Tag: Tech

Technology has had a profound effect on the way we operate in every aspect of our lives — from the way we communicate, to the way we run our homes and the way we shop. Perhaps one of the most significant changes comes into play outside of our personal lives. While we might not realise it, the effect of technology in business continues to shape the way in which we work and organisations operate.

As an example; for any business with a supply chain, investment in technology is essential. We’re all aware that the modern consumer has demands that simply wouldn’t have been met twenty years ago. In retail we’re now accustomed to click and collect, same-day delivery and one-hour delivery time slots and VR apps that let you check how that mirror would look on the wall before you buy it. These are great conveniences, but the pressure for retail businesses to remain competitive is enormous.

In a B2B environment, technology now means that any disruption to the supply chain can be quickly resolved as businesses have access to real-time data and can scenario plan in advance to anticipate a host of ‘what ifs’. Despite the fact that legacy processes, such as a reliance on spreadsheets, still holds many organisations back from reaching their full potential, others are investing in the best technology available to digitally transform both the customer-facing and, often neglected, back-end processes.

Not only does technology affect business outputs and processes, it has also changed the workplace and the way we, as employees, function. We can work from home, get paid on demand, leave the desk and tuck ourselves away when we need a few quiet minutes to concentrate and manage our pensions, annual leave and payslips on an app. Cloud computing, fintech and developments in IT mean that some companies don’t even need an office anymore. Forward-thinking fintech companies, such as Hastee Pay, offer services that mean for those of us feeling the January pinch there is no longer a wait for payday.

At the rate technology has been evolving over the last few years I expect a blog on this topic next year will be entirely different. Will robot assistants be serving us drinks while we work away on a beach in the Caribbean before meeting our clients on the other side of the world via hologram? Maybe. Check back here in 2020 to find out.

The annual global innovation showcase known as CES has seen brands from across the globe take over Las Vegas and compete for the limelight since the ‘60s. Companies need to stand out from the crowd and cut through the noise, particularly at a show where nearly every technology company in the world can be found under one roof. The sheer scale of the event is a reason having a strong creative public relations and communications strategy can enable key brands to steal a march on their competitors.

In the past CES has been viewed as a gadget fun-fair which lacked any connection to the everyday consumer, but this year things are different. This year the consumer was put first.

When talking about winning the race for consumer favour you need look no further than the fierce battle between tech giants Amazon and Google as the two dominate the voice-aided smart speaker space. Amazon is estimated to have a 41% share of the global smart speaker market while Google has 28%, following a year of significant investment to catch up to their tech rivals.

Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant (GA) AI technologies need no introduction, but they are still in the early adoption stage as consumers come to grips with the benefits of smart-home tech and connected devices. Their comms teams have acknowledged this by demonstrating the technology in-use, through partner technology like JBL’s new GA headphone range and the smart TVs that have Amazon Alexa functionality built in. The marketing teams highlighted new functionality, but unlike previous years, the benefits of the products have been the focus, rather than the gizmos themselves.

Google managed to pull off an elaborate stunt involving a ride which uses voice commands to move the consumer along a journey, putting the user in control – Hey Google, give me a thrill but don’t make me throw up.

Speaking of thrills, a robotic sex aid for women by Ose was banned from this year’s show, which caused uproar on social media. Commentators on Twitter adopted the hashtag #CESGenderBias to debate the organiser’s decision and suggest there was a double standard because male-friendly sex products were displayed at last year’s show.

Despite this biased PR decision which plays into the broader gender discussions in society over the last year, many organisations have quickly adopted policies in their recruitment and business operations that will create a more diverse workforce and empower female leaders. Comms professionals can help tackle the issue by creating strategies that position business leaders from different genders and ethnic backgrounds to be equally represented throughout PR and marketing campaigns.

If one company were to win the award for best stunt, then in my view it has to be Apple. Apple wasn’t even exhibiting at the show, yet it managed to troll the competition with a giant ad on the side of a Las Vegas building, that read: “What happens on your iPhone, stays on your iPhone.” The obvious dig at privacy standards in the industry puts the pressure firmly on the likes of Facebook, Google and Amazon. Ultimately, I believe consumers are in the process of benefitting from the increase in attention on privacy, as devices become more secure and safe to use. And in one fell swoop it looks like Apple, not Amazon or Google, won the CES comms war.

Innovate. Transform. Grow. Bold words, but all certainly applicable to Fintech Connect, which bills itself as the UK’s largest fintech trade show. Held at the ExCel in London last week, it didn’t let me down, with speakers and representatives from major institutions like Citigroup to smaller niche players like Smart Valor.

