Home › Posts tagged leverage

Tag: leverage

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

Creating new revenue streams, identifying untapped audiences and better engaging fans onsite and all year-round are just some of the wins iconic Australian sporting events are chalking up thanks to human-centric digital innovation.

If there’s any lesson brands should have taken from the last three years of the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s that investing in digital can deliver even more engagement – online and in-person. And with increasingly immersive technologies such as virtual reality, data-driven insight using artificial intelligence and creative video delivery coming to the fore, opportunities to unite digital with human-centred design principles to win in both physical and digital realms are growing.

The power of human-centric digital experiences is particularly apparent in the work Infosys has been doing to ensure leading sporting brands create unparalleled customer experiences. Here, we explore two stellar examples in the Australian Grand Prix and Australian Open.

Serving up digital innovations for the Australian Open

Using digital, immersive technologies and data to ensure fan engagement is even more immersive is also a long-term imperative for Infosys and Tennis Australia around the Australian Open. And this year’s event proved an unparalleled showcase of how physical and digital are coming together in innovative ways.

Among the highlights of the 2023 Australian Open were a revamped Match Centre 2.0, available on the AO website as well as mobile app for all matches throughout the tournament and providing fans with immersive insights such as Matchbeats, Stroke Summary, Rally Analysis, Courtvision and AI Commentary. A ‘win predictor’ also gave fans real-time predictions as each match progressed. Accessibility was equally in the spotlight, while an enhanced Infosys MatchBeats presented simplified game data and visualisations thanks to contrasting colour combinations that met Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 AA.

A host of AI Video Insights further powered on-court strategy and media reporting while giving fans, players and coaches unprecedented insights into every game.

In addition, an enhanced Player’s Portal with AI-generated videos democratised the level of insight available to players and coaches around game and competitor insights for post-match reviews and pre-game analysis. For example, Get into the Zone served up video montages of a player’s former winning performances, while an opponent tendency feature allowed players to view and analyse the statistical playing tendencies of their opponents.

And AI Shot of the Day also boasted of enhancements, enabling Tennis Australia’s media team to quickly analyse and post social media ready clips from the best shots of each day.

“For us, this has been a monumental and strong partnership with the Australian Open since 2019. Post each edition, our team takes a step back through an empathy led approach and assess data from all stakeholders engaging with the AO. This follows design thinking workshops to reimagine how our digital innovations can further enhance the stakeholder experience with the Happy Slam, make it more accessible, immersive and engaging. Our strength is digital whether it is AI, digital learning platforms or mixed reality and we combine it with a passion for tennis.

We’ve seen over 50 million fans engage with the digital innovations built by Infosys over the years with MatchBeats alone seeing 7.2mn views this edition, witnessed over 100 million views of footage generated by our AI driven innovations, launched physical platforms such as the virtual hub to engage 10,000+ key consumers of AO during the pandemic and are now going beyond with Infosys Springboard to nurture future leaders and Engage to leverage digital for sustainable futures. Over 11,000 fans engaged with our VR experiences which has doubled from 2022, highlighting a strong appetite for digital experiences. And being conscious of the future, our entire footprint this year onwards at AO 2023 was and will continue to be carbon neutral”, says Navin Rammohan, Vice President, Segment Head Marketing, Sponsorships and Events at Infosys.

Onsite, Infosys itself harnessed virtual reality in its fan zone activation. This allowed attendees to experience tennis in several creatively themed metaverse worlds, from a ride into hyperspace with moon tennis and battling thousands of flying tennis balls in a spaceship, to sparring with AO superstars avatars on centre court.

“Working with Infosys over the past five years has enabled us to set new benchmarks in fan engagement using digital technologies,” says Tennis Australia CEO and Australian Open Tournament Director, Craig Tiley. “This partnership has enabled us to deliver new innovative digital experiences year after year for everyone associated with the tournament. We remain committed to making the Australian Open a global standard for a digitally-enabled sport that is inspiring, engaging, inclusive and sustainable.”

