Market Watch Industry Bulletin – Aerospace & Aviation
The video interview took place on 10th March 2020, prior to Covid 19 restrictions.
Up until the pandemic, the biggest challenge facing many firms was attracting and retaining talent. That hasn’t changed, says Ryan Williams, CEO of Conscia, a training provider which specialises in employee engagement.
Conscia is the architect of a series of online modules designed to help companies maintain employee engagement throughout the Covid-19 crisis.
Each provides practical steps to take, plus easy to use templates and frameworks, to help companies maintain their employee value proposition (EVP).
Those that succeed in doing so will not only optimise productivity throughout this current, difficult time, but will be well placed to capture the opportunities of the post-pandemic surge.
Those that neglect employee engagement, however, risk damaging their reputation as an employer of choice long into the future. “It’s about asking yourself, how you want your company to be remembered after this pandemic,” says Williams.
Your EVP is an invaluable retention tool and should be robust enough to support employees in good times and in bad, he points out.
“The market for talent will be equally as competitive when we come out the other side of this as it was when we went in,” says Williams.
“Though some sectors will suffer more than others, the fact remains that if you needed a software developer before this, you will still need one after it, so it is important to get the best talent that is out there.”
The top priority for employers right now is communication.
By this stage new work practices will be established, either from home or, socially distanced, in the workplace.
“The novelty of the early stages has well and truly worn off, the buzz of setting up meetings on MS Teams and Zoom has ebbed, and people are starting to feel this will never end. The risk is that employers stop communicating when in fact it is vital to over-communicate now and throughout this process.”
In a period characterised by uncertainty and anxiety, it’s important to display “honest confidence” he says.
“Be honest and transparent and deliver your communications with confidence, even if it is bad news, such as, perhaps, having to take a pay cut to get through this. People can cope if they realise there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Empathetic leadership is essential. “You need to communicate your company’s vision and mission with empathy. It’s about understanding that your people are going through challenging times.”
Weekly ‘all hands’ meetings online are an opportunity to show that everybody is part of what is a communal effort.
“Be very honest about what you do and don’t know. The rumour mill can be difficult to manage so share the good, the bad and the ugly with honest confidence.”
Decision making in a time of crisis should be quick and decisive, with resources allocated speedily. Employee polls are a quick and effective tool for effecting change, offering maximum transparency and ‘buy in’.
Regular, scheduled and consistent communications help keep fear and anxiety at bay. Use video as much as possible. “People want to see their leaders.”
Be cognisant of the impact not just of your words, but of your tone and body language too. “Lean forward, be expressive, use your hands,” he says.
As well as large town hall type, and team meetings, make sure to set aside time for one to ones, to check in with people and see how they are doing.
Recognise and reward output. “Celebrate team wins and individual efforts more than in ordinary times. People are doing fantastic things right now so make time for shout outs in meetings and promote them on your social media too.”
Fostering ‘water cooler’ moments online helps to replicate the everyday interaction of the traditional workplace. “Don’t lose your social cohesion.”
At every step, focus on building trust and loyalty. “Very many companies have spent years building up their culture. Don’t lose it. Find new ways of maintaining it instead.”
Social distancing will likely continue for some time, as will working from home. “We are all living with uncertainty at present, so ‘What does this mean for me?’ is the key question people have. While you can’t control this, you can help by removing as much of the uncertainty for employees as possible.”
The current situation provides a great opportunity for learning and development. “This doesn’t have to cost you money,” he points out.
“It could be online learning opportunities, or a situation where an experienced member of staff helps train up others on a new software tool, such as cucumber. It could be a buddy system, where someone experienced is matched with someone who may be feeling overwhelmed.”
Spare capacity could be given over to executing planned projects that had previously been put off. “We have one client company, for example, who built an entire logistics platform in eight weeks, a project it had long wanted to do,” says Williams.
Such initiatives help provide purpose, an important component in employee engagement.
Set short term goals for long term results. “Focus on bite sized projects to help people navigate through.”
Finally, stay positive. “Remember, this is different from the financial crisis because it is the same for everybody. From Ireland to China to the US, the base line has lowered for everyone. So, while there is uncertainty, and a need to paint as honest a picture as possible, it’s also important to look to where the opportunities will be post-pandemic.”
To find out more about building employee engagement during the Covid-19 restrictions see here.
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Dublin-based mAdme provides a customer experience platform for mobile operators to engage with subscribers. The platform overlays rich content including images and video directly on phone screens, without the need for customers to go into an app or notification tray, delivering messages in real-time, triggered by customer usage.
“We’re seeing engagement rates up to around 20% for messages sent on our channel versus other channels like SMS and email,” says Dave Manzor, VP (Product) of mAdme Technologies. “Because of the scale and effectiveness of the platform, we can quickly disseminate important messages to huge numbers of people, which is proving hugely beneficial during the Covid-19 crisis.”
In India, mobile giant Reliance Jio used the mAdme platform to issue a message to its subscribers that linked to Covid-19 awareness information including a symptoms-checker. The campaign was viewed a colossal 250 million times.
“It’s also been deployed to help manage the load on under-pressure call centres, for example by encouraging people to use self-care channels for things like topping up credit.”
