Barnaby Nelson: So welcome back to the third episode of this podcast series. And it’s absolutely fantastic to have full crowd today of Marian, Christine, Randy, and Ryan rejoining us from the Milestone Group, RBC, and Citisoft respectively.
Today, we’re going to keep on drilling through the results of our asset owner transformation survey where the first episode we looked at the whole thresholds question around the current operating model that asset owners have today; the limitations of spreadsheets, where the thresholds are; and considerations around auditability, maturity, simplification, so on and so forth.
In the second episode, we talked a lot about then the pressures that are impacting onto that operating model, the macro pressures that asset owners are facing today, and we touched on this kind of existential question of, what is an asset owner there for today? Is it to be an investment management shop? Or is it to be a plan manager? And as a result, what that means in terms of risk management, treatment of ESG, and so on and so forth. And particularly for me, one of the quotes that stood out was just how are these asset owners investing in the companies that they want to be leading the world in 30 years’ time and how you actually turn that into an operating process.
So today really follows that continuum from operating model to pressures, to really, how things are turning into action today. So we’re going to go through how asset owners are taking a new approach to problem fixing, looking at the trade-offs they’re having to make along the way, and ultimately, the role of people and technology in that.
So to kick us off, one of the interesting or standout pieces of the research was that, if you look at all of the kind of key considerations that asset owners have in designing their transformation projects today, it’s not about costs, it’s not actually even about regulatory pressure; it’s about operational agility.
Now that’s a theme that we can expand on, but operational agility and risk management were the two leading criteria basically for project design, pointing to the fact that, actually, the change going on in the industry at the moment, it’s not about cost efficiency; it’s really about building in scale in order to help manage risk.
So to kick us off, perhaps starting with Australia first, what’s your take in terms of whether that resonates? And, Marian, how do you find that asset owners are kind of setting their agendas today with operational agility in mind?
Marian Azer: Great question, Barnaby. I think really the Australian market, being largely a DC market, has always tried to be operationally agile. And what I really mean by that is, really tried to deliver the best outcomes and returns for members whilst minimising risk and cost.
I think in terms of the current agenda, what’s really driving that is, obviously, they are consolidating. We’ve discussed that. They’re rationalizing. There are a number of regulatory pressures around making sure you’re doing things in the members’ best interests. And they’re also—I guess they’re being nudged by regulatory reform and really starting to think about what the future looks like and setting their agendas accordingly. And I think what’s front and centre is really looking at their scale, how they can use their scale and to be able to deliver returns in a very, I guess, risk-controlled way.
So I think what we’re really seeing is sort of a split in this market. We’re seeing the rise of the mega funds, and I would say there’s probably about 10 of them right now, or emerging to be about 10 of them. Lots of consolidation, both in the not-for-profit segment as well as in, I would say, with the for-profit or retail segment. And that’s really driven by the need to you have to be large, you have to have scale to be able to invest in your operational platform, your people, your processes, your technology, to be able to deliver a better outcome for members.
So I think really that’s what’s really driving this market, I would say, in terms of setting the agenda. And I would say insourcing or the appointments of professional investment professionals, CIOs, investment teams, where they’re setting that agenda that’s being obviously handed down from the board and the management team, we’re really seeing a sharp focus on, well, in order to deliver those types of returns, I need to have a sound front, middle, and back office. I need to have partners that can actually help deliver on those returns and those objectives out for members.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. And that people point, I think is a really interesting one to come onto. Just, Ryan, from your perspective in Canada, what’s your take in terms of how this operational agility kind of concept is actually materialising and what it looks like?
Ryan Silva: I think for us, we’ve seen a few clients and the agenda really depends on where they are in their current sort of lifecycle and the evolution of their technology. There are some that have really bold strategic ideas and are hiring consultants to come in and essentially map out the current state and deliver a future-state recommendation. And then they’ll sort of set action items and plans on how to get from the current state to the future state to be able to deliver on the new portfolio, which can include more private assets and so on. That’s one sort of bucket.
And then we have other clients who are more evolved. They’ve been at it for longer. They have more institutional knowledge, particularly around sort of middle-office functionality. So they’re tweaking in certain places to just get a little bit more scale out of it.
