"I was lucky enough to spend most of my Tuesday evening* at Charles de Gaulle's airport.
Although to be a fair it was much more enjoyable than the Paris Metro at rush hour, as I managed to find a quite corner to enjoy a beer and a burger while I waited for by 21:40 flight home (I can recommend the pulled beef burger if you ever find yourself in a similar situation).
So other than enjoying the delights of a modern air travel, the purpose of being in Paris on Tuesday was to visit the TotalEnergies Digital Factory (or TDF for short).
What is the TotalEnergies Digital Factory? Well, its like IT but better.
Sorry Darrell Field and co., that was unfair. 👋
The real intent is it is a way to speed up the company transition by providing innovative, transforming and differentiating digital solutions.
Trying to combine the agility, tech focused, start-up mindset of a digital organisation with the discipline and delivery driven nature of a factory.
In practical terms, it is a team of 300 TotalEnergies people in the tech quarter of Paris focused on using technology to solve problems on behalf of the company. The focus is not on 'traditional IT' or working on the groups existing IT, but new and innovative solutions removed from the constraints of the the day today.
Throughout the day I got an overview of the digital factory, the approach they take to delivery and the culture they have created across the organisation. It was also an opportunity to meet some of the development teams who presented the projects they were working on, including a data science based model to price fuel in service stations, a tool for quickly developing solar proposals for business customers in Spain, as well as asset monitoring and alert solutions for renewable assets.
The afternoon focused on how they design new products and user experience (I won the UX quiz, hopefully the first of many first place medals for the UK in Paris this summer). We then spent time focused on AI and how it has been used to support due diligence for MA and some of the emerging use cases across IPBU including marketing communications, chat bots, and competitor monitoring.
So what does this mean for us?
Well, I took three things away. Firstly the importance of how we set ourselves up to deliver projects, secondly it was exciting to see how the Company can innovate and finally for the right type of project there is a team in Paris we could partner with to deliver something new!
As always, any questions let me know!"
* Tuesday, 9th April 2024.
