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Touchless planning – retaining hearts and minds

Capgemini
Jan 19, 2022

In my previous post in this series, I outlined the benefits of touchless planning – but I also highlighted some of the main steps organizations should take in order to prepare for its introduction. I pointed out that for some businesses, this groundwork, while advisable, wouldn’t be straightforward.

In fact, even if everything goes relatively smoothly, change on this scale is going to have a significant effect on the culture of the organization and on the working lives of very many people within it. When some processes are digitized, and intelligent systems interpret and act upon data without human intervention, the workforce is understandably going to have questions and concerns.

Communicating the vision

That’s why it’s incumbent on those in a leadership role to communicate the vision for the company, and to demonstrate how people within the organization can benefit by developing skills that are complementary to an increasingly automated environment.

For organizations that assist their employees in skills development, there is clearly a mutual benefit. Service providers can provide appropriate support: for instance, here at Capgemini, the purpose of our Digital Learning Operations offering is to go beyond merely reskilling, and to start looking at creating the right channels for people to equip themselves on their own terms and at their own pace – anytime, anywhere, in module sizes that fit their other commitments. Some of it may be classroom-based, but much of it may be in remote virtual teaching sessions, with people coming together in online communities to learn and to share ideas and experiences. It all helps to remove anxiety, and to give people confidence that there is a place for them in this new environment where they can add value, and where they can maintain a sense of worth and fulfilment.

Demand  planners are a specific case in point. In this new, digitized environment, supported by smart technology acting in real time on more data than could previously ever have been analyzed, they will be able to be more strategic and less transactional, because many of the operational functions for which they were previously responsible can now be automated. They will occupy less of a support role, and they will increasingly be seen as a partner to the business, working in real time and collaboratively with other disciplines in the organization, with production and planning systems, with newly emerging automated and AI solutions, and of course ultimately also with customers.

Better – not different

The general point to keep in mind here – for everyone, and not just for newly-empowered demand planners – is that evolution, by its very nature, is intended to enable higher levels of performance. Touchless planning provides a prime example of this. It won’t simply eliminate tasks; it will also create new, more valuable forms of work. It is crucial that the organization’s leadership communicates this point to the entire workforce, together with a corresponding reallocation strategy, to ensure that everyone remains engaged, positive, invested in business goals – and able to take advantage of the benefits the new technology brings, on behalf not just of the business, but of the customers it serves.

Touchless planning doesn’t mean the culture of the organization has to change. Instead, it can bring new energy, purpose, and service quality to everything the business and its workforce holds dear.

In the fourth and final post in this series, I’ll make some suggestions about the best approach to take on the path to touchless planning.

Read other blogs in this series:

Learn more about how Capgemini’s approach to continuous touchless planning provides a framework for organizations to develop and deploy capabilities and processes across the business to deliver new levels of speed, accuracy, and responsiveness.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s Digital Supply Chain Practice  can help your organization implement a supply-value network and touchless planning across your supply chain, contact: joerg.junghanns@capgemini.com

Jörg Junghanns  leverages innovation and a strategic and service mindset to help clients transform their supply chain operations into a growth enabler.

Touchless planning – how to get there

Capgemini
Jan 19, 2022

In previous posts in this series, I have introduced the concept of touchless planning, and summarized its advantages over traditional demand planning. I’ve also looked at how to establish a base on which to build a touchless planning model, and at how to factor in your organization’s culture.

In this, the fourth and final post in the series, I’m going to make some suggestions about the best approach to take on the path to touchless planning.

Creating a framework

The first thing I should say about this path is that it’s circular – not in the sense that you keep winding up back at the start, but in the sense that the process stages are cyclical, enabling the organization constantly to re-evaluate supply and demand within the context of the current plan, so it can identify and respond to issues and opportunities in near real-time each day.

The stages in this cycle include an aggregate planning layer, to maintain a stable execution plan, supporting core planning functions, including demand, supply, and inventory planning. This layer also supports scenario building, to evaluate and fix demand/supply imbalances, and could be orchestrated to act automatically, with limited human evaluation and decision input.

There should also be a cognitive orchestration layer, acting across functional systems and planners to intercept events, including changes in demand, capability, or material availability within the ecosystem. This layer should be able to qualify and evaluate events using machine-learned or rule-based models that drive predictive, prescriptive, or action-based outcomes.

The framework will also need a detailed planning layer, supporting material-requirement planning (MRP) and detailed scheduling for optimized production runs; an execution system, supporting the execution of procurement, production, and inventory-management planning; and, finally, support components, including analytics, forecasts, promotions, and new product planning

Getting started

With this framework in mind, here are seven suggested steps to take towards a touchless planning environment:

  • Create a vision – determine your organizational goals, timeline, and budget, and identify an executive sponsor to champion the cause
  • Establish a solid foundation – assess your master data, inventory-record accuracy, operational disciplines, schedule adherence, and supplier reliability, and launch an enablement program to close gaps and eliminate organizational silos
  • Focus on touchless demand forecasting – identify those SKUs that can be forecast through historical pattern recognition, and use them as a basis from which to phase in touchless planning operations, so as to gain the confidence of wider business stakeholders. With this in place, you will then be able to expand the touchless SKU portfolio, by introducing multiple-variable forecasting techniques
  • Optimize system parameters and instill trust in system-generated plans – measure system “touches,” track their root causes, and systematically eliminate underlying reasons for them. Develop an optimal, executable plan that will be acceptable to the organization’s operations function
  • Move to a more frequent planning cycle – develop and deploy new system capabilities, such as rapid scenario modeling. You can then consider moving to a daily planning cycle, to be more available when, and only when, a response is needed
  • Extrapolate a new planning operating model – establish standard practices for processes, ensure the right talent is in place, and ramp up an effective planning function or control tower around the new client planning capability

What’s next?

In short, when building a touchless planning environment, there’s quite a lot of groundwork to be done, and a number of phases to complete – as we’ve seen not just here, but in the previous posts in this series. As I’ve outlined, though, the benefits justify the effort, and businesses that approach the challenge systematically and with enthusiasm will reap those rewards.

