Day 1 Digital Transformation Panel

Okay, so good morning, ladies and gentlemen, all across the Caribbean. Uh, welcome to this year's staging of the Caribbean Strategy Conference. Uh, had a great session a while ago listening to the Honourable Douglas Arrane talk about, uh, how, you know, Grace Kennedy moved from their challenges, you know, 25 years ago to executing on its, on its, on its vision that it had at the time. And all the various, I guess, potholes, things to look for. And I took a few notes here because, you know, that listen, think, act that Douglas mentioned a while ago is very, very important. So as we talk about digital transformation, so this panel that has been organized by, um, by our friends Francis and Dale is a very interesting and balanced panel because we have experienced, experienced management consultants turned politician. We have, uh, we have, uh, still practicing management consultants advising small, medium-sized businesses of, um, you know, across across the Americas. And of course, we also have persons supporting, I guess I'll call it public sector. So quick high-level introduction. Well, I'll ask each person just to kind of give their own introduction, their one-line introduction, not too long introduction. Now, for all the folks online, and I see about 50 people online, please ensure that just go to the webpage and everyone's more— everyone's detailed bio will be there. My name is Christopher Rickard. I am the Chief Executive Officer for an organization in Jamaica by the name of T-Tech, and T-Tech provides cybersecurity services and IT management services. Uh, simply, we tell people, you do not need to go and hire an IT department, we will become your IT department. If you have— if you already have an IT department, we'll help that IT department deliver, uh, higher and better value for the organizations. That's simply what we do, and IT outsourcing. So that's what That's what my organization does. So hand it over. Moira, go ahead, intro.

Sure. Good morning. Hello, everyone. I'm Moira Edwards. I've been collecting technology insights for about 30 years from consulting, from aviation, and from the nonprofit sectors, and in places as diverse as Ireland and America, and I'm thrilled to be here.

Fantastic.

Kevon?

Hi, good morning, everyone. My name is Kevon Swift. I've been working on digital public policy and global digital issues for about roughly 14 years. Firstly, from the perspective of the Government of Trinidad and Tobago, and now with LACNIC. I'm the Head of Public Safety Affairs at LACNIC. LACNIC is the Latin American and Caribbean Internet Addresses Registry System. We are the guys that distribute IP numbers and ASN numbers. We provide training for the technicians at your ISPs to do proper networking. But in addition to which, we find ourselves in the heart of a lot of internet governance and digital policy debates.

Okay, thank you. I'm Julianne Robinson. I've been a member of parliament in Jamaica from 2011. I'm currently the opposition spokesman on finance. I served as a Minister of State in the Ministry of Technology from 2012 to 2016, and prior to politics, I had a career in management consulting and investment promotion.

Thank you very, very much. So ladies and gentlemen, what we're going to do here today is speak at a very high level, and maybe we'll drive down into a little bit of detail, uh, around digital transformation. But because we are at a Caribbean Strategy Conference, It has to be tied to strategy. What has changed in strategy? What are we doing differently in strategic planning? What are some of the things that we need to throw out? What are the things that we need to introduce around this whole digital transformation? You know, a question that I asked, you know, our panelists when we had our pre-meeting is, you know, is there a difference between this whole digitization, digitalization, digital transformation? You know, is digital transformation a meaningless marketing word that's just bantered around, Or is it really and truly something meaningful and a strategy that an organization must consider in these times? The whole pandemic for a lot of us has changed a lot of things around digital. One of the things in my world that I found, we got a lot of calls in March, April, May of 2020 when people actually realized that this thing was real, was, you know, helping people go remote. You know, the organization had no laptops, they needed laptops. I don't sell equipment, I made references to lots of people, um, you know, for them to go equipment, you know, we had to come in and help a lot of people secure their environment because cybersecurity is a massively important thing, um, going into any sort of, you know, digital, digital transformation. The other thing that happened with a lot of folks is that they looked around at some of their competitors, and the competitors who took digital seriously earlier was way ahead, uh, than them. And, you know, so some organizations were able to sell their products and services online and others weren't. And the ones that weren't able to sell online, that was a problem. So the whole— what we want to explore here this morning is just around, okay, we are here right now, 2 years later, and believe it or not, we have thousands of organizations across the Caribbean that have— they have not started a digital transformation journey yet. They have not put a word to it, you know, and not just companies, but even governments and government agencies. So I'm very, very happy that Julian is here with us as a former technology minister, uh, you know, we'll work together with some sort of digital transformation around education. And I'm sure he will, you know, perhaps share some of those observations. But the fact of the matter is that, ladies and gentlemen, there's a lot to happen in the Caribbean public sector, private sector, on digital transformation. So to kick things off, I am just going to invite each of our team members to give an opening, you know, set of thoughts around some of the things that we talk about so that we can tee up around, you know, the questions. I want this to be engaging, ladies and gentlemen. Any questions you guys have out there on digital, digital strategy, what needs to be changed, you know, in, in the thinking in the organization, what makes a digital transformation project successful, you know, why some fail and all that. So those are some of the things that each of our speakers will share some of their experiences on. So I'm going to kick things off by asking Kevin to go first. And kind of give us his overview. Now, he may have some slides. So Kevin, I hope you see right below that little up arrow button to share your slides. And I know we haven't practiced some of these things, but guess what? It's technology, guys. You know, it may work, it may not work. Let's keep our hands up. Kevin, go ahead.

Okay, I hope it does work. If not, absolutely no problem.

Francis will help us and jump in.

And right, good, figuring out the technology. Oh, the technology says there seems to be an issue with permissions and that may hold us up a bit.

So I'm just going to say, Gail or Francis, if you could just give, uh, all our team members permission to share anything just in case that they have a great idea that they want to share.