Focusing on the fans of the Australian Grand Prix

Australian Grand Prix Corporation (AGPC) General Manager of Marketing and Experience, Arthur Gillion, will never forget 13 March 2020. Just two days out from the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix sporting event in Victoria’s Albert Park Circuit, and hours before practice sessions were to begin, the event was cancelled due to Covid-19.  

“The world was watching. It was a hard moment to go through,” Gillion recalled during the recent Infosys Confluence event. “From a strategic perspective, what we had planned for the following years had to change. The way we approached brand management, from diagnosis, to strategy to tactics all flipped on its head.”

Yet even as the pandemic negatively impacted the physical race, it presented an opportunity for the AGPC to overhaul digital experience to create a more fan-fuelled approach.

“We couldn’t stop communicating or trying to provide some joy to the fans,” Gillion said. “The emphasis had to be on the digital experience. We were very innovative in that space to stay connected.”

Helping AGPC was strategic technology partner, WONGDOODY, the global human experience company of Infosys. Together, the pair reassessed AGPC’s digital ecosystem as a first step. Diving into data the organisation held about its fans to build insights that could be realised in added value and simplified, improved touchpoints was the overarching driving force.

“While AGPC had a lot of data, the team didn’t necessarily know what it was telling them,” WONGDOODY’s chief experience and design officer APAC, James Noble, explains. “The key was to work out what information was relevant, versus irrelevant, then use that to understand the different audiences and what each of those fans wants.

“Being able to convert that into a digital experience would make it easier for audiences to understand the Australian Grand Prix, lead them towards stronger engagement and in time, to purchase things like tickets.”

Focus shifted to digital content as the dominant mechanism for keeping fans connected, and to an annual timeline of engagement, rather than burst of activity surrounding the events. Owned platform articles, blog posts and a podcast series developed by AGPC took centre stage, with built-in capabilities making it easy for audiences to engage with and share content.

With the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix website the first point of touch from a brand perspective, giving fans what they want online is critical to any human-centric approach, Noble says. WONGDOODY helped AGPC understand its digital touchpoints, understood which customer segments AGPC were trying to attract, inform, educate and engage, and transformed this into a solution. The Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix caters to diverse customer cohorts, from motor and F1 enthusiasts, to those who come for the spectacle, ‘culture vultures’ wanting to be seen; families on a day out; and corporate and sponsor delegates.

“It’s working out not only the user experience but the content strategy and experience and how that leads you through the funnel, as opposed to having people floating around with no direction,” Noble continues. “Do you want them to press that button? Or talk to that person? What is it you want to happen next?”

As AGPC began work to bring its physical event back, digital experience took on another vital role. A major achievement was improving the ticketing pathway online for the returning five-day event.

“There are lots of different permutations of tickets and it had been difficult for a consumer to understand what they’re buying,” Noble says. “We looked at the matrix of all the ticketing permutations and experiences you could have, put in a simpler interface and easier-to-use experience, and skipped all the doing it again to go straight to purchase. Just by that happening and knowing what ticket types were selling out, the AGPC team could make informed business decisions and understand where to adapt and create more of what’s popular.”

The work done as an organisation to lift digital innovation has without doubt delivered AGPC incredible growth. In 2022, almost 420,000 people came to the Formula 1 Australian Grand Prix, up from 324,100 in 2019, adding more than $170 million to the visitor economy. AGPC also saw a 154 per cent increase in digital traffic during event week and a 218 per cent increase in traffic in the months leading up to the event. It exceeded 2.6 million unique visitors to the site in 2022, a 200 per cent increase on 2019.

Importantly, the first release of Grandstand tickets for the 2023 event sold out in under 3.5 hours, testament to the seamless purchasing process. This ticketing architecture overhaul has since triggered changes to the physical environment and decision-making driving further revenue growth.

For example, pre-pandemic, the F1 event had four private lounges. In 2022, there were eight, and this year’s Formula 1 Rolex Australian Grand Prix has 14. Being in the fortunate position of having much demand and selling tickets faster enables AGPC to shift focus quickly, and use insights to innovate physical experiences.

