Black Friday and Cyber Monday have become pivotal dates in the global retail calendar, reshaping consumer behaviour in the lead-up to Christmas. Though still a highly anticipated moment in the calendar (according to Mintel UK spending during the 2023 Black Friday period increased 7.3% year-on-year to an estimated £13.3 billion) consumer perceptions have shifted. Initially seen as opportunities for substantial savings, scepticism over the strength of some Black Friday deals has grown. Many consumers believe prices are artificially inflated before discounts or that better deals can be found throughout the year. 

Behaviour has also shifted during the period after Black Friday. Research suggests more than half of consumer spending during the Black Friday period is now predicted to go on Christmas presents and the British Retail Consortium noted that in 2023, many households subsequently reduced Christmas spending following early momentum for the event. As consumer fatigue has grown around traditional Black Friday activity, an increasing number of consumers are beginning to express concern over the carbon footprint associated with Black Friday activity. For example, the co2 created by producing, transporting and using an average laptop is 331kg, a statistic which is unlikely to feature in the marketing for any of the 83 million laptops expected to be sold worldwide this year. 

Furthermore, independent research indicates the fleeting nature of impulse sales events can add up to bad news for the environment. One study suggests that less than 65% of people make use of their Black Friday purchases a year later, meanwhile delivery alone for these online deals in the UK releases the same co2 as 215 flights from London to Sydney.

As consumers become more aware of how their actions impact the environment, a number of popular, more sustainable alternatives to Black Friday have emerged, Green Friday is one movement which focuses on promoting responsible and sustainable consumption. Its purpose is to emphasise recycling, supporting local businesses, buying artisanal products, and second-hand shopping.  The movement also encourages consumers to shop from brands that have a positive impact on the planet. Other alternatives which have emerged include Giving Tuesday and Buy Nothing Day. Giving Tuesday is held on the Tuesday following Black Friday, and it seeks to celebrate the action of giving, whether that’s food, money, second-hand objects or volunteering time for an activity. Meanwhile Buy Nothing Day directly challenges the consumerism of Black Friday, encouraging shops and brands to close their businesses for the day instead.

With 62% of consumers saying they were willing to change their purchasing behaviour to reduce their environmental footprint, well known retailers are now beginning to implement strategies that make their Black Friday offerings more sustainable, combining Black Friday deals with sustainable principles in innovative ways. Here are some which have caught our eye:

1. Electrical retailer Currys ran a 2023 Green Friday event offering discounts on over 140 energy-efficient home appliances. They also provide free in-store recycling and collection of old appliances when delivering new ones.
2. Clothing company Asket takes the Buy Nothing Day approach, and instead uses its social media channels to educate followers on the environmental problems caused by the fashion industry.
3. Netherlands-based home and garden retailer Dille and Kamille have a unique approach to Green Friday. The European retailer closes all stores and websites in Netherlands, Belgium and Germany on Black Friday and staff members take to the streets to clean up litter around their stores instead. 
4. Ethical online retailer agood company runs a Green November offering a flat 15% saving across their sustainably manufactured ranges, and planting a tree for every €10 spent, in addition to their year-round ‘tree per order’ policy.
5. UK clothing brand Lucy & Yak has been donating to the Fior Di Loto Foundation, which supports girls in rural areas of Northwest India, since 2018. This year, they have invited the girls to provide sketches which have been incorporated into clothing designs. 100% of the profits from this range, plus half of all profits between 21-27^th November, will be donated to the foundation.  

Whilst many retailers and brands continue to use Black Friday activity to compete for customer attention, more businesses are beginning to incorporate sustainable alternatives or additions into their Black Friday activity. Doing so allows retailers to demonstrate a shift towards more responsible consumption and business practices. Popular initiatives can involve including circular economy schemes as part of customer messaging (such as Ikea’s re-shop and re-use service) or following Levi’s example by providing customers with advice on mindful consumption, upcycling, donation or repair. By offering sustainable additions or alternatives to their Black Friday plans, retailers and brands can reflect changing consumer values, and demonstrate their desire to address environmental concerns, whilst still participating in the holiday shopping season. 

Discover the benefits of this next-generation approach to process mining.

Keeping pace with the rapidly advancing digitalisation of processes can prove to be an enormous task. As the never-ending quest to become more efficient leads many businesses to a more digital and data-driven approach, the sheer volume of data output from various systems brings a string of new challenges along with it. 

Object-centric process mining (OCPM) is the next-generation novel approach to case-centric process mining (CCPM), designed to explore relationships between various organisational functions, such as accounting, payments, and third-party vendor-dependent processes. In comparison to CCPM, it operates by recognising events as being related to multiple objects (e.g., sales orders, production orders etc.) instead of linked to a single case (each process instance), and therefore, overcomes the limitation of process convergence and divergence to deliver a holistic view of end-to-end business processes.

By capturing multiple objects in process analysis, OCPM helps visualise how interdependencies between functions like sales orders, invoices, and payments create bottlenecks or delays. This allows businesses to identify not just isolated inefficiencies but broader systemic issues that span multiple departments.

