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Skandia consists of several different companies, of which insurance and banking are the two largest. The insurance business has old roots: the pension company was started as early as 1855, while the bank only started in 1994, yet it was first as a purely telephone bank.

In light of this, the technical basis on which each company rests is very different.

“On the insurance side, we have mainframe technology, while the bank relies on newer, Windows-based technology and basically has no legacy,” says Skandia CIO Johan Clausén. “So they are different situations.”

Right now, there is also a major change initiative taking place to consolidate and gradually transfer to standard systems—a process that’s taking a very long time. But the challenge with the older systems is not the technology or the systems themselves, he notes.

“The mainframe is very reliable and with new integration solutions such as z/OS Connect, we have good conditions to solve the integration needs we have,” he says. “The challenge, rather, is the amount of systems and the complexity with the number of systems and business logic.”

As part of the ongoing change, the business system Lumera, formerly Itello, which is used by many in the financial industry, is also being implemented.

“We will run the installation on prem in our own data centers,” says Clausén. “It’s a system that’s largely customized to the customer. At the moment, we don’t see any big gains from having it in the cloud the way the system is built. And another reason for that is the Schrems II judgment and GDPR where, among other things, it’s about the risk of putting it in the cloud and then maybe being forced to bring it home. It can be challenging to put system solutions in the cloud, but it’s probably more challenging to bring it home from the cloud.”

Because of this, Skandia has no plans to make an entire move toward the cloud despite having a multicloud strategy using the public cloud, private cloud, and on prem depending on what they think is appropriate.

“What’s important to us is to make informed decisions based on use and which information is to be processed,” he says. “We’re in an industry of trust. That’s important to remember.”

Not just changing technology

Above all, the benefit of reducing complexity is it simplifies business processes, digitization, and it takes less time to get new functionality.

“The important thing for me is the business transfer we make in a shift like this and not just that we migrate from one system solution to another,” says Clausén. “I constantly say no to suppliers who want us to do a so-called lift and shift, where we just go from one technology to another. It doesn’t produce the effects we want. When we build new, we should think about how we want the business to look in the future, not just build the same.”

Even before the pandemic, Skandia had switched to working agile according to the Safe framework, which has created completely different conditions for IT and operations to go hand in hand, according to Clausén.

“It’s about involvement and inclusion,” he says. “When everyone works together, it’s easier to influence and explain to each other where the biggest advantage of agile working methods lies; that we have common priorities everyone knows about and is involved in, and that there are no priorities on the side.”

The IT side is growing

With the agile way of working, resources that previously belonged to projects have been moved into IT, which has meant that during his seven years as CIO, the unit has grown to nearly 600 employees, nearly a quarter of the company’s total 2,300 employees.

And the unit still has a great need for new employees. Last year, over 80 people were recruited, and more growth is the aim for the near future as well. For Skandia’s part, the uncertain economic times can even be an advantage when it comes to attracting talent.

“Everyone is affected by the recession, but we are in an industry that has fared relatively well compared to others,” he says. “The insurance side has a long-term perspective like few other industries, and the bank has achieved good results. So my feeling is we’re in a good position.”

Sustainability in focus

Consolidation can often be seen as a way to more sustainable outcomes with greater energy efficiency—something not lost on Clausén.

For a couple of years, Skandia, and Clausén in particular, has started to include sustainability as a priority when making IT decisions. Among other things, he’s been involved in starting the CIOCO2 initiative because he sees there’s a lot to do on the IT side.

“Too little thought has been given to sustainability in IT and it’s going too slowly,” he says. “After my years on the supplier side, I strongly believe in driving development by setting requirements in procurements.”

He points out that if a customer goes to the supplier with requests for how a service should be designed, nothing happens unless the supplier believes it’s possible to make a profit in the near future. But when the same thing comes from 20 customers, it becomes difficult for the supplier not to act.

But if there’s sustainability criteria in a procurement and a supplier doesn’t meet them as well as others, it doesn’t necessarily signal an end to that partnership.

