Mike Wilkinson, Author at CACI

How CACI transformed Mitchells & Butlers brands’ guest experiences

Posted on: 5 December 2024

Background

Mitchells & Butlers (M&B) is a major pub, bar, and restaurant operator in the UK. It has over 1,700 locations and a range of popular brands like Toby Carvery, Miller & Carter and All Bar One. It is a successful bricks-and-mortar business with over 125 years of history.

In 2014, M&B chose CACI to create a unified, flexible ‘Guest Online’ web platform using Adobe Experience Manager.

The Challenge

Before working with CACI, M&B had multiple web platforms for its different branded websites, which made it difficult and costly to update, manage and to add new features. Using Adobe Experience Manager and working with CACI, M&B was able to move all its websites to one platform, creating efficiencies in both website editing and feature development.

M&B also wanted to introduce innovative website features to enhance its guests’ online experiences – starting with features such as table booking and takeaway ordering. These features are now common across the hospitality industry but have helped M&B grow its business and have contributed to its current success.

Solution/ Results

In 2016, CACI developed M&B ‘s order at table functionality and added the option for a guest to pay and order online. These features were essential in the post-COVID trading environment.

In 2023, M&B and CACI collaborated to create ‘My Account,’ allowing guests to register for an account. Through this platform, guests can access personalised offers, view vouchers in their wallet, and review past transactions. Registering for ‘My Account’ enhances
guest loyalty and provides M&B with valuable insights into preferences and behaviour. Additionally, guests can register with multiple brands, each offering a unique experience. To deliver the new My Account feature, CACI used Azure Active Directory B2C to support customer identity access management. This allowed safe handling of account creation, email verification, sign-ins, and sign-outs, as well as enabling guests to use social sign-in via Facebook and Google.

M&B’s considers My Account as the next frontier in the effectiveness of its digital marketing activity, with My Account aiming to increase and expand guest consent, improve personalisation, and provide a platform for future real-time promotion.

From 2016, CACI provided dedicated development and DevOps teams to M&B and round the clock support for their web platform. Additionally, in 2023 CACI executed a project to migrate the platform to Microsoft Azure’s cloud infrastructure.

Future

M&B sees My Account as the next frontier in the effectiveness of their digital marketing activity, with My Account aiming to increase and expand guest consent, enhance personalisation and provide a platform for future real-time promotion.

Find out more about our digital design, build and operate capabilities

College of Policing – UX research, website consolidation and content strategy

Posted on: 16 February 2024

The College of Policing is the professional body serving the police in England and Wales. Their mission is to equip everyone who works in the police service with the professional knowledge and skills to prevent crime, protect the public, and gain their trust. The College had a digital estate of micro-sites with inconsistent brand identity and design that required a revised modernised look and feel to improve user satisfaction and become a central source of information.

CACI were selected to consolidate their websites into a single, user-friendly next-generation Drupal platform, transform the user experience and content architecture, and upgrade the branding and interface design. Our goal was to help the College continue being a valued centre of learning excellence and cope with the demands of modern policing. It was initially launched as a public-facing beta website in summer 2020, consolidating many of the existing websites in February 2021.

The challenge

The College has a broad and diverse user base, with users from a wide range of backgrounds, working across different police forces at various levels of rank and experience. Diversity and inclusion are paramount concerns for the College, as awareness is growing about the importance of diversity for effective policing. For these reasons, they needed a CMS platform that was inclusive, accessible and highly usable.

Given this, the objectives were as follows:

Consolidate multiple websites and pages into a single, data-driven, accessible CMS platform with excellent user experience and security
Craft a new content strategy for the website with clear governance for the future
Pass Home Office-led service assessments, with a particular need to work for (and with) diverse user groups

Working together

To achieve all these aims, the College needs an accessible, user-friendly online platform that is easy for their internal content teams to manage and keep up-to-date with timely information and learning materials. They need a robust user experience strategy based on research and testing to ensure they can fulfil the diverse needs of their user base, keeping in mind the strict information security and compliance requirements of the CMS and hosting infrastructure. However, their previous websites were not equipped to meet these challenges.

As the College grew and evolved over the years, their digital estate had expanded. Different departments had worked in silos, adding their own sections and pages. As a result, there were many disparate websites and thousands of pages with inconsistent visual styles, differing content and search functions, and large amounts of legacy content which was no longer relevant to the College’s present-day operations.