And of course, organizations can always seek the support of knowledgeable, global service providers, who bring with them the rich experience they’ve gained of working on enterprise-level projects of this kind.

If you’d like to start a conversation about the best route your organization can take towards touchless planning, I’d be pleased to hear from you. You’ll find my contact details below.

Read other blogs in this series:

Learn more about how Capgemini’s approach to continuous touchless planning provides a framework for organizations to develop and deploy capabilities and processes across the business to deliver new levels of speed, accuracy, and responsiveness.

To learn more about how Capgemini’s Digital Supply Chain Practice  can help your organization implement a supply-value network and touchless planning across your supply chain, contact: joerg.junghanns@capgemini.com

Jörg Junghanns  leverages innovation and a strategic and service mindset to help clients transform their supply chain operations into a growth enabler.

Start-ups and innovation: Let’s strike the right balance between risk and reward

Capgemini
Capgemini
18 Jan 2022

Last week I joined Capgemini Ventures to lead the operation of our start-up catalyst services amongst other things.

These services proactively market scan, identify, risk assess, and create collaborative relationships with tech start-ups. The services provided by these start-ups are then incorporated into Capgemini offers and go-to-market propositions so we can provide even greater value to our clients.

I agreed to take this role because I strongly believe that collaborating with tech start-ups needs to become the norm for any organisation who wants to innovate and flourish in today’s digitally led world. According to the MIT/Capgemini Invent report, 44% of companies have stated that start-ups will be one of their top-3 innovation sources by 2025. This is up from 10% in 2020 and this role is my opportunity to play a part in helping Capgemini’s clients exploit some of this!

I know that the idea of working with start-ups is a daunting proposition for some. They are quite often unknown entities, sometimes perceived as being led by maverick Tech “Genius’s”, and can vary wildly in terms of business model maturity. At Capgemini we aim to reduce such concerns by leveraging our well-defined services to assess potential tech start-ups partners against key risk dimensions: Management, Business, Technology and Financial maturity. Making informed decisions about which start-ups to include in partner ecosystems is best achieved by understanding the level of risk involved, whilst adopting a changed mindset that has a higher tolerance for some of these.

We need to appreciate that start-ups operate in a very different way to established tech giants; and try to strike the right balance of risk versus reward when considering them! These are key ingredients if we truly want to unleash the power of start-ups to drive the ambition of sustainable innovation! Vasuja Kishore Salikineedy from my new team and Early Metrics, our Startup Rating Agency partner, have co-authored a blog post which gives some insightful perspectives on how to reduce risk exposure when working with start-ups.

I really look forward to sharing more thoughts and engaging with you on the fascinating topic of start-ups! And do continue to look out for future blogs and vlogs that we will be publishing as part of our series.

Why care about the Next Unicorn?

Lucia Sinapi
18 Jan 2022

Well, at Capgemini Ventures, we do care. And this is why we are thrilled to participate in the VivaTech Next Unicorn Awards as a member of the jury, along with major venture capital firms.

For the first time in history, European VC fundings exceed the $100 billion threshold in 2021. Even though the first quarter 2022 indicates the end of a fever valuation peak, the 86 unicorns leading this ecosystem are the future of our economy and pave the way for the newcomers. Their valuation stories are providing precious insights to understand technology and business trends. But what does it actually mean to be a unicorn and what does it tell us to reach  a $1 billion valuation?

The unprecedented amount of money raised by European scales-ups is steering the top verticals in this selection: Enterprise Saas is the main category represented, followed by Fintechs and Big Data & Analytics. This access to capital enables startups to boost R&D and expansion, core drivers of their success. In other words, granting them the financial resources to deliver upon their ambition, to pioneer sustainable innovation and transform the economy as a whole.

Talents too are attracted by the skyrocketing startup valuations. The average founding year of the selected scaleups is 2013 and yet, in less than ten years, 85% of them count more than 100 employees, with nine of them crossing the 500 headcount bar. Being able to constantly increase its talent pool is a key ingredient of the entrepreneurship magic formula.

In addition, VC players bring more than just capital, they bring their vision and network to support the startups’ journey. Because unicorns are addressing much bigger markets in an industrial play, the Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) collaboration framework is also a strategic lever. Those investment and partnership vehicles, such as Capgemini Ventures, grant them access to the corporate client segment at global level by building a joint go-to-market and helps them scale. We are proud to have already three unicorns in our portfolio: Copado, Alation and more recently Devo.

Following the money in innovation is also a powerful Market Intelligence driver. The VC/CVC industry plays a key role in backing overtime the most promising startups via a highly selective process. VCs unique outside-in perspective enables them to map emerging trends and guarantee the perfect blend of Tech, Talent and Capital that will make the champions of tomorrow. It is not by chance if Accel is a stakeholder into 10 of the scaleups nominated for this year’s Award, and the number one fund in number of European unicorns.

40% of the companies spotted by the VivaTech Next Unicorn Awards since their creation are now labelled as unicorns. So, who will be the Next Unicorn?

Lucia Sinapi

Executive VP – Capgemini Ventures Managing Director
All along my professional career, I have been embracing a variety of domains and roles, both in the finance area or more recently in charge of a Capgemini business unit over 3 continents. Key drivers in this journey have been a mix of curiosity and strong commitment. Now in charge of Capgemini Ventures, I am delighted to extend this approach to the innovation playfield, and in particular to innovation stemming from the start-up ecosystem.

    Touchless planning – getting started and the benefits

    Capgemini
    Capgemini
    2022-01-18

    In my previous post in this short series, I introduced the concept of touchless planning, and summarized its advantages over traditional demand planning.

    This time, I’m going to look at how to get started, and also at the benefits that can accrue.

    Firm foundations

    As with so many things, in business as well as in daily life, preparation is key – which is why it’s good to embark on the road to a supply-value network with certain elements in place.

    The first such factor is data integrity. The methods by which data is collected and analyzed need to be robust, and they need to be standardized. If they are neither of these things, the data on which the touchless planning system will act will be inconsistent and prone to unreliability. In order to put more dependable measures in place, many organizations will need to reconsider their technological capabilities, as well as their organizational processes, structure, and workforce skills.

