Embed Size (px)
Citation preview
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 1
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
Smartwatches mean business
WHAT ROLE WILL APPLE’S LATEST DEVICE PLAY IN THE WORKPLACE?
17-23 March 2015 | ComputerWeekly.com
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 2
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
THE WEEK IN IT
Financial services ITGoogle and Amazon bigger threat to retail banks than new entrantsRetail banks are more concerned with competition from technology companies than new banks or payment platforms such as PayPal. According to research from the Economist Intelligence Unit, fending off the threats of technology companies such as Google and Amazon will have an even bigger impact on the financial services industry.
IT skillsBBC gives UK schools one million devices in digital education initiativeThe BBC has launched a digital-first initiative to teach children to use programming and digital technologies, starting by giving one million coding devices to schools across the UK. The Micro Bit coding device will be given to all Year 7 children to encourage coding. The broadcaster has also launched a digital trainee programme to train 5,000 young unemployed people in digital skills.
Cyber securityApple and Microsoft release patch for Freak security vulnerabilityApple and Microsoft have joined Google in releasing security updates for the so-called Freak – or Factoring attack on RSA-Export Keys – security vulnerability, a week after it was revealed by researchers. Freak was introduced by old US export policies requiring weaker encryption.
Cloud computingUS Department of Labor CIO tells cloud buyers to get tough on suppliersThe CIO of the US Department of Labor (DoL) has cautioned would-be cloud adopters not to let suppliers railroad them during their move off-premise by not taking responsibility for service problems. Speaking at CloudExpo Europe, Dawn Leaf told delegates what she had learnt through her work on reducing the DoL’s reliance on on-premise technologies.
IT securityBusiness demand for information security set to grow in 2015, says reportBusinesses expect the pressure to secure their organisations to increase even further this year, according to the 2015 Security Pressures Report from security firm Trustwave. While 54% of IT and security professionals said they felt more pressure to secure their organisations in 2014, 57% of respondents said they expect to experience more pressure securing their organisation in 2015.
Cyber crimeGroup claiming links to Isis hacks small business websitesThe FBI is investigating the hacking of small business websites in the US and Europe by people claiming to be linked to Islamic State (Isis). The Isis logo appeared on the landing pages of the targeted web-sites along with the message: “Hacked by Islamic State (Isis). We are everywhere.”
access the latest it news via rss feed
ISLE OF MAN STEPS UP EFFORTS TO COURT CRYPTOCURRENCY STARTUPS
The Isle of Man government has said it is making good legislative headway on the regulation of cryptocurrencies, as it seeks to position itself as a prime location for firms dealing in digital money. The island is already home to a thriving e-business sector.
THIN
KSTO
CK
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 3
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
THE WEEK IN IT
access the latest it news via rss feed
Financial services ITPayPal targets dominance in open digital payments platform marketThe man tasked with making PayPal a giant of the financial services market told an audience of investors that software is eating into the sector and PayPal is at the centre of it. According to reports, Dan Schulman told an audience at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom conference in San Francisco that PayPal could be the world’s leading open digital payments platform.
Cloud computingOn-premise deployments high on agenda, but cloud interest on the riseWhile on-premise will remain the IT deployment model of choice for many IT managers in 2015, there are signs its hold on the enterprise is weakening, as cloud-based technologies grow in popularity. According to the 2015 Computer Weekly/TechTarget IT Priorities Survey, on-premise is the favoured model for 57% of UK IT managers.
Banking ITCloud-based CivilisedBank the latest challenger bank to hit the UKCivilisedBank, the UK’s latest challenger bank, is to use cloud-based technology to challenge the dominance of the high street banking giants. The online-only bank, which will serve small and medium-sized businesses, is expected to open later in 2015.
Women in ITTrudy Norris-Grey urges greater awareness of roles for women in ITThere are “fabulous” opportunities for women to take up careers in IT, but most are unaware of them, according to chair of Women in Science, Engineering and Technology Trudy Norris-Grey. Speaking to Computer Weekly, Norris-Grey said there is a lack of awareness of the range of roles on offer in the technology sector and more needs to be done to promote success stories to young women.
IT recruitmentHSBC names replacement CIO for Global Banking and Markets divisionHSBC has named its replacement for the departing CIO of its investment banking division, with an internal promotion filling the gap. Richard Herbert has been given the job of Global Banking and Markets CIO, moving from the role of head of global FX and regulatory IT in the same division. Herbert joined HSBC, the UK’s largest bank, in 2011.
StorageX-IO debuts in all-flash array market with ISE 800 seriesArray maker X-IO has for the first time added an all-flash array to its product range, the ISE 800 series all-flash family, which is aimed at the online transaction processing market, in particular Microsoft SQL Server workloads. X-IO’s first all-flash arrays are the ISE 820, 840 and 860. n
How banks plan to use the following resources in 2015
Full-time headcount
Outsourcing
23%
32%
36%
42%
Same Less
Source: Finextra
BANKS INCREASE OUTSOURCING BUT SLASH USE OF CONSULTANTS
More
Consultants
Contractors 37%
33%
42%
9%
40%
35%
49%
22%
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 4
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
ANALYSIS
The consumer appeal of Apple’s contribution to wearable technology is obvious, but will the Apple Watch find its way into the enterprise? Cliff Saran reports
Can enterprises find a business case for Apple Watch app deployment?
