The travel and transport sector is on the forefront of digitisation, facing a plethora of challenges and an imperative to move to a more sustainable mode of operation. The aviation and maritime industries have aging infrastructure with high costs of maintenance, legacy, and diverse technological footprints that need to be adapted to the new, smart, immersive, and autonomous applications of Industry 4.0. Similarly, rail and roads need to adopt flexibility and accommodate the increasing post-pandemic mobile nature of living while modernising infrastructure in line with regulation and interoperability needs. All this, while the sector needs to maintain a constant and ever more demanding satisfactory customer experience.  

In this complex landscape of digital and smart technologies, where every technology matters and can pivot the scale towards operational efficiencies, we often find our clients not giving the connectivity layer the right amount of attention that it requires, viewing it as just a pipe in their industrial setup. Given the increasing number of connected devices, robotics, drones, the automation of mundane tasks and the preventative nature of operation, networking infrastructure could be either the weakest link in the stack or an accelerator for digitisation at scale.  

5G combined with Edge Computing can offer that convergence platform to unify a plethora of systems, creating a high-performing, highly reliable, secure-by-design and scalable system. This is especially important as the industry is getting closer to replacing the obsolete Tetra technologies that are so far being used for private critical communications. 

But let’s have a look at the feedback and experiences on 5G adoption so far… 

The travel & transport sector is one of the early adopters of 5G private networks. While and amongst others, airports and ports are already demonstrating results from their early trials, still adoption is in its infancy and accompanied by a debate on the ROI. Zooming in on those early trials, the applied use cases belong to the Mobile Broadband communications category, with video communications benefiting the most. In parallel, it is observed that only a couple of use-cases are deployed and hence leaving the 5G network as yet another communications technology to be introduced on the floor and in the IT/OT bill. It’s therefore expected to be asking why invest so much money for something that’s just ok? 

But 5G has now “come of age” and is bringing to life massive machine-type and ultra-reliable and low latency communications. There is a plethora of advanced industrial features that will be of considerable value to travel & transport businesses – like time-sensitive networking, the ability to directly connect machine to machine, and 5G RedCap. We recommend that now is a very good time to take it seriously. 

What opportunities does 5G present for the travel & transport industry? 

The benefits that 5G brings come from the combination of cost savings and new capability introduction. Namely, large and complex industrial environments feature multiple connectivity technologies. 5G can rationalise the footprint and contribute to an operational cost reduction by replacing legacy or purpose-build with a universal connectivity solution. In parallel, productivity improves by enabling remote collaboration to resolve business-critical matters, training through immersive solutions and availability of specialists when they are required through Augmented Reality (AR). The capability to interconnect and process in real-time such an amass of data allows the business to leverage and benefit further from insights coming from machinery, tooling, and infrastructure, contributing to a productivity improvement for assets too.   

Especially for the large estates of airports and seaports, operators can automate and fault-proof surveillance by using drones or video analytics, without restrictive black holes where the network doesn’t provide any coverage, and handle issues remotely. Similarly, for the complex maintenance operations for rail. Winding through vast areas of the country, there is considerably low connectivity across the railway network, which just doesn’t meet the new standards of connectivity in our hybrid working world.  

Thinking a few years ahead, 5G could open up the possibility for all key actors in the travel & transport sector to leverage and further monetise this infrastructure with new business models and infrastructure sharing with key tenants and players in the ecosystem. 

5G can also play a role in helping you decarbonise your operations to establish a more sustainable footprint. It’s an inherently greener network, in the sense that it is designed to be more energy-efficient and offers an improved spectral efficiency to its predecessors. In addition, it requires less physical infrastructure than popular alternatives and therefore requires less resources to run. In addition, as 5G is ideal for Industrial Automation use-cases, it indirectly contributes to a greener footprint by reducing carbon emissions in industrial operations. 

All things considered, 5G’s most competitive benefit is that it creates a future-proof connectivity infrastructure with always predictable and dependable performance, scaling as the over-the-top digital demands scale. 

Why aren’t more businesses implementing 5G already? 

The compelling opportunity of 5G doesn’t come without challenges.  

Navigating existing ecosystems, new partners, can make adopting 5G a bit of a puzzle. In Capgemini Research Institute’s ‘Accelerating the 5G revolution’ report,we revealed the top challenges for senior executives from industrial organisations holding back more widespread implementation were:

• Integrating 5G networks with existing networks and IT systems (76%)
• Lack of access to the 5G and edge application ecosystems (72%)
• And, managing a multi-vendor environment (69%)  

Clients also struggle with identifying the right opportunities and operationalising them. While there is an executive demand to leverage 5G, our research found 55% of industrial organisations are having difficulties with defining 5G use cases and estimating their Return on Investment (ROI). Results also showed 69% felt challenges with adapting business operations with 5G use cases as the key barrier to implementation. They’re grappling with questions like: What are the use cases that can generate an immediate business impact and a satisfactory enough ROI? Are there applications viable only through 5G connectivity? How can the use cases be integrated with existing operations?

So, how do we get there? 

