Digital Trends Report 2014

ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS R E P O R T 2 015 BUSINESS REDESIGN FOR CUSTOMER-CENTRIC DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION S

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W W W . N I M B U S N I N E T Y. C O M FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR Emma Taylor emma.taylor@nimbusninety.com DIRECTOR OF STRATEGY & RESEARCH Caroline Boyd caroline.boyd@nimbusninety.com HEAD OF EDITORIAL & DIGITAL STRATEGY Mark Young mark.young@nimbusninety.com EDITORIAL & RESEARCH ASSISTANT Dom Murphy dom.murphy@nimbusninety.com DIGITAL CREATIVE DESIGNER Jordan Constantinides jordan@nimbusninety.com

REPORT EDITORS:

HEAD OF SPONSORSHIP Sophie Abbott sophie.abbott@nimbusninety.com

REPORT CREATIVE & DESIGN:

SPONSORSHIP ASSISTANTS Victoria Arrington victoria@nimbusninety.com Sophie Gill sophie.gill@nimbusninety.com HEAD OF BUSINESS LEADERSHIP EXCHANGE Milly Maxwell-Scott milly.maxwell-scott@nimbusninety.com COMMUNIT Y RELATIONS Zeenat Motegheria zeenat@nimbusninety.com Kavina Burden kavina.burden@nimbusninety.com HEAD OF SPECIAL PROJECTS Caroline Popham caroline.popham@nimbusninety.com OPERATIONS DIRECTOR Richard Morgan richard.morgan@nimbusninety.com CONTACT TELEPHONE NUMBER: 0203 5982237

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Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

MARK YOUNG & DOM MURPHY

OPTIC JUICE LTD www.opticjuice.co.uk

Registered company and publisher name: Nimbus Ninety Ltd Registration number: 06803745, registered in England & Wales Office address: 201 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 5NE Registered business address: 16 Northfields Prospect, Putney Bridge Road, London, SW18 1PE Copyright Š nimbus ninety Ltd 2015 While every action is taken to ensure the information within this report is accurate, the publisher accepts no liability for any loss occurring as a result of the use of that information. All rights reserved. No part of this report may be published or stored in a retrieval system without the written prior consent of the publisher.

Research powered by SURVEY MONKEY

Nimbus Ninety is an independent, communitybased organisation with over 6,000 senior executive members.

Through our research programmes, IGNITE forums, masterclasses and networking dinners, we help our members to engage with, examine and collaborate on the latest trends and developments in the enterprise technology and digital spheres.

F O R E W O R D ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

WELCOME CONTENTS ...to the Nimbus Ninety Enterprise Digital Trends Report 2015.

My name is Emma Taylor – I’m the founder and managing director of Nimbus Ninety.

I founded Nimbus Ninety in 2005 to help senior executives get to grips with the practical value of cutting edge enterprise technologies. Over the nine years that have followed, each has been more exciting than the last.

2014 has certainly been no exception – some of the developments in digital innovation this year have been astounding.

But as each year passes, it becomes harder and harder to identify what’s coming next. It’s now futile to predict what the business landscape will look like in five years’ time. We can’t even say with any great degree of certainty how the predominant business models, customer attitudes and technology trends will have changed over the next two.

Somewhat incongruously, it feels as though we are also in a time of monumental, technology-driven change, near ubiquitously throughout our business landscapes, our personal lives and the overall fabric of society.

THE NIMBUS NINETY ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 5-11/RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

The results and analysis of the Nimbus Ninety Digital Trends Report of more than 250 senior business and IT leaders

11/REACTION

Reaction to the survey by our report partner: Kcom

EXECUTIVE INSIGHTS

So how can we prepare for what we can’t predict?

In the face of this juncture formed by uncertainty and change, it is imperative that we take steps to ensure we are ready to react to whatever comes our way. We must set our businesses up to be agile, responsive and empowered – in doing so we can ensure that we’ll be ready to identify opportunities and rapidly discover the value therein. We want to be able to bring any curve-balls that come our way into our own trajectories rather than being knocked out of our orbits.

Achieving this requires significant business redesign and change to the prevailing ways of thinking. But the scale of what we must now do should not daunt us.

12-13/JOHN BOVILL, IT AND E-COMMERCE DIRECTOR, MONSOON ACCESSORIZE

This report details the results of our Enterprise Digital Trends Survey of 250+ senior executives, which set out to establish the steps that organisations have taken in this context thus far and to understand some of the challenges they continue to face.

Following the results of that survey, we have some fantastic examples of how world-leading organisations including Tesla Motors, Monsoon Accessorize and Virgin Atlantic have fundamentally adapted their businesses to take advantage of new technologies and digital opportunities.

Our thanks goes to our research partner Kcom and to all those that contributed their insight to this research.

We are looking forward to an exciting 2015 with more research, more opportunities to connect with our members at our live events, and the launch of our new digital benchmarking service. We’d love to discuss what we’re planning with you and how you can be involved.

Emma Taylor, Founder & Managing Director Nimbus Ninety

16-17/DAVID BULMAN, DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY, VIRGIN ATLANTIC

18-21/GEORG ELL, UK COUNTRY DIRECTOR UK AND IRELAND TESLA MOTORS

RESEARCH PARTNER 22-23/KCOM

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

3

INTRODUCTION ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

SURVEY INTRODUCTION

BUSINESS REDESIGN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION

D

uring September and October 2014, Nimbus Ninety surveyed 253 senior executives and project leaders from blue chip to SME organisations across the private, public and third sectors. The respondents were qualified as end-users – as opposed to suppliers of – business FIG. 1: RESPONDENTS BY technologies. They TURNOVER are all responsible for running or overseeing £0 - £25m technology projects 18% within their organisation, or have a significant £2bn+ £25m influence over which 37% technologies are £100m implemented.

13%

FIGS 1 and 2 illustrate the holistic range of organisations represented within the survey response, by turnover and industry sector.

