant to them,” she says. “That is down to culture.”

Elliot uses her own diary as an example, where she has two hours on a Wednesday set aside for growth mindset thinking, where she can do her research or collaborate on social. It is important for employers to trust their employees to do that, she says. “It’s trusting in that process – giving people the flexibility to think differently.”

Ultimately, says Elliot, if staff members are too tired it is unlikely they will be able to work efficiently. “It is just thinking about how you can help employees reduce stress, providing them with times to reduce and rejuvenate,” she says.

“When you can do that, it frees up that employee [with] space to think creatively again.”

Why the future of retail isn’t about online versus the high street, but innovation versus stagnation

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NDERSTANDING THE future of the high street is a major part of understanding the future of work in the UK. The retail sector supports nearly three million workers in the UK, and generates more than £90billion for the UK economy.

But it has been and will stay in flux for some time. Disruption is nothing new – a 2018 survey found that 80 per cent of top executives feared the risk of disruptive market entrants. Telecoms had Apple. Banks had TransferWise.

And the retailers had Amazon. The change to out-of-town shopping in the 1970s disrupted the high street. Online shopping and Amazon were the next sea change.

But Amazon was launched 25 years ago. Retail’s next disruptive moment is here. Amazon has been tremendously successful, but hegemony leads to laziness, not innovation. Disruptors foster new solutions to old problems. The future of the retail sector is about how technology can once again positively disrupt the market by finding a way

for online and high-street shopping to become interdependent, not competitive. The retail sector can no longer be online versus high street, or big versus small business, but about innovative versus outdated.

Amazon no longer answers the question of what the future of work will be. It no longer innovates to offer the services that businesses and consumers want. It has rested on its laurels, and now other agile and creative disruptors are leading the way on what the future of work for retail looks like. That is where OnBuy.com comes in. It is the disruptor that online and high-street businesses need. It is the marketplace of the future.

OnBuy is not a retailer. It does not compete with sellers and is accessible for all. OnBuy’s selling fees are cheaper than Amazon, meaning sellers can price competitively and buyers can get the best deal.

This in itself has disrupted the marketplace sector. OnBuy already lists more than 10 million products from thousands of sellers, has a

unique partnership with PayPal, and plans to expand to 140 countries.

Purchases on the site grew by more than 1,100 per cent between 2018 and 2019. Sellers and buyers already recognise value in a marketplace like this. OnBuy already has the potential to host more sellers than any other platform in the world, and the

ambition to provide the infrastructure all businesses need to deliver their products straight to the consumer.

High-street retailers can unlock the potential of e-commerce, and change the way they work. An integrated e-commerce platform will enable local click-and-collect services, and same-day delivery for small

businesses – even those with just one store – in ways that existing marketplaces have not. This benefits businesses, consumers, and the high street. This can be a genuinely integ rated model for on l i ne a nd high-street retailers, rather than a competitive one. High-street businesses can use integrated e-commerce platforms, such as OnBuy, to sell and deliver their products in a way that is convenient and competitive for consumers. T his w ill be a game-changer.

The future of work in the retail sector is always changing. From high streets, to out of town, to online, and now to universal, integrated selling and delivery platforms, a strong retail sector should never stand still. Disruptive innovation will always be good for business, for consumers, and for the way many of us will work in the future.

INDUSTRY VIEW

@OnBuy www.onbuy.com

April 2019

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Riding the wave of change in the maritime sector Technology is transforming every industry – but we need to take careful steps to ensure those changes are positive ones

T

HE FOURTH Industrial Revolution is well underway, changing the character and direction of industries across the board. Manufacturing, transport, healthcare and other sectors are undergoing transformations that stand to dramatically improve efficiency, accuracy and, ultimately, end-user satisfaction.

But while certain areas, such as vehicle technology, have taken the lion’s share of the attention, there are dramatic changes taking place further from the public eye.

Many of the boldest innovations – autonomous operating systems, AI, the internet of things – can be integrated into a vast number of industry processes, whether in vehicles, factory machines, or even maritime infrastructure.

“The changing world we live in is starting to lead us to look much more broadly across the sectors we operate in,” says Richard Westgarth, Head of Campaigns at BMT, a multidisciplinary engineering, science and technology consultancy group specialising in the maritime, security, environment and critical infrastructure industries. “We’re moving away from the traditional silos industries operate in to look at how we can bring a more holistic vision to multiple sectors.”