So we’re finding it’s highly dependent on where they are in their own journey and it varies. And the good thing is, like we’ve touched on before, there are different technologies that are out there that are emerging that can meet the different needs of the clients.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah. But I mean it’s a really fascinating point that we talked before about the kind of stages of maturity across the different markets, to your point. And, Randy, we were saying that, just given that the U.S. market has arguably reached scale—a large number of funds have reached scale already, do you find that that’s playing out? I mean, how do the large-scale players treat the agility question?
Randy McGathey: I think they are mature and sort of at a stage where we think sometimes in terms of second- and third-time homebuyers. They’ve been through the technology cycle more than once. And I think part of the cycle that we’re going through now is to move from an environment where we may have had a best-of-breed type of situation and then you’re assembling sort of a holistic solution from various components and moving towards fewer components so that things are more inherently integrated.
So that provides agility from an investment operations perspective so that you become agile because there are fewer interconnected pieces from just a purely day-to-day operating perspective, should make things simpler and more secure. But also, the step-up, the advancement in the technology and the operations allows them to be more agile as an investment manager as well.
So, one of the challenges is when you see a new opportunity in the market, a new asset class or evolving asset class, to be able to add that to the portfolio sort of quickly and easily without losing any agility or ability to be responsive to the market, even in the context of putting new things into the portfolio.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. That’s very much consistent with, I suppose, my take on kind of how agility manifests is ultimately exactly that point—something lands in the portfolio and you’ve got to be able to deal with it quickly and easily in some shape or form. And that there’s a desire, if I understand right, for a lot of asset owners to stop just fixing problems as they come and largely as the front office creates them and actually try to get ahead of that.
Christine, one of the things that was really striking in the research was that 80% of change projects historically have been driven by front-office kind of behaviour, so very much, as Randy says, something lands in the portfolio because the PM basically thinks it should be there, and then the rest of the organization had to deal with it.
But you’re seeing now a huge upsurge in the number of organizations that are actually taking an enterprise approach to their change and their planning, so 62% of projects now are being driven on a kind of enterprise scale. Are you seeing that shift happening across your clients?
Christine Knott: Yes, absolutely. I think what’s really interesting is, at the heart of all of this is data. And so who would have heard the term 15 years ago, a data scientist? The whole concept of data being at the heart of the organization? And so I think when you think about the statistics you just quoted, Barnaby, the reality is, everybody is trying to get a better understanding of your data, they’re trying to be able to leverage their data, their data is their product, ultimately. And so, I do believe that that’s why a lot of it is coming down from the enterprise perspective, because everybody wants to better understand their information and their data.
And so that to me is where a lot of the agility is going to be coming from. Because once you have control and have clear view and understanding of your data, I think that that’s why we’re seeing these types of changes and really what they’re focused on.
And that resonates with—I know we’re going to talk about ESG, but all of these things require heavy-duty data to be able to make investment decisions. So, if you don’t get that story straight, then it’s really tough because then you go back to a siloed environment, which is what we’ve historically seen in a lot of places where different portfolio managers in different segments, whether it’s fixed income, stable, whatever it is, they’re going to be creating their own data. And that’s very inefficient, so I think everybody’s looking for efficiencies.
And to your point, front office in the Canadian market, most of the plans are very advanced in terms of their investment philosophies, irrespective of size. They’re all looking to alternatives. They’re looking to different asset classes to be able to grow their business and grow their assets and also diversify, right? I mean, there’s only so much they can get into certainly with certain policies, so they have to be very innovative in their approach.
So again, to me, that comes back to data, being able to have that right information and have the ability and agility to be able to make those types of decisions.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, that squares as well with two of the biggest themes in terms of inputs into people’s decision-making now, exactly as you said, is the broadened scope of the investment portfolio and the new assets, whether it be new markets or new asset classes, but also, the whole question about investment governance and oversight, which, ultimately, two of them distill down to a data question, as you rightly said.
Quick question, though, I suppose just going back to Ryan, to your point about the future-state thinking. And then also, Marian, as well to think about how the root causes of this are kind of playing out. Because are people focusing on data now because it’s the right strategic thing? Or are they doing it because they’ve just had a rather unpleasant conversation with their regulator and suddenly, they need to actually get on and do something illico presto because they’ve got no choice, or they’ll be forced to consolidate?
Ryan, first of all on the future state, how much do you find it’s part of that kind of big picture and how much of it is tactical, do you think?
