Adrian Wright - The tech transformers

January’s Member in the spotlight

An interview with Adrian Wright, CEO & founder of Estafet

Tell us about your company.

We help Digitally Transform companies so that they can harness the full power of digital technology to rethink every aspect of what they do. A growing number of companies are facing up to digital reality. They know that digital technology can not only step change the performance of their current business but open new and often transformational opportunities for growth. They know that you need to be agile to harness an advantage. They are keenly aware that digital technology can create entirely new business models that disrupt sectors, leaving companies that fail to adapt with low margins, shrinking market share and irrelevance. The newspaper industry, finance, insurance, retail and automotive are all good examples.

Most companies now have digital transformation programmes and Estafet help accelerate them through this journey. We connect internal and partner-facing applications, data and devices so that information and business value can flow across the enterprise; we help break down silos so that everyone has a consistent view of the business; we enable automation at touch-points so that they can grow without increasing headcount; we provide insight to data so that better decisions are made; and we work to eliminate inefficiency, error and cost.

The customers we work with include Arqiva, Deutsche Bank, WorldPay, HSBC, Capita Life and Pensions, Centrica Homes (“Hive”), John Lewis, Yorkshire Bank, and Elsevier.

Estafet was formed in 2002. We have offices in the UK and Bulgaria. We love what we do.

 

What has been your biggest success so far?

Smart meters will help us get Gaz & Leccy under control. You have seen the adverts but behind the scenes each smart meter needs management, updating, monitoring and the data correctly gathered, transformed, understood and integrated into existing systems. Estafet won the contract to develop and deliver the software that does a lot of this. On the back of this project we also developed the smart meter software for Thames Water. They should now know if you have a water leak before you do.

What project are you most excited about right now?

There a couple of projects that I find deeply motivating at the moment.

1. The average cost of bringing a new drug to market is about $4 billion. We are working  to bring all of the published medical research data together, to be searchable,  to be merged with pharmaceutical company information, to apply AI and Machine Learning techniques, and to discover new drug solutions to enhance human health.  Its demanding, and complex, but very rewarding
2. Disrupting retail banking through innovative IT is at the heart of most new Fintechs. We are turning our attention to real time fraud detection aimed at stopping the suspect transaction before it settles. We use a business rules engine and Complex Event Processing software to examine every transaction for signs of fraud. We apply machine learning techniques to all transactions in real time and we feed the learning back into the Fraud rules. The system gets smarter on its own as more fraud is detected.

How has being a member of The Clubhouse contributed to the success of your business?

Estafet transformed its view on offices 4 years ago. In the UK we work onsite with our customers and after 13 years of sitting in a traditional office we let the space we had and joined the clubhouse. We come together as a management team once a week and hire the meeting rooms in St James location to report on the previous week and plan the next week. We cut our costs by 50% and gained a flexible workplace for our team. Our customers love it too and we now have more customer and partner meetings than we when we owned our own office. In Bulgaria we have more high tech office space than you can shake a stick at but we need our 100 permanent staff to be together 9-6 in an office designed for IT delivery.

Where can members find you?

Every Tuesday we are in St James and at lunch time I am usually sampling the street food served in the church courtyard.

 

Quick Fire Round:

Favourite place to go in London?

I’m a big fan of the National Theatre

Who inspires you and why?

I am lucky. I am inspired by many everyday people I meet and listen too. Top of the inspiration list is Bill Gates. Yes he’s an IT geek. Yes software is eating the world but Bill Gates is estimated to have saved 6 million people so far through his foundation. Inspirational

Best bit of advice you’ve been given?

“Take 24 hours to feel sorry for yourself, then get over it and get back out there. Anything more is self-indulgent” A quote by John Smallbone given to a 26 year old me after I lost an important deal.

If you were on a desert island, what would you bring?

If I had Audible with an unlimited library I would be happy

Which super power would you like to have?

I’m mid-way through a book on the Norse gods and I love Frey’s power of healing

What is the worst business ‘faux-pas’ you’ve committed?

This is a long and painful list but being a positive sort of character the things I have learnt are; Check your flies are done up before giving a conference presentation; Don’t stand next to a customer with two cups of coffee in your hands and sneeze; Limit hand movements near wine glasses at a business dinner; Watch out for street bins whilst walking and talking to a customer; Do not smile when a grown man and board member of a plc has a tantrum your 3 year old would be proud of, and do not crack a joke when your clearly not a comedian.

 

For more about Estafet visit their website: estafet.com

This article was originally featured in The Informer – January 2019. To read the full magazine please click here