It's okay, I would have liked the visual to accompany what I'm saying, but I'm just going to speak about this. And I want to go back to that very point you have made. What exactly is digitization, digitalization, digital transformation? Are these things synonyms? Are they marketing buzzwords, as you had referred to earlier? They are not that at all. So for the first, in the first instance, when we talk about digitization, really talking about converting something into a digital format, and that refers to encoding data and documents. So that really focuses on information. It may be as simple as scanning a document and keeping an electronic version of that document stored in some computer system or on a cloud-based solution. We have digitalization, which means to convert business processes over to use digital technologies instead of analog and offline systems. So digitization focuses on information, digitalization focuses on processes. And it's really that conversion of a process to not have it offline or analog. And then we come to digital transformation. And here's the kicker. A lot of times when we say digital transformation, we think that, oh, this is only about technology. The fact of the matter is that digital transformation doesn't really deal with technology. Yes, it includes technology, obviously. But digital transformation is typically an integration of digital technology in all areas of a business, or an institution, or territory, or government for a purpose. So it's not just a willy-nilly decision. Digital transformation seeks to fundamentally, fundamentally and radically change how we operate and deliver value. And this is the key message I want to say here for everyone to take on board. Digital transformation involves a cultural change, a paradigm shift that is focused on people. And this is where you have a lot of the sticking points. Organizations need to be able to break from or upend old processes, old ways of doing things, and challenge the status quo in order to fully embrace digitized, digital transformation. So 3 different concepts, they are interrelated, one focusing on information, the other one on processes, and then looking at the bigger picture with people in mind, digital transformation. And digital transformation, it could be linked to some old business frameworks we are aware of, the PPT model, people, process, technology. That's been around since the '60s, has been around for quite a while. But more so when it comes to the digital era, focusing on the people element has become even more critical and can even be the make or break for certain firms in this whole new digital dispensation. And I want to move on quickly. And Christopher, you can always check me on the time here because I can just speak despite my croaky voice. This is a segue here. I found out I have a regular cough and I was elated After 2 years of paranoia and several tests, I was elated to find out I have a regular cough. It's at the tail end, but we can deal with that. You know, I think it adds a bit more character to my delivery voice right now. So coming from a recent OECD report, there's a 2021 OECD report on the digital transformation of SMEs. It had a couple of highlights that I wanted to share with you. One is one that is very obvious to us. The COVID-19 pandemic has been a game changer. By that I mean that up to 70% of SMEs across the globe have been using or have intensified their use of digital technologies. Anecdotally, here in the Caribbean, we are aware that there are a lot of small businesses that have moved a lot of their marketing activities and comms activities to social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. But here's the issue there, there's a bit of nuance in that. Despite there being this uptick or this intense use of digital technologies, what we do find that it was done because of the constraints of social distancing and lockdown, and it may not have been as strategic as we may want it to have been. The term you've heard a lot over the last 2 years has been digital pivoting, which is really about survival. And you did have some cases of what would have been accelerated digital transformation plans. But the key issue here for us to consider digital transformation really deals with maturity, digital maturity, which is a strategic concept alluding to an organization's ability to create maximum value through the, through digital investments. So digital maturity distinguishes us from just adopting digital technologies, adopting digital technologies for survival, and adopting digital technologies in a strategic way for it to be truly considered digital transformation. And so from a strategic standpoint, it's not just adoption of digital technologies and digital tools, you must have the right set of protections and security measures. Christopher alluded to that in the preamble to this panel, and I will come back later on to talk about security because that's one of my key focus areas at LACNIC where I work.

Uh, so we're gonna just move over tomorrow, right? Right now, do you have one more point? Just want to finish.

That's one last point. Okay, last point. Going back to the question of people, your digital transformation has to consider what you will call a customer feedback loop that is strategically integrated into how you treat with the, your product offering and how you do product improvement. And it must focus on upskilling, retraining, and redesign of jobs. So people, people, people, people is at the heart of digital transformation. All right, that's the last point for now.

Thanks, Kevon. Fantastic. Lots of fantastic points right there. Moira, over to you.

And so perfect. And the one thing I know is that Christopher is going to keep tight control of us. So that's great. So, you know, Kevon comes at this from this, like this big systems, this global perspective. And I know that Julian will come at this as well from a global and a national perspective. But in our work, we work with nonprofits. With membership organizations. And really their focus is on the members. So it's very much, I think if there's one thing I would like you to take away today is to remind you that your digital strategy has to be personal. Like exactly what Kevan is saying about it's a cultural change. It's about the people. Digital transformation has technology elements, but ultimately it's about your team and your staff and your employees becoming very comfortable with digital tools. And your customers being served in new ways because of all that digital capacity. Now, with all of this amazing kind of world of resources available to you, of all the digital tools you could use, how do you figure out what to do for digital transformation to serve your customers and your members better? And so my goal for you today, when you think about your strategic planning, is to really get to know your customers, to use the data in your systems about who they are and where they live and what they're buying and what they're doing so that you know who they are and then reach out to them with things like a survey. So that's a little bit of a distance. Call them up, like call them up and say, how are you using this product? How are you using our service? What can we do better? Have focus groups. And some of the most eye-opening things I ever did was to go and do site visits for people who are using software that we had developed. And to see, you know, it was eye-opening to see them trying to use a software on this ancient brick of a PC, right? So, when you do that, when you really get to know your customer, then you can plan your digital transformation, your strategy, your digital strategy to be in line with where they are and where you want them go. So those are my, my start— starting words of wisdom, Christopher.

Thank you, thank you very much. Sometimes I have to make sure that I can find the unmute button quickly. Julian, over to you.

Thank you. I want to first look at digital transformation within the context of what has happened over the last 2 years with COVID and how it has changed the world and how it has impacted the Caribbean. So it has changed the world in many profound ways that I don't think we will go back to. It has demonstrated that someone can stay in one country and work in another, that remote work is a viable means of doing work and being productive and delivering for your organization. It has also forced companies— and there have been a lot of reluctant companies— to move into a digital environment. So for example, you know, when we went through the periods of lockdown, you couldn't go to a bank, or if you did, it was very difficult to get into. So you were forced to do transactions online. Similarly with utility companies. So it has put more pressure on individuals, companies, and countries to be prepared digitally. So I want to look at it from the perspective, the public policy perspective. What, what should a government do in an environment like this? It means that, for example, your telecommunications infrastructure and back— and backbone has to be world-class. So from the perspective of policy, and that's where I believe government should play, government has to put in place policy and legislation that facilitates competition so that you have a robust telecoms infrastructure, which is affordable. Why is that important? Because for 2 years, schools could not have face-to-face classes. Kids had to be logging on online. And as such, you had to have kids in rural areas accessing school remotely. So it has forced that, which I believe is a good thing because that infrastructure can be used for other things. Secondly, it has also shown up that there is a divide, and there are some of the divisions which existed before have been amplified. Amplified in the sense that those who have access to devices, access to technology, internet, have made that transition to a greater extent than those who don't. And those who don't have to some extent been left behind. So there is more of an impetus on the part of governments and public policy to ensure that those who don't have access are brought into the net. And there are specific things that government can do, and the Jamaican government has embarked on some of those things in terms of providing equipment, etc., to students, but also the rollout of our NIDS, our National Identification Card. Now, why is that important? During COVID we had to deliver welfare to hundreds and thousands of citizens. Many of them had no formal identification. It made it difficult. It had to be done physically. Now, moving forward, you want to be able to deliver goods and services in a way that is seamless and that is remote. So again, you know, governments have to put in place what I would call the enabling infrastructure. And by doing so, I believe it, it brings more citizens online, and it will force companies, even those who are reluctant adopters, to get on board this process of digital transformation. I don't think we're going to go back to banks having large physical branch networks, utility companies doing that.