This project called for a truly collaborative approach. CACI would not only design and build the new platform, but also upskill many departments in the College of Policing, from the managers to the content and marketing teams. Our goal was to help them to build a powerful internal culture of user-centred thinking and realise the full potential of their new platform.

We formed a cross-functional team, including a Delivery Manager (certified ScrumMaster); Service, Interaction/UI and Content Strategists and Designers; Drupal Developers, DevOps engineers and Quality Assurance Testers. Our team worked closely throughout with Product Owners, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and Content Designers from the internal College team.

Together, we ran the project applying Agile methodology. Stand-ups, show-and-tells, planning, and retrospectives were run at a cadence that suited both teams, across fortnightly sprints.

Crafting a new UX and UI

The College had never employed a specifically user-centred design approach before, so we incorporated a strong focus on user needs.

We began by collaborating with the College to create a detailed user research guide. This defined research goals, methods, recruitment protocols, and scripts for contextual research. Then, we conducted approximately 50 depth-interviews over multiple rounds with diverse stakeholders and user groups.

The research found that many users did not fully understand the role of the College or what it could offer to them as individuals or part of the police force. Users also stated that the College’s technology was outdated, and the platform was not responsive enough to keep up with the fast-paced word of modern policing.

It was clear that the College needed to improve communication. This called for new user journeys and information architecture, bringing together the important information from the different websites in an intuitive, user-friendly way.

Taking an iterative approach, we developed the first version of the website, usability testing the prototypes and information architecture to ensure both were robust and met the users’ needs.

Accessibility audits were done at each stage of the process; this meant there would be fewer issues to resolve further down the development pipeline. Users with assistive needs were included in research and testing from the very beginning, embedding accessibility throughout the project.

It was also important to socialise the insights from our iterative research with the College’s stakeholders. We provided UX training and coaching, embedding UX into the College team’s Agile workflow by designing ‘in the open’. We advocated best practise, and adjusted coaching for different stakeholder seniority levels. For example, UX and accessibility material was socialised differently for project level subject matter experts (SMEs) than for cross-organisation-level budget owners, who are less involved in the day-to-day work.

Alongside designing the user experience, we also contributed to refreshing the branding and UI design. Transparency and ease of use was key; the College is a publicly available resource which is viewed by journalists and the public as well as police, and they need to be fully transparent in their practises. The new website is designed to have a modern and positive tone both in the choice of content and in the photography and visuals, with an emphasis on diversity and inclusion.

Content strategy and architecture

This was a major content strategy and content design project; we ultimately restructured millions of words of content relating to police best practise.

Our research had indicated that users were struggling with inconsistent content structures across the website. There was also no obvious indication of when the content had last been updated, which was a major pain point for users who needed the latest policing guidance and best practise.

Working closely with our partner Scroll and the College’s SMEs, we crafted a content strategy informed by a new tone of voice. Together, we aimed to engage and position the College in the right way to a broad audience.

Our content strategy had clear guiding principles that outlined:

How content is created: making sure all content is validated against user needs
How content is reviewed: the roles and workflows for content reviews
How content is governed: managing the lifecycle of content and how it’s reviewed
How content is decommissioned: is the content still relevant, or is it no longer needed?

Because policing evolves so quickly, it was vital that the new content strategy provided clear governance for the future. For example, the new site needed to stay up-to-date with the latest COVID guidance during a time when laws and regulations were changing weekly, necessitating frequent updates.

Our developers, UX team and designers worked together to design the content architecture. This involved identifying the different types of content needed on the site, how they related to each other, and how each might be categorised and structured.

We created new, clear page hierarchies, along with page templates for each content type. Publication dates were placed at the top of the page where they could be easily seen. Usability testing participants found the new pages less cluttered, with consistent visual patterns that meant they could scan and absorb information quickly – crucial for busy police officers.

Next, we crafted a roadmap for migrating and integrating content from the various old websites into the new consolidated platform. We provided explanatory communications (content design principles) for subject matter experts (SMEs) to advocate best practice and collaborated with them to identify user groups and score the existing content’s quality.

