The former BAT CTO joined the €9.five billion Greek energy conglomerate at the begin of 2020: the first time the organisation has experienced a team CIO role.
Operating in the southeast location of Euro
Motor Oil Team CIO Nick Giannakakis thinks the role of the Main Data Officer is to be the “custodian of digital transformation”.
The former Main Know-how Officer at British American Tobacco, Giannakakis joined the €9.five billion revenue Greece-primarily based energy conglomerate at the begin of 2020 sitting down on its executive administration staff, the first time the organisation experienced a team CIO role.
Operating in the southeast location of Europe, Motor Oil begun as an oil and gas business and its Corinth refinery is the 2nd-premier in Europe. It is now an conclude-to-conclude energy business as one particular of the most significant retailers in the area with extra than one,300 usefulness stores it sells direct to the client by brand names like Cyclon and Coral Gas, renamed immediately after the acquisition in 2010 of all of Shell’s downstream operations in Greece.
Talking with NS Media Team, Giannakakis stated that the team – forty seven.four% owned by the well known Greek Vardinogiannis household by a holding company and the rest of its shares shown on the Athens Inventory Exchange and the London Inventory Exchange – also has a media business and direct-to-client utility business, when a tiny financial institution was also not long ago additional to its portfolio.
“Motor Oil is a team with extra than fifty many years of history,” Giannakakis mentioned, and that immediately after a prosperous time period of enlargement and expansion the management begun wondering about its technique to technological innovation.
“There was no role as Team CIO, though all people on the executive administration recognized technological innovation as enjoying a pretty important role in the enlargement of the team. There was an evaluation from a third social gathering about the need to have for a Main Data Officer primarily based on the company aspirations, and the end result was to create the CIO role as aspect of the executive management staff.”
Electronic Transformation Custodian
Giannakakis explained his CIO remit as being the interpreter and defender of the energy conglomerate’s digital ambitions, aiding transform its present operations, concentrating on a far better expertise, and embedding digital DNA in a what was a conventional oil and gas business started in 1970.
“Everyone understands that the energy sector is on the verge of transformation,” he mentioned. “Therefore the role of the CIO is – practically nothing extra, practically nothing much less – the custodian of this digital transformation. As aspect of the remit of the role the CIO wants to be ready to interpret and protect the digital ambition of Motor Oil Team.”
To transform its present operations and enable generate new business products, Giannakakis mentioned it was his role as CIO to introduce some new terminology and methodology.
“You need to have the CIO to be ready to get the strategy, interpret to actionable goods, and introduce for the first instances in our team phrases like agility and structure wondering. And at the conclude of the day to be ready to impose on the organisation – this pretty prosperous organisation – a digital DNA,” he mentioned.
Giannakakis has been in role for six months as team CIO at Motor Oil, and explained the combination of Covid-19 and the oil rate war which has viewed a steep tumble in rates as a “double jeopardy” of complicated events struggling with the organisation and the sector.
The reaction has been to speed up digital performing initiatives which has viewed a important raise in adoption across its head office, production and retail environments – with the Motor Oil Team board chaired by billionaire oil and shipping magnate Vardis Vardinogiannis meeting remotely for the first time.
“I feel it’s in our character to be ready to adapt,” Giannakakis mentioned. “I have viewed men and women that in the starting had been in no way used to digital systems not only be ready to carry out nicely, but also to prosper.”
In the retail area, Giannakakis mentioned that in spite of the disaster Motor Oil did not halt its money expenditure investments. In its place it was compelled to prioritise.
For the CIO, this was to emphasis on the client expertise and programmes which emphasis on a return on their technological innovation investments.
“Because we are in usefulness retail, we have to battle for the time of the client – the time they arrive in the petrol station and the minutes they expend there,” Giannakakis mentioned, introducing that the introduction of plug-in electric autos will totally transform the conventional petrol station.
Renewables and Electronic Twins
“I detest to use that motto that a disaster is not just a obstacle but also an possibility, but in our case we have viewed some pretty interesting movement,” Giannakakis mentioned, noting that when pure gas product sales experienced decreased there experienced been a important raise in non-gas retail and its e-commerce system to the extent Motor Oil has began a partnership with a few courier companions to handle the general volume of transactions.
“Independent of the Covid circumstance or the oil rate war, our business today is struggling with a important transformation curve,” Giannakakis mentioned. “CO2 reduction and electrical autos will transform the general petrol station expertise.
“It will power us to emphasis on personalisation, frictionless expertise, and other options like blockchain or other platforms.”
Giannakakis mentioned that energy organizations wanted to follow the innovation curve, and emphasis on investing in renewables when also on the lookout at increasing the present production and oil refinery approach.
“We have to follow that curve,” he mentioned. “We are concentrating on what we get in touch with the digital refinery we have our North Star which for us is the digital twin.”
Giannakakis cited Norwegian energy large Equinor and its CIO Åshild Hanna Larsen, recognised as Europe’s primary CIO in a 2019 initiative, as sector leaders.
“Equinor for us is one particular of the North Stars – if you see how they produce their digital twin, it’s awesome,” Giannakakis mentioned. “I was quite joyful to see this type of movement from a conventional organisation.
“At the similar time we are seriously investing in renewables, and we have to see how can we use technological innovation to the renewable sector.”
Edge Computing and Prescriptive Analytics
Giannakakis worked at BAT for seven many years, Swiss luxurious producer and retailer Richemont for a few many years, and Coca-Cola for six many years.
Now at energy conglomerate Motor Oil he pointed out edge computing and prescriptive analytics as some of the rising technological innovation set to have a large impact on the sector and outside of.
“Being aspect of an organisation with pretty heavy production, I’m commencing to be impressed by Edge Computing,” he mentioned. “I feel Edge Computing is going to transform heavy sector organisations it’s surely a video game-changer for all the large heavy industries.
“I’m also viewing that prescriptive analytics is a seriously a video game-changer. I have viewed extra organizations just take the previous move from predictive to prescriptive,” he mentioned of being ready to go outside of anticipating what is most likely to come about, to deploying the systems now suggesting the ideal classes of action to just take.
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