Market Trends Report 2013

INNOVATIVE BUSINESS TECHNOLOGIES IN A CONVERGING WORLD: OUTLOOK, OPPORTUNITIES AND OBSTACLES

N I M B U S N I N E T Y C O M M U N I T I E S

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elcome to the Nimbus Ninety Market Trends Report 2013. Nimbus Ninety is the parent company to a group of interactive business technology focused communities. It began back in 2005 with the launch of Obis Omni, which was established to explore the latest developments and best practice in business intelligence and performance management.

EDITORS:

Mark Young: mark.young@nimbusninety.com Dominic Pollard: dom.pollard@nimbusninety.com

ASSISTANT EDITOR:

Imogen Putler: imogen.putler@nimbusninety.com

FOUNDER & MANAGING DIRECTOR: Emma Taylor: emma.taylor@nimbusninety.com

HEAD OF RESEARCH & STRATEGY: Caroline Boyd: caroline.boyd@nimbusninety.com

MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER: Hannah Mitchell: hannah.mitchell@nimbusninety.com

CREATIVE DESIGNER:

Jordan Constantinides: jordan@nimbusninety.com

SPONSORSHIP:

Sophie Hardman: sophie.hardman@nimbusninety.com Benita Sabharwal: benita.sabharwal@nimbusninety.com

BUSINESS LEADERSHIP EXCHANGE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: Milly Blundell: milly.blundell@nimbusninety.com

MEMBERSHIP TEAM

Zeenat Motegheria: zeenat@nimbusninety.com Francesca Thornton: francesca.thornton@nimbusninety.com CONTACT TELEPHONE NUMBER: 0207 630 1220

REPORT DESIGNERS: Optic Juice Ltd: design@opticjuice.co.uk

Registered company and publisher name: Nimbus Ninety Ltd Registration number: 06803745, registered in England & Wales Office address: Minster House, 272-274 Vauxhall Bridge Road, London, SW1V 1BB Registered business address: 16 Northfields Prospect, Putney Bridge Road, London, SW18 1PE

Copyright © Nimbus Ninety Ltd 2013 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.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

Obis has since been joined by The Cloud Circle, formed 2009, with its focus on cloud computing, and Big Data Insight Group in 2011 which focuses on big data and advanced analytics. This year Nimbus Ninety also launched the Business Leadership Exchange, a private network for C-Level executives.

Our portfolio of activities includes independently researched reports, online content and events – comprising forums, masterclasses, networking events and dinners. Each community serves its senior end-user, business and IT members with the knowledge that they need to take advantage of new business technologies that offer innovation or efficiency gains.

New technologies are helping to create an increasingly converged world. As a by-product, they are becoming more and more interlinked, interoperable and interdependent. The vast majority of us use a wide variety of different technologies in our work places as we seek to collaborate more effectively and build a better understanding of our businesses, the markets we operate in and the world around us.

What has become clear from the individual Nimbus Ninety communities is that to realise the maximum potential of any one business technology, it almost always has to be utilised in conjunction with another. There are then also implications for the supporting foundations, processes and working paradigms that need to be established within each organisation.

This report brings together all of our communities and their separate focal points, plus a whole host of other associated business technologies, to explore the way that this convergence is developing. The study includes our indepth survey of senior business and IT end-users, expert columns, interviews with leading experts in their respective fields, and practical case studies from our sponsors. Collectively, this mix of content enables us to define the current outlook for the converging world of technology, the opportunities it presents, and the obstacles that need to be circumvented in its wake.

We hope that you find the report thought provoking and informative, and that it will serve as the inspiration you need to succeed with your technology based strategies in 2013. If you’re an end-user of business technologies – whatever industry, organisation, or job role you work in – it’s free to become a member of any of our communities. In doing so, you’ll gain access to all of our latest research and events, and the opportunity to network and learn from your peers, leading academics and solutions providers.

Please do contact us so we can tell you more.

Yours sincerely,

Emma Taylor, Founder and managing director, Nimbus Ninety

C O N T E N T S

04/INTRODUCTION TO CONVERGE

THE NIMBUS NINETY MARKET TRENDS SURVEY 2013 EXPERT COLUMNS INTERVIEWS SPONSOR CASE STUDIES

Nimbus Ninety editor Mark Young explores the notion of converging technologies and business departments and introduces the content within the report.

06/KEY FINDINGS

The headline findings from the Nimbus Ninety Market Trends Survey 2013.

07/RESULTS IN-DEPTH

Full analysis of the survey, covering the convergence, costs, benefits and risks associated with disruptive business technologies including cloud computing, big data and business intelligence.

13/FOLLOW THE TECHNOLOGY LEADER

Colin Wooldridge of Telefonica UK says many of the world’s most successful companies have techfocused leaders at the helm. High growth start-ups provide a strong case for following suit.

14/LONDON: THE DIGITAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE

David Slater of London & Partners – Boris Johnson’s official promotional organisation for business – says UK businesses should look to capitalise on the technology assets that they have on their doorstep.

16/DAVID ROWAN, WIRED UK

The award winning founding editor of Wired UK magazine discusses how businesses must adapt in the digital economy, along with big data, 3D printing and book-writing algorithms.

19/NICKMAWDITT,KINETICWORLDWIDE–ADIVISIONOFWPP

Kinetic Worldwide is the global leader in ‘out of home advertising’. Nick Mawditt, the company’s global director of insight and marketing, maps the way that marketing and IT is converging and what this means for accountability in his industry.

23/ITELLIGENCE & OFSTED

Microsoft partner itelligence was on hand when schools inspection unit Ofsted required consolidation of disparate data sources.

24/IMGROUP & HOGAN LOVELLS

Law firm Hogan Lovells needed to marry up two global IT systems following its merger. It turned to Microsoft partner IMGROUP.

26/INTECHNOLOGY & HOWDENS JOINERY

Nationwide kitchen materials supplier Howdens looked to InTechnogy for 24 hour IT, disaster recovery, managed telephony, and more.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

INTRODUCTION T O T H E N I M B U S N I N E T Y MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

WHEN BUSINESS TECHNOLOGIES

THE NIMBUS NINET Y MARKET TRENDS REPORT INVESTIGATES THE NOTION OF CONVERGING BUSINESS TECHNOLOGIES. NIMBUS NINET Y EDITOR MARK YOUNG EXPL AINS WHY INTERCONNECTEDNESS IS SUCH A KEY THEME IN TODAY’S BUSINESS L ANDSCAPE AND HIGHLIGHTS THE TOPICS EXPLORED THROUGHOUT THE REPORT.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

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nterconnectedness is the key theme which drives the development of new cutting edge business technologies. In order to run our organisations as efficiently and with as much scope for innovation as possible, we require people, departments, organisations and technologies to seamlessly interact with one another.

Our clamour for interconnectedness is driving convergence. The latest emerging tools at our disposal are increasingly required to be interlinked and interoperable, if their full potential is to be realised. Disparate business technologies must be brought into a cohesive portfolio, working in unison. These could include things like cloud computing and storage, new database systems, high performance analytics infrastructure, a whole raft of mobile devices and interaction, web-based collaboration platforms, enterprise social networking, and dynamic dashboarding and visualisations. When these links are established, and greater value can be derived from one technology by using it in conjunction with another. It naturally follows that the two become interdependent.

A level of interdependency between business technologies has long existed, if you accept things like electricity and the electric motor to be business enabling technologies, which they are of course. But the developments of the last decade – and especially the last two or three years – are

different. At the very least, things like cloud computing and big data analytics – and all of the components within these wide umbrella terms – have something of an amplified sense of that alliance.

To take cloud computing and big data analytics as a case in point, you don’t necessarily need the first for the second.

However, to optimise efficiency and indeed, for many, the breadth of possibility in the exercise, cloud could be pivotal for any of the following reasons: / Public cloud is a scalable resource which allows you to ramp up your compute power as and when you require it in order to perform analysis on huge amounts of data, without buying, housing and maintaining a room full of costly servers. / Software-as-a-service allows you access to analysis or visualisation software programmes without having to buy them on discs and install them. / A cloud development platform allows you to experiment in a ‘rapid test and learn’ methodology with the insights you’ve derived from your analysis. / If you have constant flows of data into your organisation, it will mount up quickly. Cloud-based storage would allow you to efficiently separate your data, keeping the relevant parts at hand for operational use, and storing that which has to be kept for a number of years for regulatory requirements in reserve.

INTRODUCTION M

/ Cloud offers the pay-asyou-go pricing scheme which means you can have it when you want it, and stop paying for it when you don’t.

Thereafter, security management encompasses a whole raft of business technologies, including encryption and tokenisation, firewalls, and remote monitoring systems. These technologies are critical for many organisations, large and small alike, that want to use any number of other business systems, such as cloud, CRM systems, mobile devices, BYOD, remote data storage, financial reporting tools and so on.