Ryan McGathey: I think the clients that I have spoken to, it is more about the big picture. And again, not to sort of belabour the point, but we talk about the macroeconomic forces that are happening and I think the senior leadership within these organizations are having to consider the journey that the organization is going to go down. So they are taking that bigger more holistic view and say, what do we want to be as we grow up? Because, again, ESG is evolving. They understand these things are coming into play, which is another reason why, to what Christine mentioned earlier, it ends up being a lot more sort of enterprise driven and, clearly, the stats and the surveys show that as well. So that’s been our experience with our clients.
Barnaby Nelson: Marian, what do you think in terms of what you’re seeing from an Australian perspective? I mean, is it still kind of strategically driven? Or do you think there’s a tactical element, given the regulatory landscape?
Marian Azer: I think there’s a bit of both. I definitely think there’s more of a push to strategically drive change through the funds. And I think really now, what the funds are looking at is aligning strategy with culture. Historically, the culture probably has been a little bit sleepy and the types of—it was acceptable to have manual processes and shifting data around manually and looking at a position or maybe an overreliance on third parties.
And I think what we’re definitely seeing now is the desire to own the technology, have people with the requisite skills who can transform their businesses and to really operate like professional businesses. And that really is happening from the top down. Really, the boards making those decisions, appointing executives who are seasoned, who have that experience and are really starting to want to tap into their economies of scale.
I mean, they are large enough. They are large enough to tap into their economies of scale to start to access cloud and, as Christine said, data, to become a lot more efficient and responsive, not only in managing their assets, but also their member experience, so deploying technology around that investor experience from when the investor first joins to the investor has a query or has a rollover to another fund, they are deploying that technology and change and mindset across their entire organization.
So many of them—and I agree with Ryan and Christine here—have tech consultants come in, they’ve had experts come in, they’ve had a changing of the guard, definitely, and we’ve seen a lot of new CTOs, CIOs come in and also heads of transformation being appointed into these funds with, I guess, a mandate to change and to transform their businesses at the enterprise level. That’s relatively new for this market, which I think probably, if I look back 5 to 10 years, was probably unheard of for these types of funds to be managing their own data, have their own technology.
It is still looked through, though, of the lens of members’ best interests. Is the money I’m going to spend now in the interests of the members? What am I actually going to deliver? So there’s a real focus on return on investment and that return to members at the end of the day. So there’s a lot of scrutiny as well around the costs associated around transforming their businesses as well.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. And so, largely, we’re saying, I think, that operational agility is mostly part of the future-state planning and that it’s driven by that, kind of as you said, a lot of thinking done in the last few years, a lot of reorganizations, new blood, all this kind of thing. And ultimately, it’s now playing out in the new guard, if you like.
But what does it mean in terms of what work’s not getting done? Because we talked about, yes, we want to build more operational agility; we want to build in—you know, we want to focus on data. But what are we not doing? Because to your point, Marian, there’s only so much money to go round and all of it has to deliver back value to the end policyholder.
Christine, what’s your take in terms of just the trade-off? Because ultimately, in the research we’ve seen kind of a big trade-off—between 60, 70% of asset owners looking at investing in projects around ESG, investment governance, that kind of stuff, oversight, mandate compliance, and only 10% looking at asset servicing, reconciliations, and the good old operational efficiency areas that we all know and love. Does that resonate in terms of that there is some kind of trade-off playing there?
Christine Knott: Yeah. I think so. I do believe that the sort of—I’ll call it the bricks and mortar of the things you just described, a lot of that has already been in place. So I think they’re feeling confident or comfortable, but I do think that it’s not necessarily—some of those aspects aren’t necessarily keeping up with the change. And, as you introduce new asset classes, there’s complexity with regards to just doing straightforward reconciliation.
There is, obviously, depending on the size and rank, we’ll be able to comment on this as well from a service provider perspective, depending on the size of the plan, they will outsource a lot of that because that gives them the ability and the opportunity to really look at the investment side of the business, look at the data side of their business, really look at themselves from an enterprise perspective and taking that off the table and really passing that on to a service provider.
And I think as well, technology has changed dramatically over the years. And I’m sure Randy and Marian can comment on that, given the technologies that they provide to their clients. But it’s really made a big change so that I think that it allows for these plans to be able to focus on the things that they believe will bring value.
I don’t think that they’ve lost sight; quite the contrary. But I think they’re shifting. It’s still a priority, but they’re putting a dependency on technology and/or service providers or both to be able to help them so that they don’t have to worry about the basics of everyday. That’s what I see it as certainly from my perspective. I don’t know if that resonates with you.