No.

But within that, because we're doing so many things online, we have to ensure that our cybersecurity and all those other considerations are paramount and that we have the skills necessary to take good care of the infrastructure. So Chris, I'll leave it there for my opening remarks.

Fantastic. Thank you very, very, very much, folks. So with all of this, again, you know, just a reminder, you know, we are in fact here at a strategy conference. And we have heard a lot of great points around, um, you know, digitization, digital transformation, the differences, uh, how it benefits the public overall and also small, medium companies, nonprofits. Um, folks, I'm going to ask if, if there is, uh, any experience that you could share over the last, uh, from over the last 2 and a half years around, let's call it, a winning strategy for implementing any sort of digital change? Do you have a sort of recommendation for a roadmap? Um, Mara, I'm going to put you up first, uh, simply because you've had— I, I think based upon our previous discussions, you, you've been on the ground helping a lot of people doing stuff. So is there any sort of a roadmap, high-level recommendation you give to the Caribbean, uh, you know, businesses here as to how to get started and, and how to make it successful? Because the next question I'm going to tee up after this after everyone gives their thoughts on changing for strategy is why have so many of these projects failed? So that's the next thing that we're going to talk about afterwards. Maura, you're up.

So, you know, a good crisis should never go to waste. And in many ways, you know, the pandemic helped an awful lot of organizations move to having laptops and having the infrastructure in place to do remote work. And I think when it came then to improving their digital offerings and to offering, you know, moving all of their conferences online, those that were willing to experiment made the greatest leaps ahead. So I think that was probably some of the biggest kind of roadmap. Suddenly their customers, their members were willing to try digital experiences that they would never have done before. They would never have done an online conference. They would always have gone in person. So now these organizations that were willing within 3 weeks to turn it around and try and offer it virtually, those experimenters sometimes had difficulty but most of the time they learned what worked and they got this huge response from their customers and their members. So, you know, when we think about something like design thinking which is about designing things for your customers, that starts with empathy, but then it goes into experimentation. Just, you know, try it, put something up, fail fast, do the next thing. And I think that was a really good learning lesson for many organizations in the last 2.5 years.

Kevan, you have any thoughts around some sort of a high-level roadmap based upon what you have seen from your end?

Yes, hi Christopher. Uh, yes, um, I totally agree what Maurya said. It's really about experimenting and understanding the new parameters in which, uh, you operate. So, uh, one of the things that we have learned at LACNIC, uh, we are responsible for convening 2 times a year these large conferences for all ISPs, internet exchange providers, universities, and banks to attend. To advise us on how they would like to see IP numbers administered. But we had to shift all of that to an online disposition. And we had to have a couple of just basic learnings with moving to the online environment. One is the security authentication factor, being able to have people register, move into a space, and say who they are. And being able to track their participation in that space. That is something that's very, very important because one of the things that we hadn't seen, or we hadn't— not that we hadn't seen, but one of the things we probably hadn't acknowledged as much in the first couple of years of online conferences is that you had an increasing amount of attacks to the conferences, of invasions. Happening at those conferences. So your authentication is something that's critical. Uh, the second bit is that because of this increased access to information and this online life, we had to restructure how we did things, uh, meaning that we couldn't have gone along with a 5-day, 8-hour-a-day, uh, format, uh, for what would have been additional experience. You had to look at how you can truncate the different elements of the actual events you're doing and be able to continue to deliver value, but in a system that's a lot more digestible, a lot more— will be a bit more receptive for who our core stakeholders are. And then finally, I want to switch a bit from just what LACNIC had done as an institution to something that we have been doing across Latin America and the Caribbean. We have a program called Lideres, which is intended to capture digital policy, digital transformation experiences across Latin America and the Caribbean. Lideres is a grants and mentorship program for internet governance issues, but within that we had a thrust called Internet and Productivity, whereby folks from across the region applied for this grant, and they had to develop this short study in 3 months. One of the most salient reports I want to guide you to is, it's one that was done on the judiciary in Trinidad and Tobago and how they developed e-justice during the pandemic. So e-justice had been a project that was on the burner for quite a while, the pandemic actually brought a benefit or an advantage to conducting this e-justice project. The project was expected to take up until 2027, and, um, according to this report, to date, uh, 95% of the project had been delivered in the first quarter of 2022. So that's a significant amount of savings inside of there. There are lots of practices that I think Caribbean institutions can identify with as to how you go about with your experimenting, your, um, your proof of concepts, your rejecting when something goes wrong, and how you go about testing to get something that is, uh, that is usable, uh, for the long term. So I'll stop there.

Julian, I'm going to show a few slides here. I, I think the technology is not working. Share screen. I hope this button works. I'm going to share screen 1. Share. And do let me know, folks, if you're actually seeing my screen at all.

Um, yep. Yes, yes, we're seeing it now.

