Category: Blog

5.30 AM, on a crispy morning, year 2030. Jason gets out of bed and walks into the bathroom. Lights turn on automatically and Alexa says, “Good Morning Jason, here is your calendar for today…” By the time he reaches for his toothbrush, Alexa is already reading the latest news for the day and the traffic and weather conditions, exactly the way he set his preference. Dang, my after-shave is almost finished, let me squeeeeze the last bit out of the tube. “Alexa, pause. BUY my favourite after-shave (favourite is already preset to ‘Gillette after-shave gel – sensitive skin’ on Amazon) and continue”. Alexa continues with updates on global financial news, the Collingwood football club score from the game last night, stock prices for Apple, Vanguard ETF and BHP Billiton, travel time to the office and rain forecast for the day. “Accident on the freeway, your trip will have an additional drive time of 30 minutes Jason”, warns Alexa. “Forget the brekky, I’ll grab one at the café near work. Gotta run now or I’m going be late for my 9 O’clock meeting”, Jason thinks to himself. “Alexa, in 15 minutes, START the TESLA and ACTIVATE fastest route to my OFFICE, OPEN the GARAGE and READ me in the car, all news on market share and announcements, total employees in Australia, and share prices for last 10 years for BHP Billiton and any news articles on Andrew Stewart Mackenzie, CEO of BHP Billiton”. “Turn home lights OFF in 16 minutes”. Jason is a Sales Manager in an IT Company who has a C-suite meeting with one of his major accounts today and this was a typical morning for him.

The days of reading the morning newspaper over a cuppa is well and truly over. From a face-less newspaper subscriber to ‘David who has a 12-month subscription to the newsletter with interests in Finance, Cricket and Tech gadgets’ is how intimately businesses know their customers. Customers still exist, their eyeballs have just moved to new places. If you already look away from the TV (to your phone) when an Ad comes on, or watch Netflix to get away from Ads, or read news from the online edition of the Financial Times, you know where the eyeballs have moved to. Consumer behaviours have evolved and will continue to do so, hence the need for products and services to adapt and ‘live’ where the consumers live to be consumed the way customers want to consume them.

Will Everitt, Head of Product and Technology, Pacific Magazines, discussed the transformation to a product-thinking organisation with the values of a technology start-up at a recent CIO Leaders Summit Australia in Melbourne facilitated by Focus Network. Yahoo took on the digital rights for Pacific Magazines in 2006 as part of the formation of Yahoo7, which is a joint venture between Yahoo and Seven West Media. This meant that Pacific Magazines was focused mainly on print with no digital DNA for a decade. In 2016, Pacific Magazines brought the digital rights back in-house from Yahoo7. He shared the epic journey of how a magazine publisher became a media technology company.

“We focused on 4 areas – Product, Process, People and Technology”, says Will emphasizing the need for a plan in the absence of which we plan to fail or make ourselves extinct.

• Product – Identifying the consumer behaviours and defining product strategies around them are keys to successful transformation. Mobile, Video and Data Analytics were three main pillars of this strategy. Consumer trends are heavily increasing on mobile, people are time-poor and want to consume content on the go. A mobile first strategy is key to success with focus on unique value propositions. The video advertising spend growth rate is at, and continues to grow at, double-digit figures. The dollars are there – so we needed to provide inventory to capitalise on this demand. Placing the audience at the heart of everything we do. Maximise the value of our audience to improve monetisation. Developing concepts targeted at audience growth among high value consumers. Data is the key asset. Finding it, analysing it, consolidating it and monetising it is paramount.  Get data in one place and create services to dynamically expose information.
• Process – We had clear roadmaps which everyone signed up to with regular innovations days.
• People – We brought in new talent, re-booted the organisation and established a supportive culture. This created a high performing team that drove agile adoption.
• Technology – We introduced the right operational infrastructure to support rapid development. This enabled to establish a scalable and high quality platform with speed to market. Strategically embracing the cloud-enabled infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, Test Automation (unit and e2e) triggered from the build server and Continuous delivery by automating integration and deployment resulted in an unprecedented transformation of the Pacific Magazines business.

“Focus on these aspects and change into a Tech savvy, high performing , startup like organisation to execute the vision for growth and success”, concluded Will in his engaging and thought-provoking session at the CIO-CISO Leaders Summit on how companies need to find their inner technology mojo to ensure survival in the fast changing marketplace.

