Bitcoin, Ethereum and other proof-of-work cryptocurrencies might have enjoyed a bull run since the end of last year, but if they are not good for the planet, eco-conscious millennial and gen-z investors could be turned off
Even in the notoriously volatile world of cryptocurrencies, it has been an incredibly turbulent few weeks for Bitcoin, the founding crypto. In mid-June, El Salvador became the world’s first nation to approve Bitcoin as legal tender.
A month earlier, Elon Musk first backed away from accepting Bitcoin payments at Tesla, citing the environmental effects of the energy-intensive mining that goes into validating transactions. Then, a week later, he introduced the idea of the Bitcoin Mining Council to monitor and improve the industry’s sustainability.
Understandably, these positive and negative developments impacted the stock market price of Bitcoin, as well as the values of a cluster of other cryptos that typically take their lead from Satoshi Nakamoto’s pioneering digital currency. In February, following a months-long bull run, Bitcoin – whose genesis block was mined in January 2009 – hit a market capitalisation of $1 trillion for the first time. The asset’s acceleration of nought to one trillion in just 12 years was easily the quickest in history. (The “big four” – Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft – took 33 years on average to reach $1tr.)
However, while crypto investors are used to the ups and downs, could growing worries around energy consumption derail the rollercoaster? Given the popularity of cryptos among younger people, in particular – 77% of investors are under 45, according to a study published earlier this year by Gemini Exchange – and their supposed eco-conscious sensibilities, do Bitcoin and other energy-draining cryptocurrencies need to change direction, and clean up their acts?
Investors aside, environmental concerns are understood to be behind China’s recent crypto crackdown. The vast majority of crypto is mined in China, driving up energy demand and making it hard for the country to achieve its net-zero emissions by the 2060 target.
Solving the proof of work energy issue
The recent skyrocketing of Bitcoin’s value has triggered new interest, which has led to a surge in mining and energy consumption, as individuals and mining farms alike have invested in hardware to dig for digital gold.
“Bitcoin’s energy consumption has more than quadrupled since the beginning of its last peak in 2017, and it’s set to get worse because energy-inefficiency is built into its DNA,” posits Charles Hoskinson, co-founder of Ethereum – the second-largest crypto by market capitalisation – and, as chief executive of global blockchain engineering firm IOHK, the driving force behind Cardano.
The Hawaii-born entrepreneur points out Bitcoin’s carbon footprint will “become exponentially worse because the more its price rises, the more competition there is for the currency” and thus the more energy it consumes.
As a leading “green crypto”, Cardano stands to benefit from the furore around Bitcoin’s energy problem. It uses a proof-of-stake protocol that requires considerably less energy than proof-of-work chains used by Bitcoin and Ethereum. Hoskinson reckons the Cardano network uses 6 GWh annually – less than 0.01% of the 110.53 TWh needed by the Bitcoin network, as estimated by the University of Cambridge.
Currently, Bitcoin would rank as the 32nd highest energy-consuming nation in the world, ahead of the Netherlands. Next is Ethereum, and the pair consumes over three-quarters of the electricity used by all cryptocurrencies. Notably, the other three on the list of the five worst offenders – Dogecoin, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin – all use proof-of-work protocol.
However, things are changing rapidly. Notably, Ethereum will shortly be switching to a proof-of-stake protocol that, its creators claim, will reduce electricity consumption by 99%.
And most people inside and outside the crypto space welcome both the Bitcoin Mining Council and the Crypto Climate Accord, which is a private-sector collaboration focussed on making all blockchains carbon neutral by 2030.
Ultimately, perhaps this energy issue is the shake up Bitcoin needs to pave the way for a more sustainable future for the whole digital asset class, even if the founding crypto becomes less attractive to eco-conscious investors.
The Colonial cyberattack that cost a US fuel pipeline $4.4m in May highlights why businesses need to treat the fast-emerging threat of ‘ransomware as a service’ more seriously
A wry observation doing the rounds among cybersecurity experts is that the hackers who’ve transformed ransomware attacks into a multibillion-dollar industry are more professional than their high-profile corporate victims.
It was certainly no laughing matter for the CEO of the Colonial Pipeline, one of the largest fuel-distribution networks in the US, when an attack in early May disabled the 5,500-mile system, triggering fuel shortages and panic-buying at filling stations. Within hours of the breach, Joseph Blount controversially paid a $4.4m (£3.1m) ransom to DarkSide, the Russian hacking group that mounted the attack, on the basis that it was “for the good of the country”. Despite this, the network was still out of action for a week.
The Colonial Pipeline case is one of many similar incidents, which have increased sharply in number since the pandemic started but have tended to go under the radar, as the victims are understandably reluctant to publicise their security failings. This high-profile example has exposed the rise of so-called ransomware as a service (RaaS), which DarkSide and various other professional hackers are now offering.
Ethically speaking, you have to consider that you are enabling cybercrime by paying a ransom
The number of cybercrimes committed worldwide in 2020 was 69% higher than the previous year’s total. Ransomware was involved in 27% of these and a total of $1.4bn was demanded, according to a report published in May by US data security company Zscaler. In the UK, cybersecurity specialist Mimecast believes that as many as 60% of companies suffered a ransomware attack during the year.
“Covid-19 has driven a huge ransomware surge,” reports Deepen Desai, Zscaler’s chief information security officer. “Our researchers witnessed a fivefold increase in such attacks starting in March 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the pandemic.”
Criminals seeking to exploit the network vulnerabilities created by the general shift to remote working during the Covid crisis either developed more sophisticated hacking methods or, seeking a shortcut, paid for RaaS.
RaaS business model rings alarm bells
“RaaS has enabled even the least technically advanced criminals to launch attacks,” says George Papamargaritis, director of managed security services operations at Obrela Security Industries. “Gangs are advertising their services on the dark web, collaborating to share code, infrastructure, techniques and profits.”
The RaaS model means that the spoils are split among three partners in crime: the programmer, the service provider and the attacker. “This is a highly structured and organised machine that operates much like many other legitimate organisations,” he adds.
The earliest reference to RaaS can be traced back to 2016. But, as Jen Ellis, vice-president of community and public affairs at Rapid7 and co-chair of the Ransomware Task Force, notes: “There are indications that it’s on the rise as more criminals take the chance to make a quick, easy and relatively risk-free profit by entering the ransomware market.”
This collaborative approach to ransomware attacks is terrible news for businesses, warns Ian Pratt, global head of security for personal systems at Hewlett-Packard. “Once, it was the preserve of opportunistic individuals who targeted consumers with demands of a few hundred pounds. Today, criminal gangs operating ransomware make millions from corporate victims in so-called big-game hunts,” he says. “This should have the alarm bells ringing in boardrooms.”
By educating themselves and their employees, business leaders can improve company-wide security protocols and so minimise the risk of ransomware attacks. Pratt explains that “users are the point of entry for most attacks”, accounting for 70% of successful network breaches. Malware is “almost always delivered via email attachments, web links and downloadable files”.
Prevention better than cure
Michiel Prins, co-founder of HackerOne, a vulnerability-disclosure platform connecting businesses with penetration testers, agrees. “Difficult as it may seem to prevent these attacks, prevention is always better than cure when it comes to ransomware,” he says. “This means maintaining a nimble and adversarial approach to cybersecurity that takes into account the perspective of an attacker, getting beyond traditional solutions that miss more elusive vulnerabilities.”
Prins argues that working with ethical hackers will “strengthen an organisation’s overall security posture”, as potential weak spots are reported and fixed “before serious damage is done”. Additionally, establishing a so-called bug-bounty programme, which rewards people for highlighting faults in the coding, “signals a high level of security maturity,” meaning that the criminals might look for easier prey.
If they do fall victim to an attack, should organisations accede to ransomware demands? CrowdStrike estimates that just over a quarter of victims end up paying the hackers to unlock their systems. Nearly 60% of UK businesses would enter negotiations, according to Sam Curry, chief security officer at Cybereason.
Gangs are advertising their services on the dark web, collaborating to share code, infrastructure, techniques and profits
“We’d advise against paying ransoms. But in extreme situations, where lives are at risk or a national emergency is likely, it could be better to pay,” he says. “Before making that decision, it’s essential to notify your legal counsel, your insurer and the relevant law-enforcement agencies.”
Even when a business does cough up, there’s no guarantee that this will put an end to its problems. Peter Yapp, former deputy director at the UK’s National Cyber Security Centre and now a partner at law firm Schillings, cites the Travelex attack in December 2019 as an example. Many of the company’s web pages were still out of action two months later and a $2.3m ransom was eventually paid to the hackers. Later in 2020, Travelex sank into administration, “partly due to the losses and reputational damage caused by the attack”, he says.
Charles Brook, threat intelligence specialist at cybersecurity company Tessian, acknowledges that it’s a tough decision. “Ethically speaking, you have to consider that you are enabling cybercrime by paying a ransom,” he says. “But I can sympathise with organisations that may have no other option.”
There are other considerations, Brook adds. “If you pay, you could put a target on your back for further attacks. And, even after your files are decrypted, there may still be something malicious left behind.”
With the hackers in the ascendancy, Yapp believes that the government needs to step up its efforts to combat ransomware. “This has become such a serious problem that perhaps it’s time to lobby for the UK’s new National Cyber Force to fight back against these criminals in a different, military, way,” he suggests.
Perhaps the hackers won’t have the last laugh, after all.
This article was originally written for Raconteur’s Connected Business report, published as a supplement in The Times in June 2021
The proliferation of smart devices and the improving capabilities of AI-powered voice assistants mean that voice search-ability is no longer a mere ‘nice to have’
Hey, Siri. Are marketers and their businesses investing enough time, money and effort in improving their conversational search rankings?
Given that Juniper Research forecasts that consumers will be using voice assistants on more than 8.4 billion devices by 2024, while MarketsandMarkets predicts that the global conversational AI market will grow from £3.4bn in 2020 to £9.8bn in 2025, there’s a strong case that they should be doing more.
Consumers embrace new technology if it makes life simpler and more effortless for them. Otherwise, what’s the point?
Firms that have already invested in achieving higher voice search rankings are benefiting from it. For instance, translation service Lionbridge started optimising for voice search in July 2019. Twelve months later, it had almost 47 times more ‘featured snippets’ – the short text at the top of a page of Google search results. This improvement aided a 127% year-on-year increase in traffic to the firm’s website.
“Businesses should view optimising for conversational search as mandatory,” argues Olga Andrienko, head of global marketing at Semrush, which manages Lionbridge’s marketing analytics. “We have already seen the dramatic effect it can have on businesses’ search results. As voice assistants are further integrated into people’s everyday lives, this influence will grow.”
Nick McQuire, chief of enterprise research at tech consultancy CCS Insight, agrees. “As one of AI’s most important areas of development, conversational search is progressing rapidly,” he says.
Bringing AI to the masses
Conversational search development has accelerated “because it sits at the centre of two important trends”, McQuire suggests. First is the improvement in AI speech technology. Second is the need to improve information search in businesses. “This area”, he says, “is often listed as ‘broken’ by customers owing to information silos, especially across several data stores, documents and applications.”
McQuire continues: “The fact that all the big tech firms have started to tackle this area with products and tools demonstrates the scale of the customer need.”
Conversational search is a more complex matter than people simply using their voices instead of keyboards, though. For instance, on what smart device is the search being conducted – a screen-less Apple HomePod, a Google Nest Hub Max or an in-car Amazon Alexa?
While companies can pay to appear on the first page of a conventional typed search on a computer screen, mastering conversational search is not so straightforward. For one thing, marketers don’t always have the same real estate for advertising.
If a device being used for voice search has no screen, how likely is it that a business will pull traffic to its website if it ranks outside the top three search results? Equally, if the device has a screen, a more visual response is presumably better. Notably, the average answer length for the three most popular voice assistants – Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant – is 23 words, according to Semrush.
Convenient and contextualised answers
Semantics aside, the crucial point for marketers is that consumers want their problems solved quickly. So says Kashif Naqshbandi, CMO at IT recruiter Tenth Revolution Group, who adds: “Most of the time they are not just looking for a ‘what’, but also a ‘how’ and ‘why’. This is why question-driven conversational search has spiked.”
Naqshbandi explains that few people are now searching online for, say, a “mountain bike” and then clicking through web pages of information. Instead, they are asking specific questions – for instance, “what sort of mountain bike should I buy?” – to seek a contextualised answer.
“Consumers are more accustomed to these fast, personalised interactions that help them cut through the digital noise and find a solution,” he says. “Marketers have to evolve to deliver interactive, dialogue-based experiences to stay competitive.”
