EVENT
THE DEMOCRATISATION OF INNOVATION CXO INSIGHT ME AND KISSFLOW ORGANISED A THOUGHTPROVOKING CIO ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION ON HOW TO ACCELERATE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION AND BRIDGE THE SKILLS GAP BY DEMOCRATISING IT.
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he Covid-19 crisis has prompted businesses of all sizes to adopt new strategies and practices and accelerate digital transformation initiatives. CXO Insight Middle East, in association with Kissflow, brought together a limited group of IT chiefs for peer-to-peer learning and knowledge-sharing on fostering innovation and driving digital transformation. The tone for this virtual roundtable discussion was set by Rahul Bhageeradhan, global director of digital architects at Kissflow, who remarked digital transformation is the force to take the business forward. He went on to explain the business value proposition of low-code, no-code platforms: “Building new applications requires heavy IT skills and high investments. Low code is a software development approach that needs minimal or no coding. It speeds up app development and delivery time and has all the important building blocks as security and volume management built-in.” 32
CXO INSIGHT ME
AUGUST 2021
With 500 million new apps projected to be built in the next five years, Bhageeradhan said low-code would help businesses embrace new technologies much quicker. An interactive discussion followed Bhageeradhan’s presentation among key technologists in the region, who shared key lessons learned from their digital transformation journeys. Javeria Aijaz, senior director of technology and innovations at Farnek Services, a Kissflow customer in the region, said her company is heavily focused on the operational side of the business: “We believe in digitalising every aspect of the business to make service delivery more efficient. When you grow as a company, you rely more and more on data, and information visibility and efficient processes become key.” Shumon Zaman, chief information and digital officer of Ali and Sons, said that everyone is on the same boat when it comes to digital transformation. “We have 15 different business units across six different verticals. We have to transform the organisation and be more agile. We are putting in place
foundational platforms, and for us, it is not just about automation and digitalisation, but also about creating new value from data we already have to build new products and services.” Venkatesh Mahadevan, CIO of Dubai Investments, shared his perspective on the impact of the pandemic on his business. “There are a lot of innovation centres that have come up within business units to reduce the time to market. We have completed our DX blueprint and remodeled the IT strategy. We no longer continue to run IT the way it was before and moved to a federated model; we provide strategy, advisory, and governance. We are also moving away from in-house development to offthe-shelf solutions.” Wael El Khatib, director of digital, IT and call center at Enova, noted there is a lot of pressure on IT to provide the same quality of service at lower costs. “We developed our digital strategy a long time ago, and we revise our strategy every six months. We moved to the cloud and optimised processes even before the pandemic, which helped us adapt to the new operating models quickly. For us, the focus is on accelerating digital operations and process efficiencies.” MN Chaturvedi, IT director of Al Shirawi Group, echoed a similar opinion as Bhageeradhan on the value of low-code platforms. “We have to develop certain applications in-house and it requires resources that we don’t have. We have removed that barrier by developing some new mobile applications without coding. Low-code is clearly the future of app development and will help us overcome the developer shortage.” The other attendees at the roundtable included: Sebastian Samuel, CIO of AW Rostamani; Jayakumar Mohanachandran, group CIO of Easa Saleh Al Gurg; Mubarik Hussain, IT director of Bloom Holding; Ronald D’sa, OSN’s IT Director; Mohammad Raffi, senior IT consultant at Jotun; Fayaz Ahamed Badubhai, group IT director of Al Yousuf; and Aditya Kaushik, head of IT at Adyard.