£500m - £2bn 18%

£100m - £500m 14%

1%

3% 2%

4%

2% 2%

3% 1%

9% 5%

3% 4%

2%

4%

• OVER FOUR IN FIVE COMPANIES (82%) ARE UNDERTAKING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN REACTION TO CHANGING BEHAVIOURS AND EXPECTATIONS AMONG THEIR CUSTOMER-BASE

• DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IS NOW A CONSTANTLY EVOLVING PROCESS FOR MORE THAN HALF (51%) OF ALL ORGANISATIONS

10%

1%

• ALMOST NINE IN TEN ORGANISATIONS (88%) ARE CURRENTLY UNDERTAKING OR PREPARING TO UNDERTAKE A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION – BUT JUST 41% HAVE A CLEAR STRATEGY FOR DOING SO

• DESPITE THIS, ORGANISATIONS ARE ILL-EQUIPPED TO UNDERSTAND THEIR CUSTOMERS AND ACT ON INSIGHT – LESS THAN HALF (47%) HAVE EFFICIENT PROCESSES FOR SHARING CUSTOMER INSIGHT DATA BETWEEN DEPARTMENTS AND CHANNELS

FIG. 2: RESPONDENTS BY INDUSTRY Arts & entertainment Charity/Not for profit Construction Consumer packaged goods Education Energy/Mining Financial Services Gaming/Gambling Hospitality & leisure Insurance Technology & telecoms Logistics Manufacturing/Pharmaceutical Media, publishing & broadcasting Professional services Public sector Retail Transport Utilities Other

KEY FINDINGS

11% 10%

12%

11%

• ACTIVITIES THAT CREATE LONG TERM INCOME (59%) AND ‘FUTURE PROOF’ THE BUSINESS (58%) ARE ORGANISATIONS’ BIGGEST PRIORITIES • CEOS ARE A KEY STAKEHOLDER IN 60% OF ORGANISATIONS’ TRANSFORMATIONS

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

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S U R V E Y

R E S U L T S

DIGITAL TRENDS SURVEY 2015

IN

the foreword to this report, Nimbus Ninety founder and managing director, Emma Taylor, alluded to a perception of immense, technology-driven change that appears ubiquitous throughout the business world and much of the wider society. Our Enterprise Digital Trends Survey 2015 proves this perception is in fact reality. An overwhelming majority of almost nine out of every ten organisations (88%) report that they are currently undertaking digital transformation, or preparing to. Just seven per cent say that the process is not required or has already been completed.

FIG. 3: WHY DOES YOUR ORGANISATION NEED TO UNDERTAKE A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? Our customers’ behaviours and expectations are changing

82% 45%

Our competitors are transforming

42%

To create and release new products

65%

To improve operational efficiency

35%

To enter new business markets

Customers are the principal driver behind the need for organisations to change, and are the biggest influence on transformation strategies.

More than four in every five organisations (82%) are undertaking, or preparing to begin, a digital transformation primarily as a reaction to changing behaviours and expectations among their customer base (see FIG. 3). In addition, ‘better engagement with our customers’ is the most commonly cited aim of undertaking digital transformation (81%) (see FIG.4).

To ready the organisation for new technology developments

54% 59%

To seize a new way of doing business

FIG. 4: WHAT ARE YOUR ORGANISATION’S PRIMARY OBJECTIVES IN UNDERTAKING A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION?

54%

Become more agile Better engagement with our customers

64%

Become more innovative Become more open to risk Increase analytical decision making

8%

Bigger margins Bigger volume of business Gain repeat business Higher touch customers

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Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

17%

43% 36% 30% 29%

81%

However, while the commitment to consumer sovereignty is commendable, there is a concern that organisations may be undertaking digital transformations without the necessary facilities in place to gain enough valuable insight into their customers and to use that insight effectively.

Customers today are increasingly demanding ever-more personalised user experiences and interactions. If organisations fail to build a knowledgebase of their customers, including details of their preferences and experiences in previous interactions, it will be difficult to satisfy this demand.

R E S U L T S ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

Currently, only two-thirds of organisations (67%) feel they have adequate facilities to achieve meaningful feedback on the way that their products and services are consumed, and less than half (43%) have the means to analyse customers’ sentiments in doing so.

Organisations also appear ill-equipped to maximise the value of customer data, with less than half (47%) having efficient processes for sharing customer insight data between departments and channels. Little more than a third of respondents (37%) have the ability to determine and adapt user experience journeys by previous interactions.

On an organisational front, the data is even more concerning. Only 41% have a clear strategy in place for digital transformation.

Furthermore, only 19% of organisations have enabled their line-of-business employees to take control of their own technology (see FIG. 5). In Nimbus Ninety’s mid-2014 survey, the data showed a clear correlation between the companies that had put measures in place to this effect and those that were the disruptors of their own industries, as opposed to being disrupted by a rival.

FIG. 5.1: WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ORGANISATIONAL ASSETS, PROCESSES AND FUNCTIONALITIES DO YOU HAVE IN PLACE?

41%

A clear strategy for digital transformation, formulated and defined

21%

A unified strategy for cloud, analytics, mobile and social where any one or more can add value to any other

32%

A unified, organisation wide strategy for bringing in new technologies

16%

The ability for business users to create their own solutions from a catalogue of available services provided by IT

19%

The ability for line of business employees to manage their own technology projects

FIG. 5.2: WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING CUSTOMER-RELATED ASSETS, PROCESSES AND FUNCTIONALITIES DO YOU HAVE IN PLACE?

67%

The ability to achieve feedback on the way that our products and services are consumed The ability to achieve sentiment analysis on the way our customers perceive our products and services The ability to cross analyse and draw insight from multiple types of different customer interactions (i.e. analysing website usage against social media interactions) The ability to measure the value of our actions by the return on engagement

43% 38% 36% 50%

The ability to identify high margin customers and focus marketing accordingly The ability to determine and adapt user experience and customer journeys by previous interactions and preferences

The ability to share customer insight data between departments, functions and channels

37% 47%

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

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S U R V E Y

R E S U L T S

LONG TERM STABILITY FIG. 6: WHAT ARE YOUR ORGANISATION’S PRIMARY OBJECTIVES IN UNDERTAKING A DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? High

Medium

Those that bring in the most short term monetary income Those that offer the most long term income Those that increase engagement with customers Those that improve operational processes

Low

23%

Don’t Know 38%

34% 5%

59%

29% 9% 3%

70%

25% 4% 1%

51%

40% 8% 1%

Those that allow employees to innovate

28%

Those that offer quick wins

22%

50%

26% 2%

22%

51%

24% 3%

Those that inspire others to buy in to the process Those that ‘future proof’ the business

48%

58%

23% 1%

28%

12% 2%

W

ith the rapidly-expanding pace of new technology development and evolution, and more and more industries primed for unannounced disruption to their prevailing paradigms, the future is becoming less and less predictable.

It is generally accepted that long, granularlydefined roadmaps that are rigid and inflexible are, at best, now impractical and probably even detrimental to businesses’ prospects.

