Hi, my name is Kieran Gilmurray and I'm an AI and automation expert. Who you may have seen around the REC offices over the last numbers of months. But I was delighted to get to do a talk today on technology and how it's actually impacting the world and society and businesses today. So let me give you a quick summary of what we were talking about in the slightly longer session. So look for a moment It may seem odd, but I'm going to ask you to forget about the technology for a moment. The key bit is about being customer obsessed, understand what customer experience is, what customers value and then work out how to use great technology and great people to deliver an amazing service. That customers are in our instance, in the REC, members want to come back to and are willing to pay for. What I also talked about was how AI, data and technology will play an increasing role in every business. There isn't any company today that isn't being driven forward by technology. It's not about technology replacing people. It's about technology augmenting those individuals to allow them to even do more. Give the technology the boring bits, the grunt. It's about automating some of the tasks that are necessary. But if a machine can do it and do it better, let it do it. So we free ourselves up to spend time adding more and better value to our members or customers. We need to be more data driven in terms of our decision-making, I get that we are experts inside of companies. But once you put great data or as I call it decision insight into someone's hands and that requires a CRM with the right to access, it requires a CRM with the right data and an accurate data as well and it requires dashboards. But once you give people the data decision insight, they need to make a decision, you normally make a better decision than you would have. In the first instance. I want to talk about as well or we did talk about today about machines working harder. So there are things out there that should be doing some of the work that we're doing already, you know. So for example, chatbots answering basic questions, you know, day and night when customers or members want to ask the question, online buying online self service, all of those things are expected. People are very much an Amazon view of the world or a Netflix view of the world. They log in once they can search and find everything they want, they can do this at a time that suits them, they can pay for it whenever they want, they can leave comments and queries and join in and get support all digitally. It doesn't mean there isn't great people behind Amazon, but people want and are used to that experience. So then they want that across every interaction they come across and we're no different than the REC. Our digital and AI literacy needs to increase. Therefore, our skills in those areas need to improve. So we understand how to use these tools better. What works, what doesn't work, what are the risks and what are the benefits? I believe over the next number of months, the re will be putting a lot of investment into digital and skills training and work placement skills for everyone as well, which would be an exciting time and bring us up to where we need to be. If we're struggling in any of those particular areas. We're not fantastic to teach someone else because everybody's digital and literacy and AI skills will need to improve. A part of this is, look the talk today was mentioning that whilst we will do a lot of data and A I and digital work or digital delivery. There isn't an exhaustible amount of resources or time and therefore us being very ruthless for want of a better words about where we put our time, where we put our energy and where we put our investment is going to be absolutely key going forward. But it's an exciting time. I wouldn't be worried about technology or automation or anything like that. I'd be actually getting excited about how I can learn these new things. Bring these new tools into my work to allow me to concentrate on the bits of the task or the role of the job or the member experience. That is the most fun for me, the bit that I jump out of bed in the morning and want to do as opposed to the grunt or the grind that may or may not be in place of copying data between multiple spreadsheets or anything else. The other and the final message was, look, we absolutely need aligned business with an aligned technology strategy and an aligned people strategy. Once you get those three pieces together, those three legs of the stool, then you can deliver meaningful change for our members or our customers. When I say meaningful change it's about putting things digitally into the hands of our customers that they absolutely desire and want and are willing to pay for. So notice we've connected the front and the back end here as well. Customer obsession delivered through great digital means delivered by great people means that we will have an even greater business.