    The second key factor is the need to digitize operations. Organizations should aim to equip their entire supplier ecosystem with sensors that provide near real-time feedback to the planning systems on various issues, such as production capacity and material availability.

    The third and final preparatory factor I’d like to mention here is the advisability of enabling concurrent planning systems, linking demand and supply systems into a single view and bringing them together. The rule set will need to be defined and mapped into these systems, thus automating recurring or routine tasks according to program settings and scenario planning.

    Taking these steps may not be straightforward for some organizations, but in competitive terms, they will be worth the effort – especially for those who are active in consumer products markets.

    Effectiveness and efficiency

    Worth the effort how, exactly? What are the benefits of a touchless planning approach?

    One principal positive is the overall effectiveness of the new, smart, digitized process. Organizations will be able to achieve higher levels of forecast accuracy: machine learning will be able to recognize and extrapolate patterns in demand, and it will also be possible to combine traditional data, as well as new data sources, to greatly improve plan accuracy and reduce forecast bias.

    Effectiveness will also be enhanced by the increased ability to synchronize supply with demand. Inventory norms can be set more scientifically; key planning parameters such as factory run strategies can be optimized; prescriptive scenario modelling can be conducted to minimize any necessary plan changes; and the use of safety stock can be optimized.

    The second general area of benefit is improved efficiency. Low-value activities, such as manual forecast overlays on certain SKUs, can be eliminated; repetitive, low-value tasks can be automated, freeing the workforce to focus on higher-value activities; and planning activities can be consolidated and scaled into appropriate skills and salary bands. Also, the enhanced visibility that smart, digitized planning provides can enable better workforce scheduling and allocation, helping businesses to reduce overtime costs and related expenses.

    Additional benefits

    There are other, broader potential outcomes. The positives I’ve described above aren’t just about better planning, but about the emergence of a more stable supply chain, leading to additional benefits in cost, cash, and service, including:

    • Lower operational factory costs, due to higher capacity utilization, less overtime, and less use of third-party overflow capacity
    • Improvements in service, including on-time in-full (OTIF) delivery and on-shelf availability
    • Lower logistics costs, due to less overtime and more predictable transport requirements, leading to better lane rates and less expediting
    • More stable signals to suppliers.

    In my next post in this series, I’ll examine the extent to which an organization’s culture can and should be accommodated in the transition to a new continuous, touchless planning environment.

    Read other blogs in this series:

    Learn more about how Capgemini’s approach to continuous touchless planning provides a framework for organizations to develop and deploy capabilities and processes across the business to deliver new levels of speed, accuracy, and responsiveness.

    To learn more about how Capgemini’s Digital Supply Chain Practice  can help your organization implement a supply-value network and touchless planning across your supply chain, contact: joerg.junghanns@capgemini.com

    Jörg Junghanns  leverages innovation and a strategic and service mindset to help clients transform their supply chain operations into a growth enabler.

    Top five pro tips for designing agile hybrid workplace

    Capgemini
    Capgemini
    2022-01-17

    The world has woken up to the new realities of hybrid working for the business benefits and flexibility it offers. Now, organizations need to reimagine their workplace to support on-site and remote employees while keeping them happy and productive. They are looking for new ways of working that strike a balance between flexibility and employee experience and well-being.

    To address this market need, Capgemini continues to make significant investments to help clients transform their workplace. Our Connected Employee Experience enables hybrid working by connecting employees with everything they need to execute their job anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Our Leadership position in NelsonHall’s NEAT Evaluation of Advanced Digital Workplace Services  reinforces our commitment to delivering end-to-end holistic workplace solutions.

    If you are looking to build a hybrid workplace that focuses on experience and well-being of employees while adapting to constant market changes, here are a few tips:

    • Create an experience-centric workplace: Employees now want to be able to access work at office location or at home or on their mobile devices. While designing your workplace strategy, break away from a location-centric model to an experience-centric model. Empower your employees with the right tools and technology that maximize their output at home, in office or on the move. Focus on persona-driven design, gamification, and experience analytics to create an inspiring and engaging workplace.
    • Measure employee experience: It is a well-known fact that great employee experience translates into great business results. Understanding employee sentiments helps to uncover inefficiencies and take corrective action. Understand what truly matters to your employees. How do they feel about using IT products and services? Are they happy with the work culture? Establish a XLA( Experience level Agreement)-based approach to measuring employee sentiment that links employee experiences with business outcomes.

    Capgemini’s Employee Experience Index  provides accurate assessment of employee sentiment by linking their subjective opinions with IT matrices and KPIs.

    • Integrate security into the hybrid workplace: Ensure robust security protocols are in place to ensure safe access to work anytime, anywhere, and from any device. Apply Security policies uniformly across private and office networks. Identity Access Management (IAM) policies must encompass all employees and devices to build digital trust. Set up data governance policies considering country-specific and industry-specific norms.
    • Enable collaboration by design: Rethink and redesign the workplace to enable effective collaboration between on-site and remote employees. Our Future-of-work study recommends adapting a “phygital” workplace design to encourage collaboration and learning in a hybrid setup. Reconfigure office spaces to create more meeting rooms and conference areas; virtualize office spaces to enable augmented classroom trainings and webinars. Equip employees with virtual collaboration and knowledge sharing tools for effective participation regardless of location.
    • Personalized support: Invest in self-serve capabilities to empower your employees to be productive with a lower support cost. AI-led intelligent support that is context-aware and fits employees’ job role and digital dexterity is an effective way to empower your employees to deliver their best. Strike a balance between on-site support (tech cafes, smart lockers, IT vending machines) and virtual support services (remote video support, smart chat) for a consistent support experience.

    Focus on experience, security, and employee well-being while designing a hybrid workplace. When leading the shift to hybrid working, be emphatic towards your employees. Conduct regular meetings to communicate changes. Train your employees to drive digital adoption.

    We thank NelsonHall for recognizing us as Leaders in Advanced Digital Workplace Services. You can access the full report here.

    If you want to enable hybrid working in your organization, we would be happy to help! Please contact us to explore new options to keep your employees satisfied and productive.