In addition, many industry eco-systems have been ripened for disruption by democratising and liberalising technologies such as the cheaper access to compute power, collaborative tools and pay-as-you-go services offered through cloud. These developments remove the infrastructure and investment requirements that larger, established businesses have enjoyed as a competitive advantage. As a result, disruptive start-ups have shaken up the status quo across a number of sectors and some of the former giants they’ve displaced have ceased to exist at all.

Therefore, beyond better customer engagement (70%), it comes as little surprise that organisations bestow their highest priority to activities aimed at long term sustainability. Those that create long term income (59%) and those that ‘future proof’ the business (58%) were noted as the second and third highest priorities (see FIG. 6). The latter, in particular, intonates that organisations appreciate that they cannot necessarily define the future, but must prepare their organisations to react to whatever may arise. In their bid for long term assurance, organisations must ensure they do not take for granted the here and now – as John Bovill of Monsoon Accessorize points out later in this report, the best business strategy is usually a response to a point in time. The pressures of having to keep the wheels turning in the short term, especially if shareholders are to be appeased, should not be taken lightly.

BUY IN FROM THE TOP IS BEING ACHIEVED

IT

is commonly cited that large-scale change programmes require stakeholder buy-in from the very top of an organisation.

It is positive, therefore, that the vast majority of respondents identified at least one C-Level executive as being a senior stakeholder, and that the CEO was the most popular of all – a key stakeholder in 60% of organisations’ digital transformation projects.

With change programmes initiating partially as a result of the influx of information and the increased prowess of technology available to us today, it is little surprise that the CIO is the next most cited leader from the c-suite (45%) (see FIG. 7).

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Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

FIG. 7: WHO ARE THE PRIMARY INTERNAL STAKEHOLDERS OF YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? 60%

CEO

30%

CMO

45%

CIO

36%

CTO

18% Dedicated transformation role

1% No senior stakeholder Other

21%

‘Others’ specified included: Chief Digital Officer; Chief Financial Officer; Chief Operations Officer; Multi-channel Directors; entire Executive Board; Product Managers; Analytics Director; Propositions Director; front line staff; Strategic ICT group; Everyone.

However, less than one in five respondents (18%) reported that their organisations have a dedicated transformation role in place as a senior stakeholder. If no person or team is solely focussed on leading the transformation effort it can be prone to inefficiencies owing to the constraints of business-as-usual activities on other stakeholders. Indeed, in the biggest barriers (see FIG 8. overleaf), ‘time’ (41%), ‘allocating resource’ (29%) and ‘existing business operations’ (24%) were three of the most oft-cited obstacles.

R E S U L T S ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

FURTHER LEGACY CHALLENGES IN THE FUTURE?

L

egacy tools and systems (58%) was the most oft-cited barrier to transformation in the survey, just as it was cited as the biggest barrier to implementing new technologies in Nimbus Ninety’s mid2014 survey (see FIG. 8).

As such a common concern today, logic would suggest that companies would be taking steps to avoid the problem in the future, especially given the focus on long termism that was noted earlier.

However, the evidence suggests companies may be setting themselves for further legacy issues in the future by not building interoperability with the so-called ‘third platform’ technologies – mobile, social, cloud, analytics, along with, more generally, connectivity and automation.

Although 70% of organisations cite mobile as a key influencing concern when building new products and systems, this drops to 59% for analytics, 44% for social and just 37% for cloud (See FIG. 9).

Internal collaboration is the biggest pain point organisations find in their digital transformation journeys, with 54% citing ‘connectivity between organisational departments’. This was significantly higher than the next two biggest concerns, ‘organisational focus’ and ‘measuring the value of actions/return on engagement’, which were cited equally by 37% of respondents. (see FIG. 10).

FIG. 8: WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST BARRIERS IN YOUR PATH TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? Legacy tools and systems Time Existing business operations Leadership Vision Skills Analytical frameworks Executive sponsorship Organisational buy in People Governance Allocating/reallocating resource IT and CRM skills Monitoring/metrics Identifying sources of cost reduction Selecting engagement and sales channels Mapping customer journeys Connecting the enterprise

FIG. 9: WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ‘THIRD PLATFORM’ TECHNOLOGIES AND PROCESSES INFLUENCE THE WAY YOU DESIGN AND IMPLEMENT NEW PRODUCTS AND SERVICES?

Connectivity Automation Mobile Social Cloud Analytics

58%

41%

24%

18%

19%

29% 16% 14%

31%

28%

24%

29%

25% 10% 11% 6% 11% 14%

57% 44%

70% 44% 37%

59%

FIG. 10: WHAT ARE THE BIGGEST PAIN POINTS YOU FACE IN YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION? Circulating insight Connecting sales channels Connectivity between organisational departments Understanding how to engage with individuals/groups of customers Measuring value of actions/return on engagement Capturing knowledge Reviewing and understanding sentiment Earning customers’ trust Focusing the organisation Which metrics to track Privacy policy

23% 24% 26%

54%

37%

31% 20% 23% 37% 26% 14%

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

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S U R V E Y

BUSINESS VALUES

FIG. 11: WHAT ARE THE MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS IN YOUR CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT MODEL?

44%

55% 31%

48% 33%

44% 30% 28%

47% 33%

Trust Speed Accuracy

IN

the midst of all of the new opportunities for reaching out to, and engaging with customers, organisations have not lost sight of the old school values on which customer relationships are built on and still apply today.

Trust (71%) and accuracy (55%) are seen as the most critical factors in an organisation’s customer engagement model, ahead of even security (47%) and continuous user experience across channels (44%) (see FIG 11).

R E S U L T S

Mutual value Repeat business Multiple touch points Continuous user experience across channels The exchange of knowledge to drive better services Synergy with customer goals Security Privacy policy

FIG. 12: HOW LONG WILL YOUR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION TAKE TO COMPLETE?

Less thana year 3%

Our transformation will continuously evolve 51%

1-2 years 18%

3-4 years 15%

5 years + 4%

10

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

71%

Finally, the Nimbus Ninety Enterprise Digital Trends Survey highlighted that the speed of development and change on the business landscape is producing a fundamental adjustment in the way that transformation is viewed and approached.

More than half of all organisations (51%) no longer see transformation as an activity which starts or ends – they see it as a constantly evolving process (see FIG. 12).