1. Start with an evaluation and assessment of the technology before a hands-on experience.
   Often customers adopt a 5G trial based on one or two use-cases. This creates a gap for the desired ROI. Contrary to that, we recommend examining the overall digital transformation roadmap and identifying not only killer use-cases but also services that can benefit from an advanced network, hence creating compound benefits. What is also critical is examining how infrastructure can be simplified and components with a narrow impact can be replaced.  
2. Identify the best timing. Trialling a new technology is critical during which period we need to monitor KPIs, assess progress, then help the client move to standardisation, industrialisation, and scaling of the solution. In this journey, we consider adjacent technologies coming end of life and a gradual expansion of 5G to ensure a continuous improving TCO and ROI.  
3. Identify how the investment should come. 5G sits between the IT and the OT worlds and responsibilities and technical benefits are shared.  
4. Explore the best way to deploy the technology for your business outcomes. What is your digital transformation roadmap and how does 5G fit in it? This is where Capgemini’s deep industry expertise and partnerships can help; depending on the need, we can bring a personalised solution rather than off-the-shelf. We can tailor a solution to the enterprise and move from assessment and evaluation to experimentation and adoption.

In summary, we strive to help our clients adopt 5G for long-term benefits, and can offer four key enablers: 

• ROI-focused business case 
• Pre-integrated infrastructure solutions 
• Customisable Industry 4.0 applications 
• End-to-end ecosystem orchestration and integration 

Smoothing the way to frictionless travel 

Key to meeting any common challenge head-on is to unite and start sharing. We believe there is a great opportunity for the industry to collaborate, think, and reflect with like-minded peers, focusing on some key opportunities facing the industry, including: sustainability, customer experience, multi-modal transport, intelligent industry, and 5G. 

You have the opportunity to explore these industry themes at our exclusive breakfast workshop on Thursday 1st February 8am – 12pm. 

Click here to register now as spaces are limited! 

Hear more from our experts in the Smoothing the way to frictionless travel blog series, below: 

Listen, understand, and build a relationship with your passengers to improve their customer experience by Dominic Corrigan – Engagement Director. 

Turning data into information is key to paving the way for ‘frictionless travel’. Here’s how to start by Mike Dwyer – VP & Head of the UK Intelligent Industry CoEx.

The UK travel and transport system gets a bad rep. Regardless of whether it’s earned or unjustified, “frictionless travel” is not a phrase many, if any, customers of the end-to-end network would use to describe it – whether it’s on the roads, on the rails, or in the skies. Passengers may be beholden to use it every day but that doesn’t mean they enjoy the experience. So how can intelligent industry – by that we mean the convergence of product, software, data, and services – help transform the future of the sector? And how do you make the business case that investment in it isn’t just about getting flashy new technology?

A lot of it comes down to the big challenge many transport operators have; turning data into information that allows them to make predictive, not reactive, decisions.

Data for provisioning

Imagine if an airport was energy-efficient, reacting to the passenger loading that’s going through it. We could see that we’re expecting 100,000 travellers on a particular day, which means X cars, buses, and trains. How is that going to behave as a model and what do we need to re-provision for it? Should we set up different flow lines? Should we adjust the frequency of the lifts? Could we even schedule lifts that are predominantly taking people from the tube concourse up, rather than the regular frequency of a lift going up and down? Intelligent use of data can help us really get into that dynamic scheduling of resources – both people and things.

Data for resilience

We’ve all experienced it as passengers: one issue on the line and the whole system is desynchronised, resulting in serious knock-on effects and having to figure out potentially massive, unnecessary workaround journeys. In the long run it chips away at your reputation as an operator and gets added to the list of reasons why customers are less inclined to use the service.

But if you can learn to turn your wealth of data into useful information and be stronger at how you use it, you can enjoy much better resilience in timetabling and service provision so that when you encounter those problems, you’re fully equipped to fix them quickly.

Intelligent industry can help you accurately understand the state of your assets, dynamically and predictively. Taking a step down into supply chain layers, we can create intelligent assets like geo-tagged vehicles that work from real-time data. Not just so that we can make operational decisions based on rerouting but so that we can understand any diagnostic issues coming off them.

Resilience is a grand challenge many of our clients are facing. They’ve coped with disruption so far – with some good technology and a lot of human intervention and intuition – but with post-COVID staff retention issues, they’ve now lost that operational resiliency that once was built into their people. In response, resilience needs to be in the system and the intelligence of the augmentation layer around the humans that are operating the airport, train station, or shipping port.

With SNCF Réseau, we developed a unique system to drive surveillance and maintenance efforts using data and an application to monitor the railways in real-time. This allowed SNCF Réseau to more effectively predict the need for and perform maintenance to ensure the undisturbed operation of its railway network across France.

Finding the information needle in the data haystack.

Everything above points back to using data and information in two ways:

Too much data leaves you square-eyed! Get the computer to help you.

Much of the data you will ingest is nearly impossible to understand without machine augmentation – whether that is machine learning (ML), robot processing automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), or generative AI. Intelligent industry means both people can look at the same data – or variants of that data – with different types of analytics overlaid to it to create high fidelity models of those scenarios.

Plus, when you have access to the lifecycle data, you can improve resilience of your product based on real operational data. In this industry, we need access to that in a sufficiently high frequency so that we can then upgrade the software on-board. Working in this way means always updating your fundamental capabilities because you’ve thought about resiliency and built in the ability to adapt.

Take Capgemini’s work on Airbus’ Skywise platform, for example. Based on a cloud-hosted data lake (a large repository for data storage), the platform allows airlines and other aeronautics players to store, manage and analyse their data and that of their ecosystem more efficiently. Offering visualisation, alert management, predictive and machine learning capabilities, Skywise makes it possible to manage a fleet of aircraft over its entire lifespan, integrating its operations and maintenance. One of the tangible benefits of the platform is to maximise the availability of a fleet of aircraft, increasing the operational and economic performance of the airline.

