Reflections on Highways 2024: Insights from Kerv Digital’s Mike Chappell

Published 15/11/24 under:

Reflections on Highways 2024: Insights from Kerv Digital’s Mike Chappell

Highways 2024 was a fantastic experience, packed with insights, conversations with industry leaders and toy cars. As Kerv Digital’s Solutions Director for Transport, I enjoyed the chance to highlight our role in helping modernise the UK transport digital infrastructure and share ideas with a community invested in “driving” real change.

Sector Challenges and Goals

It’s a really interesting time for the sector. On the one hand we’re having conversations with people about how AI – which is finally as mainstream as folks have been promising for 20 years – can actually add pragmatic value (moving from it showing off, to making a difference).

On the other hand, there are still hundreds of vital processes tied into paper / excel based approaches, or even digitised but in monolithic legacies that fail to talk to the rest of the digital world without some level of RPA or similar (visions of Robin Williams’ robot bashing keys on an IBM mainframe terminal).

In many ways, the very real stride towards autonomous vehicles is acting as a clarion call to the industry. We seem moments away from having more data than we’ve ever had before with incredible efficiencies and value being driven from that, but in some cases landing into an environment which would rather it came in a file to be batch processed at the weekend.

This is why it’s exciting for us, because this is where Kerv can really help.

Not only are we specialists in streamlining and unifying data from hundreds of disparate sources (even your onprem mainframe), especially of interest to our friends in large organisations that have grown organically for so long without chance to stop and take stock, but we’re also specialists in surfacing that data from scalable, flexible cloud platforms or “Software as a Service”.

We’re uniquely placed in the sector. Our work in Central Government means we’re helping shape the “how” of the future; how data and digitisation can help very real and new legislative challenges.

At the same time, we’re working with suppliers and industry leads to rationalise how all this information that will need to be collated, transformed and aggregated can be delivered without stopping things that – whilst eventually destined for renovation – aren’t top of that list.

It rather helps when cutting the key, if you also crafted the lock, right?

So, in summary – and not for the first time – we’re talking about moving data, processes and intelligence into the cloud to unlock efficiencies, improve customer service (even Sales) and enable decisions to be made on data. The difference now is we’re talking about how we can do it faster, in chunks and iteratively but with an eye to the future, acceptance that it’s not fully known but an understanding of how we can Build Future in a way that can adapt in a moment.

I guess choosing “Build Future” as our moto 12 years ago (in the past) was rather ironically prescient.

Key Outcomes and Success Stories

Our approach to transformation is grounded in practical, proven outcomes. For example, we’ve helped the DVLA drastically cut its service update deployment times—from days down to minutes—by using Microsoft’s Power Platform. Similarly, the DVSA achieved a 90% reduction in the time needed to register offenders, which means quicker enforcement actions and a more responsive service overall.

These aren’t isolated successes but part of a growing movement to use technology in ways that bring tangible, measurable improvements. Many organisations are moving from a “big bang” approach to tech projects, opting instead to tackle issues in manageable phases. This reduces risk and shows value quickly, making it easier to gain buy-in for future steps.

Partnerships and the Path Ahead

Events like Highways 2024 remind us of the strength in partnerships within the industry. Kerv’s close relationship with Microsoft and other key players keeps us on the cutting edge of tech solutions and innovation. Working together, we’re excited to help the sector overcome its challenges, whether it’s through automation, cloud adoption, or data unification.

Highways 2024 was a reminder that digital transformation is a journey, and we’re ready to support every step of it.