So, so, so I did a presentation for the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica. They had a conference with about 1,000 people attending recently, and one of the things that they asked me to do was just to talk about this whole digital transformation. So, uh, you know, Kevon, based upon something you said a while ago, and of course, you know, Mara also made a contribution similar, and Julian is something that he spoke about, you know, the pre-COVID versus now, is that— and there's a slide that I used and I actually got feedback from my team, no, Chris, don't use a slide, people don't like to be compared to monkeys. I said, no, it's not about the monkey, let's focus on the words. And all I was saying here is what didn't happen in 3 years happened in 3 months., right? And, you know, just a quick move, especially for those folks who are ready to even sell online or call it money online. There's a discussion about change management that popped up. Everyone likes ideas change as long as it has nothing to do with them, right? And that's also something that I think we have to have a little discussion around, change management. And I think I did see a comment in the chat around change and change management. Um, and of course, you know, we have said various versions of this. What the transformation is involves use of technology to radically improve the performance or reach of business. And there's a fair amount of people that, you know, for them, digital transformation is just having online meetings. But hey, you know, that's a start, right? Um, and in terms of roadmap, one of the things that I've, I've— in the discussions with folks who have small business, I think more I guess the same foundational components required for good solid strategy is the same for any digital transformation framework. Crystal clear objectives, integrated approach, buy-in from leaders, adaptability, skills focus. And the skills focus part, I know it's, and you know, Kevin repeated over and over again, the people, the people, the people, the people. For those who were on earlier with Douglas Oren's discussion, you know, buying from leaders, integrated approach, and crystal clear objectives. He spoke, you know, the whole concept of from Raph to Rupert. I mean, as someone who sits down in one of the GraceKennedy buildings, Grace is one of my bigger customers, I've heard the story repeated over and over. And even when I ask advice from Doug, it's one of the things he, you know, reminds me of. Chris, make sure that everyone understands the objectives crystal clear. So one of the things that we help people with, we come in and we do some sort of an assessment as to where their maturity is. So there's a maturity model, high level, You know, there are some folks struggle to support their IT. Oh yes, the IT organization can support the business, moves all the way up to the IT organization helps to optimize the business, the IT organization expands the business, and then of course, there's the transformation is at the top level. And so there's a whole process that we can go through and help people understand where we're on this platform there. By the way, the last survey we did, majority of organizations in Jamaica, medium, large, and small, are all between the trusted operator and firefighter. That's where most people are. Very, very few are in the top two sections at all, right? Um, so where I was getting to was this specific situation where I just sat down, scratched my head, spoke to a few people, and just came up with this very high-level digital transformation roadmap: realization, digitization, transformation. And the realization is just, you know, oh my, we need to do something now. And having that buy-in from everyone. But it's the figuring out what do you do, you know, why are we doing it, what's the strategy around doing it, how we're gonna get it done, is there any specific focus, the money part, and of course, the people, the people, the people, the people, right? And, you know, as an example, you know, Kevin gave a very nice breakdown in this digitize, digital transform earlier, and this is an example I gave out to the folks, and, you know, President of PSOJ, Keith, Don can use it over and over in our talk afterwards. I just said, guys, is your HR department still filling out forms, paper forms? Digitize that. Do you have internal approval processes requiring somebody to print something and a manager to sign something? Digitize that. Are you still issuing paper invoices? Digitize that. You know, how are your customers engaging with your organization? Digitize that, right? Do all your systems generate data? Are they integrated with each other? Digitize that. So there's a fair amount to be done to move whether it's public organizations, private organizations to the next level. And then of course, the transformation. At the end of it, there has to be some— something has to change. We have to do something differently. Sadly, some people are digitizing processes and the processes practically remain exact same and it just happens faster, right? And we're like, well, hold on, this thing is supposed to change the experience with me and the organization. I gave a little bit, um, I, you know, the situation, and I was reading one of the comments. I don't think it's a conference, the technology needs to catch up with our needs. Fantastic, um, comment there from, from Chris Fox. I, um, my wife sent me out to buy a laptop for my, my daughter, and I was in Florida, and, you know, she had told me that, you know, look, Chris, just go to the Apple Store. They have this new thing called Apple Pay. Just, you know, I tried applying for Apple Pay online in Jamaica, didn't work, right? I don't know what the reason was, maybe I put in some wrong information. So I'm in the store, you know, got the laptop ready to go, and then I turned to the lady, hold on there, um, can I apply for Apple Pay from here? She said, do you have an iPhone? I said, sure. She said, let me the phone. Say, I want it on it, wallet on it. Yes, press the button for the wallet. Okay, fill in information. I'm standing there, fill information, took a few minutes, enter. And then I'm like, "Lady, last time I tried this—" and before I could finish the sentence, ploop, approved. And all of a sudden, I have 12 payments for this laptop for the next 12 months, zero interest. And I walk out the door not paying a thing because I did come prepared to use my credit card. But also, Apple is now facilitating me. And now, in my mind, I just sat there and I said, "This is digital transformation." Right? And several times I'm in, I'm in organizations and I challenge them, how can you give me an experience like that with your company? So I will, I will stop my sharing right there. And, um, I will now just ask our team, you know, based upon what you understand and learn from just, you know, experiences around the Caribbean, why has some, or why, why has many not work? Why have many of these projects not worked? I've heard about this, uh, over and over again. These guys are working on something. I mean, one organization came to me and he said to me, Chris, 3 years I'm into this digital transformation thing, no, it's not happening. So, um, Julian, yeah, I sure—

I think I, I want to look at it from 3 perspectives. First, what does this mean for your customers? Are you— if you're in the business of delivering physical goods, or if you're delivering services, What, what has changed in the last 2 years with COVID How can you make it seamless for your customers to access either the goods or services that you have? Are your customers in a position to access these things digitally? Because across the Caribbean we have a divide. Some people will have access, some don't. So the first thing I think you have to understand is who your customers are and whether— and in determining the strategy It has to be about making it easier for your customers. The second thing I think you have to look at is who are your employees, the people who are actually going to create either the physical goods or the services. What— how have they been impacted over the 2 years? You may have had a big office with a lot of space. You still need that? Maybe not. Can your team work from home? Yes. If they can work from home, what are the implications of that? You spoke about getting laptops. But what about security? What about networking? What are, what are the protocols that you put in place to ensure that the physical environment that you had is replicated when people are working remotely? And then the third thing you have to look at is, how am I going to still create value to my customer that I can extract a payment for it in this environment? Because that's ultimately what the final thing is about. You are— you're running a business, you have to earn revenues. What is it that I'm going to do to make this interaction? You gave the Apple example. Unfortunately, you only could do it when you went abroad, but you'd want to do it here, and you would— you should be in a position where you could do it here and get the laptop delivered to you here via FedEx or whatever. To your house, obviously for a fee, versus jumping on a plane to Miami. So the question is— and we have seen that, for example, with Amazon and, and how Jamaicans have used that during the pandemic. So for me, you have to look at the three elements: your customers, the employees, and the value that you're hoping to continue to create, and how the transformation enables those three things in a way that it is positive for all three, because your customers have to be happy, your employees have to be happy, and you have to recognize that we are in an environment where some employees will never come back into an office. Are you okay with that as a business if the employee still delivers value? So those are considerations I believe that should guide whatever that transformation strategy is. And I think we get bogged down too much, I think, in the technology and trying to fix the technology without defining the strategic parameters before we start to deal with the technology.