“If I had 9 hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend the first 6 sharpening my axe” – Abraham Lincoln

6.30 PM, a cloud-less night in 2030. Jason returns home. He has been thinking about getting married. Throw in voice instructions from wife and kids into the Alexa algorithm, aaahh!. “Welcome home Jason”, says Alexa interrupting his thought train. “Playing recording of the Boston Red Sox game you missed today” informed Alexa while the TV turns on and his attention is completely diverted into the game. “GO XANDER (Bogaerts)!”, yelled Jason, settling down into his recliner with a highball glass of Jack Daniels neat. The wedding and kids and their toys can wait for another day.

Focus Network is a leading B2B event company that builds and creates C level communities throughout the APAC region for commercial connections to our clients to engage directly with C-level executives throughout a key number of verticals. Some of the excerpts in this article have been shared from one of our recent well-acclaimed CIO Leaders Summits Australia held in Melbourne

– Jilfy Joseph

For more information about the CIO Leaders Summit Australia please register your interest at http://cioleadersaustralia.com/

For all media enquiries please contact:

Stacey Alker – Marketing Director, Focus Network

E: stacey@focusnetwork.co

P: +61 (0) 484 963 072

The challenges, risks, and benefits of Outsourcing vs Insourcing

Soon after the financial crisis of 2009, outsourcing gained drastic momentum as companies sprinted to gain competitive advantage and cost savings by sending their ‘non-core’ business operations offshore. While customer service and accounting departments bore the initial brunt of this master plan, things have started to change in the recent years. Enter X-aaS (Everything as a Service) models, AI and Machine Learning innovations and improvement in internal sourcing maturity resulting in cost savings, the pendulum of outsourcing has well and truly begun to swing the other way. Not exactly in Insourcing, but the new ‘smart-sourcing’ or rightly called “Right-sourcing”.

“Be careful when you focus on cost, you might get a cheap service but not a good or valuable one”, says Tim Palmer, former General Manager Workplace Technology, National Australia Bank, speaking at the recent CIO Leaders Summit in Melbourne. Based on his wide industry experience in outsourcing with companies like IBM, Telstra, Tech Mahindra etc. he said that the trend is now reversing, and his work has evolved to insourcing the same Technologies. According to a Deloitte survey, the #1 reason for outsourcing in 2016 was ‘Cost Cutting’ and in a similar survey in 2018, cost cutting has moved down to #5 as a driver for outsourcing. Several challenges have tainted the passionate movement of ‘outsourcing’, some of which are:

• Vendor’s ability and willingness to deliver – maturity (or lack of) / revenue generation focus
• Contractual Limitations – SLAs, Penalties/Rewards, Timeframes, Reviews, Exit/Unwind clauses
• Cost Increases – Hidden costs in Statement of Work (SoW) and no focus on Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
• Poor time to market and change management ability – Speed of delivery
• Poor Quality of Service (QoS) and User Experience (UX) – Affecting customer satisfaction and brand image
• Difficulty of use – translating requirements into customer outcomes
• Regulatory Concerns – Disaster recovery issues, business process continuity and Data location
• Loss of Control – loss of IP, loss of technical muscle/knowledge gap, Lack of value-add/innovation
• Vendor Lock-in – Cost of unwind/portability, inability to match industry innovations
• Loss of Technology currency
• High attrition of offshore resources

Once the strategic capabilities are clearly defined and roadmap laid out, the ‘Right-Sourcing’ decisions will automatically fall into place. Lessons learnt from previous experience and industry stories will enable satirizing the old mindset and set the tone of becoming a ‘smart value driven customer centric organisation’ of the future. One of the best examples of Right-sourcing is the widely publicised policies of Donald Trump to bring back manufacturing to America. With rising cost of living and wages in China, the timing could not have been better for America to right-source manufacturing. Companies like Ford, GM, have quelled plans for offshoring production and committed to opening factories in the US. While Trump has clearly claimed the 312,000 job growth, the Obama camp says, of course the results of Obama’s work is now paying dividends after the logical 2 year cycle. But hey, let’s leave the politics for another article, shall we? Point was, cost cutting is no longer the strategy for companies or countries who want to win with their customers or citizens.

Improving customer service is the most important driver to Insourcing followed by increase in control and surprisingly cost reduction.

Customer facing roles and their importance have been clearly identified in maintaining brand equity. Cost reduction is an interesting driver as the entire point of outsourcing initially was cheaper contracts offshore. However, the ‘true cost’ of maintaining the operations and the huge hidden costs of change management threw the savings away, to a large extent. This calls for action on three possible ways to right source:

1. Renegotiate the existing deals with outsourcers
2. Insource core strategic systems and processes
3. Re-Tender – alternate delivery models – ‘Cloud sourcing’ or XaaS-ing

Talking about pendulum swings, why not challenge your thinking right now. “What did the pendulum say when he left?”. Well done! if you guessed the right answer “I’ll be BACK” (yeap in the Terminator’s accent as well). While at this juncture we are talking about insourcing a lot more, there is no guarantee that it’s here to stay. The outsourcers will no doubt up their game and hit back with a vengeance to gain back that momentum. Success or failure of a strategy is, as they stay always relative.

