CIO July15, 2015

POWERING MOBILITY

An employee-friendly app increases efficiency. 11 RAISING THE EXPECTATIONS BAR

www.cio.in

Millennials want more from you. 28 BARCODING SAVED HAVELLS

How barcoding saved Havells millions. 24 AGILE SKILLS ARE HERE TO STAY

B U S I N E SS T EC H N O LO G Y L E A D E R S H I P

Why enterprises are turning to agile skills. 37

ABOUT FACE!

July 15, 2015

`100.00

CIOs are giving their teams new marching orders to turn their attention from internal issues to external customers, who have ultra-high expectations. 32

PLUS

Spinning the Growth Fiber There’s no loose thread in Sterlite Technologies’ plan to strengthen India’s digital infrastructure. 20

VOLUME 10, NO. 9

July 15, 2015

Start

From the Editor in Chief 2 Trending 5 Quick Fix 6 Career Path 8 World View 10

02

Grow

About Face!

I N N OVAT I O N & B U S I N E S S VA LU E

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How an employee-friendly app increased efficiency 11 Security innovation finds a new home 16 Sterlite spins India’s digital growth fiber 20 Myntra pushes the e-com cart 22

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CIOs are giving their teams new marching orders to turn their attention from internal matters to external customers, who have ultra-high expectations.

Run

BY JULIA KING

L E A D E R S H I P & O P E R AT I O N A L E XC E L L E N C E

How barcoding saved Havells millions 24 Five things you should know about geofencing 25 Now it’s easy to track your teen’s driving behavior 26 WaterGenius helps California fight drought 26 Graduates raise the expectations bar 28 Twitter is the new job hotspot 30

24

Connect P E E R A DV I C E

37

Agile skills are the new norm 37 Marketing technology is a house divided 40 Questions about the future 42 Mphasis focuses on being customer-centric 43

Finish

Robots to deep dive in Indian Ocean. 44

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PUBLISHER, PRESIDENT & CEO

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CONSULTING EDITORS EXECUTIVE EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR FEATURES EDITOR CONSULTING ASSISTANT EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITORS PRINCIPAL CORRESPONDENTS VIDEO EDITORS LEAD DESIGNERS SENIOR DESIGNERS TRAINEE JOURNALISTS

start

The Hunger Game 2

In the grasslands of eastern Africa, before the hyenas have stopped cack-

ling in the dark and before the sun has risen, Thompson’s gazelles wake up knowing that they’ll have to outrun the fastest cheetah in order to stay alive. And, not so far away from them, the cheetahs stir and stretch knowing that they’ll have to run faster than the slowest gazelle in order to stay fed.

Cheetahs can reach 105 kilometers an hour in just three strides, but they can maintain that speed only for half a kilometer. A typical hunt is over in about 15 to 20 seconds leaving a winded, tired and highly vulnerable cat that’s open to attack by just about any animal.

Interestingly, the second fastest animal on the grasslands is the gazelle.

So, it’s no surprise that a cheetah hunt succeeds only about 40 percent of the time.

Those aren’t good odds for the smallest of the big cats. With miniscule fat reserves compared to say a leopard or a tiger or a lion, a cheetah needs to run and hunt over and over till it finally snags prey. It’s either that or death by starvation.

You wont ever hear cheetahs whine about motivation, buy-in, limited resources, or even the number of hunts they need to go on. They just focus and stay determined. Giving up isn’t even an option despite successive failure.

Why this lesson in ecology? Because life whether in the African savannah or within an enterprise is a Darwinian contest. The ability of organizations and lines of business to buy or rent IT skills and services has already begun to shrink IT teams. A fresh struggle looms large for you and your colleagues to prove business value.

I’m not suggesting CIOs are heading for extinction.

But, irrelevance is certainly a possibility.

So learn from the way of the cheetah. Stay hungry. Stay lean. Roll out multiple pilots. Do so fast. Take failure in your stride. Sink your teeth and claws into the latest technology without letting legacy dull their edge. Win. Adventure calls. A new day is dawning. Let the hunt begin.