Euan Matthews, director of AI and innovation at ContactEngine, a developer of conversational AI systems, agrees that people ultimately want to save time wherever possible and are happy to pay for convenience.
“Consumers embrace new technology if it makes life simpler for them. Otherwise, what’s the point?” he says, attributing Amazon’s continuing ascendancy to the time it saves customers. But he adds that a “big pitfall” for marketers is to focus only on the search element.
To illustrate his point, Matthews says that some devices, when asked about the best local Indian restaurant, say, will now offer a follow-up option of booking a table through Google, and – if the user accepts – they will add this booking to the digital calendar.
“This time saving is not because of the conversational search,” he says. “It’s more because that search has been seamlessly married with the ability to execute a transaction on your behalf. Marketers must consider how to marry conversational search and the transactional capability of the voice assistant, because this is what saves consumers time and makes it more likely that they’ll progress down the sales funnel.”
The direction of travel is clear, so marketers must alter their course accordingly. “We will see more advances in the ability for conversational search to end in a transaction – and this will drive uptake,” Matthews predicts.
Will it ever replace keyed search? “I doubt it,” he says. “Some searches are best not voiced aloud.”
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Future of Marketing and CX report in June 2021
While consumers in different demographics have varying priorities when it comes to online shopping, they’re all losing tolerance for substandard etail experiences
Gertrude Stein, the avant-garde novelist and poet, declared that “whoever said money can’t buy happiness simply didn’t know where to go shopping”. The meteoric rise of ecommerce has, 75 years after her death, given this aphorism added meaning.
Thanks to the power of the internet and the ubiquity of smart devices and applications, today’s consumers have never had more places to go shopping and be happy, without even having to leave their homes. With such a wealth of choice at their fingertips, they’re unlikely to be patient when a retailer fails to hit the standard of ecommerce experience to which they’ve become accustomed.
Any brand that fails to engage with its target customers in their preferred place to shop will pay a heavy price. The lack of an effective ecommerce strategy has proved damaging for Topshop, Debenhams and Primark, to name but three laggards.
Research shows that 51% of consumers now want a mix of both bricks and clicks for the best experience
It’s clear that retailers need to keep pace with consumers’ changing requirements to survive. The digitalisation of the shopping experience, accelerated by the Covid-19 lockdowns, has transformed how customer loyalty is gained and lost. New statistics indicate what shoppers want from etailers varies depending on their age.
A survey published by Sitecore, a company focused on improving consumers’ online experiences, suggests that 61% of 18- to 24-year olds are less loyal to brands than they were before the pandemic, compared with 33% of baby-boomers, while 69% of these post-millennials have become less patient with poorly functioning websites.
Meanwhile, research from customer-service software firm Zendesk has indicated that 80% of UK consumers will switch retailers after only one bad experience.
A great opportunity to innovate and expand the customer base
“The pandemic has undoubtedly changed the way we shop,” says Jeni Mundy, Visa’s MD in the UK and Ireland. “Our research shows that 51% of consumers now want a mix of both bricks and clicks for the best experience.”
She continues: “As the lines between offline and online continue to blur, there is great opportunity for businesses to keep innovating to reach new shoppers, expand their customer base and build their brands. But different generations and age groups have varying priorities, so it’s more important than ever for retailers to tailor their websites and social media offerings to meet their target audiences’ needs.”
Visa’s research suggests that 18- to 34-year-olds shop mainly online for a wide variety of goods and services. “Updating your website to showcase the full range of products is a good way to attract this audience,” Mundy recommends. “Many in this age group are also likely to shop on social media, so having a presence here and switching on the ‘swipe up to shop’ functionality is a great way to meet them.”
Social media campaigns and digital events encourage micro-influencers
Studies show that consumers aged between 35 and 54 most want an efficient online shopping experience. A well-signposted website is therefore vital. For people aged 55 and above, simplicity is the key, so maintaining an uncluttered, straightforward page design should help to attract and retain them as customers.
Francesca Grillini, an ecommerce manager at Reckitt, points out that social media platforms ranging from TikTok and Clubhouse to Instagram and Facebook are especially popular among both millennial and gen-Z audiences.
“Members of generation Z are digital natives who have attention spans of eight seconds, compared with millennials’ 12 seconds. Yet they are notoriously loyal,” she says. “They can quickly become brand ambassadors, acting as micro-influencers on social channels.”
Ecommerce is “more about necessity” for baby boomers, she says, suggesting that people in this generation have changed their shopping behaviour the most during the pandemic. Ecommerce has “opened previously closed doors” for boomers, many of whom have been forced to shop online more often because of lockdowns and health concerns.
The Covid crisis obliged most high-street businesses to close their doors at various points over the past 18 months. North London restaurant Top Cuvée was among them, but it took a glass-half-full approach to the problem and has successfully turned to ecommerce, becoming an online wine supplier. It has fostered customer loyalty by adopting a multichannel marketing strategy, including email newsletters, social media campaigns (the firm’s Instagram following has grown tenfold to 35,000 in a year) and interactive online events.
Brodie Meah, co-founder and chef at Top Cuvée, says: “Our mailing list is a great way of keeping people informed and engaged, but we generate a lot of sales from social media too. We recently held a digital Easter egg hunt, which drove mass engagement online as well as attracting over 1,000 customers to our physical store.”
Tom Pugh is director of client services at Revive Management, a software company specialising in payment systems. He salutes any retail business that’s willing to embrace a multichannel approach.
“There is a huge demand for them to accelerate, improve and enhance their digital capabilities and to blend these with in-store experiences to add value,” he says. “Omnichannel strategies allow businesses to create breadth and increased accessibility to their customers.”
Connecting with consumers across various channels enables a deeper understanding of their generational habits, which is why investment in ecommerce is worthwhile, Pugh adds. “Providing customers with a variety of channels of engagement is key, as it empowers them to interact via their preferred channel.”
After all, shopping instils happiness – as Gertrude Stein would concur.
This article originally featured in Raconteur’s Future of Ecommerce report, published in June 2021
Experts agree that the growing maturity of a cluster of technologies has transformative potential, but businesses must act fast if they’re to gain a competitive edge
Hyperautomation has been thrust into the spotlight for the second time in six months by Gartner. In October 2020, the research giant named it as one of its top strategic technology trends for 2021. Its latest report on the subject, published at the end of April, forecasts that the global market that enables hyperautomation will be worth almost £430bn in 2022 – a 24% increase on the previous year’s figure.
“Hyperautomation has shifted from an option to a condition of survival,” says Fabrizio Biscotti, research vice-president at Gartner.
But what is hyperautomation, why is it generating such interest now, and – most crucially – how can businesses best harness its potential?
In essence, hyperautomation is a strategy that enterprises adopt to quickly identify, vet and automate as many processes as possible, applying a disciplined, holistic approach and mix of technologies. It spans the whole spectrum of operations, using digital tools to simplify many time-consuming tasks. These tools include AI systems, robotic process automation (RPA), low-code application platforms and virtual assistants.
The concept is becoming increasingly relevant, Biscotti says, because organisations will “require more IT and business process automation as they are forced to accelerate their digital transformation plans in a post-Covid, digital-first world”.
Gartner’s October 2020 report had noted: “Many organisations are supported by a patchwork of technologies that are not lean, optimised, connected, clean or explicit. At the same time, the acceleration of digital business requires efficiency, speed and democratization. Organisations that don’t focus on efficiency, efficacy and business agility will be left behind.”
Tackling low-hanging fruit
Peter van der Putten is director of AI solutions at cloud software firm Pegasystems and an assistant professor of AI at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He suggests that the drive towards hyperautomation has been “gathering pace for a while as the technologies have matured”.
Their simultaneous emergence has created far-reaching possibilities. There is low-hanging fruit to be gobbled by business leaders, he says, although those who invest heavily in hyperautomation stand to gain the most from it.
“There is more to hyperautomation than streamlining workflows to save time and reduce cost,” van der Putten stresses. “There are strategies that businesses can use to link automation with business outcomes more directly. Realising the potential of hyperautomation hinges on robust governance and the quality of executive-level support – how it is implemented across an organisation and not in narrow niches.”
Hyperautomation will do to the knowledge worker what the industrial revolution did to the manual worker
For instance, the ability to manage exceptions through AI enables finance, IT and governance experts to deliver value for industries that already use new networks or decentralised cloud services. A recent global survey of 1,300 business leaders by Pegasystems identified key areas where hyperautomation has already been benefiting financial services providers. Respondents reported achieving quick wins in a number of functions, including finance, data management and production. They expect to see significant advances in areas such as supply chains and “partner ecosystems” over the next five years.
As an example of what’s possible with hyperautomation, take credit broker Loan.co.uk. The business, which has been building intelligent systems since 2014, has transformed mortgage lending from a process that’s traditionally been opaque, complex and painfully slow. The total automation improvements to date have “saved our 40 advisers and processors on average three hours and 45 minutes a day”, reports CEO Paul McGerrigan.
The company’s AI helper, Albot, can search thousands of lenders’ offers in less than a second while matching more than 10,000 criteria, delivering the lowest rate appropriate for the applicant’s circumstances.
“Our smart AI underwriter can fully underwrite about 100 cases in 30 seconds, including credit searches,” McGerrigan says. “Previously, it would have taken an adviser 20 minutes to underwrite one complex case.”
A workplace revolution
The company’s new approach has significantly increased transparency and, in turn, engendered greater trust among its customers. McGerrigan urges other companies to embrace hyperautomation, which, he says, “will do to the knowledge worker what the industrial revolution did to the manual worker. We are seeing the largest shift in how we work in 100 years. Most firms have been taken by surprise at the speed of change, while some are still asleep.”
Guy Kirkwood, chief evangelist at UiPath, an RPA software provider, agrees that the potential for hyperautomation is huge. “In the US alone, 2.6 trillion hours of work a year are automatable,” he says, noting that the pandemic-induced lockdowns have added impetus to the trend.
“Work will be revolutionised,” Kirkwood predicts. “Almost over night, employees were expected to work from home, deal with unfavourable economic conditions and handle a huge rise in their workloads in areas such as customer service and data entry. Many turned to automation to adapt.”
He points to a firm providing smart infrastructure that used to print, sign, scan and upload 400,000 invoices a year manually. The business “now has a robot that performs these tasks digitally. This means that no employee needs to physically be in the office to process an invoice.”
Now that businesses have been catapulted into the digital age, regardless of their industry, we are on the verge of a new era of work in which hyperautomation will play a much greater role. Companies that make the leap today and go big on automation will be winners tomorrow.
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s AI for Business report in May 2021
Roundtable highlights: Technology may be the great enabler for banks and their customers, but to achieve holistic risk management, culture change and education are equally important
Speakers
Charlotte Branfield, Head of operational resilience, Citi
Andrea Brody, Chief marketing officer, Riskonnect
Marc Leaver, European chief operating officer, Standard Chartered Bank
Jason Maude, Chief technology advocate, Starling Bank
Q What is the current state of personalisation in banking in the UK and around the world?
Ralph Nash Last year’s events have accelerated some of the trends already emerging in banking. These include the increased use of automation and digitalisation and the concept of “the bank in your pocket”. Branch networks will remain important, but increasingly we see demand-led interaction around digital and that’s something we need to satisfy. A greater digital focus creates both risk and opportunity from a stability and resilience perspective. There are some risks, both technical and ethical, but if we get it right, it could be a win-win scenario for the bank and the customer. We are at an exciting juncture.
“Driven by demand for seamless customer experience and fintech partnerships, banks will become hubs where products can be plugged in and out. That’s pretty revolutionary” Charlotte Branfield
Jason Maude In the next decade, affording customers immediate and secure access to their data in the same way they have access to their money will become a requirement, rather than a “nice to have”. If you, as a bank, cannot offer that connectivity or application programming interface (API) capability, you will be like a town the railroad missed out, and you will weaken and die. Customers, including small and medium-sized enterprises, are not going to do business with a bank that relies on paper processes.
Charlotte Branfield What makes a good bank is how fast they reach the customer, to solve their problems and provide financial services conveniently, efficiently and responsively. Therefore, the concept of a bank is evolving from the traditional bricks-and-mortar bank to an “embedded finance” model. Driven by the demand for high-quality seamless customer experience and fintech partnerships, banks will become hubs where products can be plugged in and out. When you think about banks’ business models, that’s pretty revolutionary. The whole system is changing and it’s an exciting time to be involved in operational resilience.
Marc Leaver I agree that we are at an inflexion point in banking: if we don’t change the traditional way of delivering products and services to clients, we will be redundant in the digital age. We see ourselves as a bank that connects clients, products and markets. To do this we utilise digital offerings to tap into the digital needs of our clients. Three pillars to build this: innovative partnerships exploring disruptive business models; investment in fintechs; and, arguably the most challenging element, greater internal innovation.