Thank you very, very, very much, Julian. Uh, Mara or Kevin, anyone can jump in with any additional comments, uh, here.

Okay, I was just waiting to see if Moira wanted to intervene, but I'll just come in here. Yes, I just wanted to dovetail on what Julian was speaking about and add some comments, but from a more macroeconomic level. So the same OECD report I referred to earlier had spoken about these gaps, and the infrastructure gap is one of the long-term structural barriers that we We know, for instance, um, in telecoms regulation across the Caribbean, there's this thing called Universal Service Funds, whereby, uh, where you have not economically feasible areas on an underserved areas, uh, this fund is a levy from the telcos that, uh, should be redirected to be able to provide a high-speed broadband to these underserved areas. And the efficiency of that fund across the region works in various ways. But what I wanted to add is that in addition to that, you do have very clear opportunities to build something called community networks. And community networks from global organizations such as the Internet Society take you from zero to a level of connectivity in a short space of time. Even among unskilled people, people who are not familiar with networking, people who are not familiar with equipment. There are programs whereby you can have access to equipment and training to provide internet connectivity and meaningful internet connectivity in these unserved and underserved areas across Latin America and the Caribbean. So the infrastructure gap is one that we have to always contend with, and we always have to raise our voices when it comes to that. The two other comments I want to allude to refer to these myths that we tell ourselves in the Caribbean, which are not true. There are these myths that exist. One deals with the shortage of talent or shortage of skills. The Caribbean isn't short of talent, or skills, or creative ideas. Within organizations, there are a significant amount of creative ideas. That need to be tapped into. So it should be really a question as to how do you discover the existing talent and skills outside of organizations? One of the lesser spoken sources is the actual talent pool that we have, not only among Caribbean nationals here in the region, but across the diaspora. And if we're talking digital, you're no longer thinking of coming into an office and sitting down for 8 hours, you're talking about being able to tap into strategic services by a Caribbean national who can remote— remotely— to either provide some, um, a business— to provide a business support service or any other thing across your value chain. Um, and the third comment I want to talk about is this myth about there being no financing. If you look at the volume of finances that come across the region, There's so much. It's not a question of there not being financing. It's a question of understanding how do we redirect the savings and the dividends from existing— well, not existing— from the actual adoption we've already done with digital technologies and continue putting that into upscaling and looking at more sophisticated investment in digital technologies. If you have a company that has embraced email technology, you already have a savings versus a company that goes via traditional post. If you have a company that has email technologies and has embraced a solution such as SharePoint filing, you have economic savings there. And quite often it isn't spoken about enough that these savings shouldn't necessarily mean that they go into the wild. It's where you would have traditionally put something that's labor-intensive and you're now saving money because of your adoption of additional tools or additional technologies, how do you continue reinvesting that into something like cloud support services, or even adopting digital platforms? The benefits of adopting digital platforms besides using it for marcoms and other business functions is that a lot of these have intertwined in them business intelligence, and business analytics, and data analytics, which would have come at a significant cost if you were to look at it from a labor-intensive focus. So the finance question is that there is finance, is a question as to how do we tap into that finance? How do we redirect savings from existing digital adoption and put it back into what would be upskilled and sophisticated digital transformation. Thank you. Moira?

And Chris, I just wanted to add on to this whole idea of the, of access. And I, you know, I just came back from spending 6 weeks in Ireland and access to internet can be quite spotty over there as well. But in my mother's house, somebody important lives out the road. So we had great Wi-Fi, right? Right? So, but in the US, in general, you know, certainly in the metro areas, access is pretty good. But what we now see as well is a recognition of, you know, access for those with disabilities. So when you think about digital transformation, you actually begin to think about wider issues of access as beyond the physical infrastructure. Through to things like closed captioning, through to, you know, like ways that we, you know, and a recognition that going into the office is about access as well. If you have like, if you are immunocompromised and you've got to get in a bus or you've got to get in a metro train, you know, and you don't have a car, like, like there's a lot of ways in which I think this whole last 2 years raised issues about giving people access and being at home if you have the Wi-Fi really is a huge accessibility bonus for many people who don't have to physically manage to get into the office.