    Author

     Alan Connolly
    Global Head of Digital Workplace Services, Cloud Infrastructure Services

    2022 Key trends in the public sector

    Marc Reinhardt
    2022-01-17

    Governments and public authorities around the world continue to face an unprecedented combination of challenges that test their resilience and resources to the limit.
    A second year of COVID-19 produced new and constantly evolving impacts on citizens, workforces and economies, while the need for structural change and decisive, collective action to slow the growing effects of climate change has become more imperative than ever. But public sector organizations are embracing technology, innovation, data and analytics and new ways of working with skill, commitment and pace.

    1. Cloud adoption will continue to accelerate, but tailormade approaches remain crucial

    The global pandemic has greatly accelerated the public sector’s journey to the cloud, delivering transformational improvements to service choice, quality and the user experience, for employees, citizens and businesses alike, as well as substantial cost and efficiency benefits. The speed with which governments and public authorities have developed and launched vital pandemic response services is demonstrating a growing spirit of confidence and innovation. As the public sector’s cloud adoption journey continues, we expect a shift in focus away from TCO and towards business value, agility and leveraging cloud platform capabilities.

    Administrations are also recognizing that there is no uniform journey to the cloud: There are many, with a portfolio of options available – private, public, hybrid, multi – providing the opportunity to tailor the journey that best suits each organization’s needs. To get there they must review their application and data landscape and identify which cloud environment is most appropriate for each workload.

    The public sector is increasingly focused on cloud sovereignty. This means working closely with service providers to ensure transparency, control, choice and autonomy over the strategic landscape and IT assets such as data, systems and critical software. Benefits include security, regulatory compliance and the building of trust with citizens and other stakeholders.

    Trust is the vital component that will enable the sector to deploy the best of cloud technologies with confidence – including AI, machine learning and edge computing – and build the partnerships with business and civil society that will help deliver the visionary public policy goals that are at the heart of Society 5.0.

    2. From owning departmental data, to accessing data from an ecosystem: Realizing the power of data sharing

    COVID-19 has proven the benefits that the harvesting, combining and sharing of data can deliver for society. The public interest-driven requirement for multi-agency, multinational data sharing has been critical, enabling the research, testing, treatment, track and trace and vaccination programs that have been the hallmark of the collective global response to the pandemic.

    We see a shift toward accessing data outside the traditional departmental boundary, rather than “owning” it directly. This is gathering pace as the public sector perceives the benefits it brings, including real-time access, agility, cost and accuracy, and finds compliant ways to achieve them. Healthcare has taken a lead in this space: Telecoms companies, hospitals and Departments of Health have combined in new ways, using data sharing to improve processes. Analysts all point toward a rapid increase in investment by public organizations in viable data sharing platforms, delivering ever more insights to act upon. In parallel, the continued emergence of Open Data will also fuel the information environment that public services can rely on and use together.

    Citizens will have a major role to play in these new data ecosystems, by controlling the use of their own data, deciding when and with whom to share it, and by exercising their right to choose becoming smart citizens who contribute to the data-powered society. In this context the public sector will need to adopt a finer grained level of engagement with citizens, heading toward hyper personalization as citizens’ expectations evolve based on their digital experience with the financial services and retail sectors.

    Enlightened authorities will increasingly see their citizens as partners and active participants in the pursuit of public policy goals, enlisting their support and involvement, for example in the reporting of cybersecurity attacks or in donating their data to help inform public health campaigns.

    In 2022 we will witness new data sharing models emerging in many promising fields where a bigger picture is crucially needed – such as skills for employment agencies, international supply chains for customs authorities and earth observation for environmental actors. In all these fields, the effort will require rules-based, internationally respected collaborative data platforms and ecosystems that contributors and users trust, enabling access to rich and diverse sources of data and analytics, to be available, shared and deployed for the benefit of all.

    3. Going beyond guidelines: Why a digital social contract is needed to build trust in technology

    Trust in, and acceptance of the authority of governments and public institutions is coming under increased scrutiny and challenge. The need for responsibility, transparency and accountability in the use of citizen data and new technologies is becoming more important.

    Unless public trust is earned, it is inevitable that resistance to the use of citizen data and the continued rollout of digital technologies will grow, hampering progress and making it more difficult to achieve the EU’s key digital targets by 2030.

    Responsible AI is an emerging technology in government. Gartner has found only 7% of government CIOs and technology executives have already deployed responsible AI; but 70% plan to do so over the next three years.[1] So, there is cause for optimism that during 2022, the damaging erosion of public trust may be slowed, and momentum created for the recovery of lost ground in this vital area of democratic society.

    In our recent blog, Digital trust is the heartbeat of public sector transformation, we made the case for a digital social contract: agreements between society, politicians and industry on how, and to what extent, we use technology to serve society, observing the key principles of transparency, explainability and logic. In the development of the digital social contract, co-created by governments and their citizens, the ideal will be a balance of freedoms, responsibilities and protections, underpinned by clear digital values and principles.

    4. Tightening our defenses against the cybercriminals

    No exploration of public sector trends would be complete without the latest forecast of inexorable growth in the volume and sophistication of cybercrime, further fuelled by the inevitable exposure of data and systems, caused by the need for fast-tracked responses and solutions to COVID-19.

    As we become more and more digitally reliant, new opportunities to exploit weaknesses are constantly emerging, to be instantly exploited by hackers. In particular, governments around the world identify critical infrastructure as a key cybersecurity battlefield, with some hospitals reporting a 500% increase in cyberattacks.

    No surprise then that Gartner reports that the highest increase in all spending by 70% of global governments is on cybersecurity.[2] Encouragingly, another upward trend is the level of international co-operation in the fight against cybercrime. For example, the UK and INTERPOL are setting up a new cyber operations hub in Africa working across Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria and Rwanda to support joint operations against cybercrime.

    Investment and collaboration will undoubtedly grow in the years to come, to ensure that public authorities keep pace with the limitless ingenuity of the cyber criminals, maintain resilience and enable governments, citizens and businesses to operate normally, without imposing intolerable restrictions on everyday life.

