"We have a clear goal around removing inefficient work"
Anna Manz, CFO of the London Stock Exchange, said the company's internal processes are "a muddle" after years of growing through acquisitions.
"We stitch stuff together at the top for the customer and at the bottom to report, and everything in the middle flows every different way."
LSE is in the middle of a transformation, having spent the last 18 months "going slow to go fast." Manz warned, "if you don't know how you want to run the business, it's very dangerous to embark on a transformation journey."
"The work that we've been doing has been to really make sure we understood our customers' needs, all the way back to the data and insights we needed to run our business, to then actually change our processes and the systems.
"That is the work that we're currently working through, and it's really exciting."
As CFO, it was Manz's job to make the business case for the change. Luckily, this was her third transformation; she knew to express it as "tough but necessary" work that would raise efficiency.
The efficiency piece is obvious but important, especially today. "The labour market is such that if your work is low value and frustrating, you go to another company," said Manz, "so there's a very clear goal for us around removing some of this inefficient duplicative work."
"Climate change is the biggest challenge of our generation"
The final speaker, Jessica Öhrblad, is CEO of Logivity in the Volvo Group, a new company that uses a custom blockchain platform on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to handle "millions" of transport and logistics transactions every day.
Logivity is all part of Volvo's drive to improve sustainability. "We want to lead by example, and have a state-of-the-art supply chain," said Öhrblad. "But there are some constraints built into the industry, and we cannot optimise completely in isolation."
Logivity has been working with Oracle and other stakeholders to overcome those constraints, share data and foster collaboration in the transport industry, leading Catz to comment that "partnership is the new leadership."
At the same time, sustainability is an innovation driver at the company; finding solutions that make a real impact on the company's environmental impact will be a priority.
Catz summed up the key takeaway from the keynote as, "We must bring in our best and newest capabilities, because the world is not getting less competitive; it's getting more competitive, and resources are not unlimited.
"We really do have to do more, spend less doing it and make better decisions going forward."
