THAMES 250 VALLEY ® TV250 dinner recognises region’s top performers
An awards dinner was held in July for 60 local business leaders to celebrate the launch of the 2018 TV250 listing of the Thames Valley’s leading private companies
The ninth annual TV250 listing (see
businessmag.co.uk) shows combined sales of TV250 businesses are well over £20 billion and they employ more than 100,000 people. The TV250 is sponsored by HSBC UK, Moore Stephens, Gateley plc and Henley Business School. Vail Williams was announced as a fifth sponsor.
David Murray, publisher of The Business Magazine and the TV250, noted: “One interesting statistic that came out last year was that the economy of the greater Thames Valley actually dwarfs the economies of the so-called powerhouses like Greater Birmingham and Greater Manchester.”
Disrupt or be disrupted?
The evening’s guest speaker Scott Dodds, CEO of IT services provider Ultima Business Solutions, talked about the unprecedented scale of technology change that is underway.
Ultima won the Innovative Tech Company award and was named Thames Valley Tech Company of the year at The Business Magazine’s Thames Valley Tech Awards 2018. The company is 50th in the TV250 and recently invested £18 million in new headquarters in Reading.
Dodds said the world of technology is moving so rapidly that businesses are operating in fast-moving “digital rivers” where they constantly risk being disrupted.
Ultima helps businesses transform using technology, but Dodds confessed his company faces similar challenges. “If we hadn’t modernised Ultima into areas like the cloud and robotics, we would have become irrelevant,” he said.
It’s also important to bring your people with you as you transform, he noted. “It’s about humanising your business. If you don’t bring humans with you, it doesn’t matter how good the technology is.”
Cobotics – the collaboration between people and robotics – is therefore an important step businesses can take in a future where Ultima redefines the term IT as ‘intelligent transformation’ that can free people to innovate.
“Artificial intelligence is the new electricity. It is changing industry in the same way the invention of electricity did. We are just at the edge of this now and will see massive change in the next few years.”
Data management using AI will be crucial for businesses. “If you put as much data as you can into a central repository and throw AI at it, then it will start to tell you some really clever things about what’s going on in your business,” noted Dodds.
“We need to automate to innovate. We have to massively change the cost of running our businesses, which comes through automation and robotics, so we can afford to innovate and make our businesses more competitive,” he concluded. “We all have to ask ourselves: do you want to disrupt or be disrupted?”
The TV250 awards Although not a fully-fledged awards, the dinner was an opportunity to recognise the achievements of some star performers in the TV250.
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Business THE TM MAGAZINE 54
businessmag.co.uk THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2018
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