Founded in 2013 by Triona Mullane, the mAdme platform is currently deployed in 28 countries, running on more than 200 million phones in key markets including Asia, North America and Europe.
Mullane, who won the ‘Emerging’ category in last year’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year awards, has overseen rapid growth and a hatful of industry awards for mAdme including a 7th place ranking in the 2019 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and 2018 winner of the Disruptive Technology Award in association with Facebook.
The company has also overcome a few challenges along the way, the most notable of which was having to rapidly scale up to match the growth of Jio in India, going from zero to 100 million subscribers in the space of just five months.
Working with some of the biggest mobile brands in the world, mAdme is now focussing on improving operators’ customer care offerings, especially around the calling experience.
“We’ve developed a new experience in the phone dialler that directs callers to the information they’re looking for,” says Dave Manzor. “This is having a massively positive impact for operators because it reduces the number of calls they need to service in their call centres, but also benefits the caller who can get what they need without having to wait on hold.”
The Dublin-based firm is also looking into the broader enterprise space with relevance for any company that wants to improve how it engages with customers.
“Innovation and R&D are at the core of everything we do,” says Manzor. “When you’re a small player from Ireland selling to a global market, you need to be innovating in every aspect of the business. We’re disrupting some very well-established industries and we couldn’t do that without continuous innovation.”
“From a R&D perspective, we’re building software to meet the needs of the market,” he goes on. “Every line of code we write, we make sure it’s adding value for all our customers and we have a really exciting technology roadmap that will enable us to continue adding value well into the future.”
“We’re also active in the IP space with a number of patent applications on the go,” Manzor says. “The first of these was successfully granted just last month, which was very pleasing and further proof that what we’re doing is genuinely innovative.”
Firmly established among the fastest-growing tech companies in Ireland, mAdme has its sights set on further international growth.
“Irish companies have very strong history, credentials and reputation for delivering great innovation and it’s all the more impressive given that we’re coming from a small island on the edge of Europe,” says Dave Manzor. “I think it makes it all the more exciting to compete and win business in markets all over the world.”
The company has had support and investment from a range of sources including Enterprise Ireland, the national export agency. “Enterprise Ireland has been a huge supporter from day one, they continue to support us to this day and we really appreciate that,” says Manzor:
“If you look at the trade shows Enterprise Ireland runs every year, without them it just wouldn’t be possible for small companies like ourselves to showcase our work but Enterprise Ireland makes that possible.”
Working closely with Tier 1 network partners such as Orange, Deutsche Telekom, Digicel and Telenor in more than 85 countries, the aim is to identify and block fraudulent traffic while protecting messages from legitimate businesses and organisations. Such partnerships are essential in a time when fraudsters are primed to take advantage, according to Mary-Therese Fitzpatrick, Anam’s Marketing Director.
Anam is equipping operators with firewalls that detect fraudulent traffic, block it and keep the networks clean. The system is a win-win for all parties involved. The operators benefit from a revenue-sharing model on increased business messaging traffic, and their subscribers are safe from any fraudulent activity.
Anam has been recognised 3 years running in independent surveys as the world’s leading SMS Firewall and A2P (application-to-person) monetisation service provider. Anam’s technology helps mobile operators to increase revenue per user by reducing the amount of spam & fraudulent messaging on their networks.
As the number of messages being sent increases, so too do the opportunities for fraud within the channel. While the Covid-19 pandemic contributes to a general relaxing of data protection rules, it may also be loosening our own digital defences. When this happens, fraudsters are at the ready.
Fitzpatrick compares Anam’s firewall technology to a tolled road. There will always be those who try to find back ways to the destination:
Anam blocks this traffic and filters it through the paid route, making sure that all traffic is legitimate and clean. They then share the revenue with the operators.
In the context of Covid-19, we see more messages from government services, health systems, e-commerce notifications and food delivery services. Some fraudsters are attempting to take advantage of this, sending texts containing key terms like ‘Covid’, ‘Coronavirus’ and even ‘testing’ that might mislead people into giving away sensitive information or clicking on fake links to legitimate-looking websites designed to do the same thing. This is known as phishing.
The texts may look like they are coming from a bank or the government. Some fraudsters even use a tactic known as “spoofing” in which they can make a message appear in a chain of text alongside previous genuine messages. There have also been reports of fraud messages promising free devices or financial relief to cope with the Covid-19 lockdowns.
“If the operator has a firewall installed on their network, they can protect themselves and their subscribers from this malicious messaging,” Fitzpatrick says.
During emergencies, SMS is an important method of communication due to its immediacy and reach. Most people in the world have a mobile device capable of receiving SMS, and 90% of the messages tend to be read within three minutes.
The success of the channel, unfortunately, means that some vulnerable groups are misled. They may be isolated and not aware of the fraud risk. They may not be tech-savvy, but they most likely know how to read an SMS. Fraudulent texts have the potential to reach everyone, even those without sufficient access to high-speed internet.