Suresh Viswanathan The definition of where a bank starts and finishes is transforming. Previously we have been constrained by physical infrastructure and analogue systems. As we emerge from a post-pandemic world, the march to digital is inevitable. However, as we move towards a world driven by open banking and APIs, you lose control of when demand hits. People trust banks and I think now it is obligatory to ensure we deliver more value to customers than just a current account, a loan, a mortgage and a card. It’s a unique position to be custodians of customer data and leverage that trust, and it means we, as banks, can offer them more connectivity.
Andrea Brody We talk with our financial services customers all the time. The same topics are discussed; the drive for greater automation and data analytics is taking centre stage because of the need for connectivity. It’s imperative to leverage technology, but improved risk management in corporate strategy is required and the pandemic has exacerbated the need for better reporting.
Q What are banks’ biggest operational challenges in 2021 and what problems are on the horizon? RN The last year emphasised the importance of banks as a transmission mechanism of government policy to support individuals and businesses through the coronavirus crisis. We have effectively done years of lending in a few months, at an unprecedented level. Managing the exit from government support schemes will be a significant operational challenge for HSBC and the industry, this year and next, particularly in the UK. Customers’ payment holidays will end, but some will be unable to resume repayment on their debt. Historically banks have been worried about cash and keys, and now they should treat data and systems as crown jewels and focus on building resilience for the latter. The operating model and technologies need to support that, as well as meeting regulatory and societal expectations.
JM To keep pace with those expectations, it’s essential to have the architecture to operate faster. It’s often thought that for banks there is a seesaw-like balance between security and reliability on the one side and speed of delivery on the other. At Starling Bank, we have constructed a system that makes these two things mutually reinforcing. We rapidly deploy feature changes, new products and services, and seek bugs daily to increase resilience. This system will be vital as we look to enter new markets globally in 2021.
“We are marching to the cloud. As networks become smarter and 5G is more widespread, we can push more content into the hands of devices customers hold” Suresh Viswanathan
ML Standard Chartered Bank has moved to a cloud-first strategy and we are looking to shift our core banking platform into the cloud by 2025, subject to regulatory approvals. Regulators are beginning to become more comfortable with banks’ evolution to digital and familiar with safe data storage. Certainly, the strides made by Starling Bank and others are fabulous for the industry and the customers we serve. Partnerships with technology specialists are critical to our strategy because we know clunky platforms and traditional banking methods are not sustainable, frankly.
SV Today, 90 per cent of TSB’s customer services are digital, as is 70 per cent of our sales. In terms of operational resilience, it is very important to have a multichannel approach because you want to comfort and support customers and be readily available. We are marching to the cloud and, as networks become much smarter and 5G is more widespread, we can push more content through the pipes into the hands of devices customers hold. That capability gives us the ability to educate customers and improve financial literacy. A key imperative, though, is to become more holistic in our management of risk.
CB I agree that banks need to embrace holistic risk management and think about processes differently. At Citi, our priorities lie in better understanding our clients’ experience of using our services and improving upon it. As an industry, we have to move away from the mindset that cybersecurity, for example, is only a tech expert’s responsibility. That approach causes a disconnect concerning operational risk because, in today’s digital economy, the fundamental commodities at risk are trust, data and connectivity, not just money. If we want to manage cyber risk properly, we are going to have to have far greater engagement from the client relationship managers, the user experience designers, and the product sales and development teams, and not just within banking, but in the public sector as well.
AB Considering the customer’s viewpoint is a perfect way to look at risk holistically. Every department in a bank is responsible for risk. Thus, silos need to be broken and communication between the different functions improved, and this can now be enabled by technology.
Q How can technology help optimise risk management? RN Increasingly, we feel there are some challenges in using data from an ethical perspective. How do we ensure we don’t end up with unintended consequences due to modelling our customers’ data? For instance, if we become more sophisticated at modelling the propensity of a customer to commit financial crime, or pose a compliance risk, do we end up inadvertently becoming less inclusive and less able to target the unbanked at a time when probably we should be trying to do the complete opposite? There is also the question of staff surveillance; what is legal but fails on the “creepiness” test?
ML The debate about vaccine passports has dominated the news recently, showing that the ethics of handling customer data is no longer a horizon risk. As banks, we are grappling with the same challenges: we know if we use data-driven insights, we can make better business decisions and we can improve the way we serve our clients. But what is the tipping point? While customer data protection has long been part of the design of a bank’s processes and systems, with increasing digitalisation, data management best practice needs to be embedded into its DNA. Ultimately, the customer’s data is a gift and we must keep it secure.
JM We think of cybercriminals as competitors who are trying to steal our business, so we combat them by making it too expensive for them to spend time trying to hack our systems. A security bug is a big draw because it allows you to hit multiple people all at once and in banks no one has coded everything from scratch. Chaos engineering is going to become more prevalent in our industry. We deliberately attack our systems in a controlled manner to test and prove we are resilient.
SV There is a lot of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the banking industry, though some applications are more mature than others. Smart partnerships that drive innovation will be vital to delivering super specialisation, for example if you want to optimise the noise-to-signal ratio in ATM fraud. It’s about adding value to the customer, but not at the cost of impacting operational resilience. For this reason, we need to be bold, be innovative, fail fast and move on.
CB There are so many shiny new tech toys and it’s easy to think a bank has to have the latest gadgets and be deploying the latest piece of AI, but without actually understanding why. It’s critical to go back to basics and back to your first principles. Ask yourself, “What benefit is this bringing to either the business or my customers?” It’s an exciting time to be involved in resilience and risk management because it means looking carefully at your organisational structure and culture.
AB It is indeed an exciting time and there is clearly a real focus on operational resilience in the digital age from those in the financial services space. There are many challenges, but a bank’s technology stack must support the desired outcomes. It will be fascinating to see how the ethics and compliance concerns evolve in the coming years.
This article was originally published in The Times, as part of Raconteur’s Future of Banking report, in April 2021. The videos for the roundtable session, which I moderated, can be accessed here
Simon Finch says the coronavirus outbreak left retailers grappling for new supply chain models and now organisations must scale new heights to put people and the planet before profit
The iconic doors of Harrods’ Knightsbridge store closed for the first time in its 172-year history in March 2020, when prime minister Boris Johnson enforced an initial lockdown to stem the spread of coronavirus. But what did this mean for the supply chain of arguably the world’s leading luxury department store?
Incredibly, the London stalwart remained open throughout the Blitz and only shut for half a day following a 1983 terrorist attack. Consider the joy, for staff and customers alike, when the doors were unlocked on April 12.
Speaking on the eve of the reopening, Harrods’ supply chain director Simon Finch reveals a “back-to-school feeling” and is optimistic that footfall will be impressive, despite the lack, for the moment, of wealthy tourists. “People are very keen to come back in and Harrods has the benefit of being 1.1 million square feet, so there’s plenty of space for social distancing,” he says.
From now on, the supply chain must be more about agility, to cope with volatility and uncertainty, and less about being lean
Finch began his career at Harrods 25 years ago as a graduate trainee. The amateur high-altitude mountaineer, who has scaled Himalayan peaks as well as the highest reaches of Africa and Europe, has climbed the corporate ranks and was appointed to his current role in October 2019, less than six months before the first lockdown.
While both his employer’s online operations and warehouse remained open for the duration of the pandemic, the 46-year-old concedes, with admirable honesty, that like so many other supply chain professionals, he was forced to grapple with unforeseen operational challenges and struggled initially.
“We were probably all a bit too overconfident in the system, a bit like those in financial services when the economic crash happened in 2008, and when something unexpected hit, there was a lot of scrambling around to make things work,” he says.
Championing the technology-driven supply chain revolution
Like other UK retailers, Harrods has been buffeted by the coronavirus crisis and, more recently, Brexit fallout. It is the pandemic, though, that exposed operational weaknesses.
“The pandemic has triggered a supply chain revolution,” says Finch. He argues, convincingly, that businesses were “obsessed with making supply chains as lean as possible” before COVID, moving items around quickly, with minimal stock and expense.
“Coronavirus completely screwed up that approach,” Finch continues, “as the organisations holding themselves up as having the leanest supply chains were the ones that had the most significant challenges as soon as there were global disruptions.
“From now on, the supply chain must be more about agility, to cope with volatility and uncertainty, and less about being lean. However, that agility has to be fully supported by technology and data insights. Whereas previously we have used technology to create a leaner supply chain, now the tech needs to provide the knowledge to make better decisions to drive agility and visibility.”
Data can’t get stuck in the Suez Canal, nor does it get held up at the borders with Europe
Given that Harrods was established in 1849 with the rather ambitious motto of omnia omnibus ubique (all things for all people, everywhere), the consumer behaviour trends accelerated by the pandemic forced the business to keep pace with change and embrace the digital age. Little surprise, then, that Harrods has recently employed more data scientists.
“Understanding our customers, and how we can serve them better, and starting to use artificial intelligence, whether for our replenishment operations, to make sure we have the right amount of stock, or to manage outbound fulfilment volumes, is paramount,” says Finch. “Data can’t get stuck in the Suez Canal, nor does it get held up at the borders with Europe. And the sharing of data with our partners delivers a better operating model for the end-to-end supply chain.”
Data insights and deeper relationships driving sustainability
Technology alone, though, is not enough to drive the supply chain revolution, according to Finch. He contends that it is critical for those operating in the industry to “go retro” and forge or nurture deeper relationships with suppliers, service providers and brand partners.
“Because the pandemic messed everything up, and we didn’t know what was happening, we picked up the phone and spoke to trusted partners and suppliers to all pull things together,” he says. “It was a return to the supply chain of the 1900s.”
Moreover, the combination of emboldened trusted relationships and data insights, plus greater diversity in terms of distribution nodes, inside and outside the UK, enables Harrods to develop a more sustainable supply chain.
The sustainability agenda is critical to the luxury industry and we will lose sales if we don’t do this right
“As a father to two eco-conscious girls, I’m incredibly passionate about sustainability and building a brighter future,” says Finch. “I believe it’s the responsibility of all supply chain professionals and businesses to ensure we are doing the right thing for our customers. Therefore, putting the product closer to the consumer, through a decentralised supply chain and more localised distribution, is a win-win scenario.
“Also, from a purely commercial perspective, this is the direction in which our customers want us to go; the sustainability agenda is critical to the luxury industry and we will lose sales if we don’t do this right.”
To illustrate his vision, Finch uses an example of how inefficient and harmful to the planet the supply chain and fulfilment processes can be from an ecommerce perspective. Goods might be manufactured and shipped from the United States to the UK only to be then sold online and shipped back to an American-based customer.
“We are doing everything wrong if we create that unnecessary movement from a sustainability perspective, and also it increases costs and length of delivery time,” he says.
The COVID crisis may have sparked a supply chain revolution, but it is a work in progress for many retailers, including Harrods. Stressing the importance of diversity, data insights and developing trusted relationships for supply chains of the near future, Finch adds: “By having products that are local to customers, we can serve them more quickly, more cost effectively and more sustainably, while reducing risk, because the goods aren’t moving as far.”
Through shifting its business model and with this smarter, tech-powered approach to the supply chain, Harrods will stand a good chance of keeping its doors, both physical and virtual, open for many years to come.
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Procurement and Supply Chain Innovation report in April 2021
Jen Felch is leveraging her deep knowledge and experience from 17 years at Dell to manage change, drive collaboration and supercharge innovation
What’s the secret to achieving as smooth a digital transformation journey as possible? Taking your people every small step of the way with clear communication and, more specifically, letting them help plot the route. This insight is shared by an expert perfectly placed to offer an opinion on the subject: Jen Felch, Dell Technologies’ chief digital and information officer.
In September 2019, she took on the dual roles for the first time in the computer technology company’s 37-year history. Back then, like everyone else, Felch had no inkling of the coronavirus-induced disruption that lay ahead.
During the pandemic, from her home in Austin, Texas, she has been at the helm to navigate the organisation’s road to recovery, driving the strategy, direction and delivery for Dell Digital, Dell’s IT arm.
As if that wasn’t enough, Felch combines her responsibilities as CDO and CIO alongside “the emerging role of change agent for digital transformation”. No wonder the 53-year-old has taken up hot yoga to help increase her physical and mental flexibility.
Aside from an eight-month stint with Boeing in 2010, she has been employed by Dell since April 2003. Her deep knowledge of the company is hugely beneficial to steering digital transformation, particularly in a period of epochal change. Felch has access to all areas, is a trusted ally and understands various stakeholders’ pain points.