The Apple App Store was already listing over 30 apps for the Apple Watch just a day after the firm confirmed it would
go on sale on 24 April. But can Apple’s wearable device make it into the enterprise?
Apple became a watch maker one hundred years after Rolex was created, joining Samsung, Microsoft and others in the smartwatch and wearable technology market. According to analyst Gartner, the wearable devices market for fitness prod-ucts was worth $70m in 2014, and is forecast to grow to $170m by 2017. But the consumer fitness app market is far from the only opportunity for wearable software developers.
In Forrester Research’s Five urgent truths about the future of wearables report, analyst JP Gownder noted: “While consumers’ interest in weara-bles has grown strong, businesses’ demand for wearables is even greater. Today, 68% of global technology and business decision-makers say that weara-bles are a priority for their firm, with 51% calling it a moderate, high or critical priority.
“This is comparable with the mobile land-scape in 2010, when 43% of enterprises identified employees using mobile devices as a critical or high priority.”
Time to update your
BYOD plans to include the
Apple Watch
Citi Apple Watch app already on
virtual shelves
Gownder said businesses could use smart-watches and other wearable devices to augment data analytics.
He wrote: “In the future, cognitive com-puters (like IBM’s Watson) and voice-con-trolled intelligent agents (like Siri, Cortana or Google Now), used with wearable devices, will augment the skills of humans on the ground, helping them identify and act on specific problems.”
“It Is only a matter of tIme before smartwatches enter the enterprIse” roberta cozza, Gartner
Prices go up to
£13,000 for a gold
Apple Watch
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 5
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
But these are generally bulky, fully specified computing devices. Cozza said: “The Apple Watch and other wearables are partial devices.” In other words, they can only function fully when used in conjunction with another computing device.
A user primarily collects information from the watch, rather than interacting in the way one would use a tablet, smartphone or PC. “The smartwatch is suitable for a very spe-cific and short task,” she said. “You need to think about situations where you can just use a device on your wrist.”
Context for wearable technologyAs an example, Cozza said an oil company could give oil platform workers a smart-watch to collect instrument readings from the rig, rather than using an 8in tablet for data collection. The information collected on the smartwatch could then be uploaded to a central database.
Apps for a smartwatch should be context-aware, said Cozza. “You should think about scenarios where it is beneficial not to take out a smartphone.”
In December 2014 IBM posted a video on the developer.ibm.com site, which demon-strated how to use its MobileFirst platform to create an Apple Watch app.
But it is early days for smartwatches. Apple’s entry into this market will inevitably stimulate interest among consumers. But, as Forrester’s Gownder notes, there are oppor-tunities for the devices in the enterprise too.
Many consumer-facing organisations will assess whether an Apple Watch app is right for them, but firms need to consider how such a device could work in their enterprise or in business-to-business relationships. n
Salesforce.com is building apps for the Apple Watch, providing data analytics. Raj Mistry, senior vice-president, solution engi-neering at Salesforce.com, said: “Salesforce Analytics on the Apple Watch allows you to get insights with much more immediacy.”
There is also the Salesforce1 app, which supports notifications on the Apple Watch. This could be used on a customer care service desk, for example, where the watch wearer would be alerted if a critical service level is about to be missed.
Mistry said: “Notification on a smartwatch is key. Later this year we will introduce actionable notifications.” This will let the user act on the alert with the Apple Watch.
Roberta Cozza , research director at Gartner, said: “Given the partnership with Salesforce, it is only a matter of time before smartwatches enter the enterprise.”
ANALYSIS
Enterprises need to think about when employees can only use a device
on the wrist – for example, an oil firm could give
platform workers a smartwatch
to collect instrument data
readings from the rig, rather than using
an 8in tablet
With prices starting at £299 and going up to £13,000 for a gold Apple Watch, the device is aimed at the well-off consumer who already has an iPhone. But this is unlikely to prove a barrier to enterprise adoption. Cozza said: “The iPhone started in the consumer market but is now used in the enterprise.”
Challenges to enterprise adoptionBut she said wearable technology will find it more difficult to break into the enterprise,
which will need a solid business case to deploy smartwatches.
Companies such as Yodel and TNT use wearables and handheld computers from Motorola Solutions to streamline logistics.
› The legal issues of wearable technology› Wearables provide security opportunities› Data governance in wearable technology
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 6
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
ANALYSIS
Interoperability, installation and public communication issues threaten to derail the government’s energy-saving smartmeter programme, reports Alex Scroxton
Government committee warns UK smartmeter project close to failure
The House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee has said government plans to install energy-
saving smartmeters in every UK home and business by 2020 are veering off track and could end up an expensive failure.
The committee, chaired by MP Tim Yeo – a former environment minister under John Major – said the smartmeter project was not being driven forward effectively, highlight-ing a number of concerns around technical, logistical and public communications issues.
Yeo accused the government of failing to move quickly enough after previous warn-ings, and said time was now running out.
“Without a significant and immediate change to the present approach, the pro-gramme runs the risk of falling far short of expectations,” he said.
“The government is at a crossroads on pol-icy. It can continue with its current approach and risk embarrassment through public disengagement on a flagship energy policy; or it can grip the reins and steer the energy industry along a more successful path.”