    5. Public authorities will become innovation hubs, deploying technology for good

    As the public sector’s confidence in its ability to innovate and develop imaginative solutions with agility and pace continues to grow, so those authorities will become increasingly entrepreneurial for the good of society. In her book Mission Economy, Professor Mariana Mazzucato argues that the state needs to transform itself into an innovating organization, and develop the capacity to mobilize different parts of society around a common goal in a purpose-oriented economy.

    The scale of the challenges facing governments today – from post-pandemic economic recovery to the climate crisis – demands bold and ambitious action. The pandemic has highlighted the need for government to lead the response to our biggest systemic challenges, while also showing that digital technology and data are vital tools we can use to tackle them.

    The UN Sustainable Development Goals with their 2030 timeline offer a framework for government at all levels to mobilize business and society to address the most significant global challenges. As this decade progresses, we will see public sector organizations establishing their own digital cultures and data ecosystems, forming new coalitions, and providing vital resources for citizens and small, local tech firms to collaborate to deliver bespoke solutions that meet the specific needs of local people and businesses.

    For further reading about technology in the public sector, you might like to read one of our many blogs, for example Why the future of the Public sector is increasingly automated, and our report on technology trends, TechnoVision Public Sector Edition 2021-22.

    Find out more about about our services for governments and public sector organizations.

    [1]Gartner, Inc., 2022 CIO and Technology Executive Agenda: A Government Perspective, Apeksha Kaushik, Rick Howard, and Bill Finnerty, 18 November 2021  https://www.gartner.com/document/4008460

    [2]Gartner, Inc., 2022 CIO and Technology Executive Agenda: A Government Perspective, Apeksha Kaushik, Rick Howard, and Bill Finnerty, 18 November 2021  https://www.gartner.com/document/4008460

    Our look at 2022 trends in the Public Sector was compiled in conversation with:

    Person in a suit and tie with a blurred face and less hair on head.

    Marc Reinhardt

    Executive Vice President, Public Sector Global Industry Leader
    “We are proud to be a leading partner to public sector organizations globally, supporting mission-critical systems that touch the lives of millions of citizens and users every day. While developing the next generation of citizen-centric, inclusive public services, we are also enabling organizations to transform to tackle the most important challenges our societies face. As we look to the 2030 targets of the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals, it’s clear that technology is a tool for achieving better outcomes, and that societal purpose should be a driving force behind the sector’s use of digital to perform and transform.”
    A well-dressed man in a suit and tie poses in front of the European flag, representing international relations.

    Pierre-Adrien Hanania

    Global Public Sector Head of Strategic Business Development
    “In my role leading the strategic business development of the Public Sector team at Capgemini, I support the digitization of the public services across security and justice, public administration, healthcare, welfare, tax and defense. I previously led the Data & AI in Public Sector offer of the Group, focusing on how to unlock the intelligent use of data to help organizations deliver augmented public services to the citizens along trusted and ethical technology use. Based in Germany, I previously worked for various European think tanks and graduated in European Affairs at Sciences Po Paris.”

      Community policing officer – Requesting backup!

      Capgemini
      Capgemini
      2022-01-17

      Too much information and infobesity threaten the effectiveness of community policing officers.

      An Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) can filter information based on relevance. IVAs can monitor behavior and stress in order to deliver information effectively.

      A pitfall of IVAs is ‘filter bubbles’ that limit areas of focus and the extent to which choices can be explained. The IVA can assist community-based officers in staying in control of their own work. The work of community policing officers has changed due to the stream of information from social media, sensors, and statistics. Having your own Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) can help.

      In community policing work, officers are the link between residents, companies, and institutions in the neighborhood. They are crucial in the integrated approach to safety in the communities they serve. Based on the principle of ‘knowing and being known’, community policing officers endeavor to increase trust in the police and reduce the distance to civilians. In this digital age, close contact with civilians and organizations is more important than ever. The first to arrive at the scene of any event in the neighborhood are civilians, who use smartphones, social media, and local neighborhood apps to share high-quality videos and photos, as well as real-time information. In addition, more and more information comes in digitally from local authorities, governments, and both public and private sensors. And, of course, community policing officers also receive information from their colleagues. From all of this, they must filter what is relevant and what they need to act on.

      There are significant differences in information needs between community policing officers in large cities and those who work in rural areas. In cities, community policing teams are often used where officers have responsibility for certain aspects of policing, such as youth crime groups, environmental, drugs, and cybercrime, for which there are specific information needs. In the current landscape, filtering of information takes place via intake channels, such as service centers, online support and coordinators within police teams, which are unable to provide the desired customization for individual community policing officers. In order to prevent relevant information from being overlooked, more information is shared with the officers than they can actually handle. As a result, officers are buried under a growing mountain of information.

      AI as a solution for information overload

      Could Artificial Intelligence (AI) help to extract the information that is relevant to a specific district or expertise of a community policing officer from that mountain of information? We discussed the possibilities offered by Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) with Tibor Bosse, Professor of Social AI at Radboud University Nijmegen, and Charlotte Gerritsen, Assistant Professor of Social AI and Criminology at VU University Amsterdam. They defined the problem as one of infobesity[i].

      They indicated that infobesity causes a person to lose sight of the overall picture due to a continuous flow of information. In particular, people tend to read information that matches their own preferences and prejudices. The dangers of infobesity within policing were warned about in 2016 in a Belgian evaluation of the terrorist attacks in Zaventem and Maalbeek[ii]. It was revealed that infobesity and fragmented sources of information are one of the biggest problems facing today’s police force. The police have traditionally had an information policy of ‘need to know’, which has led to the fragmentation of information throughout police forces. Based on the survey, the police in Belgium decided to shift the approach from ‘need to know’ to ‘need to share’. This shift is also noticeable in other European countries. And by applying a ‘need to share’ approach, the problem of infobesity will only increase further.

      Could AI help tackle the issue of infobesity?

      In the world of AI, IVAs are increasingly being used to help people in their work and protect them from infobesity. For example, IVAs can be trained to effectively filter information flows for the user and can even proactively search through various fragmented sources of information. In order to arrive at a good final selection of information, an IVA can use a Recommender Engine. We’re already familiar with these recommendation algorithms in our private lives, for example on YouTube and Netflix, where we receive recommendations for products or films based on our interests. These algorithms initially make use of historical data, and subsequently adapt the recommendations to the specific user’s viewing and listening behavior.