R E S U L T S

DIGITAL TRENDS SURVEY 2015

PARTNER CONCLUSION

ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

RESPONSE FROM KCOM

A

lthough digital transformation is now an undeniable business reality, there is still considerable debate around the motivation for this disruption. However, this year’s study may have finally answered the question, as an astonishing 82% of organisations surveyed consider digital transformation as a response to changing customer behaviours. This escalating significance of the customer both echoes our experiences and validates Kcom’s continuing focus on building engagement into the heart of our digital transformation approach.

When it comes to realising the potential of new technologies to drive customer engagement, legacy infrastructure remains the primary obstacle for organisations to overcome. In the future, organisations will have to find ways to leverage their legacy IT and existing investments into a responsive system that will continue to adapt to the pace of change. Building interoperability and third party elements to enable new systems is a good place to start, but organisations also need to consider their plans to upgrade and scale infrastructure as the needs of their end users evolve.

Finally, internal collaboration must take centre stage in any transformation strategy. Enabling the flow of knowledge and ideas between departments and individuals could open up new avenues of innovation and differentiation for every organisation – facilitating this revolution will certainly be Kcom’s focus in the coming year.

PAUL DEWAR, HEAD OF MARKET DEVELOPMENT, KCOM

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

11

EMBEDDING DIGITAL INNOVATION INTO THE HIGH STREET JOHN BOVILL, IT AND E-COMMERCE DIRECTOR AT MONSOON ACCESSORIZE, EXPLAINS HOW THE COMPANY IS BRINGING NEW DIGITAL INNOVATIONS INTO ITS BRICKS AND MORTAR OPERATIONS TO PROVIDE AN ENHANCED, PERSONALISED CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE. HE ALSO OUTLINES THE TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGES THAT ARE ENABLING THESE DEVELOPMENTS. MY

12

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

T

he digital cannibalisation of high street retail businesses has ensued steadily over the last two decades, as more and more of us swap the high street for the web. But that cannibalisation has perhaps not been as all-encompassing as one might assume.

About a quarter of 1400-store fashion company Monsoon Accessorize’s transactions are started and completed online.

Another quarter begin online and are finished in-store. The remaining 50 per cent are conducted completely in the stores.

It’s clear therefore that, for now at least, a majority of customers still don’t want their entire bricks and mortar retail experience completely replaced by digital.

The Monsoon Accessorize senior leadership knows the digital-only side of the business will continue to grow, and they have designs to become an ‘e-commerce first’ business.

But they also know that ‘digital disruption’ is no longer confined to that simple trade-off between online and in-store.

In the here and now, the latest digital innovations can enrich both channels, and the channels themselves can complement one another.

EXEC INSIGHT M O N S O O N AC C E S S O R I Z E

The trial has been extremely encouraging.

The iPads have accounted for 7-10% of the sales in the piloting stores. It is fair to surmise that this figure would increase still further once the new system becomes naturalised and reaches mass adoption with customers.

MA has also been able to prove that those iPad transactions have represented a highly optimised sale compared with those through the regular tills. For a start, the return rate on items bought through the iPads is around two per cent lower than the usual rate for in-store purchases. What’s more, when suggested stock is unavailable in that store, the bulk of customers who order it using the iPad service do so on a ‘click and collect’ basis. They then come back into the store and buy more items.

“It drives up average units per basket, drives up average transaction value, and drives up repeat custom,” says John.

“That, by definition, drives up profitability.

Most importantly though, the customer has a great experience and she gets what she wants.”

The company has implemented mobile pack and wrap desks for removing hangers, security de-tagging and folding the garments. This means the regular tills can be reduced in both size and number, bringing the added benefits of linear and walkthrough realised from the Accessorize initiative.

“ IT D R IVE S U P AVE R AGE U N IT S PE R BAS KET, D R IVE S U P AVE R AGE TR AN SACTI O N VALU E , AN D D R IVE S U P R E PE AT C U S TO M ”

John Bovill serves as Director of IT and E-commerce at Monsoon Accessorize (MA). He explained how a pilot initiative to optimise space within the company’s Accessorize stores has led to a wider, digital initiative within its Monsoon outlets.

The company has removed the counters from three of its Accessorize stores – Liverpool Street Station, Wimbledon and Brighton – and replaced them with tills that are integrated within merchandise tables.

The primary benefit to this is that it increases the store linear – the available space for merchandise displays – by 10 to 15 per cent.

The pilot has been a success. As well as improving the customer walkway around the stores, MA’s data proves that, for Accessorize stores, more linear means more sales.

MA also embarked upon a second trial along the same lines, but this time with far more scope for digital to add value. The company has equipped sales staff on the shop floors of 14 Monsoon stores with iPads.

These can be used for assisted till sales as well as a deeper level of personalised and dynamic customer service.

Says John: “We’ve equipped the devices with our online recommendation engine which, on the web, looks at your browser history and suggests other items you might like. Since it works so well online, we looked for a way to bring it into the stores.

IN

order to drive ‘higher value customers’, we also offer free delivery on anything you order in store via the tablets.

The customer is taking time out, they are obviously loyal, and we need to reward that. We didn’t perceive that, but we put it in later within the trial. We were open to change

“Now, when a customer buys an item through the iPad, the sales assistant gets a visual display on screen of other items that go with it, based on the choices other customers have made online. That visualisation also then helps the assistant, many of whom are temps working just a few hours a week, to easily find the item in the store.”

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

13

As a result of its success, the pilot will now be scaled up to 100 stores, using 750 iPads in total, by the end of 2014.

Some of MA’s other digital initiatives in the pipeline that will support the in-store experience include:

MY ACCOUNT

In September, MA launched a new feature for its loyalty customers called ‘My Account’.

This system holds all of a customer’s previous purchase details as well as the points they have accrued, offers they are eligible for, and any vouchers or gift cards that they hold.

STATS

2.2

MILLION: THE NUMBER OF REWARD CUSTOMERS MONSOON ACCESSORIZE HAS SIGNED UP THE PERCENTAGE OF MA’S TRANSACTIONS MADE BY REWARD CUSTOMERS THE REDUCTIONS IN RETURNS ON IN-STORE IPAD TRANSACTIONS COMPARED WITH OVER-THE-COUNTER PERCENTAGE OF MONSOON ACCESSORIZE ONLINE SALES ORDERED ON A ‘CLICK AND COLLECT’ BASIS

43% 2%

31%

E-RECEIPTS

1,400: MONSOON ACCESSORIZE TOTAL STORES GLOBALLY

14

The My Account system will also include the roll-out of e-receipts.