It is estimated that about 53 million smart-meters will need to be installed by energy suppliers in 30 million homes and busi-ness, costing around £10.9bn – although the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) claims this will be offset by energy efficiency savings of £17.1bn.
Tim Yeo: “Without significant change, the programme runs the risk of falling far short of expectations”
Smartphones could render
smartmeter in-home display
redundant
DECC publishes
annual report on delayed
smartmeter scheme
The meters use mobile phone networks and wireless technology to provide suppliers with electricity and gas readings remotely. If successful, they may emerge as a benchmark for internet of things deployment.
British Gas said customer satisfaction among its existing smartmeter customers was, on average, 53% higher than among those still using standard meters; and com-plaints were down by 21%, with dual fuel customers saving around £26 per annum.
Following a review, the committee expressed disappointment at the govern-ment’s failure to resolve problems around technical communications in multiple occupancy and tall buildings; compatibility problems between different suppliers and types of meter; a slow start to informing and educating the general public on smartmeters; and network roll-out delays at the govern-ment-appointed communications infrastruc-ture company Smart DCC.
“there Is a lot of cost and there Is a rIsk In employInG Installers” melIssa Gander, ovo enerGy
POLI
CY
EX
CH
AN
GE
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 7
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
“There is a lot of cost and there is a risk in employing installers because the market is so small that you pay to train them and there is a retention risk,” she said.
British Gas smartmetering managing direc-tor Jorge Pikunic estimated he would need more than 10,000 engineers to complete on schedule. In 2014, he hired 450 British Gas-trained fitters.
But Pikunic said: “To make sure the peak does not go too high, it is important we start the mass roll-out as soon as possible, to smooth that peak.”
Disconnect with general publicThe committee’s report highlighted a lack of effective communication between the energy industry and the general public.British Gas was among those calling for a broad, consistent and positive message as it had found that, although 40% of customers were aware of smartmeters, it was unclear if they knew exactly what they are.
Vulnerable customers in particular would need support, noted Jenny Saunders, chief executive of fuel poverty charity National Energy Action, who said she had no confi-dence everything was in order to ensure all customers had access to smartmeters.
Gander at Ovo Energy added that smart-meters often fell out of use and were even switched off, possibly because people didn’t understand how to use them properly.
Smart Energy GB, the body responsible for consumer engagement, called for broadcast-ers with public service obligations – such as the BBC – to communicate the smartmeter roll-out to the public, as part of their remit. n
It also noted the continuing failure of DECC to publish the Major Projects Authority’s review of the scheme on grounds of “com-mercial sensitivity”.
Interoperability is criticalEnergy suppliers, meanwhile, have called for the government to take the lead in making sure all industry parties supply an industry-standard, interoperable system.
British Gas said it believed this would be substantially cheaper than having each sup-plier go into a multiple-occupancy building to install its own technology which might not be compatible with others – a view echoed by Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE).
Responding to the committee’s inquiry, a spokesperson for smartmeter maintenance firm Skanska said the lack of interoperability added risk, with no mechanism to transfer meter-rental agreements between suppliers, should a customer switch.
For example, if a customer switched from British Gas to SSE, SSE would bear the burden of installing new equipment and the costs would be passed to the consumer.
Concerns were raised around the estate of existing smartmetering equipment technical specification (Smets) 1 smartmeters, which would need to be removed and replaced with Smets 2 meters for the roll-out phase.
SSE said that, the longer Smart DCC delayed its infrastructure, the more likely it was that suppliers would continue to install the foundation-stage Smets 1 meters, exacer-bating the interoperability problem.
In response, the committee agreed that Smart DCC must find ways of incorporating foundation-stage meters into its infrastruc-ture as a matter of urgency.
Smartmeter installation skills crisisThere is a further challenge in the shortage of installation engineers, said Ovo Energy
in-home tech-nology man-aging direc-tor Melissa Gander.
She said electricity-trained installers and gas-trained installers were already having to be retrained for dual fuel meters, and then had to layer smartmeter training on top.
› Smartmeter IT costs set to escalate› Smartmeter project hits delay
› Is the UK smartmeter project doomed to fail?
ANALYSIS
British Gas found that, while some
40% of customers
were aware of smartmeters, it was unclear
if they knew exactly what
they are
ISTO
CK
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 8
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
INTERVIEW
The world’s oldest media company places IT at the core of its offering
T echnology has prompted unprecedented
innovation and transformation in the
media sector, and Cambridge University Press (CUP) is no exception as the publisher continues an IT-led transformation to re-invent itself.
As the world’s oldest media company, CUP is more associated with printed books than most, but it is placing technology at the core of its offering – about 22% of its $263m revenue in 2013 came from digital products and services, and the goal is to increase that to two-thirds by 2020.
Leading that process of technology-driven change is CIO Mark Maddocks, a media veteran with years of experience as a senior IT executive at sector giants such as the BBC, Sony and Reed Elsevier.
“This is an industry going through a huge amount of really quite radical change. We are witnessing a fast move, not just to digital, but to whole areas of solutions and services – so it’s no longer just about content,” Maddocks tells Computer Weekly.
Cambridge University Press is making continued investment in the renewal of its back-office systems, aimed at providing faster and deeper business information and helping to introduce new products and business models more quickly.
