A stronger future for everyone through Digitalisation

‘Reinvent with digital’ is one of our strategic pillars. Data and digitalisation have helped Rolls-Royce generate new insights, solutions and opportunities.

Our digital programmes have become even more mission-critical and relevant amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital tools allow us to overcome physical limitations and connect not just with our employees, customers and industry partners, but also with governments, other sectors, as well as people from all walks of life on a global scale.

In these challenging times, we have also introduced our digital initiatives to the wider community to help build resilience. Rolls-Royce’s Digital Academy, Yocova and Emergent Alliance are three transformative digital programmes that we have launched this year to encourage digital learning, promote the exchange of ideas, and support organisations in their post-pandemic recovery through data.

We are proud that these initiatives have won the Technological Impact of the Year Award from the British Chambers of Commerce Singapore, at its 21st Annual Business Awards. In our view, this recognises that sustainable business excellence entails a commitment to sharing and collaborating in an effort to elevate wider industry and society as well.

“Digitalisation has been disrupting industries for many years and the shift towards digital value exchange is now more important than ever,” said Chris Murray, Head of Operations, R2 Data Labs, Rolls-Royce. “We have seen great momentum since the launch of these initiatives in early 2020, which tells us that companies are committed to accelerating their adoption of digital skills and capabilities.”

Powering resilience through disruption with digital learning

To help prepare for a more digital future, we opened our Digital Academy to the public in May. Individuals and businesses around the world can now gain access to online courses on topics such as data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and coding at no cost.

The modules offered by the Digital Academy are developed by our internal experts and external learning partners. The topics centre on encouraging new ways of working and the attainment of valuable skills in a changing landscape. These include business intelligence, Internet of Things, agile mindset, as well as data capabilities and privacy. We hope that by making the Digital Academy accessible to all, it will help to strengthen capabilities during this challenging time and prepare organisations for recovery.

We have seen incredible engagement in the programme from Asia. The testing times have created a stronger desire to build knowledge, skills and experience. We will continue to pioneer initiatives to contribute to broader society by exploring our role as a trusted provider of learning within - and beyond - the industry.

Facilitating digital value exchange across aviation

In February 2020, Rolls-Royce launched Yocova – an online platform for aviation professionals to exchange ideas, data and digital solutions – to improve outcomes for their organisations and the industry at large. Yocova provides an open and neutral space for online communities and private working groups to thrive, secure data rooms for member-controlled data exchange and curate marketplaces for leading digital solutions.

While still in the beta phase of development, Yocova has already brought together 447 members from over 100 airlines, 65 digital vendors and other industry players including airports, manufacturers and air navigation service providers. We are proud that Singapore Airlines (SIA) joined as the first major airline participant in the programme. SIA has worked closely with us since the inception of this concept to create an open data collaboration and innovation platform, to its current realisation as Yocova.

Helping businesses and governments accelerate recovery

In April 2020, we invited a group of leading companies to collaborate on Emergent, a new global alliance of data analytics experts aimed at exploring new, more efficient ways of supporting businesses and governments as they recover from the economic impact of COVID-19. What had started as a small group – that included academic and industry leaders like Whitespace, Leeds Institute for Data Analytics, IBM, Google Cloud, The Data City, Truata, and ODI Leeds – has grown to an alliance of 38 members in about four months.

The Emergent Alliance combines traditional economic, business, travel and retail data sets with behaviour and sentiment data to offer fresh insights into the COVID-19 landscape and help formulate practical solutions to support recovery. Organisations can use these insights to aid early decision-making that could mitigate negative impacts from the pandemic. With a focus on privacy and security, Emergent Alliance uses industry best practice for data sharing combined with robust governance.