The advantage to the customer is primarily to have all of their receipts in one place for their own accounting.

It will make returns easier too, for both the customer and MA. Additionally, the e-receipts will also utilise the recommendations engine and will include suggestions on the receipt itself.

WIFI DERIVED INSIGHT

With the help of a couple of innovative tools, MA is able to assess nonpersonalised data derived from smart phones that have WIFI switched on in and around its retail environments.

This sits at around 30% of people, so MA can extrapolate the data to the overall footfall. The data reveals the number of people coming into the store, the number of people who walk past it, the ‘hot spot’ activity locations within the store, and the dwell times in different areas.

Nimbus Ninety ENTERPRISE DIGITAL TRENDS REPORT 2015

“TECHNOLOGY IS ALWAYS SIMPLE: THE BEHAVIOURAL CHANGE IS THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE”

So how are John and the rest of the team adapting MA’s culture and organisational structure to enable these new developments?

John has a ‘golden rule’ when it comes to any technological change initiative: “If it’s noninfrastructure, if it touches anything outside of IT, you never get IT to lead it. You get whoever the key stakeholder is, the ambassador for the business, to head it up. With our tablet solutions, the front face of it all is our retail director, Gail Ford Hills. She is responsible for effectively selling our solution into the business and store teams.”

EXEC INSIGHT M O N S O O N AC C E S S O R I Z E

T

he simple answer would have been to just put our website on our in-store iPads. But it doesn’t work like that.

UI in-store is very different to online. We’ve broken it down and based it on what our store teams have told us. It’s all based on availability and convenience John Bovill, IT and E-commerce Director at Monsoon Accessorize

they say, they’ll ignore what you give them. The teams are even in charge of coming up with the project names and we stand by what they decide.

“This is the notion of allowing the people that do the work to decide how it’s best done. Our upcoming Office365 with Yammer implementation will be key to that.

We’ll give it to the store teams and give them the ability to monitor the insights from the WIFI footfall data and share them across their teams and with other stores. They know their stores better than we do – why not liberate them to act on it?”

By the same token, full buy-in must be achieved by customers.

Here, it is a matter of trust and transparency.

“Data privacy is obviously a key concern,” John adds. “With anything we do, the customer can always opt in or out. It’s important that the choice is there and clearly expressed.

As retailers I think we have a moral obligation towards that.

“And actually, what we’ve found is that if you’re completely transparent, not only about what you’re doing, but why, you get a lot less objections and opt-outs anyway.”

PL AC I N G ANALY TI C S AT TH E H E ART O F C U S TO M E R I N S I GHT

That is a common stance in businesses today – yet all too often it is implemented only superficially. Ownership is stated, rather than achieved. In order to actually realise the objectives of end user ownership, MA has implemented a system called MAX – Monsoon Accessorize Extended – which gives the end user teams the control over new developments from the offset.

“On the iPad project, the retail teams are the ones that will breathe it and make it live,” says John. “If we want them to use it, it is pivotal that the user interface is moulded to their preferences. The best way to do that is to involve them in the design process. And don’t just take suggestions, do your utmost to implement them where possible. If you ignore what

Being the director of both e-commerce and IT holds a huge advantage for anyone who wants to take a leading role in the digital transformation of a retail business. Without anyone’s say so, without months of selling his vision to other senior stakeholders, John was able to pick up his business intelligence team and move it into the e-commerce faction.

The reason? To focus the organisation’s data analytics primarily on the customer.

John explains: “Hour by hour, the e-commerce team are studying conversions, tweaking iterations, and monitoring uplift.

It’s a really tight, live and interesting trading environment. BI must understand that’s the future and we need to be responsive to it. So we placed the team within the heart of this action so that they can not only respond to requests more quickly, with face-to-face interactions, but also so they can begin to foresee what types of data would be useful and the ways that the business wants it presented.”

There were obstacles to be circumvented, of course. Aversion to change was one; the other was ensuring that the IT team could keep up ‘business as usual’ with proper change controls,

governance and the like, while picking up some of the slack that the BI team left behind.

“People were wondering how it would all hang together operationally. But you get around this with processes, planning and a clear vision.

You need to be able to articulate and help people to understand the rationale – the human factor of what everyone is trying to achieve. You always take your team with you in your thinking, and be honest: ‘it’s an experiment and we’re going to test it out and see how it works’.

“You also need a clear distinction of roles and responsibilities so you can comfortably make the transition.”

FOC U S I N G O N TH E H E R E AN D N OW

So what does the future have in store for Monsoon Accessorize?

As stated at the beginning of the article, the company will transition towards an e-commerce-first company in the ensuing years, and try to close on the online pure-plays like ASOS and Net-A-Porter – something that he thinks the established bricks and mortar businesses haven’t done enough of yet.

For a company like MA, that will be chiefly be about playing to our strengths and delivering Internet point of presence in store.

Alongside that, there are still plenty of ‘bread and butter’ improvements left to make. “How do we continue to collect data in stores? How do we share information in stores? How can we use social to react quicker? How do we ensure as a business, we up the ante and respond quickly? How do we give our employees the tools and platforms that we all use in our personal lives to help them achieve more in their work lives? These are the things in the forefronts of our minds.”

There is also a strong possibility of fastgrowth start-ups from emerging economies entering the market. These new competitors may be unhindered by the twenty years’ worth of legacy systems that shackle UK incumbents and they may disrupt the systems once again, in both the physical and virtual worlds.

But while John says he is constantly assessing the potential business models and developments that the future could bring, he isn’t unduly concerned with problems that haven’t presented themselves in any sort of detail as yet.

“The best strategies are a response to a point in time,” he says. “What we ask is, ‘is it best for us now, and as far as we can reasonably predict?’ We’re implementing strategies that serve our customers best today and that set our business up to innovate and to react quickly tomorrow.

That’s the best future proofing we can do.”

