HCL TECHNOLOGIES
COVID-19 and Digital Transformation: A HCL PERSPECTIVE DIGITAL REPORT 2021
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
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COVID-19 and Digital Transformation: A HCL PERSPECTIVE
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Eric Cohan, CPO of HCL Technologies, discusses supply chain resilience and the digital acceleration caused by COVID-19
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hen COVID-19 came knocking, industry leaders all over the world found themselves both shocked and, in many cases,
slightly puzzled. Never before in their lifetimes had a naturally-occurring event like this cropped 04
up, so the question, “What do we do?� was prevalent across every sector - especially across the global supply chain network that allows modern society to thrive in the way that they do. The same was true for HCL Technologies, a leading IT services company that assists global enterprises in the reimagination and digital transformation of their business operations and infrastructure. The multinational company uses and sells technological products and services that have been built on four decades of innovation - an innovation that thrives under the watchful eye of a world-renowned management philosophy, a brazen culture of invention and risk-taking, and a relentless focus on customer-centricity.
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Curvature, global leader in independent IT maintenance and support, allows forward-thinking leaders of data centres to realize their business ambitions for the digital economy. Curvature, one of HCL Technologies’ Strategic Partners, works hand in hand with HCL to provide intelligent alternatives to vendor IT maintenance and support, allowing world class organisations to achieve their digital ambitions without compromise.
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A Curvature and HCL Collaboration - The VP of Sales Perspective Christo Conidaris, VP of Sales for Curvature, sat down to discuss the ongoing partnership between his own company and HCL Technologies, and supply chain. Christo Conidaris, Vice President of Sales for Curvature, (now a Park Place Technology company), the global leader in independent IT maintenance and support for storage, server, and network hardware, jumped in the Supply Chain Digital hot seat recently to discuss Curvature’s ongoing partnership with HCL Technologies, and his thoughts about the state of global supply chain networks. The industry-leading Vice President of Sales finds himself overseeing Curvature’s EMEA sales, and rather uniquely, rolling up his sleeves and fostering some of the strongest relationships in the industry today. One such relationship comes in the form of Curvature’s tight-knit partnership with HCL Technologies, an Indian multinational information technology services and consulting firm. “We have different tiers of salespeople all over the world. I’ve spent a lot of time working alongside them, and we’ve worked very closely with HCL Technologies’ staff to ensure that HCL is always successful as a company with us. There are two reasons for that. The first: the
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propositions that HCL bring us are always complex - they’re never straightforward and simple, often because they need to make tough decisions very quickly, in order to maintain their competitive edge.” “The second reason: it’s important for us to achieve a strong partnership together, and my role is really to foster that and make sure that business understanding can flow between the two companies. Ultimately, we can meet the objectives of the company, and HCL can meet the objectives of their campaign. It’s about making sure those two aspects come together.” On fostering a strong relationship, Christo stated, “One of the things that really gets me excited about working for Curvature is its customercentric approach. And HCL is reassuringly similar. Let me elaborate. When HCL take on a customer, they put several people on the task, and they push until they’ve provided everything requested. I think that’s part of the success story. When somebody asks why it works so well between Curvature and HCL, I would say that it’s because we have the same vision for the customer.”
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“ I would say that not a lot of innovation has accelerated. It was more about accelerating investments in existing technologies” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies 08
The company’s prolific, first Chief Procurement Officer (CPO), Eric Cohan, the man in control of HCL’s end-to-end supply chain, took the time to discuss the impacts of COVID-19 on HCL Technologies’ year, and his own personal experience of the ‘new norm’. Stating that his team supports both its customers and HCL employees directly, Eric shared that “[HCL] had several major themes of issues to deal with related to COVID. One was
E X E C U T I V E P R O FILE :
Eric Cohan Title: Chief Procurement Officer Industry: Information Technology & Services Eric is HCL’s Chief Procurement Officer. In this role, he leads HCL’s global procurement and supply chain organization in delivering Category Management, Sourcing, and Procurement Operations for all external spend categories (Technology, Labor, Facilities, Travel, HR, Marketing, etc.) In addition, Eric sits on the U.S. employee benefits council and chairs the HCL 401k Investment committee. Prior to joining HCL, Eric worked for Accenture, most recently leading the Americas Procurement organization where he was accountable for Sourcing & Category Management, Procurement Operations, and Payables across the Americas region. Simultaneously, he served as the Global Sourcing & Category Management process lead in addition to the Global IT Category Director. Prior to these roles, Eric held a variety of leadership positions within Accenture’s Procurement Business Process Outsourcing organization directing global teams of category-specific resources in delivering procurement services to Accenture’s end clients. Prior to Accenture, Eric spent over 10 years at Dell, most recently as their first Executive Director of IT Procurement. Preceding this, he held several position in Dell’s IT department, leading both application and engineering teams. Prior to Dell, Eric spent 8 years in Accenture’s (Andersen Consulting) Supply Chain practice. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Operations Research & Industrial Engineering from Cornell University’s College of Engineering.