“I started my career as a software developer and spent two years working in the Dell factories as part of a development rotation, and it was a fabulous experience,” says Felch. “That hands-on operational experience is invaluable and I still leverage it today. I don’t have to imagine what it is like in a factory because I have first-hand knowledge.”
Digital transformation: a never-ending continuum
Felch boasts a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is an alumnus of the Leaders for Global Operations Program at MIT, where she earned her MBA and a Master’s in computer science. She continues: “Thanks to my 17 years with Dell, I can make use of a network of people across the company.
“I can pick up the phone to find out what is really happening in a certain area and what people are truly thinking. By understanding what they are trying to achieve and how we can make them more effective, employees are less resistant towards technology adoption and change.”
We might have great technology, but it is having highly skilled people who are available and have the environment in which to innovate that makes the difference
Indeed, when asked about the biggest challenge to successful digital transformation, Felch is quick to answer: change management. “You need the right mechanisms – people, tools and processes – for managing and leading change. You need people within your organisation who will champion change, interact with the business and with the technical teams, and drive understanding and solutions to opportunities.”
She posits it is “human nature” to find change daunting, hence why there is resistance, at least initially. However, Felch acknowledges the irony of IT professionals needing to be more communicative, collaborative and, well, human in 2021. Man and machine must comprehend one another and stride ahead together to enable an optimal digital transformation journey.
“Today, IT all depends on developing the right engineering culture within an organisation,” Felch says. “At Dell, we are highly dependent on how we engage with others and we have to draw out those latent needs, so we understand where we are going and innovate accordingly.
“We might have great technology, but it is having highly skilled people who are available and have the environment in which to innovate that makes the difference.”
Little surprise, then, that Felch views digital transformation, both for her company and its clients, as a “continuum that doesn’t end”. She explains: “For us, digital transformation is much more than upgrading a server rack; it is about a mindset to keep the whole business performing and moving forward. As we look ahead, we’re finding the balance between security, privacy and ease-of use, which I believe can be accomplished with good design.”
Further, she is a “firm believer” in Dell’s lean and agile methodology concerning development that drives transformation. “Our iterative approach is delivering great results,” Felch says, lauding a more open, collaborative mindset across the business and also with trusted partners.
“It’s incredibly powerful when you pair strong technologists with strong business partners and modern IT, like a developer experience rooted in self-service, to drive transformation. That’s where you see multiple wins of creating better experiences, improving employee satisfaction and driving out cost.”
Lean and agile development: delivering results
The outcomes are impressive. She claims that by eliminating redundant work and reducing manual tasks or testing, Dell Technologies has shifted around 10 per cent of its workforce into the development team to “be able to engage with our business partners directly to develop new solutions”.
The company has also reduced its cycle time to deploy new capabilities by 30% and the number of incidents – when a user calls for help – by 31%. It has done this, Felch says, through a focus on user experience, fixing the root cause of existing problems and driving quality in new capabilities.
“The net of it all is that we’re getting faster and more responsive, quality is improving and we have better engagement with our business partners. That’s what digital transformation is all about,” she says.
Finally, Felch stresses how business-critical it is for organisations to “embrace digital transformation”. Those that do not, and are closed to change and constant evolution, will fail – and sooner, rather than later.
“Digital transformation can drive growth opportunities, enhance customer experiences, better connect employees and continue to accelerate positive change within a business,” she explains.
Given Felch’s wealth of knowledge and experience, it’s worth heeding her words of wisdom.
Felch’s top five tips for leading through digital transformation
Start small Find the people who are willing to drive change and solve their first problem. Solve it, celebrate it and let that be the example that you build upon for broader transformation. Having people who can step back, see the larger opportunity or problem that could improve other areas or be replicated, and interact with designers, developers, and so on, can serve as powerful change agents within your organisation.
Focus on the end user experience Take the time to listen and observe the problem or opportunity. This avoids the “telephone game” and helps surface latent needs that will delight the user.
Invest in your own processes and team Create and embed common ways of working and interacting for the entire team so that it is easy for people to focus on the problem. Have common processes for tracking status and priorities so that people can bring their expertise, whether that’s in DevOps, design, or user experience, to solve the problem efficiently.
Stay connected to your teams Keep providing context and communicate priorities left and right, up and down, to help keep everyone pulling together in the same direction. Stay close so that you can jump in to help remove obstacles, celebrate successes and to remind people that change can be hard. Mistakes will happen but if we commit to learn quickly and to move forward together, driving real change is hugely rewarding.
Be optimistic Stay flexible, agile and be ready to pivot. Be optimistic about the present and excited for what transformation will deliver in the future.
This article was first published by Raconteur in April 2021
Trends accelerated by the coronavirus crisis present challenges and opportunities; dealing with both has increased the workload for chief information officers
1 Regulatory compliance and security
The entry might have been number one in the charts for the past few years, but the mass jump to working away from the office catalysed by lockdown has meant chief information officers (CIOs) must be on top of data management, security and compliance.
“The shift towards remote work and digital operations has meant the information security posture of many businesses, faced with an increasing amount of threats, has had to improve,” says Federico Baldo, CIO at Eurotech, a multinational company supplying internet of things solutions.
“Security starts at the top of an organisation and, while chief executives do not need to be security experts, they do benefit from an accurate understanding of the relevance of security to their organisation. And for many smaller businesses, in particular, it is the CIO’s job to lead the internal security programmes.”
Caroline Carruthers, chief executive of data strategists Carruthers and Jackson and former chief data officer at Network Rail, says a mindset transformation is required. “My biggest piece of advice for CIOs when it comes to regulatory compliance is they need to stop thinking about security and privacy as a tick-box exercise,” she says. “It’s essential they see this as a positive opportunity rather than a hurdle to overcome.”
There are enormous advantages for the organisations that get compliance right, she insists, from increased customer trust to more secure intellectual property.
2 Modernise IT infrastructure and systems
COVID has tested the robustness of supply chains, business models and information technology systems alike. In many cases, it exposed worrying vulnerabilities.
“After the immediate response to the pandemic, it allowed the time to look at IT systems and assess whether they remained fit for purpose,” says Jean-Sébastien Pelland, deputy managing director of Eland Cables, a global supplier of cables and cable accessories.
“Businesses constantly evolve, requiring IT systems to adapt rather than making wholesale changes, simply due to the pace and perhaps uncertainty of the new avenues. Now is the time to make sure the systems match the business as it stands today.”
This chimes with Sharon Mandell, CIO of Juniper Networks, a multinational cybersecurity company. “As we ‘cloudify’ and ‘SaaSify’ our entire product line, Juniper also needs to update its IT architecture. We need one that’s more nimble, that brings new capabilities and that’s more user aware to enable the experience our customers and partners desire throughout their journey with us,” she says.
Like many organisations, Juniper has pivoted its offering, in part because of the pandemic fallout. “Modernising IT is a priority now as many of our systems were built around a business model that delivered hardware, with embedded software only, and traditional technical support and services,” says Mandell.
3 Ensure real-time visibility of critical data
“The world we’re living in is moving faster than ever and organisations relying on data even one week old are behind the curve,” warns data strategist Carruthers. “The nature and speed of change in 2021 will make real-time visibility of critical data the single biggest factor in winning new business across almost all industries this year.”
She advises that “CIOs need to make sure they have insight into what is going on in their industries in real time” to make accurate predictions.
Rich Murr, CIO at Epicor, a global provider of enterprise resource planning software for the manufacturing, distribution, retail and service industries, agrees. He calls actionable data “the holy grail” of IT. “And sometimes it’s seemingly just as difficult to obtain,” he says. “The challenge is less about systems and more about the business processes that produce and consume the data.
“CIOs need to educate their business peers, not to sit back and expect clean data to appear magically in their systems, but instead to take strong ownership and execute the hard business process improvement work necessary to create actionable data.”
4 Engage and educate the workforce
On Murr’s point of driving education and training, so employees can use all IT systems capabilities and have a good handle on data management, this is another important CIO task. “IT needs to work for the worker,” says Tim Christensen, chief technology officer at workforce communications platform SocialChorus.
Football Association CIO Craig Donald says: “Facilitating tech literacy will be central to my role in boosting enjoyment and attainment as the football community comes back to life in 2021. Particularly in non-tech organisations, CIOs shouldn’t just go in there being the mystical gurus of technology. Get a dialogue going and show how tech can directly impact relationships.”
Educating staff is particularly challenging for Jo Drake, CIO of The Hut Group, the retail and property company that in September attracted the largest initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange since 2013. “As part of a global business that is expanding at a rapid rate, it’s important to have the best team possible and the right talent to grow with us,” she says, pointing to several schemes that attract and nurture tech talent.
5 Make full use of cloud computing
Eurotech CIO Baldo urges businesses to “go full-on cloud”. He says: “If the business gross margin is not sensitive to slightly higher costs, there are many more advanced and integrated security capabilities that smaller businesses can leverage through the use of cloud services from AWS, Azure, Google or IBM than could be achieved on-premise, within the same budget.” It is the CIO’s responsibility to manage the move to the cloud and beyond.
Dr Anjali Subburaj, chief architect of digital commerce at multinational manufacturer Mars, believes businesses can move up a level in this area. “Adoption of cloud computing allows IT teams to focus exclusively on driving business outcomes via their endeavours instead of grappling with IT infrastructure issues,” she says.
Once the cloud is embraced, more tech opportunities become accessible. “CIOs should also be prioritising the introduction of an artificial intelligence-embedded approach,” Subburaj adds. “This will improve the accuracy and relevancy of outputs, such as supply and demand, and personalised product recommendations to consumers.”
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Future CIO report in March 2021
Which trends accelerated by the coronavirus pandemic are here to stay? Exploring some of the businesses set to thrive in the digital era
The coronavirus pandemic has fired a starting gun for the acceleration of various trends and necessitated distant business plans to be hurriedly activated. E-commerce companies, automated software services, health-tech businesses, videoconferencing, communications platforms, and other organisations facilitating remote working are among the big winners.
But which innovations embraced en masse since March 2020 are here to stay? Conversely what will prove to be a lockdown-induced fad? Have we had our fill of virtual drinks, online quizzes and expensive cook-it-yourself restaurant kits?
Moneypenny, the leading outsourced communications provider will explore some of the business lessons from 2020 and beyond looking at organisations and companies that have thrived and, moreover, look set to succeed in the long term.
Online events platform Hopin, for example, has brought work colleagues together remotely with tools for virtual talks and networking. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack and Workplace by Facebook, plus many similar videoconferencing and digital collaboration tools providers have also triumphed.
And as businesses start to re-open their workplaces, it will be fascinating to glean insights from the likes of Vpod, provider of next-level visitor management systems. Moneypenny recently collaborated with London-based Vpod to offer businesses dedicated video front-of-house and concierge support for the first time. Moneypenny’s video-based support will be added to Vpod’s Vgreet product: a virtual reception that offers a contactless check in and reduces visitor management costs.
Meeting rising customer expectations
While it may be unclear what the “next normal” will look and feel like exactly, we can start to make a decent, educated guess: because the direction of travel is clear. There is little doubt that the coronavirus pandemic has catapulted businesses into the digital era, but comfort, convenience and communication will all play even greater roles than before.
To adapt, progressive leaders seek more technology-driven solutions and are now more open-minded about outsourcing certain aspects, including communications, to better meet ever-rising customer demand. We can thank leading organisations like Amazon for that, raising the level of expectation to have things delivered by a simple couple of clicks on a device as soon as is humanly – or even robotically – possible.
Certainly, the retail landscape has evolved, and e-commerce has boomed.
In the United Kingdom, the latest Office for National Statistics figures, published in late January, highlight that online sales surged by 46 per cent in 2020 compared to the previous year. Looking deeper at the data, online food sales enjoyed the most significant uptick given the context offered by months of lockdown, growing by 79.3 per cent.
As a December ONS report noted: “The 2008 recession had a smaller impact than the COVID-19 pandemic on individual industries and the economy … Services such as hospitality – including pubs, restaurants and hotels – recorded almost no output in April and May, but industries such as information and communication, where staff could largely work from home, saw little change compared with February.”
Collaborating and sharing expert insights in the digital era
Accommodation and foodservice activities were 90 per cent smaller than a year earlier, according to the ONS. Will these industries recover, albeit in evolved forms, because of the vaccine roll out?
It’s clear that to keep up with customer and client expectations, technology solutions are no longer a “nice to have” – as perhaps they were 12 months ago – but business-critical.
Forward-thinking decision-makers have shifted their mindset. They realise that much in the same way servers and data have migrated to the cloud, collaboration with trusted partners and utilising the services of skilled experts and technology services in the outsourcing world makes best business sense on several levels.