I had to, Mara, you know, that last part about the Wi-Fi, the quality of the Wi-Fi hit home with me at the beginning of the pandemic because of course my board meetings had to move online And I remember one of the first meetings that I had, luckily it was a committee meeting before the board meeting, and my connection dropped. I'm in the middle of a presentation to my board and I had to run out. And so at home right now, I have in Jamaica here, I have both Digicel and Flow coming into my house and I have to jump between them occasionally. So this morning I made sure that I did a speed test, I made sure that I was connected to the the fastest one this morning. I won't tell you which one it is, um, but I had to make sure that— and there have been several times when in the middle of a presentation I have to switch, as happened with us when we had our pre-meeting earlier this week. So, so that specific access to broadband is a massive concern for some. But let's try to bring things— you know, we have about, um, 20 minutes left, and what I want to make sure is that we cover some I mean, let's call it some practical things that some folks can do around how they think about digital transformation. So one of the things I'd mentioned about why some of these projects fail, I'll give you a little example. I was doing my 5:30 morning walk this morning, brought up the fact that I'm doing this presentation, and someone gave me an example. He's the head of IT for— he's an executive with several responsibilities. IT falls under his, his purview. And he said to me, one of the biggest challenges we're having here is that— is, is the, the war— I'll use that word, that was his words— or the tension between the business and IT. Because what happens is that, for example, you know, just listening to Kevin explain some of the things he was explaining a while ago, I'm sure there are a few people sitting on there like, man, he's using some big words, I don't really understand some of those big words, you understand? But the fact of the matter is that in the organization, the leadership just turns to the IT guy. And they're watching him for his face to genuflect. Or guess what, these discussions are taking place and the IT guy is not in the room. Right. So when the IT person is not in the room, and there's talk from external advisors and consultants about technology, then there's a divide. Here's another— here's the other scenario that was brought up this morning, Chris. Sometimes the IT guy is in the room and he grabs this thing with two hands like it's his project, and it's not his project. Digital transformation is not an IT project. Let's repeat that: digital transformation is not an IT project. It's a business project that everybody involved— and IT technology is a tiny, tiny component. It's about change management. It's about people, capacity, capabilities. And one of the main reasons why this thing fails sometimes in some organizations is that sadly too many of the business folks leave it to the IT folks, and then also the IT folks take over. This is your fiefdom. And look, I'm an IT guy. I started life as an IT guy, as a technician. I'm throwing myself under the bus here. Sometimes we use language to keep everyone else at bay. Sometimes we use language to kind of sort of make sure that our seat at the table is always there, and then sadly it turns back and slap us in the face because we were not being inclusive. In a recent case study that, um, Harvard Business Review, uh, posted in their December 2020 issue, talks about Apple and how it innovates. And one of the things— two main things to talk about— I talk about leader experts leading experts, got a whole idea and concept, and it's something that comes up in strategy all the time. Do you hire an expert in this area, or do you hire a leader and then teach them the technology? And of course, you know, there's many different consulting thoughts around that. And what they thought is, look, let me get the best person for this technology, we can teach them management and leadership after that. So for them, it's experts leading experts. But the other massively important thing was around collaboration. They said the leaders must collaborate. No one can own this. No one can be throwing all these other people under the bus for everything. We must work together to make this innovation occur. And I mentioned the word innovation, so that's another thing that I also want to throw to the audience here, uh, this whole topic of innovation versus digital transformation. Is it the same thing? Is it, is it different? Um, so, so yeah, so those are a few points I kind of want for us to kind of think on as we move towards the last 20 minutes in the discussion. While I'm doing that, I'll read a concern. It's not much of a question, a concern that Kareen Wilson raised when I gave the whole Apple Pay example. She's a content creator, and she finds it extremely difficult, and she extremely was in block capitals collect funds that persons donate via PayPal, Payoneer, etc., because of Jamaica's restrictions. This has come up in so many of these forums as we talk about this transformation and digital payments and all of that. It's one of the things that I have kind of thrown out to our folks at the ministry in terms of the, you know, there's this continuous talk of Jamaica as a digital society. And there's, there are several underpinning components of this. Of course, one of them Julian mentioned several times is the national identification system, or digitized identification, which is one of the three major components. The other major component is exactly what you brought up, Kareem, it's digital payments. How do, how do we, um, how does that work? And then using the Estonia model, the, the key thing, the other key, um, foundational component, because there are three digital IDs, digital payments, and the other component is data exchange or data interchange within the country and within government, private sector, and back and forth, and inter-government organizations. Where is that master database of the information that needs to be shared? Uh, how is it shared? Do we have access to it? So that is what will give the foundation for moving Jamaica as a digital society. So So I threw in about 3 or 4 or 5 topics in there that we're going to try to squeeze through in the next few minutes. Okay, Dale has put up another question. Digital transformation and work from home is here to stay, especially with younger professionals and younger digital customer base. Where are we in our mindset in the Caribbean? Lennox from PCCM Club in Toronto. Another part of the discussion. You are so correct. You're so correct, Lennox. So, uh, with the— with, with those 4 or 5 topics that I threw up in the air a while ago, uh, where do we land around some of these? Who wants to go?

All right, looking at the question Dale put up, I think where employers are going to be forced to adjust, because I think the balance of power to some extent has shifted to employees, and particularly employees who are highly skilled, who are mobile, and who can stay in one location and work in another. And I think, you know, the concept that somebody has to come in at 8:30 and clock out at 5:00 and be at a physical desk is, is something— is anachronistic. You know, we're in an environment where people can deliver value from their home, depending obviously on the nature of the job. So I think employers will have to adjust if they want to keep the kind of talent that can transform and constantly innovate in their businesses. The issue of, um, the question about payments and receiving payments has been a sore point from— I was in government from 2012 to 2016, and I know we still haven't resolved it. I would say that part of the challenge we have as a country, you know, we have a lot of good things, but we also have some negatives. And I think part of the challenge we have with this area is that you know, the, the people who use their innovation in a negative way to scam people, to find ways of bringing money in, have put such a limelight on the country that many of the people who we have to interact with are very cautious about enabling the receipt of payments via these digital means. And it has made it very, very difficult for legitimate customers who want to whether it is to do remittances or basic transfers, to do it because it is being used as a means of, um, of scamming people. So I'm not saying that's the sole reason, but it certainly is a contributor, I believe, to why Jamaica has such a challenge, um, getting, um, these payments via these, the, the online media.

Go ahead, Kevon.

Thanks, Chris. Um, a lot of ideas there. I wanted to, uh, leverage so many things you said and reiterate a couple of points we had before. So one of the things that I've observed over the years is that you have these different camps. So for instance, engineers and lawyers don't live in the same house, so they don't like to live in the same house. Neither do IT people and policymakers, and yet we are expected to all face digital transformation together. You're quite right, we have to undo this mindset that transformation is the IT manager's problem, and we have to find a way of structuring more cross-fertilization. I think this conference is a good example of there being cross- hospitalization between people with one set of competencies and skills and having people with other sets of competencies come in and start to share information and co-construct. So that happens in the ambit of this conference. What could be done at a policymaker's perspective? So government's responsibility, and this is where all of us as conference attendees could do this, we need to insist on there being multistakeholder approaches to developing digital policy. Because it is unreasonable to think that someone who is steeped in security, who works in the private sector, to see that that information is reflected in any sort of public policy or legislation that comes out of the government if there's no way of them actually communicating. And when I say communicating, multistakeholder approach to governance doesn't just mean that government does an online request for comments and then shuts itself off. It means that they listen. You are in a space where each one is able to express themselves on equal footing, listen to the other, and come up with an outcome that is richer than if it were just a one-sided affair. And I say so because one of the things we have to realize with going digital is that the course has already left the stable. And I'll go back to a point I made earlier. It ties back to the whole question of maturity models and our digital maturity. We open up ourselves to risks if we are not strategic about how we do digital transformation, if we are just picking at— cherry-picking and choosing what we want to do in a digital space. One of the biggest risks that have happened over the pandemic is something called ransomware. And ransomware is a thing I've been tracking across the Caribbean. I like when I see journalists pick up on it and they write a short story, and then it just disappears. Because we tend to see, or we tend to have this idea, well, as an organization, if it happens to me, I don't want anyone to speak about it. So it's a hush-hush affair. You really try not to have journalists talk about these things. And then there's a stick your head in the sand approach. The fact of the matter is that from the minute that we do go online, we set up web presences, we set up, or we put our business processes online, we have to contend with how we treat the security questions. And security is a thing that you want to have to reassess and redefine what exactly is your risk profile so that you could come up with what would be new barriers of acceptable risk meaning that you have done all that you can do in terms of security measures. And beyond that, it will be something out of the blue. So security is the one of the biggest priorities that all of our organizations have to contend with. To be able to face and address things like ransomware, organizations can also look at something called Computer Security Incident Response Teams, or CSIRTs. And what this means is that when something happens, before it happens, there are defined policies and protocols as to what an organization does in those instances. And it steers us away from the stick your head in the sand approach. It tells us, okay, this is what hap— happens on a communication level to our external stakeholders. This is what the leadership needs to do. This is what the IT person needs to do to be able to capture, to either stop, stymie, or capture evidence of this incident that's threatening the organization. And then how do we liaise with law enforcement to find some sort of redress for what has occurred to us? So there's so many other points I can speak about, but I'm going to stick a pin in there. And I really wanted to talk about that security factor. So maturity means that we take front when it comes to security. That, that's the message that I want to stop here with.

