 Here we are And people are joining us. I will give them a couple of minutes While they come And we are getting ready You can hear me fine, and you can see me a bit yellowish a good morning to the Americas good afternoon or good evening to Europe and Beyond and maybe we have some people joining us From the eastern part of Where we are located which means that it's late night for them This is a webinar that gave us a bit of headache When we were trying to choose the right title to convey the message, I think we have a good enough title to work with It's going to be about how we see Digital food safety changing Organizations at the at the end of the day. That's the essence of what we wanted to to talk about and Why are we talking about this kind of change? Well, essentially it's because the world is changing. It has been changing is Changing nowadays and it most probably will continue to change in different ways and This is having a tremendous effect And in companies that operate in the supply chain either because they have to work with restricted budgets and be Under a continuous improvements reorganizations or changes within the structure or and because The way that people work is not the same The habits that we are following the remote or hybrid ways of working or the way that people view Work and how long they stay in there in an organization. This is changing nowadays food safety compliance is Becoming more digital and this is changing the content and the responsibilities and The outcome that people have to deliver then safety adds up with Sustainability concerns and requirements coming either from the consumers or Entore from the standards and specifications of companies apply and while this is happening the world is being had hit hard by Various disruptions and this means that Unusual or unexpected or forgotten risks hit the supply chain. I think that This becomes an efficiency question. This is what Digital transformation is all about and this puts a difficult question on the table for people in Organizations, what do we do? Do we develop digital capabilities? Do we transform the way that we do business or do we wait and If we do transform the way that we do business Do we do it internally? Are we looking for people and new types of roles taking over new types of activities within the organization or do we rely upon What vendors are giving us and give the support from external specialists And when do we start doing something like this? Are we proactive moving fast so that we can catch up with change or do we wait to see what others are doing? That's exactly what we had in mind for this webinar and we designed it to share a bit of Experience ideas or even challenges that have questions and we haven't answered yet with People in large organizations that are either starting Or have already started this journey the obvious question that we used was Where do I start from? Where am I in the journey? But I think what's hidden behind the Official wording of the topics is also how can we manage to suffer less? How can our people suffer less from this change management? process Ideally, I would hope that at the end of the webinar All participants as included come out with a better understanding of Which are the options ahead at the different steps or stages of the journey? Maybe Gain a better understanding of the different ways that you can follow the different paths that one can follow When choosing how to implement such a transformative journey and Share a bit of good practice what has been working for people and a bit of Not so good practice traps that have cost money and energy and In some cases sleep To people so that we can all live wiser At the end of this one hour the speakers I think are the perfect ones for this kind of conversation I have with us Yanis who is Day every day from the morning till late at night Working and supporting clients on exactly this kind of questions and suffering from these challenges that he will be describing and hopefully he will share a bit of experience on How he sees this challenge is being overcome and calling Who was working and having this kind of systems view responsibility deploying Digital platform In a global organization With different roles being involved with different people being involved with different geographies and culture being involved and He has been through this painful digital transformation journey and he has done it and he's eager to serve What has worked and what has not worked so well, so let's get it started Yanis I'm handing over Control mission control and the floor to you. Thank you so much Nikos. I Don't know why but it was quite hard to find that mute button, but okay I will I will manage it. So thank you so much. And it's always a pleasure And I'm very happy if we can share some of the knowledge that we see horizontally from the industry And so I will try to share some of this knowledge highlighting both the challenges, but also the opportunities And I will mainly share the experience that has to do with The deployment of risk intelligence solution so First of all what we see and I think that we will all agree on that is that Digital the digital food safety landscape is changing Both in terms of the practices the best practices But also in terms of the requirements that are coming from the legislation so I I have here the example of the FDA's blueprint for the new era of smarter food safety Where there are many interesting points and there are already some new regulations like the one The proposed rule for the food traceability But also other Rules that have been already established which require the adoption of digital solutions and It's obvious now that Doing this starting this journey of digital transformation for the food safety is something that Is is the option if you want to to improve there is prevention approaches that you have in place so first of all, I would like to Share what we see from the leaders in the in the