The mass move to remote working has changed the way we interact with one another, and the rise of videoconferencing and walking meetings, and so on, have paved the way for businesses to engage both employees and customers in different and exciting ways.
For businesses determined to grow in the digital era, it is vital to invest in new forms of communication – but could nuance and the human touch be lost? Building trust – with customers, staff, and other stakeholders – is still imperative.
This article first appeared on Moneypenny’s blog channel in March 2021
Bill Gates recently published his “green manifesto”, but is it feasible for organisations to follow and, if not, what should businesses be doing instead?
You could argue it is a bit rich that Bill Gates, co-founder of technology titan Microsoft and one of the world’s wealthiest people, is calling for businesses to drive climate change. However, there is no debating that consumer and investor demand is forcing organisations to clean up their processes for the future of an endangered planet.
In How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, his latest book styled a “green manifesto”, published in February, the 65-year-old billionaire introduces the concept of “green premiums” or the differences in cost between a fossil-fuel-based way of doing something and the clean, non-emitting way of doing the same thing. But how achievable is Gates’ vision?
A fresh approach to doing business is essential to avoid a climate disaster, posits Gates. This new way requires courage from business leaders to take on risks they are not used to taking and also that investors are not used to rewarding. It’s a simple problem, he suggests: we must stop greenhouse gases by the middle of the century or else.
Green premiums essentially show how much it will cost to “zero out emissions” in all sectors of the economy where fossil fuels are involved, including producing electricity, manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and heating and cooling.
There are four areas where organisations can make “a practical difference”, according to Gates. The first involves “mobilising capital” to reduce green premiums. Second, businesses should buy greener products. Next, they should expand research and development. Finally, drive down green premiums by shaping public policies.
“Working in these four areas will not always be comfortable,” Gates concedes, though he adds: “These are short-term costs required of every business leader who wants to do more than pay lip service to climate change. In the long run, these risky steps will be good for business.”
The global reaction to his green manifesto, and green premiums in particular, has been ambivalent. Molly Scott Cato, a Green Party politician, who from 2014 until last year served as a member of the European parliament for South-West England, is in two minds about them.
“As an economist, I like and agree with the green premiums principle of using market incentives to tackle the climate emergency and the consideration of how to achieve wellbeing with minimum energy use is important,” she says.
On the flip side, the professor of economics and finance at the University of Roehampton, says: “Green premiums are too technologically focused and adopt the adage that if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Scott Cato contends the planet’s systems are highly complex and ungovernable: “Many of the solutions require social rather than technological innovation.”
Stressing the need for greater international collaboration and higher appreciation of the complexities, she says: “Gates’ proposal is also too exclusively focused on the climate and consequently risks displacement, for example where are the biofuels grown and have they destroyed peatlands for food growth?”
Oliver Bolton, chief executive of Earthly, a tech platform that helps businesses become “climate positive” through science-backed natural solutions, identifies another hurdle. “The use of green premiums is ultimately going to be driven by governments changing policy,” he says, “so it could be hard at the outset for businesses to use the model.”
Dr Jane Davidson, pro vice chancellor for sustainability and external engagement at the University of Wales, is more scathing of green premiums. “I’m disappointed at the proposition that ‘green’ is more expensive,” says the former minister for environment and sustainability in Wales. “This is classic short-term thinking, when each year the costs of us not being green goes up, contributing to climate change.
“Green premiums are the wrong answer to the wrong question. We need a new value system that drives climate and biodiversity-led action, and drives out fossil fuels, waste and obsolescence.”
Despite the headlines and promises, there is concern that environmental, social and corporate governance strategies are largely meaningless, in part because they are not regulated and tricky to measure accurately. Moreover, could it be that by committing to a net-zero target in 29 years, as many have, businesses are delaying action on climate change, as it is not an imminent worry?
Indeed, while a search on financial data service Sentieo indicates that references to 2050 in corporate literature have doubled in the past two years, a PwC survey released in mid-March found climate change ranked ninth among global chief executives’ perceived threats to growth. Additionally, 27 per cent of the executives surveyed reported being “not concerned at all” or “not very concerned” about climate change.
Worryingly, this tallies with research from French-headquartered digital design software corporation Dassault Systèmes, published in September, that shows the coronavirus crisis caused 32 per cent of organisations to scale down attention given to environmental sustainability, while 18 per cent paused it completely.
“As organisations come out of crisis mode, it is vital they quickly return to making environmental sustainability a priority,” urges Séverine Trouillet, public sector and education director for Dassault Systèmes in Northern Europe. “This can be done by setting short to mid-term goals to help reach long-term ambitions, as well as building upon the already accelerated adoption of technology to reduce their footprint and increase their handprint, making positive impacts on the environment and communities.”
Trouillet believes those companies that act now can still achieve a competitive advantage. “Eco-conscious consumers will continue to vote with their wallets, meaning businesses failing to take it seriously will lose revenue and struggle to keep pace with rivals,” she says.
Peter Bakker, president and chief executive of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, concurs. But he says a new wave of leadership thinking is imperative. “Three radical and strategic business mindset shifts – reinvention, resilience and regeneration – are critical to realising a sustainable and inclusive society,” the Dutchman says.
Bakker concludes: “It is time to move beyond ambition and targets and make net zero real, within the next decade.”
This article first appeared in Raconteur’s Sustainable Business report, published in April 2021
For the future of humanity, society must grasp this opportunity to evolve, rethink broken systems, remove corrosive business cultures, and right deep inequalities
While it is distressing and lamentable that the chaos spread by the coronavirus pandemic has squeezed the life out of countless businesses across the gamut of industry and restricted liberties we all previously took for granted, I am optimistic that society will be reborn for the better. The darkest days will prove the catalyst to drive meaningful change for a brighter future, I sincerely hope.
Despite – or perhaps because of – being locked down, minds have been set free. Concepts that were considered radical at the start of 2020, such as universal basic income, have gained tremendous momentum. It has been liberating to discuss how to solve some of humanity’s most significant challenges, together. But the time for talking is over: we now need to act on the promises to improve life for more people and repair the planet.
The events of 2020 have exposed that society is gravely poorly, traditional systems are broken, and inequality in all its forms is growing. If the COVID-19 fallout has accelerated various trends and catapulted businesses into the digital era, now we need to reboot the world.
“The coronavirus pandemic has taken an X-ray of society and shown us where we are sick,” an Australia-based chief executive told me recently. “It’s also like a time machine and has taken us forward to where problems that were latent are now acute, whether that’s the glaring reality that to be successful businesses need to be as good at generating clicks as they are at bricks, or deep-rooted social inequality.”
It was galling to learn, via an Oxfam report published at the end of January, that the world’s ten wealthiest people according to Forbes – all men, bar one (Alice Walton, the only daughter of Walmart founder Sam Walton) – have seen their fortunes grow by $540 billion since mid-March 2020, when the pandemic took hold.
However, I sense there is a genuine groundswell to rebalance inequality, in all its forms. It won’t happen overnight, but there will be an inexorable and seismic shift to the point where it is no longer morally acceptable to turn a blind eye to, for instance, racism and gender disparity. The same goes for environmental issues.
One of the few pleasing long-term consequences of the pandemic is the proof of concept of collectivism: if we act together, we can achieve remarkable things. Millennials and younger generations weaned on social media have always considered themselves part of a global community. If we can apply that drive and discipline to matters like the environment, sustainability and equality, we can deliver colossal change.
We must begin thinking beyond ourselves, where we live, to create the sort of future that we all need. Whatever happens, if we go back to how things used to be and forget the tragedy – as with happened after the September 11 attacks – would be a huge failure. As a society, we must grasp this unique opportunity to take stock, look at what’s worked and what hasn’t, and move forward to address some of the most expansive cracks.
How lockdown has affected my working experience
As I’ve typed from home as a freelance journalist since 2014, there were no sweeping changes required when lockdown was enforced, fortunately. However, one key difference was that my family members were suddenly also around, and in particular my young son required homeschooling (and entertaining). Over the last year, it has been fascinating to chronicle the significant changes society has undergone so far. I have found, though, that not relying on the black and white of email and speaking to clients and contacts – thus allowing the time and space for nuance and being, well, more human – has greatly benefited both parties and strengthened bonds.
This article was first published in Beyond the bylines report by Farrer Kane in March 2021
Creativity often flourishes when people are together in the same place, but technology solutions can help whether at home or company headquarters
Even before the coronavirus pandemic, workspaces sought to maximise innovation and collaboration by introducing communal spaces, breakout areas, brainstorming pods and the like. Now remote or location-independent working has become more widespread, how can organisations ensure their offices remain a lightning rod for creativity?
It’s a puzzle that business leaders must urgently tackle. According to Nespresso research, over a third (34 per cent) of large enterprise businesses see themselves utilising co-working and collaborative spaces in the future. Organisations need to double down and make offices inviting, comfortable and collaborative spaces.
“Businesses can’t assume employees will flood back to the office in the long term,” says Rebecca Tully, managing director of inclusion and diversity at Accenture in the UK and Ireland. “Employees are increasingly looking for more flexibility from their employer. As such, the onus is on business leaders to rebuild trust with its employees when it comes to returning to the office, ensuring the environment is both safe and beneficial for them.”
Dr Susan Lund, partner at McKinsey Global Institute, says the tasks needed to be performed in an office have changed irreversibly because of the rise of remote working, the ubiquity of good wifi connectivity and the capabilities of tech devices. It is arguably more efficient for practical, task-based work to be performed at home. Meanwhile, creative and collaborative work is best done in the office.
“I can answer an email or write something from anywhere,” says Lund. “When people go into the office now they are not going to be sitting at desks in cubicles. The office, however, is important for creativity and collaborating, and also bringing on board and training new colleagues. The same is true for making business-critical decisions, serious negotiations and forming new relationships.”
In-office cross-pollination of ideas
Nicola Mendelsohn, vice president, Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), at Facebook, concurs. “When I started my career, I would dream that one day I’d get the big corner office on the eighth floor, but that’s no longer the case,” she says. “The spaces we have to co-create, to ideate, to bring people together need to be even bigger than they were before the coronavirus pandemic.”
Future smart technologies will soon be harnessed by workplaces to provide personalised environments able to be altered seamlessly from one mode to another
While existing physical offices are widely considered to be vital for collaboration, Adam Steel, strategic foresight editor at The Future Laboratory, believes these buildings might evolve to become what he calls “rotation offices”. He explains: “These spaces, owned by multiple companies but used by one at a time for weekly or monthly face-to-face meetings, would help employees retain a degree of tactile humanness with colleagues, resulting in a cross-pollination of ideas.
“Beyond design, future smart technologies will soon be harnessed by workplaces to provide personalised environments able to be altered seamlessly from one mode to another.”
It’s already something the workforce expects, according to research from Aruba Networks that reveals almost three quarters (72 per cent) of people think the future workplace should automatically adjust and update itself.
Companies that embrace these concepts, using technology to usher workers to take breaks in social spaces and encourage conviviality, will likely experience a boost in productivity too,” says Steel.
ComRes research demonstrates the impact social spaces can have on overall efficiency, with two thirds of workers (67 per cent) feeling more productive after a coffee break.
Steel adds: “Being based around conviviality, the bleeding edge between workspace and hospitality space is a natural one and will also inspire a new wave of hospitality-focused brands to develop their own co-working spaces, enabling the creations of connections between employees, fostering collaboration and creativity.”
Investing in collaboration tools
Thankfully for businesses whose headquarters are not co-working spaces, technology is making it easier to innovate as part of a dispersed team. “Collaboration solutions that foster productivity, from online meetings and videoconferencing, to instant messaging and content-sharing, can be used to maintain a high level of collaboration between employees and facilitate creativity, regardless of their location,” says Sion Lewis, vice president, EMEA, for remote IT specialists LogMeIn.
“We are likely to see an increasing number of IT professionals adopting artificial intelligence in their workflow to make their collaboration efforts smarter and more efficient.”
More than ever though, the office is vital for generating innovation. And remote workers should be encouraged to head in for meetings regularly, says Lee Penson, founder of PENSON, the innovative commercial architectural firm behind Google’s famous inflatable office space. He believes the office “needs to be somewhere that caters for all teams to support their creativity, whether it’s in-house or remotely”, he says.
“The simplicity of taking a group call on FaceTime with colleagues and the progress of conferencing on the move has developed significantly. These innovations join people together in the most basic way. But spaces are still facilitators for unlocking creativity for people and businesses; the cross-pollination of ideas between people happens when they’re together,” says Penson.
Lewis concludes: “Technology is an enabler, not the end-goal, for creativity. It removes the barriers of geographies, time zones and accessibility, and creates a limitless space where people and their creativity can flourish. Ultimately, tech enables us to drive innovation, wherever we are in the world.”