“Because the team knows so far ahead about what kinds of tickets are being sold, there’s an opportunity to create another stand or another section. The forward planning is so much easier and it’s adding millions to sales generated,” Noble adds.

Infosys

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

By: Larry Lunetta, VP Portfolio Solutions Marketing at Aruba, a Hewlett Packard Enterprise company.

As customer-centric innovators, we’re constantly looking at how we can better help businesses reach their goals by leveraging technology. That’s why hearing from them first-hand is so valuable.

This year, we kicked off our quest for insights with a survey run by Sapio Research.

Targeting 200 international business decision makers from organizations of 500 employees or more, its purpose was to gauge the C-suite’s understanding of where and how a network can deliver against modern business needs.

And what a set of needs businesses are facing in 2023—from enabling more immersive omnichannel customer journeys to creating bespoke data-led experiences, innovating to secure new revenue streams, weaving sustainability into operations, and much, much more.

The survey findings are telling: one in four business leaders have only a functional or limited understanding of the enterprise network’s true potential.

And this snapshot aligns with a far bigger trend we’re noticing across industries—business leaders need expert partners (both from within their IT teams and from vendors like HPE Aruba Networking) to help them leverage their network to produce innovative business outcomes, aligned to their specific, strategic digital transformation goals.

While business leaders want to innovate, other key findings reaffirm that the value of the network to help them do so is not well-understood:

While 93% agree their business’ technology needs have increased post-pandemic, 73% are concerned about their organization’s ability to keep up with the latest requirements.71% acknowledge that technology and enhanced digitalization are crucial to employees doing their jobs, however only 61% see the link between staff productivity and network advancements.Half of respondents believe access to data is fundamental to unlocking new revenue streams in the year ahead, but 53% aren’t aware of how the network could help drive this innovation.

High levels of digital transformation and innovation will define business success in 2023, which 81% of surveyed business leaders recognize. But almost a third anticipate moderate transformation at best. As the network is the proverbial on-ramp to the digital transformation freeway that stretches from edge to cloud, we believe that a more innovative, agile, optimized offering on this front will make all the difference.

With our results showing that only a quarter of respondents are planning to put budget behind their network infrastructure this year, there is clearly more to be done in demonstrating the network’s value as a business-driving asset in its own right.

Part of this is lies in how IT leaders frame their networking discussions—talking in terms of business outcomes versus technical specs. But it might also require a different approach to networking entirely.

Agile Network-as-a-Service (NaaS) can offer business leaders the flexibility and resilience to battle through the prevailing headwinds faced across industries—from budget and resource constraints, to the need to match network capacity to the ever changing business needs. While these leaders can’t be expected to have all the answers around networking, working with their IT teams to understand how NaaS can help them meet their business goals is the right first step. With the correct NaaS strategy (from acquisition to deployment and management) that fits their unique requirements, businesses can then fast-track a successful digital transformation.

Want to learn more? Check out our infographic.

IT Leadership

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

As companies lean into data-first modernization to deliver best-in-class experiences and drive innovation, protecting and managing data at scale become core challenges. Given the diversity of data and range of data-inspired use cases, it’s important to align with a robust partner ecosystem. This can help IT teams map the right set of services to unique workflows and to ensure that data is securely managed and accessible regardless of location.

Data volume has become a challenge for organizations as the size and velocity of data increase. Yet there’s no singular, one-size-fits-all framework for secure data storage and management. According to IDC, global data creation and replication will experience a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23% by 2025. This means that organizations need access to a range of solutions for storing sensitive data at scale, especially considering mounting regulations that vary by geography and industry. Two well-known examples: GDPR in Europe and HIPAA privacy rules for health information in the U.S.

With data well situated as the lifeblood of organizations and as a core competitive differentiator, data security becomes paramount. The rise in ransomware attacks and other cybersecurity breaches has raised awareness of the issue and made securing the IT estate a top C-suite priority. 

Upgrading IT and data security to reduce corporate risk was the No. 1 CEO priority for respondents to the IDG/Foundry “State of the CIO Study 2022” research, cited by a third of the respondents. Almost half (49%) called out increasing cybersecurity protections as the top business initiative driving IT investments this year, up from 34% in 2021. 