Our agency has a strong heritage in the Fintech space and we’ve represented disruptive firms from across the industry, from Regtech to small business finance and data management to invoice financing. This is an industry landscape that is constantly shape shifting, influenced by the regulation agenda, consumer demand and mobile technologies, to name just a few.

A glance at the speaker sessions and workshops gave just a flavour of the huge variety of solutions on offer: from augmented reality in banking to tokenised investments, the opportunities created by open banking to machine learning. This is an industry that is fertile hunting ground for innovation and it is a source of huge pride to see London and the UK rightly recognised as the perfect base for these sorts of companies to launch, grow and thrive.

I was fortunate enough to speak with a few of the home-grown Fintechs at the event and find out how their transformative technology will meet one or many market needs.

Their passion and belief is admirable, but it also strengthens our own resolve. What is clear to me is that PR is a strategic investment for these firms – it isn’t a budget pot they are willing to fritter away so that they get it again next year. Instead, it drives and supports strategic business direction, from breaking new markets to attracting external investment, increasing sales to generating new leads.

So as we continue to disrupt our industry with our results-driven engagement model, it was heartening to hear that these firms require a communications agency to complement their own company ethos or approach.

As a proof point, have a look at our work with Fraedom, a hugely disruptive B2B firm in the commercial credit cards and spend management space, which earlier this year was acquired by Visa.

Doing things the ‘same old way’ has been a terminal error for businesses in the past – and those working in the financial services and Fintech space know that better than anyone. Different results need different approaches, different ways of thinking and similar disruptive philosophies, which is where I think Whiteoaks truly sets itself apart from the rest.

A number of Fintech and digital technology trends are having a big impact on the financial services industry right now. Artificial Intelligence, a strong compliance framework, CRM systems, Blockchain and the subject of this blog, Regulatory Tech which is more commonly termed Regtech. We all know the background: after the financial crisis in 2008, an enormous volume of new regulation and compliance responsibilities were placed on financial institutions. In response, those organisations looked for help from technology start-ups aiming to ensure that they better manage the vast amounts of data and conformity to a myriad of international regulations, including most recently, GDPR and MiFID II.

The Regtech sector has evolved in the last 10 years and the new technologies help compliance professionals to save costs and increase efficiencies on their regulatory burden – and at their best discover that regulation can be a new revenue stream.

The focus areas in 2018 and 2019 are automation, intelligence and data analytics. This combination helps financial companies with the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)’s KYC (Know your Customer) and AML (Anti-Money Laundering) screening, and transaction monitoring. As a result, the industry is finding that Regtech works better for large institutions – the volume of data required to ‘train’ an AI engine to the stage where it can provide meaningful data analysis is heavy and improves over time.

Yet Regtech has been, often unfairly, dogged by an argument that it will negatively impact on employment prospects and employee satisfaction levels. The current reality is that Regtech shouldn’t and won’t replace professional, qualified and knowledgeable people. The capabilities are meant to take the load on repetitive, expensive, data-heavy jobs and data analysis – in exactly the same way that Business Information (BI) product suites have helped businesses to achieve the same outcome, for many years. Compliance professionals continue to provide consultancy, strategy, data management, risk intelligence and advice, and ultimate oversight of their company’s regulatory approach.

From everything that we see about Regtech, the excitement is in its ability to make it possible for experienced compliance professionals to spend more time doing what they do best, and as a result adding the most value to their business.

But what are the key challenges? Data portability is a Pandora’s box. The dream for clients to easily and seamlessly switching to a service provider with the best offering is often not realised. Most Fintechs arguably are still not working on the same platform as the big financial institutions but with Regtech, that may be about to change. Whilst innovations in customer experience may be seen to be optional, compliance is non-negotiable.

Banks are finding that they must open up their operations, with potential Regtech partners only too happy to oblige. As well as the business, the opportunity provides them with access to years and years of legacy data. Armed with this, they can apply the complex algorithms required to make the bank’s compliance operations more efficient. As the algorithms iterate, they’ll learn and make their own tech business better and more competitive.

Nevertheless, data portability is a huge mental and operational challenge for large financial institutions. It forces them to change everything they thought they so far believed: client data security is paramount and keeping their own business practices utterly confidential is not up for discussion. In fact, recent research by Asset Control, the leader in providing proven, high-performance systems for financial data management, shows that more than a third (37%) of those financial firms think that legacy data platforms are the biggest obstacles to improving their data management and analytics capabilities.