Collaborating with the SMEs throughout, we:

Used roadmaps and user-centred content considerations to prioritise what would be migrated and when.
Analysed and migrated content against defined and validated user needs.
Created and adapted new content, applying College brand guidelines and tone of voice.
Designed, developed, and built a pattern library containing defined content types to keep style and tone consistent (to be used both retroactively and for creating new content).
Developed content types to cater for new requirements and formats, such as online courses.

Building the new site with Drupal

As a tech-agnostic agency, we considered different CMS solutions to determine what would work best for the College. Drupal stood out as a platform that would allow them to manage their content in a scalable, secure, and performant manner.

In late 2019, we selected a version of Drupal 8 combined with Layout Builder called Acquia Lightning and used that to develop the initial solution, taking our functional cues from the in-depth UX work and our theme cues from the design phase of the project. Drupal offered significant content moderation and scheduled publishing improvements, making life much simpler for the College’s team of content creators. All pages on the site have been improved in this respect, from news and articles to the careers page. We’ve also implemented new page types which empower them to deliver information in different formats, such as podcasts.

From the redesigned content architecture, we built an initial beta MVP version of the website that the College were able to review and give feedback on. From this, we iterated the final website. The site that was formally launched in “beta” and ran in parallel with their old website for several weeks, as the old content was migrated across by the content creators.

After launch, we organised independent security testing to validate and sign-off on the secure architecture of the CMS and hosting setup. An additional independent accessibility audit revealed a few minor issues; all but one of these (an error in Google Maps outside of our control!) was fixed within a week of that report. This demonstrates the value of embedding accessibility throughout the entire project, rather than leaving it as a tick-box exercise at the end: by taking this approach, we ensured there were no non-conformities to be resolved before launch.

As part of our work with the College and other Government clients, we’ve developed a very deep understanding of the power and limitations of the mandated hosting service provided through GOV.UK PaaS.

With Drupal 8 approaching EOL in November 2021, we migrated the site to Drupal 9 in September of that year, setting up the College for an eventual smooth transition to Drupal 10 in mid-2023 (as well as future iterations of Drupal).

A powerful search solution

Throughout this project, our primary aim was always to help the College realise their goal of becoming the go-to resource for information, learning and research in policing. To achieve this, they needed a powerful search function with multi-site functionality, enabling users to navigate through huge amounts of information (from both internal and external web pages, including multiple policing websites) with ease.

This was beyond the capabilities of the native Drupal search, so we replaced it with an Algolia index to drive an extended search solution. By building middleware to parse and enrich data sources, we’re able to index several types of content in any format for many external sites. We also incorporated manual data feeds from external CSV/JSON files.

Using Algolia InstantSearch, the search page now aggregates all data from within the College website, plus external sources including many British police force websites.

It also pulls from the National Police Library, which houses many thousands of research papers and information resources on crime and policing. Users can access all these resources from one simple search page, making the College a central hub where people can go for information and research.

The new search function was iteratively developed and validated through usability testing at every stage. The engine brings up to 200x faster results, more accurate word-matches, better filtering, synonyms, and featured results that can be controlled by the admin-level editors. It is designed so users can filter content by source, theme, type, or recency, navigating through huge amounts of information quickly and efficiently.

As the College continues to grow, evolve, and expand in its aspirations, the website and search function will continue to evolve with it.

Screenshots of the "Support for Forces" page from the College of Policing website.

A new approach to SEO

Because there was an overlap between new and old websites, and they were live at the same time, this was an unprecedented project for us in terms of SEO. The old websites were always intended to be merged after a few months, so we needed to make sure the migration would go smoothly.

To track performance of the new beta site, we set up a new Google Search Console account and implemented the relevant analytics settings.

When the new site was fully launched, we coordinated this with the Search Console to ensure the College would not lose the SEO credibility they had built up over the years. Because the URL had changed, we put it on Google Analytics as a legacy. Our SEO specialists and developers worked together on cookie configuration, ensuring the cookie banner was GDPR compliant.

We have since worked this way with other clients who had an old and new site running in parallel as part of a website consolidation project, making the College a landmark SEO project for us.

Results and ongoing work

This project demonstrates how technology can be used for genuine digital transformation, changing what our clients do and how they do it. Our work has touched every single department of the College of Policing in some way, from user journeys and content strategy, to DevOps support, to upskilling their internal teams and inspiring cultural change.

