Another year of Capacity conferences draws to a close! Over 350 operations leaders came to our events in Toronto, London, and Melbourne – making 2024 our biggest Capacity yet.
We had dozens of speakers who showcased their own experiences with AI and insights across financial services, banking, healthcare and insurance – and we were also joined by sportspeople and Olympians to discuss how data enables them to create incremental gains, either scoring points on the rugby pitch or making up hundredths of seconds in the swimming pool.
We heard from experts in operations who spoke about how Decision Intelligence – with AI inside – is carving a new path in ops, and allowing for more efficient digital transformation and simplification, while arming individuals with the autonomy to succeed in tasks built for humans, rather than technology.
Delivering MORE, delivering better, and delivering faster…that’s ActiveOps.
Read on to find out more about the insights gleaned across our conferences.
Our keynotes
From sport to bespoke research, our keynotes had it all this year. To see more on how Joe Lydon and Stuart Pugh covered data, insights and AI across business and rugby sevens, watch the videos here.
Joe Lydon and the power of sport
As a proud sponsor of the GB7s women’s and men’s teams for the 2024-25 season, it was a true pleasure to have Performance Director Joe Lydon at all three conferences. He was able to highlight the synergies between ActiveOps and rugby, with data and analytics at the heart of this.
As a fundamental principle, Joe and his team look to implement the following process:
- Plan
- Do
- Review
- Do better – together
With the addition of ActiveOps analytics in their tech stack, the triumvirate of People – Purpose – Process within GB7s has become even more effective – which we are hoping sees a leap in success in try scoring, teamwork, and tournament progress throughout the season!
Professor Danny Samson and Stuart Pugh, and the future of ops – with AI inside
Across all three conferences, Chief Product Officer Stuart Pugh then took to the stage, joined by The University of Melbourne’s Professor Danny Samson on a virtual video link – presenting themselves as the “Statler and Waldorf” of the ops sector…but with a slightly more optimistic outlook!
The duo presented their findings on the future of AI in service operations, with independent research undertaken by the university and presented in a co-authored report titled “The future of financial services with operations as a competitive advantage: Fast, efficient and AI-enabled” – which is available to download here.
One of the key takeaways was from Professor Danny, who encouraged “continual learning” on AI across the whole business, to ensure all the workforce is brought along the tech journey within ops, rather than merely those who are more predisposed to change and digital advancements.
For Stuart, it was important for ops leader to be “less bleeding edge, and more leading edge” – systems must be tried and tested, and in over the medium- to long-term, allows for more success than jumping on the hype and achieving less than you could have.
Our products
Product showcase and labs
Across our conferences, we had three ringmasters ensuring that our product showcases were kept on track, after unleashing our product team to share what they’ve been working on, and what is in store for the future of ActiveOps. Jenny Jordan (Toronto), Anixa Harrison (London) and Jourden Howard (Melbourne) took their respective audiences through the numerous ways that our ever-evolving products have had AI baked into them, enabling Decision Intelligence can grow with each company that implements our product stack.
This will ensure our platform allows our customers to make the best decisions for their operations, every time.
Our most exciting update was Opi, our virtual AOM coach that can answer a user’s questions, make recommendations based on real-time data, and even automatically generate actions to keep things on track.
Other exciting updates included:
- Smart Skills, an AI-generated skills catalogue for your organization that’s constantly refreshed and available in real time, taking the pain away from manually updating
- Executive Insights, decision intelligence supporting senior business leaders to make critical digitals and helping to remove silos and prove operation’s impact to the rest of the business
- Business Planning, to support long term planning and help deal with the what if events, with 9 dynamic scenarios available to apply to your base plans and help plan with ease and accuracy CaseworkiQ’s
- Early Warning System helping remove the complexity in ensuring no SLAs are missed with complex case work
Afternoon sessions
We had a variety of panels in the afternoon – from one-to-ones with Ops Game Changers, right through to panels of senior ops leaders. These took our audiences through experiences with ActiveOps products, alongside predictions for the future of service ops now AI is ubiquitous in business. For a breakdown of videos from each event, head here.
Fireside Chat: An interview with an Ops Game Changer
After lunch, we immediately jumped into a fireside chat with an Ops Game Changer – those individuals who have primarily led the charge in overseeing digital transformation in their businesses.
CIBC Mellon’s Jeremy Hulme, Fidelity International’s Ben McManus, and Rabobank’s Krystal Oliver each discussed how they forged a path within their organizations to find that one source of truth in a tool that could “do it all,” after using so many self-built tools with outdated data and low-level insights.
The key point that shined through within these fireside chats across all three conferences was about employing the right data, and indeed becoming more data-centric as a business – to improve decision-making. So much of operations can tend to fall into a predictable pattern, where decisions are made on previously seen events that are similar, or on hunches due to the speed at which decisions need to be made. But with data, you can prove a point efficiently, consistently, and see an improvement over each week, month or quarter.
A final takeaway from these fireside chats: Ben McManus said: “To anyone thinking about starting on this transformational journey…the key action is to start. Have integrity – and get on with the change!”