How do we get there?

1. Fundamentally, you need a digital-first culture.
   Everybody in the organisation needs to understand and be fluent in what digital is and why you really need it. It requires a built-in mindset that when you need to solve a problem, you look at it from a digital angle first. To do so, the whole business needs to align behind a clearly defined digital and data strategy.
2. Turn data into information with the right analytics.
   Cementing this digital-first culture leads you further down the road of understanding how data gets turned into information and how to give your customers that information through a window/format that’s digestible and useful. It can start very simply with one or two different channels and over time grow into different portals and windows, but ensure you keep the data progression and growth under control with your strategy.
3. Assess the intelligence requirements for your assets.
   Ask yourself the big questions. What levels of intelligence do you need from your moving assets? What augmentation can you give people as they move around big workplace areas? Do they need body cameras, tracking devices, or over the shoulder support like remote workers? How smart can you make your infrastructure like pumps, air bridges, or the airport/train station/ferry port building itself? Assess how smart they are now and measure it against the levels of operational resilience and efficiency you need to get to
4. Balance sustainability and resilience.
   Sustainability has become a top priority for businesses across all sectors and decisions about energy management are important. Ask yourself how you can make those decisions about use of energy and materials while also making sure you can hit your mission and be resilient when something goes wrong.
5. Be clear on the value of digital.
   This one is vital. If you structure the business case and narrative well, we can help you measure the success of your investment. Instead of seeing the benefits of digital as “this shiny new app looks nice”, we can drill down into the value digital is giving you back. How is it moving the needle on customer satisfaction, timetable adherence, or cost of fuel savings? Exactly how many tonnes of fuel have you saved? By how many minutes have you slashed passenger delays? And what did those things cost you operationally before the investment in digital? Yes, you may need to raise the cost of capital to buy a new piece of expensive kit, but what you get is higher operational resilience capacities, increased customer satisfaction, and the capabilities to keep driving results from your investment.
   There’s lots to do, but the steps are there to tangible and intangible passenger happiness.

Smoothing the way to frictionless travel

Key to meeting any common challenge head-on is to unite and start sharing. We believe there is a great opportunity for the industry to collaborate, think, and reflect with like-minded peers, focusing on some key opportunities facing the industry, including: sustainability, customer experience, multi-modal transport, intelligent industry, and 5G.

You have the opportunity to explore these industry themes at our exclusive breakfast workshop on Thursday 1st February 8am – 12pm.

Click here to register now as spaces are limited!

Hear more from our experts in the Smoothing the way to frictionless travel blog series, linked below:

Listen, understand, and build a relationship with your passengers to improve their customer experience by Dominic Corrigan – Engagement Director.

Fragmentation, frustration, and failing your customers

Consider the touchpoints of the average holidaymaker’s journey. Before they even step out of their house, they can experience the travel aggregator, the hotel booking service, the public transport ticket hub, the taxi booking service, the airport parking service, booking an airport lounge, and much more. Once the day arrives and they’re on their way, their overall customer experience is made up of the individual physical experiences with each of those touchpoints.

Owning that whole experience is hard for any one organisation and it’s frustratingly fragmented, because not all parties in the customer’s journey are cooperating. Typically, there is no flow of data between different partners – for example passengers’ flight details shared with the train company, or their train times shared with the taxi rank – and so each one competes for the same piece of information in an attempt to own the customer.

Not only does this increase fragmentation, but it also contributes to the rollercoaster of emotions that come with travelling. Many travellers find taking a trip quite stressful, at different points in the process, and when things go wrong with one service, the customer’s plan tends to completely fall apart and it’s down to them alone to get it back on track. It’s nerve-wracking, confusing, and depletes the entire experience, regardless of how well the journey was going beforehand or does afterwards.

And what doesn’t help this is that many businesses in the sector aren’t listening well enough to those customers.

With old challenges come new opportunities…

Better communication

In the age of communication, new ways to reach out and contact your customers appear every day. New technologies like generative AI can be used to make it easier to communicate with customer services by enabling the agents to become more efficient or even answer the question in real time. Combatting the fact that not all passengers will speak the same language as the operator providing their travel, it can also help with translation; providing ways for passengers to communicate in their own language with various providers.

Financial opportunities

By not being passenger-centric, many businesses are missing out on lucrative opportunities to sell the right products to their customers at a time when their moods and wallets are open.

Capgemini recently signed a new four-year deal with Heathrow airport to provide DevOps support for its extensive technology estate. Working with the UK’s largest and busiest airport, we will assist to deliver a bespoke and streamlined airport experience for passengers, by offering up a supplier marketplace that has been curated to display the most appropriate products and services.

We’ll continue to provide development and support of existing products and services such as Reserve & Collect shopping, Parking & Services, Customer Service and 24/7 Level 2 support – which is a continuation of the work started by Capgemini and Salesforce in 2018 to deliver Heathrow’s commercial digital vision. But we’ll also be working with Salesforce to introduce a greater level of personalisation to the passenger experience using Salesforce Data Cloud and Marketing Cloud to better utilise customer data and analytics.

And we’ll be assisting Heathrow in re-launching its VIP service which offers bespoke solutions to high profile travellers.