      In the case of the community policing officer, the recommendation algorithm would be trained on historical data from the police intake channels and fellow officers in different geographical neighborhoods. At first use, the virtual assistant will produce similar kinds of information from the community for each community policing officer but, over time, the recommendation algorithm will learn more and more about the personal viewing behavior. In addition, the officer will be able to give specific feedback on how relevant the presented results are, in order for the IVA to get better and better at identifying which information is more or less relevant to each community policing officer. The virtual assistant could also use, for example, skin conduction in a smart watch or the phone camera to detect stressful situations. In acute situations, this would allow the IVA’s information to be used to support and protect the community policing officer from the growing dangers of infobesity in varying situations.

      Explainable AI

      We also asked Bosse and Gerritsen whether there were any risks associated with the use of these IVAs. As it turned out, there are several. For example, there is the risk of the creation of a filter bubble or ‘fable trap’, as one Dutch TV host called it on his show[iii]. Since the system only shows information that is considered interesting, the user ends up in a digital information bubble. This also creates the notion that other information is irrelevant. A 2015 survey by Facebook[iv] showed that, on social media, people tend to focus on their own interests 15% more than they would when watching TV or reading newspapers. One way to counteract this is by using technology to draw extra attention to other or even opposing information in the area of their interest. This approach is also widely used for targeting online shoppers. Websites use it to entice users to view products other than those they were initially looking for. The Intelligent Virtual Assistant also has to be configured for this to prevent a filter bubble.

      Another risk we discussed with Bosse and Gerritsen was the extent to which the IVA’s choices could be explained. This concept is called ‘explainable AI’, where a human must be able to trace the path that an AI system has taken in order to come to a decision. Neural networks are a well-known example of an AI system where this is not the case; it is a ‘black box’. This would be unsuitable for community policing officers who must always be able to retrace how information choices are made. Therefore, the IVA will have to use explainable AI. This would allow community policing officers to, for instance, trace back the information to topics they had previously labelled as being of interest.

      After a discussion about the pros and cons, we concluded that IVAs can offer many possibilities for community policing officers. However, it is important to take into account all the pitfalls of AI. If this is properly done, community policing officers with an Intelligent Virtual Assistant in their pocket will be able to keep control of their work and cope with the growing digitization of our society. Having to spend less time being exposed to irrelevant information will result in spending more time making the neighborhoods safer for everyone.

      At the end of our conversation, prof. dr. Bosse briefly discussed his work with the European Space Agency[v]. ESA is working on the development of floating digital e-Partners for astronauts. These small robots provide contextual information and will help with complex situations during a Mars mission and can even give emotional support to astronauts. If this kind of futuristic technology could be added to the IVA of a community policing officer, then protection against infobesity might just be the tip of the iceberg for how AI can help our future police officers.

      Find out more

      This article has been adapted from a chapter in the Trends in Safety 2021-2022 report giving European leaders insight into the safety and security trends affecting citizens in the Netherlands.

      • The full report in Dutch can be found here.
      • An executive summary in English can be found here.

      Authors

      Arul Elangovan
      Enterprise ArchitectArul Elangovan mainly focuses on digital and customer experience for citizens in the public safety domain. He also provides training in customer journey design and agile architecture.
      Email : arul.elangovan@capgemini.com
      Frank Inklaar
      Business AnalystFrank Inklaar is a Senior Consultant at Capgemini. He focuses on the application of advanced analytics and Artificial Intelligence in the field of public security and safety.
      Email : frank.inklaar@capgemini.com

      [i] Infobesitas and psychological factors: https://www.researchgate. net/publication/336612222_DECISION_MAKING_IN_THE_ERA_ OF_INFOBESITY_A_STUDY_ON_INTERACTION_OF_GENDER_AND_ PSYCHOLOGICAL_TENDENCIES

      [ii] 2016 Belgian survey into the attacks in Zaventem and Maalbeek: https://www.politieacademie.nl/kennisenonderzoek/kennis/ mediatheek/pdf/94442.pdf

      [iii] Broadcast ‘De Fabeltjesfuik’ by Arjan Lubach: https://youtu.be/ FLoR2Spftwg

      [iv] Exposure to ideologically diverse news and opinion on Facebook — E. Bakshy, S. Messing, L.A. Adamic: https://science.sciencemag.org/ content/348/6239/1130

      [v]  Supporting Human-Robot Teams in Space Missions using ePartners and Formal Abstraction Hierarchies — T. Bosse, J. van Diggelen, M.A. Neerincx, and N.J.J.M. Smets, 2015

      Leveraging external digital touchpoints beyond advertising

      Capgemini
      Capgemini
      13 Jan 2022

      HOW SOCIAL MESSAGING CHANNELS AND MEDIA PLATFORMS CAN HELP TELECOM OPERATORS REDUCE CARE COSTS AND BOOST SALES

      In early 2021 the number of active social platform users exceeded 4.2 billion (54% of the earth’s population), with average users logging more than two hours and 25 minutes every day. Is your organization taking full advantage of social media platforms and their unparalleled reach?

      Leveraging social platforms beyond marketing

      Year after year, companies and marketers have become more proficient in using social media to increase brand awareness and address targeted audiences. Organizations are no longer satisfied with a simple branded Facebook page; many have become skilled at creating buzz with smart and inspired campaigns that use advanced targeting functions to reach specific pools of customers and prospects.

      But beyond advertising, social networks and messaging platforms have also seen a surge of customer-care activities in recent years. Indeed, with the growing interest in creating omnichannel customer experiences and rising customer expectations, companies have started building up their social customer-care capabilities using independent digital platforms. Some brands have also experimented with using external digital touchpoints as distribution channels, running both pre-sales and sales activities directly on WhatsApp, generating and converting leads in Instagram, distributing products using Facebook Messenger, etc.

      However, many companies in all industries, including telecommunications, have yet to tap into the full potential offered by social media and messaging platforms and to seize the revenue development and cost savings opportunities they bring.

      Social platforms can bring various benefits to telecom operators

      We’ve identified five primary motives that drive companies, including telcos, to go a step further than digital marketing in their use of external digital channels:

      Taking advantage of their vast and specific reach. Digital platforms such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, or TikTok count their users in billions and often cater to specific elusive demographics.

