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FT- Hitachi Digital Transformation Forum 2019

Ram Ramachander speaking at an event

Event location London

Event date Thursday, 27 June, 2019

The Aim - Helping business leaders navigate their digital journey. This Hitachi and Financial Times collaboration brought together C-Suite executives from strategy-based, technology, and
innovation roles to discuss how enterprises can reach seamless digital maturity.

The event provided visionary key speakers the opportunity to explore real-world benefits enabled by recent advancements in technology.

Numerous examples of high-impact IoT, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning system implementations illustrated how company strategies need to be aligned with our ever-developing digital world.

Informed Leadership - Ram Ramachander, Chief Commercial Officer, Social Innovation Business EMEA-CIS & Chief Digital Officer for Hitachi Europe, participated in a 1-1 Q&A session on how digital leaders might leverage emerging technologies to aid enterprises in becoming more relevant to their customers. He highlighted Hitachi’s unique and proven ability to harness its superior, original, technologies and products within integrated solutions that deliver optimised performance and operational automation to our global partners.

Digital Transformation - As data production and networks continue to expand, a key challenge facing all organisations is defining and mitigating the risks associated with data-driven innovation. An open panel discussion concentrated on answering several key questions:

  • How to enable our evolving data networks to remain flexible, robust, and secure
  • How to identify and filter the required information from the data flood that the IoT and digital transformation generates.
  • How to ensure the correct balance between extraction of value from data and potentially prohibitive security protocols

The Future of Work – A proven global pioneer in the field, Hitachi recognises a multi-stakeholder approach is required to deliver the full potential of Smart Cities and Spaces to their communities. Analysing how industry, academia, and national governments can interface cooperatively across society will support positive social change for us all.

Alongside fellow panel members from BT Enterprise, Direct Line Group, and the Royal Schiphol Group, Hitachi’s Naser Ali, Field CTO-Data Analytics & IoT, raised questions on:

  • How 5G rollout will facilitate improved workflow capabilities
  • How product, service, and business development will be affected by geopolitical uncertainty.
  • How to predict which processes, including workforce upskilling, will best aid enterprise-wide automation

Customer- Centric Innovation - Building an all-inclusive customer-centric business model is at the heart of our strategy.

Hitachi’s pioneering approach is improving and accelerating real-world decisions. Stena Line, one of Europe’s leading ferry companies, aims to be the world’s first cognitive travel corporation. Combining rail, road, and sea, its AI driven intermodal freight solutions, with extensive passenger operations, will play a vital role for tourism in Europe.

CEO Niclas Mårtensson’s presentation explained how innovative integration of Hitachi’s AI technologies with Stena Line’s highly experienced workforce continues to reduce costs and improve efficiencies. Jan Sjostrom, captain of the Stena Scandinavica: “AI should not be feared because it helps us, instead of replacing us. I think that is the biggest thing that we have learnt.”