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AS THE CROSSINDUSTRY BENCHSETTER IN CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE, VIRGIN ATLANTIC CONSTANTLY SEEKS NEW WAYS TO RAISE THE BAR. DIRECTOR OF TECHNOLOGY DAVID BULMAN EXPLAINS HOW A NEW, ORGANISATIONWIDE COLLABORATION STRATEGY IS HELPING DRIVE THE ADOPTION OF INNOVATIVE NEW TOOLS AND TECH. DM

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ince its launch in 1984, Virgin Glass as an innovative, fresh-thinking way Atlantic has continuously to personalise stewards’ interactions with redefined the flying experience. customers and react to their needs. Using the Its reputation for innovation is technology, the company’s concierge is able famous, and its name has become to greet Upper Class passengers by name synonymous with excellence in and can offer updates on flight information, customer service. weather reports, local information about their Under the incumbent senior management destination and more. team, those two values have become David says: “Wearables really allowed us inextricably linked. to improve the customer David Bulman, Virgin interaction, taking away Atlantic’s Director of the need to move to Technology, explains: “In a computer terminal the past we’ve tended to access detailed to focus our innovation information about the in the hard-products end passenger and their flight – things like the seats, details. It wasn’t about bars and food and drink productivity, but about inside the plane. But now making an interaction we are also looking at better with technology, where technology and rather than the tech innovation can impact on getting in the way.” the customer experience Following the success across all our touch points.” of this initial trial, Virgin This year, Virgin quickly began testing Atlantic has trialled Apple’s next-generation several cutting edge iBeacon technology, to developments. At the deliver personalised start of the year, the flight notifications to airline was the first in its passengers’ iPhones and industry to trial Google iPads. Trials are ongoing, Glass technology. This was with a focus on how to soon followed by a trial supply time and location with Apple’s iBeacons. relevant information The progressive Google to customers, as well Glass trial was initiated as assisting staff in after a major study of identifying customers as 10,000 airline passengers they approach from across the world on key locations. the future of air travel.

“We were clear that The results showed that this initiative had to be the experience of those primarily of value to the travelling by air has customer during this apparently decayed in opening trial stage,” recent decades, contrary adds David. “That’s why to popular notions of we went with a purely continuous improvement. information-based In response, Virgin service, rather than offers David Bulman, Director of Technology Virgin Atlantic Atlantic identified Google and adverts.”

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They are willing to work with us because they know we have a good track record for turning experiments into better experiences

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With technology cycles perennially quickening, Virgin Atlantic needed to rethink the way that it identified opportunities and evaluated the potential effects of those opportunities on its business.

The biggest change in this regard has been in moving customer experience from a siloed operation to a company-wide endeavour.

Where previously the company had a dedicated customer experience department, it has now implemented what David calls a ‘matrix of virtual teams’ – a system of crossdepartmental, collaborative working groups for assessing new ventures.

He explains: “We have created a process to bring together people from across the organisation into a small, central chain. They consider all of the different ideas that have surfaced and decide which offer the biggest value to the customer, and are feasible considering risk, cost and capacity.”

As the teams are cross-functional, they are able to assess any idea in terms of the knockon effects for all operational areas of the business, including the planes themselves, airport processes, service flow, and staffing and infrastructure resources.

“It’s about becoming more methodical, getting a holistic view of business value, and focusing everyone on the same aims,” adds David. “It’s about collective input and collective responsibility.”

With myriad new ideas being proposed each month, only a very select few will reach the next level: the test and learn phase.

To get there, the idea must pass through a rigorous filtering mechanism and there has to be complete clarity over why exactly, in value terms, it has been given the green light.

“We always use three lenses to assess new ideas: a customer experience lens, a revenue lens, and a cost saving lens,” says David. “If

LAUNCHED 1984 YEAR C.9,500 EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE 40 PLANES OPERATING GLOBALLY >6 MILLION PASSENGERS 2013 2013 £2.87BN TURNOVER OF A BUSINESS 79.5” LENGTH CLASS BED 10 MINUTES TIME FROM ‘LIMO TO LOUNGE’ FOR BUSINESS PASSENGERS AT HEATHROW AIRPORT

an idea cannot be justified through each of the three lenses then it cannot qualify for the next stage in the development process. The customer experience lens probably holds the most weight though, as it has always been our belief that excellence in customer service ultimately leads to more revenues in the end.”

Freeing up people’s time to work on these ideas proves to be David’s biggest challenge. It requires buy-in throughout the organisation, as it means employees taking leave of their ‘business as usual’ operations.

“This is why you get everyone across the company involved from the offset,” he says.

“Once everyone has the same ultimate goals, it becomes in everyone’s interests to make it work. And if you have to focus on one thing, it has to be the customer.”

THE VIRGIN ATLANTIC ‘IDEAS LAB’ MANTRAS: – Ask a different question – Start small, grow big – Make it part of people’s jobs – Have a process, but keep it simple – Provide access to resources – Test, measure, try again – Failure is good

40 PLANES = 40 LABS

Once an idea has made it through this stringent auditioning process, it thereafter leads something of a charmed life at Virgin Atlantic. Rather than being kept under wraps for months of tinkering and red tape approval, the team look to bring the new initiative in front of customers as soon as possible.

With the Google Glass project, David and his colleagues had no reservations about conducting early-stage testing in an Upper Class airport lounge with premium customers.

“At the testing and development stage, there’s no better feedback than customer critique,” says David. “This allowed us to innovate during the project itself, such as adding the weather-at-destination reports when customers commented it would help them ensure they had appropriate clothes handy.”

However, he warns that it is imperative to have established clear ways to measure and understand customer reactions – “not just how you think they are reacting to it” – and to understand what constitutes success.

It’s also important to manage customer expectations and be transparent about your experiments. As David summarises: “We tell our customers when we’re testing things out.

They are willing to work with us because they know we have a good track record for turning experiments into better experiences. If you can get that level of dialogue, understanding and trust, it frees you up to test in live environments, which gives you the best feedback.

“It often surprises people, but we are not a huge airline – we only have 40 planes.

However, as our CEO often says, that means we have 40 labs.”

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TESL A MOTORS IS AT THE FOREFRONT OF THE GLOBAL FIGHT TO DISPL ACE COMBUSTION EN GINES VEHICLES WITH ELECTRIC ONES. SO, WHAT MEASURES IS ONE OF THE WORLD’S HOTTEST TEC H COMPANIES TAKIN G TO OVERHAUL IT S MARKETPL ACE? UK COUNTRY DIRECTOR GEORG ELL TALKS OPEN PATENTS, ACTING LIKE A STARTUP, AND TACKLING ‘R ANGE ANXIET Y’. DM

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THE OPEN (SOURCE) ROAD

TO ELECTRIC VEHICLE INNOVATION

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he internal combustion engine has ruled the automotive roost since its inception over 100 years ago. Now, though, all but the most ardent of petrol-heads agree that the question is ‘when’, not ‘if’, it will be dethroned by electric.

Still, with a century’s worth of legacy, and an entrenched public perception of electric vehicles to transform, it’s going to take some pretty big paradigm shifts for the eco-friendly pretender to uproot its planetpolluting incumbent king.