      Leveraging their capacity for advanced targeting. Behind the popular platforms are data-powered companies that have made their users’ data the core of their business.

      Creating conversational experiences. Investing a social media or messaging platform allows companies to offer their customers more than the one-sided experience of browsing a website. They create the possibility of an actual interaction and conversation between the brand and the customer.

      Being able to automate activities. These channels make it possible to recreate in a digital setting the type of interactions that were previously limited to stores and phone calls, and to do it in an automated way, using artificial intelligence through the development of bots.

      Improving brand image and customer satisfaction. By being present and offering practical services to customers on these digital channels, brands contribute to building a modern, customer-centric image and to triggering recommendation.

      As a consequence, how can telcos concretely leverage social platforms?

      Considering these benefits, we have identified four key paths for telco operators to consider in an effort to leverage external digital platforms:

      Find the best model for customer care through messaging.

      Brands are increasingly incorporating messaging channels into their customer care resources. Offering customer care on social media and messaging platforms, supported by human-to-human conversations or chatbots, has become common practice for many organizations. It brings a mutual gain for both customers and companies, as on the one hand, customers have a more convenient, familiar, easily accessible and available 24/7 channel to engage with brands, and on the other hand, brands have the opportunity to reduce cost of contacts and gain efficiency: thus, a European telecom operator experienced up to 30% call deflection over a messenger such as WhatsApp.

      With messaging comes the opportunity to automate responses to simple queries avoiding costly calls or visits to customer care centers, conversations can also occur asynchronously giving companies the opportunity to adjust response time depending on the availability of customer care representatives or the complexity of the query, and the history of customer interaction is retained enabling seamless hand-offs between representatives for an improved customer experience and a full 360° customer view.

      The benefits of using digital external touchpoints as care channels are, in this context, evident: they operate on the two key dimensions of customer care, lowering cost of contacts – through call deflection, asynchronous messaging, and automation – and increasing customer satisfaction – by reinforcing innovative and responsive brand perception.

      However, to leverage messaging platforms for care in the most effective and secure way possible, organizations need to support agent skilling, secure high volume of automation, manage dependency to third-party policy changes, and determine the appropriate level of authentication and verification by type of query.

      Joining the live stream commerce trend as it progressively takes off worldwide.

      Social Live commerce – using live stream video broadcasts to sell products and services to viewers in real time – is taking root in the retail industry and, as it shows significant potential, all industries are taking a close look and starting to dip their toes in the livestreaming ecommerce pool.

      Forrester predicts that live stream commerce will reach USD100 billion by 2023 in China, where this trend first emerged. And, as the global population has largely been forced to stay home by the pandemic, livestream shopping adoption rose all over the world, fueled by growing customer interest in an experience marring the convenience of digital and the interactive aspect of physical retail. Now, the trend is here to stay and has become far more than a way to make a purchase during a pandemic.

      Beyond beauty, live streaming has expanded into complex and expensive products (luxury, automotive, etc.) bringing product demonstration and interaction possibilities.
      In telecoms, Chinese operators are leading the way and already run livestreaming sales.
      Live commerce is now spreading across western countries and, large electronics retailers, such as Fnac in France, are running Live commerce sessions for products such as cameras or game consoles, with audiences of up to one million viewers

      For western telco players, social livestream commerce presents an opportunity to reach new and younger audiences on social channels and to demonstrate and stage a complex range of products and services while maintaining a social element through the interaction between viewers and host. It could also be an effective way of introducing and promoting new flagship devices (handsets, smart home devices, etc.) in partnership with manufacturers to present the technological objects with its associated communication services.

      By exploring social live commerce, the telco industry could therefore generate additional revenues from real-time sales as well as bring forth indirect sales: live stream commerce delivered on social media platforms being a good tool to support brand and product discoverability and to boost brand image. It is also a smart way to break through promising channels, such as Instagram, which are successfully pivoting towards e-commerce. Finally, by tapping into influencer marketing, the initial investment to start testing the live commerce possibilities could be limited, making experimentation easy.

      In markets not yet accustomed to this kind of sales though, one shall expect success to be progressive and development to follow improved customer education and habits.

      Fully engage in automated conversational selling.

      Conversational selling is about opening a direct dialogue with customers and prospects, to engage with them and focus the sales pitch around the most relevant arguments for each individual. (So instead of talking about the merits of, say, a particular phone plan, a salesperson might ask about the customer’s phone habits.)   It’s a customer-centric method most relevant for complex products such as fiber or smart home offerings.

      Conversational selling is therefore a particularly interesting path for telco players which can take advantage of social media targeting capabilities to find, reach and start conversing with prospects eligible to and most likely to need their services. For increased convenience, these conversations can take place on the channels where customers and prospects are most comfortable interacting, moving from social media to social messaging platforms. And, as the idea is to take the time to know one’s prospective buyer’s interest and to introduce and explain all the benefits of one’s products, the more cost-effective approach is to support conversational selling initiatives with a chatbot. By investing in messaging platforms, telco companies can also leverage their interface and functionalities: geolocation pins for eligibility checks, multimedia carousels for offer discovery, pre-filled customer info based on social media account data, etc.

      With the articulation of social media and messaging apps, establishing a true connection and nurturing long-term relationships is no longer the preserve of corner shops. Automated conversational selling can be an efficient lead-generation channel for telco operators as it leverages both messaging apps’ vast base of active users and social media’s proven advanced targeting algorithms. Two-way interactive conversations make for an engaging channel and thus better conversion, especially given that the benefits are centered on the idea of nurturing the leads generated. Even if the prospect isn’t interested in the product they initially reached out about, the window is opened to retarget them, guide them toward another offer, assess their satisfaction, etc.

      In the Philippines, a leading Broadband operator experienced a x3 increase in lead generation through a geo-located Facebook ad combined with a call to action inviting prospects to chat through messenger. Users could then discover the broadband offer further and confirm their eligibility.