The push for elevated cybersecurity protections is also filtering down into storage and data management requirements. Gartner research shows that 60% of all enterprises will require storage products to have integrated ransomware defense and mitigation mechanisms by 2025, up from 10% in 2022.

As enterprises modernize with cloud, connectivity, and data, they are gravitating to technology-as-a-service models to refashion IT estates. Traditionally these IT ecosystems feature silos spread across multiple environments, including on-premises data centers and colocation facilities at the edge or across diverse cloud platforms. Compounding the complexity: the problem of multigenerational IT and the challenge of establishing resilience and cybersecurity across workloads. This considering the disparity of the environment and due to mounting cybersecurity, regulatory, and privacy challenges. 

Without an overall strategy for modernization, companies risk mismanaging their edge-to-cloud data efforts, either overprovisioning, which incurs unnecessary costs, or underprovisioning, which impedes their ability to fully deliver for customers or hit key business goals. They may also lack on-location staff expertise to design and manage robust cybersecurity protocols. 

“Customers want to be provided with integrated and optimized hardware and software platforms … to make sure there’s no disruption at all in the business,” says Valerie Da Fonseca, worldwide GreenLake and GTM senior director at HPE. “The key here is to shape the right data strategy, so you simplify data management and provide access controls in an as-a-service model.”

Partner Ecosystem at Work

A rich partner ecosystem is essential for delivering next-generation secure data management protection from edge to cloud. HPE GreenLake’s backup-and-recovery services help companies fulfill data protection service-level agreements (SLAs) without having to make upfront capital investments or take on overprovisioning risk. On-demand cloud backup and recovery services ensure resilience at scale and allow for an agile response to changing business needs. Preconfigured on-premises solutions provide extended options, and a rich ecosystem of third-party partners gives customers choice.

The HPE GreenLake data protection portfolio delivers next-generation data protection services, from design and implementation to delivery with no vendor lock-in. The life cycle starts with HPE’s Zerto ransomware protection and disaster recovery services and extends to hybrid cloud data protection with the HPE Backup and Recovery Service. Finally, HPE offers on-premises data protection with HPE StoreOnce, a modernized data management solution for hybrid cloud that simplifies operations and delivers data protection based on common SLAs. Additional backup-and-recovery options from ISV partners such as Veeam, Commvault, and Cohesity complete the picture, ensuring that HPE GreenLake for Data Protection Services provides a breadth of choice to make data backup-and-recovery operations seamless and automated.

“The partner ecosystem delivers a comprehensive, end-to-end suite of services that adds value to HPE’s data protection strategy,” Da Fonseca says. “We are integrating everything into our hardware and HPE GreenLake as-a-service platform, and the solutions can be located everywhere and anywhere and be fully managed if customers don’t have the staff.”

To ensure the right data management/protection mix, HPE works with customers to understand their business needs and IT management challenges, creating a holistic strategy that encompasses the right partners and operating model. That level of comprehensive planning is crucial to safeguarding data and ensuring an end-to-end data management strategy that truly mitigates risk and meets the needs of the business. At the same time, making data protection available as a service streamlines the customer experience, providing time-to-market and cost advantages.

For more information, visit https://www.hpe.com/us/en/solutions/edge-to-cloud.html

Data Management

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

A shift toward hybrid IT infrastructure has accelerated as a result of the pandemic, along with an increased demand for ultra-low latency, high-bandwidth networks and, by extension, edge computing.

However, many organizations simply don’t have the resources or the expertise to build or manage the complex distributed systems required for effective edge computing delivery, a distributed computing paradigm that brings computation and data storage closer to the sources of data.

The open architecture, which is sometimes referred to as fog computing, drives storage and data processing towards a location where it’s needed. Next-generation technologies such as private 5G enable this edge connectivity, while IoT technologies deliver connected devices.

For these companies, an edge-as-a-service (EaaS) solution — which combines hardware, edge connectivity services, and cloud platforms — provides a one-stop solution to accelerate their path to effective edge computing. It offloads the complexities associated with moving applications to the edge and helps businesses confronting a lack of skills within their internal IT teams to achieve greater operational efficiency, security and growth.