Ryan McGathey: I just wanted to provide a quick anecdote because I had that situation actually two weeks ago where an organization has a new head of operations and the person went to their team—and they’re going through a transformation and they went to their team and said, why are you doing this? Our provider can do this. We shouldn’t be doing this. And then we get the call and say, hey, you should be doing this for us.
And so, I think Christine’s spot on. It’s less about sort of trade-offs and them becoming a lot more nuanced in who does what and where and who’s going to add value where along the chain of the investment process.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
Marian Azer: I would add to that that many of the funds definitely through our experience don’t know that there is technology that solves certain problems. And I think they’re only just starting to scratch the surface around what type of tech is there that can unlock data, that can unlock automation and provide them with that operational agility as they manage those products. And really, that’s what they do—they wrap up products for us as we retire, right?
So I think there’s a discovery phase happening now. And I think it’s important for the industry to be able to have that conversation and to be able to present the funds with what is actually available and to help them navigate through what can actually derive that operational agility for them as they start thinking about their operating model of the future.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely, yeah.
Randy McGathey: I’ll pile on, consistent with everything that’s just been said, but we’ve observed that increasingly, I believe, institutional investors, asset owners are looking to outsource functions to service providers where they can and sometimes we provide technology directly to institutional investors, but they’re often happy to have a service provider put a service wrapper around it which is value-add from their perspective, both from an operational expertise and all of the things that go with operating advanced technology. And also, it allows them to allocate their own internal resources to other things that may be more directly a part of their essential value proposition.
But the other good thing that happens there, I think, is that those higher-value services, by being outsourced to a service provider, by being provided by a service provider, make them available to a broader array of clients. So clients that may not be in a situation to take on the advanced technology themselves and operate it and, therefore, derive the value that arises, if they can go to a service provider and get that service there without having to become a master of that technology, then everyone wins. They get the higher level of service without being barred from it just because they may not be at a stage in their evolution where they could take it on themselves.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. And so, what does that mean for the small- and mid-tier funds then? So the people who can’t go to their outsource providers and their service partners and kind of dictate the roadmaps. I mean, is it a good thing that some of the super-mega players are running ahead and dictating the new operating models that they can then have recycled back into the mid tier? Or are the mid-tier guys kind of going to lose their voice and lose their innovation in the next few years?
Christine Knott: I think that we’re going to see more consolidation in our market. We already are. I know Australia’s seen a lot of consolidation. I don’t know that they’re losing their voice. They’re changing their voice. So their voice couldn’t get louder. And I think that I look at it from that perspective—as opposed to losing something, they’re gaining the opportunity of scale. They’re gaining the opportunity of continuing to be able to provide to their plan members. They’re getting the benefit of broader viewpoints and a bigger enterprise to be able to leverage, which means, candidly, more dollars and cents to use.
So, I do think we’re going to continue to see consolidation where it makes sense, and we’re seeing it in Ontario; we’ve seen it in other provinces in Canada. I do believe that that is not necessarily bad because it does provide to the benefit of the plan member, right? That’s who it’s for. So that’s my perspective.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Ryan, do you see a similar thing playing out? Just because obviously, you’ve got a broad-brush coverage of kind of all different sizes. I mean, to Christine’s point, do you see kind of the mid-tier guys kind of either consolidating or kind of feeling that they’re keeping their voice? Or do you see any frustrations coming through?
Ryan Silva: Yeah. So I think the mid and smaller tier are working with essentially their investment consultants. So, yes, there is some feelings of frustration with how are they going to continue to deliver and meet the plan’s needs. And then they’re looking at option. It’s not only just a consolidation, but even asset managers, the third-party asset managers are coming up with different solutions, even consolidating through OCIOs, right?
So there are—I think the market continues to evolve. There will be innovation. There will be new products, not just on the technology side, but what technology will enable for plans to do. So I think the good thing is those smaller plans will have other options—will have options in the next 5 years that they didn’t have 10 years ago. And then it’ll be up to the committees to make the decision what’s in the best interests of their members, as Christine said. And I think everybody will go through that process in the next little while.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Just one statistic that springs to mind from the research, Randy, was a very strong—in terms of the inputs into the strategic agenda, a very strong sense in the U.S. that people feel that they’re boxed in not only by their service providers’ roadmaps, but also by concentration risk. And I was just curious to see whether that’s a theme that plays out as well, that ultimately, this idea, which I think makes perfect sense, that it’s about who’s doing the job, not necessarily whether the job gets done. But how does that play out in a world that’s fairly concentrated in terms of the software providers and the banks?