Collaboration and cooperation for customer experience

Instead of competing for information in a fragmented data landscape, why not acknowledge that the passenger is both party’s customer? If, as an industry, we get our heads together to ask how we can make the synergy between us better, it will improve passenger experience across the board – removing friction and opening the door for the two opportunities above.

How can businesses grasp these opportunities?

First, it’s crucial to understand the customer and what role your business plays in their journey. When working with Heathrow, we know the customer’s journey starts when they begin thinking about the trip – weeks, months, maybe even years before they take an action. Circling back to the journey we discussed at the top of this article, what happens before they turn up at the airport? What happens when they come back from the trip? Start thinking about the interim journey and how that passenger may be thinking and feeling in each of those moments. Then ask yourself: how can I fit into that experience in a seamless and friendly way? How can I actively remove the points of friction?

How do you do it? By listening to your customers. We recommend turning to user research to find out why and how your users want to interact with you. If they don’t want to pick up the phone, would they talk to a bot? Experiment, try something out, listen to your customers using sentiment analysis or social media analysis, then assess it.

With all of this comes data and it’s vital. If you aren’t already, start building a relationship with your customer and explore new ways to do so. The more data you have, the better experience you can provide. The better experience you provide, the more willing the customer will be to share their data with you because they can see the advantage. It’s a win/win.

Be clear on the value of digital and data. If you structure the business case and narrative well, we can help you measure the success of your investment. Instead of seeing the benefits of digital as “this shiny new app looks nice”, we can drill down into the value digital is giving you back. How is it moving the needle on customer satisfaction and revenue? By how many minutes have you slashed passenger delays? And what did those things cost you operationally before the investment in digital? Yes, you may need to raise the cost of capital to invest in building capabilities that help you sort your data into information, but what you get is higher operational resilience capacities, increased customer satisfaction, and the ability to keep driving results from your investments.

Key to meeting any challenge head-on, however, is to unite as an industry and start sharing. We believe there is a great opportunity for the industry to collaborate, think and reflect with like-minded peers focusing on some key opportunities facing the industry including: sustainability, customer experience, multi-modal transport, intelligent industry, and 5G.

You have the opportunity to explore these industry themes at our exclusive breakfast workshop on Thursday 1st February 8am – 12pm.

Click here to register now as spaces are limited!

The demand for renewable energy capacity is seeing increasing momentum, as countries across the globe, including the UK, accelerate attempts to strengthen energy security and create an industrial value chain with local green jobs.

According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), wind and solar will account for more than 90% of global electricity expansion in the next five years and will overtake coal to become the world’s largest source of electricity by early 2025. It’s expected the world will install 2,400 GW of new renewables capacity, which is as much solar and wind energy in half a decade as has been installed worldwide, to date. In the UK, a record 40% of electricity came from renewable energy sources in 2022.

In order to balance the intermittent renewable energy on the grid, the National Infrastructure Commission says the UK must add 30 TWh of flexible generation capacity – including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage (CCS) – by 2035. It also recommends 60 GW of flexible capacity, for example, interconnectors, battery storage, and demand side response mechanisms.

To meet the UK’s net zero objectives, we need to tackle the slowdown of renewables investment with increased certainty of projects via acceleration of project timeframes, increasing the speed of and simplifying connections processes, and continuing the delivery of enhanced grid infrastructure.

Speed and prioritisation of connections

One critical aspect of accelerating renewables projects is prioritisation. It takes an average 6-10 years to gain consent for a new connection and according to Ofgem there are currently 500 GW in the queue. That’s more than £200bn worth of projects, calculated by the BBC.

Because the system operates on a “first come, first served” basis, a study commissioned by Centrica revealed there are many investments that could drive up the UK’s energy transition and energy security, being blocked by ‘phantom’ power projects for which developers do not have the money, planning permission, or land rights.

Receiving a positive reception, Ofgem is tackling prioritisation with a recent rule change, granting National Grid ESO the power to terminate projects that are not progressing against its specific milestones, including proof of funding or planning permission from as early as 2024. Ofgem says this change will release over 100GW of capacity from the current queue – equivalent to around a quarter of the electricity needed to power our economy in 2050.

Grid infrastructure investment

Grid infrastructure is also seriously lagging behind what is required to reach net zero, according to the IEA. The organisation warned that investment in global electricity grid needs to increase to more than $600 billion a year by 2030 if we have any hope of meeting international climate targets or supporting energy security.

According to its Electricity Grids and Secure Energy Transitions report, reaching those goals means adding or refurbishing a total of 80+ million kilometres of grids by 2040. That’s the equivalent of the entire existing global grid.

In the UK specifically, the IEA’s analysis of existing power grids and predicted demand shows that more than 600,000km of electric lines need to be added or upgraded within the next 17 years. That’s 100km of electric cabling rolled out every day until 2040.

In response, National Grid has laid out plans to increase investment in the UK’s electricity grid – promising £54billion of investment towards upgrading the electricity network so that it can accommodate the growth coming from the UK’s offshore wind industry.

What’s the solution for energy and utilities businesses?

There are robust, proven, and mature solutions in place in various parts of the energy and utilities sector, as well as adjacent industries, that can be leveraged by the renewable energy sector to drive benefits across planning and financing stages. There are opportunities to leverage digital technologies and data to improve visibility and reduce timeframes in the consent and consultation processes, in securing and maintaining funding, and in processing new requests to secure connections. Each should be integrated across the enterprise, and with a focus on quality data to enable better decision making.