For certain industries, such as manufacturing, healthcare and logistics, innovations at the edge such as private 5G and IoT are delivering an even greater seismic shift, enabling them to embark on transformation journeys that were not possible before. 

NTT’s Edge as a Service is the first globally available, fully managed hyper-converged edge computing infrastructure, IoT and private 5G network offering, delivering near-zero latency for enterprise applications at the network edge, boosting user experiences in a secure environment, optimizing costs, and enabling organizations to get closer to their sustainability goals.

“NTT’s managed edge computing enables applications and data to be placed closer to the sources and users of that data and content without the need for dedicated on-site IT resources,” said Parm Sandhu, Vice President of Enterprise 5G Products and Services at NTT. “NTT manages the hardware, application deployment, security and software patching. By processing the data on-site, companies can save on expensive backhaul transport costs required to deliver large amounts of data for traditional cloud processes.”

Embracing EaaS also enables organizations to overcome other challenges they may be facing. For some, latency is a problem due to the absence of on-premises centralized processing. Edge computing enables processing at greater speeds and volumes, leading to greater action-led results in real-time.

For others, security may be even more of an issue due to data at the edge (which can include facial recognition and personal health data), including personal details which are subject to more regulatory scrutiny. Edge computing helps protect data stored at the edge and can be used to help organizations facing growing regulatory requirements.

By embracing NTT’s unique EaaS solution, organizations can also expand their reach and pursue opportunities enabled by next-generation technology. For example, industrial firms can benefit from smart factories, precision monitoring and control, and predictive maintenance enabled by computer vision. The healthcare industry can streamline operations with remote patient monitoring, virtual consultations and robotic surgery.

NTT’s EaaS solution is also key to enabling next-generation technologies such as digital twin models, autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) and autonomous vehicles.

“These technologies require features that are enabled through NTT’s Edge as a Service,” says Sandhu. “For example, the adaptive control of operational assets through AI/ML-enabled applications that learn operational patterns and enact automated self-correction, and mass data virtualization and analysis that bring together disparate data streams into one comprehensive enterprise view.”

Delivering distributed systems from the edge is highly complex and unlikely to be subsumed as a core business capability except within the very largest of enterprises. Using EaaS can help organizations stay hyperfocused on their core business while recognizing new use cases to help them scale.

NTT is working with the City of Las Vegas to transform it with Private 5G. With over 40 million visitors each year and 600,000 residents, the city is faced with immense pressure on their infrastructure as they strive to deliver high-quality services. Watch the NTT keynote address at Mobile World Congress 2022.

Edge Computing

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

When Steve Pimblett joined The Very Group in October 2020 as chief data officer, reporting to the conglomerate’s CIO, his task was to help the enterprise uncover value in its rich data heritage.

For a company that made its name in mail-order catalog sales, the idea of building an enterprise-wide data catalog seemed to be an appropriate part of that process.

Very grew from the successive mergers of a number of mail order catalog companies, the oldest dating back to the 1890s. Its constituent companies later moved into high-street retail, launched new mail-order brands selling clothing on credit, and even created a consumer financial data broker, later spun off like so many of the group’s other non-core activities.

The group’s move online began in the 1990s with its first steps into e-commerce, followed by the closure of its physical stores in 2005. It launched its first online-only brand, Very, in 2009 and finally abandoned its printed catalogs to go all-in online in 2015.

The whole company rebranded as Very in 2020, the year Pimblett joined. He found a rich collection of data assets, including information on over 2.2 million daily website visits, 4.8 million active customers and 49 million items delivered annually.

Behind the flagship brand, though, he says data remained scattered in siloes across many legacy business units and applications, with limited automation, many glossaries, and complex data lineage, and stewardship making it hard to govern and audit.

Data and analytics experts were also spread across the organization, with some under the technology team but others embedded in the various business units.

“There was no one to help everybody with standards and central approaches, so every business vertical was doing it differently,” he says. “‘It’ being everything from how they collect and measure data, to how they understand it and their own glossary. It was very fragmented, and I brought it together into a hub-and-spoke model.”