Focus Network is a leading B2B event company that builds and creates C level communities throughout ASEAN, Greater China and ANZ for commercial connections to our clients to engage directly with C-level executives throughout a key number of verticals. Some of the excerpts in this article has been shared from one of our recent well-acclaimed CIO Leaders Summits Australia held in Melbourne

– Jilfy Joseph

For more information about the CIO Leaders Summit Australia please register your interest at http://cioleadersaustralia.com/

For all media enquiries please contact:

Stacey Alker – Marketing Director, Focus Network

E: stacey@focusnetwork.co

P: +61 (0) 484 963 072

Digitisation to Digitalisation to Digital Transformation, it’s a journey every organisation is on, really by evolution rather than choice or genuine innovation. While digitisation was simply the analog to digital conversion of files, digitalisation emancipated the business operational processes to create speed and efficiency. While it makes sense to say that most companies should be brainstorming on their digital transformation journey, the reality is that only a few have embraced the inevitable change.

“Use the symptoms to find the root cause of the problems,” said Glen McLatchie, CIO of SKYCITY Entertainment Group in a keynote presentation at the recent CIO-CISO Leaders Summit in Melbourne, evaluating on how to approach Digital transformation and demystify it into a simple solution understandable by everyone in the business. The importance of a good approach involves identifying risks of cybersecurity attacks, risk of tech failure and risk of technology inhibiting strategic growth opportunities within the business. The ultimate success will be based on how well the story of digital transformation is told and how much buy-in has been secured from both management and employees. SKYCITY organised exciting trade show like events within their IT department for employees and business leaders to attend and experience first-hand what was in store for the future. Glen’s parting message of “tell the story constantly and take the jazz hands out of digital transformation” resonated well with the audience.

As defined by Gartner, Digital Transformation is “the creation of new business designs by blurring the digital and physical worlds.” Moving from brick and mortar citadels to the screens (or eyeballs? – you must be thinking smart contact lens!) of customers is a concept which sounds sci-fi-ish, but whether you run a burger shop, a soft drinks company or are a circuit board manufacturer, the sooner your organisation embraces the nuances of getting there ,the more realistic is the chances of even survival in the next 10 years. “Share the success stories to the Board from your experience, and once they validate that with their network of directors in the industry, you would have created unshakeable trust in your ambition and plans on the digital transformation journey”, said Travis Stow, Chief Information Officer for Sigma Healthcare at the CIO-CISO Leaders Summit in Melbourne on his thoughts on getting exec buy-ins for digital transformation projects.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result – Albert Einstein

Companies established as recent as 10-12 years ago are grappling with their ‘legacy’ systems and processes to enable change management projects. Leaders like Microsoft, Nike, Home Depot, Target, etc. went through the rigorous process of ‘self-assessment’ and ‘digital transformation’ in the last few years. While there was a notable impact on their revenue during transformation, the eventual spikes in their stock prices and market cap shows that it’s paying ample dividends and at the same time delighting customers with a refreshing user experience. There is obviously no silver bullet that makes your organisation ‘digitally transformed’ and is an ongoing customer-driven strategic business transformation resulting from cross-functional organisational changes enabled by technology innovation and implementation. It’s a planned execution of a gamut of variables simultaneously from Organisational Culture, Executive buy-in, Operational Agility, Multi-platform integration, culminating in providing the best customer friendly service or product in the market.

When Netflix, Uber, Airbnb entered the market, they came in with the latest in digital interface technologies direct to their customers. Want to activate and deploy your idle cars and unused extra bedrooms into extra cash? ah yes Thank you Sir! Tesla’s Over the Air (OTA) updates and the software upgrades to your Netflix or Airbnb for apps fixes/upgrades means goodbye to the local mechanic or real estate agent charges. It makes you wonder if the Innovation teams at Blockbuster, 13CABS, etc had thought about a digital transformation strategy.