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A Dell Technologies and HCL Collaboration: In Conversation with Rod Gardner Rod Gardner, Senior Director at Dell Technologies, discusses the special relationship between Dell and HCL Technologies, and ‘going digital’.
Rod Gardner, Senior Director at Dell Technologies and a pivotal figure in the industry-leading behemoth’s Global Alliances business unit, took the time to sit down with Supply Chain Digital to discuss one of the company’s most critical partnerships with HCL Technologies and the synergies that fuel their powerful collaboration, as well as his thoughts about global supply chain networks and the growing trend of ‘going digital’.
emerging technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence, and data analytics, within their own framework. “At Dell, we’re able to match that methodology head-on through the provision of technological means,” Rod added. In essence, Dell provides HCL Technologies with the infrastructure and technology needed, and HCL then re-wraps it with their own label and deliver it to some of the largest customers in the world.
“I think the most important thing in a business relationship is trust. There’s a lot of trust between our organisations at every level, from the top-down. The CEO, all the way down to our field account teams, are working together. When I think about the synergies between Dell and HCL, I’m reminded that our mission at Dell is to drive human progress, as the essential infrastructure company. The synergy with HCL is their ability to take what we bring to the market and make it special for their end-users, with their own label and intellectual property.”
With constantly evolving technological capabilities at both companies, the future looks bright for the Dell Technologies and HCL Technologies collaboration. “The unique aspect, when it comes to Dell and HCL, is that HCL is able to have that end-to-end conversation with customers that we’re working on together. Afterwards, Dell can deliver not only the infrastructure needed for the on-prem private cloud component of a multi-cloud world but also the enabling technology that makes even the public cloud hyperscaler-space operate better - and HCL is using all of it.”
“If you look at HCL’s business model, they have the Mode 1-2-3 Strategy,” which allows HCL to help its global clients map and navigate their transformational journeys, fuelling them with
“That’s the biggest trend that will continue to affect how we collaborate.”
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“ Every individual is the CEO of their position” 12
— Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies
enabling our employees, which was
We had to figure out how to get those
[indirectly an effort to] extend our sup-
machines to the employees’ homes,”
port to customers”. And, just like many
Eric added. Getting those machines
organisations around the world, that
from the office to employees’ homes
led to another question entirely: “How
“only solves one-third of the problem.
do we get our employees the technol-
We had two-thirds of the [workforce]
ogy they need at home. That was the
that didn’t have any technology
big challenge. A lot of our 100k Indian
because we had to choose one person
based employees don’t have their own
to get the desktop. So, we had to go
technology assigned to them.”
and procure a lot of laptops – us and
HCL runs a 24-7 or 24-5 opera-
everybody else in the world. Our cus-
tion, depending on the job role, and
tomers also needed the appropriate
employees “share a desk and [equip-
technology for their employees, which
ment], and they all come in on shifts.
we had to procure on their behalf.”
1976
Year founded
$9.95bn Revenue in US dollars
153,085 Number of employees
The rapid adoption of new norms, which many companies collapsed whilst trying to manage, was tough for the greater majority. For HCL though, while there was an obvious strain, their supply chain was already relatively resilient to the effects of the pandemic. The company successfully procured nearly a hundred thousand laptops and relevant equipment for their own staff as well as their customers’. “Fortunately, we have a multi-vendor, multi-channel, multi-solution approach to solving a lot of these problems,” Eric told me. “We don’t rely on just one
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“ In India, HCL is a huge brand. People know it just as well as CocaCola or Apple. We’re at that level over there - a household name” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies hardware vendor, [nor do we] rely on
they instead choose to streamline the supply chain by finding an all-in-one solution. In hindsight, HCL, through its sophisticated systems, wasn’t overdependent on an individual provider to fuel their business economy. “All we really needed to do is flex those muscles and leverage all those connections that we’ve already established, in order to put [the correct adjustments] in place.”
one distributor or on one value-added
Not to say that HCL Technologies
reseller. [HCL] has lots of partners
has found the pandemic ‘easy’, but it
globally - be it Dell, HP, Lenovo as
certainly seems to be the case that
OEMs or Insight and Egiss as reseller
the company has acted as a trailblazer
partners, for example.”