Randy McGathey: So I think the point you’re making is well made. I think it plays out differently in different parts of the market. So, in the larger end, yes, especially the larger and mid, they may be looking for different ways to get something done to achieve a certain value. And asset owners, institutional investors that have relied on service providers in the past may look to do some things for themselves or use technology to do some things for themselves that they might have looked to a service provider to do in the past.
There is an interesting phenomenon going on, though, where service providers are taking a much broader view of how they deliver value to their clients. And there is a much greater trend than there has been in the past to build an array or a portfolio of capabilities that may rely on technology and resources that wasn’t home grown and to actually incorporate those into an overall service offering and then deliver those out to the market.
So that may in fact satisfy. And those investors that are looking in other places, they may choose to take technology on for themselves and operate it, but they may find new capabilities at some of the existing providers, the capabilities and approaches that were not there before. And then, again, as spoken—as mentioned before, the notion that even asset owners that aren’t able do those things for themselves may find an expanded array of capabilities at the service providers that are more traditional, so.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. So essentially, the concentration risk question is a little bit moot, if I understand right, because the providers are changing shape all the time; that ultimately, it’s just because you—it’s not like they just do payments and settlements and that you’ve got to spread it around as they morph and evolve into tech providers and other things. The whole concentration risk question has to shift with it.
Randy McGathey: And in fact, those same service providers, they become agnostic about some of the things that were required before.
Barnaby Nelson: Right. Right.
Randy McGathey: And so you can deconcentrate by using the same array of providers but not for the things that you’re concentrated about—or worried about concentration in this [town].
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. And I’m looking forward to digging into that. Funnily enough, that’s on the list for our next podcast episode, so we’ll leave everyone hanging on tenterhooks for that one.
So, so far, we’ve talked about operational agility and kind of being part of a future state kind of thinking. We’ve talked about how that’s playing into the data world and ultimately, what are these people other than data providers and data is their product. And ultimately, though, this whole question about roles and responsibilities more than work not getting done.
But most of what we’ve talked about so far is systems. And, Marian, you touched on the people element to this. One of the really striking things about the research is that before anything else, the projects that are happening are project team restructuring. So basically, asset owners, before they get new kit, before they get new toys and bells and whistles, they are restructuring their departments along asset class specializations, if you like.
So first of all, does that resonate as the biggest thing that you’re seeing? And second of all, do you see that that is a precursor to tech change? Parallel with? Or how do the two kind of interact?
Marian Azer: Yes, it is a challenge. When speaking to many of the funds here, there is a war for talent. They’re trying to obviously make themselves attractive employers. I think historically, people with STEM skills or STEM backgrounds have been more attracted to investment management, analyst roles in banking, deep tech roles in large technology companies or banks, and I think it’s very hard to compete in terms of the compensation and to attract the type of talent.
So definitely, when speaking to many of them, they really try to recruit very early on and also looking to differentiate themselves. For example, I know a couple of funds who are particularly interested around women who have STEM type backgrounds who are reentering the workforce maybe after a period out for looking after families or having children or maybe looking after elderly parents. And so they’re really starting to think about targeted strategies to attract that right talent in.
They’re also thinking about their culture—how do they represent themselves and how do they make themselves attractive in terms of having that one mission to return back I guess to provide good returns to moms and dads at the end of the day, including themselves. So having that type—that mission statement that might sort of attract that talent, particularly the younger talent, is really important to them as well.
I mean, there is a massive shortage of people in terms of studying STEM and who are able to—who are thinking about joining a super fund. You don’t graduate from university having studied those disciplines, you just don’t. So I think it starts right there, at the universities, to be able to start to advertise what they do, what they’re about, the purpose. And that’s really going to start to attract the talent into these roles.
I think another thing they’re thinking about is around flexibility. A lot of them are in multiple states. They’re globalizing and so starting, obviously, with the pandemic, maintaining that flexibility, being able to work remotely is going to be very important for these funds to attract the right type of talent to be able to transform the business.