In summer 2020, the College’s new website was initially launched as a public-facing beta website. The new beta was evaluated against the WCAG 2.1 AA, achieving a score of 96% on the first pass, with the minor remaining non-conformities resolved within a week. This was a huge leap forward for a website which previously had no UX or accessibility strategy in place.

The new platform passed a Home Office service assessment first time. Feedback said it was “great to see the Cyber-Duck and College’s cross-functional team positively tackling such a vast organisational/cultural challenge”, particularly around including users with accessibility needs from the outset.

The beta website eventually superseded the old College website in February 2021. We continue to integrate parts of the old platform, iterate and make new releases, with a usual cadence of 2 weeks, helping the College to deliver a better experience for the policing community.

As well as new functionality and the inevitable bug fixes, every release includes an update to Drupal core and contributed modules, ensuring we have the latest stable code base in operation and the site remains secure. When Drupal announces security issues, we triage them against our knowledge of how the College’s site is used and issue a hotfix when required. Perhaps most rewarding for us on this project is the bond of trust between Cyber-Duck and the College, which allows us to provide them with real value.

Key Stats

100 – Google Lighthouse score for performance, accessibility and SEO at launch
96% – Independent accessibility audit score against WCAG 2.1 AA

Feedback from the College said:

“CACI’s expertise and advise was invaluable to transform multiple services into a single website solution for the College of Policing. Being always on hand to offer support together with their understanding of the very specific requirements of Policing was very impressive. They brought us on a journey with a user centred and design process that focused on that important aspect of getting accessibility right. We appreciated the diversity of the team and the experiences and perspectives they brought to help solve complex challenges. We have great feedback from our users, we believe it only gets better from here.”

Or for more information on how CACI can support you with your digital transformation, please visit our Policing page, or get in touch and one of our experts will happily arrange a time to talk.

Tangible actions organisations can take to combat climate change

Posted on: 31 January 2024

Benchmarking against a new global stocktake

At the 28th UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) towards the end of 2023, the first ever global stocktake concluded as a benchmarking process for countries and stakeholders to measure against. With a rapidly closing window of opportunity to make environmentally conscious change, this stocktake encourages a reassessment of where countries and stakeholders stand in terms of climate action and support, identify any gaps and strategise on solutions to accelerate action. This stocktake will also hold countries and stakeholders accountable for their policies and commitments towards genuine climate change.

In support of this stocktake, High Level Champions and the Marrakech Partnership created the 2030 Climate Solutions: an Implementation Roadmap, a comprehensive framework which businesses can reference to set and achieve their climate change goals by 2030.

Climate change is the issue of our time, and we all know that we must do our bit. But nailing down what bit we are supposed to be doing can be harder than expected. If you’re manufacturing goods, it’s a bit easier – but the vast majority of organisations are run online with little physical input or output. As businesses especially are expected, and indeed want, to reduce their carbon footprint, they may find themselves wondering… where do we start?

How to identify tangible actions for business-wide change

To meaningfully reduce carbon emissions and create sustainable business models, businesses must be able to identify specific tangible actions that are realistic for initiating change. The granular details can add up to a substantial difference, and what makes sense to one organisation may not to another. Nonetheless, what remains clear is the necessity of change.

Access to comprehensive carbon emissions data

The time has long passed where organisations can afford to stumble around in the dark when it comes to their environmental impact. In fact, by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions must be reduced by 43% and global heating limited to 1.5°C.

What businesses really need is comprehensive, transparent and insight-led data on their carbon emissions. This data is critical in decision-making, anticipating future demand and analysing the marketing campaigns’ success. So, why wouldn’t we expect it of our impact on the environment? Leveraging technology to take control of their data to make it understandable and actionable is a crucial and essential step forward.

How CACI’s Environmental Hub can help create sustainable businesses

Using CACI’s highly reputable Mood data visualisation platform to distill each component of your business and connecting disparate data, the Environmental Hub generates informative and actionable insights that drive effective decision making.

But understanding your current position isn’t necessarily very helpful without data on how to make improvements. From the top 5 power consumers, you can view a selection of Green Alternatives – i.e., more low-energy efficient alternatives to your current components. Selecting one allows modelling of what difference that choice would make. There’s also info on energy suppliers, including cost savings and whether they are providing green energy.