In the past couple of years, the company has implemented an SAP global customer relationship management platform, a digital asset management system for the company’s master content, a royalties system, finance and purchasing capabilities in the UK and US offices, as well as a global HR system which has just gone live.
Building blocksWhile the innovation agenda remains a key area of focus for Maddocks and his team, the internal journey of IT-led transformation that started in 2010 is not over yet.
“This is a business in a market that’s moving extremely quickly, so I’m not sure you are ever done with IT change. But what I’d say is that we’ve put a number of the core building blocks in place,” he says.
With SAP software implemented at CUP’s main markets around the world, the firm is
Cambridge University Press CIO Mark Maddocks tells Angelica Mari about how the publisher, founded in 1534, is undergoing an IT-led transformation
Interview: The IT
powering animated
movie-making
How the BBC became
digital in three-and-a-
half years
CW500 interview
MA
ERIE
/TH
INKS
TOC
K
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 9
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
now undergoing extensive testing of other key modules so they can be deployed.
Priorities for 2015 include migrating a third of the company’s global branches to SAP’s BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation finance and purchasing module, followed by another major roll-out of sales order processing and distribution, which will be introduced initially to the two major markets for the CUP – the UK and US.
“We will focus initially on the sales and distribution deployment for our UK and US businesses. Of course, that’s a really big ticket item because it’s absolutely crucial that when we go live it works very smoothly, as we need to be able to support our cus-tomers and the sales process, so that’s a very major area of focus over the next 12 months or so,” says Maddocks.
“Once that’s done in those major markets, then we can resume the roll-out into the other markets around the world.”
The SAP implementation isn’t just an IT project, but a business transformation project, says Maddocks. He stresses that the publisher is redesigning its core systems and a whole set of business processes because they were inconsistent and also because it presents the company with an opportunity to streamline.
Supporting ongoing changeGiven the focus on digital products and services, technology has become vital to the business offering – and therefore to the generation of revenues.
Conscious of the need to keep up with the pace of change in the sector in which it operates, the publisher has also been driving a transformation of the digital platforms, services and innovation initiatives that are core to digital growth.
The CUP maintains a number of major online platforms at different stages of devel-
opment, and evolving them is one of the
top priorities for Maddocks and his team – as is improving the IT setup required to support critical lines of business in the delivery of not just print but also digital products, globally.
“We have already done quite a few things over the past four years, but it is really just the start of what I call rewiring the business,” he says.
According to Maddocks, there is also an ongoing plan of deploying better business intelligence, also largely based on SAP, to provide the publisher with more detailed reporting insights now the foundations are in place.
“Data is another challenge because there are tens and hundreds of thousands of custom records, product records, staff records and so on that have to be cleansed and deduplicated and put into a consistent format coming out of tens of different sys-tems that all hold information entirely differ-ently. So getting the information into good shape is crucial,” he says.
Maddocks is excited about the ability to use analytics to add value to the business, but finds that because many different teams are so focused on their own data, it is impor-tant to avoid situations where business areas fail to see the value of information that is properly gathered and presented.
“It’s all about the opportunity to bring some of those different parts of information together and figure out what can drive top business decisions, and how we can drive insight out of the data. For example, what you can start to see by combining usage information next to the financial purchasing or profitability information, or the types of expenditures we make alongside a new product development,” says Maddocks. n
This is an edited excerpt. Click here to read the full interview.
› Interview: David Matthewman, CIO, Open University› Interview: Chris Birch, IT director, News UK
› Interview: Ben Hine, technology director, UKTV
INTERVIEW
“It’s all about the opportunIty to brInG some of those dIfferent parts of InformatIon toGether and fIGure out what can drIve top busIness decIsIons”
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 10
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
EDITOR’S COMMENT
IT must learn to focus on user needs and accept risk of failure
Does IT have a problem with people? In compa-nies, the question goes to the heart of the chang-ing relationship between IT departments and
users – “shadow IT” and “bring your own device” being a rebellion against the “command and control” culture. In government, it relates to the mantra of “user need” espoused by the Government Digital Service – and the irritation that seems to be causing for IT suppliers.
Speaking at a recent BCS event, Will Whitehorn, Rich-ard Branson’s right-hand man and president of Virgin Galactic, highlighted lessons the IT sector – typically so risk averse – is only starting to learn. He gave an exam-ple of Virgin’s focus on customer needs. Virgin Trains wanted a new train design to meet its goals for speed and passenger service – the end result was the Pen-dolino tilting train. Whitehorn outlined to suppliers what Virgin’s customers wanted and told the train makers to build something to meet that user outcome.
Consider, by comparison, the typical conversation between IT leaders and their suppliers, where an explana-tion of business outcomes and user needs typically leads to the offer of a “solution” based on a series of products.
“Risk means accepting failure,” said Whitehorn. He went on to explain how this was a fundamental principle behind the success of Virgin Group. It manages risk by keeping things small.
Compare that with the historic approach to IT deliv-ery, of “big bang” projects specified to death at the beginning then failing to meet user needs once finally completed. The move to agile is an overdue response to that monolithic approach to IT.
Another BCS speaker, Phil Pavitt, global CIO of Spec-savers, made the point that people in your own IT organisation almost always have the answers to the questions that matter – they just need to be trusted and to have an opportunity to step forward.