In order to effectively analyse and even

predict threats, you’ll also need high performance analytics. And with this growing list of technologies and procedures you might consider outsourcing the entire process to a third party specialist, something you can do using cloud.

Essentially, to maximise the potential benefit to your organisation from one business technology or related process, you almost always require the use of another.

In isolation, as this report will illustrate, business technologies will only offer a fraction of their benefits.

When technologies collide in such a way, the same must also naturally apply to the associated landscape around them, including BYOD policies; governance, risk and compliance; investment and payment models; solution sourcing; strategic partnering; and skills and talent management. The supporting structures that must be built into procedures must service all of the technologies and processes that come into contact with one another.

And what we’re also witnessing is a change in the way that business departments work with one another in order to accommodate these new interlinked technologies. In some instances, the departments themselves are converging too.

These are just some of the issues we explore in this Market Trends Report. We begin with the results and analysis of the Nimbus Ninety Market Trends Survey 2013, in which we seek to understand which portfolios of business technologies are to be used to help organisations achieve their key strategic objectives this year and beyond. This also covers the cost, benefits and risk factors associated with the leading emerging technologies prevalent on the market today.

Thereafter, we have expert columns from Colin Wooldridge of Telefonica UK and David Slater of London & Partners – the Mayor of London’s official promotional organisation. These establish the best structural paradigms for technology-led success and the opportunity for competitive advantage that UK companies have with London, the digital capital of Europe, on their doorsteps.

In the first of two interviews within this report, we hear from David Rowan – the award-winning founding editor of Wired UK magazine – on how his and other businesses have adapted in the digital economy. The second interview sees Nick Mawditt, global director of insight at Kinetic Worldwide – a division of WPP – continue this theme, with insight into how marketing is converging with IT to become more effective and more accountable.

Finally, we have a group of case studies from our report sponsors:

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itelligence, in establishing an analysis platform for schools inspection office Ofsted; IMGROUP, in integrating two global IT systems for the law firm Hogan Lovells; and InTechnology, in providing a host of cloudbased cost saving infrastructure for kitchen maker Howdens Joinery.

Through this mix of content, featuring input from some of the leading global businesses and individuals operating in the UK today, we hope to have established a cutting insight into the current trends in business technologies.

Ultimately, our research shows that technologies are converging at a much faster rate and to a much higher degree than they ever have before. And although increasing numbers of people from business functions are beginning to understand the value of business-enabling technologies and are starting to engage with them, there are high risks attached to viewing them in isolation, including a limited scope of what can be achieved, barriers to entry, or a failure to realise ROI. In an increasingly interconnected world, it is clear that ‘converge’ is a concept that everyone must now embrace.

We hope you find the report engaging and informative, and that it provides you with inspiration and benchmarking material to help you succeed with a varied portfolio of technologies in 2013. We welcome your input to our further reports throughout the year.

Mark Young mark.young@nimbusninety.com

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

S U R V E Y

KEY FINDINGS / SMEs are proving slower and more reluctant in the adoption of new business technologies than companies with larger annual turnover. / ‘Increasing customer retention/ average sales per customer’ (selected by 58% of respondents) was the number one business objective for 2013 among the organisations surveyed. / BI tools were selected as necessary in the execution of half (49%) of organisations’ key business strategies.

Mobile technologies and infrastructure (35%), big data analytics (30%), and collaboration tools (30%) were also commonly selected. / Enabling collaboration between different technologies and ensuring new technologies are not implemented in isolation (both 63%) were both highlighted as important by the majority of respondents.

THE CONVERGENCE, COSTS, BENEFITS AND RISKS OF DISRUPTIVE BUSINESS TECHNOLOGIES

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rom December 2012 to January 2013, Nimbus Ninety conducted its Market Trends Survey 2013. The survey elicited 268 responses from senior UK business practitioners across a holistic range of public, private and third sector enterprises.

Respondents to the survey were all qualified as senior management level and above, and as end-users – as opposed

to suppliers – of business technologies.

To qualify, respondents had to be responsible for the sign off of new business technology implementations within their organisation or to have a significant influence over which technologies are chosen.

As can be seen below (figs. 1-3), companies of all sizes, in terms of both turnover and employee numbers, across a wide range of industry sectors were represented.

Fig 1/ Organisations by turnover

/ More than half of organisations (53%) see disruptive technologies as ‘an opportunity’ while only 6% see them as ‘a threat’. / ‘Operational disruption’ (36%) and ‘not achieving ROI’ (21%) were selected as the two biggest risks in adopting new business technologies. / ‘Financial restrictions’ (47%), ‘lack of time’ (33%), and ‘legacy/existing tools and infrastructure’ (30%) were highlighted as the biggest barriers to new business technologies.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

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Fig 2/ Organisations by employee size

SURVEY RESULTS M A R K E T

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ACHIEVING STRATEGIC OBJECTIVES

CONVERGENCE Fig 3/ Organisations by industry sector

The key theme of the Nimbus Ninety Market Trends Report 2013 is convergence. With this in mind, we sought to identify which business technologies will be fundamental in organisations’ pursuit of their key strategic objectives for the year ahead. We also looked to examine the supporting infrastructure – in terms of finances, staffing levels, culture shifts and the like – that organisations will need in order to support their endeavours for each particular strategic objective and the technologies used to achieve it.

By popularity, the strategic objectives were: / Increase customer retention/increase average sales per customer – selected by 58% of respondents / Improve internal efficiencies – 50% / Increase market share – 43% / Create new product lines and/or intellectual property – 43% / Increase exports/expand into new territories – 25% / Increase brand awareness/re-brand – 21% / Form strategic partnerships – 21% / Improve supply chain management – 9% / Become more environmentally sustainable – 7% Essentially, the results show that multiple technologies are used collaboratively to support key line-of-business activities. The findings indicate that, in total, 3,365 different business technologies will be used to achieve 576 strategic objectives. This means an average of 5.8 separate technologies will be used to support each business goal.

We found that business intelligence (49%), mobile technologies and infrastructure (35%), big data analytics (30%), and collaboration tools (30%) will be the most commonly used tools. Cloud computing usage within strategic objectives was reported as 23% for software-as-a-service, 20% for scalable cloud, and 17% for cloud-based storage (see fig. 4).

Fig 4/ Business technologies used in each strategic objective The purpose of the survey was to establish the ways that UK organisations are looking to use disruptive information technologies that have high potential for innovation and efficiency gains to achieve their key strategic objectives in 2013. Produced with consultancy from leading figures from the Nimbus Ninety communities of technology end-user and supplier organisations, the survey and its subsequent analysis cover four key areas: the convergence of different business technologies (the main theme of this report) as well as the benefits, costs, and risks associated with them.

In keeping with the key focal points of the Nimbus Ninety communities, the research was primarily concerned with issues relating to cloud computing, big data and business intelligence (BI). The survey also includes other key market developments such as mobile, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD), and social enterprising for business.

The most common supporting assets required are operational investment (41%), new skills (40%), and culture shift (39%).

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

CONVERGING CLOUD, BI AND BIG DATA When we examine the role of cloud, business intelligence and big data within respondents’ key strategic objectives, we find interesting results. Overall, 56% of respondents say that some form of cloud computing (marrying together scalable compute power, cloud-based data storage and softwareas-a-service) will be pivotal in at least one of their strategic objectives. For business intelligence, the number increases to 74% while for big data it reduces to 45%.

Given the maturity and wide scope of business intelligence it is no surprise that it should be the most commonly deployed business technology, but it is encouraging that newer and emerging tools like cloud computing and big data are already being widely used.

Later in the survey we asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement: ‘Big data analytics is dependent on having suitable cloud computing infrastructure’. The results were broadly mixed, with 38% opting for ‘strongly agree’ or ‘somewhat agree’, 35% choosing ‘strongly disagree’ or ‘somewhat disagree’, and 27% ‘neither agree nor disagree’.

However, coming back to the tools that are to be used to achieve the key strategic objectives, 95% of the people that will be using big data for at least one business objective will also be using cloud computing somewhere within their organisations, either for that or another key objective.

Indeed, 44% of these will use big data in collaboration with cloud – in one or more of its forms – to achieve a single specific objective (see fig. 5).

Fig 5/ The relationship between cloud and big data

‘Big data analytics is dependent on having suitable ‘neither agree cloud nor disagree’ computing infrastructure’

27% 38% 35%

‘strongly agree’ or ‘somewhat agree’

‘strongly disagree’ or ‘somewhat disagree’

Of the respondents that will be using big data within at least one strategic objective:

95 44

% will also be using cloud computing to achieve that or another objective % will use cloud computing to achieve the same strategic objective

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

THE POWER OF COLLABORATION

So, while big data and cloud computing may not be deemed to be inherently dependent on one another, the evidence suggests that they are certainly being used in tandem within a large number of endeavours. Cloud computing could, of course, be being used for entirely different reasons to big data, all within the same strategic objective or separate objectives. But the fact that the two often co-exist within an organisation or department at least offers the potential efficiencies that can be found in operating them in unison.