Building on the CCPM technique of extracting event log data from transactional systems, like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM), OCPM enables users to better understand the complex overlaps of business operations. Extracting data from different systems allows a company to knit together a digital twin of their processes to identify and visually track process journeys in real-time, all in a single platform.

In process mining, a digital twin is a virtual representation of the company’s processes in real-time, based on event log data from various systems. It allows for tracking and visualising business processes as they occur, which is crucial for identifying inefficiencies.

How do the functions of CCPM and OCPM compare?

How does OCPM work?

To demonstrate the true power of OCPM and its benefits, let’s use a hypothetical scenario within the financial sector.

Suppose a team of senior managers at a large financial institute want to better understand their Order-to-cash process (O2C) and its impact on the overall business. Their back-office consists of typical operations like accounting, legal, payment processing etc., which come under the umbrella of O2C, spanning internal, third-party vendors and client-facing functions. Tracking all the activities encompassing various systems and functions would prove cumbersome using traditional analytical methods.

The team would first utilise the CCPM approach, with the goal of bringing clear visibility to their O2C process by extracting the event data from the systems involved to construct the as-is process. The construction of a digital twin would allow users to discover the disparity between how processes are functioning versus how they perceived those processes to function, as not all activities within processes follow the designated sequences. Process mining platforms extract every sequence that occurs within a process, revealing sequences that occur less frequently and, crucially, those that deviate from the standard process. The visual output is a complex web of conforming and non-conforming processes, highlighting key pain points within the O2C journey. Whilst this approach will highlight the potential opportunities for improvement within O2C, it will fail to capture the complex relationship between functions such as accounting and payment processing, each with its sub-processes attached to other IT systems. For example, payment processing might rely on an external vendor to provide identity verification before the issuance of a product by the company to its customers.

The case-centric process mining would allow the team to realise that their O2C process is being impacted by processes that sit outside the standard O2C process making it inefficient. To help them dive deeper into the problem of inefficient O2C the team would next deploy OCPM. This will enable the senior managers to construct data models that reflect reality, allowing them to view the complex relationship between functions such as invoices and sales orders. In the example above, payment processing is not an isolated function. Instead, it has an intricate relationship with other functions, such as O2C, invoice generation and accounting. Where case-centric process mining answered how the O2C process can be improved, OCPM will provide answers to more complex and impactful questions like ‘What will be the effects of delayed payment processing on the revenue forecast?’

For instance, if the delayed payment process in O2C is tied to external vendor identity verification, OCPM can reveal the broader financial impact, such as how delays in this stage impact days sales outstanding (DSO) and cash flow forecasting. This granular insight helps businesses predict revenue fluctuations more accurately and take corrective actions pre-emptively.

In conclusion…

Case-centric process mining operates as a foundational enabler to identify process-specific improvement opportunities. OCPM on the other hand, represents an opportunity for organisations to magnify the benefits that process mining can bring. It highlights the relationship between different functions instead of isolating processes like O2C to understand an issue intricately linked to other functions. Better understanding of cross-function relationships will help uncover opportunities to drive operational efficiency, increase employee productivity, improve enterprise profit margins, and shift the needle on key performance metrics. Combined with the existing process mining capabilities like conformance checking and predictive analytics, OCPM will transform how users view their operational performance and allow them to capitalise on opportunities previously eclipsed by their traditional analysis.

How can Capgemini help?

Our value-driven holistic approach to process mining is built on our extensive data and analytics expertise, and our deep technology and engineering knowledge, combined with proven strategy and domain acumen. We partner with some of the world’s leading process mining technology vendors to deliver best-in-class tailored solutions for our clients. We provide tool-agnostic process mining services, which include tool comparison and selection to match business objectives. Strategic partners include Celonis, Mehrwerk, and SAP Signavio. Capgemini is proud to be a Celonis Platinum Partner, strengthening our capability to accelerate outcome-driven transformation at scale across the value chain.

Our work spans a wide range of industries where we have helped clients worldwide leverage the real business potential of advanced process data and modern analytics in the supply chain, shop floor, procurement, engineering, and more. We keep clients engaged and invested throughout, ensuring a journey to efficient operations and tangible business outcomes.

To discover more about our process mining expertise and solution offering, head over to our dedicated solution page which contains further thought leadership articles, blogs, client stories and a snapshot of some use cases. https://www.capgemini.com/solutions/process-performance/

Reach out to our process mining team here to start the conversation today.

Welcome to this short series on the future of Asset Management.

In our third and final blog, Amy Muir Consultant, Energy Transition and Utilities, and James Redhead, Senior Consultant Energy Transition & Utilities, explore why growing numbers of energy and utilities businesses are placing environmental protection goals at the heart of their decision making.

In the energy and utilities world, assets that require management have always been defined in traditional terms, starting with those countless items of physical infrastructure and equipment needed to build and operate huge networks of pipes, pumping stations, sewers and treatment works, and in the many forms of power generation and distribution.

Added to these more recently are the myriad IT and OT hardware, software, systems and devices that we use to operate our networks and deliver supplies and services to customers. In the last few years, technologies like AI and IoT have been added to the inventory too.