Fantastic. Moira, do you have a comment to add here?

I do. And actually, one thing I'm going to do, I'm going to post in the chat is a link, Christopher, that you sent to us from the Harvard Business Review of democratizing transformation. And what I really liked about that article was this sense of IT and the business units working together, because the business units need the data to to really understand what's going on to make good business decisions. And so you can't have these two areas separated. It's even a while ago now where I was working on a program and the IT people said, well, we're going to change how credit cards are processed. And I'm like, I'm not sure that's a great idea for the system. And they were like, you make business decisions and we'll make IT decisions. And about 2 months later, the chief financial officer called up and said, why do we have so much bad debt? And I said, because IT made the technical decision, which was not, but it had a business impact, a huge business impact. So, you know, what we see in those organizations that really are embracing digital transformation is, like Julian saying, like, you know, people have more power. You know, those employees have more power to say, no, no, these are the tools I need, this is the data I need, because the business goals are, you know, are not subject to the king of no in IT who just can kind of, you know, though your point about security, you know, Kevon, is just spot on. And that's where IT probably has that realm of like whether if it's operating systems and security patches, you know, that's where IT still has probably that realm of the final say. But once you get into service and innovation, then you really have to be working together.

I love that comment. The king of no. I have never heard that one before, but you're right. Um, you got the IT guys, no, can't be done, no, you know, because it wasn't their idea or whatever. I'm going to share, uh, again one more time, just, uh, very quickly. Uh, Kevin, I have been on the— I've been talking to everyone who would listen about cybersecurity for the last maybe 3 and a half, 4 years. And I have modified my slides in various ways. Um, I have tried to explain to people why is it critical right now. Um, and I have different versions of this depending on the target audience that I'm talking to. I try to talk about the global situation, and of course I also, uh, talk about the, the local situation and the ones close to us. And I do have a newer slide that, that brings in the JMMB, uh, $40 million plus, uh, situation just week before last. Um, and some people sadly just keep on believing that this has nothing to do with me. I mean, nobody's coming after me. And I'm like, no, ransomware— let's talk about Kevin a while ago— it's, it's a scattershot approach. It's just the systems are out there just throwing, uh, throwing phishing out there. As I just said, it's phishing. It's whoever will hook. And once you get hooked and your data is compromised, then it's It's, it's goodbye. Um, and why we don't hear about it, it's not newsworthy. It's getting to be newsworthy a little bit, but not, you know, it's embarrassing to admit, horrible PR, um, you know, legal ramifications around it. But, uh, one of the things that we're, we're having in Jamaica right now, and I know a few other Caribbean islands do have it, is, um, there is gonna— there's a legal requirement. So we do have Office of Information Commissioner in place, um, and she's ramping up her, her capabilities right now. And the fact of the matter is that, you know, by law you have to report if, uh, if you're processing private information for whether it's your staff or your customers and it gets compromised, you have to let the commissioner know, right? And so there's a requirement for technical measures, and then there's a requirement for organizational measures to ensure that you keep people's data private. And so this is something that for us in the IT security, cybersecurity industry, we've been kind of asking for, for a while. Now it's here. Yes, Dale, cybercriminals do have PhDs. And that is also one of the challenges. The attacks are getting more sophisticated, and they're getting more complicated. Right. So we do have some legal requirements right now. So at the end of the day, we have some leg to stand on when we go into organizations and they say, look, I'm here to, you know, help you audit your situation, just to give you some sort of a report, maturity level, some sort of a feel as to what's your standing in terms of protection, what capabilities do you actually have and give them some sort of a roadmap. Sadly, we're still pushing that rock uphill because not everyone is just jumping at the bits to do that. So in our last 10 minutes, folks, or last 8 minutes to be exact, what I'm going to do is ask each of my panelists to, if there's any final takeaways or final thoughts that they have that they definitely don't want to leave here without saying, if we could do a round-robin around it. Let me just run through some of the comments that have been here, 'cause there have been a lot of comments. Thanks for the engagement, folks. I saw one that was, I thought, pretty interesting. Kelly McIntosh mentioned her approach with respect to, you know, as a non-IT person, she have used to automate, you know, improve processes to invite the IT person into the room, paint the picture of the pain points, and work on the relationship that way. And in the end, I think further down, she says, guess what, the more I interacted and collaborated with IT, the more tech savvy she became, and the more commercial business savvy the IT person became. So that I think is a great example of collaboration. She got a lot of thumbs up right there. So that's something that I want to highlight. Collaboration is massively important across the board for this thing to work. It's not going to work otherwise. Trisha, I think organizations keeping secret their challenges with security is a way to somewhat maintain some amount of confidence. Sadly, yes, but in more advanced countries, there are laws requiring, you know, requiring, you know, disclosure. Lisa Marie Alexander, question on the screen: How do you ensure digital strategy transformation is part of the strategic agenda? Great, great, great question, and I think it's a good perhaps closeout question. Moira, Kevon, Julian, how do we answer that one right there? How do we ensure it's part of strategic agenda? Julian, I'm also going to ask you, um, throw in a secondary question, uh, as someone who has been a volunteer in a fair amount of things that, you know, trying to make sure that Jamaica gets towards a digital, uh, digital society, I have come across a plethora of studies. And Kevin, I don't know, you know, your organization probably helped with some of these studies, but one of the things that I realized that, you know, almost every multinational does some sort of a study And there's all of these reports, and, you know, whatever— ask your counterpart in the, in, in, in the administration, why do we need any more studies? We are, we are studied out the wazoo, you know. UNDP does one, um, World Bank does one, IDB has another one, and everyone has recommended something else that they're going to bring somebody else to do. Julian, help us.