What is data portability? How should it be embedded in the financial company? Who can access the data? These are the key questions for 2019…

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And for further reading about the current compliance landscape, the Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence team has published their annual ‘Cost of Compliance’ 2018 report, benchmarking opinions from compliance professionals over the last nine years.

When the Fintech industry started to emerge as a strong sector within financial services a few years ago, all everyone could talk about was how on earth the big, established, traditional banking institutions were going to compete with the gutsy ‘start-ups’ which would change the way that the finance industry was run.

At a conceptual level, it’s true that Fintechs have overhauled the way that the quartet of central banks, capital markets, consumer banking and B2B banking and payments are run. Some of that transformational change can of course be attributed to the reaction and needs spinning out from the financial crash in 2008 and the various austerity measures that have followed around the world.

In retail banking, while the consumer banks started out by partnering with Fintechs to provide customers with more channels, services and options, some are now starting to venture out by bringing some of those learnings in-house and launching their own fintech-based businesses. They’ve watched those Fintechs bring an open and agile approach to digital service, including personalisation in both communications and payments plus diversity and control with payments options, and they want some of it for themselves.

Probably the most high profile retail banking example is when, earlier this month, Nat West announced the launch of Mettle, an app-only business bank for SMEs. The big ‘threats’ from those fintechs have of course been realised in the success from the likes of Monzo and Atom – innovating, yes, competing in customer experience, yes. And growing fast.

In the B2B space, partnerships have proven to be where the real value is still best added for the end user, the finance institution and the payments provider who operates between the two. In fact, just a few days ago, the importance of partnerships in the B2B paytech space was underlined by an announcement that new guidelines have been developed with the “aim of addressing the issues that prevent Fintechs and financial institutions from becoming successful allies.”

A key component of the Treasury’s Fintech Sector Strategy has seen a number of big banks and Fintech companies working with the British Standards Institute to create the new Publicly Available Specification – PAS 201:2018. In essence, any Fintech from the UK or abroad will now have a detailed framework to work within when gearing up to pitch to banks to ensure that they meet the complex myriad of compliance, data and security obligations that both parties will be subject to should they decide to work together.

This critical initiative underlines further just how much the fintech industry – and the broader financial market as a whole – has matured in recent years. And, whatever the outcome of Brexit is, anything that means that the UK can still be a financial services leader around the world, creating an environment where businesses have the landscape to innovate with support from Government and industry, is to be wholeheartedly applauded.

A business like Fraedom, one of our clients, which works with global banks to power their commercial cards and with businesses to manage their payments in nearly 180 countries is a case in point of the power of B2B paytech partnerships. Recently acquired by Visa, this company is making sure that its clients can stay competitive with personalised, convenient customer experience, improve user retention and ensure compliance to the current regulatory landscape. Here’s our case study detailing what we’ve been working on for Fraedom, which includes UK and US brand building and PR.

At the moment, barely a week goes by without store closures or high street woes featuring in the headlines. Just last week, news broke that in the UK, 14 shops are reported to be closing every day with more than 2,700 closing in the first half of this year. In recent months it has become abundantly clear that this isn’t a sustainable situation and retailers have called for “decisive action” from the government to support the high street.

However, with Black Friday around the corner and as many of us turn our attention to Christmas shopping, might tech be the answer to the high street’s problems? How are retailers securing their place on the high street this Christmas? And beyond into 2019 will implementing the latest in retail technology both on the shop floor and in stockrooms and warehouses turn their fortunes around?

One thing I’m sure we can all relate to is getting to the shops only to find out that the items we wanted are out of stock. For many of us, this will have resulted in us heading home and buying the desired item online. This, while working out well for online and omnichannel retailers, isn’t such a great result for high street stores. Fortunately, this is one area retail technology partners are now able to help with, using artificial intelligence to more accurately forecast and assess the supply chain to avoid such situations, especially during the busy Christmas shopping period and subsequent January sales. More accurate forecasting will ensure retailers have the right stock in the right sizes and colours to meet customer demand.

Similarly, technology can be used for workforce management, allowing retailers to predict when the store might be busy and ensure there are enough staff members on the shop floor – there’s nothing worse than wanting to pick out that perfect Christmas party lipstick and finding there’s nobody behind the counter to help. While these solutions might not be visible to shoppers, their impact on the retail experience can’t be underestimated.

In-store technology, on the other hand, can be used directly by customers to make the shopping experience smoother and faster. For example, retailers can adopt apps which allow customers to scan and shop without even having to visit a till. These apps also provide a platform through which retailers can engage with customers and enhance their experience by offering them discounts and offers tailored to their likes and previous purchases as soon as they enter the store.

