In the past few years, everything has changed around us. Technology has affected almost every aspect of our lives and has become an integral part of all businesses. It is crucial for any company to make the most out of technology if they want to be competitive in this rapidly changing world.
The most recent digital transformation report by Contino emphasises how some of Europe’s best tech leaders utilised technology and how it was at the forefront of their digital transformation process planning and implementation, and here we explore some of the best tech leaders from the report and how they managed to do so.
Why do businesses need technology?
A successful business needs a strong foundation with a solid infrastructure before anything else can be built on top of it. Technology provides this foundation by allowing businesses to operate more efficiently and effectively than ever before, which leads them directly towards success!
With technology evolving at such a fast pace, businesses cannot afford to lag behind their competitors who are investing in new technologies such as Big Data Analytics or Artificial Intelligence (AI), which is crucial for business success today.
Technology offers scale; let’s face it – we live in a digitised world where human beings are expected to keep up with the pace set by robots and machines. Digital transformation investments allow companies to reach more people than ever before which is great news for small-business owners who want to take advantage of technology but may not have the resources or means needed to do so.
Customer relationship management solutions allow companies access to tools and services they wouldn’t be able to afford if they hired humans instead. Many of these technologies also provide multi-channel interaction which means your customers will be able to transact with your company from whichever place they prefer.
An Overview of Some of Europe’s Best Tech Leaders
Debra Bailey
In March 2019, Debra joined O2 at a time when the company was undergoing an extensive digital transformation. As the company’s Chief Information Officer, Debra was tasked with overseeing the ongoing transformation and reviewing its goals and processes.
She found out the transformation was being led independently by two business and IT units. She believes that business processes should be unified from beginning to end using technology while keeping the future in mind.
So, she developed a new operating model focused on both business processes and technology. While designing the new model, she kept the future in mind. She converted the project-based approach to a product-based approach, integrating the units into one single product.
With this new product, O2 successfully transformed its core technology stack platform using a 5G network. The result of this transformation was that O2 reached its target of 10% growth in less than a year and is on track to meet future growth targets.
Matt Davis
Lloyds is one of the big four retail and commercial banks operating across the United Kingdom. Matt joined Lloyds as Head of Cloud Engineering in 2017. Matt’s first task was to establish Lloyds’ open banking platform. Matt always advocates for using cloud-native approaches for transformation and keeping the future vision in mind.
Lloyds wanted to enhance the customer experience through a multi-billion dollar digital transformation strategy. Matt developed a public cloud-based product model for Lloyd’s new platform. After the model was approved, he and his team developed a new cloud platform. Matt calls this approach “Cloud Native Engineering (CNE)”, a cloud-native ecosystem for the rapid development of new products and applications integrating Kubernetes and other PaaS services.
With this transformation, Lloyds gained a more secure, robust, and efficient digital capability. This enabled its coders to complete a project that previously took one month in just 15 minutes.
As the pandemic hit, this capability was tested. Matt and his team designed a chatbot that could serve millions of bank customers to relieve the pressure on the call centre.
Paul Whyte
Best Food Logistics is a food delivery service based in the United Kingdom. Paul joined Best Food Logistics in 2017 as the Managing Director. Food delivery companies traded historically on price worldwide, and the sector kept its badge as a loss-making sector.
When Paul joined the company, his task was to make the company profitable. He studied the whole business process of the food delivery network. After finding the loopholes, Paul and his team decided to create a new delivery platform for Best Food Logistics. They used big data and cloud-native approaches, keeping the future in mind.
They developed a mobile app to collect data and track deliveries. The on-time delivery rate improved from 40% to 95%, and business costs were reduced by utilizing the data. A higher delivery rate helped Best increase its commercial rates and transformed it from a loss-making organization to a profit-making one.
Shakeel Butt
Green Flag is a roadside assistance and vehicle recovery company that operates in the United Kingdom. Shakeel was appointed Chief Technology Officer in 2017 to lead the company’s major transformation. Shakeel is a firm believer in cloud-native technologies. He said, “It is critical to future-proof your IT by building according to cloud-native best practices that allow for flexibility.”
Shakeel decided to use a cloud-native approach when designing the new platform for Green Flag transformation. Nevertheless, this task was not easy since Green Flag had many-core systems that needed to be integrated into the organization’s broader operations. Shakeel called these cores “clunky, expensive, and time-consuming.”
Therefore, Shakeel gathered 100 highly skilled tech experts to work on this project. Shakeel and his team developed an API-based serverless stack that is nothing but code. This helps them make the whole business process agile, and the result is that Green Flag is now able to deliver new features to its users at an increased pace than before.
