Mick McNeil of Logicalis On How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level

Optimize operations: Digital transformation offers an opportunity to build a secure modern IT foundation to enable business agility. Agility used to be nice to have, but the pandemic and its ongoing impact, has transformed this into a necessity. It means businesses can adapt to unexpected circumstances or sudden market changes. Agile business models can put customers’ needs at the forefront and continue to deliver an optimal service regardless of the situation.

As part of our series about “How To Use Digital Transformation To Take Your Company To The Next Level”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mick McNeil from Logicalis.

Mick McNeil was appointed the Logicalis Group VP for Business Development in September of 2020. Previous to his role at Logicalis, McNeil held several global positions within Microsoft’s commercial partner organisation, most recently leading the incubation of strategic partnerships across America, Asia & the UK. In that role, McNeil was instrumental in helping Microsoft’s global partners digitally transform their operating models to succeed in a cloud-first world.

McNeil’s role at Logicalis focuses on further accelerating the development of its highly innovative, leading-edge solutions and services embedded with Microsoft technology for its 10,000 global customers.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

I went to university to become a pilot and studied aerospace engineering. Three years into my four-year course, I was fatefully invited to dinner by a fellow student to meet some people from Accenture. After dinner, they offered me a position, which I accepted, leaving university early and started me on my career path. At Accenture, I became a Management Consultant and worked closely with a range of vendors, including Microsoft. After a couple of years of working with Microsoft, they said, “we really like what you are doing at Accenture. Will you come to Microsoft and do it for us?”

This conversation led to me creating a partner-focused sales program within Microsoft. My focus was on extracting value from partners in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. After successfully launching the program, I moved over to Microsoft HQ to run it from a global perspective. My role evolved from sales to business development, working very closely with Microsoft’s international partners. It was my job to find which partners would be relevant to Microsoft on a global scale and invest in them. It was actually from there I met Logicalis and transitioned to the VP of Business Development for Logicalis Group.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘take aways’ you learned from that?

Once in an interview, I was asked if I was proficient in Excel. I said, “Yes I’m an excel ninja. I can do anything with Excel!” The interviewer then asked, “Can you do this formula and organize the data?” To which I said, “Absolutely!” The interviewer then turned his laptop around with Excel open and asked me to show him within a timeframe of 5 minutes. I couldn’t do it. He asked me why I said I could, and my answer was, “I wanted to show up well in the interview.”

I didn’t get the job, but I learned a valuable lesson — always be authentic. This is easier to say, now I’m a few years older and have established myself in my career, but I think many people have a tendency when first starting, to think that they have to know everything. Being authentic and saying, “No I can’t do that, but I’ll learn and figure it out” is a better way to present yourself than to be untruthful.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?

One of my earliest managers at Microsoft, who had previously trained as a psychologist, helped me consider how I communicated before I spoke to get the best outcome. It’s all about two-way communication, considering the other person’s point of view, and asking questions to understand where they are coming from to reach a shared understanding. The trick is don’t just say what you think off the bat. Instead, ask multiple questions to understand where they are at and them round to a common viewpoint.

Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?

There are a few books that come to mind. One is Mindset by Carol Dweck, a Stanford Professor in Psychology. Her book dives into how understanding our mindset and other people’s mindsets help us succeed. Mindset resonates because the principles it describes encouraged me to always bring ideas to the table, no matter what point of my career I’m at, and regardless of who is at the table. It also taught me that it’s okay to be wrong, it’s okay to say no, and it’s okay to ask for help. In hindsight, I would have encouraged my younger self to read this book ahead of the failed interview!

Another book worth noting is Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Nudge is about decision-making. It’s also about how people, organizations, countries, leadership, and environmental factors can influence decisions. It’s taught me how to combat the pressures of an environment I’m in and keep calm and composed instead of adhering to the pressure.

Extensive research suggests that “purpose driven businesses” are more successful in many areas. When your company started, what was its vision, what was its purpose?

Logicalis has been around for over 25 years, and in that time, our vision and purpose has developed and progressed extensively. We are currently updating our vision to continue to offer the best solutions and services for our customers and employees. As part of this new vision, we focus on inclusivity and challenging our employees as Architects of Change to leverage their critical thinking skills to support local communities.

For example, we recently helped a children’s charity divert more donations to charitable outcomes by almost halving its global IT expenditure. By consolidating disparate systems in the cloud, the charity was also able to improve its rating. The cloud environment provided by Logicalis supported uniform employee access, allowing them to log into over 3,000 cloud-based apps with a single identity.