      With these clear benefits, telco companies need to start building the technical prerequisite to invest the field of automated conversational selling on messaging platforms. And, in the meantime, they must begin with initiatives that will facilitate service discovery and improve the purchasing experience even if still short of full scope use case deployment. In particular, linking social media and CRM data is an important challenge to be tackled to mine for prospect data, retarget and effectively explore A/B testing.

      Embrace messaging platforms top-up for pre-paid business.

      Social messaging platforms can also support revenue development in emerging markets where prepaid remains the norm and customers often shift between the various SIMs they own.

      Allowing mobile phone users to top up their prepaid phone cards on their favorite messaging platform brings about a new level of convenience for customers, as the freedom and control that come with prepaid phone plans also come with the hurdle of having to top up often by visiting a store or memorizing a dedicated phone number.

      But top-up acts can now be as easy as initiating a chat on WhatsApp with one’s mobile provider. Informed about his low credit on his usual social messaging platform, a customer can provide a bot with an amount to top up and select his e-wallet or another payment method, before receiving confirmation of their transaction. Moreover, these same bots can be used to check or be notified of one’s balance on a channel that is not only more convenient but also more engaging. This is the direction followed by a leading African mobile operator that has created a fully automated top-up journey supported by WhatsApp end to end.

      Of course, security stakes remain, requiring platforms and telcos to secure transactions using tools ranging from conversation encryption to well-defined partnership contracts to implement the appropriate level of authentication to safeguard customers from frauds while maintaining convenience.

      In summary

      The potential of social and messaging platforms for telecommunication companies is vast. Looking ahead, investing these platforms will help in creating improved service and offer discovery experiences as well as stronger long-term relationships between brand and customer. Companies that wish to get ahead cannot afford to overlook the opportunity digital external touchpoints bring.

      TelcoInsights is a series of posts about the latest trends and opportunities in the telecommunications industry – powered by a community of global industry experts and thought leaders.

      Author:

      Philippe BLANC, Vice-President, Telecom Media Technology at Capgemini Invent

      Innovation and quantum: how do you bridge the gap between idea generation and implementation?

      Pascal Brier
      2022-01-13

      We face many critical societal challenges, from healthcare crises to economic and social disparities, energy transition, and climate change. Although they are not a panacea, innovative technologies, when applied properly, can help overcome these challenges and create benefits for all – if they are designed by and for humans.

      Even before the coronavirus outbreak, global economies were committing a significant and ever-growing proportion of GDP to research and development. The pandemic has added new urgency to the quest – almost half (49%) of companies  now see innovation as a top-three priority.

      Eight of the world’s 10 biggest companies by market capitalization today are technology companies compared to just two in 2010. By the end of the decade, researchers estimate that technological innovations across virtual reality, metaverse, quantum, and circular economy could contribute trillions of dollars of new value to the global economy.

      However, while the positive power of innovation is evident, the route to tech-led success is far from clear. Businesses often struggle to adapt due to the abundance of new and complex technologies. Capgemini research suggests half of business leaders feel their organization is unable to keep up with changes, with only 17% believing they have a company-wide culture of innovation.

      What’s more, just as the scale of the societal challenges that we face continues to intensify, so does the pace of innovation. Take quantum technology, for example – the development of the new field of quantum computation during the next decade will make it possible to simulate processes through complex mathematical models and superior processing power that were not considered feasible before. We are truly entering a new era of tech-led innovation. So, how will your business get there?

      Prioritizing an effective innovation strategy

      It is all too easy for organizations to take a scattergun approach to innovation, and also to mis-time their innovation investment. Creating an innovation strategy that harnesses the most appropriate technologies and turns these levers for change into a positive force is essential. Innovation can then transform your business and deliver progress for people and societies in an inclusive, sustainable, and ethical way.

      For those who harness innovation effectively, the opportunities are boundless. Following a decade of pessimism, experts now believe that there is a realistic possibility of a new dawn of technological optimism breaking, but a new era that is tempered by pragmatism and honest communication.

      Building an innovation ecosystem to learn and leverage

      I also believe innovation should be seen as a continuum. While some concepts – such as quantum computing – will be truly disruptive and will in time create a seismic change; others will lead to incremental benefits.

      It’s important to recognize how creativity can bubble up from anywhere. Companies must find ways to allow everyone, everywhere – whether they’re in your business or from a wider ecosystem of partners and startups – to contribute their ideas to this continuum.

      However, the scale of the innovation challenge means no business can afford to work in isolation. If you want to harness the right technologies effectively, it’s important to connect to an ecosystem that can help your business get the future it wants.

      Applied research is crucial to a successful innovation strategy

      The third element is bridging the gap between idea generation and implementation at scale, from scoping the initial problem, to researching use cases, from developing innovations and to scaling up those creative ideas.

      Here’s the rub: an effective innovation strategy is about much more than simply talking a good game. The success of your approach to innovation will be judged on your company’s ability to put its creative ideas into action – and that’s where our newly launched Quantum Lab (Q-Lab) can help.

      This new dedicated initiative draws on the expertise of our scientific quantum researchers and specialist partners. Working with clients, we explore the potential of quantum applications, combining research projects and bringing in cutting-edge quantum partners – in computing, communications and sensing – areas where we see quantum adding value in the medium term.

      In addition, Capgemini’s world-wide network of Applied Innovation Exchanges plays a key role in bridging that gap.  The AIEs are connected to local and global ecosystems of specialist startups, academics, venture capital firms, incubators, and large technology providers.  Together we work to transition organizations from incremental, low-risk, low-return innovation activity to a more balanced portfolio of innovation projects that can drive tangible value and competitive edge.

      This pioneering, research-led approach is helping business see what’s possible and then make it a reality. Yes, innovation is an inherently complex process, but this is a proactive and pragmatic approach, that will help our clients get ready for the quantum revolution.

      Is your organization ready to ride the next wave of innovation?

      Where do you see the opportunities of quantum technologies? How do you think they will help your business to gain a competitive advantage? Find out more about how Capgemini’s Quantum -Lab bridges the gap between research and business application in my colleague Julian van Velzen’s blog to be published soon.

      Author:

      Pascal Brier

      Pascal Brier, Group Chief Innovation Officer, Member of the Group Executive Committee, Capgemini