The lines are blurring between the responsibilities of the CMO and the CIO in organisations. The budgets for marketing automation, IoT (Internet of Things) things, CRM upgrades, Data analytics-based insights-driven decision-making needs, etc. are now creating that grey area of who owns the customer-centric strategic investments; Marketing or IT? Recent news streams are proving that some industries have already spoken; UBER, McDonalds, and J&J are first to eliminate the grey area between marketing and IT by making the CMO roles redundant. Reading between the lines, the CIO’s role has evolved into a revenue and profit generation one by executing strategies moulded around the most important and core focus of every business – THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE.

Media Corp facilitates a fine selection of CIO-CISO events internationally creating a platform for top C-Level executives from across various industries to come together and participate in world-class sessions on the most relevant topics in discussion today. The day is split into best in breed talks by renowned speakers, break-out sessions and fully interactive group discussion sessions giving the delegates a host of opportunities to interact, share knowledge and network with like-minded participants.

– Jilfy Joseph

For more information about the CIO Leaders Summit Australia please register your interest at http://cioleadersaustralia.com/

For all media enquiries please contact:

Stacey Alker – Marketing Director, Focus Network

E: stacey@focusnetwork.co

P: +61 (0) 484 963 072

With customer experience being at the heart of every organisation’s plans, businesses are increasingly working towards a dynamic platform to cater to the evolving needs of customers. “From an era when customers had to physically come into a Bank branch to an age where mobile banking is an ubiquitous way of transacting, we are now entering an era of the Bank going to where the customer live (internet)”, says Himanshu Shrivastava, Managing Director, Citibank Singapore in his opening keynote presentation at the CIO Leaders Summit in Melbourne.

‘Customer preferences are changing with the younger Millennials and Gen Zs opting for quicker and seamless technology interaction…’

The need to build a ‘Smart Ecosystem’ has never been more important for businesses. ‘Datafied’ customer interactions, neurons of APIs exchanging data between activities in real time with the addition of AI and Machine Learning results in delivering a Smart User Experience (UX) driving remarkable customer interactions and loyalty. From cashless to contactless transactions, customer preferences are changing with the younger Millennials and Gen Zs opting for quicker and seamless technology interactions enabling daily activities. From shopping without the need to check out to using ride-sharing apps for commuting, customers are already expecting a frictionless integration of their ecosystem based simply on ‘consent’. The same has been experienced in banking where the digitally born and bred banks and Fintechs are creating smart ecosystems giving the traditional financial institutions a run for their money, literally.

Citibank has created multiple revenue streams using APIs to support building new partnerships for growth and customer acquisitions. Study shows that banks that embrace the Open Banking APIs are expected to grow revenue by over 20% while those that are uninterested will decline by 30% by giving away their market share to disruptive challengers emerging in the market by 2020.

While without APIs there is a long cycle of requirements for definition and interfacing contracts to testing and validation between parties. The Investment in bespoke infrastructure, ongoing support and maintenance with partners and scalability are all impacted in the absence of APIs.

‘Dorothy’s ability to traverse the yellow brick road successfully was due to the smart partnerships she created on the journey…’

The many advantages of using APIs clearly outscores the effort required to activate them. It is a one-time effort and investment in API build and deployment. Partners have ready off-the-shelf standard APIs to consume and with a single support and maintenance model, it allows amazing scalability in partnership growth. Taking a leaf out of lessons from the Wizard of Oz story, Dorothy’s ability to traverse the yellow brick road successfully was due to the smart partnerships she created on the journey with Tin Man, Scarecrow and Lion whose combined strengths created a level of endurance and capability she would not have achieved on her own. Financial services firms are increasingly concentrating on only their core business, stopped developing tech internally and leveraging collaborations with Fintech solutions and APIs to get ahead in their customer experience journey.

A rich use case, functional sandbox covering all scenarios for independent partner certification and JSON message format, as also being available on public internet APIs are clearly enhancing effectiveness in growth and collaboration plans of business organisations. With a very low budget for APIs, these are surely ‘smart bets’ that organisations can enter to succeed in the long term. In a race to add more value to customers, the financial services industry needs to constantly innovate and collaborate to retain existing customers and to attract prospective ones. A recent survey showed that 69% of customers expect their banking institution to be innovative but only 12% considered their own banks being at the forefront of innovative solutions.

Media Corp’s CIO Leaders event created a platform of a multitude of expert speakers who excited, sparkled and challenged thoughts on the future of the industry all in a well planned and executed day of insights and interactions among top C-level delegates from across top Australian businesses.

For more information about the CIO Leaders Summit Australia please register your interest at http://cioleadersaustralia.com/

– Jilfy Joseph

For all media enquiries please contact:

Stacey Alker – Marketing Director, Focus Network

E: stacey@focusnetwork.co

P: +61 (0) 484 963 072