food industry on how they Embark to a digital food safety journey. So we see three scenarios the one scenario has to do with Doing a huge investment in digital R&D to explore new technologies offerings and to see which is the business value of these technologies the second thing that we see is that there are leaders that are Selecting a specific portfolio or a suite of External Providers and solutions that fit into the way that the things are being done internally in the company And the third way that we in which we see that the leaders are embarking the digital food safety Journey is by letting the teams be more autonomous And use digital tools that can automate critical tasks And they can add immediate virus I would like to To put here the angle of the risk analysis and I would like to share with you Which are the risks that we see in these three ways of starting the journey the digital the Digitization journey So the first thing that we see in the case of doing a huge investment in Digital R&D is that there is a risk of letting The data science the data scientist driving the food safety Organization so that this is something that we see the second thing in the case of selecting external providers and Solutions that are ready and that you can directly adopt is that we see the risk of assigning it to internal leaders or project managers and Falling into cracks and have single point of failure in some in some cases and In the third way of embarking this journey We see where where we have this more Distributed an auto monos Autonomous way of using the digital tools is that There is a risk of being disconnected from the strategy of the company from the wider strategy So I would like to to go into more detail and share some specific cases of how Which are the options of deploying and it's the food safety solution a risk intelligence solution and I have here That three use cases that I would like to share The first one Is a more top-down approach that we see that the companies Can follow so this is This has to do with deploying a risk intelligence solution in centrally at the at the corporates of the head quarter level the second scenario deployment scenario that we see in the industry It's it has is a more bottom-up So we have the deployment of the solution at different levels of the supply chain and Mainly involving the key stakeholders At a global level but also at the original level and the third one is a combination of the two answers is using is combining Aspects from the top-down and the bottom-up Approach deployment approach is something that we call called a hybrid approach and In this approach we have to double level risk monitoring But also We have key suppliers and manufacturing partners Which are adopting the solution that the company has selected and is deploying Let's go to some more detail of This specific scenarios. So starting from the first scenario Which as I mentioned, it's a top-down scenario the purpose here is to have A headquarter driven transformation of the way that risks are being monitored Assessed and communicated. So the goal is to provide to the to mainly to the global food safety team the information about food safety risks and This information can help them to take decisions about the mitigation actions And to create mitigation plans and to have to activate the actions And so this is the the case of the top-down approach that we see in a Putting this into a more visual way More visual format Usually There are already a lot of data internal data that are used In order to do the risk assessment. This can be data that has to do with audits with lab tests But also supplier data other data for that the companies using for risk assessment but One thing that the company wants to introduce in this scenario is the view of the external risks So in in this case They are trying to combine all this risk information and to put the risk information in a central Risk storage. This can be a file or it can be even a database Before putting the information in a central place that the risk information in central place. We have also food safety and Quality assurance experts which are assessing the the data and the risks that that we have that they are Collecting both the external but also the internal ones so the main goal in this case is This the the validated risks to show them through a dashboard through a dashboard that the company is building and Help the management to be well informed about the risks. And so this is the way that we see That the top-down approach that we see for the deployment and there are of course Advantages and disadvantages of this approach. So the advantage Some of the advantages is that we have a very clear integration with existing systems and workflows We will see that it's very easy to to visualize it because there are clear paths the clear connections between the different systems and The current workflows. We have a controlled interpretation of the emerging risks So we have the validation of the risks. So you are controlling and you know what is going And what is communicated to the management and there is also clear accountability for the reporting And it's usually following the reporting workflow that the company already has But of course, there are also the disadvantages so one of The disadvantages that we see is that not all the levels of the business are covered there is a single point of failure in case a super user or a core team is doing this kind of validation of this kind of communication and Usually a new role and some new steps in the in the current process in the existing process Need to be introduced. So there is a change management process, but it's quite control. It's still quite control So this was the first scenario the first deployments are the second deployments and scenario Has a bottom-up philosophy. So the idea here is to Integrate the emerging risk information at the key levels of the organization having QA and food safety