So I think people are really, really important. And I think it’s hand in hand with the ability to execute, to reimagine their operating model, to understand, to pick technology that solves the problem, not pick a technology and then determine how that’s going to solve a certain problem. I think that’s going to be really, really important in terms of the future of some of these funds.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. And I mean, Christine, do you see a change in the urgency of kind of the whole tech side? Because obviously, they are entirely symbiotic. But do you see, because of kind of the war for talent, the great resignation, is that accelerating or changing the pace in any way of the whole tech side of the change agenda?
Christine Knott: Quite honestly, I think it’s accelerating. It is amazing how many firms are rethinking. I like the term reimagine, Marian. They’re trying to reassess who they are, what they’re doing, how they’re doing it.
I do agree that, given the specialization of some of the asset classes, some of the investment types that they’re working with, they are looking for people to focus on it. They’re really trying to break down their business to ensure that they’ve got the right people doing the right jobs. And, to Marian’s point, it is tough. Finding talent is a very, very challenging thing for everyone right now.
I don’t know where everybody’s going. I’ll be honest. But I still struggle with that it’s real. So, I think that the technology or/and service providers and both are really having to come to the table quickly with good solutions.
I do believe that there’s a focus on being able to create integration across the organization and that the people part of this is really important. Marian touched on it. Culture is a really important thing. Making sure that the employees are in a good place. And supporting the employees through change I think is also really important.
If we’ve learned nothing over the last two years, we’ve learned that it’s the employees that keep it running no matter where they are, whether they’re at home, whether they’re sitting outside of Starbucks. I mean, it just doesn’t matter, right? But the people are the ones that keep it going. So there really can’t—that can’t be lost either.
So I think it’s a combination of getting the right people, making sure it’s the right technology and services, and being able to then facilitate the changes that they want to make.
Barnaby Nelson: So just to pick up on that, the point around the huge competition for talent, at the same time, you have some very specific domains that we’re talking about expanding in—I mean, ESG, new asset classes. If a pension fund suddenly takes in a—participates in a syndicated loan, for example, that’s a very specialized area.
I mean, Randy, are you seeing kind of—basically, how does this kind of thing play out between kind of the specialization of going out and hiring for people versus going and getting in these kind of new systems to be able to take care of, whether it be of all the pressures—ESG, as I said, investing in Guatemala, syndicated loan or whatever?
Randy McGathey: Well, it is of interest of mine, of ours, that very space, so the notion of using technology as a solution to bring all those things together. Now comments earlier I made would suggest we’re looking at fewer systems so that there are fewer linkages. Nevertheless, there needs to be some technology platform or process, and I think platform, that enables all of those various specialization pieces to be brought together—point of view, you need to have a book of record, some place where all of those pieces come together to serve the needs of the portfolio manager and we would say the asset allocator.
But in order to be able to create that total portfolio view, you have to be able to bring in data from all those specialty—asset class specialty systems. And if you’re bringing in analytics, some things like ESG, you need to be able to do that as well.
So technology plays a role, both as reducing the number of technology components that are used, but nevertheless, the ability to assemble the various pieces that continue to be necessary or to deal with all of the specialization that exists in a large institutional asset manager’s or asset owner’s office.
Barnaby Nelson: Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that’s a fantastic place probably to round out the conversation because I think it brings together really nicely the two heavy themes that we’ve talked about—data and people. And ultimately, that—I really love what you’re saying is technology is an enabler to both. It’s not really just an enabler to better data and all the kind of stuff that ultimately kind of gets all the headlines, but it’s also, as we’ve discussed, operational agility is about supporting the people as much as the investment.
So I think, if you pull all of that together, what is happening to the change agenda? We’ve said really that operational agility has many facets. It manifests very, very strongly in the data world. But ultimately, there is this whole question of who’s doing what and, frankly, who’s doing what today and tomorrow and whether they’re still going to be there.
So, I think for me, the aim of this conversation was really to set out all of these considerations as people who are listening are starting to set out their own kind of change agendas. And so it’s been brilliant to be able to walk through that.
And in the next episode, we’ll aim to really then talk about the actual execution of projects—who’s around the table, which we’ve kind of started on, but ultimately, roles and responsibilities around the table, which projects, and what kind of subconscious biases we may or may not be applying to our choices of projects.
So I hope that’s a decent wrap-up of what we’ve covered off. But really, thank you very, very much for all of your brilliant inputs, as always, and looking forward to speaking on the next episode very shortly.
Randy McGathey: Thanks very much.
Marian Azer: Thank you.