Indeed, organisations largely understand that to get the maximum potential from any new business technology implementation, and to bring it into the business in the most efficient possible manner, technologies must be integrated as part of a unified strategy. A majority of 63% either ‘somewhat disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’ that ‘the best way to bring in new technologies is in isolation’.

Only 16% were in agreement – strongly or otherwise – that isolation is the most conducive method for new implementations. The remaining 21% were unsure.

Furthermore, collaboration tools were deemed critical to the success of insight-based strategies (63% agree versus 9% disagree), as are dynamic visualisation tools (56% agree versus 15% disagree) (see fig. 6).

Fig 6/ Collaboration, not isolation

‘The best way to bring in new technologies is in isolation’

21% 16% 63%

28% 9%

63%

‘Dynamic visualisation tools are critical to the success of insightbased strategies’

‘Collaboration tools are critical to the success of insightbased strategies’

29% 15%

56%

SURVEY RESULTS M A R K E T

The most popular responses to the question ‘What activities and support functions must be in place to optimise the use of cloud’ were: ‘additional security software/controls’ (51%), ‘virtualisation’ (45%), ‘mobile strategy’ (41%), ‘Bring Your Own Device strategy’ (24%), and an ‘infrastructure manager’ (23%).

Where big data strategies are concerned, the biggest supporting functions that businesses will need are once again dynamic and interactive visualisations (35%), followed by scalable compute power (30%), and in-memory analytics (28%). The fact that visualisations are rated as so important – more so than the analytical tools themselves – is reassuring: big data analytics is a redundant exercise if there are not adequate methods for relaying the outcomes to the business departments that can use them for strategic gains.

agree’ or 16% ‘strongly ‘somewhat agree’ disagree’ or 63% ‘strongly ‘somewhat disagree’ 21% ‘neither agree nor disagree’

agree’ or 63% ‘strongly ‘somewhat agree’ disagree’ or 9% ‘strongly ‘somewhat disagree’ 28% ‘neither agree nor disagree’

agree’ or 56% ‘strongly ‘somewhat agree’ disagree’ or 15% ‘strongly ‘somewhat disagree’ 29% ‘neither agree nor disagree’

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espondents were split almost evenly on whether their overall technology spend will increase in 2013, compared with 2012 (49% ‘Yes’, 51% ‘No’). Broken down by industry, the sector that will see the most widespread rises in technology budgets, according to the survey results, is somewhat surprising – 86% of charities say their expenditure will rise, against 14% which say it will remain static or fall. Charities are, by their nature, traditionally among the most restricted organisations when it comes to investment. However, the evidence shows that they are beginning to see the value that big data can hold in helping them to target only the people that are most likely to donate to their respective causes, and therefore can provide a quick ROI. The ever increasing maturity of cloud computing, with its low entry costs, appears to be the enabler here, with 71% of charities stating that their cloud computing spend will rise in 2013 (compared with 52% across all sectors). Furthermore, 86% also state that the ‘pay-as-you-go pricing model’ is among cloud’s principle draws (compared with 48% across all sectors).

‘Social media analytics’ will also be a factor in charities’ brand awareness and audience engagement, with this being the business technology that charities plan to implement most widely in 2013 (57% vs 20% accross all sectors) (see fig. 7).

Taking all industries into account, the 52% rise for cloud computing expenditure, against just a 5% fall, is higher than for any other technology.

‘Mobile technologies’ (47% rise against 8% fall) and ‘business intelligence’ (46% rise against 9% fall) both also registered strong intentions for increased spend. The area that will see a decline in spending by the biggest number of organisations was data storage with 17%. Given the context of the ever increasing amounts of data that businesses are capturing, the higher level of declines registered is a strong indication of cheaper storage facilities through cloud, rather than a sign that the organisations will actually store less (see fig. 8).

Organisations, the survey reveals, will generally be looking to assign similar staffing levels to each business technology in 2013 as they did in 2012. ‘Big data analytics’ and ‘BI’ (both 28%) will see the biggest rises, while ‘data storage’ will again see the biggest fall – another

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Fig 7/ Charities liberated by convergence:

Expenditure rise (vs 49% across all sectors)

ia l med Socialytics on ana ementati impl 13 s in 200% acros 2 s ) v ( ctors all se

Cloud computing rise (vs 52% across all sectors)

go’ s you a y a ‘P ng as w prici iple dra s princ8% acros (vs 4 ctors) all se

Fig 8/ How will your organisations expenditure for the following business technologies change in 2013 compared to 2012?

indication of intent to outsource this element of IT. This survey also shows that IT will see the biggest rise in budget for new technologies in 2013 (49%), with marketing in second place (36%).

Expenditure will increase Expenditure will fall Expenditure will stay the same

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

SMES SLOWER TO ADOPT THAN LARGER ORGANISATIONS

An interesting result that emerged from the survey was the relative reluctance of SMEs to adopt new technologies when compared with organisations with a larger turnover (see fig. 9). When it comes to big data analytics, 61% of respondents from an SME (classified as an organisation with an annual turnover of £0-25m) stated that they had ‘no current plans to implement’ this technology – indeed only 6% said they had actually already implemented any big data technologies.

However, 30% of respondents from organisations with an annual turnover of £2bn or greater said that they had implemented big data technologies, with only 20% saying they had ‘no current plans to implement’ them.

Other technologies provided similar results. Two thirds of SMEs (67%) said public scalable cloud compute power is not on their roadmap for the next three years.

For organisations within the higher turnover brackets on the other hand, this figure drops down to 47%.

Furthermore, when asked about their use of dynamic and interactive visualisation tools, 46% of SMEs again stated they had no plans to implement this technology. For the £2bn+ turnover organisations, this number sits at just 12%.

These findings could be indicative of two things.

Firstly, that there are greater costs or time barriers to new technologies for organisations with a smaller annual turnover. Or alternativly, it could suggest that, because of their size, SMEs do not even feel they stand to benefit from these new business technologies.

Moreover, they may be of the opinion that their business operations are not advanced enough to need emerging business technologies – for instance, because they don’t have the quantity of data, or are not performing complex enough analysis to need dynamic and interactive visualisation tools. This perhaps infers a lack of appreciation of the far reaching possibilities in disrupting their current processes.

Fig 9/ Which of the following business technologies is your organisation currently using or planning to implement?

Big data analytics

Dynamic and interactive data visualisation tools

Public scalable cloud compute power

Already implemented Will implement in 2013 Will implement between 2013 and 2015 No plans to implement

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ositively, more than half of organisations see disruptive technologies primarily as ‘an opportunity’ (53%), while a quarter see them as ‘a challenge’ (27%). Only 6% see them as ‘a threat’, although 15%’ ‘largely ignore them altogether’.

‘Mobile technologies and infrastructure’ are set to have the biggest disruptive influence on organisations in 2013 (29%).

In the context of departments, ‘Operations’ and ‘Sales’ are expected to be the areas of the business that benefit the most from new technologies, in 2013 (27% and 21% respectively) and beyond (33% each). > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

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BENEFITS Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

SURVEY RESULTS

KEY BENEFITS OF CLOUD, BIG DATA AND BYOD

Respondents see the main benefits of implementing cloud computing as ‘scalable compute power’ (59%), followed by ‘payas-you-go pricing model’ (48%) and ‘removing the commitment to infrastructure upkeep’ (47%). This indicates that companies are primarily looking to cloud for expense and operational efficiency benefits – namely alleviating the need for capital investment and the in-house responsibilities of purchasing and maintaining servers.

Meanwhile, the standout benefits of implementing a high performance, big data analytics strategy into the organisation are rated as ‘understanding and interacting with customers’ (47%), the ‘ability to cross-analyse disparate data types and sets’ (45%), the ‘ability to analyse historical data sets’ (43%), and a ‘better understanding of market conditions/competitors’ (42%) (see fig. 10).

Fig 10/ What do you see as the main benefits of implementing a high performance, big data analytics strategy into your organisation?

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ne of the most interesting progressions in the business technology market that can be observed from the survey results is that security fears appear to be waning as a barrier to implementation. When asked: ‘What does your organisation see as the biggest risk associated with failures in implementation of new business technologies?’, with respondents able to select just one answer, ‘data security’ elicited only 15% of the responses, against the top answers, ‘operational disruption’ (36%) and ‘not achieving ROI’ (21%). Indeed, it was only marginally ahead of ‘bad publicity among customers’ (14%).