Louis D’Mello

Vijay Ramachandran Sudhir Narasimhan, T. M. Arun Kumar Yogesh Gupta Sunil Shah Shardha Subramanian Balaji Narasimhan Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Aritra Sarkhel, Shubhra Rishi Kshitish B.S., Vasu N. Arjun Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor Unnikrishnan A.V., Laaljith C.K. Ishan Bhattacharya, Madhav Mohan, Sejuti Das, Vaishnavi J. Desai

SALES & MARKETING PRESIDENT SALES & MARKETING VICE PRESIDENT SALES GM MARKETING GENERAL MANAGER SALES MANAGER KEY ACCOUNTS MANAGER SALES SUPPORT SR. MARKETING ASSOCIATES

Sudhir Kamath Sudhir Argula Siddharth Singh Jaideep M. Sakshee Bagri Nadira Hyder Arjun Punchappady, Benjamin Jeevanraj, Cleanne Serrao, Margaret DCosta MARKETING ASSOCIATE Varsh Shetty LEAD DESIGNER Jithesh C.C. MANAGEMENT TRAINEES Aditya Sawant, Brijesh Saxena, Chitiz Gupta, Deepali Patel,

OPERATIONS VICE PRESIDENT HR & OPERATIONS FINANCIAL CONTROLLER CIO SR. MANAGER OPERATIONS SR. MANAGER ACCOUNTS SR. MANAGER PRODUCTION MANAGER OPERATIONS EA TO THE CEO MANAGER CREDIT CONTROL ASSISTANT MGR. ACCOUNTS

Rupesh Sreedharan Sivaramakrishnan T.P. Pavan Mehra Ajay Adhikari, Pooja Chhabra Sasi Kumar V. T.K. Karunakaran Dinesh P. Tharuna Paul Prachi Gupta Poornima

ADVERTISER INDEX Accenture Services Pvt. Ltd

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Hewlett-Packard India Sales Pvt. Ltd

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SAP India Pvt. Ltd SAS Institute (India) Pvt Ltd

9 IFC

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Tata Communications Ltd

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VMware Software India Pvt Ltd

7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company.

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Editor: Louis D’Mello Printed at Manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, Manipal, Udupi, Karnataka - 576 104.

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Now 3D-printed Limbs Within Reach

Fancy an Electronic Brain?

If you’ve ever wondered whether wearable computers might one day turn into computers that are implanted in our brains, research at Harvard University suggests it’s a possibility.

Flexible electronics can be injected directly into brain tissue, allowing for brain cells to be directly monitored and stimulated, according to the researchers from Harvard and China’s National Center for Nano science and Technology.

The technology could open up new applications in medicine and brain-machine interfaces, which can read thoughts and act upon the external world, such as controlling a wheelchair by thought alone.

Harvard chemist, Charles Lieber and collaborators worked with tiny, flexible mesh structures that are made of conductive polymer strands and embedded with transistors and electrodes. The mesh was rolled up, inserted in a syringe measuring 100 micrometers in diameter, and injected into the brain tissue of mice, where it unfurled.

Reporting in a study in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers said the mesh is mostly porous and can expand to fill biological cavities. It integrated with the brain tissue and the mice did not show significant signs of immune reaction to the material after five weeks.

Extremely thin electrical wires connected to the mesh were connected to external computers so that brain cells in the mice could be recorded and stimulated. But the researchers want to refine the design to make it wireless.

The technology could potentially be developed to treat brain damage from stroke and Parkinson’s disease, Lieber said in a Nature.com news article.

–Tim Hornyak

If you lose your hand in an accident, a prosthetic could cost well over US$10,000. But 3D printing holds out the promise of making simple replacement hands available for far less.

The founders of robotics startup Exiii pore over the designs for their latest prototype. It’s a basic mechanical hand and forearm made from materials that only cost about $200. It’s also open source.

The Exiii Hackberry, as it’s called, has a flexible wrist, partially motorized fingers and low-cost parts such as an Arduino controller and a digital camera battery, all housed in a white 3D-printed plastic shell.

During a demo, co-founder Genta Kondo strapped an infrared distance sensor to his inner forearm and plugged it in to the Hackberry. The sensor measures the distance to the skin, so when a muscle contracts, it detects a change and sends a signal to the Arduino board.

The sensor can be attached on a user’s upper arm, for instance, so that flexing biceps would activate the hand.