One of the more unexpected of these shifts could be a U-turn on one of the principles that businesses have traditionally held most dear: protecting their intellectual property.

In June 2014 Elon Musk, Tesla Motors’ founder and CEO, released a statement: “Yesterday, there was a wall of Tesla patents in the lobby of our Palo Alto headquarters,” he said. “That is no longer the case. They have been removed, in the spirit of the open source movement, for the advancement of electric vehicle technology.”

Essentially, Musk asserted that the company would no longer bring legal suits against anybody who copied Tesla’s patented technologies ‘in good faith.’

Undeniably, it’s a bold move, and one which would leave the traditional gatekeepers of innovation aghast.

However, it’s not one without precedent.

Parallels can be drawn with software companies that make their own systems

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A TECHNOLOGY COMPANY THAT SPECIALISES IN CARS Probably because of its heritage, associations and Palo Alto home, Tesla is still thought of, and described by many as, a start-up. This is almost as much of a stretch as pinning the same label on Google, Facebook or Amazon. Tesla is over a decade old now. It is publicly listed, and has over $2bn (£1.22bn) in annual revenues.

But it still acts like a start-up. The open patents move is one example of this, but that’s not where the parallels end.

Georg Ell, Tesla’s UK and Ireland, says: “Tesla stays in the cloud with continuous improvement cycles, rather than adopting traditional organisations’ three year improvement cycles. Culturally, we move at a different pace to those organisations.”

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ur mission as a company is to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable transport and that means that we want to be a catalyst for change in the world Georg Ell, Country Director, UK and Ireland, Tesla Motors

open source. Usually it’s because they want third parties to build applications which utilise their platform, leading to increased usage and even a reliance on that platform for an entire eco-system.

The difference is that Tesla is not looking to benefit directly – not in the first instance anyway – from the use of its patents.

The company is simply confident it can capitalise on a ‘crowdcultivated’ market in the longer term.

As Musk said: “If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal.”

TESLAINNUMBERS

$2.1BN

2013 REVENUE

TESLA MOTORS CEO INVOLVED IN EARLY FOUNDATIONS OF PAYPAL OWNS SPACEX – MANUFACTURES AND LAUNCHES ADVANCED ROCKETS AND SPACECRAFT CHAIRMAN AND CO-FOUNDER OF SOLAR CITY – DESIGNS, FINANCES AND INSTALLS SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEMS; BUILDS CHARGING STATIONS FOR ELECTRIC VEHICLES NAMED FORTUNE BUSINESS PERSON OF THE YEAR, 2013 NET WORTH – $9.6 BILLION (EST) For ‘different pace’, you can read ‘unrelentingly rapid’ – and it’s this rate of innovation that makes the patent move a viable one. As Musk added in his statement: “You want to be innovating so fast that you invalidate your prior patents, in terms of what really matters. It’s the velocity of innovation that matters.”

A very recent demonstration of this “velocity of innovation” can be found in Musk’s unveiling of the Tesla Model D in Los Angeles, October 2014. Two years since the introduction of the Model S, the Model D features dual motors, making it one of the fastest accelerating sedans ever, going from 0 to 60 miles per hour in just over 3 seconds.

Other improved features include an auto pilot system that enables the car to park

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itself after the driver has left the vehicle, a system that can change lanes for the driver when prompted by a turn signal, and a computer that can read speed-limit signs and sets the car speed accordingly.

This degree of innovation exemplifies Musk’s ambition to stay at the helm of not just the EV but the entire automobile market, in virtue of his open patent policy.

Georg’s appointment in early 2014 was itself testament to the start-up culture that guides the company. Georg has previously engineered significant successes in growing innovative, disruptive technology companies. Under his stewardship, Yammer grew from three people to eighty-five in the UK. It was during his time that the company was bought for $1.2bn by Microsoft, where – coincidentally – Georg had previously worked.

He now takes the reigns in a market which is targeted, by the end of 2015, to be Tesla’s third largest globally, behind only the US and China.

Another start-up practice that Tesla adheres to, wherever possible, is to favour incremental development, rather than multi-year road maps. Chiefly, this development process takes place within the software that the company provides to drivers’ dashboards.

It’s trickier with the hard assets on the car, but here Tesla still subscribes to the number one agile commandment of constantly monitoring real-world use patterns and changing its tact accordingly.

“Car manufacturers can’t introduce a new chassis shape or refuelling device quite so easily, but in our ‘everything connected’ world we can certainly make big inroads towards incremental development that is informed by from-the-field feedback,” says Georg. “We have set ourselves up to be able to react to our customer needs as quickly as we can.”

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Tesla Model S Connected Dashboard

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ESTIMATED EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE

CHANGING PERCEPTIONS

So what else does Tesla need to do to truly electrify the global automotive market?

High on Georg’s priority list is countering the ‘range anxiety’ that plagues the electric vehicle market.

However, while speaking, Georg was charging a Tesla Model S at the supercharger at the London Hyatt Regency Hotel – The Churchill. Similar such ‘superchargers’ are being installed all over the UK and, “almost every motorway service station in the UK now has rapid charging capabilities, currently free of charge.

“The Tesla Model S has the longest range of any production electric vehicle in the world with an NEDC range (New European Driving Cycle) of 312 miles. But if the worst came to the worst and you somehow found yourself in the middle of nowhere with no charge, you can charge off a domestic socket and, in

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YEAR FOUNDED the final event, we’d send a service team to help you.”

Over the next few years the cars themselves will become much more accessible to the mass market too. Tesla’s Roadster sports car, which was in production between 2008 and 2012, sold for around £87,000 in the UK. Its Model S luxury sedan, released earlier this year, starts at just shy of £50,000. Next year the company will release its Model X SUV, reportedly set to come in slightly lower than the S, and two years on, it has plans for an entry level

compact-saloon which could hit the market for as little as £20,000.

The new, comparatively cheaper models will bring Tesla onto a level playing field with the entry-level electric car manufacturers. But Georg says Tesla doesn’t really see other electric car manufacturers as its competition. Again, these ‘rivals’ are actually more of a support network.

“The cost of ownership of an electric car is likely to be a lot lower than with a petrol or diesel car too,” he says. “So the saloon will be extremely competitive, not just with other electric cars, but with any car.

“Once somebody makes that decision to go electric, we’re confident that we have the product and price points to make them choose Tesla. But if they don’t choose Tesla, they’ve still entered the electric vehicle ecosystem, helping it grow, and will be acting as a social influencer for others to follow suit.”