Additionally, in response to the question: ‘In general, what are the biggest barriers to your organisation’s adoption of new business technologies?’ (see fig. 11), where respondents could choose up to three answers, ‘security controls’ was way down in tenth place on the list, having been selected by just 13% of respondents. Far more prevalent barriers appear to be ‘financial restrictions’ (47%), ‘lack of time’ (33%), and ‘legacy/existing tools and infrastructure’ (30%).

Fig 11/ In general, what are the biggest barriers to your organisation’s adoption of new business technologies?

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Finally here, the main benefits of a Bring Your Own Device strategy were reported as ‘employee satisfaction’ (53%) and ‘flexible location working’ (53%).

While these two would probably have been expected to score highly, it was slightly more surprising that fewer people chose ‘increased skills sets and capabilities’ (19%) and ‘increased technology portfolio’ (9%), since these are often spoken about as being attractive features of BYOD.

Still though, security concerns have not been completely eradicated, as you might expect. ‘Cloud-based data storage’ is still judged to carry the most risk beyond all other technologies (30%), closely followed by ‘Bring Your Own Device strategy and implementation’ (29%) and ‘mobile technologies and infrastructure’ (24%). Security will always be on the agenda for anyone that comes into contact with business technologies, especially those related to systems access and data, but it appears that the controls and security applications are beginning to reassure the market.

‘Operations’ (32%) and ‘IT’ (24%) stood out as facing the biggest challenges in the context of new business technology implementations, with all other departments of the business receiving a broadly equal single figure response.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

SURVEY RESULTS M A R K E T

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CONCLUSIONS O ANTHONY SAXBY,

PHIL HAMBLY,

MARK YOUNG,

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INFORMATION PLATFORM PRODUCT MARKETING MANAGER, MICROSOFT

n 2013 organisations are clearly focused on driving deeper and more profitable relationships with their customers through the delivery of enhanced services and products and significant improvements in operational efficiency.

In terms of technology spend, delivering on these goals is going to be achieved through: / Deeper investment in BI technologies to support insight and collaboration especially in conjunction with strategic business partners. Organisations are increasingly looking to business unit specialists for the delivery of analytics and away from the IT dept. / Accelerated spend on cloud computing through which customers expect to achieve significant economies as a consequence of consumption based licensing and reduction in overhead spending on infrastructure. / Storage strategy is clearly subject to the most significant change, customers are obviously looking to cloud technologies to increase storage efficiency. / BYOD is seen as an absolute winwin by organisations, enabling them to simultaneously increase employee satisfaction and agility and reduce the costs of providing device infrastructure.

Whilst companies recognise the need to drive change as mentioned above, they also perceive significant risk in delivering this change, providing significant opportunities to implementation partners who can mitigate this risk in a cost effective way.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

GROUP MARKETING DIRECTOR, INTECHNOLOGY

he transition from on-premise IT to cloud services, so evident in 2012, will undoubtedly continue to gather momentum in 2013. The misconception that cloud equals risk, or that cloud equals a threat to IT job security, will continue to fade as the inevitability of technology step-change takes hold over the next 12 months.

This year represents opportunity: opportunity for businesses to stop doing things the way they have always been done; opportunity to engineer agile businesses; and opportunity too for those IT seniors that grasp the moment. The signs are here: / Reducing importance of onpremise infrastructure: Now almost 50% of IT managers feel that removing the commitment to onpremise IT infrastructure is one of the biggest benefits of cloud computing. / Budget predictability: The payas-you-go model and budget predictability afforded by the cloud is now at 52% and will climb further in 2013. / Scalable computing power: The report shows that 61% of IT managers now view easily scalable computing power as a major benefit.

This illustrates that cloud is no longer seen as the cheaper alternative. Rather, the cloud is being recognised as an enabler of business change and strategic advantage. The consumerisation of IT that precipitated the Bring Your Own Device generation has exposed us all to the cloud, and that’s a good thing. But the cloud itself will be eclipsed by the analytics and insight available from the next big thing – big data.

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s businesses look to the year ahead, it is clear that they see technology playing a key part in the execution of their key strategic objectives. The average of 5.8 individual technologies cited for use in each objective proves that organisations are ready to embrace a broad spectrum of the new tools at their disposal. The perceived barriers and risks have been lowered, with the focus switching towards the need for increased operational investment and new skills as opposed to security concerns. As obstacles, these are far more surmountable when the reward is efficiency and innovation gains in a financially viable way.

Business intelligence tools still reign supreme at the heart of most business strategies, but it is encouraging to see that the use of cloud computing and big data analytics is spreading rapidly to add value to or reinvent established processes.

That fact that SMEs are less inclined towards the adoption of new technologies than the larger corporate bodies heralds a warning sign though.

It has been the cost of entry to new technology innovation has been a key factor in allowing the world’s most innovative start-ups of recent years to challenge and even displace their larger competitors, redefining the markets they enter. If established SMEs do not seek the advantages that technology offers they will no doubt find themselves struggling even further to compete against the larger companies that do.

Precisely as a result of the convergence we are witnessing, building a cohesive portfolio business technology has become easier for any company – large or small. The ones that embrace that opportunity will be those that thrive in 2013 and beyond.

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LEADER OPPORTUNITY FOLLOW THE TEC HN OLOGY

WITH THE IN CREASIN G OPPORTUNITIES THAT THE FAST EVOLVIN G WORLD OF TEC HN OLOGY PRESENT S, L ARGE COMPANIES SHOULD LOOK TO EMUL ATE THE WORKIN G PAR ADIGMS THAT START-UPS ADOPT.

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any of the most admired and fastgrowing companies today have leaders with strong technology backgrounds. It’s not just the founders either; the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Rackspace and Netflix retain influential techies at the helm.

Of course, a purely technology-led approach to business strategy risks commercial failure. But leaders from a technology background often have strong belief and passion, both in the core idea and how to make it happen, short and long term. Allied to strong commercial and customer expertise, technical engineering know-how is critical against an astonishing background of technical change, including Web 2.0; platform and agile concepts; cloud; big data; the smartphone and tablet revolution; 4G; and social media.

The high growth businesses listed earlier began with a heavily techy-dominated team. That’s a typical startup pattern; their love for and knowledge of technology makes them well-placed to gain maximum benefit from technological trends. / They use agile development, constantly analysing the impact of new features, rather than working to marketing spec and delivering products 12 months later. / They adopt a platform mindset rather than a ‘build it all yourself’ approach, due to cost pressures and the desire for an exit route which naturally positions them as part of an ecosystem, rather than the allencompassing destination. / They use cloud infrastructure and software on an as-needed monthly or daily rate to avoid upfront purchases or time-consuming self build. This scalability then primes them for big data processing.

Colin Wooldridge, Telefonica UK Many mature businesses, meanwhile, tend to have more rounded leadership teams and a range of physical and psychological legacies.

These include retail estates; times when technology led the business down expensive cul-de-sacs; marketing mindsets based on “ask what they want” paradigms.

Whether to embrace the latest tech trends, and how quickly, is a major debate. In the meantime, the evangelists and visionaries charge in.

A good example was related in a blog by a Google engineer about Amazon (where he’d worked previously). Around 2002, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos declared every team had to expose its data and function through service interfaces (i.e. API/SOA-based). As a computer scientist he believed it to be right. The

same kind of conviction told him Amazon Web Services was a good business idea.

In a non-technically led company, oodles of cost justification would have been required and it probably wouldn’t have survived the competition from myriad non-technical ‘mustdo’s’. But Bezos believed in it, and as CEO it was his view that mattered. Now Amazon has fantastic APIs that allow it to act like a platform (the Marketplace), working in an agile manner, with a great cloud business too.

Of course, I have also seen large organisations with less technically-minded leaders successfully embrace tech change, e.g. agile, cloud. Often, it’s where the technology organisation has put huge effort into engaging the entire business in the idea – after all, very few technologies can be successfully delivered without full support from every area. But my assertion is that a deeper technology background at senior level would drive it through faster.

I do not claim that technology backgrounds are somehow better than marketing, or finance, or any other discipline. A blend of business skills is essential. But we live in an

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e live in an era of massive technology change – disrupting current business models, hugely reducing development timescales, and improving return on investment

era of massive technology change – disrupting current business models, hugely reducing development timescales, and improving return on investment. My contention is that leaders with a genuine technology background will more rapidly seize, adopt and champion the raft of opportunities that are emerging.

And that is evidenced by the fact that many of today’s most admired, fast-growing businesses have exactly that background.

Colin Wooldridge heads up the IT Strategy team in Telefonica UK. He’s recently completed a six month sabbatical, suporting a number of UK start-ups. The views expressed in this article are his personal views, rather than those of Telefonica.

