Tech the Halls: How Santa's workshop can go digital

Friday, 29 December 2023 13:19

Tech the Halls: How Santa's workshop can go digital

By Michael Horton, Vice President and Head of Strategic Markets, HCLTech

Not many CEOs can claim they’ve run a business successfully for hundreds of years, yet one can – Santa Claus. However, in recent years with the rise of technologies such as the Cloud and AI, Santa’s Workshop is falling behind on modern technology standards which poses a risk to the entire operation of Christmas.

To ensure Santa’s Workshop remains as productive and competitive as possible, HCLTech is encouraging Santa to undertake a digital transformation for his Workshop to ensure the best experience for everyone – from his elves and reindeer, through to children around the world.

Modernising Santa’s Workshop is a huge task to undertake. To steer Santa in the right direction, we’ve outlined four key areas for Santa to prioritise when upgrading his Workshop to ensure a tech-savvy North Pole.

Migrating the Workshop to the Cloud

In order to bring his workshop well and truly into the 21st century, Santa needs to migrate his operations from outdated paper-based processes to the cloud. Not only would this open up a significant number of efficiencies for his Workshop, but it would enable Santa to scale the business up and down throughout the year to match the busy holiday season.

As Santa receives millions of letters from children throughout the year, transitioning to the cloud would make managing the sheer quantity of data from children’s letters much easier. Further, utilising cloud storage would securely back up all the data stored at Santa’s Workshop, preventing any mishaps such as hot cocoa spills on the Naughty and Nice List.

For the elves, a cloud-based workshop would allow them to access data securely from wherever they are on the North Pole. It could also enable automated inventory management, meaning the elves can track toy supplies in real time. This would guarantee they build only the correct number of toys, which reduces waste and makes the Workshop more sustainable.

Deploying a cloud strategy would provide Santa with a complete cloud consulting and delivery platform, enabling the smooth migration of his Workshop from on-prem to off-prem.

Upgrading cybersecurity to block the Grinch

However, in migrating Santa’s Workshop to the cloud, it is absolutely critical that the workshop has strong cyber governance and information security oversight. Santa is privy to a huge amount of data – from children’s names, ages, and addresses – making the Workshop the Grinch’s dream to hack.

Any minor data hacks or leaks would destroy the confidence children globally have in Santa. This could create major reputational issues for Santa’s Workshop that would be difficult to recover from. Further, a more serious cyberattack on the Workshop itself could shut down all the toy production lines, meaning millions of devasted children and a ruined Christmas.

To increase the cyber resilience of Santa’s Workshop, all the elves in the North Pole need to undertake cybersecurity training, so they know how to spot phishing attacks from anyone trying to infiltrate the Workshop’s system. The Workshop itself also needs to be protected against malicious threats, so Santa needs to implement a cyber threat management system, as well as a foolproof damage mitigation and recovery strategy.

Automating Santa’s supply chain management

As Santa has one of the most diverse customer bases in the entire world, the operation of his Workshop is supported up by an incredibly global supply chain. This ensures Santa not only has diverse toy inputs, but he sources raw materials for toys from different parts of the world, so that he can tailor children’s gifts for local markets. While this diverse and global supply chain makes it easier for Santa to respond quickly to changes in toy demand, enabling his workshop can be resilient to crises, to fully modernise his workshop, Santa needs to implement an automated Supply Chain Model (SCM).

An automated SCM would offer Santa and his elves more holistic insight into the workshop’s operations. This would help his workshop understand where they can improve efficiencies for better toy production and delivery. This would enable Santa to achieve greater collaboration with his elves across the North Pole.

Further, in automating his supply chain management, Santa can ensure there are fewer errors when ordering raw materials from around the globe, streamline his supplier negotiations, and simplify the end-to-end procurement process, allowing the elves to focus less on sourcing materials, and more time on creating the toys.

Developing an AI-enabled sleigh

One of the biggest challenges Santa faces in his job is Christmas, when he needs to deliver all of his Workshop’s presents, to all the children around the world in one night. While Santa’s reindeer can be trusted for their speed, Santa could make his present deliver process even smoother by embedding an AI into the sleigh.

AI would support Santa and his reindeer optimise their route through analysing real-time data on weather, traffic and delivery priorities. AI could dynamically adjust the sleigh’s configuration based on the presents loaded and weight distribution, ensuring that the sleigh is balanced and flying smoothly, allowing Santa to focus more on bringing joy to the children around the world.

Digitalisation is no simple feat

With so much to modernise, it’s no surprise that Santa’s workshop hasn’t gone through a digital transformation process in 1,752 years. However, ensuring Santa selects the right partner who can support him through the digital transformation journey from the North Pole to the Cloud is critical to making sure everything goes smoothly.

Michael Horton, Vice President and Head of Strategic Markets, HCLTech

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