This article – sponsored by Nespresso – first appeared on Raconteur’s Return to the Workplace for SMEs report in March 2021
When Govia Thameslink Railway suffered a 95 per cent drop in footfall, chief financial officer Ian McLaren drove recovery by being open to innovation and investing in staff
Drag queens, diversity and inclusion, and data-driven decisions are unlikely to be among the first words you would associate with a typical chief financial officer (CFO). However, Govia Thameslink Railway’s Ian McLaren is far from a stereotypical CFO, although he argues no such thing exists in 2021.
As the 52-year-old cycling enthusiast, who took up his position at GTR in December 2017, can attest, the tumultuous events of the past year have elevated the role of CFOs and significantly expanded their list of responsibilities, across the board. “When I started at GTR, my remit was a lot simpler and I was focusing on a narrow scope of my skillset, whereas now I’m using a much broader range,” he says.
“Today, it’s more about the human side of things, thinking about very practical stuff: keeping almost 8,000 colleagues safe while being able to carry out their duties, alongside supporting the varying ambitions of stakeholders and looking for opportunities to create value.”
The inference is the train has left the station for those who still believe a CFO’s primary journey is counting the beans. Business continuity has been paramount through the coronavirus crisis and those in McLaren’s position, at their respective organisations, have become more central to steering strategy.
Considering GTR, which handles 250 locations and some of the busiest train stations in London, went from “moving over a million people” in and out of the capital on a normal day, pre-pandemic, to footfall crashing by 95 per cent when the first lockdown was enforced in late-March, it has been a mighty challenge to get the business back on track.
Broader range of skills required
Connecting with, and looking after, customers and staff alike has enabled McLaren to navigate a quicker route to recovery. “As an organisation, we are looking to build back better, greener and faster,” he says, “and part of that is drawing on the ability to listen and adapt.”
Today, it’s more about the human side of things, keeping colleagues safe while supporting the varying ambitions of stakeholders and looking for opportunities to create value
A good handle on technology also augments modern CFOs and, most importantly, their employers. McLaren has this in spades; his curriculum vitae lists two-year stints as CFO and head of finance at Nomad Digital and Digital Barriers, respectively. Indeed, he has been in the driving seat for GTR’s digital transformation journey, which began in 2017, and it “came into its own” last year, allowing colleagues to “work with technology in an untethered way”.
Further, through utilising products provided by technology partner Microsoft, McLaren and his fellow GTR strategists can gain “real-time insights that have led to data-driven decisions”. He says: “These insights have meant our colleagues can optimise their time on the ground and it has empowered people to do the job we’ve required of them, which has been ever-changing.”
Dealing with the pandemic has taught us that our ability to change can move at lightning pace, so over the next five years we need to become very good at rethinking everything we think we know
Since the first lockdown, that agility and flexibility, following the data, has been vital for GTR’s service operation and particularly for hospital staff and those they aid. “We realised there are nearly 70 NHS trusts across our network, and first-responders and critical workers relied on the train service, so we adapted our timetable predominantly for them,” says McLaren. “We became more of an off-peak rather than a commuter service. The old rush-hour peak has disappeared and now travel patterns are more evenly spread throughout the day.”
Value-creation officers: open to innovation
A suite of new digital applications has minimised disrupted running of services. These include an app, introduced in May, that indicates to train drivers and station staff how recently a long-lasting virucide, designed to stick to surfaces and kill viruses, including COVID-19, for up to 30 days, has been applied.
“It has given all our colleagues confidence about going into a clean workplace,” says McLaren. Another app allows GTR staff to access the latest Public Health England information about the pandemic and report sickness and absence from work, thereby limiting potential bottlenecks.
“Technology has helped us all throughout the pandemic and understanding technology is increasingly important for CFOs and others in executive positions,” he says. “I’m lucky because tech has been my background, but it’s essential to know the risks associated with technology and cybersecurity especially. I would encourage all organisations to think more like technology companies, but being technology-savvy certainly raises a CFO’s stock.
“Dealing with the pandemic has taught us that our ability to change can move at lightning pace, so over the next five years we need to become very good at rethinking everything we think we know.” McLaren, who has thrice cycled from Land’s End to John o’ Groats, owns ten bikes of various vintages, the oldest being a 1935 “speed racer”, and regularly clocks up 200 miles a week, finds strategy brainwaves often hit him when pedalling. The secret is being open to innovation and new ideas. “Some might think the finance director is there to say ‘no’ and it’s all about cost-cutting. But to me, it’s more about value creation; we are becoming value-creation officers,” he says, suggesting that adopting a “beginner’s mindset to everything” helps in the current CFO’s role.
Invest in employees
“If you consider yourself an expert then you are closed to many things,” he adds. “I try to approach things with novelty and understand the art of the possible.” Ultimately, the success or failure of an organisation is down to its employees, argues McLaren. “You have to understand the business and, more importantly, what makes its people tick.” Hence, he is passionate about diversity and inclusion, and keen to invest in and join events that “demonstrate my more human, fun side”.
For example, he and his daughter have recently enjoyed tuning in to virtual drag queen shows, featuring the amusingly monikered Annabelle Lecter, put on for GTR’s LGBT+ Network. “Spending a tiny amount on a diversity and inclusion event is nothing compared to the huge value it generates to us as a business,” says McLaren.
“It’s intangible, but you know you are creating something quite special when you see the brilliant reactions from colleagues, which then resonates with their service to customers.”
The anatomy of the modern CFO
The chief financial officer’s role has evolved somewhat since Ian McLaren gained his accountancy qualification over three decades ago; finance credentials alone are no longer sufficient.
“Today, finance roles need to be augmented with many more skills,” says Govia Thameslink Railway’s CFO. He suggests, in addition to being good with numbers, the modern CFO must understand legal and broader governance issues, and be technology savvy, not least to manage cybersecurity risks and data. On top of being able to structure commercial deals, they ought to be excellent negotiators too.
In terms of personality traits, the best CFOs are armed with “a good sense of humour, can understand and show humility, and have tenacity”, says McLaren. Further, given the business agility necessitated by the pace of change, they require a certain amount of creativity, plus an openness and a “growth mindset” that enables them “to question, listen and rethink” strategies and business models.
Being a courageous leader, who can communicate with and energise colleagues and those across the business, is increasingly valuable for a CFO. “Having good people skills is essential,” McLaren concludes. “This skill helps with negotiation and, if you can be authentic and intentional, it will inspire those around you.”
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Future CFO report in March 2021
Investing time, resources and money to create personalised and valuable customer experiences can reap big rewards, but there are challenges in aligning data for a business-wide strategy
Organisations that invest heavily to build a data-driven “single customer view”, enabling personalised experiences, are likely to reap huge rewards. And I can vouch for that.
At the risk of offending family and friends, by far the greatest highlight of a recent birthday was receiving a personalised celebratory email from the captain of the football club I have supported since I could kick a ball.
While it was a surprise to see his grinning portrait and accompanying message landing in my inbox, it triggered a giddy response. The feeling of being unique and valued overpowered any rational scepticism that my Premier League team’s superstar skipper had taken the time to congratulate my age milestone.
This nifty, cost-effective note, made possible because the club somehow knew my birth date, emboldened my trust and loyalty. I duly spent hundreds of pounds in the online shop on kits, mugs and hats, and marked with a flag the email, which I often click on when needing either a mood lift or guidance.
Businesses will score if they use real-time data to communicate with customers at appropriate times, and it comes across as sincere and authentic, says Adam Spearing, chief technology officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Salesforce. “Brands can build trust through meaningful interactions with their customers, anticipating their needs and delighting them,” he says.
“Having a 360-degree customer view is crucial for enabling brands to have more personal and contextually aware interactions with customers. The more valuable an interaction is for a customer, the more inclined they will be to continue to trust a brand to use their data appropriately.”
Spearing warns there is “a fine line”, though: “Only if brands use the data respectfully will they gain that trust.” Herein lies the main challenge with building a single customer view.
Slow and steady wins trust
There are myriad benefits to investing in digital identity specifically to build a single customer view by unifying all relevant data into a centralised profile. Done well, aside from improving all-important customer trust and loyalty, it can guide marketing, boost customer service, better model consumer habits and, therefore, generate more accurate predictions and increase revenue.
Yet there are many pitfalls to dodge to obtain this view. For instance, brands need to connect all historical data with real-time behavioural data, which means digital identities should grow organically over time.
“Achieving a single customer view remains a huge challenge for many businesses due to the multiple touchpoints the average customer faces when dealing with an organisation and the rapid rate at which data is generated,” says Gavin Laugenie, head of strategy and insight at dotdigital, an omnichannel marketing automation platform.
He points to a recent Experian study that found 92 per cent of companies do not have access to a single customer view. Laugenie says this “staggering” figure is mostly because the many touchpoints result in fragmented and siloed data. “The key to getting around this is by adopting technology that not only allows you to communicate with all of your data touchpoints, but pool the data and enable you to use it quickly and easily,” he says.
A single customer view will provide the foundation from which an organisation can “easily read the data and plot the right messages to send individuals as they navigate their unique journeys with you”, says Laugenie. Once armed with the data, it is crucial not to bombard customers, though.
“It’s a continuous process and that mutual sharing process will generate trust, which is essential, especially for older online shoppers,” he adds. “Slow and steady will win the race.”
Rising appetite for personalisation
Benoit Soucaret, group creative director at LiveArea, a global customer experience agency, concurs. “Good personalisation shouldn’t appear personalised at all,” he says. “Instead it should appear fortuitous, delivering value to a consumer at the right time, in the right place, in the right way.
“It is less about selling consumers products and more about complementing their life experiences. At no point can it appear disconcerting, intrusive or annoying.”
There appears to be a rising appetite for personalisation, according to research published by the Data & Marketing Association (DMA). Some 39 per cent of consumers are “personalisation fans”, a group whose members prefer offers to reflect their interests instead of being surprising. A further 33 per cent appreciate both personalised offers and those that are more random. Only 28 per cent do not favour personalisation.
“This strong desire for personalisation is encouraging for brands wanting to strengthen their relationship with existing customers,” says Tim Bond, head of insight at the DMA. But he identifies something else brands seeking to build a single customer view must beware: poor quality or misused data.
Consider how, in January 2020, Aviva addressed its entire email base as “Michael”, proving that mistakes can creep in, even with basic data. “The assumptions, errors and insults will be amplified with each step more personal,” says Tom Kennedy, M&C Saatchi’s senior art director.
Bond agrees: “For a centralised profile to have meaningful value, businesses must have a system in place that can analyse data on previous interactions and combine it with insights from real-time user journeys. Only then can businesses truly understand a customer’s preferences and values.
“Having the right data, consent and preference management processes in place is imperative for businesses that want to guarantee and gain the maximum value for and from their customer data.”
Connecting online and offline data
In particular, marketers understand the merits of a single customer view, according to another recent DMA study. Such a system enables brands to offer more personalised experiences (45 per cent of respondents recognised this as a benefit) and increased transparency (44 per cent gave this the thumbs up). “These are two key factors in fostering long-term customer loyalty and trust,” says Bond.
Consumer expectations in this area are also rising. Some 78 per cent now expect consistent interactions across departments and four in five won’t buy from companies they don’t trust, a report from Salesforce shows.
Given the uptick in demand for customer personalisation, there is an urgent need for businesses of all sizes to evolve for the digital age. “The growing prevalence of ecommerce and multichannel customer journeys through 2020 only increased the importance of understanding your customers’ digital identity,” says Matthew Avery, enterprise sales manager at Infinity, a cloud-based call-tracking platform.
Avery argues that many businesses are not taking advantage of the technology now available to connect online and offline data, including telephone calls and point-of-sale systems. “If you’re currently only monitoring the touchpoints where customers finally convert, you risk neglecting your understanding, and optimisation, of pivotal engagements higher up the sales funnel,” he says.
However, Megan Jones, senior strategist at R/GA London, worries that some larger companies, where departments work in silos, are simply not set up to maximise the potential of a single customer view. “Legacy organisations struggle to execute these grand visions,” she says. “This failure can be caused by many reasons, including a lack of digital talent or poor data proficiency. Ultimately, it comes down to a lack of strategy and understanding.”
Clearly, for those who have their sights set on crafting a single customer view, the road to glory is fraught with challenges. To help guide the way, perhaps business leaders can make use of an inspirational personalised email from their favourite football team’s captain, too.