The new model enables Very to design once and deploy everywhere, while maintaining a product focus.

As a result, Pimblett now runs the organization’s data warehouse, analytics, and business intelligence. “We’re a Power BI shop,” he says. “I run the infrastructure and a central enterprise BI team.”

Establishing a clear and unified approach to data

But getting to this stage was an intricate process that involved creating centers of excellence for things like data analytics that own the end-to-end infrastructure, application and skill sets, as well as career plans for staff.

Pimblett took a carrot-and-stick approach to get everyone working together, partnering with them on value creation (the carrot of profit) and risk mitigation (the stick of compliance). “It’s about making sure we understand the legal basis by which we’re capturing data, what we’re doing with it, where it flows, how we use it, and that we govern all those things,” he says.

Enterprises need to be aware of the dual nature of the data they hold, that it can be both an asset and a liability, he says.

One of the early projects on which he was able to add value through a partnership between his data hub and one of the business unit spokes was in building a new demand forecasting tool.

“We’re a multi-category retailer with over 160,000 SKUs, so forecasting how much stock to buy of each SKU is a business challenge, but also very much a technology and mathematical challenge,” he says.

Steve Pimblett

To get buy-in from business units for projects like this, he says, “you have to sell them the benefit and the outcome of shared platforms, reuse, shared data, and the efficiencies that they’ll get,” and not the technology you’ll use.

“A lot of roles in data just talk about the data,” he says. “Where do we store it? What’s the infrastructure? What’s our warehousing technology? You know, good old DBAs, modelers, and analysts.”

Instead, says Pimblett, he and his data colleagues ask business managers, “Where do you think you can create value from data? What type of decisions are you making? Where is there opportunity to automate? And how can we delight the customer or empower your colleagues to take better decisions? Turn it into an outcome, a value and an action conversation. That tends to get them engaged,” he says.

 A more nimble catalog business

Very has come full circle as a business built on catalog data, but it took some introspection in order to figure out the best way to get there.

“Cataloging your data is more important than ever for many companies, with so many technology options, different data silos, enterprise warehousing, lake houses, data lakes, and all those types of capabilities,” says Pimblett. “Understanding what data you’ve got locked in all these different stores is a big part of the jigsaw puzzle.”

So he began working on a pilot project with data catalog and governance tool vendor Alation about a year ago, after it responded to Very’s RFP. In a first test of the technology, he used Alation to catalog a subset of Very’s data held in an old Teradata database. It took about nine weeks to set up the infrastructure, make the connection to the database, and index and understand the metadata. Very is focusing on short sprints like this, rather than on monolithic 12-month projects that may not fit the business when finished.

“Run a pilot within nine weeks, prove it, prove the value, and then roll it forward into production is very much how we think about our full technology agenda,” he says.

Pimblett hasn’t yet catalogued all of Very’s data, however. It’s always going to be a work in progress. “We’re picking off the highest potential value and highest risk areas,” he says. “We’ve done it in our financial services area, and some of our marketing area. Those tend to hold the biggest amount of our customer information.”

The next step will be to roll it out across the whole company.

“We’ve got some massive systems that take time to index — not from a tech perspective, but from a data stewardship and understanding perspective,” he says.

Value, not vanity

Reflecting on things he might have done differently over the two years since he joined Very, Pimblett cautions against embarking on new technology projects for the sake of it and recommends always thinking about the desired outcome or action first.

If you don’t, he says, “there’ll be an occasion when you realize you didn’t comply with your own principles and start with the action and outcome.” In those situations, he says, you need to tell yourself: “Get back to your strategy. You’ve thrown value away because you’ve had a team working on a vanity project rather than creating business value.

One of the next value-creating projects to which Very will be applying its rich data legacy centers on loans: By the end of 2022, it will pilot a new personal finance business, offering its existing customer base loans of up to £7,500 ($8,800) over one to five years.

“We’ve got a trusted brand and we’ve just started to innovate based on our technology and data capabilities,” he says.

Chief Data Officer, Data Center Management