1. Process digitisation and workflow automation to increase visibility

There is an untapped opportunity to digitise all steps of the connections process from enquiry to application, review, update, and approval. The current process has limited visibility, many back-and-forth communications and significant human intervention. Optimising the end-to-end connections process, improving speed in decision making via reducing manual data entry and re-keying of information, and automating requests and approvals where criteria are met would enable simplification and acceleration of new connections (we are talking years not months or weeks). As projects head into the development and construction phase, this visibility could be extended, and a seamless experience provided to developers and stakeholders.

Integrated stakeholder management embedded in the model provides all relevant parties the ability to participate and align on use cases with regulatory controls built into the model. We see this at a regional level in a number of geographies with various DNOs where for example, stakeholders engaged in new connections have full visibility of the process. The Netherlands has a working example of optimising stakeholder engagement for the whole city of Amsterdam across multiple participants in the transport sector with water, rail, and road providers. A working model that could be applied to stakeholders across renewables projects in a central fashion, at a national level in the planning and financing phase.

2. Model-based data and analytics platforms for data-driven decision making

Data and analytics platforms are not new. There is however significant potential to leverage model-based platforms with geospatial positioning to drive a structured, insight driven, automated approach to planning phase activities of renewables projects, for example in site selection, environmental impact analysis, commercial modelling and yield prediction. This would improve certainty of projects, reducing human error and increasing productivity of stakeholder, commercial and environmental teams.

Digital twins are one such option for modelised delivery tracking the “as designed” vs “as built”, identifying any deviations in planning applications vs the specifications for seamless handover to owner-operators. Setting this up in the planning phase moving into development and construction is worth considering. The Nuclear sector is, for example, leveraging digital twin solutions across facilities to improve safety, comply with regulatory controls and improve license compliance. Using location-based services allows all stakeholders to make decisions together in the context of these models.

The opportunity exists to leverage the UK’s emerging national digital twin programme for new renewables projects. This could support more accurate program scheduling, and therefore the opportunity to be prioritised for a connection, as well as of course supporting delivery.

3. Advanced technologies to increase accuracy and transparency

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality have the potential to enhance stakeholders’ engagement in a project through immersive technologies. We can create realistic simulations of functional and physical domains to enable communities to visualise and explore the impact of a new wind or solar project, in turn improving transparency and understanding.

We need to make highly complex data-rich simulations more intuitive. This is being done for power generation and processing in Europe for modifications and upgrades removing the need to travel to site, at an individual or fleet level. This enables the future of remote operations, in a dispersed ecosystem that can be carried through to development, construction, and operations and maintenance.

There are many use cases for Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). In planning new renewables projects, we can use AI/ML to augment the teams responsible for complex calculations, driving more accurate yield predictions and enabling new levels of productivity to drive project scaling and acceleration. The opportunity to cater for subtle trend monitoring, and event combinations offers potential. Augmenting decision making in air traffic control is a mature example of the possibility of AI/ML technologies, where highly complex scenario modelling is undertaken. If we can increase investor confidence in the early stages, there is the potential to speed up projects.

Solving the serious problems facing energy transition requires a significant level of market collaboration – drawing in multiple parties from across the sector. Addressing these challenges in an efficient, scalable way means embracing digital by design and taking an iterative approach to the steps above, with a business and technology transformation partner entrenched in the energy and utilities sector.

Get in touch with Nicole Alley or connect on Linkedin to start the conversation today.

Stay tuned for the next instalment of our Future of Renewables series, in which we’ll explore the challenges and opportunities of the development and construction phase.

Changes across the digital landscape are creating new challenges for the defence industry. In our packed Digital Culture 26 report, we discuss how much like most other industries, the sector is exploring how to turn those challenges into opportunities, harnessing new digital tools and capabilities. But unlike other industries, defence upholds a unique obligation: to provide the very best to those facing danger every day. And when, increasingly, providing the very best to their end user must include the most advanced technology the world can offer, and the most up-to-date digital capabilities available, the challenge isn’t just mighty, it’s urgent.

Impeding the pace of this digital adoption is a workforce increasingly less inclined or able to drive digital innovation. To change the culture organically, we need to attract fresh talent; people who are tech-native pulling it in, rather than technology being pushed onto the less willing.

In 2021, the UK Institute of Engineering and Technology wrote to the UK Government to highlight that there are 173,000 engineering places open, with no concerted plan to address this. This is a national issue not just a defence industry problem, creating significant pressure on our ability to research, design, supply, build, operate and maintain our critical defence platforms and products. Availability of talent is directly affecting the availability of capability. To mitigate this, the UK’s largest defence supplier, BAE Systems, made a commitment to take on more than 3,000 apprentices, with a focus on the person not just the CV to develop the critical skills needed to fulfil their order book and growth ambitions.

But what if they don’t want to join us?

Dealing with the security constraints of working in the defence sector – perceived or otherwise – remains an issue. When my daughter finished university and looked for organisations to join, she received two offers: one from a leading engine maker in the defence industry and one from a leading Formula One team and manufacturer. You can guess which one she chose. Not just because the brand oozed coolness but because of the modern benefits and fast-moving culture it offered. With old laptops and security firewalls preventing simple tasks like using social media or running her household, defence was deemed too old-fashioned for a career hungry grad.