Perhaps this is the biggest challenge for the maturing IT community as it seeks to exploit the digital revolution and sit at the top table of business and government – to become less risk averse, to manage failure better, and to put people first. n
Bryan GlickEditor in chief
Computer Weekly/ComputerWeekly.com2nd Floor, 3-4a Little Portland Street,
London W1W 7JB
GENERAL ENQUIRIES
020 7186 1400
EDITORIAL
Editor in chief: Bryan Glick 020 7186 1424
Managing editor (technology): Cliff Saran 020 7186 1421
Head of premium content: Bill Goodwin 020 7186 1418
Services editor: Karl Flinders 020 7186 1423
Security editor: Warwick Ashford 020 7186 1419
Networking editor: Alex Scroxton020 7186 1413
Special projects editor: Kayleigh Bateman020 7186 1415
Storage editor: Antony Adshead07779 038528
Business applications editor: Brian McKenna 020 7186 1414
Business editor: Clare McDonald 020 7186 1426
Datacentre editor: Caroline Donnelly 020 7186 1411
Production editor: Claire Cormack 020 7186 1417
Senior sub-editor: Jason Foster 020 7186 1420
Sub-editor: Ben Whisson020 7186 1478
DISPLAY ADVERTISING
Sales director: Brent Boswell 07584 311889
Group events manager: Tom Walker 0207 186 1430
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 11
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
Meanwhile, 46% reported that they are struggling to handle case-based processes through rigid workflows and inflexible con-tent management systems; 29% are using an ad hoc collection of file shares and content stores; and 16% still have manual paper- and email-based processes.
As part of the research, AIIM asked respondents what experience they had in smart business applications. The research found that 7% consider they have adaptive and intelligent workflows in live deployment, and a further 12% of survey respondents said they are experimenting.
AIIM then asked what the outcome has been. Some 41% claim to have already achieved their initial objectives and a further 52% are seeing promising results – with only 7% reporting they are disappointed.
For such an early-stage technology as adaptive case management, these results are encouraging. Indeed, business users see myriad benefits from case management. Faster and more consistent customer response was said to be the biggest benefit, and shortening the end-to-end process time was also cited.
Flexible, rules-driven compliance processes can make response to regulatory changes much simpler and are a major benefit in finance and insurance. As the importance of providing a good customer experience increases, so will the need for modern case management systems. n
OPINION
Adaptive case management boosts companies’ resilience in handling disrupted business processes and improves your customers’ experience, says Doug Miles
The benefits of using smarter case management in business processes
Smart process applications, intelligent business processes, adaptive business process management: You may have
heard such terms with increasing frequency in 2014 – and you can expect to hear a lot more of them in 2015. They are all names applied to an emerging wave of applications that will pull context-relevant information from the content associated with a business process, and use it to select, modify or redirect successive workflow stages.
Case management has always been a challenge for most workflow systems, because they work best when there is a predictable path through the process. But, by its very nature, case management frequently involves variations to such processes that may only become apparent as the case progresses – and which require a high degree of adaptability in the workflow rules.
For many organisations, case-based pro-cessing makes up more than half of their main business processes. Applications range from payment management, contract bids, claims handling and loan origination through to traditional healthcare, crime or legal cases.
And it is the increasing impact that case management is having on organisations’ customer service ambitions (see also page 15) that make it especially relevant. AIIM recently carried out a major research study of our members – the global information management community – to find out why. The study, Case Management and Smart Process Applications, looked at the adoption of adaptive case management, the drivers and early experiences of users.
The research showed that increasing customer expectation for speed of response is the biggest business pain point for those surveyed (44%), and dealing with unstruc-tured inputs and connecting to key business systems is the next biggest issue (42%).
Download Case ManageMent
and sMart ProCess
aPPliCations
FAQ: Using adaptive case management
for enterprise success
Doug Miles is director of market intelligence for AIIM, the global community of information manage-ment professionals, and head of the AIIM Market Intelligence Division.
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 12
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
BUYER’S GUIDE
It is worth starting with a history lesson on desktop computing, because the situation today is analogous to IT a quarter of a century ago. In the 1990s, from an IT audit, security and compliance perspective, desktop computing was out of control.
The desktop freed users from the controls IT placed on data and application access and people installed what they wanted, when they wanted it.
But then experts worked out that the total cost of ownership of these PCs that the IT department was not managing was more than £5,000 per device per year.
Arguably, the consumerisation of IT has recreated 1990s-style user-led computing, with PCs now replaced by smartphones and tablets as the device of choice.
Back then, to save costs, IT locked down the desktop, rolled out standard desktop software images across the organisation and offered the business a common Windows desktop envi-ronment. Users could belong to groups that gave them authorisation to use certain applica-tions and data. In some organisations, desktop IT became so commoditised that it could be outsourced. But then Apple came along.
New ways to workDesktop IT is no longer about Windows and supporting Windows applications. Tablets, smartphones, cloud computing and applications delivered as software as a service offer compelling new ways to work.