teams At different levels to use the intelligence Solution and to be able to improve the monitoring and the risk monitoring the risk assessment and the risk prevention approach that They are doing so Again, if we would like to visualize how This deployment approach looks like so we have the new solution the risk intelligence solution being used both at a global level, but also at the regional level By different business units or operating units So at the global level There are some specific scenarios some specific operations that are used In which the system is used and Also at the regional level the Experts are using the system in a different way following different use cases and also looking at some cases at a different Set of suppliers different set of ingredients that are relevant for the specific region Which are the advantages of such a bottom-up approach is that in this way we can involve more Key we can involve all the key business levels, but also more theorems Which can be empowered with emerging risk information. We have Fast dissemination of emerging risks. I've avoiding also the single point of failure that we mentioned in the top-down approach so Very in a very fast way the risk the emerging risk information is communicated Not only centrally, but also at a regional level And there is also an alignment of the of the key teams regarding the emerging risk Which can speed and which can speed up the decision-making process Of course, all the goods are coming with some disadvantages as well here. So the change management process is a bit More is we can say it's more important here So it should be carefully managed because there are more people That need to be involved more people need to be trained There are new responsibilities for existing roles That they need the people need to adopt so the change in terms of the People and the experts is something that needs to be done in a Very serious and careful way The third scenario that I have already introduced at the beginning of This this part of this presentation Is that there is a combination we see also a combination of the top-down and the bottom-up approach Which is a more end-to-end deployment option By end-to-end. I mean end-to-end in the supply chain So we see that we have In this scenario, we have The teams at the global level using the Solution The digital solution we have also the teams at the regional level But also Manufacturer partners and suppliers Adopt the information the the digital solution locally So this is this is the main add-on here and Again, if we want to illustrate it and to visualize this This specific deployment scenario, we have the digital solution being adopted at the different levels And the new level here is the local level Where the suppliers or the manufacturing partners Can use such a solution to have a real-time Monitoring of the risks for the materials and the the ingredients that they are using But also there is They can that can be a good collaboration can be established between the company and the Organizations the suppliers and the partners that are located at the upstream Of the supply chain so the Again here the advantages that we see Is that It's quite similar the the set of the advantages quite similar to The ones that we had in the bottom up What I would like to point out here is that Engaging the regional operating units Uh can help us to ensure That risk will be identified timely at the upstream and not only at the process in the downstream of the supply chain Again here we have some disadvantages Still there's still a change management process that we need to carefully manage Uh, we need to make changes in the roles Uh in the by adding responsibilities And there are many people that need to be trained in the new solution in the way in the new way of Identifying and reporting risks and preventing risks and of course The very important advantage of engaging the regional the the local level of suppliers and partners Comes also with the disadvantage that Still some energy some important amount of energy is needed to convince The suppliers and partners to adopt the solution And here I want to make it more I want to emphasize a bit in this scenario Which are the benefits of engaging the suppliers and the partners Uh that we see Uh one one very important benefits is that They are using the same solution so you can have a homogeneous Way risk prevention approach way of approaching the risk The second thing that I would like to highlight is that When This level this local level this upstream level is involved We can have an improved collaboration With the stakeholder at this level, but by sharing risk reports and predictions and A very important thing is that we can ensure that preventive measures Start at the upstream. So, uh, we have a more timely Activation of the preventive measures that can help us to become more practical Independently on the deployment scenarios Since I started with the new requirements. So I would like to make clear That independently independently of the deployment scenarios The food companies By adopting such a solution Uh can comply with the new requirements. So this is something that Yeah, we see that it's important to do Uh and by adopting such a solution We can comply with the hazards analysis requirements that we see in the new regulations With the vulnerability assessment requirements that we see Coming from the gfsi food safety recognized schemas And also we can The companies can comply to the foreign supplier verification program rule By evaluating the suppliers history of compliance With according to the regulations and by knowing all the Previous food safety history of this supply of these suppliers and these companies that we are they are working with So there are I would like to To finish my part by saying that there are Many points from which we can start the journey of The digital transformation, right? And the And the at the end of the day It's about