This project is an excellent example of how successful digital transformation can be an asset to increase productivity, cut costs and drive change in the community. Examples like this strengthen confidence in our vision and purpose to build a better world.

Are you working on any new, exciting projects now? How do you think that might help people?

We are in the process of launching our AI-enabled cloud-based security platform — LogiGuard, with Microsoft. LogiGuard covers an entire IT environment, from cloud applications to on-premise end-points, and automatically detects, responds, and addresses security risks before any human intervention is needed. It also provides a straightforward, centralized interface to view and manage the multiple security functions across a technology environment.

Supported through Checkpoint Infinity Microsoft Azure Sentinel powers the central management. Using a cloud infrastructure means that customers benefit from a stable, secure, and fully scalable system, programmatic onboarding, and accelerated deployment without large initial investments.

Designed to help reduce the impact on valuable internal resources, LogiGuard provides a fully scalable solution that lessens the pressure on internal resources allowing internal staff to focus on other strategic projects.

We are rolling the platform out on an international level to enable an integrated security approach at every level of a multinational organization.

Thank you for all that. Let’s now turn to the main focus of our discussion about Digital Transformation. For the benefit of our readers, can you help explain what exactly Digital Transformation means? On a practical level what does it look like to engage in a Digital Transformation?

Digital Transformation integrates digital technology into all areas of a business, fundamentally changing how a business operates and delivers value to its customers. Digital transformation is as much an organizational transformation as a business one. Being digital at the core means every part of the business needs to be adapted with data at the heart — data is then used to inform and influence future decisions.

A specialist medical care provider approached us, looking to transform their practice through data-driven clinical decision-making. They wanted to ‘virtualize’ care and integrate venues while keeping patients at the center. Working with their team, we created a tailored infrastructure and managed service solution, using the latest technologies in an integrated and coherent manner. This allowed them to maximize efficiency, provide a better user experience for staff and ultimately improve patient care.

On a practical level, getting the job right requires drawing up a digital transformation roadmap, which defines and manages the full process in a structured way. A successful digital roadmap begins with an assessment of the digital maturity of the organization and moves on to a definition of a digital vision. To know where you are going, you need to know where to start.

The best roadmaps are those aligned with business strategy from the top-down and the bottom-up. From the top-down, the big picture goals need to be broken down into executable tactics and translated into significant business outcomes. And from the bottom-up, user insights need to be fed back to executives who can monitor progress and make necessary revisions.

Which companies can most benefit from a Digital Transformation?

Any company can benefit from digital transformation. Research from Deloitte shows that higher digitally mature companies were two to three times more likely than lower digitally mature companies to report that they were receiving the following benefits: efficiency, revenue growth, product/service quality, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement.

Digital transformation can help organizations grow revenue by improving the customer experience or supporting new products and services. It’s about doing previous processes better, faster, with more of a return on investment, and accomplishing things that were not possible before.

The pandemic accelerated a global move to the cloud, and businesses are only now starting to realize the opportunities for business success and growth through digital transformation. The move to digital will play a crucial role in organizations’ innovation and staying ahead of competitors in a post-COVID-19 world. Some industries are transforming much faster, such as healthcare, and retail and others lag behind like the public sector. Digital transformation has always been high on the public sector agenda. But historically, the transition is slow despite the benefits that migration to the cloud can offer.

We’d love to hear about your experiences helping others with Digital Transformation. In your experience, how has Digital Transformation helped improve operations, processes and customer experiences? We’d love to hear some stories if possible.

We help our clients build a digital nervous system throughout their organizations manifesting in a ‘modern’ cloud data estate. Putting data as the central tenant of the cloud journey ensures we positively impact the top line; we call this approach data-led digital transformation.

One example of a recent digital transformation integration is our work with a large healthcare research institute. They specialize in the treatment of diseases of the musculoskeletal system and are located in Rio de Janeiro. They needed new IT infrastructure and technical support. We allocated a team of 30 professionals to do the wiring, installation of devices, handling legacy technology, interviews, and professional training for the new solutions in just 30 days. In all, more than 300,000 calls were sent and received on more than 1,300 Cisco IP phones managed by Logicalis.

Logicalis also provided technical advice on the creation of digital strategies to deal with the effects of Covid-19. One of Logicalis’ ideas was the use of 3D printing to create safety equipment, such as face masks, surgical gloves extractors, more than 600 face shields, and more than 20 upper limb prostheses.