Today a potentially game changing philosophical shift is gaining momentum, reframing our view of what constitutes an asset, with the result that a new asset category is emerging – namely our shared natural resources.

By positioning the features of our natural landscape at the heart of our thinking and applying proven asset management principles to the way we relate to them, in combination with the deployment of breakthrough technologies, we have a mouthwatering opportunity to transform the way we protect and enhance our environment. 

Historically, our natural resources have been on the receiving end of our activities. And though our industry has made huge improvements in the way it respects and protects the environment, the landscape has remained at the margins of our thinking, at the end of countless processes, places where the goal was to manage our impacts at “acceptable” levels, set by regulators.

The philosophical shift that I refer to turns this traditional model on its head. Using a water industry example, in asset management terms, by defining a river as a system and the water quality within it as the asset, this positions water quality as the driver of all associated activities, a benchmark against which we plan and execute all operations to achieve our agreed water quality standard.

Uniting around a common goal

To use a sporting analogy, the leading teams in the Tour de France have one goal in mind, from the outset. That is to see their rider in the yellow jersey on the Champs Elysee. Every decision the team takes works backwards from that single vision, triggering coordinated activities to achieve the goal.

By setting a water quality standard that’s achievable and meets all regulatory and environmental protection criteria, just like the cycling team, everyone can unite around that goal, focusing on how each upstream activity contributes to success. And this “water quality as the asset” model can be applied throughout the energy and utilities sector, by using environmental targets as the catalyst for concerted action.

Positioning water quality as the asset will also, I believe, accelerate the deployment of the technologies that are producing transformational results. And that acceleration will fast track significant benefits for the environment as already stated, but also for the water and wastewater companies, consumers and society as a whole.

Rivers are cherished as iconic symbols of a healthy countryside, and as a result, subject to intense scrutiny by the public, media and pressure groups. The reputations of those companies that put the achievement of environmental standards at the heart of their operations are more likely to be enhanced. The rapid deployment of multiple digital technologies will improve performance and cut costs, reducing the capital investment burden, while also ensuring regulatory compliance and reducing the need for customers’ bills to rise.

Reducing monitoring costs by 75%

At Capgemini, we’re working with the sector to bring these exciting developments to reality, in particular to assist water companies to meet their statutory Continuous Water Quality Monitoring obligations. Addressing this issue alone will require the industry to spend around £10 billion on river water quality monitoring in the decade to 2035, and a further £50 – 60 billion in mitigating root causes of water industry driven pollution.

Already we can see a future where, in the water industry, the need for traditional physical assets will be reduced by 50%, producing a 75% reduction in through life costs.

These remarkable results will be achieved by using advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence solutions, alongside a growing cluster of earth observation satellites and proven novel sensing technologies. In the monitoring arena alone, we believe we can reduce current typical costs by 75%. Global partnerships will enhance our access to diverse datasets to provide the insights required to make sound decisions.

Utilising a model-based solution with predictive analytics, water utilities will visualise real-time river catchment health and take informed, proactive steps to reduce the frequency of events and mitigate the impacts of those that cannot be prevented.

A modelled solution will provide scenario planning capability to assess macro changes to the river catchment, measuring for example the impact of urban and industrial development, agricultural land use, and the increasingly extreme effects of climate change.

To this end we’re working in partnership with stakeholders across the sector to develop a suite of what we are calling “Smart Rivers” capabilities to help achieve our vision of healthy rivers and watercourses, including Next Generation Monitoring to provide proven, trusted data and Smart Accountability, focusing on pollution source identification.

In the meantime, if you would like to know how we can support you to achieve healthy and smart rivers, please get in touch to understand why Capgemini is your number one trusted business and technology transformation partner for the job.

Explore our ‘Future of Series’ blog page, click here to learn more.

Reinvest billions in your assets by driving data transfer efficiencies.

Imagine a world in which your capital delivery alliances received trusted information so smoothly that they could start a project with the highest quality data possible. Imagine the operational part of your business was set up to receive the high-quality digital asset data your capital delivery alliances sent back.

These ideas may seem simply “nice to have” right now, but this shift in digital efficiency is crucial as the water capital delivery market skyrockets from approximately £51billion in AMP7 to £88billion in AMP8 – putting pressure on businesses to deliver twice the investment while also meeting increasingly ambitious regulatory outcomes. The water industry is not alone; supply chains are stretched across other utilities industries to meet a similar scale of increase in the next 5-10 years.

What’s needed now is to bridge the capacity gap created by scale and supply chain constraints. We need to drive different thinking in the market by introducing different types of delivery practice and increasing digital collaboration and continuity.

And we can use these to improve information management throughout the entire asset lifecycle and address the two main pain points of the current water owner/operator and delivery alliance relationship: inefficiency at the information delivery stage; ineffective content at the handover stage.

Challenge one: Inefficient client/delivery alliance information exchange.

In the current setup, large siloes between client and delivery alliance often lead to data loss, duplication of effort, and the potential for missing out on crucial information needed for informed decision-making. The resulting recapture and revalidation lead to a sharp drop off in momentum at the first interface.

What’s the solution?