improving the risk prevention approach That we have And we need to take into account Uh not only the systems, but also the people and the processes that needs to Be changed And the people that will adopt and the experts that will adopt And how we can empower them with such solutions So I have five points that I can share As Suggestion of how such a Journey can be started So the first point is that it's very important to start with A return of investment In mind Which will help you very much to quantify the benefits To to have a clarity on to clarify which are the goals and To get the Budget sign of the budget approval. So this is starting through starting with Roy is a very important part The second thing is that It's good to have a more long-term View and decide open a clear Three to five years model and have a plan for this model And this Includes also the decision If something should be implemented in-house Or a third-party solution Should be Adopted The third thing is that We would recommend avoid being too technology driven That AI can solve everything big data can solve everything But also we need to have a balance there Because we don't need to be also Too technology skeptical that all these things are marketing buzzwords We will build our own. So there is always a trade-off. We need to have a balance there And the third thing is the fourth thing is that Try to be lean and Follow an agile approach and alternative uploads in the execution And the last thing is that We need it's it's very good always to keep our eyes on the target And there are points in this journey that we need to rethink Strategically where we are what we want to achieve And it's very important to have in this journey All the leaders with us, but also Ideally, we would like it would be great also to Engage external partners Thank you so much for your attention Thank you Yanis and we'll get back to you with questions. I would like to ask the audience to start even if they want now Putting some questions in in the chat. I will I will collect them and have a Q&A session at the end of the webinar Colin that's the That's the external expert Experience or advice, but you've been there. You've done that. You have suffered throughout the journey So we we're really looking forward to To your experience and your what you have to share with our audience Great. Thanks, Nick. I appreciate that. Yes. I've been there suffered And have the war wounds to prove it I'm just trying to move down the page and Okay So yeah, so so what's what's my experience? So I had a 10-year journey with a big corporation at naslay of implementing systems digital transformation And I lived and breathed that for over a decade. I just wanted to go through some of my experience The challenge number one is is is when you have a big corporation you're deploying Common systems common platforms across the organization is it starts with a global design And that's where I started off in switzerland for over a year Design in a template and part of that I think there's three key principles that that come with looking at this Giannis mentioned there is a A global and a regional approach and this is how My organization that I was working for at the time adopted that The three principles and and try to keep this in mind. They're still very valid today Processes and process mapping you have to understand your processes. You don't go straight in and start putting A technology into an organization if you haven't fully defined your process, it won't work The second one is data standards. You have to start understanding that Organizations have grown over time and have their own data standards typically country by country And then that has to change you have to get to new naming conventions for various different things objects and data Objects in your organization such what's a material number what what's a process order number look like and and so on That is really really important And with the data standards actually brings a common vocabulary Some organizations might have called it a a shop floor order And these things have to become a common vocabulary, which is key And then finally that the business excellence piece comes in it is where business Professionals will come in and define the best practices So if there's a best way of doing something in a particular market, how do you deploy that globally? And how do you get buy-in to do that? Well, as I mentioned that that leads me nicely into senior leadership buy-in If you don't have a sponsor at the top of the organization Digital transformation will likely fail if it's seen as a bunch of technical guys coming in to update your systems It will likely fail. So the head of the organization has to take that leadership sponsorship type role Then you have proof of concept. You have to test the hypothesis. You've created this template. Does it actually work? So you pick a market or two you go in there and apply that template design to see whether it fits If it fits great, you've tested the hypothesis. You can you can roll this out globally. So these are the kind that kind of Processes to do that then you can go into the implementation phase And then for me that's Where I moved from Switzerland to Australia and I worked regionally then in Asia Oceania and Africa implementing the system that was that was globally designed And I can't go into all the fun of go lives I have a few war wounds a few good stories a few horror stories, but if anyone's interested Let me know and we can have a discussion all about go lives So then challenge number two Oh first of all that the process framework is a quick diagram for this. What do I mean by mapping your processes? If you're not familiar with this is is understanding process levels What are the very high level processes and what are the lower level processes? And when you can align processes to procedures and understand what goes where And fully define the why the what the how this is when you