Tesla Model S

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DIGITAL TRANSFORM A T KCOM IS A UK-BASED INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS SERVICE PROVIDER, FOCUSED ON HELPING ORGANISATIONS TO DIGITALLY TRANSFORM THEIR INTERNAL AND END USER SYSTEMS. PAUL DEWAR, HEAD OF MARKET DEVELOPMENT, AT KCOM, REVEALS THE ORGANISATION’S BEST PRACTICE TIPS FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND OUTLINES HOW IT HAS HELPED TWO OF ITS CLIENTS.

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e’ve been talking about ‘digital disruption’ for three years now. So why are so many organisations still failing to seize the digital imperative?

Despite conflicting perspectives on digital disruption, the basic truth remains the same: digital disruption is an opportunity, a chance to embrace evolving digital behaviours and engage customers and employees at every possible touch point. With a unified approach that brings individual digital projects under a common organisational goal, the value of digital disruption is wide-ranging and undeniable. So why do so many organisations see digital disruption as something that must be defended against, rather than seized?

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Even once key stakeholders accept the opportunities of digital transformation, there can still be several obstacles to successful innovation.

A common trap is to approach digital transformation as a series of stand-alone projects, rather than a cross-functional programme integrated into wider organisational goals. It’s an understandable mistake – the effort and resources required for a large-scale programme can be daunting.

Through a series of industry round-tables earlier this year, we explored the challenges that organisations encounter in their journey to digital transformation. Having engaged with organisations across diverse industries, there are three almost universal challenges in the digital disruption space: culture, processes and technology.

CULTURE

Culture is often the first stumbling block.

Considering the support and vision required to truly evolve a business, internal politics can lead to a lack of sponsorship or urgency for ambitious digital programmes. Individuals’ resistance to change can also prove problematic. Technophobes exist throughout the supply chain, whether it’s internal employees unwilling to adapt to digitisation, or end users who struggle to access digital services. Despite the best intentions of ‘digital first’ initiatives, it is vital for organisations to account for traditional users and ensure no one is excluded in the rush to transform existing services.

PROCESSES

It is vital that organisations seize the digital imperative and clearly define their

SAFEGUARDING PATIENT CARE FOR MID YORKSHIRE HOSPITALS The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust provides hospitalbased treatment and specialist health services to half a million people and employs over 8,000 staff. Robust and efficient communication between hospitals and colleagues is key to a patient’s wellbeing.

We worked to transform the flow of information around the Trust by delivering both wired and wireless local area networks (WLANs), allowing staff to access the resources they need and contact colleagues across the different sites.

One significant challenge for the trust is making sure the right equipment is available in the right place and at the right time.

With almost £16m spent each year on new hospital equipment, the Trust needed to transform its processes to account for key equipment at all times.

Bariatric beds are a prime example. Only certain patients need them, but they’re hard to distinguish from other beds. Because the beds continuously move around the hospital, it’s easy to lose track of them.

Kcom worked with the trust to tag equipment with physical Radio Frequency Identification tags (RFIDs). The uniquely coded tags are picked up by the WLAN.

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I O N transformation vision. Focusing on stopgap measures rather than new digital opportunities is a common mistake, but can be countered by establishing a roadmap of measurable objectives. With the roadmap defined, mapping (or adapting) business processes in line with a digital transformation programme becomes much simpler.

TECHNOLOGY

A common perception is that legacy IT infrastructure presents limitations. But it is becoming increasingly straightforward to leverage previous investments and integrate existing elements into a host of new technologies. One of the most significant technology challenges is ultimately another cultural issue: updating fatigue. IT teams struggle for time and resources with the proliferation of new platforms and devices. Some resign themselves to always being behind the curve. A welldesigned digital transformation initiative addresses this issue.

Cloud-based services can help, as instances become futureproofed, seamlessly updating while allowing for rapid and flexible adoption among new users.

If a staff member needs to locate a piece of equipment, they access a simple, centralised application from any computer which shows, on a map, where to find it. It’s also possible to extend searches to other hospital sites.

This simple solution allowed the Trust to transform its infrastructure, improve patient care and simplify communications between staff.

James Rawlinson, Assistant IT Director for Mid Yorkshire Hospitals, commended our work, saying: “The easy-to-use interface has proven a hit with our clinical site managers. They can now easily locate equipment from phones and PCs across all three of our hospitals.

This prevents the unnecessary waste of vital clinical time.”

The WLAN infrastructure is based on Cisco architecture, providing the functionality and reliability necessary for a hospital. Our managed service allows us to continuously monitor the infrastructure and quickly identify and fix any faults that occur.

The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), issued by the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA), provides UK holidaymakers with reassurance that their healthcare costs are covered if they fall ill while travelling in Europe.

Digitally transforming the inbound calls process for NHSBSA has helped to make applying for an EHIC more straightforward and has delivered significant savings for the authority.

EHIC renewal transactions peak at over a million per month.

This presents a considerable challenge in servicing all inbound calls by using call centre agents alone. To tackle this, Kcom implemented a hosted cloud-based solution featuring natural speech recognition. A caller speaks to a ‘virtual agent’ and all the information required is collected through the caller simply speaking their details.

Additionally, NHSBSA only pays for each successful transaction. This delivers a fair deal for the Authority and demonstrates our confidence in what has been built. The solution can be flexibly scaled up or down as needed and fully integrates with the authority’s back end systems. This means information captured by the automated system will be instantly available if the caller decides to speak to an agent during the call.

The system has delivered considerable annual savings to NHSBSA. The cost of automated transactions is less than a third of an agent-led transaction. The ease and efficiency is popular with customers, and agents have more time to help callers with more complex needs.

ENGINEERING SUCCESS

Digital transformation efforts vary significantly between organisations.

But there are still fundamental approaches to maximise the value and impact of digitisation programmes.

Digital transformation is not about updating existing processes and services; it’s about redefining how an organisation operates holistically.

It’s vital to invest in both infrastructure and people. The programme must reach customers, employees, and also partners and users across the supply chain. Collaboration and access between organisations can truly make a digital transformation programme worthwhile.

Above all, digital transformation must be purposeful, with clear value for both the user and the organisation. Success requires leadership, not ownership, and belief in your organisation’s vision. We must be guided by our own objectives rather than being swayed by the competition. After all, they’re almost certainly grappling with the same challenges – digital disruption affects us all.

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