Serving up success

We're at Wimbledon today and like our top British tennis players would use data on their own performance and insights on their opponents to build customised game plans.

Within transaction banking at Barclays we use data to produce strategic insights.

These strategic insights allow us to have more relevant and actionable conversations

with our clients.

Digitalisation and data are the cornerstone of any supply chain, and the benefits and efficiencies unleashed through those initiatives can affect businesses in multiple ways.

If you take Wimbledon for example, it’s obviously a very clearly complex legistical supply chain that Wimbledon run from scheduling of tennis courts obtaining tennis balls, precuring strawberries for the strawberries and cream season.

It clearly requires a lot of planning and care for preparation behind it.

The beauty about the Wimbledon experience is you most people only come once the fortnight,

so you're only going to get one survey. But that data is really important for us to learn about how people, are thinking and what make what's good.

And we're aiming for 50% of people who come here every day to have an outstanding experience. And that's quite hard. But that data allows us to work out

what we can do better.

I think it's really apt that were at Wimbledon today. You know, tennis players every single day

are using data to make decisions, right. So it could be their own performance. It can also be the performance of their competitors. But it can even be more broad than that right.

What's the weather conditions today and how does that affect the flight of the ball?

It's a saturated data market in tennis at the moment.

What is available for players and coaches is the real time data. So our data analyst is analysing

the match as it goes on. My father likes to look at data. All those numbers and following the data

of what the best Americans were doing and also where I was progressing and using

that on my journey was so, so key.

Now it's so easy. We just go to tennis IQ on the ATP website, it tells you where

the favourite patterns are on breakpoints. It tells you the percentage

where they serve. Is like so easy. My dad would have the easiest life instead of staying up till 3 a.m. doing data every day.

There's two main things that businesses use data for at the moment.

Plenty more on top of that, but the main ones we see at the moment

to firstly to improve decision making. Day in, day out, we're already making decisions.

A lot of them are gut feel. If you can use data to empower those decisions and drive those decisions, it really does help that decision making process.

You can make the decision quicker.

The second way we see is forecasting. We all want a crystal ball to look into

and to see what the future might hold. But a lot of that can be forecast from the data

that you as a business, might hold. Without adequate planning and forecasting, businesses

would be missing the essential roadmap to successfully navigate and deliver their corporate strategy.

You have to have the combination of data and also instinct that goes with that

to be successful in those ways. So in a nutshell, a lot of benefits unleash through the power of digital and data for any business.

We're all making decisions day to day. A lot of them are gut feel. 

But if you can have data from the outset, you can really empower your teams to make data decisions. 

At the core of it, you have to understand your own data first and we’re a data driven business. 

And so we can really help waypoint for you how to use the data you might already have. 

Be it financial or customer data. But then when we get into the data that Barclays holds. 

So we have a commercial acquiring business as well as a retail issuing business. 

And across those two we see about 40% of the transactions in the UK.

For the last ten years we've been releasing our Barclays Consumer Spend report, 

which looks at what are people spending on an essential and non-essential spend. How is that changing per industry?

But then we can get really micro as well. So where should you open your next store? That's a really big capital decision to get right.

And so using Barclays data and transactional data, you can see where your customers are already spending, where to open that next location. 

We think it is very important. Before we start a program to use data to really get the most out of all of the efforts, 

looking from a payments and acquiring perspective, we could really work closely with our clients to understand how payments are being processed because we're an issuer and an acquirer.

We see more data than most, so we really understand how to present transactions to get the best acceptance rate. So looking at the data, 

we can understand that perhaps while payments declining and what can we do to really improve acceptance rate. We have amazing results from doing that.

Barclays can help improve your working capital position by utilising data to implement the rights and strategy for your business. 

So looking at how you pay your suppliers, automating those payments and also freeing up working capital by perhaps extending a line of credit to some suppliers, 

frees up capital in order to to focus on other projects,but also to look at maybe different payments tool sometimes you might want to pay suppliers 

more quickly and get better commercial terms for them, and then that will help you with your capital position as well.

Within transaction banking at Barclays we use data to produce strategic insights. These strategic insights allow us to have more relevant and actionable conversations with our clients.

For example, this could be insights into a client's cross-border payments to help us serve their FX needs better.

As businesses grow and expand internationally, managing that cross-border payments

becomes an essential part of this journey. Within transaction banking at Barclays we have a suite of products to help clients on this journey, from offering foreign currency accounts

to help manage liquidity in different currencies to FX payment platforms and access to specialists to help with cross-border transactions and FX Risk management.

Forecasting is an essential tool for businesses to plan for their future and achieve their long term goals. A lot of forecasting today relies on data analysis and modelling to develop accurate

predictions and allocate resources effectively. Without adequate planning and forecasting businesses would be missing the essential roadmap to successfully navigate and deliver their corporate strategy.

Digitalisation and data are the cornerstone of any supply chain, and the benefits and efficiencies 

unleashed through those initiatives can affect businesses in multiple ways.

International trade continues to be an industry that is predominantly paper based.

With the passing of the Electronic Trade Documents Act and England in the UK,

it's enabled the move towards digitalisation of trade and other countries are following suit as well.

So that's one of the key steps businesses should actually take to look at how they can digitalise their 

trade documents and also look at wider digitalisation within their businesses. and also look at wider digitalisation within their businesses.

Some key benefits are faster access to working capital, faster access to goods, support as well.

Any business looking to embark on a transformation agenda to a digitalise and enable a data led strategy needs to start looking from within.

Looking at the core platforms, ERP systems and ensure there's a front to back

connectivity across the supply chain.

So, for example, looking at their finance and treasury systems and connectivity with their procurement system, connectivity, the compliance system.

The ICC have launched a roadmap for the UK.

There are recommendations for industry bodies like ICC, and also for businesses with practical tips and tools on 

creating the investment case for digitalisation, but also resources that they could tap into in their journey towards transformation and digitalisation.