We also have difficulty retaining or re-attracting those who do join, only to leave for pastures more exciting. These fresh-faced grads and school leavers walk into businesses and buildings that still feel like they’re in the 80s, where everything is done on paper, only to walk straight back out to join somewhere more exciting and fast-moving where they’re given the best tools and experiences to grow their careers. We need to break that with investment in new programs, innovation, and capabilities. If we genuinely want to foster a digital culture, we’ve got to change the way we do it.

We want the best, we want the ‘Formula-One-deciders’ to come work with us, to drive the same speed and accuracy, with the design capabilities to put the next submarine in the water or aircraft into the sky. A nuclear submarine is arguably the most complicated product built on the planet and there are many people that would want to come and work on such an exciting endeavour.

Next year, and in the years to come, industry events like DSEI provide the perfect opportunity for all of us to encourage those enthusiasts to walk in and see what an exciting industry ours is (and not simply on the event’s Friday open day when the excitement buzz has reduced somewhat).

At Capgemini we hire, on average, 800 to 1,000 digital new starters and returners every year – an integral part of our competitive advantage and corporate culture – and we deliver world-class engineering services and business transformations that are fundamentally powered by digital and data excellence. But even Capgemini’s own grads were amazed by what we do as both a company and an industry because as a collective we don’t talk about it enough.

It is down to us as leaders to not just sell why we’re passionate about the defence industry, but to sell the exciting digital tools used in the design, manufacture, and servicing capabilities, and to also prove that once you join us, the digital culture runs deep.

The bottom line is this: to meet the changing threats and needs in our industry, we must have a workforce that’s suitably skilled, energised and agility-enabled – which can only be achieved by investing in our digital cultures. We must create and shout about a digital culture that embraces changes in both engineering technology and information technology and integrates them both.

Mike Dwyer, our Head of Intelligent Industry at Capgemini in the UK, has authored a related piece to this one which I highly recommend. In his blog he discusses how and why the defence industry needs to collaborate and innovate to speed up the pace of digital adoption. Please click below to give that a read.

• It’s time for defence to collaborate and innovate to speed up the pace of digital adoption.

Capgemini has provided IT, engineering, and consulting services to the defence industry for more than 30 years. We are seeing, and indeed experiencing, the essential changes that companies across the sector must make to successfully compete in the market, stay ahead of challenging geopolitical actors and to keep our citizens safe.

Get in touch to join us in creating a new digital culture, for the protection of us all.

In our seminal Digital Culture 26 report, we took a thorough deep dive into the challenges and opportunities facing the defence sector, accelerated by changes across the digital landscape. In it, we explored how digital adoption can improve collaboration across organisations but predicted that a lack of cross-industry collaboration would continue to hold us back from meeting the sector’s collective and urgent issues. At this year’s DSEI event – a landmark moment in Capgemini’s long relationship with UK defence, as we exhibited with a significant global presence – we found ourselves proved disappointingly correct.

We need to talk less; act more.

There was a lot of good talk and excitement at DSEI, with plenty of gadgets and innovation to explore and encouraging signs of the industry discussing important topics like sustainability and talent for example. But it’s clear we still need to turn that excitement into a production reality – and more quickly. As an industry, we spend lots building single point acquisitions, like submarines, aircraft and ships. But bringing the wealth of expertise and capabilities across the industry together must be the future to provide better protection for us all.

Conversely, what we see in private industry is continuous adoption of new digital tools driven by continuous pressure. And this culture of can-do innovation brings with it a new digital culture for our staff. Defence needs to be seen and start to behave as a continuously innovative industry, seen through small, medium, and large investments and new digital defence quickly coming to the fore.

We need to talk less; act more together.

As highlighted in Digital Culture 26, despite more “good talk”, most players in our industry are still mainly focused on their individual organisations. Healthy competition has its place, but when we’re building products for the defence of the realm, actual collaboration should be driving a connected environment. We need to shift from a “this is how we did this bit” mindset, to a more connected manufacturing and servicing process driven by a brilliant set of digital tools, that eliminates waste and duplication in the process. And we need the MOD to continue to incentivise it. It would allow for higher creativity, higher speed of delivery, and could be supported by a wider portfolio of products.

It was something athlete, adventurer, and Digital Culture 26 foreword author Rob Bell also noticed on his visit:

“With Digital 26 in mind, what became increasingly clear to me was the need for supremely strong leadership to drive real change and true collaboration amongst industry partners. Especially where large national defence projects are concerned.

“In the report, Capgemini clearly set out that a modern, effective, and fully integrated arena relies on comprehensive adoption of digital capabilities and seamless collaboration between many different players – some of whom may be direct competitors in certain fields. And as I understand it, that requires a significant, industry-wide culture change from the status quo.”

But we are embracing the digital agenda

The very good news is we saw evidence that small, medium, and large companies are seeing the need for and in some cases embracing a digital culture, with much discussion about getting data flowing across boundaries and the need to go faster.

All organisations are on a journey, and no one is perfect, but you could see significant shared thinking and in some cases investment in digital capabilities. And this is where the next wave of innovation is required, to drive to the next step and scale ‘it’ to the extent of collaboration and the depth of this digital culture. Together, our next step is to sit down as an industry and work out the tricky equations of how ‘it’ all gets wired, connected, shared, and controlled, so that we can trust ‘it’ and make sense of ‘it’ and crucially leverage ‘it’ to provide a better service to end users.