The shift from Windows-only to a user computing environment where Windows is just one element will not happen overnight. But by 2016, Gartner expects tablet sales to overtake sales of desktop PCs. The analyst’s Mobility is having a major impact on IT support paper by Terrence Cosgrove, published in February 2015, notes that by 2018, 40% of contact with the
THIN
KSTO
CK
Desktop virtualisation
market guide
Royal Mail outsources
desktop IT services to
Computacenter
What will office desktop computing look like in 2020?Over the next five years, IT departments will increasingly support a highly heterogeneous computing environment. Cliff Saran reports
BUYER’S GUIDEdesktop computing 2020 part 1 of 3
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 13
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
BUYER’S GUIDE
IT service desk will relate to smartphones and tablet devices – a leap from less than 20% today. This will put a heavy burden on desktop IT support, unless it works in a different way.
Limiting device choice is not the answer. IT can no longer deny users choice by enforcing standardisation. The bring-your-own-device (BYOD) genie is out of the bottle and the heads of IT that Computer Weekly has spoken to are sympa-thetic to the changes in user computing.
One example is Peterborough Council, which is changing its IT to a department that commissions services rather than buying on-premise.
The council is undergoing a transformation that is running alongside its IT strategy. It plans to deploy Chromebooks or tablet devices to 50% of its staff.
Richard Godfrey, assistant director of Digital:Peterborough, says it needs a “more dynamic IT department” and a “move to tools that fit together”.
Godfrey wants to avoid situations in which the coun-cil is stuck on certain versions of Microsoft Office or Windows. “This takes away from the day-to-day fire-fighting task, allowing us to work more closely with the council departments,” he says.
In fact, modern cloud-based applications are designed to work well together. “In the old days, we worked on integration, but a lot of prod-ucts are now designed to work together, such as Box with Salesforce.com,” says Godfrey.
He points out that some of the newer tools are also simpler to use, which means users can customise them. “We use Form Assembly,” he says. “Anyone in the council can build their own form, rather than wait a week for a quote from IT.”
Simplifying a multi-device strategyDale Vile, research director at Freeform Dynamics, recommends IT heads look at segment-ing users into task workers and information workers. “It’s easy to run away with the idea that everyone is using multiple devices,” he says. “Meanwhile, PCs are used as the end-point for the network, and provide access to hardcore routine, process-centric, back-end and administration systems.” These tend to be used by task workers.
THE FUTURE OF THE IT HELPDESK
According to Gartner, the implementation of new support models that resemble those in the consumer world is part of a broader transition. Gartner analyst Terrence Cosgrove notes in his report Mobility Is having a major impact on IT support: “The IT support organisation must evolve beyond the traditional service provider model toward a partnership with the end-user com-munity. When users have more control over their devices and applications, the support models must adapt to this paradigm change.”
Among Gartner’s recommendations for supporting the multitude of devices in enterprise IT is self-support documentation and short 20- to 30-second videos demonstrating how to fix common support problems. Peer-to-peer (P2P) support is also becoming more common, says Cosgrove.
“About 53% of the respondents to our 2014 survey reported that they use P2P support,” the paper reports. “We believe this number is higher than the overall industry level, and it suggests an increase in the use of P2P support.”
Gartner has also been seeing interest in Apple’s Genius Bar-style walk-in support, where staff bring their device to the IT department for one-on-one support enquiries. An internal walk-up service gives IT an opportunity to influence device choice, says Cosgrove.
“we need a more dynamIc It department and a move to tools that fIt toGether”rIchard Godfrey,
dIGItal:peterborouGh
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 14
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
BUYER’S GUIDE
From an IT management and infrastructure perspective, it is clearly beneficial to be consist-ent, which, says Vile, is why IT departments virtualise desktops to stream desktop applica-tions onto thin-client access devices.
Clearly, a thin-client computing environment will fulfil the requirements of a certain propor-tion of users going forward, and this is a style of desktop computing that the IT department has fine-tuned since the late 1990s.
But Vile says information workers are “more client-server in the way they work”. In other words, they may work on a central IT system some of the time, but then require the flexibil-ity to perform computing tasks locally. They typically use cloud-type applications, accessed from a web browser on a desktop computer, or an app front end via a tablet or smartphone.
Medway Council has taken a desktop virtualisation approach to centralising its desktop computing on a Citrix server farm to support flexible working. Moira Bragg, head of ICT at the council, admits that user computing is more complex than it was a few years ago, when eve-ryone ran Windows. “People can have more devices,” she says. “People want to do more with these devices, and we need to support them.”
This is achieved through user segmentation, she says. “We identify every worker as a mobile or a desk worker. If they have a laptop, they don’t get a desktop.”
Security and risk mitigationTwo years ago, people would go to work and access their work applications. Today, the challenge is not the technology, but making sure data is secure, says Bragg.
So mobile access and device management is set to become part of every IT department’s desktop IT toolkit in the next few years. Gartner estimates that, by 2018, 40% of organisations will use enterprise mobile man-agement tools to manage some Windows PCs – up from less than 1% today.
But that is only half the story. IT will not only be expected to manage multiple devices, it must also support cloud-based applications, some of which may not yet exist.
Speaking at a recent Computer Weekly CW500 Club event, Richard Gough, group IT oper-ations manager at Punter Southall Group, said it made sense to move certain applications to the cloud, while others require plenty of due diligence. “It is a no-brainer to use Mimecast for email,” he said. “It is an obvious one. And we use Salesforce.com.”