“Instead, you can set demands that within a certain time they must have reached a required level,” he says. “In this way, you push on and raise the general level.”

How suppliers respond when demands on sustainability are made, however, can vary widely.  

“There’s no one who doesn’t think it’s important, but some have difficulty delivering what we want because their company has not progressed far enough,” says Clausén.

CIO, Cloud Management, Digital Transformation, IT Leadership

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

CIOs have always had to find a balance between the need to deliver innovation and the need to establish operational excellence. However, this tension has become even more challenging in recent years.

After several years in which businesses of all sizes and across all sectors were forced to transform rapidly in response to the pandemic, CIOs are now facing the need to drive optimisation and re-focus on the stability of the IT environment. According to The Human-Centered Insights To Fuel IT’s Vision 2022 report, conducted by Reach3 for Lenovo, 83 per cent of CIOs are still seeking digital transformation, but 76 per cent also acknowledge that they’re grappling with the challenge of finding the right balance between business innovation and operational excellence.

In a report, EY highlighted five steps towards delivering innovation in a way that also achieves cost efficiency. These steps are:

Leadership and Culture – where embracing the entrepreneurial mindset across IT motivates individuals and brings transformation initiatives to fruition.Technology Transformation – particularly, however, the CIO needs to understand what technologies to invest in that maximise a company’s value.New Methodologies – Agile methodology is more needed than ever, so organisations can experiment, measure outcomes, and learn fast.Governance and Ownership – striking the right balance between retaining the right level of control while also allowing the Agile approach to thrive is critical.Sourcing and Partnerships – revisiting and improving the sourcing strategy is critical for minimising the total cost of ownership while maximising the value of the investment.

One of the key steps in achieving all of the above will be vendor consolidation, and there will be a strong trend towards this in the year ahead. For example, one key piece of advice for CIOs looking at constrained budgets and inflationary pressures in the year ahead is to be open with suppliers regarding those budget constraints. Having a true partnership with an end-to-end supplier allows the CIO to more strategically engage and drive both optimisation and efficiency across the IT environment. A full 21 per cent of CIOs say that a major focus of theirs is negotiating with IT vendors. Reducing the number of vendors helps to minimise this disruption.

What does the right technology partner look like?

According to the Lenovo and Reach3 report, there are three qualities to an end-to-end solutions provider that will help to drive successful optimisation and consolidation across the organisation:

Productivity and Collaboration

At a top level, one of the key benefits of consolidating the number of vendors to a single end-to-end provider is that the technology is inherently designed to work well together. This helps improve reliability, and reduce the amount of time that the IT team spends on managing technology. In addition, it improves the security of the IT environment by limiting any gaps in the connectedness between technology.

One in four CIOs spend a significant amount of time managing IT crises. In addition, 51 per cent and 43 per cent have security management and improving IT operations as key priorities. The wastage that comes from poorly structured IT environments can consume far too much timefor the IT team. Vendor consolidation provides a way to quickly start to address this challenge.

2. Agility and Optimisation

Just as the modern business needs to operate according to agile best practices, CIOs have to find suppliers that can scale quickly as the business needs. This ranges from the technology and devices needed to access work, through to their service and support and end-of-life management.

To address this need, Lenovo created the TruScale Infrastructure-as-a-Service solution, which offers day-to-day support, flexibility backed by a pay-as-you-go model, and complete transparency into the whole environment at all times. This solution allows CIOs to shift most of the IT environment to an OpEx expenditure model while working with Lenovo to deliver a solution that is tailored to the specific needs and objectives of the organisation.

Meanwhile, at the device level, Lenovo provides technology that has been designed to meet all needs and require minimal customisation and support. The ThinkPad X1 Carbon, powered by Intel vPro, An Intel Evo Design, for example, is built for what IT needs and users want. Backed by Lenovo accessories, the CIO can streamline their device fleet rollouts and management by working with a single provider.

3. Intelligent Infrastructure

With the ongoing migration to the cloud, organisations are realising significant improvements to the efficiency and productivity of their working environment. Having IT solutions that are structured around cloud computing as the default is essential. The bulk of corporate data is now stored in the cloud, and workplaces have become completely decentralised, flexible and hybrid in nature, so flexibility in infrastructure is critical.

