reinventing the dna of the future workplace

POST-EVENT REPORT

AGENDA

7:45AM Registration, networking breakfast & product showcase viewing

8:45AM Welcome introduction by Glen Francis, President, CIO Academy Asia

8:50AM Opening remarks by Eric Goh, Vice President, Enterprise Sales, Dell EMC Singapore

9:00AM Case Study Presentation 1

- Shirley Cheung, Head of IT, Asia Pacific, Rolls-Royce

9:15AM Case Study Presentation 2

- Clara Lee, CIO DSM Materials, Innovation and Food Specialties, DSM Engineering Plastics AP

9:30AM Panel Discussion

- Eric Goh, Vice President, Enterprise Sales, Dell EMC Singapore

- Shirley Cheung, Head of IT Programme Delivery, Asia Pacific, Rolls-Royce

- Clara Lee, CIO, DSM Materials, Innovation and Food Specialties, DSM Engineering Plastics AP

- James Loo, Chief Information Officer, Singtel Group Enterprise

- Samuel Tan, Chief Digital Officer, SP Group

Moderator: Glen Francis, President, CIO Academy Asia

10.10AM Networking & product showcase viewing

10.30AM End of programme

Clara LeeChief Information Officer,DSM Materials, Innovation

and Food Specialties,DSM Engineering Plastics

Asia Pacific

Shirley CheungHead of IT Program

Delivery, Asia Pacific,Rolls-Royce

James LooChief Information Officer,

Singtel GroupEnterprise

Samuel TanChief Digital Officer,

SP Group

Invited Speakers

Event Date: 20 April 2017, ThursdayVenue: The St. Regis SingaporeAttendees: 27 CIOs, Chief of Digital, senior IT decision makers

Reinventing the DNA of the Future WorkplaceA CIO Breakfast Briefing hosted by CIO Academy Asia in partnership with Dell EMC

High interest was evident among the invited CIOs as they gathered for the recent morning breakfastmeeting, with energy levels carrying through the course of the presentations and lively Q&A.

Kicking off the proceedings, Glen Francis, President of CIO Academy Asia noted that the gaining pace ofconversations on digital and workforce transformation suggest growing expectations and concerns over howthe future of work will impact organisations and vice versa. How enterprises each approach the challengesin the context of their digital transformation journeys can be telling, as evinced by the two keynote speakersfrom different organisations.

Veterans of Transformation …

The dynamic transformation at Rolls-Royce make for a riveting story in itself. From venerable company witha legacy in luxury automotive and manufacturing, Rolls-Royce has evolved to encompass highly advancedtech capabilities serving the engineering and defence sectors. The transformation continues today as it facesnew challenges that come with the evolving digital landscape and workforce. According to Shirley Cheung,Head of IT Programme Delivery for Asia Pacific, the organisation has embraced a vision for strategic changei.e. ‘Digital Excellence for a Changing Business’ to guide delivery of commitments, enable competitiveadvantage, transformation of user experiences and development of people and culture, all undergirded byone IT organisation. As a testament to organisational will, even operating constraints and restrictions on datasharing due to sensitive defence and military projects were not considered insurmountable; the constraintsled to their adoption of a cloud-based secure infrastructure that allowed data sharing and centrally-administered services, while easing security upgrades and assuring common standards.

… Delivering Next Gen UX

The transformations at the user level were even more dramatic, allowing significant improvements inprocedures such as remote expense processing for offshore personnel that did away with the long delaysand complexities of manual claims. Rolls-Royce’s commitment to delivering improved user experiences alsoensured that the workforce had a choice of approved devices with regular apps and capabilities that allowedthem to use a single device for work and personal purposes. Other workplace changes to enable flexibilityincluded hot-desking, support for remote working, and use of wearable and AR tech capabilities on the shopfloor that greatly reduced the need for costly on-site consultants or diagnostics. The changes set in motion aneed to continually keep up with users’ demand for new capabilities while also ring-fencing the organisationfrom risks, which led to a review of their security suites and services requirements. Serving the next genuser experience and the need to test new technologies came with a tall order, one that Rolls-Royce looks tohave achieved with balance and a keen eye on the broader corporate implications.

The mention of balance reminded Glen of the premise in the book ‘Age of Discovery’ by Ian Goldin and ChrisKutarna on approaches in the course of navigating uncertainty.

Power To The People

DSM’s context offered a contrasting picture of workplace transformation. The IT organisation at the globallife science organisation with diverse product lines and industry divisions underwent restructuring from 2014to 2016, transforming the network design architecture from a federated to a centralised system with astrong focus on compliance and validated systems. Business units still drove their own initiatives such asmarketing and R&D but capabilities were built on a common supporting IT and service infrastructureoverseen by the Corporate CIO. The latter worked with business units on a Demand, Plan, Build and Runbasis towards delivering 80% of capabilities via the cloud and internet by 2016.