Shipping, for example, is one element in an expansive value chain that comprises many different, yet interlocking, parts: ports, harbours, goods distribution centres, vessel traffic services – the list goes on.

With new data systems and the growth of connected technologies, these can interact to a greater degree than ever before, boosting the efficiency of maritime operations.

Yet there are, of course, the challenges that come with any form of disruption. How do personnel in these sectors keep on top of rapid advancements? How can innovations be integrated in a way that doesn’t cause negative disruption – such as loss of jobs – further downstream?

“We have skills shortages, we see trade changing and we’ve seen the impact of the potential of Brexit starting to come through,” says Westgarth. “How we think about future skills, the ways we adopt technologies, how we ensure the demands of a greener shipping agenda are met – these are all questions we are investing considerable time and resources into answering.”

“With the growing demand for digital talent, industries will be looking for employees who clearly have that level of specialist skill and thought, and that entrepreneurial drive. So we have to know how to create a maritime sector attractive to that kind of talent, and that can keep hold

“With the growing demand for digital talent, industries will be looking for employees who clearly have that level of specialist skill and thought, and that entrepreneurial drive. So we have to know how to create a maritime sector attractive to that kind of talent – Richard Westgarth, BMT

Richard Westgarth, head of campaigns at BMT

of it and enable a person to work how he or she wants to work.”

The signs that the sector is entering its own Maritime 4.0 are numerous: the emergence of autonomous ships that can conduct geophysical surveys with minimum human assistance; “connected” ports and harbours; the growth of alternative fuels, such as liquefied natural gas (LNG), and more.

“We need to be able to match skills to emerging technology. It’s thought that around 50 per cent of employees will require additional skills within the next five to 10 years, and so there’s the challenge of continuously developing our employees as the technology changes. This puts a whole new emphasis on career-based training.”

The car industry illustrates how disruptive these new technologies are. The move towards a shared economy of pooled car rides and expanding taxi services is complicating demand for vehicles. The supply chain model is also changing: no longer focused on traditional combustion engines, the production line is increasingly dominated by electric components and integrated sensors.

Similar innovations are having farreaching impacts in the maritime industry too, and BMT is looking at how to integrate developments such as autonomous vessels into new port and harbour technology, and the ways in which AI can assist with that.

“We need to think hard about how the maritime sector can afford to make all these

changes,” says Westgarth. “It’s a capitalintensive business – ships are expensive to build, and they are built to last a long time, meaning margins are often low.”

Given the extent of changes the industry is under pressure to implement – new physical infrastructure, new technologies, expanded trainings for personnel – there are significant concerns around whether businesses can make the transformation a financially secure one. Failure to adopt new technologies carries the risk of becoming obsolete, yet the process of transitioning is a risk in itself.

BMT sees a future in which businesses not only within sectors, but across sectors, appreciate the importance of collaboration.

“No one company can have a complete set of skills and capabilities to take a systemwide view of the sector as a whole,” says Westgarth. “You have experts in shipping, experts in port and harbours, experts in data and analytics. But to deliver this as a connected system and to get all the necessary economic benefits, we need to work together to bridge these different silos and encourage cross-interest collaboration.”

Westgarth sees BMT channelling increasing time and effort into developing connected, autonomous systems over the coming years. While it already has considerable experience in autonomous shipping, he says, the focus will now widen to explore the digitalisation of ports and harbours.

But, he cautions, technology is an enabler, not necessarily the answer.

“These technologies have immense potential, but we need to change the narrative between people and tech,” he concludes. “We need to push past the hype – that technology is a magic silver bullet and the deterministic technology-driven perspective – to a more nuanced, holistic and symbiotic view.

“That’s why we have this interest in building up the skills of people in the industry. We need to bring together the people element with the digital element of transformation, and this of course raises key questions: how do people develop the skills to interact with AI yet not be overly reliant on what the machine is telling you? How can we both trust, and yet be critical of, the information coming back to us? We want to find out how to create the right test environment.”

Ultimately, though, the success of any vision shouldn’t be reduced to whether or not individual areas are seeing improvement.

Rather, there’s a higher mission being pursued. “Think about smart cities,” Westgarth says. “We’re introducing technology into cities but we need to think harder about the benefits, and whether it could disrupt communities in a negative way. It’s not about developments that better things only for the few. We need to improve the overall quality of life.”

INDUSTRY VIEW

@BMT_Global www.bmt.org