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LONDON E U R O P E DIGITAL CAPITAL OF

DAVID SL ATER OF LONDON & PARTNERS EXPL AINS WHY LONDON DESERVES IT S TITLE AS THE DIGITAL CAPITAL OF EUROPE.

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he technology and digital media industries continue to fascinate me. I arrived on the West Coast of the USA in 2002 and over the next seven years watched the industry re-invent itself and its business models.

I get that same feeling of dynamic growth driven by creativity from the thousands of technology companies spread throughout London; from Hammersmith and Chiswick in the west, through Victoria and Soho in the centre, to Shoreditch and Greenwich and spreading east. And with the recent opening of Telefonica’s Wayra academy in Euston and Google’s announcement of a £1bn UK headquarters in King’s Cross, London’s position as the Digital Capital of Europe is being further cemented.

I don’t care much for comparisons with Silicon Valley. Silicon Roundabout, the unofficial name given to London’s ‘Tech City’ area, makes me smile because those that coined the phrase saw the irony. The Valley is unique; no-one has duplicated the model and I am not sure you can when you consider that the California business environment is consistently voted by CEOs as the least

friendly of the US states.

We very much admire Silicon Valley, as we admire what is happening in technology in New York, Singapore, Shanghai, Berlin and Dublin. But London’s way is different. We have our own unique set of factors which are driven by the tech community itself and its desire to compete. Companies are supported by professional service firms and investors, are energised by a diverse range of other industry clusters providing convergence possibilities, and are incubated by good old market forces. When blended together, this makes one of the most competitive business environments in Europe and, yes I dare say it, the world.

Any business based here in the UK therefore has a fantastic opportunity to benefit from the groundbreaking developments that this advanced technical landscape offers, right outside their front doors, either through adopting state-of-theart technologies themselves or partnering with other companies that create and utilise them. It’s therefore an opportunity for competitive advantage.

So what are some of the unique factors in the creation of London’s expansive technology blend?

David Slater is director for international trade and investment at London & Partners – the mayor’s official promotional organisation for business.

He says London is a hotbed for innovative technology companies – and that gives every other UK business an opportunity to take advantage.

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London enjoys the largest concentration of European corporate headquarters and remains the centre of the financial services industry – a key user of IT. On our doorstep, given our Olympics’ tested transport links, is the £600bn European market. Any potential customer’s key decision maker is accessible within hours.

A technology sector worth £140bn, the largest technology market in Europe, has grown in the UK to service this mass of businesses here. London is the beating heart, hosting roughly 40 per cent of the UK’s IT.

TALENT AND CREATIVITY

London’s skill base is world-class and plentiful, and regarded as the best in Europe. We have 46 Universities with more in the world’s top 200 than any other city, which not only provides a stream of talent but also a large base for R&D activity. In addition we also have a unique ability to attract talent from all over the world: some 80 per cent of foreign born executives think London is better for their careers than any other European city.

Companies tell me that the key to success is the creative spark that comes from the workforce, not the power of the technology platform.

CONCLUSION

London is listening carefully to the technology community and remains committed to ensuring the best possible business environment to continue its success, which we know will be of benefit to the UK’s entire business landscape and wider economy too. The tools to get ahead are here – why not use them?

In addition to financial services, London boasts strengths across many industry sectors which open up enormous possibilities for collaboration – the fashion, film, music, healthcare and life sciences, energy and environment sectors are all key users of and innovators of technology.

The systems themselves and the thought leadership that goes with them can be repurposed from one industry to the next. The UK is also leading the charge on big data.

QUALITYOFLIFE

A point often overlooked. London has a unique offering as a place to live, work, visit and conduct business. It’s a multicultural and cosmopolitan city with an unrivalled choice of world-class theatres, museums, restaurants, sporting and cultural events, and more than 40 international schools. It should be no surprise to anyone that we are the only city to host the Olympic Games on three occasions.

But don’t take it from me. The words of hugely successful US start-up Airbnb on why they invested in London serves the purpose perfectly: “We see ourselves as pioneers of the ‘sharing economy’ – a movement rooted in the belief that access is greater than ownership – so being here offers enormous benefits.

Tech City is the centre of innovation in the UK and with such close proximity to other game-changing companies, we think this is the best place to be to change the world.”

However there is no sense of completion in London. We prefer to innovate and enhance not duplicate and stand still. We enjoy strong political leadership from the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, and from the Prime Minister who both see the technology industries as important drivers of economic growth and job creation and who are committed to enhancing that blend, without interfering and picking winners.

CRITICALMASS

Success breeds success. There are some 24,000 technology companies in the greater London area, twice as many as in any other European city. Long established companies with big bases here – the likes of Microsoft, Infosys and Cisco – continue to grow and we now also have the emergence of concentrations of small, fast-growing digital technology companies utilising every accelerator and incubator space available, as well as every café and bar with WiFi. The ‘Tech City’ area around Shoreditch boasts over 3,200 firms and 48,000 employees. The Google Campus in Tech City, Google’s co-working space, illustrates the natural self regenerating quality of a thriving tech market too.

If you would like to know more about London’s growing tech industry, contact business@londonandpartners.com or visit www.londonandpartners.com/business @L_PBusiness

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DA V I D ROWA N

INTERVIEW DAV I D ROWA N E D I T O R ,

DAVID ROWAN IS THE AWARD WINNING EDITOR OF WIRED UK MAGAZINE. HE TALKS TO MARK YOUNG ABOUT THE WAY THAT BUSINESSES MUST EMBR ACE DISRUPTION IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY, 3D PRINTING, BIG DATA, COMPUTER ALGORITHMS THAT WRITE BOOKS AND MORE.

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n 2009, David Rowan launched Wired UK. It was the third country launch of the Wired magazine brand, following Wired Italia earlier that year and the original US version some two decades before. Initially there were doubts as to whether launching the UK version was a savvy business move or not – some commentators questioned whether a technology, science and innovation themed-title could emulate its American cousin without having the same start-up culture and surrounding landscape that the latter possessed.

In the four years since, the decision has been more than vindicated. The entrepreneurial culture in the UK and throughout Europe has transformed in recent years. The ‘Tech City’ start-up hub in east London is now home to more than 3,000 companies – global leaders in their specific fields among them – and there is an ever expanding network of venture capital firms, innovation hubs, technical infrastructure and government support alongside it.

As with the US title, Rowan describes Wired UK’s chief raison d’être as finding “the people that are reinventing the rules – the disrupters – whether they are designers, technologists,

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scientists, artists; we look for the people who are using tools to solve big problems”.

But the brand has also had to innovate itself. As a publisher, Wired, and its parent company Condé Nast, operate within an industry that has witnessed major

nitially, incumbents tend to dismiss challengers, and if they feel threatened they tend to play down the threat, it is human nature... But you can’t suppress innovation upheaval at the hands of the digital revolution. Wired UK has responded by expanding its portfolio of products and services to include pop-up technology retail stores, a consultancy arm, conferences

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and digital editions on multiple platforms and devices, alongside its print edition magazine.

Wired was, in fact, the first magazine to launch an iPad edition and the UK arm won Technology & Gadget Magazine of the Year at last year’s Digital Magazine Awards. Rowan also won Editor of the Year across all titles.

The company also recently led a consortium of automotive companies on a trip to China to see the innovations that are emerging there first-hand as part of its consultancy work.

VALUE DRIVEN DISRUPTION

As we’ve seen in recent weeks, though, not all companies have responded to the threats that face their industries in the digital era quite so well. HMV and Blockbuster both entered into administration in January, having failed to find a way to successfully deliver digital products in their traditional retail environments.

“Those businesses should have pivoted and changed their model long ago,” says Rowan. “You could have seen this coming five years back. But people tend to think relatively short term.”

He points to Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, as an example to follow in this regard. Polman recently outlined to shareholders that the business will be making longer term decisions about its values as a company, instead of running ‘hand to mouth’, quarter to quarter.

“Values driven businesses have greater chance of succeeding in the longer term,” says Rowan. “If you have values – if you know what your purpose is – then you can adapt to fast changing circumstances.

Having a vision and executing on it clarifies your credibility to your customers and shareholders and also motivates your staff – people want a sense of purpose.”

Short termism isn’t the only psychological issue businesses face in a disruptive landscape either. “Initially, incumbents tend to dismiss challengers, and if they feel threatened they tend to play down the threat, it is human nature,” Rowan adds.

“Kodak invented the digital camera but it tried to suppress it because it made tens of billions each year selling film. But you can’t suppress innovation; others picked up the technology while Kodak failed to adapt.”

Thus, he says the ethos that start-ups run their businesses by should now be adopted by all companies, large and small.

“That involves iterating all of the time, listening and responding to your market and not thinking you know best, being constantly aware that what you are producing now is out-dated, and thinking about how you add value to the Internet. You have to constantly disrupt yourself.”