Kondo flexed his forearm by making a fist and the fingers on the Hackberry closed, mimicking the movement. Although the servomotors emit a fairly loud screech, the grip is delicate enough to hold a business card without crushing it.

Compared to the previous, fourthgeneration prototype hand, the Hackberry is now more compact and functional, with the battery use time extended from two hours to a full day.

The number of servomotors has been reduced from six to three, one for the thumb, one for the index finger and one for the other three fingers, to keep it as light and simple as possible. Its plastic can now be printed on a consumergrade 3D printer instead of an industrial one.

—Tim Hornyak

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oad,

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I M A G E S O U R C E : T H I N K S TO C K . C O M

Kumar

quiFIX ck Refresh Your Memory

start

Nantero, a developer of Nano-RAM (NRAM), said fabrication plants are beginning wafer production.

6

A

new type of non-volatile memory known as NanoRAM (NRAM)—it’s based on carbon nanotube and sports DRAM speed—is now being produced in seven fabrication plants in various parts of the world. According to Nantero, the company that invented NRAM, it also has more than a dozen corporate customers lined up to begin experimenting with the memory once it begins rolling off production lines. “So those fabs have been and are indeed producing large numbers of wafers and chips,” said Greg Schmergel, CEO of Nantero. NRAM has the potential to create memory that is vastly denser than NAND flash, which is used to make thumb drives and solid-state drives today. NRAM can reach densities of below five nanometers, according to Schmergel.

—Lucas Mearian

For more articles, see: www.cio.in/article

WORTH READING BOOK

Cracking the Tech Career

By Gayle Laakmann McDowel Become the applicant Google can’t turn down Cracking the Tech Career is the job seeker’s guide to landing a coveted position at one of the top tech firms. A follow-up to The Google Resume, this book provides new information on what these companies want and how to show them you have what it takes to succeed in the role. Amazon.in Rs 374.

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How to Assess a Potential Employer’s Corporate Culture?

ALWAYS: Identify the culture where you thrive, and pursue that culture. Do you excel in more formal hierarchical organizations or informal, loosely organized structures? And remember, when leadership changes, the culture changes, too. Often, the address of a company will tell you all you need to know about the company culture. If they are located in the business district of a city rather than a funkier part of town, there is a good chance the office is more likely to be business professional than business casual, for instance. Is the receptionist working with an equipment of current communications technology plan? If it’s outdated, that may be an indication of where the investments in technology fall as a business priority.

SOMETIMES: Ask current employees to describe the culture. If there are differences between what former employees have said, ask about that, and identify why.

Take note of private office space. Are cubes or offices used? Are there many private conferences rooms being used? Also notice whether office doors are open or closed.

This is a good indication of the how well the company collaborates on projects. And note the technology each person has. Are they limited, or part of each person’s repertoire of tools to work more effectively?

NEVER: Don’t compare one company to another and don’t disparage other companies. Don’t be threatening, judgmental or hasty in your assessments. If you find things lacking or not up to par, remember that those short comings may provide tremendous professional opportunities if you take a position with the company.

Elaine Varelas is managing partner at Keystone Partners.

CIO-The IT Hero

Anthony Thomas, CIO, Vodafone India

This feature is brought to you

by IDG Services in association with VMware

Digitizing Traditional Framework Gradual, seamless transition from legacy to state-of-art, open technologies has defined Vodafone’s digital roadmap

Interview by Shantheri Mallaya How has your role as the IT decision maker influenced the IT journey at Vodafone?

Since a CIO owns the data stores and technology infrastructure of the organization, it is a given that he/she has to lead innovative technologies–be it open source, virtualization, big data, or analytics– anything that calls for enablement and empowerment of the business.

In the last few years here, the focus at Vodafone has been on Transforming business capabilities, improving customer experience and centralizing IT infrastructure and Applications.

Since we are a telecom provider, operating in many circles, we have to deliver consistency in customer experience at all touch points, including the call centers, and through online and mobile apps.

All of this were cases of technology enablement. We had to bear in mind the intricate synergies between functions, while retiring old technologies. After lat retail, we are currently at the cusp of billing transformation systems. The CRM is also going through a massive overhaul. Internally too, we had to think ahead of the curve in terms of championing technologies that would create a workforce that could think differently, think ahead of the curve, through the adoption of BYOD, Virtual Desktops, etc.