Fitzpatrick says that there has been an increase in fraudulent traffic. Although the process of detecting and blocking it is automated to a large extent using artificial intelligence and machine learning, there is still a manual element involved. The process itself benefits from the close partnership that now exists between Anam and international partners. “There are known addresses across international networks that can be identified and blocked once certain patterns of messaging are detected,” explains Fitzpatrick.
Anam’s solution is a very clever evolution within the changing messaging landscape,” Fitzpatrick explains. And the fact that today Anam’s systems and services are being used in 85 countries to protect an estimated three-quarters of a billion subscribers is testament to this.
Speaking on the success of the solution and the importance of partnership during the Covid-19 crisis, Fitzpatrick notes that Anam is a preferred partner because they are independent.
After an initial €350,000 investment from Enterprise Ireland in 2018 to aid global expansion and R&D, Anam is currently in a growth phase, expanding its worldwide presence. In November last year, they opened an Africa headquarters in Kenya on the back of significant local contract wins. The new office builds out on the company’s other regional HQ office in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and a presence in Egypt, Jamaica, Nigeria, Vietnam, Malta, United Kingdom, Czech Republic and Pakistan.
8 West is the company behind an innovative new remote monitoring system, CREW, which is designed to protect frontline healthcare workers and their patients from the spread of Covid-19.
CREW, an acronym for Covid19 Remote Early Warning System, remotely identifies healthcare workers who develop a temperature.
A rise in body temperature is the symptom that is most common among all sufferers of virus. A spike in temperature, particularly when combined with an increased heart rate, at a time when no other physical activity is taking place – such as when a person is asleep – can provide a key early warning sign for the onset of Covid19.
CREW consists of a wearable digital thermometer sensor which measures body temperature, and a sensor platform such as a smart phone, smart watch or other IoT (internet of things) device, which runs the CREW app.
A cloud based server then runs the CREW system, monitoring incoming data from frontline workers wearing the device. If an elevated temperature is recorded over a specified time frame, CREW generates an automatic alarm warning both the wearer and their employer of their need to take remedial action and self-isolate.
The system has been developed by 8 West in partnership with the Ireland’s College of Medicine and Health at University College Cork (UCC), its ASSERT Centre and the renowned Tyndall Institute.
UCC’s ASSERT Centre enables clinicians to design, develop, deploy and trial innovative healthcare solutions in a simulated healthcare environment. The Tyndall National Institute is a leading European research centre specialising in integrated ICT hardware and systems.
Trials are being undertaken at Cork University Hospital.
“CUH Emergency Department staff are delighted to have helped pioneer an innovative 24 hour monitoring device like this,” says Professor Stephen Cusack, recently retired Professor of Emergency Medicine at University College Cork and emergency medicine consultant at Cork University Hospital.
“We are 24 hours on the front line of care daily, and it’s good to know that efforts like this are being made to support our wellbeing 24 hours a day too.”
8 West has extensive experience in developing remote monitoring safety and security systems.
The company, which has been in operation since 1998, specialises in providing technology service solutions to the healthcare and retail sectors to international clients such as insurers Anthem, Delta Dental and DentaQuest, and brands such as Estee Lauder and Ralph Lauren.
It is a product innovator too however, developing its own proprietary solutions. One of these is SafeTrx, which is now Europe’s leading tracking and alerting software platform for the marine sector and which was used in 625 rescue missions last year.
It is thanks to SafeTRX that 8 West has an established presence in the Middle East. A bespoke version of what was originally a marine product is now relied on by Dubai’s police force as a way to remotely monitor and leisure sailors in Dubai waters.
CREW is available on iOS and Android smart phones, Apple WatchOS and Google smartwatch operating system WearOS with the mSafety platform from Sony to follow soon. In developing it 8 West received technical and hardware support from a range of companies including Sony Network Communications Europe, Cambridge Wireless, Vodafone Ireland, Huawei, Davra, BlueBridge Technologies and PMD Solutions.
According to 8 West founder and co-chief executive John Murphy, the solution was developed from start to finish in just three weeks, “a Herculean effort from our employees” and a part of its contribution to the global crisis.
As such he believes an early warning system such as CREW, alongside measures such as social distancing and workplace deep cleaning, will be required for a long time to come as part of all employers’ duty of care to staff.
In the meantime, his goal is to make CREW available to as many frontline staff as possible around the world as soon as possible.
It has the potential to help not only individual medics but the wider hospital and nursing home communities and the general public too, says Murphy, who is due to meet with healthcare sector representatives from Oman, Kuwait and the UAE over the coming weeks.
In developing CREW 8 West didn’t just leverage its own SafeTRX technology, it leveraged Ireland’s uniquely collaborative technological eco-system, he points out.
CREW’s market expansion strategy is being supported by the Enterprise Ireland team in Dubai who are working closely with 8 West to identify optimal routes to market with key local partners.
According to Mike Hogan, Regional Manager Enterprise Ireland, “Markets across the Middle East are always keen to acquire cutting edge technologies and we think this is even more prevalent in the current situation fighting the spread of Covid-19. I’m sure 8 West’s CREW solution will play a big part in fighting the spread of the disease and protecting the frontline health workers who are doing an incredible job keeping our communities safe”.
Read more about the Irish companies using innovation to make a difference.
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