An interview with Transform UK’s CEO Emma Robertson

When utilised correctly, digital transformation has the capability to streamline products and services, significantly enhance customer experiences, as well as make better informed decisions across the board. One company that knows this all too well is Transform UK. The British consultancy has a proven track record for harnessing innovative technology and data to generate a competitive advantage for businesses in their respective industries. To find out more about what an effective digital transformation entails and how Transform UK can help its clients to get the desired results, we spoke with its CEO, Emma Robertson.

In today’s world, why is digital transformation such an important aspect of driving growth?

Digital and data transformation has never been more important for organisations on all fronts – efficiency, growth and sustainability. It is no longer about big programmes titled “Digital Transformation”, but a continuous journey where technology and data run through organisations, the services they offer and the experiences they deliver.

Organisations can find themselves squeezed by the combined weight of customer expectations, reducing budgets and growth expectations – in a world where technology is advancing faster than anyone can keep up with (myself included). For many of our clients there is a risk this causes paralysis when it comes to digital and data transformation where they can’t see the wood for the trees, or worse, are a rabbit caught in the headlights.

The recent hype around artificial intelligence (“AI”) has only exacerbated this pressure, and whilst it will take time for the hype to translate into impact at scale, it is only organisations with the right level of digital and data maturity that will be able to capitalise on AI as differentiating technology.

Can you tell us more about Transform UK’s origins with regards to the DirectGov review and the Government Digital Service, and how those projects came about?

Transform is now more than 20 years old, and came together through the merger of a private sector consultancy with clients including Argos and eBay, and a public sector consultancy with specialism in the digital transformation of government services. Later, we added research and data capabilities to the business, rounding out our offer as a full-service technology and data consultancy with the scale and culture of a boutique.

One of the projects we continue to be associated with is informally known as “the Martha Lane-Fox” report back in 2010, working alongside the Baroness on the digital government review that set the foundations for the transformation of government, and continues to underpin much of how it operates today. The output included recommendations like:

• Revolution not evolution
• Outcome-based procurements in phases of digital delivery
• Agile software engineering and ways of working
• Service design and user-led requirements and testing
• The establishment of government digital services to offer a combination of expertise, support and oversight to both enable and enforce best practice.

Which key technical disciplines do your team specialise in day-to-day?

We offer our clients a full-service digital, technology and data offer, helping to either accelerate, optimise or transform their digital and data products and services. This means that whilst we have a depth of specialist technical expertise, it is always anchored in business objectives and user needs – enabling us to operate with true agility and product strategy aligned to agreed product vision and OKRs. Within technology and data, our teams include:

• Technology strategy and architecture
• Data engineering and advanced analytics
• Software engineering across a breadth of platforms and languages
• Quality engineering and dev ops, including green engineering and SecDevOps

How can Transform UK’s client projects improve workplace culture?

Collaboration and co-creation are central to our practice, and a key part of our philosophy is to deliver capability building for our clients alongside our scope of work. We are very aware that client teams often have their day jobs to do alongside our projects, and no-one appreciates the old-style consultants who arrive en-mass and attempt to “tell everyone how to do it”. Working as we do creates a “one team” culture, and means when our role is complete, the project, product or service is owned internally.

Businesses are accessing more data today than ever before. How does Transform UK help them remove the jargon and focus on impactful data alone?

Data is a jargon-tastic part of our industry, and we work hard to cut through the noise for our clients. AI has made the flow of jargon even worse, as well as the accompanying imposter syndrome that everyone else understands what is being talked about.

We counter this by always focusing back on business objectives and user needs – then the architecture, tools, technology or languages used are all in service to those outcomes. Everyone can articulate what they want to achieve – and we work with our clients to help them do that. The subject matter experts and practitioners then deal with the jargon – which to them is bread and butter.

A key part of our data engineering and architecture capability is in the simplification of the data landscape – we undertake a lot of data-discovery projects for our clients over three to four weeks to understand what they have, what they want to achieve and a path to get there. This involves looking at architecture, working with legacy systems and processes and mapping data flows – what starts off as a tangled ball of data complexity, becomes a forward plan with more clarity and fewer knots!

Each of your clients work with a handpicked team of specialists during the entirety of their project. What are the key characteristics factored into the curation of these teams?

We always curate the best team for the combination of client, context and project – combining sector/departmental experience with practitioner skills. We also consider the culture of the client organisation and the governance of the project. Some projects require bespoke skills immediately, others need shaping and defining before we move into implementation.

We find remaining agile and adaptable is important. Everyone goes into a statement of work with a clear understanding of what is needed with best intent, but often needs change in projects and we will flex team and skills to what is needed, not what has been written down.

What exciting projects have you been working on recently?

So many exciting projects. Literally, too many to mention and give due credit to the clients and teams involved. A couple of different projects we have been working on recently include:

• A digital strategy for Historic Royal Palaces: A long-standing client of ours, this latest project involved bringing together future technologies in service to tell the stories of the past. We treated digital as though it is “the sixth Palace”.
• Improved sustainability: Sustainability is a big focus area for Transform and its clients, and we have been working with some very exciting and complex data modelling and visualisation projects. We have literally been putting 1s and 0s to ecological eco-systems to understand the interdependencies and consequences of actions at scale.
• A digital product developed for a client in the media space: This project combined the viewing experience of established streaming services with a rewards platform where customers can accrue cryptocurrency rewards to viewing.

Can you talk us through the Transform Academy and the events and workshops it offers?

Transform Academy is our learning experience for clients and teams, bringing together our expertise and experience, with real world client challenges. This elevates the Academy from a training exercise into a true learning experience. We invite clients to share their specific questions and challenges in a safe space, meaning they often leave the Academy with both knowledge on a subject and insight into a challenge.

We are also really proud that we offer cross-client Academies alongside bespoke client sessions. This means there is a genuine opportunity to collaborate and benefit from perspectives outside of your normal frame of reference. At a recent AI Fundamentals Academy, we hosted clients from retail, financial services, central government, and media in a single session.

Looking to the future, what key technology or service do you believe will be a focal point of digital transformation in the coming years?

AI in all its forms is going to be a huge area for anyone involved in technology and data, and we are already working on how this translates from a capability we have, into a service we can offer to clients. We launched Transform AI Labs in 2023 and have a number of client experiments in different stages, enabling them to bring a challenge or use-case for us to collaborate on a proof-of-value solution.

Sustainability is another area that we believe is going to be increasingly important in the technology and data space. We are excited by the opportunity to empower our clients to be part of the solution for many of our collective sustainability challenges. We are a founding part of the planet centred design community, and already have established green engineering practices. Beyond this, we want to help our clients progress from measuring sustainability to impacting it – and believe that data solutions and digital services are part of that journey for our clients.

To find out more about how Transform UK can help your business to generate a competitive advantage through digital transformation, get in touch by visiting www.transformuk.com.