So, has the move to the digital enterprise been gradual? How did you effect the process step-wise?

While the digital enterprise shift has been seamless, VMware has been instrumental in catalyzing the virtualization and the cloud journey at Vodafone.

Anthony Thomas, CIO, Vodafone India

Yes, undoubtedly the transformation is slow, seamless, and not a rip and replace approach. With lakhs of subscribers at stake, there can be no unplanned risks whatsoever.

In addition to application and process transformation, we also began adoption of open technologies to shift from traditional UNIX-based OS to Linux-based OS. Now we are looking at virtualized compute, besides overhauling the storage environment.

We are firm believers in cloud infrastructure and have large investments there. We have been able to reduce 25 percent of our technology footprint by virtualizing and moving to the cloud.

VMware has played a pivotal role in virtualizing your IT platforms. What has been their contribution to the overall journey?

VMware has been instrumental in catalyzing the virtualization and the cloud journey at Vodafone. As required, we have evolved a more hybrid approach, combining our own private cloud with a hybrid cluster approach for a couple of clients.

Significantly, VMware’s approach has helped balance out the opex-capex ratio of IT infrastructure.

Will a software defined enterprise be the journey going forward?

While it is easy to say that storage and compute can be a commodity, the fact is that the real power lies in the abstraction of the layer above it. Being a telecommunications company, a software-defined approach holds tremendous potential to us. n

careerPATH

Negotiate a Better Salary start

Successful salary negotiation is as much an art as a science. Here are some tips that will help you get paid what you’re worth. BY S H A R O N F LO R E N T I N E

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Salary negotiation is nerve-wracking, but don’t let fear get in the way of being paid what you’re worth. After the 2008 financial crash and during the ensuing recession, many people were happy to have a job at all—any job, at any salary, says Lydia Frank, senior director of editorial and marketing, at PayScale. com. As the economy improves, businesses have more flexibility in their budgets and are starting to loosen the purse strings.

You have to be confident that you deserve a raise and provide specific examples as to why you deserve more money.

- MICHELLE JOSEPH, CEO OF PEOPLEFOUNDRY.

“Many people were afraid to ask for more money, or to ask for a raise in an existing position - and they didn’t have negotiating power.

But what we’ve seen more recently is that a significant portion of people who take that risk and ask for a salary increase do get something,” Frank says.

Know your Value Make sure you know—and can demonstrate with tangible examples—exactly what your value is to your company. “First, you have to be confident that you deserve a raise and provide specific examples as to why you deserve more money. They key is to show

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why you’re valuable rather than just saying it. Tangible examples of previous projects are good, but quantifiable examples—like how those projects have made money or saved money or man-hours for the company—are better,” says Michelle Joseph, CEO of PeopleFoundry.

If you don’t ask for a raise, or don’t negotiate starting salary based on your value, you’re giving your employer a major break by undervaluing what you’re worth.

Salary.com and Glassdoor.com are great places to start doing in-depth research about what type of salary range you should expect.

“Make sure you understand the going market rate for the position you want within a range, and take into account the external factors that can affect that range,” says Frank. “Where’s the position located? How many years of experience do you have? What’s the size of the company? What’s their financial state? What industry do you work in? Taking into account these factors gives you a pretty realistic read of salary range, and then you can walk in with confidence and facts to back up your assertions,” says Frank.

Don’t Just Consider Salary Finally, if your salary requirement is rejected, don’t lose hope.

See what other options you have to negotiate benefits and perks.

“Remember, it’s not just about salary; it’s a compensation package.

If you end up with a higher salary but horrible benefits, you’ll end up paying for that out of pocket— things like healthcare, vacation time, matching 401k programs, gym memberships,” says Frank.

Do your Homework Hard data is your best ally as you negotiate a starting salary or a raise. Sites like PayScale.com,

Sharon Florentine covers IT careers and data center topics. Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

LEADERSHIPCONVERSATIONS

AGILITY IS KEY TO

MODERNIZATION Understanding the organization is crucial for pushing tech transformation, says Manish Choksi, CIO at Asian Paints.

Manish Choksi, CIO, Asian Paints What have been the key challenges you have faced as an IT decision maker?