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Digital Identity report in February 2021
Governing in advance may seem like something from science fiction, but by using artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, experts say it’s possible
When the coronavirus pandemic hit UK businesses in the spring, forcing organisations to lock down, it required open minds to grasp technology and reimagine ways of working. Government and the public sector sought to solve challenges old and new, including rushing through essential financial support to companies and their furloughed staff, and improve service delivery and data-driven decision-making by dialling up investment in tech, especially artificial intelligence (AI).
After all, with predictive analytics, governments can conceivably prevent, rather than cure, issues or respond to citizens’ needs before they arise. But how far off are we from governing in advance? And what are the ethical implications of such a system?
Around the world, there are numerous narrow-scope use cases of authorities using predictive analytics to life-saving and life-enhancing effect. In Durham, North Carolina, the police department reported a 39 per cent drop in violent crime from 2007 to 2014 after using AI to observe patterns and interrelations in criminal activities and to identify hotspots, thus enabling quicker interventions.
Also in the United States, AI has helped reduce human trafficking by locating and rescuing thousands of victims. Knowing that approximately 75 per cent of child trafficking involves online advertisements, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developed a platform using software that monitors suspicious online ads, detects code words, and infers connections between them and trafficking rings.
Further afield, the Indonesian government has partnered with a local tech startup to better predict natural disasters. By analysing historical flood data, collected from sensors, and accessing citizen-complaint data, prone areas can now be quickly identified, speeding up the emergency response and improving management.
Actionable intelligence and data scientists needed
In the UK, the public sector has much work to do, and requires people to do it, if governing in advance is to become a reality, says David Shrier, adviser to the European Parliament in the Centre for AI. “More investment in predictive analytics will help with risk mitigation, although this exacerbates the already extant shortage of data scientists who can develop and manage these models.”
Predicting trends through data analysis is vital for governments and has been for some time. “Forecasting approaches using historical data to build mathematical predictive models have been core to government economic policy for decades,” says Andrew Hood, chief executive of Edinburgh-headquartered analytics consultancy Lynchpin. “Whether those models allow governments to govern in advance effectively depends on to what extent they have enough political motivation and capital to apply the model outputs directly.
It’s too tempting to see predictive analytics as a magical answer, a black box that can solve all our challenges
“Arguably, there has been no shortage of predictive models kicking around as the pandemic took hold. However, the pandemic also points to the reality of a lot of prediction and forecasting: it is not about having one crystal ball to rely on, rather a set of predictions based on the best data to hand that need to be reviewed constantly, updated and critically applied.”
Hood stresses that skilled humans must remain in the driving seat and warns of the dangers of solely relying on technology to steer choices. “As with any application of predictive analytics,” he says, “it is the integration of those models within the context of governing and the processes of human decision-making that is the critical success factor.”
Public trust in AI must be won
Futurist Tom Cheesewright, whose job is to predict trends, posits that predictive analytics is “one subset of a wider array of foresight tools for scanning near and far horizons”. Should governments be making better use of such tools? “Absolutely,” he answers. “But I think it’s too tempting with predictive analytics to see this as a magical answer, a black box that can solve all our challenges. It’s not like Minority Report-style predictive justice. It’s about pulling policy levers in time to dodge obstacles or maximise opportunities.”
Echoing Hood’s advice, Cheesewright adds: “Foresight needs time and investment of cash and political capital, both of which are in short supply in our volatile, post-austerity era.”
Nick McQuire, of specialist technology market intelligence and advisory firm CCS Insight, says: “Historically, the public sector has been behind most sectors in terms of maturity in deploying and investing in AI,” but senses the purse strings are being loosened. “We are starting to see more AI applications in the public sector: chatbots, contact centre assistance and demand forecasting,” says the senior vice president and head of enterprise research.
AI has been excoriated in the UK media this year, though, making citizens and politicians wary of the tech and by extension predictive analytics. “Public confidence in AI is not high,” McQuire concedes. “To build trust in AI, organisations are now having to double-down on areas like data governance and security, privacy, explainability and ethics.”
It didn’t help that prime minister Boris Johnson, the most powerful politician in the UK, blamed the Ofqual exam-marking fiasco in August on “a mutant algorithm”, says Dr Jeni Tennison, vice president and chief strategy adviser at the Open Data Institute. “We have to recognise people are at the heart of designing algorithms; it’s not that algorithms go off and mutate on their own and we have no control over them,” she says. “We need to ensure there is a good end-to-end process that recognises the AI isn’t always going to get things right.”
Tennison, a fervent supporter of open data, believes those in the public sector must take care of how they deploy the technology. And, as such, predictive analytics, if applied, should be closely managed. “Algorithms that are used by the public sector have a much bigger impact on people’s lives. Government has a particular responsibility to make sure it uses AI and data well,” she says.
“Right now we’re operating from a position where people distrust the use of algorithms. The public sector has to be very proactive and win that trust.”
Given the public scepticism around AI, and the paucity of data scientists to make best use of predictive analytics, it seems we are some way off the UK governing in advance. Ethically, perhaps that is no bad thing.
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Public Sector Technology report in December 2020
Cybercrime is always distressing for those affected, but when the resultant losses come from the public purse, it must be taken even more seriously
Coronavirus has coursed through every facet of our lives, and society and business have already paid a colossal price to restrict its flow. We will be counting the cost for years, if not decades. And while people have become almost anaesthetised to the enormous, unprecedented sums of support money administered by the government, it was still painful to learn, in October, that taxpayers could face losing up to £26 billion on COVID-19 loans, according to an alarming National Audit Office report.
Given the likely scale of abuse, it raises the question of how authorities should go about eliminating public sector fraud? Could artificial intelligence (AI) fraud detection be the answer?
Admittedly, the rapid deployment of financial-aid schemes, when the public sector was also dealing with a fundamental shift in service delivery, created opportunities for both abuse and risk of systematic error. Fraudsters have taken advantage of the coronavirus chaos. But their nefariousness is not limited to the public sector.
Indeed, the latest crime figures published at the end of October by the Office for National Statistics show that, in the 12 months to June, there were approximately 11.5 million offences in England and Wales. Some 51 per cent of them were made up of 4.3 million incidents of fraud and 1.6 million cybercrime events, a year-on-year jump of 65 per cent and 12 per cent respectively.
Cybercrime gold rush – counting the cost
Jim Gee, national head of forensic services at Crowe UK, a leading audit, tax, advisory and risk firm, says: “Even more worryingly, while the figures are for a 12-month period, a comparison with the previous quarterly figures shows this increase has occurred in the April-to-June period of 2020, the three months after the COVID-19 health and economic crisis hit. The size of the increase needed in a single quarter to result in a 65 per cent increase over the whole 12 months could mean actual increases of up to four times this percentage.”
In terms of eliminating public sector fraud, Mike Hampson, managing director at consultancy Bishopsgate Financial, fears an expensive game of catch-up. “Examples of misuse have increased over the last few months,” he says. “These include fraudulent support-loan claims and creative scams such as criminals taking out bounce-back loans in the name of car dealerships, in an attempt to buy high-end sports cars.”
AI fraud detection and machine-learning algorithms should be put in the driving seat to pump the brakes on iniquitous activity, he argues. “AI can certainly assist in carrying out basic checks and flagging the most likely fraud cases for a human to review,” Hampson adds.
John Whittingdale, media and data minister, concedes that the government “needs to adapt and respond better”, but says AI and machine-learning are now deemed critical to eliminating public sector fraud. “As technology advances, it can be used for ill, but at the same time we can adapt new technology to meet that threat,” he says. “AI has a very important part to play.”
Teaming up with technology leaders
Technology is already vital in eliminating public sector fraud at the highest level. In March, the Cabinet Office rolled out Spotlight, the government grants automated due-diligence tool built on a Salesforce platform. Ivana Gordon, head of the government grants management function COVID-19 response at the Cabinet Office, says Spotlight “speeds up initial checks by processing thousands of applications in minutes, replacing manual analysis that, typically, can take at least two hours per application”. The tool draws on open datasets from Companies House, the Charity Commission and 360Giving, plus government databases that are not available to the public.
“Spotlight has proven robust and reliable,” says Gordon, “supporting hundreds of local authorities and departments to administer COVID-19 funds quickly and efficiently. To date Spotlight has identified around 2 per cent of payment irregularities, enabling grant awards to be investigated and payments halted to those who are not eligible.”
We need to watch how the technology fits into the whole process. AI doesn’t get things right 100 per cent of the time
She adds that Spotlight is one of a suite of countermeasure tools, including AI fraud detection, developed with technology companies, and trialled and implemented across the public sector to help detect and prevent abuse and error.
Besides, critics shouldn’t be too hard on the public sector, argues David Shrier, adviser to the European Parliament in the Centre for AI, because it was “understandably dealing with higher priorities, like human life, which may have distracted somewhat from cybercrime prevention”. He believes that were it not for the continued investment in the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the cost of fraudulent activity would have been significantly higher.
Work to be done to prevent fraud
Greg Day, vice president and chief security officer, Europe, Middle East and Africa, at Palo Alto Networks, who sits on Europol’s cybersecurity advisory board, agrees. Day points to the success of the government’s Cyber Essentials digital toolkit. He thinks, however, that the NCSC must “further specialise, tailor its support and advice, and strengthen its role as a bridge into information both from the government, but also trusted third parties, because cyber is such an evolving space”.
The public sector has much more to do in combating cybercrime and fraud prevention on three fronts, says Peter Yapp, who was deputy director of incident management at the NCSC up to last November. It must encourage more reporting, make life difficult for criminals by upping investment in AI fraud detection and reallocate investigative resources from physical to online crime, he says.
Yapp, who now leads law firm Schillings’ cyber and information security team, says a good example of an initiative that has reduced opportunity for UK public sector fraud is the NCSC’s Mail Check, which monitors 11,417 domains classed as public sector. “This is used to set up and maintain good domain-based message authentication, reporting and conformance (DMARC), making email spoofing much harder,” he says. Organisations that deploy DMARC can ensure criminals do not successfully use their email addresses as part of their campaigns.”
While such guidance is welcome, there are potential problems with embracing tech to solve the challenge of eliminating public sector fraud, warns Dr Jeni Tennison, vice president and chief strategy adviser at the Open Data Institute. If unchecked, AI fraud detection could be blocking people and businesses that are applying for loans in good faith, or worse, she says.
“We need to watch out how the technology and AI fit into the whole process,” says Tennison. “As we have seen this year, with the Ofqual exam farrago, AI doesn’t get things right 100 per cent of the time. If you assume it is perfect, then when it doesn’t work, it will have a very negative impact on the people who are wrongly accused or badly affected to the extent they, and others, are fearful of using public sector services.”
There are certainly risks with blindly following any technology, concurs Nick McQuire, senior vice president and head of enterprise research at CCS Insight. But the public sector simply must arm itself with AI or the cost to the taxpayer will be, ultimately, even more significant. “Given the scale of the security challenge, particularly for cash-strapped public sector organisations that lack the resources and skills to keep up with the current threat environment, AI, warts and all, is going to become a crucial tool in driving automation into this environment to help their security teams cope.”
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Public Sector Technology report in December 2020
What happens to Black Friday when customers can’t jostle in the aisles? Or Christmas shopping season when we can’t hit the high street? Experts think these dates will become part of a whole new online retail calendar
Will it be a happy Christmas for UK retailers? After the coronavirus pandemic squeezing the life out of the high street, they certainly deserve some cheer. Data shows their fortunes could be resurrected by ecommerce. But given the shift to online, and the evolution of shopping habits, what does it mean for the traditional retail calendar?
New data from Adobe indicates activity around key retail dates will begin earlier, and peak retail occasions will be higher and more prolonged. According to the software giant’s international president Paul Robson, online holiday sales will “shatter all previous records”.
This is supported by Adobe’s projections that, in America alone, Black Friday will generate $10 billion (£7.5 billion) in online sales. “That’s a 39 per cent year-on-year increase,” says Robson. “Cyber Monday will remain the biggest online shopping day of the year,” he continues, adding that $12.7 billion (£9.6 billion) is expected to be spent in the United States, up 35 per cent on last year.
Robson says: “Our research into the online shopping habits of UK consumers during lockdown found that while they were up to four times more likely to buy from marketplaces like Amazon, it’s not always at the expense of smaller independent retailers. Where marketplaces may have the edge when it comes to convenience and speed, shoppers have also shown they are keen to support local, independent retailers where they can.
“The extended shopping period, coupled with the ability of independent retailers to deliver great, personalised digital experiences, could see them have a happier Christmas period than many might expect.”
Looking beyond traditional retail peaks
Google data also implies the retail calendar needs updating. “As a direct result of COVID-19, we have witnessed heightened search queries for online retail this year that will lead to a new baseline for Black Friday,” says Becky Power, director of consumer retail and technology at Google UK. “Google searches for ‘early Black Friday deals’ were up by 150 per cent versus November 2019.” Further, Google searches for “Christmas shopping” are up 1,800 per cent compared to the same period last year.