Google is a prime example of this, as an advertising company that is currently

inventing, among other things, a selfdriving car and glasses which help users navigate the physical world with visual aids.

Rowan also points to Elon Musk, the South African entrepreneur behind SpaceX (space exploration technology and programmes), Tesla (electric cars), SolarCity (the largest provider of solar power technology in the US) and also had a pretty large hand in the development of PayPal. “There are people like these that are not settling for what they do, they are rethinking what their businesses are. These are the people that inspire us.”

THE FUTURE OF TECHNOLOGY So which of the current emerging technologies does Rowan think will reinvent the world?

One certainly is 3D printing. This is an area that will change “not just the process but our expectations” of manufacturing, he says. “We will expect to be able to customise furniture, desk lamps, toys or pretty much anything else to our own specifications using these low cost technologies. It will change the rules of

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intellectual property because when you can scan an item and then print it, it’s hard for the designer to protect it.”

When the cost of the technology inevitably reduces as it matures, 3D printing will enable the cost effective production of an infinite range of one-off, single items, on a local basis. It therefore threatens the entire manufacturing supply chain, from materials suppliers to assembly plants, to logistics, retail, after-service and beyond.

Under this principle of localised small volume production, Rowan advocates a search on Amazon for a company called Icon International Group. He promises some ‘extraordinary’ book titles as a reward, and the exercise does not disappoint. Search results include ‘The World Market for Caviar and Fish Egg Substitutes: A 2013 Global Trade Perspective’ and ‘The 2009-2014 Outlook for Silver Oxide Button and Coin Primary Battery Cells in Japan’, among hundreds more.

These books certainly sound niche. That, coupled with costs of between £500 and a £1,000 per copy, means it isn’t likely many people will be buying them. But for Icon, that’s the point;

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or any 16 year old today, there is a good chance that the job they will be doing when they reach working age has not been invented yet

instead of employing humans to write, it has created algorithms that scan terabytes of data over the Internet and pulls research together to create an entire book autonomously. When one order is made via Amazon, that single copy is produced. As Rowan states, “It’s the very long tail of the long tail theory.”

According to Rowan, the height of innovation over the next couple of years will occur from a combination of both mobile and these robotic and algorithm-based technologies that enable autonomous completion of jobs currently done by humans. One example of this already established is drones that deliver medical supplies to remote places. The drones are able to carry packages for 10 kilometres or so before passing them on to the next ‘team member’, with all of the journeys mapped and completed by GPS guide.

All of this relies, to differing extents, on big data. And though he rightly labels the term a buzzword, Rowan says it’s now the task of every business to work out how they can use high performance analytics to give themselves an edge. Running through examples of how that can and has occurred in a range of different industries – covering transport, politics, retail, healthcare and beyond – it is clear he agrees that the breadth of opportunity is huge. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

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while big data matures, he feels there’s “a chance people will be disappointed” by failed projects, possibly because they will purchase inappropriate technologies that have ridden the wave of the big data buzz. He also highlights the skills gap that forms the focal point of much of the current discussion around big data. While this is being rectified by the university courses that are now hastily being created, Rowan warns there will be a time delay before enough graduates are produced to meet demand. More likely, we’ll have to wait until the current generation of school aged students reach the workplace, and even then the future development is uncertain. “For any 16 year old today, there is a good chance that the job they will be doing when they reach working age has not been invented yet,” he contends. “Our own tablet designers are evidence of that – their skills did not exist two years ago.”

But overall there is no question of big data falling away like some of the other technology buzzwords of recent years. “Data is power,” Rowan says. “And that’s not going to go away.”

Elon Musk, serial entrepreneur, a model example of self-disruption Image courtesy of OnInnovation

Phili p claim M. Parker s 200,00 that his of Icon Group prog 0 bo rams metho oks Intern fr have d th ationa of Ic at he om the w on G algori ritten ov l roup patented prog rams . Ph thm wri er Intern ilip ha the al at M. Pa ting gorith ve written ional cl rk aims Phili mw er p riting over 200, that 000 his metho claim M. Parker s d that books from 200,00 that his of Icon Group he patent prog 0 bo rams ed. metho oks Intern fr have d th ationa of Ic at he om the w on G algori ritten ov l roup patented prog rams . Ph thm wri er Intern ilip ha the al at M. Pa ting gorith ve written ional cl rker aims Phili mw p riting over 200, that 000 his metho claim M. Parker s d that books from 200,00 that his of Icon he Group pate prog 0 bo rams metho oks Intern nted. fr have d th ationa of Ic at he om the w l ri tt on G en ov algori roup patented prog rams . Ph thm wri er Intern ilip ha the al at M. Pa ting gorith ve written ional cl rker aims m wri over 20 th ting metho 0,000 bo at his oks fr d that om he pa tented .

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ADOPTING A DESIGN ETHOS

3D TV, on the other hand, is one technology he feels will not stand the test of time, as won’t ‘gimmicks’ like augmented reality – “at least not as it is being demonstrated now – companies breathlessly talking about an immersive experience where it’s clearly not.”

The primary reason he believes they will fail is that they go against the grain of the public’s demand – technologies that simplify people’s lives.

He says: “Technology in general is becoming less complicated and more accessible. The

The number of books Philip M. Parker of Icon Group International claims his programs have written from the algorithm writing method that he patented.

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trend in software design is for simplicity and lack of specialism in order to operate it. If you are producing graphing or database software you should also make sure your nine year old kid can use it. It’s now so easy to create user interfaces

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this context; if your company does not take that opportunity, you should expect to lose market share to those that do. Rowan offers the example of a ski resort or hotel: by offering a real-time vision of the condition of the slopes, along with virtual tours of the chalets, the viewer is much more likely to become engaged with the product. “But,” he stresses, “it has to be quick, it has to be quality and it has to be easy.”

echnology in general is becoming less complicated and more accessible.

The trend in software design is for simplicity and lack of specialism in order to operate it

that are attractive and intuitive – any company that produces something too complicated is going to be at a disadvantage. Especially in the context of open source, a competitor’s product can go global extremely quickly.”

Similarly, the rapid uptake of tablets and smart devices means all companies have an opportunity to provide the aesthetic excellence and immersive experience that consumers have begun to demand.

But, as with the simplicity aspect of software, ‘opportunity’ should also translate to ‘necessity’ in

And with this in mind, Rowan goes on to issue his final piece of advice: that every business must adopt a design ethos, whether or not they make a physical product.

“It’s all about using design and technology to create ever enhanced user experiences,” he says. “The hardware is commoditised now, and you add value by endowing something with a greater sense of purpose. Automotive companies like Jaguar or Audi, as an example, make their cars about art rather than driving.

With the best smart devices, it’s the ease of use, one click; with Amazon it’s the ability to find what you want and touch to buy it.

“Essentially every business today must concentrate on getting rid of the clutter, simplifying people’s lives and bringing out the emotion in what they do. Those that do that successfully should find themselves in a relatively strong position.”

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NICK MAWDITT PROVIDES INSIGHT INTO HOW MARKETING AND TECHNOLOGY ARE CONVERGING IN THE OUTDOOR ADVERTISING INDUSTRY AND OFFERS HIS THOUGHTS ON HOW COMPANIES CAN UTILISE NEW TECHNOLOGY INNOVATIONS WITH THEIR TRADITIONAL MARKET KNOWLEDGE TO WARD OFF NEW CHALLENGERS.

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t the turn of 2013, Sir Martin Sorrell – chief executive of the global advertising company WPP and one of the most respected figures in British business – backed a sentiment which has been growing in business circles over the past few months. “Increasingly,” he said, “clients want better coordination between their IT departments and their marketing departments, between their chief information officers and their chief marketing officers.”

The statement came as an accompaniment to the news that the group – which already boasts some of the leading brands in advertising and PR, including the likes of Grey, Burson-Marsteller, Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, Hill and Knowlton – had purchased a 20 per cent stake in Argentine company Globant. WPP’s interest was piqued by the Latin American firm’s unique business model, in that it delivers both the technical infrastructure and traditional creative design agency services for digital marketing campaigns.

It is therefore a model of this new converged marketing and IT working paradigm that the WPP CEO and others have described.

It’s a philosophy that has already radiated throughout the capillaries of Sir Martin’s sprawling corporation too, at least if Kinetic Worldwide is to be taken as a representation. > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

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> > > > > REDEFININGACCOUNTABILITY Kinetic is the ‘world’s largest planner and buyer of out of home media’, with a 40 per cent share of the UK market and similar levels in other territories around the globe. With a client base that covers small, single site, locally focused businesses, all the way to the world’s largest multi-national corporate operations, “our job is to make the most effective decisions on how they spend their money on outdoor advertisements,” says Nick Mawditt, the company’s global director of insight and marketing.