As Rob put it: “I was left impressed by the sophistication of the engineering on show, but the questions in my head were mainly about that leadership role. Should it come from industry project management? Is it the role of governmental procurement personnel? What is the motivation for commercial project partners to change without strong external leadership? Does a leadership team of sufficiently skilled, digitally aware individuals who are unshackled from current industry culture presently exist?”

My Colleague, Simon Macwhirter, has written a very similar, related piece on the defence industry’s need to modernise and diversify its talent pool. To read his thoughts on that subject please click here:

• The defence industry must modernise to diversify its talent pool and accelerate digital adoption.

Capgemini has provided IT, engineering, and consulting services to the defence industry for more than 30 years. We are seeing, and indeed experiencing, the essential changes that companies across the sector must make to successfully compete in the market, stay ahead of challenging geopolitical actors and to keep our citizens safe.

Get in touch to join us in creating a new digital culture, for the protection of us all.

The Challenge

We recently worked with a client who needed our support to help them operate within the Industry 4.0 paradigm.

The client’s drive for Industry 4.0 was to increase their OEE, thinking that digital solutions would be the answer. After working with them, we found that digital solutions alone would not drive improvements. They needed to also develop their people, processes and data.

They also had an unstable manufacturing operation, making their supply chain unpredictable. To counter this, they were stockpiling product to stabilise the supply chain, compounding the losses they were making from inefficient manufacturing processes and waste. These losses meant that they were less able to fund new innovations and continuous improvement activities. It also made the organisation fall foul of sustainability metrics (see Capgemini report).

A new way

To stabilise their manufacturing processes, we introduced our Manufacturing Excellence (ManEx) programme across two sites. ManEx is based on Agile practices and on the principle of ‘zero losses and 100% engagement’ from everyone in the manufacturing process, from machine operator to factory manager. As part of this, we introduced new, small teams of front-line managers to handle the day-to-day activities, and standards that were rapid to deploy and improve.

These leads would be responsible for developing, deploying and updating new and existing standards that would be written with the experts in using the production machines: the Operators themselves. Their engagement in writing and giving input into these standards was crucial, as it ensured compliance: you have no reason not to follow a standard if you’re the one who wrote it!

Culture Change

By far the greatest challenge faced by the client was driving a change in culture from an organisation that resisted change and addressed loss reactively, to one that embraced change and worked to pre-empt production loss.

To help them, a Proof of Concept (PoC) was deployed to demonstrate the Daily Management Systems (DMS’s), shown in Figure 1, that are part of ManEx, to the client.

One example of the challenge facing us was changing the mindset of the front-line management to incorporate ‘Rapid Daily Action’, another key principle of ManEx. Getting them to understand that deploying a standard when it was 80% ready and listening to the feedback of Operators to improve it, was much more effective for their adoption than waiting to deploy standards when they were 100% ready.

The PoC started off with two machines, then three, then four. At the end of the 16-week PoC, the results of the manufacturing lines incorporated into the MBU spoke for themselves – production was up, stops were down, the Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) had increased, as had the overall OEE (on one machine, OEE increased by 18%!)

Development

Once the concept was proven, the journey of rolling it out to the rest of the factory began.

A second MBU was established, trained and the process of bringing the learning from the first MBU into the second began. Lessons learned from the second MBU also had to be transferred back to the first, so Change Management processes were implemented to manage and monitor improvements to standards.

The second phase of work delivered an 8% improvement in OEE, a 35% improvement in production target attainment, an increase in MTBF of 63% and around half of the factory operating under the ‘new way of working’.

Digitisation

While much was made of returning to pen and paper, there was always an eye on the future and eventual digitisation. Once the DMS are deployed and refined on analogue formats, the learning can then be incorporated into a digital format much more easily. This reduces the need for complex and expensive re-iteration or re-designing of digital systems that are deployed before they’re fully thought through.

For example, the use of automated dashboards to record daily data is already in progress, which automatically displays historic data, allowing quicker and easier analysis to understand where losses are.

With clear standards and processes in place, an engaged and capable workforce, clear data and the correct technology adopted, the road to Industry 4.0 becomes much easier.

As the reliance on data to enable business agility and reliance increases for organisations to succeed and grow in the digital space, so does the importance of the role of Chief Data Officer (CDO). The pre pandemic growth and post pandemic corrections have expanded the role of a CDO to not only deliver value from their data initiatives, but also to build a data driven culture within organisations to foster growth and innovation.

With the rise of business domain led data and analytics principle where data is no longer seen as just a support function but rather a core need and with this the CDO’s mandate is slowly changing focus from cost optimisation to value maximation avenues. Hence, the responsibilities and expectations placed upon CDO’s have been continuously evolving, which has left companies with a question of “How can we implement an effective and manageable data office within the dynamic nature of data management and the ever-changing technological landscape?”

The Challenge

According to a Harvard Business Review study – Sixty-two percent of CDOs surveyed reported that the CDO role is poorly understood, and incumbents of the job have often met with diffuse expectations and short tenures. 

