Looking Inside the Box: Contextualising Innovation for Digital Transformation
2 BUSINESS INTERVIEW
Looking Inside the Box: Contextualising Innovation for Digital Transformation
Nishith Srivastava, Vice President of Continental Europe at Tech Mahindra, divulges the company’s approach to innovation of ‘Looking Inside the Box.’ Nish believes this signifies a paradigm shift – a shift towards innovation rooted in practicality and customercentricity, redefining the way businesses perceive and embrace innovation in the digital age.
In a dynamic landscape defined by rapid technological advancements, Tech Mahindra stands at the forefront of innovation. With a steadfast commitment to delivering transformative solutions, the company adopts a unique approach – one that involves 'Looking Inside the Box' to contextualise innovation.
At the helm of this endeavour is Nishith Srivastava, Vice President, Europe at Tech Mahindra, who provides invaluable insights into the company's strategic deployment of innovative solutions devoid of mere buzzwords. With over 146,000 employees across 90 countries, Tech Mahindra has emerged as a global leader in IT
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“Embracing new technologies is imperative for companies seeking to transform and stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape”Nishith Srivastava, Vice President of Continental Europe at Tech Mahindra
consulting and services, boasting specialised domain verticals catering to diverse technological needs.
Amidst this vast landscape, there exists a unifying horizontal – the BORN XDS. This integrated entity, comprising 31 niche agencies acquired over the past five years, serves as the backbone for Tech Mahindra's CX, eCommerce, Experience Design and MarTech transformation services.
Nish joins us today to unveil his comprehensive approach to innovation, emphasising the need to transcend buzzwords and delve
deeper into the core of technological evolution. For Nish, innovation is not just about adopting new technologies – it’s about understanding the problem at hand and crafting tailored solutions that resonate with specific business objectives.
“Embracing new technologies is imperative for companies seeking to transform and stay ahead in an ever-evolving landscape,” says Nish. “To harness the full potential of any technology, be it AI, composable commerce, or marketing automation, it's essential to conduct an introspective analysis.
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“Look within your organisation, examining your business landscape, IT infrastructure, and intricate processes, envisioning the ideal future state. From there, draw inspiration from exemplary use cases, both within and outside your industry, to tailor solutions to your specific needs.
“Merely because a competitor adopts AI doesn't necessitate immediate replication. Instead, consider alternative approaches. Perhaps your challenges could be more effectively addressed through advanced data analytics tools. Prioritise enhancing your data science capabilities and optimising existing analytics tools before layering AI for incremental outcomes. By following this strategic sequence – first optimising your analytics foundation and then integrating AI – you can derive enhanced effectiveness and achieve incremental gains in performance and efficiency.
“This underscores the critical importance of ‘Looking Inside the Box.’ By this, I mean thoroughly assessing your organisation's pain points and business requirements in relation to your existing technology stack. It's imperative to optimise this infrastructure to its fullest potential, extracting maximum effectiveness before considering any transformative measures.
“Only after this foundational optimisation should you embark on the transformation journey. This involves evaluating, defining outcomedriven use cases and selectively introducing new technologies into your ecosystem. The objective and key results (OKR) framework serve as guiding principles throughout this process, ensuring alignment with overarching business objectives.”
The initial step towards meaningful innovation, Nish advises, involves gaining a deep understanding of emerging technologies and evaluating their relevance through the prism of specific business goals. “Immerse oneself in the best use cases of these new technologies across verticals,” says Nish. “This broader perspective enables businesses to contextualise these new technologies and their logical use cases within their unique operational framework.”
"That being said, we expect your priorities to change over time as the business or market evolves. You just need to be sure your technology will support this. For instance, Spryker, our partner for B2B e-commerce, has an innovative and extensible platform which allows us to keep evolving as needed. We can adjust processes and add capabilities based on what we're learning or depending on what new developments are happening at the customer. That's why within a very short space of time they’ve placed themselves in the top league of e-commerce platform companies.”
Here, Nish introduces Alexander Graf, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Spryker, a valued strategic partner of Tech Mahindra and BORN XDS.
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“Technology is the enabler not the driver of business transformation,” weighs in Alexander. “To remain competitive and responsive in an ever-evolving market landscape, businesses must continuously adapt their processes to meet changing market demands and customer expectations. The need for flexibility and agility has never been more important. At its core, Spryker’s composable technology enables enterprises to continually adapt
and innovate their e-commerce in response to shifting market demands, essentially future-proofing their business and enabling enterprises to continuously differentiate.”