and shown organisations across the
We honed in on that particular
globe exactly how they can transform
element; the businesses that have struggled the most in 2020 tend to be those that feature very rigid, robust supply chains of yesteryear - the ones that haven’t yet evolved through the blessings of digital transformation. HCL had, even prior to COVID-19, a diverse portfolio of suppliers and partners, which allowed them to quickly respond to supply and demand issues. It’s something that, in many cases, business leaders lament, classing a multi-system as overcomplicated and www.c o mpa www.hc ny we lbsit t eche.. com
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HCL TECHNOLOGIES
into agile, resilient stalwarts. Maybe
haven’t.” Organisations were forced to
they’ll release a guidebook one day.
adapt their technological arsenal and
On the question of digital transfor-
adopt new norms and values but “most
mation being accelerated by a decade
of the capabilities that our customers
during 2020, Eric wasn’t so sure. “The
are asking us to develop and accel-
suggestion that we’ve accelerated by
erate are not necessarily, new and
that vast amount of time implies that
innovative; it’s more about how we can
the COVID-19 made us invent futuristic
apply existing technologies to remote-
technologies - in reality, though, we
access purposes. I would say that not
“ HCL had a couple of major themes of issues to deal with, with COVID. One was enabling 16 our employees, which was indirectly an effort to extend our support to customers” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies
a lot of innovation has accelerated. It
teams across the globe which allowed
was more about accelerating invest-
them to rapidly respond to the pan-
ments in existing technologies.”
demic, were ultimately beneficial for
Investments can go either way and,
the company. Not just for the ‘boots
in Eric’s case, when HCL released
on the ground’. HCL announced a net
its FY21 second-quarter figures on
income of US$424mn, up 12.7 per cent
the 16th October, it was revealed that
year-on-year - exponential growth in
their prudent financial decisions and
a time period of uncertainty. Naturally,
the nimble mentality he’s instilled in
from an outsider’s perspective, you’d assume that this - alongside the fact that HCL Technologies has been the fastest-growing large technology company globally for four years in a row - would have something to do with the technologies that it has access to. Speaking of the “technological arsenal”, Eric notioned that it’s neither cloud adoption, digital transformation or next-gen technology that is truly revolutionising the system currently. In response to the suggestion, the CPO stated that “It’s none of those. It’s actually HCL’s business architecture. Our architecture has multiple lines of business - IoT, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based services, included.” But Eric was quick to clarify that it isn’t the technology itself that is transforming the company - it’s the people in charge of the tech. At HCL Technologies, www.hc l t ech . com
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“ We are currently the digital technology partner for both Manchester United and Cricket Australia and have been a highly visible participant at the World Economic Forum, amongst other things. So we get seen, and we’d like to find ways to increase that visibility. That’s the future for us” — Eric Cohan, CPO, HCL Technologies
that they do whatever they think is
there is an ethos that “every individual
wrong; most of the time they go right.
is the CEO of their position”. In a
You have to have a certain amount of
workplace that implements that very
flexibility to find out.
best - which is often the very best for the company too. Sometimes things go
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modern and unique mindset, there’s
Sinking cash into a diverse and
a degree of freedom within the ranks
dynamic business architecture and
which allows staff to flex their skills in
the subsequent infrastructure is
whichever way they see fit, to ensure
incredibly important in companies of
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the future, especially in an era where employees are heavily focused on development, freedom, and opportunity. “Our business architecture... We have multiple lines of business. So we have all those technologies you mentioned, and we have big bets that we’ve made in those, both organic and inorganic. We’re involved in every industry. If you look at our industry split, it’s not like we’re 80% one industry. Our largest one is less than 25%,” Eric added. 20
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hit, and they were able to put up a very strong, resilient defence against the effects of the pandemic and subsequent lockdowns. “I don’t think there’s going to be anything massively changing strategically across the next 24-months. However, we will see an increase in our local hiring at both the experienced and entry-level ranks; as such, you’ll see an increase in brand awareness on campuses and other hiring channels. “In India, HCL is a huge brand. People know it just as well as CocaWith all of this in mind, it’s clear
Cola or Apple. We’re at that level
that while some industry-leaders are
over there - a household name. In the
focused on implementing certain
Western nations - where most of our
technological elements into their
revenues come from - our custom-
business operations, spreading your
ers and prospects know us, but we
investments across several technolo-
aren’t as well known. We are currently
gies, as well as your human assets
the digital technology partner for
is potentially a wiser move. Create a
both Manchester United and Cricket
wider web and infiltrate all of the mar-
Australia and have been a highly vis-
kets, in other words.
ible participant at the World Economic
Looking to the future, Eric doesn’t
Forum, amongst other things. So we
think that we’ll see HCL Technologies
get seen, and we’d like to find ways
changing its strategies up too much.
to increase that visibility. That’s the
Fortunately, as we now know, the com-
future for us.”
pany had already prepared a diverse supply chain years before COVID-19 www.hc l t ech . com
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