This begins with a top-down view showing power use across an organisation split by location, which is then benchmarked against equivalent miles driven and trees needed to offset. From there, users can browse locations, investigate connected infrastructure from hardware linking into applications and determine which applications support services in each department.

At this stage, any item’s power usage can be viewed in just one click, alongside a comparison of other items. It’s here that you can see where your carbon footprint is really coming from – and start to make changes.

From the top five power consumers, you can view a selection of Green Alternatives (i.e. more low-energy efficient alternatives to your current components). Selecting one allows modelling of what difference that choice would make. There’s also information on energy suppliers including cost savings and whether they supply green energy.

Once you’ve begun to make changes, however, you must be able to see what kind of progress you’re achieving. The Tracking view shows detailed data over time and is logged against Green Initiatives to highlight the where and when impacts were made. Over time, organisations can build a truly holistic and well-informed picture of their carbon emissions.

Book a demo for CACI’s Environmental Hub here and find out how it could help your organisation reduce its carbon footprint.

How to cut organisational costs to help the environment

Posted on: 15 January 2024

While the cost-of-living crisis has become inescapable, what isn’t spoken about is the cost of doing business. With businesses forced to pay hefty electricity fees, their power usage efficiency has become critical — but where should they start?

Auditing existing infrastructure

The hybrid working revolution has certainly saved organisations millions – but for many, the hardware around their buildings is still having a real impact on bottom lines. The networks of assets and components that many organisations have built up over the years can be highly complex, responding to needs as they arose without an understanding of the gradually incurred, long-term cost.

Auditing existing equipment and operational components

Equally, so much of the equipment – from servers and data centres to screens and printers – that we make use of seems indispensable and unavoidable. It doesn’t matter how much power it uses if there doesn’t appear to be a significantly better improvement to be made.

That does not, however, mean that it is. Just as a homemade meal is healthier than junk food, there are alternate versions of your organisational components that could very well be healthier for your business’ bottom line. This could apply to every element of your operational setup, from lightbulbs down to coffee machines.

What you need is a guide to making those positive changes that can streamline and improve your efficiency. This begins with a transparent, adaptable view of your current setup, alongside alternatives which make sense for your business.

How CACI’s Environmental Hub can help

There’s no better time to make your organisation more efficient. Investing in taking control of your energy usage now can set you up for future success and give you a winning advantage over your competitors.

CACI’s Environmental Hub offers a comprehensive view of your organisation’s operational setup, alongside its energy usage. Based on CACI’s Mood data visualisation platform, it draws on organisation-wide insight to create both the big picture and the minute detail that will help your organisation reduce its carbon footprint and cut costs, significantly impacting the environment.

The bigger picture comes from the whole view of your operations and power use across your organisation, across all locations. The minute detail is derived from energy usage of every item of your connected infrastructure, which connects to department usage across the organisation.

Through location and unit granularity, you can understand which departments and locations are making better decisions about energy efficiency. This can be a key driver when it comes to investing in training and education programmes.

Alternative components are provided, as is modelling of the impact any changes would make to overall power intake. Making one improvement can have a domino effect: if computers don’t produce excess heat, air conditioning usage can be reduced. The Environmental Hub helps you predict what might lead to such changes across your organisation and enables the creation of the most efficient business model possible, reducing unnecessary costs and driving improvements. Moreover, it gives stakeholders a complete, holistic view that prompts future investment, green initiatives and enhanced decision making about office locations, energy suppliers and working practices.

Read more about the tangible actions organisations can take to combat climate change in my previous blog. You can also book a demo for CACI’s Environmental Hub here.

CACI officially launches its new digital forensics laboratory in the North of England

Posted on: 19 June 2023

CACI Ltd, a leading UK data and technology company, was proud to hold the official launch of its new Northallerton based digital forensic laboratory on the 9^thof June. The event was well attended throughout the day, with representation from almost all police forces covering the local North East region, as well as the local Mayor. The facility builds on the success of its parent company CACI Inc.’s* accredited facility in Virginia, United States, the laboratory will cater to UK law enforcement organisations by providing specialist digital forensics services.

Over the last 18 months, CACI’s highly skilled team of digital forensic professionals has worked diligently to establish the UK laboratory, drawing from the experience and accomplishments of its counterpart in the United States, which has been providing exceptional service for the past decade.

