STORIES ARE BEST SHARED

The fourth industrial revolution is rapidly outgrowing its adolescence. Technology is advancing at an exponential rate that is simply unprecedented in human history. And consumers are reaping the benefits, with new competitors arising on the back of consequential technologies to cater to hyper-personal requests.

Established enterprises are reflecting earnestly to identify their own vulnerabilities and build resilience moving forward.

Improving working capital efficiencies is a crucial yet often overlooked dilemma within this wider recalibration. Consumer driven change is so entirely pervasive that the most fundamental structures underpinning business operations are feeling an impact.

Pressures and expectations are steadily growing on financial executives to absorb this consumer-driven change. In response, AMEX united CFOs from a wealth of industries to give this dialogue the volume it deserves. This conversation unearthed a number of shared frustrations, as well as shared opportunities – this is their story.

KEEPING COMPLEXITY MOVING

Deepening fissures in globalisation, hostile trade wars, a drift towards isolationism and populism—all signs of a global paradigm shift impacting the movement of goods. Combined with reduced automation costs, consumer demands for seamless service delivery and renewed attention to sustainability, finance and procurement professionals are re-evaluating their priorities for continued success in the digital age – and transparency is climbing to the top.

LEASEPLAN and CONNECT MEDIA gathered leading finance and procurement executives from all sectors of the national economy for a candid and honest discussion on how businesses are navigating this shifting landscape. Our conversation unearthed a number of shared frustrations, as well as shared opportunities – this is what they had to say.

DATA DRIVES THE FUTURE OF RETAIL

Customers, the protagonist of our retail narrative, are fundamentally changing. They are shopping in the moment, and that moment has become ubiquitous. Brands are challenging held business assumptions to remain part of the story.

CRITEO along with CONNECT MEDIA gathered a diverse group of leading retail executives to write the next chapter of this narrative. From conversion and attribution to segmentation and dissemination, there is no doubt the data-infused web that is retail can entangle brands. But for every shared struggle there is shared opportunity. Here is what they had to say.

BUILDING YOUR THREAT INTELLIGENCE

AKAMAI and CONNECT MEDIA recently hosted 10 of Australia’s premier hi-tech leaders for an executive conversation on mitigating the latest cyber-attack threats.

With new attack vendors being discovered almost daily, AKAMAI’sEnterprise Security Architect provided a first-hand account of the emergence of a new security paradigm. Next followed a robust discussion on how to effectively militate against dynamic and mutating attack patterns.

As one of the world’s largest procurers of bandwidth, AKAMAI delivers a formidable portion of the internet. With a hundred and twenty terabytes per second of traffic – and visibility over 15 to 30 percent of global web traffic – AKAMAI absorbs billions of attacks a day.

This data is manipulated by a team of data scientists to create actionable threat intelligence that is then embedded in their security portfolio. Conversation around the table was anchored in this veritable intelligence.

THE ART AND SCIENCE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS

Government has long endured its reputation as a digital laggard and rarely elicits the envy of corporates when it comes to data and technological capability. But now the pendulum is swinging.

Government has reached a data saturation point, crossing a critical mass threshold that affords insights substantial weight. For communication and public affairs professionals, this new found meaning is a deeper understanding of consumer voice, contextualised commentary and the nuanced forces driving consumer sentiment.

Threading this logic and understanding back to critical government decision-makers is changing media intelligence, and by extension, affecting how entire communication and public affairs structures and strategies are conceptualised and executed.

MELTWATER is leading this media intelligence renaissance in New South Wales, rejecting out-of-the-box corporate focus solutions in favour of bespoke government models that empower leaders to absorb and react to media forces with unmatched speed and confidence.

The New South Wales Government isn’t the only institution with a growing appetite for digitization. Hungering to change user behaviour, CONNECT MEDIA and MELTWATER gathered leading Victorian public affairs professionals from across the public sphere to examine how media intelligence and communication strategies are evolving, and how data is opening new doors and informing novel approaches to the news cycle.

Conversation was anchored in the work MELTWATER has done for the New South Wales Government, and by extension, what the future holds for communication in Victoria.