Once a company has identified its business requirements and identified the technology’s relevance to its business strategy and consumer expectations, BORN XDS employs a structured approach to implement the transformation approach. Nish
“Technology is the enabler not the driver of business transformation”Alexander Graf, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Spryker
Lead Tomorrow’s E-Commerce Market with Spryker’s Agile Commerce Solutions.
The global business landscape is evolving at an unprecedented pace, making adaptability more critical than ever before to stay ahead of the curve. Spryker’s composable commerce platform offers unparalleled agility, enabling your business to respond quickly to new market trends and consumer demands.
With Spryker, enterprises can optimise and scale their commerce operations seamlessly, fortifying their operational excellence and competitive edge. Are you ready to embrace a solution that accelerates innovation and equips you to face future challenges confidently?
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outlines the following clear steps:
1. Comprehensive Auditing
2. Market Analysis
3. Roadmapping
4. Implementation Planning
By following these systematic steps, BORN XDS ensures the seamless deployment of innovative solutions tailored to meet the client's specific objectives such as driving revenue, creating efficiencies, cost-
effectiveness, client-centricity and employee empowerment.
“Every brand aspires to offer premium services, surpassing customer expectations and setting new benchmarks for brand experiences,” says Nish. “At BORN XDS, we believe in reaching for the stars—this mantra encapsulated in the acronym ‘STARS,’ standing for Strive to Achieve Record Sales. It's the reason we've christened our framework ‘STELLA,’ deriving its name from the word ‘star.’”
STELLA Framework
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But how does the STELLA framework function?
“In the first layer of STELLA framework lies the Brand Experience (BX) layer, where brands craft their identity and expression across all omnichannel touchpoints,” explains Nish. “BX encompasses a strategic approach, defining the markets served, the path to competitive dominance, tone of voice, customer segmentation, user journeys, and competitive analysis, among other elements. Upon closer examination, four pivotal experiences emerge within this layer:
• Attracting a Prospective Customer
• Engagement with the Customer
• Performing Transactions
• Reacting to Feedback
“Enabling technologies and platforms within this layer include eCommerce, Digital Experience Platforms (DxP), Marketing Automation, Performance Analytics, and Campaign Management systems. These technologies play a crucial role in empowering brands to deliver exceptional brand experiences and
drive customer engagement and loyalty across diverse channels.
“The second layer is for Behavioral Experience (BE) to leverage insights into how your audience seamlessly engage and transact across all omnichannel touchpoints. These touchpoints encompass websites, mobile apps, retail stores, print, events, social media, and IoT devices. The BE layer delves into understanding the reasons behind and mechanisms driving people’s behaviours across diverse omnichannel touchpoints.
“Key enabling technologies and platforms in this layer include Customer Data Platforms (CDPs), Digital Asset Management (DAM) systems, Product Information Management (PIM), Order Management Systems (OMS), Cloud infrastructure, Security protocols, Data and analytics tools, Artificial Intelligence (AI), MarTech solutions and Automation solutions.
“In the third layer, known as the Books of Record (BR) layer, STELLA serves as the nexus connecting two outer layers with systems of record. i.e. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems capturing interactions and engagements with customers across various touchpoints. Next, the focus shifts to the back-office operations, particularly order orchestration between channels, facilitated by Order Management Systems (OMS). Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems manage processes ranging from order to cash, procure to pay, and other vital financial metrics that
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underpin the brand's financial stability, customer satisfaction, and supply chain efficiency.”
By utilising these layers with data science disciplines such as analytics, insights, and cognition, the STELLA framework catapults the overall user experience, serving as a cornerstone for informed decision-making, driving personalised experiences, operational efficiency, and long-term customer satisfaction.
“It’s not about theory, it’s about making it operational and effective,” says Nish. “A lot of ideas fall apart
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when rubber hits the road. We do a comprehensive feasibility analysis encompassing cost, effectiveness and cultural considerations. The key focus is on ensuring that the chosen technology aligns seamlessly with the existing infrastructure and processes. A smooth transition is paramount, and to achieve this, BORN XDS develops a detailed step-by-step blueprint. This blueprint covers all aspects of the transition, including employee education, support infrastructure, costs, timelines and other critical factors.
Learn more here.
Connect with Nish Fun Fact
Nish is crazy about aliens: his favourite show is Ancient Aliens which reconfirmed his belief that humankind on planet earth is a science experiment by aliens. There is a strong belief that very soon, aliens will make contact with us, and he hopes it happens in his lifetime.
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www.techmahindra.com/en-in/experience-design-service
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