really start understanding how to deploy systems There's a whole philosophy behind this if you don't know it happy to discuss with you guys anyone wants to drop me an email And then challenge number two Is basically once you have the system implemented You really have to understand does it really align with the corporate procedures and global instructions? The reality is these Implementations are fast-paced. They they require a lot of resource those resources are finite So sometimes the speed of the deployment doesn't always go with the speed of alignment So after my stint down in australia and working in asia and africa I came back to switzerland to spend a lot of time in a global role now my position has changed I was the global head of of an ISIT systems for quality food safety Working with our corporate folks to really align against corporate procedures corporate instructions And that is quite a challenge because you have a lot of Moments where there is not alignment and and that needs to be addressed In addition to that you start saying okay. We have a global system in now. We need to start either Um Legacy system creating legacy systems basically archiving old systems or defining what needs to stay in the system landscape So legacy versus heritage. This can be an interesting And there's a lot of people that will fight against their system being archived and being decommissioned So there's a lot of Discussions and a lot of debate people will not always give up their systems They become their babies and we we have to understand that there's a people side of that As well to manage But ultimately why are we decommissioning systems? Well, it's ultimately reducing complexity for big organizations that reduces cost And and ultimately you'll get into the goal of in this case digitizing food safety And if there's too much complexity you can overburden your organization So in addition to that then new systems providers will come in and offer plug-and-play systems off the shelf I always say be wary of that because it comes back to my my first challenge is understand your processes understand your best practices Understand your business before you you adopt a system And it's not always plug-and-play. It needs a lot of understanding not just configuration, but ultimately how does that Work with your business Then they manage your priorities Um, there is a whole whirlwind when you're doing a global transformation project They everything seems to be a priority So you have to have the breathing space to step sit back Work with the corporate business to understand what is a priority? What is not a priority? and once you have defined and mapped out your priorities stay focused There'll be a lot of distractions depending on what's happening around the world Very importantly look at roles and responsibilities roles and responsibilities May may change as you put in systems historically One function may have worked on a certain task that could change when you understand best practice That becomes really important Otherwise you become very siloed managed within quality within food safety It can often be a dumping ground for roles and responsibilities If quality is in the title it tends to be run by the quality department when it's not always the case It's not always the case. It could be operations. It could be engineering. It could be Procurement and so on so be wary of that And then the final watch out is don't over configure the system if you Create custom development. If you create bespoke development, you have to manage that forever So so really you are looking for a A system that you can work with but you don't have to over configure If people are saying the system needs to be over configured go back to the business processes not easy, but that's the way That's the only way you're going to do it. You will learn the hard way. Otherwise if you over configure And then challenge number three So I said I started off in a regional I started off in a switzerland role looking after the template and a regional role down in australia back to switzerland And then challenge number three was back in a regional role in the americas So in in this role is once the systems have been deployed once you have alignment with with global instructions corporate procedures The implementation is done the glow live is done But then what does that really mean? How do you sustain the system? A lot of energy goes into getting what people believe is over the finish line with the system implemented But if it's left unattended over time Then the system will not deliver you can actually have problems with that system if it's poorly maintained So there there is the challenge there is how do we sustain the system? And in that respect, how do we have the right people doing the right tasks? How do we if we over configure? How do we have a lot of technical resource to keep on top of that? And the locks and the checks and balances that come with with sustaining the system and that that is really really key And then ultimately once you have the sustain in place then then the critical thing is leverage the system Is all of a sudden a big organization that historically had thousands and thousands of different systems that didn't talk to each other All of a sudden has one massive ERP system in this case SAP With one standardized set of data that has the same number in and the same data standards And all of a sudden you can get a lot of Perspective on what food safety means and what other things mean that's important for an organization So for me to be part of this sustain and leverage was really the the Completing the journey for me And I had the pleasure to do that in north and south america going to a lot of markets and helping them understand One how to make sure they maintain it and one how they really get that return on investment And all of a sudden you are working with integrated systems And it's fascinating because again as I said before