Which lessons did Kumsal Bayazit, Chairwoman of the Technology Forum at RELX Group, learn during the large-scale digitalisation of the company?

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1 Date: June 22, 2018 Publication: Het Financieele Dagblad Transformers Magazine Title: We need to fall in love with the problem of the client Author: Job Woudt Which lessons did Kumsal Bayazit, Chairwoman of the Technology Forum at RELX Group, learn during the large-scale digitalisation of the company? We now do things, I did not dare to dream about when I started at the company fourteen years ago. For about fourteen years Kumsal Bayazit has had many commercial and strategy roles at RELX Group, known in the Netherlands as the parent company of Elsevier. This makes her one of the architects behind the renovation of the British-Dutch group. She is now head of Reed Exhibitions Europe, the exhibitions and conventions division of the company. RELX Group transitioned from a traditional publisher to a company that provides information and data analytics to professionals. But the transformation is by far not completed. RELX Group s technology is, according to Bayazit, the golden thread, from the development of websites, apps, databases, search engines to the use of the very latest algorithms and techniques for machine learning. It helps us to improve results for our customers and to strengthen our leading position in the world. Bayazit talks with great enthusiasm about Wunelli. This is a tech company from Portsmouth in the UK that has been in the Risk & Business Analytics market segment of the Group since Wunelli develops apps and other smart applications that can accurately track the driving behavior of motorists. For insurers, this offers crucial information to generate tailormade premiums. But it is also helps policyholders. For example, young drivers now often pay a high premium. Thanks to this technology, they can manage themselves to quickly improve their driving behavior and in effect lower the premium. The former Reed Elsevier looks very different from what it was during the merger of British publishing house Reed and the Dutch company Elsevier. Following the merger in 1992 the group had mainly print publications, from professional journals like Boerderij" to the scientific journal The Lancet, as well as Algemeen Dagblad, NRC and the Hollywood magazine Variety. Few years later, the newly formed group acquired the American online database, now LexisNexis. This is still one of the most expensive acquisitions in the history for the company. Strong and unique databases are keeping us outside the reach of big tech-companies And then the internet arrived and the world changed completely for publishers. The first, but not the least transition was from print to digital. For RELX Group this can be considered as completed. Only 11% of the group s turnover of 8.4 billion comes from paper. This is mainly because some customer groups still strongly prefer print publications. In recent years, the company has also been shifting from a digital information-collector

2 and provider to an expert in data analytics. Of about 30,000 employees at RELX Group, 8,000 are working as IT specialists or data analysts. In addition to scientific and professional information, the group supplies more and more products that enable all kinds of rapid data analyses. For example, insurers can make their risk analysis in no time and can provide quotes to customers efficiently; airlines, with the use of data-analysis, can use their fleet more efficiently and academics can collect their research data more efficiently and effectively via its Elsevier business. With all those terabytes of information, the sky is suddenly the limit. Kumsal Bayazit is happy to give her tips and "take-aways" on the changes at RELX Group. Is professional information boring? Are databases drowsy? IT solutions annoying and incomprehensible? No, she has not been bored for a moment at the RELX Group. "We are now doing things I would not have dared dreaming about." 1. The customer, the customer and once again the customer Publishers have entered a new force field since the arrival of the internet in the midnineties. With a lot of power display, tech companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook have joined the fight. Especially public media that depend on advertising revenues are sighing under their arrival. RELX Group focuses on professional customers across industries. The information is not there for entertainment, but leads customers to be able to make better decisions, achieve better results and be able to work more productively. The company already developed this mission as a publisher of (print) trade magazines, scientific journals, trade fairs and exhibitions. In the digital age this happens in an even more faster and in much more effective ways. At various times during the interview Bayazit stresses the importance of the customer. The optimal service of our customers has remained unchanged as our mission, she says. We are very customer-oriented, we understand the segments in which we operate like no one else. We always also had strong and unique datasets. It is a sustainable set of data that we continuously enrich. Moreover, that also ensures that we stay out of the reach of the major tech companies. 2. Be centralised and decentralised Technology has fundamentally changed the structure of the organization. After the merger, Reed Elsevier was like a fleet with small ships: decentralised, close to the market, with publishers as the indispensable link between the authors and their audience. Only the financial management was operated centrally from the head office. This model has since been adjusted, reflecting more on the needs of the clients. Technology platforms require a global scale. Knowledge and expertise of software programs, data processing, artificial intelligence or open source networks cannot be hidden in the various small ships in the organization. The pendulum now goes much more towards global instead of local, says Bayazit.

