Karl Smith

Karl Smith is a highly creative and motivated person with keen insight ability. He is a critical thinker and is able to rapidly discover the essence of problems then define, communicate, create buy-in and deliver solutions. 

He positively motivates those around him and is able to engender a great team dynamic by leading from the front. He has business experience spanning 27 years at comparable levels in fields including defence, industry, construction, fashion, finance, banking, FMCG, property, publishing, healthcare, travel, policing, crown office, and local and central government.

Karl Smith has a wide experience in management consultancy and digital technology including business management, strategy, innovation, marketing, advertising, governance, change management, project management, definition, design and delivery. He has been honoured by the British Computer Society for his eminence in IT leadership over the last 15 years with a Fellowship. He mainly focuses on customer experience engagement and management in both B2B and B2C sectors. 

He works with directors and stakeholders whose main focus is increasing efficiency, transaction frequency and accuracy through the provision of knowledge-driven, context-focused, user-centred and responsive, future-proofed (IoT, Blockchain, Artificial Intelligence), progressive interactive organisational change, innovative business processes and technology systems. He is involved in defining new business concepts, strategies, requirements, governance (ISO/IEC 38500) and solutions that support businesses and organisations involved in transforming themselves to be adaptive and future-proof themselves for market disruption.

In a recent interview with Dinis Guarda, Karl Smith said the following about his vision on different topics: 

Digital Transformation and Businesses 

“In the last 15 years, businesses have gone through this process of digital transformation. Businesses adopt technologies but most fail to adapt their processes and ways of working to become digital as well, as to realise their true potential. Digital transformation is about opening a dialogue and communicating with customers, not talking to them. We got to think about what forces drive change: what drives digital transformation so businesses and industries are able to adapt to what people need. We see this in banking for example open banking means that ownership of a customer account is shared by financial service providers. 

Ownership is changing then. Customers’ behaviour is constantly changing too and businesses need to be able to adapt to them.” About UX/UI “UI is what you see and UX refers to how a system works. They are related, with UI being part of UX. Big corporations like eBay, Alibaba, Amazon, etc really try to tailor their products, their systems, and their UX to make sure that they keep selling. And they have adapted every part of the customer journey to make sure they complete the transaction. Everything matters in their system: the user experience in the platform, the way the information is presented, the supply chains, the products, transportation, etc.”