Until recently the tools of Kinetic’s trade were primarily static: billboards, bus stop posters, spots on the London Underground network and such like. But, like the vast majority of companies across the vast majority of industry sectors, its fastest growing element is digital. That means video billboards, two-way communication devices like RFID and NFC, interactive installations like computer games, and a whole host of location-based initiatives – all with built-in technology for constantly capturing data.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Tests in the airport retail environment showed digital screens elicit 20% higher responses that static messages

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e have maturity in our understanding of how advertising works and the key now is to use new technologies to add value to that

Essentially this provides the company with a new level of accountability which it has never had before. Kinetic can demonstrate the value of its propositions and provide feedback on the campaigns that it runs. As Mawditt points out, “advertisers want to rigorously justify every penny they spend. It’s our job to provide the data to do that. We spend their money because we can justify it, and this area allows us to make even smarter decisions.

“In the past, accountability meant the guy who put the billboard up taking a picture of it to prove it was there. Now it is ‘who responded to that advert? Where do they go?

Where did we reach them? When are they most alert? When are they happiest?”

Of course, the rope that is to be used to lasso greater treasures can easily become the instrument by which one hang’s oneself.

Having the data to prove the performance means that there is little scope for error and Mawditt says that the advertising industry now has no choice other than to make use of all of the tools at its disposal. If they don’t, they could quickly find there’s new competition out there that is using them.

“We have maturity in our understanding of how advertising works and the key now is to use new technologies to add value to that.

It’s an opportunity that any business has to take, but all businesses should be looking at how they will redefine their business models

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in the context of the new technologies and capabilities that are out there because if not one of the big technology disrupters will come along and do it for them. If you look at Amazon they are threatening the retail, FMCG, media and computing industries. Google and Apple are expanding into a similar number of sectors as they constantly look for new ways to monetise what they do.

“We work with the likes of Vodafone and Amazon and these types of companies have different expectations to what they had five years ago. The development has even increased rapidly from this time last year. If you don’t meet those expectations it’s easy to see how your customers could end up becoming competitors.”

This divergence that the big technology companies have been making so successfully might seem an ominous sign for anyone in an industry that could potentially be next on the hit-list, but Mawditt says there is definitely still scope for the incumbents within a particular industry to better recognise the gaps in their market and to innovate their industries to their own advantage. But he is in no doubt that technology will have to be one of the principal cornerstones of that change. “Essentially it’s about how we adapt and change and use the expertise that we do have in house – and we’ve been playing with data for a long time – to adapt in the current landscape.”

Mawditt and his team are already travelling down that particular road.

The outdoor advertising industry has long known that the most effective ways to reach people isn’t actually where they spend the most time – at work or at home – it’s while they are travelling between the two. It has thus invested heavily over the last few years in building an understanding of which routes different demographics of people take to get to different places, the modes of transport they take and how they react to different forms of advertising. Now, the use of mobiles with GPS and data capture from the adverts themselves – through features such as cameras which track eye movement – enables much more granular insight.

“We can now know whether you are in a shopping mall, an airport, a high street, or if you’re on a particular mode of transport, and we can begin to drill down into clusters of behavioural dynamics,” says Mawditt. “It’s about understanding how people react in certain places and what we can deliver them to make them more active in the retail environment.

Kinetic helped Lloyds Banking Group with a campaign which included a two-way interactive driving game poster

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REDEFINING ROLES While we are travelling we are making decisions about what we will eat later, what we will watch on TV, whether we will go out or stay in. We still need to understand what decision you will make in certain environments and what mechanisms you want to use to make those decisions – direct advertising, social media, or location-based media. Also, which content do you push out to people?

Do you want to enhance your experience of a brand through a video? An offer?

A voucher? It comes down to whether you are loyal to a particular brand or whether you respond to offers.

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t’s about understanding how people react in certain places and what we can deliver them to make them more active in the retail environment

“It’s a rapidly changing environment so it has been important for us to be able to build in the functionality to react to this insight when we learn about it. We now have tools to buy 3,000 poster sites at the push of a button. That has liberated our thinking considerably and has made a big difference to clients’ ROI.”

To take hold of these opportunities, it is clear that an underlying technical backbone is required.

The aforementioned convergence between the marketing and IT factions is certainly evidenced

by Kinetic’s 30-strong global team in this area.

Whereas previously the team was made up solely of researchers and marketers, it now features graphic designers, visualisation experts, data experts of multiple types, qualitative insight experts, communications experts, social media experts and more. In short, the team is diversifying and becoming much more specialist.

“And they’re all tech savvy,” says Mawditt. “Our team’s challenge is to take all of the data we have and create a single version of the truth. It has to be understandable but it has to utilise the richness of the data that we have built up. Clearly the data analysis employees have to have a strong technical grounding but then so do the insight team that works alongside them in asking the right questions and articulating them to produce a story, and then relaying those interesting insights.”

Dynamic visualisations are therefore key for telling these stories to customers, who have “much shorter attention spans now”, but also, and perhaps Di more fundamentally, within Kinetic itself.

(D gita “It would all be a useless exercise if the rest of the business didn’t accept it,” says in OO l O Mawditt. “That can be a big challenge es the H) a ut o when people are in their comfort ye tim UK dv f Ho zones – you still meet client facing to ar – ate rea erti me people, planners and even buyers d s ta l O 16. £1 che ing who are more like traditional traders OH 5% 53m d a on the phone negotiating prices.

Unless they adapt to embrace insight m of t la n ar he st it’s a pointless exercise. ke “Therefore, the way we as the insight t. team communicate to them is critical. It’s not only our responsibility – there has to be willingness throughout the company – but we can help with the work that we do as internal stakeholders.

Essentially, insight must not be isolated, and while many companies talk about ‘putting insight at the heart of the business’ you’ll find many large companies that don’t actually do anything like that.

Some of the bigger client companies we deal with have departments that don’t always communicate effectivly.”

The advertising industry might be ahead of some others in terms of its maturity and current capabilities but Mawditt says any company that wants to make insight a key part of their operational paradigm will have to heed this warning from the outset.

As for the question of the convergence between marketing and IT, in Kinetic’s case its clear: marketing fundamentally is the business so it has to be inherently interlinked with technology.

Wherever marketing forms a focal part of any other business strategy, you’re likely to see a similar trend.

(DOOH)

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

SOME WORDS HAVE BECOME DANGEROUSLY GENERIC

BUSINESS GRADE CLOUD SERVICES

CALL: 0800 983 2522 EMAIL: CONtACt@INtECHNOLOGY.COM WEB: WWW.INtECHNOLOGY.COM

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OFSTED’S CORPORATE DATA REPOSITORY OFSTED NEEDED A USER FRIENDLY INFORMATION SYSTEM THAT WOULD ALLOW IT TO ANALYSE THE RESULT S OF IT S INSPECTIONS AND SHARE THIS ANALYSIS WITH LOCAL AUTHORITIES AND OTHER STAKEHOLDERS. THIS REQUIRED CONSOLIDATION OF DATA FROM DISPAR ATE SYSTEMS. ITELLIGEN CE CREATED A MICROSOFTBASED BI SYSTEM THAT MET IMMEDIATE REQUIREMENT S AND MADE PROVISIONS FOR THE FUTURE.

or Ofsted – the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills – transparency is a vital part of their mission: it has committed itself to making its findings available to ‘all who share our vision, from service providers to policy-makers’.

The senior management team realised that its existing information systems would not be able to cope with this level of transparency.

Every week, Ofsted’s inspectors visit hundreds of providers, generating data that are held in separate data systems in a range of formats. Ofsted needs to pull this information together to report on its findings to Parliament and the public, both on a regular and ad-hoc basis. Once published, the results of this analysis are shared with local authorities to enable them to track their progress and consider how services can be improved in future.

A central team at Ofsted spent a lot of time producing reports and providing insights into data – the information had to be compiled manually because the source data systems were incompatible and data definitions inconsistent.

CORPORATE DATA REPOSITORY

itelligence worked with Ofsted to develop a Microsoft-based business intelligence system that would provide report publication and performance management capabilities.

The project centred on a SQL Server data warehouse – known as the Corporate Data Repository – that would allow Ofsted to comply with its statutory reporting obligations, while laying the groundwork for the presentation of inspection judgements and information about providers. The

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n less than a year, we are already reaping the benefits of this investment...

We have a joined-up view of the organisation for the first time

Rob P ik e, Ofste d

Corporate Data Repository draws data together from disparate data sources, based on a revised, standardised set of data definitions and hierarchies. itelligence worked in close collaboration with key staff at Ofsted, interviewing 35 people from across the organisation to clarify the requirements, create data definitions and ensure requirements were met. The system is accessed through a clear, simple, webbased information portal using Microsoft SharePoint.