3 But that does not mean that local involvement and focus are not equally important. There is for instance still a great deal of local involvement in the legal division, as well as in the insurance sector. In the end it starts here with our clients, the neurologist, the medical lawyer, the risk manager, and so on. We organize ourselves around those customers as well as ideas that come from our product management and from the entire organization. We look at the issues that our customers face and then work with our global technology groups for the design and the prototypes of our solutions. In turn, they then receive feedback from within the organization to be able to make adjustments quickly. 3. Dare to stop projects New initiatives are important to stimulate organic growth. So, half of the revenue growth in the insurance market comes from new products. The teams that makes this possible receive careful treatment. This means that the management builds all kinds of milestones to closely follow the success of a project. We often start small, with a few customers who help us and give us feedback. Then we test and adjust quickly. The good thing is that customers can also make their own business case this way if they want to purchase our product. There are no 100% chances of success. It is therefore important to draw the plug from an initiative in time. We have to be objective in the assessment, says Bayazit. Continuing unnecessarily with a fantastic looking product makes no sense. We have to fall in love with the customer's problem, not with its solution. 4. Walls are to be taken down The target groups and the associated market operations may differ completely, but that does not mean that this should lead to high walls within the organization. One of her first acts as chief strategy officer for RELX Group was to set up a forum for the technology directors in the company, which is referred to as the CTO Forum. Bayazit brought them physically together every six months. Now that the participants in the group know each other well they meet about twice a year. Though there are regular meetings via modern video conferencing. Then the technology directors explain how they are solving certain issues. They can also offer technologists interesting career paths and place them within one of the businesses to coordinate the planning of the various projects. But are the division directors not afraid to lose their best people? "That's not how we work," Bayazit reacts. "That's an old-fashioned way of thinking. Let people fly out above all. Our technology people are very curious. The more challenges they have, the higher the involvement. We do coordinate the planning of the projects. We are always looking for pragmatic solutions to allow our people wo wok on new problems and challenges. 5. Take full advantage of the technology A small acquisition with major consequences. In at that time - Reed Elsevier was

4 acquired a company with HPCC Systems, a technology platform from the US that can process enormous amounts of data. Big Data still had to become a buzzword. 'It was a relatively small purchase, with developed technology', according to Bayazit. 'We included it in our Risk & Business Analytics division, where the search engines initially worked with public files and public data. Then we brought the HPCC Systems platform to legal data sets and that really opened our eyes. Linking legislation and individual cases with the names of judges was previously very time-consuming. It was very expensive, for example, to get two million names linked. That would take nearly two years. With HPCC Systems we had 80 million links in no time, with direct updates on the data files. Then we started using HPCC Systems for our Science Direct product, for searches, analyses and recommendations in science literature.' 6. Do not stare blindly at Silicon Valley RELX Group is in Silicon Valley in the mix of other technology companies. But there are more ways to increase knowledge and get talents within the gates. For example, the group has partnerships with universities. Its scientific division Elsevier has alliances with the University of Leiden and with Amsterdam Data Science, an alliance between the local knowledge institutions and the business community. Bayazit: 'We already have 110 people in this team from all nationalities in the world. There are more students who choose Elsevier than Facebook or Google. But there are also alliances with for instance universities in Cardiff, in London and in the American State of North Carolina. In this state the group has also developed its own 'technology hub', just like in Atlanta, London and Shanghai. This is where the lion's share of the 8,000 tech employees is also stationed. 'Internally, we have built a' tech track platform for career development for our technologists. It is a global system that also includes all vacancies. 7. Keep buying and selling RELX Group aims for autonomous growth by coming up with new services and products and developing new markets. But smaller, targeted acquisitions help further, for example to bring in technology or specific content. 'And we divest when an activity no longer fits in and when it can better thrive somewhere else, says Bayazit. Kumsal Bayazit. RELX Group We often identify potential acquisitions after tips of employees or clients. The most expensive acquisition dates from 2008, when the company paid $4.1 billion for data analysis company ChoicePoint. At the start of this year, it acquired ThreatMetrix for 672 million, a San José technology company specialising in identity information and risk analysis. This was mainly for the knowledge and the 250 employees behind the company. The strategy department plays an important role in such purchases. It tests whether an acquisition is useful, often after tips from within the own organization. They also draw up a business case. Then it is up to the colleagues of Mergers & Acquisitions to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion.

5 8. Face to face communication remains intact Bayazit has been leading the Reed Exhibitions European operations and its 2000 employees since early 2016, the largest organizer of trade shows and exhibitions in the world. What does this division still have to look for at RELX Group? We use data and technology to further improve this form of communication. This way we build platforms to better match the visitors with the exhibitors. As a result, a visit to a trade fair can be done much more efficiently. We also measure the flow of visitors in more and more sophisticated ways and we can make suggestions for the design of a trade show. With our data technology we can also make recommendations to visitors. Bayazit further explains that the activities of this division still account for 15% of turnover, grow strongly and make a significant contribution to profits. With all that attention for data, digitisation and technology, the trade shows and exhibitions prove to be a stay-on. Bayazit: Next to digitalisation face-to-face communication is a very strong form of communication and it will stay that way. INSERT: KUMSAL BAYAZIT (1974) Bayazit did not follow training in computer science or data sciences. She graduated as an economist at the University of Berkeley, after which she started working at the management consultancy Bain & Company. While working she also obtained an MBA at the Harvard Business School. About 14 years ago she came on board at RELX Group, where she has been responsible for the European activities of Reed Exhibitions, the trade shows and exhibitions division of the group, since the beginning of Since 2013 she has been part of RELX Group s CTO Forum, where technology leaders who serve different customer segments work together as one team. Her previous roles include, Chief Strategy Officer at the corporate headquarters in London and has also been responsible for strategy at LexisNexis. n.b: this article originally appeared in Dutch and has been translated to English in-house.