Panel discussion: With AI inside, what will the future operations team need to look like
One of the more engaging discussions of each event came in this, ‘future of ops’ panel. With three guest speakers at each conference, there was certainly a division of opinion and some healthy conversation about what the future ops team would look like, from the point of view of each customer or partner.
From the external viewpoint, one of the key themes that each speaker had discovered was the worry about job displacement, or AI taking over a workforce’s jobs to the point that they would no longer be needed. But Microsoft’s Matt Quinn made a very good point: “Regardless of how advanced technology and AI become, compassion and critical thinking are two human factors which will always remain key to any business.”
However, as with the keynote between Stuart and Danny, there was a consensus that we have “bring people along for the journey” – asking them what can change within the business. When you’re implementing wholesale change in business, the most engaged people will become managers of that change – if people aren’t excited about the future of a business, they will become barriers to that change.
AI will ultimately bring change less by product, and more by process. Easy admin tasks can be picked up by automation – some of which is already in place, and some of which is yet to be distilled into an AI-appropriate job – which leaves more space for humans to do the jobs that only they can.
A final point was made about AI: ultimately, it’s still a big algorithm which is making these jobs easier – and after all, it’s only as clever as the person programming it!
Panel discussion: Driving sustainable benefits
As part of the ActiveOps Awards 2024 – an event which took place on the evening of each conference this year – we introduced the MORE3 Award. This is for those ops leaders who, 3 years+ in, continue to extract MORE value and drive continuous transformation, proving that operations is central to performance excellence and customer experience.
The MORE3 finalists from each region joined us on stage to discuss how they have maintained continuous and sustained benefits in their businesses over the time that they have been customers of ActiveOps.
An overarching theme from each of our finalists is around data; how, over three years – and in some cases, much longer than that – customers have been able to use more up-to-date data, which in turn allows for more timely insights and recommendations for transformational change. This data, in the words of SBV’s Suleiman Asvat, “gave integrity to work, allowing employees to share benefits”.
The same goes for decision-making. When starting work with data and building up trust with what you have, it’s hard to really place all of your bets on the data – experience and hunches can often feel safer. Gemma Carter, Director of Operational Excellence at SS&C, mentioned that “the longer you’re using data, the more comfortable you become with it” – showing that over time, decision-making can be more efficient, and more effective, with data added onto this.
And now with the advent of AI, these processes only increase in efficiency once more, as our customers are able to double down on what they can achieve in the same amount of time.
Panel discussion: Operational excellence and the power of AI
The following panel discussions centred around turning data into insights, and leveraging AI to drive decision-making. These three discussions were more informal, and each guest was one who was presenting a MORE Story in real life – one of our many testimonials from our customer base, who have featured across our business to showcase the power of Decision Intelligence.
In Toronto, BNC’s Jasmine Primi and TD Bank’s Jenna Tattersall discussed how the two businesses have actually worked together to share insights and allow AI to enhance decision-making across banking in Canada in general. London’s panel saw Dan Carroll from Xcentuate join with AIB’s Jane Lynch to promote the power of insights to bring about operational excellence – a goal that AIB have been able to work towards thanks to the support of our Irish partners.
Finally, Melbourne saw Patti Eyers – in Bhavesh’s words, a “true visionary” – take to the stage to discuss how First Mortgage Services is using real-time data to enhance their decision-making, and come out on top against its competitors.
Our Olympians
From Paris 2024 to Capacity24!
For the final fireside chat – and likely the moment our attendees were waiting for! – each conference was joined by an Olympian who represented their country in the pool at Paris 2024’s swimming events.
Toronto saw three-time Olympian Javier Acevedo take to the stage, with Head of Banking for North America, Jeff Bonaventura. Having been a Canadian Olympics team member for Rio, Tokyo and Paris, it led to some fascinating insights into how the Olympics team itself has evolved from a data perspective, leading to increased accuracy in tracking and individual development.
In London, Olympic gold medalist and World Champion Matt Richard MBE joined Rebecca Hughes who, at the age of 21, was part of the 4 x 200m men’s relay team who became the first British team to have defended an Olympic relay title in swimming or athletics in the history of the Games. He spoke of his pride in this defense, his frustration – and determination – in the 200m freestyle, where he has got his eye on the gold in Los Angeles. He recalls the start of his career being analytics that were merely “being at this time at 50m and this time at the end of the race…go figure” to now being analyzed by each individual stroke of a lap, and how these incremental changes can see him cut an extra 0.3s over a period of four months of training.
Finally, in Melbourne, Lani Pallister spoke with APAC Managing Director Anna Itsiopoulos about her gold at Paris, overcoming COVID while at the Games(!), and how insights into her performance throughout each heat enabled her and her team to take the top spot in the 800m freestyle relay.
All three Olympians had unique stories to tell. Notably, the overarching theme for each individual athlete was that the people that surround them – whether that is their immediate teammates who encourage and spur each other on, or the wider training team that provide the feedback through data and advice – are huge in enabling the success to continue. That, and the fact that each of them thoroughly enjoys what they do, and wants to do it, day in day out.
A huge thank you – here’s to 2025!
And that’s a wrap! What a whirlwind October we had, making sure ops leaders globally were able to see how ActiveOps is helping customers and sponsors to achieve MORE: MORE efficiency, MORE results, and MORE success.
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