CTO Sessions: Marc Harper, Lumi Global - IDG Connect

Name: Marc Harper

Company: Lumi Global

Job title: Chief Technology Officer

Date started existent role: June 2021

Location: Hampshire, UK but moving with teams crossed the UK, Netherlands, and the US.

Marc Harper is the CTO of Lumi, the AGM supplier of 5000 planetary organisations and each the FTSE100. Harper joined Lumi arsenic CTO successful 2021 having spent 15 years starring planetary exertion functions for a assortment of organisations spanning retail, integer content, managed services, and nationalist information solutions. Experienced astatine designing and implementing secure, scalable, and innovative bundle arsenic a work solutions, Harper graduated from the University of Westminster with a grade successful Computer Science and a Masters grade successful IT Security.

What was your archetypal job? My archetypal part-time occupation was astatine a section Tesco supermarket erstwhile I was 17. I worked determination for six years during my studies and near with bully penetration into retail, a large stock returns strategy and a woman that aboriginal became my wife.

My archetypal imperishable occupation was arsenic an IT Assistant astatine The White Company. I joined astatine a play of immense enlargement and enjoyed each infinitesimal of it. I progressed to Head of IT and americium grateful for the experiences I was afforded astatine the opening of my career, arsenic good arsenic the colleagues and friends I gained on the way.

Did you ever privation to enactment successful IT? As a young child, I wanted to beryllium either a lawyer oregon enactment successful IT.  My involvement successful IT started erstwhile I learned to constitute elemental syntax connected the household Commodore C16 erstwhile I was aged 6 oregon 7. Fast-forward to the aboriginal 1990s, my parents bought a Packard Bell with Windows 95 and I was spellbound. We managed to root an further 4Mb RAM spot from determination and I plucked up the courageousness to unfastened the basal unit, insert the chip, and watched successful wonderment arsenic the instrumentality notified me: “New Memory Detected…8Mb”, and similar that, aged 13, I recovered my career.

What was your education? Do you clasp immoderate certifications? What are they? I americium arrogant to accidental that I was state-educated and enjoyed schoolhouse tremendously. After completing my A-levels, I achieved a BSc successful Computer Science and past a Masters successful Information Security from the University of Westminster. As my vocation progressed, I obtained respective nonrecreational qualifications covering Prince2, ITIL, and a plethora of method accreditations from Microsoft.

Explain your vocation path. Did you instrumentality immoderate detours? If so, discuss. On reflection, my vocation has been people progressive. When I started moving successful IT, I acceptable myself an nonsubjective of becoming a CTO astatine the property of 40. For this to happen, I needed to summation acquisition successful bundle improvement and information arsenic this is wherever I saw the satellite heading. With hard work, focus, and ne'er losing show of the vision, my extremity became a reality. I’m present CTO of Lumi and person served arsenic Director of Technology astatine Oxford University Press. My vocation has spanned some the backstage and nationalist sectors, moving for companies ample and small, each of which person contributed to the idiosyncratic I americium today.

I judge the cardinal to occurrence is gathering meaningful relationships. With the adjuvant guidance of large mentors including Hamish Mansbridge (CEO of Heals), Patricia Alford-Burnett (former MD of The White Company), Simon McCalla (CEO of Elexon), and finally, Martin Harris – who astir apt had the top interaction connected my career, I’ve adapted to go a concern person with beardown commercialized consciousness successful summation to my earthy method skills.

What benignant of CTO are you? Commercially-minded with a absorption connected worth procreation to the business. One of my talents is creativity erstwhile it comes to identifying concern betterment opportunities and this is mostly driven by my entrepreneurial side. I bask balancing the absorption of method improvement but besides moving crossed each aspects of the concern to summation much insights connected solutions to amended the institution arsenic a whole.

Which emerging exertion are you astir excited astir the imaginable of? Virtual world continues to beryllium an country that volition grow rapidly and extensively. As radical person go much accustomed to moving remotely and with governments and influential leaders encouraging reduced question for some biology and geopolitical reasons, VR volition apt beryllium the ‘norm’ wherever enactment and societal gatherings are conducted via a headset connected your sofa.

Are determination immoderate technologies that you deliberation are overhyped? Why? The metaverse has been the speech of the municipality for months and the contention is surely connected for companies to beryllium the archetypal to genuinely predominate this caller frontier. Yet to immoderate extent, the metaverse is overhyped.

While it's breathtaking to ideate however this exertion could revolutionise galore aspects of our lives, specified arsenic however we interact with colleagues, friends and family, much probe is needed to recognize the interaction it volition person connected people's societal and enactment abilities, arsenic good arsenic their wide wellness and wellbeing.

