In Your Shoes - Mark Hutchison

Kick-Off Monday

Energised after spending much of today with our in-house Research and Development team. I really enjoy collaborating with the wider team and working closely with colleagues and friends across the business.

In partnership with a British multinational health and leisure company, we’re currently developing a fully compatible card-less membership solution that can be used on Android and Apple devices. This solution will help businesses respond to the current climate and offer customers a contactless solution, while also providing their customers with an improved experience and peace of mind.

Elsewhere, we’re developing a new app to better manage intervals during HiiT workouts with the aim of improving participant experience. The HT HiiT app will allow operators to manage HiiT classes across many tablet devices at any one time. The app will also integrate with our custom LED lighting solutions to control lighting throughout the workout and create a fully immersive and intuitive workout experience. The app also integrates with a music service provider to generate detailed reporting for licensing purposes.

Took the opportunity also to review some project drawings and collaborate on some creative designs with the Design and Technical team.

Efficiency Tuesday

As our reputation has grown, so too has our business. To ensure we can continue to develop and grow, Hutchison Technologies has always advocated iterative improvement. To support that, we are consistently reviewing and improving our internal processes to ensure the business is operating as efficiently as possible, is scalable and sustainable, and provides positive experiences for colleagues and customers.

Today, I spent time with the Service and Support team reviewing KPIs and exploring how we can harness our technology to further improve processes and enhance field service and customer communications. Although coronavirus has caused incredible disruption, we’ve used this time to focus on internal development and projects.

Hutchison International Wednesday

Had a great meeting with CEO Bruce Hutchison about Hutchison International and our supply chain success. Hutchison Technologies was already supplying medical quality approved and accredited supplies to some of the largest household medical and pharma names from its office in China, managing a worldwide network of supply chain partners. Earlier this year, after Scottish Enterprise issued a call to action, our Supply Chain team pivoted to source and deliver medical quality approved and accredited PPE and virus collection and testing equipment for the NHS.

This week, our Supply Chain team is working hard to deliver on a new order of virus collection and testing equipment for the NHS, while our Marketing team is busy developing spec sheets to ensure procurement teams everywhere have the right information about our products.

Leadership Thursday

Culture is an essential ingredient in any successful business, and an important part of what we do at Hutchison Technologies. Today, we had a collaborative session exploring ways of nurturing our unique culture with the newly formed Sales and Marketing leadership team. Along with CEO Bruce Hutchison, I’m joined by Director of Marketing Sara Webster and Director of Sales Jonny Curley.

While we’re together, we take the opportunity to visit our new global headquarters in Dundee’s technology park. Coronavirus has created huge uncertainty for many businesses, and we’ve certainly experienced that at Hutchison Technologies. But we’ve taken the bold decision to forge ahead with our investment because we’re committed to Dundee and believe this is a fantastic opportunity to keep contributing to the local economy, the regeneration of the city, and to the wider technology scene across Scotland and the UK.

Customer-focused Friday

Had a fantastic day today connecting with some of our customers. It’s always great to hear directly from our customers about what they’re up to and how we can help advance their exciting plans.

Currently, we’re working with an international health and leisure company on plans to refurbish a number of health clubs and gyms across their European portfolio. We talked through some of the things they’d like to do, and how we can develop unique solutions to support them.

Project meeting with one of our large international fashion retail customers, developing ‘store of the future’ concepts where we were invited to work on the project as part of a handpicked team of innovators.

Spent some time with the folks at Earth+Sky exploring different ways of elevating virtual fitness. We discussed how charismatic teachers, incredible locations, specially commissioned music, and cinema-quality production can create dynamic, motivating, and inspiring virtual fitness experiences that support the body and mind, which is particularly important in the current climate.

Also managed to spend some time on FitboxVirtual, where a collaborate team of world-class entrepreneurs create and deliver virtual on-demand group exercise experiences for global clients.