Jyotsna: Do you think that people in the corporate world now are speaking about sustainability more than ever? What has caused this shift?
Peter Herweck: If I were to go back to about five years ago - sustainability, I would say it was a rare discussion. Of course, in the case of any new projects, there was always the worry about how we could reduce our CO 2 footprint, or if you were talking to the energy market, keeping in mind important greenhouse gases.
Today, after all our research, and through interviewing the S&P 500s on the planet, it turns out that 98 percent of them are really worried about sustainability. I'd be interested in the 2 percent of the companies that aren’t – as a matter of fact, I think it is vital if you're the leader of a corporation to worry about it. The capital market is worried about it, your clients are worried about it, and even more so, your employees are totally worried about it.
Moreover, when you go and talk to clients in the energy market, the majority of them are worried about sustainability and how the energy transition can happen. It is not about the newly generated investments, but it is also about the investments that have been made several years ago. We need to be concerned not only about what’s newly built but also about what's been built over the last few centuries. How can we make those operations more sustainable?
It's on top of the agenda with all the CEOs. It’s on everyone’s agenda.
Jyotsna: What about digital technology? How does that come into play when we talk about sustainability?
Peter Herweck: Digital technology is the biggest enabler that drives a carbon footprint reduction, as well as the majority of the United Nation’s Sustainability Development Goals (SDGs). Take, for instance, AVEVA’s technologies. We are not only covering renewable markets – we are covering all industrial markets. Our clients produce essentials, such as safe, reliable energy, food, infrastructure, transportation, and more. From that perspective, digital technology is the largest and an important enabler of sustainability as it drives and supports these essentials.
Jyotsna: Please tell me a little bit about AVEVA and your focus on sustainability.
Peter Herweck: At AVEVA, we specialize in industrial software, and we provide these solutions across multiple industrial sectors. As a tech company, we do our best to ensure we are sustainable both internally, in our operations, and in the solutions that we provide to help our customers become more sustainable, too.
Sustainability is at the forefront of our mission, in the very ambition of our company, because we think it is important to us, it is important to our clients, it is important to our employees, and it is important to the market.
We have made commitments to reducing our scope one, scope two, and scope three emissions. While the biggest impact, of course, is in scope three, we are helping our clients drive down their CO2 footprint, and their greenhouse gas emissions, and helping them to increase the circularity of what they're doing and what they're producing. We have set particular goals out there, as it is important to tell our customers what we are aiming for. As opposed to just talking about all the scopes, we have made it a little bit more tangible. We want to reduce our carbon footprint at AVEVA, and we have made commitments until we will reach Net Zero ourselves. More importantly, I always say we have a technology handprint, too. We offer a hand to our clients in regards to digital technology to help them drive down their CO2 footprint.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are also crucial to AVEVA. At the end of the day, I believe this goes hand in hand with driving your own company towards sustainability. You're more sustainable if you have a more equitable and inclusive culture because different people bring different aspects to the business. The more diverse and inclusive it is, the more you will also be internally driven and willing to drive it forward. It's important.
In India, one of the things we are driving forward in alignment with the government is smart city development. We have 10 deployments in the country – Nava Raipur, Namchi, Gangtok, Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation, Rajkot, and Kohima, to name a few.
People ask us, how do you go about building a Smart City? I always say that the new currency of the industrial world, at the moment, is in the future’s data. When people talk about the Fourth Industrial Revolution, they've been talking about IoT, Cloud, and AI. I think the next big thing that's in front of us is data. And one needs to establish a very strong data backbone because data gives transparency.
Engineers love to say: We can only improve what we can measure. And in the digital world, it seems very simple. If we have data, then we can start improving several things. For instance, if you think about cities and you want to drive down energy consumption in cities, or if you want to enhance the security of a city, we want to make sure that you have supplies, where they are required. With that, the whole city environment becomes much more resilient and more sustainable concerning civilian services. Enabling our clients to drive down their energy consumption, in turn, helps them reach their targets of a Net Zero future.
Also, as we've experienced lockdowns, in cities, in particular, when, when a lot of things need to be done remotely, then data backbone goes with it. The next thing you want to generate is transparency. It is typical for a smart city to look at all the operations that they have in the city. A Unified Operations Center gives you visibility into all these systems.