Smoothing that interface is crucial to prove a solid on-ramp to delivery. Enabling capital delivery alliances to start a project with the best, most trusted information possible.

It’s a challenge we’ve answered for a water company operating in England – designing a comprehensive, integrated Information Management program through extensive stakeholder engagement, detailed workshops, process mapping, piloting, and iterative improvements.

This implementation saw almost immediate improvements in efficiency with streamlined information exchange processes that unlocked cost savings and reduced the need for additional recruitment to meet greater demands.

Standardised collection and management practices ensured high-quality asset data, which is essential for optimising operations and decision-making, while also improving the transfer and retention of the information gathered from capital delivery. Collaboration was smoother thanks to improved information sharing across various teams, which is now empowering individuals, breaking down silos, and facilitating smoother knowledge transfers. Additionally, the company benefits from increased compliance and alignment with adherence to ISO 19650 standards, all while ensuring consistency with industry best practices that align with its official information charter.

Challenge two: Ineffective use of rich content.

Though improving, the water industry is a few years behind industries like manufacturing and aerospace in their design practices, leading to the second pain point in the owner/operator and delivery alliance relationship.

At the end of the project, the delivery alliance is ready to hand over strong capital delivery generated content which would be of high value to operational colleagues. For example, 3D models, a wealth of asset information, all the procurement plans, costs, delivery programs, health & safety risks, etc. However, the operational part of the client’s business isn’t set up to receive this rich digital data and ends up with 2D paper and PDF content instead.

What’s the solution?

Over the next five years of investment, owner/operations should be enriching their asset data, rather than losing it or paying for it but not getting it.

We’re working across the industry to upskill clients in the rich content their alliances are creating and solidify their understanding of the value it would be to their operational and asset management businesses.

The idea is to use capital delivery as the vehicle to feed the organisation with high-quality asset data. To update asset and data systems and increase the general asset data quality by asking for the right stuff up front and then using it in a digital enterprise.

The future of intelligent capital delivery.

Bringing together these two ideas, you can take a holistic view of your digital information lifecycle and see a continuous increase in uptick of data quality for both owner/operators and capital delivery alliances.

Capital delivery projects get more efficient, asset management and asset operations/maintenance are improved because they have higher quality asset data to start with, and you can also make better operational decisions.

In terms of tangible benefits, the client we referenced in challenge one saw a 30% process efficiency simply through improvements to existing data transfer. Tested on a very small sliver of the portfolio, they unlocked around £8 million in addressable benefit over the next five years.

Given they estimated around 10-20% of the value of their capital programme was spent gathering asset information and intervention planning, driving efficiencies and increasing the general level of asset data quality could unlock billions across the UK water market. Which could be reinvested in assets and asset improvement.

How do we get there?

To achieve this future, we need a more intelligent owner/operator who is more deeply integrated with their delivery vehicles and supply chains. Owner/operators must recognise that an increasing part of their business is not just operating assets but also in delivery of new assets. As such, owner/operators must transform their businesses to reflect this, rather than just fully relying on the supply chain to perform that function.

This will require a capability development engagement to understand missing capabilities across their systems, people, and processes. Stay tuned for the next instalment of our ‘Future of Capital Delivery’ series, in which we’ll explore the changing roles of the owner/operator and the Digital Delivery Partner in the modern capital delivery lifecycle.

In the meantime, get in touch to understand why Capgemini is your number one trusted business and technology transformation partner to help you use more data-driven and digital practices to increase the efficiency of each individual resource, bring in new types of thinking, and take innovation into AMP8.

Explore our ‘Future of Series’ blog page, click here to learn more.

Tech4Positive Futures is Capgemini’s challenge to colleagues across the business to drive positive change through innovation. It seeks out the best technology solution that can create positive futures by addressing some of the most pressing planetary and societal challenges.

Earlier this year the UK shortlisted four projects to be judged by a panel of leaders across the local business. At the end of September, the judging panel agreed on the one UK entrant to be put forward to compete against all other entries from across the business globally. The final winners of the Tech4Positive Futures Challenge at a global level will be announced later this year. The winning teams will then get the opportunity and support from our organisation to build the idea into reality.

Ahead of the global announcement from Capgemini Group, I want to share the most impactful and innovative solutions we shortlisted and highlight the colleagues and partnerships behind them. The shortlisted entries were:

Smart Camera Traps

• The Team: Isobel Ashbey, Gareth Stoyle, Katie Spimpolo and Stuart Watson
• The Challenge: Conservationists manually collect image data, however it can remain unanalysed until months or years after collection, limiting the opportunity to act on its insights.
• The Solution: A smart, modular camera trap system that could be used in any conservation context around the world. Equipped with edge-AI to provide instant, actionable insights, and modularity, enabling limitless applications for numerous use cases.
• The Partner: Cambridge Conservation Research Institute (CCRI)