Has integrating Digital Transformation been a challenging process for some companies? What are the challenges? How do you help resolve them?

Many companies are struggling with their digital transformation plans. One of the challenges with digital transformation is the lack of internal buy-in or understanding across the organization. 57% of executives admit they don’t know what digital transformation is or misinterpret it, with many thinking it means moving to a paperless office. Digital Transformation is not a one-off activity. It is an ongoing evolution tied to the development of a business’ offerings.

At the start of the pandemic, businesses had little to no choice but to accelerate their transformation plans from a year-long process to an overnight overhaul. This rapid adoption, which is already complex, left many gaps preventing them from realizing the true benefits. It isn’t enough to just get to the cloud or digitally transform. Companies need to optimize the environment based on what they want to achieve for longer-term business objectives.

Many businesses don’t have the in-house skills or access to technical resources to achieve this optimization. That’s where we come in. We help manage the end-to-end digital transformation process and provide the expertise, technical skills, and resources to succeed. This also allows organizations to focus on their day-to-day responsibilities, knowing their transformation plans are in very capable hands.

Ok. Thank you. Here is the primary question of our discussion. Based on your experience and success, what are “Five Ways a Company Can Use Digital Transformation To Take It To The Next Level”? Please share a story or an example for each.

A successful digital transformation allows businesses to enhance and improve their overall business strategy in several ways:

Optimize operations: Digital transformation offers an opportunity to build a secure modern IT foundation to enable business agility. Agility used to be nice to have, but the pandemic and its ongoing impact, has transformed this into a necessity. It means businesses can adapt to unexpected circumstances or sudden market changes. Agile business models can put customers’ needs at the forefront and continue to deliver an optimal service regardless of the situation.

Empower employees: By digitally transforming, a business gives its people the tools and the power to support customers. It can also improve the user experience and employee collaboration for enhanced productivity and cost-effectiveness. The ability to create and successfully exploit new ideas is critical to any business to improve its processes and bring new products to market.

Connect with customers: A digital transformation allows businesses to engage effectively with customers, creating a seamless experience that builds better customer relationships. Enterprises are increasingly competing to deliver an optimal customer experience. More than two-thirds of organizations state they are competing mostly on customer experience, and customer experience has emerged as a key driver for sustainable business growth.

Unlock potential: Through digital transformation, businesses can benefit from data-driven customer insight. The big data industry will be worth an estimated $77 billion by 2023. Unlocking and activating business data has significant benefits for organizations as they tailor their proposition to support and deliver what their customers truly want. McKinsey recently revealed that businesses that use big data saw a profit increase of 8–10 percent.

Support business growth: With digital transformation empowering employees, unlocking potential, improving the customer experience, and optimizing operations, will boost the overall experience. Satisfied customers and productive employees increase cash flows and lead to scaling operations in support of business growth.

In your opinion, how can companies best create a “culture of innovation” in order to create new competitive advantages?

The companies that will see the most innovation coming from their teams embrace diversity and empower employees to share ideas. Hiring a diverse pool of people builds in innovation from the start. When companies also encourage employees to come forward with innovative ideas, whether, for new customer products and services or to update internal company processes, this creates a ‘culture of innovation’. This atmosphere helps employees to take risks and speak up when they have a new idea, no matter who they are and who is at the table.

For instance, at Logicalis, we recently hosted our first Global Innovation Challenge, where we encouraged teams to create innovative solutions to current social and environmental issues worldwide. Our winners established a solution to help migrants access the job market and reduce internal personnel shortages. The team will be receiving funding to develop their solution into a minimum viable product, and we are looking forward to seeing the solution become a reality.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

I think perhaps one of the best life lessons anyone can learn is around how to focus. To quote from The Science of Serendipity by Matt Kingdon, “The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing”. In a world where we have continually competing for priorities, whether it be work or personal life, focusing is the single most important ability for me every day. Each morning, I prioritize the day ahead, but the key is picking the critical task that needs to be achieved and ensuring that that is the main focus of the day. Once you know what that is, everything else falls into place.

How can our readers further follow your work?

I regularly contribute thought leadership articles across Logicalis’ website, exploring pressing topics and trends on digital transformation, technology, and the IT industry.

You can also follow me on LinkedIn and Logicalis across its social pages like LinkedIn and Twitter.

Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!