there's thousands of different systems run by different functions that didn't talk to each other Now you've got common data sets and you've got a common system Where especially in the technical area You're looking at operations folk talking more with quality folk talking more with engineering And so on and pulling data at a very fast speed to make decisions So you start being able to make global decisions based on data Where historically you may have to send out requests try and aggregate that data try and understand it And that is almost an impossible task So the return on investment starts coming when you understand understanding the data and the connectivity that you have in your organization The key points there is Sustaining the system. The business needs to be convinced. They've seen this huge investment They've seen a lot of talk from the head of the organization who's the sponsor A lot of these business excellence guys coming in and saying this system is going to transform your business And when sometimes it doesn't work very well, the business is not convinced So the first thing is get them convinced And when they have confidence in the system, the leverage piece is getting the business excited And and literally you will have these aha moments when a senior leader comes into a meeting and says You know what I have a very very strong picture of compliance in my organization today Because I can extract it from the system. I can extract data to give me a higher confidence level Then all of a sudden the business says really yes And that and one example being with things like ERP systems You can create health checks and health checks in terms of food safety compliances is anything from Have I consumed an expired material? Do I have enough operators on a production line? Do I have the right authority for release of finished products? Do we have The what what is our number one problem within cost of non quality? These are the kind of our home our home moments comes out of these health checks And then you can even get organizations then benchmarking themselves regionally one markets Comparing themselves to another market You get senior leaders just looking at comparison data like that. They get very competitive and that drives improvement So again, um, they're getting the business excited Is at the end of the journey are they excited at the beginning of the journey? No, not always, but when they see the output, um, it can be quite a transformational change But in my case It's a long journey. It takes around 10 years to to achieve that One key point I just wanted to touch upon here is is after my journey implementing systems for digital transformation for quality food safety And and working with the corporate folk on global instructions on global procedures and policy I got fascinated by the the concept of the management systems the management systems Are examples like ISO 22,000 so in food safety that could be sqf or brc or ifs, for example These gfs. I recognize schemes Now that that's really important because then that how does that play nicely with the data the digital transformation That comes out and I ultimately I go back to silo managed Uh approaches business excellence people are so focused on the digital transformation and best practices That that's their wheelhouse But then you get on the other side of the fence systems managers implementing things like ISO 22,000 ISO 9001 a quality management system You go beyond food safety and you start looking at environmental management systems occupational health and safety But the key point is is they they play so well together But people don't understand how they connect I I've had the privilege of working on a 10-year digital transformation journey And and a privilege of working 10 years in management systems So so really that that's been my journey. I don't I don't encourage everyone to do that It's quite a transformation just personally to be able to do it But the key thing is to encourage if you are a Digital transformation expert in your organization start speaking to your systems managers Start understanding how management systems work And again, if you're a management systems expert in your organization implementing these food safety systems Start talking to your digital guys and seeing how data can actually transform your role to drive compliance And I believe auditing will change because of the data side of things So then just to summarize um my journey with with management systems with is it systems and and um digital transformation Um four tips of advice and I I stick by these principles today and I often think about them First one is is people protect your people Now we've talked probably for the last 45 minutes about digital and transformation and systems and processes But none of that's possible. Um, we're not advanced enough where everything is automated by computers and robots It's people that are doing these tasks So so when you are doing these digital transformation projects understand the people understand who are the who are the people that are going to be doing this work support them It's it's no surprise that people will tell you stories of doing 20-hour days and and these kind of things And ultimately that that's your number one asset with digital transformation with compliance. It really is to honestly believe that The second thing is is eliminate and challenge manual processes um, I sniff manual processes out and bought poor processes Probably by instinct now because I've been doing it for 20 years And and I'm a painful guy because when I see it I raise it and I said this is just like crazy How long has this been going on and typically the answer is I've been going on for 20 years colin You're never going to change it And it's just the way it is and this is the way it was put in And I go back to that point is saying it takes a minute to establish a bad process But a lifetime to reverse it to go through the change