Richard Cockerill, Operations Director of CACI Ltd’s digital forensics laboratory, highlighted the exponential rise in the use of digital devices worldwide over the past decade. “Over 90% of crimes involve a digital component, which has resulted in unprecedented demand placed on police digital forensics units (DFUs) supporting criminal investigations,” he explained

CACI’s digital forensic laboratory has been meticulously designed to mirror the capabilities of law enforcement digital forensic laboratories, adhering to industry standards and employing the same tools and processes. This facility offers police DFUs additional resources and capacity to meet their growing operational demands.

The digital forensic team at CACI has also developed a suite of support services to assist police DFUs with ISO 17025 accreditation while ensuring compliance with the codes of practise set by the Forensic Science Regulator (FSR Codes). Since the beginning of this year, they have been providing a digital forensics proficiency testing service, with numerous accredited digital forensic laboratories having already participated and more booked in for future cycles. This service will undergo assessment by UKAS later this year, with the aim of receiving ISO/IEC 17043:2023 accreditation.

CACI’s digital forensic laboratory is fully operational and works in compliance with a quality management system designed to meet the requirements of ISO/IEC 17025:2017, FSR Codes and ILAC G19, as required for evidence used in UK criminal proceedings, with UKAS assessment scheduled in the next few months.

*CACI Inc. is a $6.2-billion American-based technology company.

CACI acquires Bitweave to upweight national security intelligence services

Posted on: 4 May 2023

CACI Limited, a leading data and technology solutions company, has acquired Bitweave Limited.

Bitweave provides software engineering, data analysis and cyber services to the national security sector. Jeet Khaira, Managing Director of CACI’s Information and Management Solutions Division, comments:

“We’re delighted to welcome the Bitweave team and their exceptionally rigorous software engineering and data analysis mindset. Their important position in the national security sector is a mark of both their capability and calibre. We have common core values and a shared culture – a collaborative workstyle, a focus on solving real-world problems and a passion for deploying the best and most secure technology solutions for our clients. This makes Bitweave a perfect fit and an important addition to our national security business.”

Nick Leaver, founder and CEO of Bitweave, adds:

“Joining forces with CACI gives us more power, resources and support to provide scalable, adaptive solutions to organisations of national importance. We’re excited about the potential for growth, innovation and to deepen our reputation, under the CACI banner, of delivering industry-leading software skills and services that work for the safety, security and prosperity of the UK.”

About CACI Limited

Established in 1975, CACI employs more than 1200 staff in the UK and Europe, providing business information systems to public and private sector clients. CACI Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of CACI International Inc., an IT services company publicly traded on the NYSE and employing over 22,000 staff globally.

At CACI, we help clients transform their businesses using data and technology so they’re ready for today’s and tomorrow’s challenges. We provide specialist software and technology consultancy services and deliver digital transformation and innovation projects for UK government, defence and national security organisations.

Find out more about our Cyber Security capability & our work in National Security.

Digital Twin: Seeing the Future

Posted on: 28 February 2023

Predicting what’s coming next and understanding how best to respond is the kind of challenge organisations struggle with all the time. As the world becomes less predictable and ever-changing technology transforms operations, historical data becomes harder to extrapolate. And even if you can make reasonable assumptions about future changes, how they will impact on the various aspects of your business is even more problematic.

Decision makers need another tool in their arsenal to help them build effective strategies that can guide big changes and investments. They need to combine an understanding of their setup with realistic projections of how external and internal changes could have an impact. A Digital Twin built with predictive models can combine these needs, giving highly relevant and reliable data that can guide your future course.

The Defence Fuels Prototype

Using Mood Software and in collaboration with the MOD’s Defence Fuels Transformation, CACI built a digital twin focused on fuel movement within an air station. With it we aimed to understand the present, but also crucially, to predict the near future and test further reaching changes.

We used two kinds of predictive model that can learn from actual behaviour. For immediate projections, we implemented machine learning models that used a small sample of historical data concerning requirements for refuelling vehicles given a certain demand, allowing an ‘early warning system’ to be created.