It is important to be able to connect to a lot of different systems. In simple words, that means we can translate the data that's generated from one system into a common system, so all the data sources can communicate with each other. People can speak one language of data.
Jyotsna: What is your view on data privacy?
Peter Herweck: We have a very simplistic way of looking at it. This is not our data, this is the data of the client. We are custodians of this data. It is their data, and our software is the custodian of it. We have no access to it unless clients want to give us access and want us to help them with something.
It is very different from data in the consumer world, where suddenly, you know that somebody is doing something with your data, but you don't know what they're doing. That is very different in the industrial world, we are very clear about it.
Jyotsna: Can you tell me a little about your growth plan and your focus in India, and what is it that you look to achieve in the next couple of years?
Peter Herweck: As mentioned, India has a lot of different aspects that are very important to our growth. Let me start with all the bright minds that are in the country. More than 40 percent of our whole R&D workforce sits in India. We have been producing patents from here for many years now, we are producing new products, and we have global functions that operate from here. In itself, it's an extremely important component of our product generation.
Something that is rarely talked about in terms of the products we are producing – if you want to call software a product, which I think it is – and the production process, is generating code. That is done here, in India.
As we are growing the company overall, India is going to play an important role. Secondly, a large portion of our professional services come from here. Professional services in our field mean we do deployments and services for our clients and help them in their digital transformation. A lot of the service team is also hosted here. A big global hub is in India.
With Smart Cities and the energy transition going on, there is a big incentive in the energy market to drive digitization forward. We are helping companies such as Indian Oil, and Reliance, amongst others, drive their digital transformation forward. They do have assets that need to be worried about, while they're investing in renewables, and this is where we can also help them.
Additionally, across the country, there are several 100 data centers. Some of our software gives clients visibility on the different data centers that they have. Many people do not realize that as they're operating their mobile phones, and streaming videos or they're using Blockchain, they're very big users of electricity. If that is structured in the right way, in a data center, one can drive the electricity usage down. That's what we're doing together with our strategic partner and shareholder Schneider Electric, a leader in data centers.
These are three very important industries in India that we at AVEVA are engaging with to drive growth. As a CEO, I see immense potential; sometimes I see the potential as bigger than the existing team. But that's also the task of the CEO – to have a vision and to know where we can bring business.
Jyotsna: According to you, what are the attributes of a good leader?
Peter Herweck: I believe that one needs to have a vision – a vision to lead a company in the right direction. In our technical world, where we are active, it's important also to have a vision in terms of technological development, where it's a never-ending goal to achieve – where is it going, and what is the next big thing? I think that that vision is important, too.
But the vision in itself does not create value. A leader must also mobilize their troops to execute this vision. Everybody wants to be successful and work in an environment that is inclusive. One that does not just worry about the financial aspect, but also worries about all the stakeholders of the business, from customers to employees. Those are things that are important for me to deliver growth for the company – the human aspect. And, like we always say at AVEVA, make the best out of all the natural resources that we have.
Jyotsna: Can you tell me about this program called Action for Good?
Peter Herweck: The local communities where we are active are also stakeholders for AVEVA, because our people live there, and we want to make sure that we contribute. We have committed to using 1 percent of our profits that we're generating to allow our people to participate in helping the communities where we are active or in areas where we see the need to support. We encourage our employees not only by providing financial support and funding but also by giving them an extra day of a holiday where they can personally contribute to their communities through social activities.
Jyotsna: What do you do outside of work? And also, what is your favorite book?
Peter Herweck: Outside of work, I'm trying to stay mentally healthy. I love hiking in the mountains, I love skiing. And I try to maintain a good network of friends.
In regards to books, I'd love to read more. One of the books I've read recently, that I enjoyed, because it left quite an impression on me and left me thinking, is called Homo Deus, A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari.
AVEVA, an FTSE 100 company is a global leader in industrial software, driving digital transformation and sustainability. The company supports customers through an ecosystem that includes 5,500 partners and 5,700 certified developers around the world. The company is headquartered in Cambridge, United Kingdom.