The world is that for galore businesses, peculiarly those successful regulated industries, the metaverse has privateness and information implications that bounds wide adoption. In the IR and AGM abstraction for example, innovation already consistently outpaces legislation, truthful organising IR events and AGMs successful the metaverse would beryllium a regulatory minefield. This situation multiplies erstwhile you see planetary markets person antithetic authorities and restrictions. 

What is 1 unsocial inaugural that you’ve employed implicit the past 12 months that you’re truly arrogant of? Over the past 12 months, the squad astatine Lumi has expanded the merchandise beyond the accepted AGM oregon EGM gathering format by processing and implementing an capitalist relations constituent to the platform. Only released successful February, we are already seeing keen lawsuit adoption crossed Europe, Australia, North America, and South Africa. This started arsenic a tiny inaugural and has rapidly go an expanding gross stream.

Are you starring a integer transformation? If so, does it emphasise lawsuit acquisition and gross maturation oregon operational efficiency? If both, however bash you equilibrium the two? I’m arrogant to accidental Lumi is starring the mode erstwhile it comes to integer translation successful the AGM industry. For decades, AGMs person been successful league rooms, supplied with beverage and biscuits, and often during concern hours. This meant that lone a definite demographic was apt to be meetings – those who could question and be a gathering connected a weekday – and excluded many. Lumi’s virtual and hybrid gathering solutions are changing this for good. The Lumi Platform not lone replicates the in-person acquisition of Q&As, voting and enforcement enactment astatine AGMs - but enhances it for attendees joining events remotely, striving to marque AGMs arsenic inclusive arsenic possible. Yet, I run successful a assemblage that is inactive heavy regulated and accepted successful its attack – integer transformations are gathering astatine gait wherever authorities allows, but inactive not accelerated capable for my liking.

What is the biggest contented that you’re helping customers with astatine the moment? Our customers are issuers and organisations who person a ineligible close to clasp a gathering for their shareholders. The biggest contented we are moving connected is to guarantee wide accessibility to the meeting. Whether a subordinate oregon shareholder chooses to be remotely, oregon successful person, they should beryllium capable to afloat enactment successful the meeting. This indispensable see voting and asking questions.

Beyond that, the wider contented successful the listed abstraction is simplifying the process of allowing retail shareholders to entree the AGM and workout their rights. The existent proxy strategy makes it prohibitively hard for retail shareholders to vote, person their voices heard oregon adjacent be a institution AGM. We are moving with partners crossed the manufacture to simplify this process.

How bash you align your exertion usage to conscionable concern goals? At Lumi we enactment with much than 5,000 companies globally, including each the FTSE 100 successful the UK, to marque complex, ineligible meetings similar AGMs simpler and easier done technology. Based connected proprietary, patented technology, Lumi provides software, hardware, and services that assistance registrars oregon lawsuit organisers to registry delegates and supply live, unafraid polling, Q&A absorption services, and applicable reporting. As a result, our concern goals are fundamentally babelike connected our tech strategy. Innovation is astatine our halfway and providing seamless enactment betwixt our customers and their shareholders done cutting borderline exertion is what drives the concern forward.

Do you person immoderate occupation matching product/service strategy with tech strategy? At Lumi, I find myself successful the envious presumption that arsenic a tech company, our merchandise strategy is fundamentally our tech strategy. The precise talented method squad astatine Lumi are renowned for being the planetary experts successful our tract of organising and delivering AGM, EGM and IR meetings.

What makes an effectual tech strategy? A tech strategy is lone effectual if it intelligibly aligns with the customer’s objectives and has a high-level absorption of question that is realistic and developed with each cardinal stakeholders.

What predictions bash you person for the relation of the CTO successful the future? The CTO position, if you spell backmost 10 years, was precise overmuch astir maintaining backmost of location - however you support your systems, however you support your e-commerce platforms. Now, it's much astir expanding the capableness of the business.

Moving forward, each CTOs should study straight to the CEO and beryllium a board-level relation to guarantee exertion is represented astatine the highest level of decision-making wrong an organisation. I foretell the CTO relation volition proceed to summation successful value to bespeak the underlying power of exertion and integer services wrong the organisation.  

What has been your top vocation achievement? My squad are the biggest operator for me. The 1 accomplishment that gives maine the top consciousness of restitution is processing members of my squad and seeing what they spell connected to execute individually.

Technology is an ever-evolving cycle, but what volition ever stay changeless is the restitution you get from knowing you person inspired idiosyncratic to propulsion their boundaries to execute things they ne'er thought possible, and to maine that is priceless.   

Looking backmost with 20:20 hindsight, what would you person done differently? Honestly speaking, precise little. Each relation provided its unsocial challenges and opportunities.