The idea of the in-store experience is something retailers must pay more attention to. While online competition has no doubt played a part in the high street’s struggles over recent years, it is time for bricks-and-mortar stores to use the factors that differentiate them to fight back.

Although it might not always be possible to match online pricing, it is possible to give consumers with a more bespoke experience that justifies them spending those few extra pounds. Personally, I love the buzz of the high street at Christmas and, frankly, wandering the aisles as ‘Last Christmas’ plays in the background makes me feel like I’m in my very own version of Love Actually, which is something online retailers definitely can’t provide. Retailers must recognise the benefits a physical store provides by allowing customers to try, taste, test and touch products, as well as find out additional information, and make sure their local store delivers on this.

In the run-up to Christmas, it’s vital that brands do what they can to offer their customers a unique experience that can’t be replicated online. By using the latest technology, high street stores can turn what many now see as a ‘showroom’ back into a store, which not only attracts customers to browse but also to buy.

Will you be tempted back to the high street this Christmas? Personally, I’ll definitely be hitting Guildford High Street to hunt out some stocking fillers from Anthropologie and Oliver Bonas in the coming weeks.

Let the Christmas shopping commence!

If you were to judge the health of a sector on headlines alone, 2018 has not been a great year for retailers.

House of Fraser, Homebase and Debenhams are among the big brands to fall on bad times.

The Centre for Retail Research reports that 23 UK retailers have failed during the first half of the year, with more than 1,800 stores and nearly 21,000 workers affected.

High rents, lower consumer spending and a weak currency have all been blamed for the downfall of brands which have stood proudly on the nation’s high streets and retail parks for many years.

 But as we all know, it’s the rise of online retailers and e-commerce which has perhaps had the biggest impact.

 The success of Amazon is well documented, its growth seemingly unstoppable.

 Alongside its stunning financial success – this week it became only the second company to be valued by Wall Street at $1tn – Amazon has maintained a good reputation among British shoppers, and recently won the accolade of the UK’s most reputable retailer. According to research from The Reputation Institute, Amazon was voted top retailer for products and services, innovation, leadership and performance.

 It is the continual innovation of Amazon and its use of technology which has made it the envy of the retail world.

 Artificial Intelligence (AI) has played a key role at Amazon for many years – it was one of the first companies to use the technology to drive its product recommendations. AI is at the heart of more recent product innovation at Amazon – the popular Echo device is now a feature in millions of UK homes and features AI bot Alexa.

But it’s not just the big online retailers which are using the power of AI to drive innovation.

 Many of our clients at Whiteoaks are helping retailers use the technology to drive efficiencies and enhance customer experience.

 One such client is global reviews and customer insights company Feefo, which offers retailers an AI-powered online reviews platform, to gain unrivalled customer insight and make smarter business decisions.

The Feefo Smart Themes plug-in helps the customers of its clients instantly find the most relevant and useful information they’re looking for from all the reviews, in real-time.

AI also drives the smart reporting tool, Performance Profiling, which provides unrivalled insights into product and service performance throughout the customer journey, including detailed understanding of strengths and weaknesses along with valuable business intelligence.

 While the subject of AI may seem alien to many smaller, independent retailers, innovative companies such as Feefo are demonstrating how their solutions can help retailers of any size stay ahead of the competition and improve their business prospects.

 AI has a remarkable ability to spot patterns and shifts in data – retailers which fail to invest in such technology risk missing changes in consumer behaviour, and ultimately, risk losing their customers for good.

The question: “how technology affects our lives?” is one that has many answers — not all of which can be covered in one blog. But I will have a go at explaining some of the ways that technology has changed our everyday lives.

Some people argue that technology is making the world a better place, while others say that technology is having the opposite effect. Let’s explore both sides.

For almost all of us, technology plays an invaluable part in our normal day. We use technology from the time we wake up to when we go to sleep. A recent study by Ofcom found that Britons check their phones on average every 12 minutes. This is something I can relate to; I’m woken up in the morning by the alarm on my phone, so it’s the first thing I look at and it’s also most likely the last thing I look at before I go to sleep. This might seem like an unhealthy habit but having a phone that can allow me to manage my life and connect with anyone that I know, regardless of where they are in the world, has meant that I have been able to show friends and family experiences and moments that they would never have seen if it wasn’t for technology. But there are wider benefits, beyond social ones.

Technology has also helped the world in more significant ways than people checking Instagram to see how many likes they got from a photo they took of their dinner last night. Today’s smartphones can be used as health monitors as they can measure your heart rate and tell you when you should be active, among other features. Technology has also helped develop medicine and produce drugs, such as the vaccine for polio, which has seen a drop of 99.9% in the number of cases since 1988. Pacemakers can now be fitted with Wi-Fi capabilities that allow data to be sent from the person fitted with the pacemaker to a certain hospital giving the doctors real-time updates of the individuals condition.