Well, well, let me tell you, Part of the problem is when you ask for multilateral help, whether it is grant, whether it is loan funding, it starts with some form of study or consultancy to determine the problem, make recommendations, which will then lead to a project. And so generally you end up with all these studies because as any, uh, small developing country, you're seeking assistance to get things done. And generally the study is done as a grant or the consultancy, but then the implementation is generally a loan, right? So, and I was in government, we had that experience, and it's the same here. I think, you know, if we had our own resources to take on some of these things, we could move more quickly to implementation, but we don't. But the other challenge is we also have an implementation deficit as a region, as a country. The skills that we're talking about are in very high demand, the public sector can't necessarily retain these individuals for long periods of time. They come in, they get the experience, and then they go to jobs that pay them 4 or 5 times what they would earn in the public sector. So that is also a challenge in terms of having the kind of expertise that you need to ensure that you can successfully implement. To come back to the question that Lisa Marie put up— Maria put up— I, I would say digital or Transformation has to start at the top, it has to be led by the CEO who understands what it means for his, his or her business. It is not an IT problem. IT is enabling what you want to transform. If you don't see it that way, you're going to fail because the owners of the project are going to be too low down the totem pole to get the transformation in people, in processes, etc. So for me, the, the CEO, the C-level person has to own it and has to drive it. And I believe if you have that, you have a greater chance of succeeding than if people just leave it to the IT man to, to do something and ensure that we're online, so to speak. Thank you very, very much, Julian.

Uh, last words, Kevon, and then we end Olade.

Thanks very much, Chris. And yes, uh, exactly as Julian has said, we have a saying here— I'm sure it's probably across the Caribbean— and we say that fish rots from the head. Your transformation process needs to be done by strong leadership, strong leadership which is able to give you enabling infrastructure within your organization, the tools tools, the requisite tools and skills that you need. The ability of building skills has to be a clear focus from the leadership, and also the ability to inspire. They must be able to inspire, and they must be able to be visionary as to what sort of transformation they want to see, and not put the cart before the horse in interpreting digital transformation as a technology issue. Technology comes last. There's a last set of 3 Ps that I want to leave you with. I've said people so many times, but I'm gonna say it again. People who are adequately equipped and empowered, they can help chart the way. So again, it ties back to leadership, being able to adequately equip and educate people so that they can be empowered to Chart chart the way. the way. There are policies, policies on infrastructure, policies that need to be enabling in order to be able to transform. Again, leadership needs to be responsible for setting those policies, not in a vacuum, not all on its own, but setting policies through an open process that will help lead the way and ensure that you have enough enabling infrastructure. Within the organization to lead the organization forward. And last but not least, something that it hurts us culturally, persistence, having the confidence and the boldness and the faith to make an energized way forward. When you fail, you simply find out a way of something that will not work, but you need to persist. Too often we look at failure as the be-all and end-all, to anything, and we revert to the risk-averse nature within us. But what I'm saying is that in going digitally, doing anything digital, that horse has left the stable and you are in what you call, uh, it's, it's a situation where there's no stopping. It's either do or die at that point. So you really need to focus on being persistent and understanding what is trial and error, what is failure, how you learn from failure, and how you continue innovating your process. So 3 Ps: people, policy, and persistence, all coming from strong leadership on what digital transformation means.

Thanks, Kevon. Moira, you have the last word.

Very last word, and it's really short. Like, we work on a lot of organizations that have a board, and like, yes, absolutely, the executive director, the CEO might be very, you know, convinced of the need for digital transformation, but there's a board to convinced. And the word there is fear, right? You make them afraid of what will happen if they don't, whether it's information about security issues that will be faced, or how their members won't be served, or what, you know, or it could be a good quote, it can be data. But that's a way to make sure, Lisa Maria, that technology gets a seat at the strategy table. Thank you. Fantastic.

Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, let me just thank my panel. Thanks Thanks, Moira. Thanks, Kevin. And thanks, Julian, for all your contribution. Thanks to the audience who was highly engaged. Lisa, let me just leave with my 4 takeaways here. I had 3 until Moira dropped that last one a while ago. And it was not about technology, people. It's people, people, people. And of course, it's about people collaboration. And then I will translate something that Moira said, because when I was trained in sales by IBM, about 35 years ago, and my training was actually down in Trinidad at the time, we learned this whole concept of FUD— fear, uncertainty, and doubt. FUD them, keep FUDing them, right? Keep FUDing the leadership. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt, right? And, and, and it has to be at the board level. If you don't do this, here's what's going to happen. So I agree with Amara, it has to be at the board level. Um, fear, uncertainty, and doubt, and, and, and just let them know if you don't do this, you're going to miss out. And Douglas O'Rean gave us some of that, uh, whole, whole, some of that concept, the whole black swan and extinction, um, this discussion earlier this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. And Lisa Marie, over to you and over to the content.

Thank you so much. Thank you, Christopher and Julian and Kevon and Moira. Thank you, team. What an, what an awesome discussion. And, and, you know, we, we— I'm not going to rephrase or paraphrase again, it's been said, but the importance of people in a transformation of any kind. And for me, the takeaway— this is a Caribbean— this is, if you're just joining us, this is the Caribbean Strategy Conference. So we're talking about how do we, how do we do it? How do we execute it? How do we, how are we successful at it? I think for the Caribbean, the important takeaway there was that there's an implementation deficit. So for organizations, in order to focus on implementation, I think what we heard from this panel is that we're focusing on people.