As an IT decision maker, one has to ensure that one can realize the business value from IT investments. This entails striving to keep abreast of the advances in technology, while aligning and mapping the relevant ones to business. The other important piece for a CIO would be to match timelines, expectations and deliver the best fit for a requirement, factoring in all the lines of business.

One has to also look at the security challenges—which can proliferate from anywhere—and fortify IT infrastructure in the organization.

What is innovation in IT, as you see it? Can you articulate any specific instances of innovation management that you have driven for Asian Paints?

Innovation in IT cannot be function without complimentary investments in building the capability of people and change in the organization culture. A thorough understanding of the organization is what ultimately drives the right kind of innovation, such that change and change management are being pulled by the business and not pushed to the business.

Our recent migration to SAP HANA platform has been significant in terms of innovation. HANA allows us to extract

By Shantheri Mallaya

benefits from enormous volumes of new data and delivers agility through in-memory computing. For instance, the improvement in throughput of analytics using HANA has enabled better utilization of real time data.

This has ultimately helped to ensure customer satisfaction. We believe SAP HANA will help us enhance the delivery infrastructure considerably for both internal and external customers.

evolve beyond the technology. In effect, he doesn’t remain merely a technology advisor, but his role requires a holistic understanding of business and how to use technology as a key driver to enhance business performance. An IT decision maker must have vision and foresight to navigate the fast changing world of technology. He must be a leader and must actively drive change within the organization rather than being seen only as a support.

How do you view the changing role

"Our recent migration to SAP HANA platform has been significant in terms of innovation. HANA allows us to extract benefits from enormous volumes of new data and delivers agility through in-memory computing." of CIO? How do you see this evolving further?

Organizations must recognize the need to have the CIO when making decisions affecting business. With the rapid changes in technology, a CIO needs to

How has and how will SAP continue to be a catalyst to move IT to the next level?

In our journey on business excellence, our investment in SAP has played an integral role. It began and continues to be the backbone of our information technology infrastructure and powers all transactions. However, in recent years, with a change in strategy, we have seen SAP launch new services and solutions in the on-premise world and in the cloud that have allowed us to innovate in enhancing our customer engagement and increasing the people connect. We are launching many more services based on the throughput and combinations derived from SAP solutions.

With the move to HANA, we are looking to embark on a journey to increase innovation without disruption.

Powered by

This interview is brought to you by IDG Services in association with SAP

world Fresh Ideas from Around the Globe

vıew

start

How Kenya is Making Sense of Government Data

B E I J I N G N A I R O B I Governments are known to be big generators and keepers of data, but bureaucracy in most African nations has blocked public access to and use of government-gathered information.

Kenya’s Open Data Initiative (KODI), has been at the forefront of efforts to make government data accessible to the public and third-party service providers. Citizens can now get information on all health facilities in Kenya, see government spending from 2005 to the present, compare HIV/AIDs reports from various years and access retail fuel price trends on the KODI website. The KODI site has 65,000 to 80,000 monthly views and has had more than 190,000 downloads of its 500 data sets. IDG News Service

10

North Korea Said to Block Instagram

PYONGYANG Days after photos leaked of a fire at one of

North Korea’s biggest and best-known hotels, the country has begun restricting access to Instagram. Attempts to connect to Instagram’s website via PC or smartphone were met with a message saying the site was on an Internet block list, according to an Associated Press reporter in Pyongyang. While Internet access is impossible for all but a handful of the country’s 25 million people, foreigners have enjoyed Internet access through cellular connections for just over two years. IDG News Service

Mobile Web a Hit Among Poor

ZAMBIA Eighty-seven million people in Nigeria browse the Internet on mobile phones, according to figures from the country’s telecom regulator that confirm that even among lowincome people, the mobile Web is big in Africa. About 25 percent of the people who use mobile phones to browse the Web in Nigeria, more than 22 million users, are from low-income households, according to an NCC official. IDG News Service

Microsoft Predicts China’s Air Pollution with Data Analysis

BEIJING Microsoft has taken its big data analysis to China, with computing models that can forecast the air quality across 41 cities in the country. Pollution continues to be a major problem in China. To bring some clarity to the situation, Microsoft has come up with a mobile app that can predict the air quality two days in advance. The Your Weather app works by first taking official data from government air quality monitoring stations across a 300 kilometer distance, and then using weather data to predict the pollution levels. The weather data used includes forecasts, along with current information on humidity, temperature and wind direction in a selected city. IDG News Service