Projects being led by Health Data Research UK funded with £37.5 million via the Industrial Strategy Challenge fund have set up Digital Innovations Hubs with the aim to utilise scientific information and emerging technologies to develop new drugs and devices. This could lead to major discoveries that will impact people’s lives forever, be it longer life expectancy in third world countries or helping people with long-term illnesses experience a higher quality of life.

On the other hand, it can be argued that technology has made the world a worse place. The amount of data that is collected on citizens, combined with cases of cyber-attacks doubling in 2017, has meant some people feel more vulnerable about their personal information getting into the hands of the wrong people. Especially with medical information, highlighted by the NHS WannaCry hack last year that disrupted hospitals and reportedly put lives at risk.

Technology is also impacting on our mental health. It can also be said that even though we can be connected to anyone, anywhere and have endless information available to us, technology is making us as a society more unsociable. A lot of the time people choose to engage with their phones instead of engaging in conversation with the person next to them, which can lead to social isolation, anxiety and depression.

Cyber-bullying is also a much bigger problem than it was 10 years ago, with one in eight young people in the UK being bullied on social media in 2017 according to Ofcom.

There is an app for everything – even to help people with mental health issues with apps such as Calm and meditation apps like Headspace. These apps can give people access to help that they wouldn’t have been able to access before. With a little bit of faith in humanity, you’ll see that there will always be people trying to work against misuse of technology to see that it is used for the greater good. The rise of cyber-crime has been met with a rise in the number of cyber-security firms working to protect personal data and data belonging to businesses.

I believe if we choose not to accept or invest in technology, we will stagnate and be left behind while others embrace technology and reap the benefits of it.

This week the news broke that the non-food online division of Tesco, Tesco Direct, will close in just a matter of weeks, putting 500 jobs at risk. The website that sold clothing, lifestyle items and homewares has been forced to cease business as it has “no route to profitability” – the reason given for this? Tesco said it was high delivery and marketing costs. My reason? Amazon.

Amazon is ruthless, unwavering and we cannot seem to function without it! Need a new phone charger delivered by tomorrow? Amazon. Ran out of cat food? Amazon. Forgot to get your boyfriend a birthday present? Amazon.

Product searches needn’t begin on Google anymore; shoppers can turn to Amazon as the first port of call for even the most obscure of products – leaving other retailers on a backfoot from the very start. The ‘Amazon Effect’ is becoming a widely referred to phenomenon and for good reason. The giant is forever spreading its tentacles, venturing into, not just new categories of retail, but new sectors as it sets its sight on entertainment, shipping, food, healthcare and banking. A recent article by Natalie Berg in the Grocer put it well by saying, “It doesn’t just go after share of wallet. It goes after share of life.”

Combine this approach with competitive prices and Prime delivery offerings and it seems inevitable that websites, such as Tesco Direct, won’t be able to compete and are destined to struggle at best or at worst, collapse.

One of the key differentiators that is attributed to Amazon’s success is its relentless disruption which it continues to finetune. Recent years have seen the retailer lead the way with innovative shopping solutions such as its cashier-less shop Amazon Go and its AI-powered home assistant Amazon Echo. Each action is led by a vision that hasn’t changed since its inception: revolutionise in order to bring long-term value for customers.

The recent merger discussions between Asda and Sainsbury’s can also be attributed to the ‘Amazon Effect’. The supermarkets are attempting to take control of the market before Amazon, inevitably, does. Despite the infrastructure being in place, as it stands Amazon is not a food destination as it lacks a compelling range of products – something that an Asda-Sainsbury’s merger could certainly offer. With Sainsbury’s owning Argos, this merger would create a retailing powerhouse in food, clothing, toys, home and lifestyle.

Amazon’s continuous dissatisfaction with the status quo pushes all retailers, including supermarkets, to be on their toes and raise the bar in accordance with the standards the online retailer sets. We have already seen this in areas such as sophisticated delivery options and speed, voice technology and checkout options. Customers’ expectations are rising in accordance with the standards Amazon is setting, meaning retailers are having to keep on their toes if they are to survive.

Ultimately, nobody does Amazon like Amazon and neither Tesco closing its non-grocery website nor the Asda-Sainsbury’s merger will challenge the Amazon problem overnight, but both are certainly a step in the right direction to supermarkets surviving against the almighty Amazon.