Sea Sea TV

• The Team: Sarath Latham, Charlotte Long, Michelle Baldelli, Howard Roscoe, Csilla Elekes and Alan Law
• The Challenge: The Ocean Conservation Trust needs to accelerate the mapping of seagrass meadows across the UK to inform their restoration efforts.
• The Solution: An app to enable those using the waters around the UK, including divers, sailors, kayakers, etc., to upload images and video footage of seagrass for analysing. This would help increase coverage and ensure effort was focused on the coastal areas in greatest need.
• The Partner: Ocean Conservation Trust

Pollination Game

• The Team: Emily de Courtenay Wellum, Tim Angelini and Sarah O’Donnell
• The Challenge: How to empower a generation of young people with knowledge and actions to protect bees and enhance biodiversity.
• The Solution: Like bees collecting nectar and spreading pollen, children would play the game to input biodiversity data to a global open-source database. This data would enhance the global understanding of biodiversity, support policy makers and local and global conservation initiatives.
• The Partner: University of Stirling

Calypso 2.0

• The Team: Nathan Harris, Ella Mann, Alex Diaz and Mustapha Mustapha
• The Challenge: How can we build a better picture through data collection of human noise pollution within our oceans, which injures and kills marine organisms and disrupts behaviour.
• The Solution: An affordable acoustic monitoring system which could be deployed across our oceans to help us track the noise pollution. And in so doing, help industry, policy makers and the science community to make informed interventions to reduce the devastating impact of this lesser-known pollutant.
• The Partner: University of Exeter

We’re pleased to announce that team Calypso 2.0 have been recognised as the UK’s entry for the Tech4Positive Futures Challenge 2024 for their affordable acoustic monitoring system.

Congratulations to Nathan, Ella, Alex and Mustapha and their project partner, Dr. Matthew Witt of the University of Exeter. I know everyone wishes you all the very best as you progress to the global competition.

And well done and thank you to all the teams and partners who took part in identifying the issues and collaborating and innovating for positive impact.

Learn more about our social value and digital inclusion programmes in the UK.

Senior data executives from top consumer products and retail brands share how data and AI are transforming their business at Big Data LDN London as part of the Capgemini-hosted panel discussion, in partnership with Women in Data®.

The best retailers are like mind-readers. They know what their customers want to buy and how much they will spend. But companies don’t need to be telepathic to grow their profits: they only need to put the right data to work in the best way.

That might mean something specific such as using AI to price match competitors, or something as general as improving an organisation’s data literacy, according to four senior data executives at this year’s Big Data LDN conference. They were being quizzed by Claire Williams, Vice President, Analytics and AI, Retail and Consumer Product at Capgemini Invent.

For best results, every employee needs to become a data champion, according to Steph Bell, Director of Analytics at J Sainsbury. “We need to be bringing data closer to the business and bringing business closer to the data,” she said.

Leaders must also be “data fluent” if they want their businesses to be competitive, said Emma Duckworth, Head of AI and Data Science at healthcare company Haleon, which owns brands such as Panadol and Sensodyne toothpaste. “The most impressive managers are those who make data-driven decisions,” she told the audience. “They understand it and they prioritise how data is being used.”

Real time, competitive pricing

A key factor in improving commercial performance as John Lewis Partnership (JLP)  enters the Golden Quarter (Black Friday, Christmas and January sales) is the relaunch of its “never knowingly undersold” price promise, based on an AI-led assessment of what 25 competitors are charging for 30,000 products, in store and online.

“The power of AI has enabled us to make sure the John Lewis team can factor in internal and external data, plus other factors, at the same time, in real time,” said Barry Panayi, Chief Data and Insight Officer at JLP. “People in the commercial team will make commercial decisions on where we should sit versus competitors. AI enables them to do that quickly without lots of manual effort and risk.”

At Sainsbury’s, data has long been at the heart of its Nectar loyalty programme. Last year’s introduction of personalised pricing for Nectar cardholders changed how the retailer rewards its customers, said Bell. “In the Nectar app, you get hyper-personalised offers driven by algorithms that understand how you shop and what offers you’ll want.”

Attention to customers remained paramount, she added: “Amid all the technical brilliance of AI, you have to be obsessed with your customers so you can make the right decisions about where to best deploy your technology.”

Clearer language, safer products

At Haleon, AI is being used to enhance inclusivity and representation in digital advertising content “One barrier to health inclusivity is health literacy,” said Duckworth. “We are using AI to make sure information about our products is accessible and of the appropriate reading age. Our Health Inclusivity Screener tool evaluates content on health literacy and representation criteria.”

Meanwhile, GenAI is also helping Haleon to be more efficient when it comes to translations. “We built an AI powered internal translation product that is really making a difference to us as a global company,” she added.

AI needs well-structured data

For all the enthusiasm about the transformational impact of AI, participants cautioned that organisations need to structure their data for AI applications to work.

Simon Jury, vice-president of data and analytics at Asda, said there was a certain naivety among executives about what it means to use data as a decision-making tool. “It’s incumbent on us [in the data team] to have the right, clean data available in the right format at the right time for the people who will be making those decisions,” he said. “Training, data literacy and data culture are part of that. But it has to be top down and bottom up.”

Duckworth from Haleon agreed. “If you want to get the value from this amazing AI, you can’t avoid having clean, well-structured, well-organised data,” she said.