However, we knew that the real value came in understanding what’s further ahead, where there is a higher risk of the wrong decision seriously impacting the success of operations. We adapted and integrated an existing Defence Fuels Enterprise simulation model, Fuel Supply Analysis Model (FSAM), to allow the testing of how a unit would operate given changes to the configuration of refuelling vehicles.

Functions were coded in a regular programming language to mimic the structural model and to mimic the kinds of behaviour that is evidenced through the data pipeline. As a result, we are able to make changes to these functions to easily understand what the corresponding changes would be in the real world.

This allows decision makers to test alternative solutions with the simulation models calibrated against existing data. Models informed by practical realities enables testing with greater speed and confidence so you have some likely outcomes before committing to any change.

What does this mean for me?

Digital Twins are extremely flexible pieces of technology that can be built to suit all kinds of organisations. They are currently in use in factories, defence, retail and healthcare. Adaptable to real world assets and online systems, it’s hard to think of any area they couldn’t be applied to.

Pairing a digital representation of your operations, processes and systems with predictive and simulation models allows substantial de-risking of decision making. You can predict what will happen if your resourcing situation changes, and plan accordingly; you can also understand the impact of sweeping structural changes. The resulting data has been proven against real-world decisions, making it truly reliable.

Time magazine has predicted that Digital Twins will ‘shape the future’ of multiple industries going forward and I think it’s hard to argue with that.

If you’re looking for more on what Digital Twin might be able to do for you, read ‘Defence Fuels – Digital Twin’. In this white paper we show how we’re using Digital Twin to make improvements worth millions of pounds.

For more on Mood Software and how it can be your organisation’s digital operating model, visit the product page.

Modernising data infrastructure & OSS to enhance customer engagement in transport

Posted on: 9 January 2023

BACKGROUND

Our client provides the transport industry and third-party partners with national telecommunications capability. Their long-term IT strategy includes efficient access to robust, secure and scalable data centre facilities (DCF), with architecture to support hybrid cloud services. This infrastructure modernisation aims to help them deliver the reliable network services their stakeholders require.

THE CHALLENGE

Ensuring security measures did not adversely affect the performance of customers. The old tactical solution had been open access, whereas the new strategy required all communications to be secured by a Firewall.

THE SOLUTION

The strategic update of architecture and systems on this scale is a complex and long-term programme. CACI Network Services worked with the client on several stages:

Building strategic data centre facilities (DCF) using a new technology stack

Remediated and optimised existing critical data platforms (CDP) for minimal cost to support crucial workloads while the DCF was set up

Migrated operational support systems (OSS) from the CDP in the legacy IP network to a strategic location in the DCF. There was an added complication that some OSS would be live during migration.

Our consultants are highly experienced and have certification and accreditation from key technology services partners such as AWS, VMware, Cisco, and Microsoft.

We set out to ensure the solution would be effective and compliant by designing a hybrid solution with the help of our network, cloud, server, storage, virtualisation and IT infrastructure architects, with applications hosted according to importance:

On-premise for critical applications
Public cloud platform for less business-critical applications

This enables technologies to be run through a thorough assurance process for compliance. Initially set up with a team of four network service experts, it has the flexibility to adapt to support an expanded programme in the future. Our team set up structures for rigorous testing to ensure the new technology would function as required and comply with the relevant regulations and requirements.

We also developed a customised platform for project management and testing to deliver pragmatic, innovative and cost-saving solutions with an excellent track record within the marketplace.

To help drive better experiences for their people and customers through more effective use of technology and process, our team also leveraged our long-term partner relationships with key organisations in the technology services sector. Working closely with internal client teams, we were also able to ensure their operational challenges were fully understood, gain work approvals for individual components of the migration strategy and provide on-site support before, during and post-migration.

THE RESULTS

With support from CACI Network Services, our client achieved:

Our team of experts produced a strict plan for the migration of OSS, ensuring the actual migration event was swift. In the end, it took less than a day, resulting in a significant reduction in operational impact and any inconvenience for the client’s customers.
The migration programme’s high degree of efficiency saved the client tens of thousands in development costs and allowed the client to restore services over two months ahead of schedule.
Lastly, the client was able to provide their customers with more enhanced and secure services which led to increased customer satisfaction and engagement.

RELATED SERVICES

To view the full customer story, click here.

CONTACT US

To find out more about our end-to-end network design, deployment and management solutions, or discuss how CACI can help you align your processes with your KPI performance expectations and make quantifiable improvements in stakeholder engagement, contact us now.

