INTERVIEW:
PAUL BRAY
We speak with Paul Bray, Divisional Head, Office of the CTO, on how we can enable our customer to move at pace and remain agile and competitive.
Paul is the CTO for Computacenter in the UK&I and a member of the UK Leadership Team. Paul leads the Office of the CTO in the UK, which is tasked with defining our technical strategy, driving our thought leadership to the market, and developing the offerings and capabilities required of our customers across all our portfolio areas.
Paul is highly active with our customer and partner ecosystem, holding senior relationships with customers and representing Computacenter on various partner boards and forums and at industry events.
The ability to pre-empt and predict demand more effectively is now a critical capability
What is the importance of speed to remain/become agile and competitive?
Across all aspects of life, the pace of change is unabating. We are under constant pressure, and taking the time to think, plan, evaluate and respond often feels like an outdated notion. Expectation to respond quickly is a key requirement – one that is often demanded – to ensure your business isn’t the one that loses by simply ‘not being able to keep up’.
We are seeing the macro landscape continue to be volatile and uncertain, with uncertainties and vulnerability in the supply chain. The ability to pre-empt and predict demand more effectively is now a critical capability. First, respond effectively to demands for your current products and services, then swiftly figure out how to accelerate the time to market for future products and innovations to retain your relevance.
How do we enable our customers?
Given the breadth of our business we do this in several ways, but I’ll pick just two to discuss in a bit more detail. One that focuses on our Customer Engagement, the second on just one of our capabilities.
From an engagement perspective, we operate across a variety of geographies and industries, but within that we are focused on a relatively modest number of customers. This generates speed in terms of our ability to engage with our customers, and our intimacy helps us to understand their needs and respond faster, especially when we share patterns and trends from other geographies and industries that can help accelerate our customers thinking and help them reduce risk.
From a capabilities perspective we can provide our customers with various skills. Our technology sourcing capabilities through our globally distributed Integration Centres help us speed up technology deployment and transformation. Our other skillsets include providing our customers with rapid access to technology expertise in flexible ways – helping to mitigate the challenges caused by skills shortages and access to talent.
How do we help our customers transform and innovate?
I always like to think about transformation and innovation in terms of change to People, Process and Technology. All three aspects need to be considered to distinguish between iterative and more radical evolution to which “transformation and innovation” allude. We need to be solving old problems in fundamentally new ways or solving new problems – all with a clear focus on benefit and value.
Across the various industries our customers operate, they are having to transform and innovate at pace. We have capabilities and services that support this goal, with a focus across the IT infrastructure portfolio – from Workplace, Apps & Data, Networking, Security and Data Center, and Cloud – and the key is applying those in pursuit of resolving the customers business objectives. We are involved in complex change projects in several areas, and the skills we bring to the table, and what we learn in these industries can be key to accelerating change in other areas.
Fundamentally, the approach here is working with our customers to help them achieve their goals – these days we may give that a label like “co-creation”, but it’s in our DNA and something we’ve been doing for years. The second is in sharing our insights and technical expertise to help our customers rethink how they are approaching their challenges, and constantly evolving and maturing what we can do to support them. A good recent example of this may be the establishment of our “Apps and Data” Centre of Excellence in Cluj, Romania. This is not something our customers may necessarily associate with Computacenter – but it is an area we think is key for the continued digitalisation of our customers industries.
Fundamentally, the approach here is working with our customers to help them achieve their goals
Why is the speed of IT important to our customers, for their customers?
Consumer Experience, the threats and opportunities of global markets, the need to react to all of these “unprecedented events”; we are all now experiencing these on a much more frequent basis. Businesses cannot respond to the requirements of end consumers, or their other customers within a supply chain or delivery ecosystem without IT being at the heart of it.
We are long past the notion where IT was just a small part of the business, it’s now inherent in all businesses which is creating the classic dual challenge in terms of delivering operational efficiency to manage cost and quality and delivering agility and growth to drive revenue and new value streams. Both of those demands need to be satisfied - but given that the time to deliver has decreased, the acceptance of failure is almost nil, and the fact that one of your competitors is almost always certainly trying to encroach on “your patch” as they seek to succeed in the market just like you, means this needs to be done at pace.
The ability to cross-fertilise key knowledge between verticals is a big advantage Computacenter offers
What makes us the ideal partner to enable customers to become agile/competitive?
We are highly focused on the customers that we work with and the key industry verticals where we think we can help. This breeds a strong understanding of the trends and challenges of those markets, so we are in-tune with what our customers are wanting to achieve. The ability to cross-fertilise key knowledge between verticals is a big advantage Computacenter offers – as well as the breadth and depth of our portfolio. Across the IT infrastructure landscape, and from advice on strategy to hands on delivery, we do all of it, so our engagements are practical and actionable.
What services/solutions should people be aware of going into 2023 that will help them remain/become agile and competitive?
There is a lot going on across our portfolio, so I’d encourage you to reach out to the Computacenter team for an in-depth chat about how we’re seeing the market evolve and how we’re investing to meet those needs. We continue to invest in evolution and innovation in our Workplace propositions, as customers still adapt with the challenges of hybrid working and figure out a more effective and sustainable mode for the future. As I alluded to earlier, users on the frontline can be the difference between an amazing consumer experience and what they might get anywhere else, so we’re focusing on solutions that empower and enable users to be productive and delight their customers, wherever they may be.
We’re continuing to make investments in the data area. I’ll avoid the cliches, but everyone understands the power that data will hold to effective decision making – generating speed and competitive advantage. We’ve been thinking carefully about this area and the role we can play to support our customers, so expect to hear a lot from us in 2023 on that.
There are so many other things I could write about, but to summarise a few key themes underpinning our investments. Cloud, automation and convergence are key. Whether that’s in computing, storage, networking or workplace – those three themes are relevant and prevalent to the evolution and change that is required to accelerate future business. And all the while we’re doing this with two other central considerations – Security and Sustainability – at least two of the “non negotiables” of business and IT currently – so we’ll embed that into all that we do and think about to support our customers success.