“Otherwise, something big will blow up because no-one has bothered to fix their data,” warned Panayi of JLP. “AI is going to make that much worse. When that happens, data management will get its renaissance.”

Data literacy for all

While Asda continues to migrate its data from Walmart’s IT systems to its own, Jury is most excited about what the future could mean in terms of non-technicians being able to interrogate complicated data without help from experts. “Having an English interface into complex datasets would mean non-techies could follow a meaningful train of thought with the data,” he said.

Everyone agreed that excitement over the arrival of AI was helping to change attitudes towards data. “AI – and even a lot of data and analytics – historically felt quite removed [from the rest of the business], a black box people couldn’t tangibly understand,” said Bell. “But GenAI is opening the door to a much wider conversation about data and all applications of AI.”

A huge thank you to Women in Data® for the opportunity to host this truly insightful panel discussion! To learn more, read our latest report exploring how organisations are harnessing the value of generative AI.

At Capgemini we want social value to make a real difference. We do this by bringing our digital expertise to inspire individuals and communities across the UK to learn new digital skills. This week, as part of our commitment to social value, we’re introducing our latest digital inclusion project in the UK – ‘Let’s Get Digital, Durham’, in partnership with Digital Unite. 

This is part of our mission to help bridge the digital divide in local communities and follows the successful programme of change in West Cumbria which commenced in 2022.

‘Let’s Get Digital, Durham’ will support local community groups to help others with digital motivation, confidence and skills. To enable this, it provides free training for staff and volunteers and a dedicated local co-ordinator, helping them to share ideas and opportunities in a community of best practice. The project has started with an initial cohort of five local organisations:

• Foundation for Good
• Livin
• The Fulforth Centre
• West View Advice and Resource
• Building Self Belief

Rebecca Lightburn from The Fulforth Centre, commented: “We were excited when we were asked to join Let’s Get Digital Durham. As a community centre who serves the young, the elderly and everyone in between, there’s always room for us to improve and develop our skills so that our community can reap the rewards. Also being able to offer our staff and volunteers CPD accredited courses is brilliant!” 

Funded by Capgemini as part of a contractual social value commitment, it will be supported by volunteers from across our business with clients and partners in the region also being invited to participate. The delivery will be managed through close collaboration with Digital Unite, specialists in digital inclusion who offer a range of products and services based on a ‘train the trainer’ approach. These include the Digital Champions Network, an online learning and engagement platform aimed at recruiting, training, and supporting Digital Champions.

Emma Weston, OBE, CEO of Digital Unite, said “Let’s Get Digital brings organisations together to help people who struggle with motivation and confidence in their ability to navigate an increasingly digital world. We’re really excited to be rolling out ‘Let’s Get Digital, Durham’. We’ve been working in partnership with Capgemini for many years now and their long-term commitment to digital inclusion has allowed us to grow and learn together and create flexible, adaptable frameworks to combat digital exclusion in multiple environments and make a real difference to people’s lives.”

We’re excited to introduce Capgemini’s latest social value project in the UK and together with Digital Unite, we are committed to helping bridge the digital divide. We know how impactful our long-term approach to digital inclusion can be to communities in the UK and look forward to connecting with the people and community groups across Durham to share crucial digital skills and encourage digital empowerment for all.

I am pleased to share that I have been provided with the opportunity once again to attend and host my own session at the Scottish Summit in Aberdeen next week. The Scottish Summit is a leading annual technology conference, typically held in Scotland.

Centred on Microsoft technologies like Power Platform, Azure, and Dynamics 365, the purpose of the Scottish Summit is to bring together global IT professionals, developers, and business leaders for expert-led workshops, keynotes, and sessions. The event highlights innovations in cloud computing, AI, automation, and data analytics, fostering collaboration and networking within the technology community. This year, the Scottish Summit is expected to be the biggest event yet, spanning across three days!

Last year, I led a panel discussion at the Scottish Summit that explored the career journeys and success stories of trailblazing women in the technology industry, with a focus on Dynamics 365 and Power Platform. As a junior and degree apprentice eager to learn from industry leaders, I posed questions from my own perspective, gaining invaluable insights from their experiences and achievements.

As a young woman in tech, I found their presence and our conversation both inspiring and motivating. This year, I’m excited to host another session, this time with a Microsoft Security MVP. Together, we’ll explore our journeys from beginners to leaders in our respective fields. Although quite nerve-wracking, public speaking has greatly boosted my confidence. Sharing my journey alongside a leader in the field will challenge me, but it’s a great opportunity to reflect on my growth and offer valuable insights from my apprenticeship and experience in Dynamics 365.