How CACI helps shape network data strategies that earn customer trust

Posted on:

BACKGROUND

Our client is a provider of mobile infrastructure services for leading telecoms operators. They relied on the availability of accurate network data to operate and support the shared Radio Access Network. However, the integrity of the network data in the systems has degraded over time.

THE CHALLENGE

THE SOLUTION

CACI Network Services provided the client with independent consulting advice by:

Reviewing and analysing data issues through workshops, examining data flows in detail and focusing on pain points where processes have broken down
Generating a Network Data Strategy and Roadmap, placing actions in three categories:
Short term (1-3 months) – Quick wins at low cost
Medium term (3-18 months) – Tactical initiatives: some process changes and possible architectural designs required
Long term (up to 5 years) – Strategic initiatives: some new tools, systems and working practices added

Driving a policy and process review, including:

A gap analysis exercise involving experts who reviewed current and future processes aligned with CAS(T)/ISO 27001 standards and best practices
Supporting evidence and documents collected in a central location
Actions to address gaps in processes reported on with timeframes

THE RESULTS

Our client was able to move forward with a network data strategy that would measurably improve data quality and efficiency of processes. Combined with data-centric alignment with industry standards and best practice measures, they can differentiate and engage customers, with quality firmly embedded at the heart of their business practices.

CACI impressed with their data strategy methodology and individuals assigned to the project as well as their stakeholder management.

The data strategy was delivered to some challenging timeframes but with high quality and is already being used to guide the next stage in our system and networks transformation journey.

– Network Design, Planning and Deployment Director

RELATED SERVICES

Enterprise Data Services

To view the full customer story, click here.

CONTACT US

To discuss how CACI can help you align your processes with your KPI performance expectations and make quantifiable improvements in stakeholder engagement, contact us now.

Women In Tech Excellence Awards 2022 – We’re nominated!

Posted on: 28 October 2022

CACI Ltd are honoured to be nominated for the Diversity and Inclusion Initiative of the Year Award at this year’s Women in Tech Excellence Awards. I thought it only appropriate to describe the Pride event that is responsible for our nomination.

50th Anniversary of Pride Panel Event

In June, we held our “50th Anniversary of Pride” panel session where we were introduced to the wonderful Jake and Hannah Graf, a transgender couple redefining the meaning of family by becoming the UK’s first transgender parents. They both took some time at the start to discuss their struggles growing up knowing they were transgender without being able to show it. While they had their fair share of difficulty, they both noted that the first moment coming out to someone as transgender was a weight lifted from their shoulders. Years on from that moment they found each other on a first date lasting hours and they now both live in London with two beautiful daughters and successful careers.

For this panel we were keen to ensure we were raising the voices of the LGBTQ+ community rather than speaking for them. It is crucial to us that transgender colleagues, especially transgender women, feel included, respected and celebrated for who they are. Transgender women in tech are women in tech.

Their introduction was followed by a series of questions posed to five panellists formed from CACI employees from all areas of the business. Topics included the commercialisation of Pride, with arguments both for and against, and the need for more support in schools for LGBTQ+ students, with one of the panellists sharing her experiences working in a school. Jake and Hannah were also keen to emphasise the sheer amount of misinformation in the media about transgender people and how we should all be critical of the material that we are consuming.

Gave staff the confidence to tell their stories

In and amongst all these conversations was the constant message that for people across the world Pride is joyful, enlightening and necessary. This message was highlighted for me when a few individuals decided shared their stories with myself and the rest of the attendees.

Firstly, a colleague felt comfortable enough to share that he has a transgender son and wanted to hear Jake and Hannah’s advice about physical transitioning and the differences between the NHS and private sector.

Secondly, a colleague whom I was later speaking to revealed that she was new to the company and had yet to come out to anyone as in previous workplaces they had made her feel uncomfortable for discussing it. I was the first person she had come out to here as at CACI she felt braver and more welcomed than she ever had before.

I realise that the world keeps turning and, compared to the global struggles that the LGBTQ+ community faces, these are small stories. But these experiences are chapters, if not novels, in the lives of my colleagues and I am honoured that our event has helped them.

The Women in Tech Excellence Awards 2022 takes place on 22nd November in London.