Email, messaging and even complex applications such as customer relationship manage-ment (CRM) are good candidates to migrate off-premise. But, says Freeform Dynamics’ Vile, moving a vertical application is much more risky: “You spend a lot of time defining your policy, workflow, rule set. A lot of this is not pure data; it defines how your business process works. Getting data out of the cloud using ETL [extract, transform, load] tools is pretty easy. But trying to transform cloud-enabled workflow is a lot harder.”
So there needs to be an element of risk mitigation if the application to migrate to the cloud is business-critical.
“Theoretically, there is nothing we will not put in the cloud,” says Punter Southall’s Gough. But where he struggles is when he encounters new, innovative tools from companies that provide specialist software, such as the tools that actuaries use for risk analysis. “These companies won’t sell the software to you any more,” he says. “They won’t let you bring it on-premise. They only want to deliver it as a service.”
Vile adds: “You have to do the due diligence. What happens when you want to switch?”Gough’s biggest concern is, if the provider’s business folds, how can the customer replicate
the value-added processes and services on-premise or with another cloud provider? “There is no concept of a cloud escrow,” he says. n
“people want to do more wIth these devIces, and we need to support them”moIra braGG,
medway councIl
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 15
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
MANAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
In many consumer sectors, it has become increasingly difficult for organisations to really stand out from the crowd in pricing, products or services. As a result, the last great bastion of differentiation in recent years has become customer experience – and that seems unlikely to change any time soon.
Ed Thompson, an analyst at market research firm Gartner, says: “Between 5% and 10% of companies truly have a customer culture at their core, but the rest have been forced to care because all other means of differentiation have been eroded over time. That’s why it is currently a hot topic and has been very high on CEOs’ agendas for the last three years or so.”
But a major challenge everyone faces is that optimising the customer experience is a continually movable feast. Today’s customers are more demanding and vocal than ever. While providers struggle with a proliferation of contact points and channels, ranging from telephone and email to social media, customers expect to move simultaneously and seam-lessly between all of these – and for the experience to be consistent.
Yunus Ozler, a partner at management consultancy Ernst & Young, says the problem is that, even if you manage to create an optimum customer experience, it has a habit of changing – which makes for a constant battle for continuous improvement.
Waitrose rolls out
touchscreen customer
experience hardware
Timberland focuses on
online customer
experience
Use customer experience to differentiate your businessWith ever increasing points of contact there are more ways than ever to manage your customers’ expectations and stand out, writes Cath Everett
Motorbike manufacturer Harley Davidson is among the vanguard of companies with the most advanced customer experience, employing a board-level head of customer experience to co-ordinate organisation-wide efforts
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 16
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
MANAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
“The holy grail is to be 100% responsive to customer expectations, but that’s almost impossible,” he says. “So you have to keep on shifting and growing because, if you don’t, the customer will always be one step ahead.”
The most advanced sectors tend to be retailers, particularly in food, clothing and consumer electronics. Other exemplary organisations include HSBC’s First Direct bank, motorbike manufacturer Harley Davidson and airlines such as Malaysian and Cathay Pacific.
Interestingly, over the last two years, many of these companies have taken on heads of customer experience, and the trend shows no sign of abating. Although their teams tend to be small and focused, the role of these managers is to co-ordinate activities across the whole organisation to ensure that personnel in all departments – including sales, HR, logistics and IT – are working towards the same customer-oriented goal.
To date, this strategy has been found mainly in the technology, banking and consumer packaged goods industries – but it is now also starting to emerge in other sectors.
Amanda Whittaker, a senior manager in management consultancy Deloitte Digital’s cus-tomer advisory practice, says: “They are generally at chief operating officer level as this gives customer experience a board-level focus. If the position is lower down, it tends to get buried in operational requirements.”
CASE STUDY: ELMBRIDGE BOROUGH COUNCIL
Elmbridge Borough Council in Surrey spent two years transforming the way it works. The cata-lyst for its change management programme – entitled Brilliant customer service every time – was a combination of a mutual peer review undertaken with another local council, and budget pres-sures that made it important to streamline operations. The second-largest political party in the Conservative-controlled council was a residents’ association with a strong interest in obtaining services that delivered value for money. Dawn Crewe, head of customer services at Elmbridge Council, says: “Our senior management team see this as our most important project to help the organisation move forward. They have absolutely bought into it.”
A key part of the initiative involved rationalising and reworking the local authority’s previously siloed business processes. ICT and customer service staff work in tandem as a combined project team, alongside different service departments. “The service areas tell us what they want to change and we see ourselves as the facilitators to help them achieve that,” says Crewe. “So we use best-practice benchmarking and technology to help us get there.”
The work started in large, high-profile departments such as waste and recycling, parking, planning services and general enquiries, but it will be expanded to include council tax and other smaller departments. The council’s next step after revamping its business processes is to automate them as much as possible. Key systems here include customer relationship manage-ment (CRM). But according to Mark Lumley, head of ICT at both Elmbridge and Epsom and Ewell Borough Councils, it is not so much the technology that is the most important thing as the underlying data. “It’s not about joining up systems A and B, but what data you want to get from the system and that’s the key thing,” he says.
One useful vehicle for capturing such data from service users is customer contact software VoiceSage. This enables the council to automatically send customers a five-question survey via interactive text, mobile or telephone voice message immediately after they interact with any of its channels. This information is then stored as a file in each individual’s CRM record, enabling negative feedback to be dealt with more quickly than if it were simply compiled into a report.
