Anthony Howcroft: Developing the De-Facto Way for Agri-Food Enterprises to Address Business Challenges

Technology never sits still and neither should the people involved in it. Whichever evolving technology sparks your interest – whether it’s Artificial Intelligence (AI), CRISPR technology or something else – a combination of passion and enthusiasm is the most important fuel for innovation.

This is according to Anthony Howcroft, CEO and Co-Founder of SWARM Engineering, who is onboard and riding the wave of this shift in technology, encouraging other leaders to jump on board with him.

The Road to SWARM

Anthony’s journey to the helm of SWARM has included a stint as a computer operator at Kraft foods straight from school, a Creative Writing course at Oxford University, and success as a published author of both fiction and non-fiction books. Equally at ease with art and science, Anthony has always enjoyed the way computers allow people to do things using hard logic. At school, he created a sophisticated space combat simulator computer game that ran in real-time and supported several users before that was commonplace. It’s this fusion of art and science in a fun approach that drew Anthony to technology.

A Social Network for Machines

It was during five years running Microsoft’s EMEA Big Data team that Anthony got the opportunity to interact with a wide range of businesses wanting to maximize the value of their data. Anthony’s imagination was captured by solving issues rather than using analytics to simply highlight them, which he saw as the next step in the development of business intelligence (BI), fuelled by AI. During his time at an incubator in Southern California, Anthony had a conversation with the CTO of a GE business division which sparked a conversation on creating a “Facebook for machines” and how these social networks of machines might use data and AI to solve their own problems. The seed for SWARM was sewn.

From Comfort Zone to Co-Founder

Both competitive and creative, Anthony constantly strives to improve, whether it be by running faster, playing more challenging pieces on his classical guitar, obtaining his pilot’s license, or winning writing competitions. His writing these days mainly consists of blog entries, PowerPoints, and articles, although he was thrilled when his book “Questions – A User’s Guide” made it onto the Amazon best-seller list.

Although familiar with commercial and technological issues, on starting SWARM Anthony found himself stepping outside of his comfort zone to handle venture-related tasks such as fundraising, warrants, stock grants and pricing. As the start-up grew, he shed some of the aspects of the role, leaving him to focus on leadership, fundraising and guiding the product vision.

What is SWARM?

The SWARM SaaS product suite assists business users to resolve operational issues in the agri-food supply chain with three core elements.

First, the one-of-a-kind SWARM Challenge Modeler, helps users quickly and easily outline a problem in their organization. It offers templates created by subject matter experts for typical food supply chain issues. Because these templates are so versatile, users can complete and edit the template or create their own definition from scratch. The user can then publish the results into an easily-digestible document that can be shared with multiple stakeholders.

The second component is the SWARM Solution Engine, a highly developed multi-agent system that can execute a variety of algorithms to address problems specified in the model. It is completely scalable and can combine different improvements to address problems throughout an entire process rather than just in one area.

The SWARM Ops Dashboard, the third component of the solution, allows the customer to communicate with the engine. It features a cutting-edge, user-friendly interface that enables users to execute solutions, alter parameters, perform what-if analyses, and eventually submit executable plans to other users or apps.

New Tech, New Opportunities

New technology trends and capabilities will open up entirely new categories of solutions for SWARM. One software trend that Anthony finds most exciting is Nocode. This has the potential to place powerful algorithms for AI, machine learning (ML), and operational research in the hands of regular people without requiring them to have a math degree or years of software development experience.

Anthony is also enthused about the potential of quantum computing (qc), which would make it possible to handle complicated issues like global supply chains much more quickly and effectively. However, he believes this technology is still “in the ether” and will have limitations when it does appear. As he points out, even with qc, users will still need to define the challenges they wish to solve, and he hopes that qc will provide a new batch of advanced algorithms to help tackle some of the hardest problems. In many ways, it will make SWARM even more relevant and valuable to organizations.

As Anthony says, “True creativity and leaps forward in tech have come when people combine ideas from different genres.Challenge Management and quantum are a fabulous match.”

 The Definition of Success

Anthony believes SWARM has the power to change how people view their issues and that it will act as a catalyst for the global enhancement of “a billion processes”. His aim is to contribute to the decrease in carbon emissions, the elimination of food waste (“and more importantly, hunger”) the advancement of regenerative farming methods, and helping other businesses to reduce their costs and become more efficient. This, says Anthony, is his definition of success.

Anthony says, “I don’t see success as a destination, with an Oscar or a Nobel prize at the end. We need to celebrate all of our small wins on the journey; every new customer, each positive product review, every press accolade.”

SWARM’s Future

With an emphasis on the agri-food supply chain, SWARM enables business users to make transformational improvements to their critical processes. Anthony aspires to be the de-facto way for agri-food firms to streamline their procedures and address their most pressing business issues, throughout the next few years. His exciting journey is far from over, with the suggestion that he might be able to apply this strategy to other markets as well, perhaps beginning with those that are adjacent, like water and energy.

“That’s an exciting journey, and there’s nowhere I’d rather be than here in the driving seat, helping steer the company down that road,” – Anthony says.