Enable But Also Induce

As Clara Lee, CIO - DSM Materials, Innovation and Food Specialties of DSM Engineering Plastics Asia Pacificputs it, the strategy’s 5-pillars – namely Service, Automate, Connect, Stimulate and Insight sounded cut anddried but there was a real drive to create ‘desirable solutions’ that people wanted to use. Consolidation of ITassets into a Digital Hub and restructuring to enable development of process APIs with business units wasmeant to spur initiatives at the business level, drive education at the front-lines even among customers, andpush for greater knowledge sharing, idea generation and innovation grounded on real end-user andcustomer needs.

While philosophically enabling, the situation in reality may also require further inducements from amanagement perspective. Enabling technologies and infrastructure may be necessary first steps toempowering diverse business unit teams but getting them to take initiative on their own may still requiredirectives from the top.

Implications From a Smart Nation Perspective

Regrouping after a break, panellists comprising the 2 keynote speakers with CIO of Singtel Group EnterpriseJames Loo, Chief Digital Officer of SP Group Samuel Tan, and Vice President for Enterprise Sales at DellEMC Eric Goh were set to discuss the broader implications of Singapore’s Smart Nation initiatives on workpractices and the workplace, and necessary responses from the corporate and technology perspectives.

User (Experience) is King

There was broad consensus that despite the hype over the smart technologies involved, initiatives would failif people are blind-sided by technologies alone without adequately complementing or serving users or theirneeds. As James noted, ‘smart’ technologies should entail more than just connectivity between devices andshould focus more on UX and strategies for delivering real value.

Sam agreed, noting that digital technology is even changing the competitive landscape to the extent that SPno longer regards other power/energy companies to be competitors; rather, they are looking to enterpriseslike AWS and Alibaba. Digital transformation is necessitating a mindset change in the corporate sector,focusing attention on delivering value, changing business models and processes in response to broadermarket developments and expectations. It calls for refocusing around increasingly social media savvycustomers who can be vocal in expressing their priorities and needs. His quip spurred a comment from thefloor that technology’s smartness should even be felt and experienced - it should be so easy to use andenabling that users feel smart even if they are not!


Walking the Talk, and Vice VersaThis led to considerations of user empowerment – how solutions could be designed specifically forcustomers to easily manage their own end-point devices and services according to need and yet secureenough to take the load off users. Robust back-end security with regular patches, data management,support and tech infrastructure are needed to enable great UX on the front-end. That in turn called forgood communication to ensure alignment among different stakeholders on what digital transformationreally means for both internal and external customers. This is likely easier said than done, as Sam notedfrom experience in the power and energy industry. Convincing the Board is one thing but getting the rankand file and especially organisational veterans on board may be a very different story, which suggestsorganisational culture to be a significant factor. A way to address this is, again, to paying attention to UX andensuring that enabling technologies are not only easy to use but also able to clearly demonstrate value tousers.

Pivoting Towards User TouchpointsAt the other extreme are segments of users and even customers who are keen to drive initiatives - to theextent that digital transformation decisions may no longer entirely reside with CIOs or IT leaders. Beyondimplications for organisational culture and necessary supporting infrastructure, it raised questions as to howbroader change should be conveyed without necessarily needing to come down from the CIO.

Reconciling this may involve changing the work environment right from the top and focusing on value as thebasis for any change or initiative. In broad strokes, this calls for a re-orientation of awareness andresponsiveness to user and customer-oriented touchpoints. Dynamic computing in the retail context wasmentioned as an example that can offer useful reference points.

Delivering on the Tech FrontTo enable and deliver benefits and user expectations, cloud and internet-based delivery of services suggestsa useful approach. Clara noted that data security and information management measures would need to bein place, such as information handling according to data classification and categories. Likewise with devicemanagement policies, useful insights may be drawn from the notion of serving the needs of differentworkplace personas.

That said, organisations often struggle when it comes to app development for myriad users’ needs, having toensure that they can securely and robustly address requirements and provide support. James suggesteddisciplined approaches can help, such as the practice of re-engineering exercises to develop solutions bydesign according to field usage and context, and running all apps through the stack for end-to-end clearance.On top of such challenges, some IT leaders also had to drive transformation initiatives from within less thanideal environments, such as having to work with legacy systems like mainframes. Risk management is afurther consideration, and drew interesting comments on how security incidents may be seen as the lageffect of innovation because controls and regulations tend to play catch-up with technology.

Keeping Pace with the Next GenUltimately, however difficult or complicated it might be for IT to deliver the goods for end-users, users werelargely only concerned with having their needs met with easy-to-use technologies that. Drawing the sessionto a close, attendees were invited to ponder further organisational and workplace implications for the nextgeneration who may no longer be relatively passive technology users but will be social media savvy and alsoexpect to be active in collaborating and creating their own solutions.


EVENT PHOTOS

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reinventing the dna of the future workplace

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