Not only are customers contacted directly about their problem but, if the complaint is ongoing, the feedback is used to further enhance service delivery and ensure a process of continuous improvement. “We are not just asking customers what they think of the initial process,” says Crewe. “We ask them what they thought of the whole experience. This enables us to home in and fine-tune our existing processes, as we can track the customer journey from start to finish.”
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 17
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
MANAGING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
Pressing technology into the service of the customerThis is an important point because, to ensure a consistently positive customer experience, the right culture must be in place – something that is usually ordained by senior managers at the very top of the organisation.
Another important consideration is that, despite many product suppliers, ranging from analytics and survey tools to contact centre voice system providers, describing themselves as customer experience specialists, the term has yet to be appropriated in technology as cus-tomer relationship management (CRM) was a decade and a half ago.
This means it is currently not possible to simply deploy an off-the-shelf customer experi-ence software suite to achieve your goals. Instead, it is about using technology from across the spectrum to underpin a wider customer-centric vision. Gartner’s Thompson says: “Customer experience isn’t really a market per se. It’s a business goal and, while technology can help you get there, the term hasn’t yet been usurped into just buying software.”
Instead, customer experience is all about “doing things that benefit the customer rather than things that benefit the organisation,” he adds. “So it actually looks very similar to the original ideas behind CRM.”
Case study: Orlebar Brown uses NetSuite softwareLike all clothing retailers, particularly in the luxury market, delivering a positive customer experience is vital for Orlebar Brown’s brand and reputation. Every Monday morning it begins the week by holding customer service meetings that include senior and middle man-agers, as well as selected staff members, at its London headquarters.
The aim is to discuss what is happening across all its sales channels – comprising a website, its own stores and franchises in department stores such as Harrods and Barneys New York – to react quickly to any problems. Senior managers also meet once a month to share infor-mation and co-ordinate activity, much of which is IT-related, at an organisation-wide level.
For example, at the end of each season, which lasts about 12 weeks, customer experience designers are brought in to update the presentation of the London-based retailer’s website. Merchandisers are hired to understand what has and has not worked for customers in-store.
Senior IT manager Abi Somorin says: “We couldn’t offer a good customer experience without technology – it drives everything in one shape or form due to the data element, which is important to continually improve what we do.” Orlebar Brown has used NetSuite’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning systems at the back end to run its operations since 2011. But a couple of years ago, it decided to migrate to the supplier’s retail and e-commerce software to improve the customer experience. One key objective was to ensure that activities such as customer service and pricing were consistent, no matter which channel the customer used.
“Our customer data was held in three different places and it was becoming apparent that the customer experience was being eroded,” says Somorin.
“For example, if someone placed an order but changed their mind, they’d call up, but our customer service people might not know anything about it.”
As part of the move, the firm also introduced a master data strategy that involved a data-cleansing exercise. “Customer and product data have to be very accurate because they are
the most important, and everything else is built on top of them,” says Somorin.
For example, if customers are willing to give Orlebar Brown their personal details, a service has been set up to email them a copy of their receipt before they even leave the shop.
This service is particularly handy for the firm’s key jet-setting demographic, who may want to buy from a store in one country but return the item to a store in another – and who were prone to losing the paper version. Somorin says: “It’s all about recognising customer chal-lenges and ensuring that we can support them no matter where they are because, in luxury retail, you have to get it right first time.” n
› CEM or ERP to improve customer experience?› What defines an effective user experience?
› Manufacturers enhance customer experience
computerweekly.com 17-23 March 2015 18
HOME
NEWS
THE ENTERPRISE BUSINESS CASE FOR
THE APPLE WATCH
UK SMARTMETER PROJECT CLOSE
TO FAILURE
WORLD’S OLDEST MEDIA COMPANY
PUTS TECH AT CORE
EDITOR’S COMMENT
OPINION
BUYER’S GUIDE TO DESKTOP
COMPUTING 2020
USE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE TO
STAND OUT
DOWNTIME
DOWNTIME
final message for all to see,” said Emma Myers, head of wills, probate and lifetime planning for Saga Legal Services.
Presumably, at the tearful moment that whichever minister of the faith is blessing your passing into whichever paradise you subscribe to, he or she will press not only the button that starts the conveyor belt but also a hidden “send” button, elicit-ing a chorus of notification alerts across the room. Given suitable forewarning, your mourners could even co-ordinate their alert tones to play all your favourite memorial tunes, direct from your saved iTunes legacy.
As ever, Downtime is ahead of the pack here, and has its final tweet ready to go: “It’s getting very hot in this box #notreal-lydead #nicetan LOL.” n
Ashes to ashes, tweet to tweetSaga – that well-known organisation famed for its popular use in taunts against your over-50 friends – is encouraging its elderly audience to get into the social media mindset before it’s too late.
The company has suggested that people prepare a “last tweet” to leave their final thoughts to friends, family and followers in perpetuity – or at least, for as long as it passes through your Twitter timeline.
Saga’s advice comes as part of its newly published Guide to digital legacy detailing how to protect your online assets after death so your family can retain all your gurning selfies and cake pictures forever.
“All too often, last words are not heard or not remembered, and the internet provides a neat way of broadcasting your
Read more on the
Downtime blog
AM
OK
IV/E
IVA
ISLA
/TH
INKS
TOC
K