Rob Pike, chief statistician at Ofsted, comments: “In less than a year, we are already reaping the benefits of this investment. Local authorities can examine inspection results and evaluate their own performance in detail. Internally, we can provide more information quickly and with less resource. More importantly, we have a joined-up view of the organisation for the first time.”

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HOGAN LOVELLS GAINING INSIGHT FROM ENTERPRISE-WIDE FINANCIAL REPORTING GLOBAL L AW FIRM HOGAN LOVELL S REQUIRED THE INTEGR ATION OF TWO DISPAR ATE IT SYSTEMS AND A NEW WORLDWIDE FINAN CIAL REPORTIN G SYSTEM FOLLOWIN G IT S MERGER. IT TURNED TO IMGROUP.

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ormed on 1st May 2010, Hogan Lovells is a global top 10 law firm by revenue and employs some 2,300 lawyers worldwide.

The merger of UK-based Lovells with Hogan & Hartson from the United States virtually doubled the size of the firm. One of the major requirements for the newly merged organisation was the provision of global financial reporting across the consolidated firm.

Following an analysis exercise, Gary Abbott, Hogan Lovells’ senior manager of global information management, explains that the firm took a strategic decision to standardise on Elite BI as the ‘single version of the truth’ for financial data across the enterprise.

“The merger brought many challenges in terms of integrating IT systems,” states Gary Abbott. “We recognised that we would substantially benefit from partnering with IMGROUP to oversee the technical design, ensure that development and implementation adhered to ‘best practice’ and provide guidance and assistance in the development of our global reporting solution.”

By working closely together, Hogan Lovells and IMGROUP’s consultancy team identified a number of mission-critical factors that were crucial to the success of the project: / Fast, ad-hoc analysis of global financial data across the new firm. / A reduction in the costs involved in the reporting cycle. / Easy to manage month-end processing.

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

/ Daily availability of new data, (as opposed to the existing monthly reports), allowing for more timely utilisation of information within the business.

“One of the benefits of partnering with IMGROUP is that we have expertise on tap,” explains Gary Abbott. “IMGROUP was invaluable in helping us develop a robust platform, based on our specialist

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MGROUP has provided valued, independent sanity-checks on our ideas and has helped us take these ideas into reality

Gary Abbott, Hogan Lovells

requirements that would deliver the capabilities that we need well into the future.”

Previously, much of Hogan Lovell’s financial analysis and reporting was undertaken via spreadsheets – a laborious procedure that was prone to error. As the new solution delivers daily feeds, the entire analysis and reporting processes is faster, more efficient and provides end-users and managers with the up-to-the-minute financial information that they need.

“IMGROUP has been an invaluable partner,” concludes Gary. “They have been extremely patient and have worked with us through the merger to ensure that our solution is best-of-breed. Already, we are saving hours of manual labour across our finance teams and in the long term we will extend the capabilities of the solution into other areas, including document management. IMGROUP has provided valued, independent sanity-checks on our ideas and has helped us take these ideas into reality.”

Delivering Business Value Sopra Group is a leader in the European consulting and IT services market with over 14,000 staff in 9 Countries. The UK business of Sopra Group is a total solution provider, from board level consultancy through to the management and implementation of major systems integration and application outsourcing projects.

Spotlight On Business Intelligence (BI) Our dedicated BI Consulting Practice offers full end to end BI Solutions as well as specialist services including BI Maturity Scan, Strategy and Architecture, Data Management, Data Analytics, Data Governance, BI Testing and Cloud BI. Our understanding of Business Intelligence Technology and our specialist knowledge across a range of industries allow us to quickly get to the heart of the challenges you face.

Visit www.sopragroup.co.uk/bi to read more about our experience in this area and see how we have delivered tangible business value to clients such as easyJet and the Motor Insurers Bureau.

Belfast | Birmingham | Bristol | Chester | Dunstable | Edinburgh | Glasgow | Horsham Leeds | London | Manchester | Oxford | Sheffield | Stevenage | Sunderland

www.sopragroup.co.uk

AND SUPPORTING GROWTH

INTEC HN OLOGY WORKS WITH HOWDENS JOINERY TO HELP THEM CUT THEIR IT AND TELECOMS COST, WHIL ST AT THE SAME TIME SUPPORTIN G THEM AS THEY GROW THEIR BUSINESS. THIS IN CLUDES PROVIDIN G CLOUD-BASED TELEPHONY, NETWORK AND HOSTIN G SERVICES TO A GROWIN G NUMBER OF DEPOT S.

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owdens Joinery is a leading supplier of kitchens and joinery to trade customers across the UK. It has over 520 depots nationwide and opens 30 depots a year. Working to tight deadlines, it annually supplies 234,000 building trade professionals with around 400,000 complete kitchens. In looking for an IT partner to support its 6,500 employees and its stringent data and voice management requirements, it chose InTechnology.

THE CHALLENGE

Howdens’ main customers are small local builders installing or renovating kitchens to tight timeframes. As soon as the company’s depots open at 7.30am, there are large numbers of customers wanting immediate access to the kitchen and joinery products they need that day.

Clive Cockburn, head of IS infrastructure at Howdens, says: “Despite our size, we see ourselves very much as a local business,

support is a key feature of our service and success. It’s not acceptable for our systems to go down at any point in the busy day.”

When Howdens decided to outsource its network management, disaster recovery backup solution and voice systems to achieve cost and efficiency savings, one of the key requirements was that the chosen supplier would be able to support its exacting demand for a highly resilient, agile and efficient service.

It wanted to ensure: / Core communications and IT systems would be available to all corporate sites, branch offices and trade depots 24 hours a day. / A cast-iron disaster recovery strategy would take over immediately if the main system failed, ensuring continuous access to hosted data. / Voice communications could be rolled out across the company, removing the time and cost of maintaining and managing some 500 in-house PBX telephone systems.

here are big benefits for us in terms of security and resilience in having data and voice services managed HOW INTECHNOLOGY HELPED Howdens chose InTechnology to provide

by InTechnology. We know that all our backups are held the fast, resilient and cost-effective service Clive Cockburn was looking in an InTechnology data centre and this gives us an for. It installed a copy of its production important safety net environment in the data centre at

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

Clive Cockburn, Howdens Joinery

supporting busy customers with local accounts, CAD planning services, quality products – and highly available systems.

The immediate availability of supplies and

InTechnology’s headquarters and has added more racks and servers as needed.

At the same time, InTechnology ensured a smooth transition from the traditional in-house PBX telephone system to its VoIP

CASE STUDY H O W D E N S

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TECHNICAL INFORMATION / Cloud-based telephony for all branch offices and corporate sites, including head office. / Managed Network Services based on InTechnology’s private fibre LANnet and BT 21CN Infrastructure. / Data Centre Hosting in a private suite at InTechnology’s Harrogate data centre.

Almost the amount Howdens has saved on their IT and Telecomms costs since moving from BT to a cloud-based solution. service, Unity IP Telephony. Since the initial rollout Howdens has continued to expand the Unity deployment and has brought every office and depot in the company into the same voice network.

The data and voice services are underpinned by InTechnology’s Managed Network Services. As new offices come onboard, they are absorbed quickly and easily into the fold, enabling Howdens to meet critical time criteria for bringing new depots online.

InTechnology’s solutions have brought: / A single resilient private network linking all of Howdens’ sites. / Storage of Howdens’ corporate and commercial data in a secure private suite hosted at an InTechnology’s data centre, complementing Howdens’ own data centre and providing powerful disaster recovery and live system capabilities. / Backup, monitoring and management of Howden’s data, providing an extra disaster recovery layer. / Managed IP telephony services across the entire company.

BUSINESS BENEFITS

InTechnology’s solutions have brought integrated network, data and voice communication and disaster recovery strategies to Howdens.

InTechnology’s next generation data centre The InTechnology data centre has brought added security along with both capital and operational a single provider, Howdens expects to cost savings, and the underpinning network benefit from significant cost savings. provides a reliable and resilient core for Budget efficiency: The “pay-as-you-go the company’s voice and data. In addition, model” of InTechnology’s voice and data with the day-to-day management tasks services means Howdens is not paying now outsourced, the IT department can for unused space and, as it expands the concentrate on front-end activities. service, can predict future costs accurately.

Business continuity: The fail-safe Scalability: Extra capacity for all disaster recovery strategy created by network, data and voice services is easily the combination of data backed up available for the predicted expansion of to the InTechnology private suite and InTechnology’s own backup services means depots and for new service offerings to the end customer. that Howdens’ systems are highly available Expert support: The InTechnology even in the case of a major company data centre is supported and monitored incident or breakdown. by a specialist operations team 24/7, and Cost savings: By removing the need to Howdens has access to a dedicated maintain and manage its 500 or so PBXs account team at any time. and by having an integrated service from

Nimbus Ninety MARKET TRENDS REPORT 2013

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