The landscape of CDO offices has undergone significant changes over the years, reflecting the evolving needs and challenges of data management within organisations. One of the common issues has been the lack of single accountability of data responsibility within the corporation. A study by Harvard Business Review quote that average tenure of a CDO is between two and two-and-a-half years which can be attributed to evolving responsibility and the lack of clarity of priorities and cultural resistance. Organisations are constantly seeking CDOs with the right skills and experience. Additionally, the high demand for data-driven strategies and the scarcity of experienced CDOs have resulted in a competitive market.

Other reasons often cited for failures include lack of strategic oversight, lack of leadership and stakeholder buy-in, inability to build the appropriate skill sets, lack of funding and sponsorship, siloed data operations and inability to build trust in data consumptions. According to a Harvard Business Review study – A substantial (69%) percentage of CDOs spend a significant portion of their time on data-driven culture initiatives, and it is clear why: 55% view a lack of a data-driven culture as a top challenge to meeting business objectives. Therefore, it is no surprise that, CDO’s who have managed to turn the stories to positives have attributed their success to spending time on planning, catering to the people aspects, and looking at technology as enablers of business outcomes to achieve their vision.

The first 90 days of a CDO’s term is especially important and sets the tone on how CDO’s can navigate in the complex data landscape, mange disruptive technology to their advantage, focus on growth while gaining the support of the stakeholders.

First 90 days of a CDO

Navigating through the complex business scenarios, managing stakeholder expectation, focusing on delivery, gaining the confidence of the management and showing tangible benefits is part of every new CDO’s story. In most organisations, data is still not a direct lever for measurement of revenue or optimisation of cost. Hence a direct line of sight between the activities of a CDO and the benefits to an organisation are hard to derive which makes the role very complex to navigate.

Having worked with CDOs in both private and public sector, Capgemini Invent has identified the following essentials that a new CDO must consider to ensure success:

Image source : https://storyset.com/: First 90 Days of a CDO

1. Start and focus on people: a CDO’s role involves extensive collaboration and forging partnerships with diverse set of stakeholders. A new CDO must spend time to understand the people footprint, set up regular cadences with various stakeholders in the organisations to establish the importance of CDO’s role and create awareness. These initiatives will not only help the CDO to shape his own mandate but will also provide avenues for other stakeholders to find the possibilities for collaboration and support. Fostering confidence is the key to get the stakeholder buy in. CDO’s hence should:

a) Mobilise the core team who will enable the delivery of the data mandate

b) Set up forums as means to get inputs, gather feedback on the next steps, cement relationships and manage expectations.

c) Clearly communicate to all what the key outcomes, scope and expectation of the CDO role will be to get common alignment

d) Develop strategies to create synergies within the enterprise which is focussed on managing and communicating the value of managing data as an asset to the various stakeholders

2. Keep the data mandate simple but relevant: Often when CDO’s start their journey without pivoting their drivers to organisational strategic objectives, it results in a disconnect between the data initiatives and business outcomes. CDO’s can circumvent shortcoming by setting clear foundational elements during the start of the journey which encompasses the following:

a) Clearly pivot the data mandate to be in line with the business strategy and start with key focus areas

b) Co-create CDO function vision and strategy in conjunction with the various lines of business within the organisation

c) Establish a clear line of sight between the data initiatives and tangible benefits by formulating a business case and establishing key performance indicators (KPIs) to measure the success of data initiatives.

d) Design programme governance and ways of working

e) Create a skill matrix against the mandate to identify the organisational capabilities and ideate ways to manage the gaps.

f) Pivot data governance as a key enabler of the data mandate

3. Drive the momentum: creation and capitalisation of the initial momentum will be focal to gaining support of all stakeholders. Once the plan for the operationalisation of data mandate is in place, there should be focus on quick wins possibly consisting of key data quality engagements to showcase impacts. The momentum should balance risk and reward to make it sustainable. The quick wins should also be used as means to test the water and the learnings will be critical for the CDO to take into consideration any changes if needed to the data mandate. CDO must therefore:

a) Develop a risk management strategy to mitigate potential losses.

b) Consider portfolio adjustments if necessary to optimise returns.

c) Focus on learning and improvement

4. Overcome the cultural inertia growth/innovation/change management: success of data initiatives relies on the foundational cornerstones of people, process and technology. Extensive investments on technology or extensive planning alone will fall insufficient for data initiatives to get the needed momentum. A CDO must understand the organisational cultural inertia and incorporate the findings into the plan. Breaking cultural blocks is effort intensive but appropriate controls in place which incorporate the below will ensure progressive strides.

a) Manage the fabric of data literacy.

b) Embed the need to be data driven by showcasing real examples

c) Communicate success stories and foster an environment that is driven by innovation and learning

d) Plan for learning and development program which is focussed on providing a supportive environment and cater to the needs of the different levels of stakeholders.

e) Set aside a part of the budget specifically for the people development and key skillsets as part of the budget portfolio.

f) Keep the data initiatives relevant to business and stakeholder outcomes

The foundations that the CDO will put into the first 90 days will be instrumental in ensuring the success of the role. The landscape of the CDO office is constantly evolving, as organisations adopt recent technologies and data-driven strategies. CDOs must be able to adapt to these changes and stay ahead of the curve. CDO’s should follow cycle of define (what to do) and refine (how to do) iteratively while incorporating the learnings from the first 90 days to ensure the successful delivery of the data mandate.

1. https://hbr.org/2021/08/why-do-chief-data-officers-have-such-short-tenures
2. https://hbr.org/2023/01/8-strategies-for-chief-data-officers-to-create-and-demonstrate-value