management of fixing a bad process To get stakeholder buy-in and people will always say they're too busy for that initiative. So so keep that in mind The the the planning of establishing processes really have to understand what that is going to do If there's going to be any any unintended consequences, otherwise You have a lifetime of pain with that process The next one, um, we've talked a little bit about standards. We talked a little bit about process Organizations can be overly prescriptive in standards Scheme owners can be overly prescriptive in standards And ultimately that makes it very very difficult for organizations to implement and sustain And also and also it can create a lot of compliance problems as well because you have to maintain and adhere to those standards Things are moving way too quick to have 50 page procedures today. No one reads them And ultimately if you're overly prescriptive in there, you will as an auditor you will get found out very quickly You'll have non-conformities Many the the advice I give you today is all about establishing simple rules simplify the procedures Make sure that there you we need pre procedures policy And so on but make sure that there are simple rules that are adaptable to risk And the rapid speed of change. I'm very quickly. You'll have a set of procedures that will be like the britannica encyclopedia That will be no longer relevant when the internet took off and these guys are trying to knock on people's doors and sell Encyclopedias that's what can happen to your organization as a watch out And then finally last but not least is never sit still If you rest on your laurels And you think hey, I've mastered it. I've mastered my system If you sit still for too long you the world will change around you So as as an example for me, I learned SAP. I implemented SAP I went on a 10-year journey implementing that but I was motivated then to move into management systems I'm not telling everyone to do that. But that was my example of not sitting still. We see now that that many other Experts in SAP are maybe getting overtaken by salesforce.com and all these other cloud-based platforms So that's the key thing as well is be aware of that And and then ultimately partner with technology partners that understand that that their technology needs to evolve as well So it's nothing worse than putting a system in and that system becoming obsolete or becoming a legacy system Without providing that return on investment. So as I say never sit still keep moving forward It's a fast-paced industry. If you choose digital transformation It's a it's a really fun ride. It really is but it also means you never stop learning Thank you very much That's that's a positive Sense and flavor. I want to keep this Positive spirit and I have a couple of questions. I will not ask all the questions that I have collected but There is one that I really want to ask you Both of you and it has to do with silos I was probably the conversation with one of our clients a couple of days ago and They were telling me We really want to put this digital transformation project in place But our people are very slow when it comes to talking to each other So There are department silos R&D doesn't speak very easily To quality R&D is Understaffed and they are very very busy And then quality doesn't speak Very often with procurement because procurement is focusing on Very critical things and doesn't have time for this kind of interaction Collina I want to ask you how did you manage To overcome these obstacles Yeah, it's it's a good question. It's uh to overcome Yeah, to overcome it's not not so easy a few things Is you you need cross functional thinkers you need systems thinkers to be able to connect the dots So so you need people that are willing to learn a little bit about everything across your value chain Those are key players You can't have everyone in your in your organization to do that but identify those key players and encourage them to connect the dots Just simple things like open plan seeding in organizations pulling down the walls if you're in a corridor And and the procurement guys are in one room and the quality guys are in another room They won't talk you pull down the doors And literally people start talking And ultimately systems that are integrated Actually forces people to to have those conversations. So integration People being in the same proximity and identifying your your systems thinkers and encouraging them to connect the dots Okay, thank you when it comes to To systems integration. There is something there hidden behind data integration yannis The data silos part either the internal data silos or when you're trying to connect internal data To external data Is there something else that we shouldn't forget? Is there a critical component there that helps? Connect these different worlds Yeah, so what we see is that I will Share three three levels that I see this this silos. The first level is even internally Calling shirts some examples, but even internally in the company Due to the fact that many different terminologies are used by different departments or different systems The data Remain disconnected. So you can you cannot use you cannot link the the different data that you have internally So this is the one level the second level is When you you are trying to connect other systems or external data. So again there You have very similar challenges. You cannot connect them. You have silos You have different terminologies being used Uh different formats of data being used. So this is another another thing and If we want to go to the third level, which is the ideal of how we can build public private data trusts Data banks that are trusted and secure you have also The difficulty of connecting different formats connecting different types of data But also you have there the security things the data protection important issue so What we have seen is that the answer To eliminate the data silos