CIOs realise the value of finding the right vendor partner. Lenovo research shows that 92 per cent of CIOs believe that their vendors play a valuable role in their company’s overall success. However, having too many vendors can result in incompatibilities, confusion, and time lost in vendor management. For CIOs that are looking to deliver an agenda that both supports innovation while realising efficiencies, finding the right partner for an end-to-end technology solution is going to be a priority.

Lenovo

Posted on Posted in Digital transformation, General topics Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Consolidation is happening across industries – even spirits. Acquiring companies gain a myriad of benefits when they add new brands to the fold, but one resulting downside is internal complexity and confusion caused by different systems and processes being used. The Pernod Ricard Group, the producer of premium spirits such as Chivas, Absolut, Martell, Ricard and Perrier-Jouet, experienced that very challenge.

A global company, Pernod Ricard operates 90 subsidiaries across 100 production sites in 80 different countries and employs over 19,000 workers. To track and monitor the entire lifecycle of its spirits, Pernod Ricard used server-based technology. Because of the volume of different products and the complexity in managing associated processes across so many countries and sites, however, it was becoming impractical and unsustainable, creating a disconnect for prospective IT technicians who are accustomed to working with more agile and accessible systems. In order to both compete for better talent and improve its operations, the company made a decision to forge ahead and build a single web- and mobile-based platform that would serve all main production plants, allowing teams to monitor operations from anywhere and on any device and enabling the company to implement automation and standardized data collection and management processes across all its brands.

Upon researching the market, Pernod Ricard concluded there were no solutions that could provide the adaptability and agility its operations would need for competitive advantages and continued future growth.

Buy, build… or modernize?

When the company struck out looking to buy, Pernod Ricard turned its focus internally toward a tool it had used previously that was still performing at a high level; however, it had become cumbersome and unsustainable for users. Pernod Ricard determined modernizing that internal application would deliver the flexibility, adaptability, and agility its users needed – and, at the same time, it would be a selling point for retaining and attracting new IT talent.

While web- and mobile-based applications were critical to the project, Rocket Software – which acquired Uniface, the company that had created the original application – started by revamping Pernod Ricard’s 2,500-page ERP, doing away with its outdated and unused pages. A hybrid team of Rocket Software and Pernod Ricard developers then worked hand-in-hand to rethink, reconstruct, and rewrite the entire framework of Pernod Ricard’s application. The team simplified and reduced the application’s components from 4,000 to 2,200 — cutting them nearly in half. To create a uniform platform for managing Pernod Ricard’s many brands, the team built the application out brand-by-brand, deploying new functionalities as they went. In doing so, Pernod Ricard hoped to introduce standardized data collection and management processes while still providing its brands with the freedom to implement into the software the different methods and functionalities specific to their operations.

Creating a better user experience

In less than three years, Pernod Ricard completed its modernization project, cutting the 1.3 million lines of code needed to create the software by 60%, substantially reducing coding times. Since its transition onto a single platform, the Pernod Ricard Group has signed an additional 180 users to its company, a true testament to the solution’s modernization and innovative allure to the next generation of talent.

By automating its barrel reservation and Cognac QA process, employees save two days of work per month on average, which allows teams more time for value-driven tasks. And newly integrated automation is helping to streamline Martell’s cask inventory operations. On the old platform, employees could complete the physical process of “debonding” and content measuring at a rate of 7,000 to 8,000 barrels daily. Since adding automation capabilities, employee workloads have been reduced and teams can now complete between 12,000 to 14,000 barrels per day, saving Pernod Ricard both time and money.

Faced with few options, Pernod Ricard chose to modernize and it’s paying big dividends for its digital transformation efforts. Next time you’re contemplating some combination of new hardware and/or software to address operational challenges in your business, the answer to those challenges may already be in-house.

Read more about Pernod Ricard’s modernization efforts here

Digital Transformation