Not only am I excited to host another session at the Scottish Summit, but I’m also eager to attend sessions that focus on various technologies within the Microsoft stack. One session I’m particularly looking forward to is “How the CoE Starter Kit Can Help You Deliver a Governance Model That Works,” presented by Emma-Claire Shaw and Kieran Holmes. I anticipate gaining valuable insights from their real-life applications and applying the principles they teach to enhance governance in my own work. Another session I look forward to is Matt Collins-Jones panel discussion with Emma Claire Shaw and James Connolly on the “Power Platform Adoption in Large Organisations – The things we wish we knew before we started.” From this session, I hope to gauge further insights on how Power Platform is used in real-world scenarios for different industries and organisations

Having attended the Scottish Summit before, I’ve come to expect a keynote speaker each year who delivers a standout session on trending industry topics and technologies. This year, Scott Hanselman, VP at Microsoft, will be returning to Scotland to deliver his keynote, “AI: Hero or Villain.” I’m especially intrigued by the topic and eager to hear his insights on the impact of AI, relating to both the future opportunities and the challenges it presents. His perspective on AI’s dual potential as a force for good or harm will no doubt provide valuable food for thought. I’ve been exploring the backgrounds of key speakers and industry experts, eager to engage in conversations about industry trends, best practices, and career growth.

I’m continually inspired by my colleagues and mentors at Capgemini, and the supportive, inclusive environment within the MACE team has made my journey as an apprentice and a woman in tech both rewarding and exciting. The nurturing atmosphere encourages me to push my boundaries, explore new ideas, and fully embrace my passion for technology.

Being invited to host a session at the Scottish Summit for the second time is a significant milestone in my career, and it’s an honour to attend and represent Capgemini at such an esteemed event. My journey thus far is a testament to the investments, endless opportunities, and trust that Capgemini consistently places in me, for which I am deeply grateful. I look forward to continuing this journey, learning from my experiences, and making meaningful contributions in the field.

We’re currently hiring for a number of roles across the Microsoft practice, you can find out more here.

The fundamentals of hydrogen and its role in the global energy transition. 

Major momentum behind energy transition, fuelled by pressures to decarbonise, decentralise, and digitalise, has spurred innovation within the energy sector, as we hunt for alternative fuels to secure a more sustainable future.  

Much ado has been made about the role of hydrogen in this energy transition, as organisations worldwide implement new models based around: 

• Electrification. 
• Green hydrogen and biofuels. 
• Hydrogen for thermal engines. 
• Renewable energies for electrolysis. 
• Technologies other than electrolysis, such as biomass thermolysis. 
• Transportation of hydrogen via pipelines, trailers, decentralised energy, and platforms that enable peer-to-peer energy sharing. 

For those in the industry who last discussed chemical elements in a classroom, it’s time to get a firmer grasp on this high potential gas. Here, Francesca Gabriel, Senior Consultant at Capgemini, and Jack Taylor, Associate Consultant at Capgemini, explore the standard generation methods, potential applications, and common challenges for hydrogen. 

What is hydrogen? 

Hydrogen is the lightest of all chemical elements and, at standard conditions, is a colourless, odourless, tasteless, non-toxic, and highly combustible gas. Constituting a staggering 75% of normal matter in the observable universe, serving as the fuel for stars, hydrogen is present in almost all organic matter. Its gravimetric energy density of 120 MJ/kg exceeds that of fossil fuels and Li-ION batteries, which underpins the excitement surrounding hydrogen’s potential as a low-carbon energy source.  

Note: gravimetric energy density refers to the amount of energy stored per unit of mass – it’s often referred to as the specific energy. 

What are the different types of hydrogen and how are they produced?

In juxtaposition to its lack of colour and odour, hydrogen is typically classified due to its production method and carbon intensity as part of a colourful spectrum. This classification for hydrogen has been universally adopted to explain the difference between the various hydrogen production methods as the table below describes.

Green Hydrogen uses electricity generated from low carbon renewable sources (e.g., wind and solar) in electrolysers to produce hydrogen.  

• Varying loads across the day introduces challenges in the efficiencies of connected electrolysers. 
• Green hydrogen is typically the most expensive form of hydrogen at circa $3.2-8.65/kg. 
• Cost of green hydrogen production is heavily linked to the cost of the renewable electricity used in the electrolysis process. 

Purple/Pink Hydrogen is derived from nuclear power. The electricity/heat from the nuclear reactor is used to power electrolysers and produce hydrogen.  

• Unsubsidised prices for pink hydrogen are typically in the range of $2.7-5.4/kg. 
• Electrolysers connected to constant loads typically benefit from efficiency gains, making nuclear a potentially attractive option. 

Blue Hydrogen takes the CO₂ emitted from grey hydrogen production and stores it using Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) technologies – processes generally involving compression/liquidation of CO₂ before transportation by road or by pipeline into underground rock formations. 

• Blue hydrogen prices are generally comparable to grey hydrogen due to the 50-65% dependency on the price of natural gas in the region. 
• Prices of blue hydrogen typically vary from $2.8-3.5/kg. 

Grey Hydrogen is produced through Steam Methane Reforming (SMR), which breaks down methane (CH₄) to release hydrogen using high temperature steam. The carbon released through grey hydrogen production is on average 1.5 times less than black/brown hydrogen. 

• As of 2020, grey hydrogen provided 71% of global demand. 
• During SMR, CO₂ is released as a by-product which takes the carbon intensity of grey hydrogen to the region of 10kg of CO₂ produced per 1kg of grey hydrogen. 
• The cost of grey hydrogen is on average around $3.30/kg. 