is to adopt data standards data standards, which can start from the Schemas of the data that we are using of how we are describing the key entities in the food safety landscape Uh, but also standards even in terms of how we classify Our foods how we classify the hazards So if we want to eliminate this we need to go to also data standards What I hear you describing is actually Developing components of a data infrastructure Not to forget that there is a data infrastructure piece that has to be built And this makes me wonder what kind of people we need in the organization or complimenting the in-house capabilities to develop this kind of Of components any quick thoughts Or suggestions or good practices before we wrap up What kind of people do we need for the data piece and then the AI piece? I will share Quickly some thoughts and Colin you can compliment her Uh, so, uh, yeah in a data in a world That is based on the information where the the the information is very critical Uh, it's it's necessary to have people that also understand data that can process the data. So Uh, the the basic thing that we should establish is that we should also internally have people That they can Do the main things the main stuff of the data Engineering of the data processing data analysis So this is something that uh need to be integrated and we see that the companies are already adopting This approach so they have and Mainly the analysis the data analysis is very important Uh, the data engineering has is a complex is something very specific. So Uh, it's not necessary to have a very large data engineering team Data engineers data analysts data analysts data scientists if you want to to go towards the predictive analytics part and Uh, in general if you want to integrate analytics for risk. So these are the three categories that I see Okay, only what do you think? Very quickly that that data person can be a bridge builder. So what we've seen before is I mentioned before a corporate function looking at business processes And policy and you see an is it division looking after systems, right and historically Maybe the corporate system said I need this data that the Is it guys never fully understood what the problem statement is you create the data set and it doesn't quite deliver What what that integration has to happen now is now some of these corporate functions are hiring a data specialist in their team that understands Their functions when food safety It's typically a junior person that may not be qualified to sit in a corporate function But what they bring they bring all that data expertise. So it's not a request for another function It's actually being part of that That that corporate group to be able to really Translate that and then they're the bridge builder to the guys that actually made me build that data set So that that's that's the key thing. I see the same thing in in auditing as well Is today we have management systems and auditors will be 30 years experience But they will be over time. I believe complimented by more junior auditors But that junior auditor will come in with a data capability to be able to to data mine and understand how to get data out And to draw conclusions from that data. So that that's where Any young person that's coming through with that that skill set It won't be you won't be sitting in a nice IT function You will be sitting in business roles. Um, and I think that's the important thing that they Anyone who learns the business and understand systems is going to be the bridge builder So you're here describing not only different skill sets and the functions and profiles But also different perspectives and the different sets of eyes I think it boils down to the essential ultimate question that I wanted to To to ask you or ask everyone to reflect upon I don't think that we have an answer here, but What you're describing is building a some kind of technology organization within the organization So do we see a transformation of food companies into technology companies or do we see parts of these organizations that have been manufacturing and distributing food into also becoming the technology data and ai engines Of such an organization. That's that's a good question to keep in mind And then I also want to highlight the I think the the greatest pitfall Of them all. I think that's The trap in which People like me and Yanis who have been in technology for many many years have been falling again and again Focusing too much on tech and what sounds fancy and interesting and new Uh can distract people from the real thing and the real thing is supporting the business critical decisions becoming more efficient and more evidence based and data based rather than Being relied relying upon the expertise and the experience of human experts only, uh And I think I heard you both describing this mentality of being iterative of working in an agile mode Being able to learn faster by fading faster Doing experiments doing pilots trying things design things process-wise then go down to implementation Then go back again to processes so that the cycle of Of learning and evolution can become quicker and this is a different mindset And the challenging mindset in love's organizations So I want to thank you for sharing this experience we we have been sharing a bit of advice in one of the white papers that we have authored in in the past so I'm inviting everyone that hasn't read it to download it and read it and I think that I can convince you guys to contribute to a new one That will be documenting all the experience that you have shared Today with us so that we can also make it available and people can download it and they can also come to you to ask more questions Let me thank everyone that joined the webinar today. I hope that you found value in it and stories of success, but also stories of failure Thanks a lot Have a nice day or have a nice evening Thank you Colin. Thank you Janice. Thank you so much Thank you