“The message is clear: consumers are looking beyond traditional peaks in the retail calendar as they continue to enjoy the flexibility of browsing online,” says Power, who points out that Enders research estimates there will be an additional £4.5 billion-worth of online sales in 2020.
Retail owners must keep pace with customer expectations and arm themselves with technology that enables multi-channel personalisation and improves data analysis. “Given that a continually growing number of consumers are already shopping online for traditional peaks, retailers will have to adapt to be ready for this rise in demand,” says Power. “Digital tools are imperative for applying product promotions easily and quickly, boosting retailers’ visibility to new customers, and can uncover meaningful insights from their performance.”
Kyle Harbinson, of global technology consultants REPL Group, agrees. “To reduce the impact of the troughs, retailers need to connect with and understand the circumstances of their customers, in a dynamically changing environment,” the consulting partner says. “We are in uncharted territory, so retailers need to pivot from instinct-driven decision-making to a data-driven culture.”
Taking steps to bolster the online offering
Warnings are being heeded. Capgemini’s annual Holiday Shopping Survey reports that while more than a third (36 per cent) of UK retailers expect an increase in holiday sales compared to previous years, 91 per cent have taken deliberate steps to bolster their online offering. Almost half (47 per cent) have improved their ecommerce propositions and 52 per cent will offer more generous discounts both online and in-store.
The benefit ecommerce brings allows you to create and build your own peak retail event
However, Dr Rajesh Bhargave, associate professor of marketing at Imperial College Business School, cautions that one issue retailers will face post-COVID-19 is the dilemma of “sticky prices”. “Consumers tend to remember what they would have paid previously for a product, so would view price increases as unjust in poor economic conditions,” he says. “Similarly, cutting prices would erode pricing power.”
No retailers should be discouraged from embracing ecommerce, however, stresses author and business consultant Erica Wolfe-Murray. “The hype surrounding traditional retail peak days has a halo effect across the board whether you are actively marketing or not,” she says. “But the benefit ecommerce brings allows you to create and build your own peak retail event. Think ‘Founder’s Day’, ‘Dress-Up Day’, or whatever.”
Embracing technology is business-critical
Technology can also help with the morphing of traditional peak retail periods, from dealing with stock management and the supply chain, to predicting when more staff might be required. Or with improving the delivery process, posits Mike Hancox, chief executive of UK couriers Yodel. “The five months stretching from November to the end of March have long been the busiest period for those in logistics as they encompass retail’s traditional peaks of Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day,” he says.
“This year we’re expecting Christmas to be higher in intensity and longer in duration than previous years, but a greater increase in overall volumes means the fluctuations seen in previous years could be less pronounced in the future.”
Yodel has developed a parcel-scanning app to streamline the delivery process. “It gives more flexibility to the growing numbers of self-employed couriers out on the road who can download the app on their own devices rather than having to get up to speed with a handheld terminal.”
Striving to reduce touchpoints and frictions through tech is now business critical, argues Professor Laurent Muzellec, founder and director of Trinity Centre for Digital Business. “Big digital players such as Netflix, Amazon and Apple use artificial intelligence to produce an effortless experience; this should be a source of inspiration for all retailers,” he says.
Retailers that act on this advice and tailor their offerings, both online and offline, look set to have a happy Christmas and beyond.
This article was originally published in Raconteur’s Future of Retail report in November 2020
The United Kingdom European Union membership referendum was inevitable when David Cameron won the 2015 general election, having promised such a vote during his campaign. Coincidentally, 2015 was when branchless challenger banks Monzo and Revolut were founded, with Starling launching a year earlier.
While the direction of travel was established five years ago, the combination of Brexit and now COVID-19 has quickened the drive for older financial institutions to transform their business and operating models, because it’s clear: the future is digital.
Technology is enabling fintechs to enter the banking market, and thrive. Experts predict traditional banks will have to partner with tech organisations to keep pace with developments.
A study of 200 UK and European banking executives by Marqeta – an open-API card issuing and processing platform that MasterCard has recently invested in – found that in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic over three-quarters (78 per cent) of banks have been forced to change their future banking strategy.
Some 72 per cent of those surveyed are planning to grow the number of in-branch digital services, and two-thirds will invest more in digital banking and services. Further, nine in 10 respondents (89 per cent) says the COVID-19 situation has “drastically increased” the speed of change in banking from years to months.
Max Chuard, chief executive of Geneva-based banking software fintech Temenos, says: “Uncertainty is a catalyst for innovation. The 2020s were already set to be the decade for digital banking transformation. But now the coronavirus crisis has accelerated this process. It has made the need for advanced banking technologies – like artificial intelligence, cloud and SaaS – even greater.”
Defining moment for the banking industry
The Temenos CEO points to his organisation’s global survey that shows almost half of the respondents (45 per cent) say their strategic response to the rapidly changing banking landscape is to build a “true digital ecosystem”. He adds: “It’s a defining moment for the banking industry, and those who can harness the potential of digital technology will shape the future.”
Michael Plimsoll, industry head of financial services at computer software giant Adobe, thinks the same. “Banks have to ensure they keep pace with digital-first challenger banks, such as Monzo or Starling, to deliver new experiences that both enhance and complement their bricks-and-mortar branches,” he says. “This has included implementing new technologies within apps and websites that enable customers to perform tasks previously exclusive to the branch, like cashing cheques or remote meetings with advisors.”
This need to evolve banking operations provides an opportunity to streamline typically time-intensive tasks, such as setting up an account or applying for a loan, Plimsoll says. “As an example, TSB implemented digital signature technologies using Adobe Sign to allow customers to carry out important processes from their own home, moving over 15,000 account sign-ups that would normally require a trip to the branch,” he adds.
That convenience will be central to winning customers, believes Aaron Archer, chief executive and founder of London-headquartered challenger bank Finndon. “Digital banks will see a major increase in their market share compared to high street banks, due to their lack of flexibility to adapt to market conditions, and customers will be seeking greater opportunities to save.”
He wouldn’t be surprised if big tech firms, including Apple and Google, begin to “offer banking products to their customer base to create a robust ecosystem”. Archer adds: “You will see an increase of mergers and acquisitions between tech firms and traditional banks looking to stay relevant.”
Sophia La Vesconte, a fintech lawyer at Linklaters, agrees. “With increasing digitalisation, we are likely to see a growth in outsourcing arrangements between the financial sector and technology service providers.” However, she warns: “Regulators across the globe are quite concerned about the sector becoming overly dependent on a small number of – unregulated – technology companies.”
This article was first published in Raconteur’s Future of Banking report in November 2020
Being self-employed has always involved some insecurity, but as the coronavirus pandemic sweeps away potential work, financial support for this vital part of the workforce has never been more urgent
When disaster strikes, who protects the unprotected? Three years ago, LV= calculated that just 4 per cent of self-employed workers in the UK had income protection cover. The insurance firm warned, with eerie prescience, of a “heightened risk of a financial crisis”.
At a conservative estimate, more than four million members of the UK’s self-employed workforce did not have relevant insurance when the coronavirus pandemic began to suffocate the economy. And now that they are feeling the squeeze, having complained about inadequate financial support from the government, many are so cash strapped, it is hard to justify paying insurance premiums.
The plight of Dani, a Preston-based freelance lighting technician, is all too typical. On March 17, a day after prime minister Boris Johnson announced lockdown plans, she was due to begin her dream job. “Literally ten minutes after that announcement, the email came through from the theatre explaining ‘we can’t continue’,” she says.
The 31 year old has fallen through every financial crack and only receives Jobseeker’s Allowance. But at £73 a week, it doesn’t cover her bills. With Dani’s partner being made redundant, the outlook is bleak. “I don’t even feel like we’re surviving,” she says.
Self-employed musician, composer and sound engineer David, who lives in Perth, Scotland, qualified for the government’s COVID-19 Self-Employment Income Support Scheme, but he too is struggling to cope financially.
David and his wife, a care worker, haven’t bought anything non-essential since March and, to reduce petrol costs, their car has remained stationary. Despite tightening their belts, this has not been enough to prevent having to dip into their savings to pay the bills.
“The events industry folded overnight,” says David. “That’s my entire income gone. What am I going to do? Have I got any transferable skills?”
It is a particularly challenging time for those in the live events industry, which depends on self-employed workers with niche skills. Conal Dodds, who co-founded Bristol-headquartered Crosstown Concerts in 2016 and had staged more than 300 music events within 18 months, has already written off next year.
The events industry folded overnight. That’s my entire income gone. What am I going to do? Have I got any transferable skills?
“This situation has highlighted that the self-employed, freelancers, zero-hours contract workers have no safety net,” he says. “We need to recognise the importance of these workers and look to protect them in the future.”
Deepening the finance crisis for the self-employed
Those self-employed workers whose industries are still open for business feel pressure to keep working regardless, according to Nesta research. Some 22 per cent of self-employed, 29 per cent of sole traders and 30 per cent of gig workers agree that if they caught COVID-19 and had to self-isolate, they fear they’d lose their job.
In mid-October, the Office for National Statistics showed the UK’s self-employed workforce had shrunk to 4.56 million, and fallen by 240,000 in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2019.
Derek Cribb, chief executive of the Association of Independent Professionals and the Self-Employed, laments the record drop to 2015 levels. Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the UK had experienced a consistent trend towards higher self-employment. “At the start of this year, there were over five million self-employed people in the UK, up from 3.2 million in 2000, representing 15.3 per cent of all employment,” says Cribb.
He argues the new figures are evidence of the “devastating impact of the gaps in government support for the self-employed during the first wave of the pandemic” and reflect the critical need for better solutions. “In times of recession, the self-employed are key to driving recovery,” says Cribb, “but the sector is now struggling to save itself, let alone the economy.”
Mike Parkes, technical director at GoSimpleTax, worries that the financial pressures facing self-employed workers will soon ratchet up. He predicts a “double bubble” in January, as his organisation’s research suggests 56 per cent of people opted to defer payment to HM Revenue & Customs. Many self-employed workers will have to settle tax liabilities for the 2019-20 tax year and the first payment on account due for 2020-21.
“Unless you have your house in order by January 31, and sufficient funds to cover all tax liabilities, a deferral could create a perfect storm,” says Parkes. “What’s more, once that date passes, HMRC will not hesitate to reimpose the interest charges, penalties and collection procedures usually in place.”
Bleak outlook for the hardest hit
Can insurtechs or traditional insurers come to the rescue? Andy Chapman, chief executive of insurance provider The Exeter, acknowledges “the self-employed are among those hardest hit” by COVID-19 fallout. “Despite the perks and flexibility of self-employment, the reality is they are not protected in ways their full-time counterparts are,” he says.
The Exeter’s research indicates that workers in this sector have a stark lack of savings. Almost a fifth (17 per cent) have no personal savings to fall back on and 35 per cent don’t save anything in a typical month. Chapman reports The Exeter’s Day 1 cover, permitting policyholders to claim after just three days off work due to illness or injury, has proven popular, with more than 5,000 applications during lockdown.
Is technology the answer to freelancer insurance?
Now is the time for insurers and governments alike to embrace tech-driven solutions, urges Freddy Macnamara, founder and chief executive of flexible car insurance provider Cuvva. The insurance industry “must modernise its processes and products to better support millions of people’s changing needs” and adapt for the on-demand generation, he says.
“More affordable and fair insurance products and services to protect the self-employed community, bolstering the right level of support, will encourage growth in the sector, which is critical in the economic downturn,” says Macnamara, pointing out that Cuvva provides car insurance by the hour, week or month. “It’s not surprising that insurance providers offering flexibility and a better product market fit are thriving.”
Chris Kaye, co-founder and chief executive of Sherpa, an insurtech organisation offering personal risk management, agrees. “Drewberry has a nice angle focused on freelancers as a more traditional broker and Dinghy has picked up on the need for flexibility in cover that is important to freelancers,” he says. “I also really like what Zego has done, embedding insurance into the gig-economy platforms to make it a seamless part of the worker experience.”
Collective Benefits, a London-based insurtech startup, is similarly working with leading gig-economy platforms. “Providing benefits and protections for workers is a win-win,” says Anthony Beilin, co-founder and chief executive, who reveals the companies his organisation works with have seen a 17-fold increase in engagement.
With the government unable, or unwilling, to offer greater support for self-employed workers, the onus is on organisations and those within the insurance industry to collaborate and provide a lifeline. Otherwise, millions will sink.
The article was first published in Raconteur’s Future of Insurance report in September 2020
Oliver Pickup 