Brown/Black Hydrogen is produced through a process called gasification, whereby Lignite or Anthracite (brown/black coal) is loaded into a gasifier alongside pressurised air and steam to produce a syngas from which hydrogen can be extracted. 

• It has the highest carbon intensive of hydrogen production methods, releasing 14-15kg of CO₂ per 1kg of hydrogen produced. 
• Average temperatures required for the gasification process are in the region of 700^oC, potentially increasing its carbon output, dependant on its power source. 
• The cost of brown/black hydrogen is, on average, $1-2/kg. 

The most prominent hydrogen production methods continue to rely on fossil fuels. To solve this problem, the world is currently exploring “low-carbon hydrogen” (such as green hydrogen or pink hydrogen), which has only marginal carbon emissions in the production process and is emerging as a promising tool for emissions reduction and sustainable development. 

A deeper dive into green hydrogen production

There are three ‘generations’ of electrolyser varying in technological maturity, electrolyte, and operating conditions, summarised in Figure 2.

Electrolyser integration and ancillary components 

Typically, electrolysers are incorporated into stacks, forming integral components of broader hydrogen generation systems. These stacks are accompanied by an array of ancillary components, including purifiers and de-ionisers. These elements collectively ensure the purity of reactants, a critical factor in optimising the efficiency of the hydrogen production reaction. This meticulous approach underscores the precision required to achieve optimal results in green hydrogen generation. 

Ultimately, the transition away from high carbon intensity hydrogen production methods (black, brown, grey) and the mass adaption of green hydrogen depends on electrolyser technology becoming more cost effective.  

How diverse are the use cases and applications for hydrogen?

Hydrogen has a plethora of use cases and typically offers the most promise in areas where electrification is not a feasible solution. Figure 3 showcases the key use cases where the integration of hydrogen could result in significantly lower CO₂ emissions.

In summary, hydrogen’s diverse applications hold the potential to drive transformative changes in decarbonising various sectors of the economy, from mitigating emissions in steel production to enabling grid stability and decarbonising transportation.  

What are the challenges in using hydrogen for decarbonisation? 

As well as showing significant promise for decarbonisation, there are still some major hurdles to hydrogen’s application at scale. Two key areas of contention are safety considerations and scalability (although this is by no means an exhaustive list of challenges).  

1. Safety – Hydrogen molecules have a very high diffusivity which means that if leaked, gas levels can quickly reach dangerous levels of combustibility. As such, it’s likely there will be different engineering considerations for hydrogen infrastructure compared to existing gas networks. Hydrogen can also cause embrittlement when stored in an untreated metal container; it will eventually force its way through the gaps with steel being particularly susceptible to this process. Embrittlement increases the likelihood of mechanical failure which could lead to a leak or explosion. The risk of embrittlement can be reduced by lining hydrogen-filled containers via electroplating. The nuanced behavioural characteristics of H₂ molecules require a level of safety standards that the current infrastructure may not meet. If true, that would mean significant investment to make infrastructure safety compliant.   
2. Scaling – Material costs to build electrolysers are one of the key factors driving the cost per kg of hydrogen. Catalysts are the most expensive materials in an electrolyser, with Iridium typically fetching circa £130,000 per kg. Building a 1MW electrolyser system capable of producing 400kg/day can therefore cost between £350,000 and £750,000. This would then produce only enough hydrogen to keep 250 cars on the road for 100 miles. Scaling this system to provide enough hydrogen for a fleet of vehicles might prove costly without incorporating subsidies. Together, the expenditure on ancillary components for an electrolyser system, management of electrolytes, infrastructure, and hydrogen storage all lead to higher costs for hydrogen usage compared to traditional fuels. 

Capgemini and hydrogen. 

Stayed tuned for the next instalment of our ‘Future of Hydrogen’ series, in which we’ll explore the economics of hydrogen and some of the associated scaling challenges. 

In the meantime, our industry experts have authored several in-depth reports on hydrogen and its role in decarbonisation. Download them here: 

• Unlocking the hydrogen age – explore the critical, engineering-specific challenges vital to creating a low-carbon hydrogen value chain, and the innovative concepts to surmount them. 
• Low-carbon hydrogen: A path to a greener future – learn more about how to capitalise on the opportunities green hydrogen creates. 
• The path to low carbon hydrogen – understand the market perspectives and strategies essential to decarbonated production of hydrogen. 

You can also hear some of our global perspectives on the topic, over on our YouTube channel:

• Why low-carbon hydrogen is a sustainable solution  
• Capgemini Invent Talks: The path to a green hydrogen future 
• Creating a hydrogen marketplace 

To see our hydrogen expertise in action, read our relevant case study on how we helped take Hyliko from concept to company to provide freight transportations companies with a more sustainable, carbon-negative alternative. Download it here: https://www.capgemini.com/news/client-stories/hyliko-powers-freight-transport-with-hydrogen/ 

Get in touch with one of the hydrogen team – Francesca Gabriel, Jack Taylor, or Nicole Alley – if you have a specific hydrogen-related challenge or want to explore options for decarbonising your business.  

Explore our ‘Future of Series’ blog page, click here to learn more.