–Compiled by IDG News Service from CIO magazine affiliates worldwide

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grow innovation and business value

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Powering Mobility Mahindra Group launched company-wide an all-purpose mobile app to improve mobility adoption by its employee. By Shubhra Rishi In this digital age, do you feel you have been living a double life? On one hand, you’re a consumer enjoying the convenience of spectacular user apps. On the other hand, you’re an employee in an organization struggling with poorly made mobile apps with limited functionality, and bad UI. The IT folks at the US $16.9 billion (about Rs 106,400 crore) Mahindra Group were aware of this gross contradiction. So when Mahindra & Mahindra’s core IT team and Bristlecone, its wholly-owned subsidiary, decided to build a mobile app in May last year, the company’s aim was to effectively mobilize each and every Mahindra employee with a mobile app that offered its employees, the best of both worlds.

The company had three active portals: MConnect, the Intranet Portal which gives information on the latest developments at Mahindra; The Rise Portal, the Mahindra Group platform that creates better crossbusiness engagement among employees, and an Employee Portal that enables transactions from various internal systems such as expense reimbursements, payroll, travel, and leave approvals among others.

••••••••••••• 81% of Indian CIOs say the increasing number of business-critical applications is leading to an increase in DC complexity. SOTC 2015 •••••••••••••

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grow

In 2014, security didn’t have much

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The mobile app, christened MeConnect, inteto write home about. New threats grates the three portals and provides a single lurked in every corner giving gateway which can be accessed through a Indian CISOs sleepless nights. mobile device. The mobile app can be accessed Their biggest source of grief? on Android-based phones, iPhones and the iPad. Insider threat.

“It’s now all available in the palm of your hand and can be accessed on the run,” says V Current employees 48% S Parthasarathy, Group CFO, Group CIO & Former employees 39% President, (Group Finance and M&A), MemCurrent service providers 22% ber of Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra.

Former service providers 21% MeConnect is a bouquet of over 70 apps Customers 15% built using a blend of multiple technologies SOURCE: GISS 2015 from Native, Phonegap, SAP Fiori and integrated with SAP and SharePoint.

For instance, the MeConnect app allows an employee to check company updates, connect to news apps, and browse social media apps. In case of an emergency, an executive can choose from various hospitals listed on the app and look for directions “Our goal was on the maps while driving to one to focus on of the hospitals.

Since the app is integrated enabling people with the company’s SAP portal If there was any question as to whether people were excited to get their own perin the backend, an M&M execu- to rise through sonal robot, the answer is clear now. tive can instantly browse for solutions that SoftBank Robotics Corp., an internapassport information, frequent power mobility,” tional company based in Japan, put 1,000 flier number, CTC details, PF balpersonal robots, dubbed Pepper. Pepper ance, and leave balance among —V S Parthasarthy, Group not only can read and respond to human CFO, Group CIO & President, other things, with this app. emotions but it will have its own emoMahindra & Mahindra.

He can perform business tions. According to SoftBank, the robot transactions such as approving leave requests and claim can autonomously generate emotions by requests. The mobile app, integrated with the travel agent’s site, processing information from its cameras also allows the executive to place request for tickets ‘on the run’. and sensors. “With this emotion function, Pepper’s emotions are influenced by peo“Our goal was to focus on enabling people to rise through soluple’s facial expressions and words, as well tions that power mobility, drive rural prosperity, enhance urban as his surroundings, which in turn affects lifestyles and increase business efficiency,” says Parthasarathy.

Pepper’s words and actions,” the company The development and execution of this app took a mere 10 said in a statement. “For example, Pepmonths and has over 4,000 active users from M&M. The comper is at ease when he is around people pany is still in the process of integrating all the employee portals he knows, happy when he is praised, and across the Mahindra Group. “In the next few months, our vision gets scared when the lights go down.” is to surge adoption of mobility within the entire Mahindra The robot is designed to raise its voice Group,” says Parthasarathy. or can sigh depending on its emotions at

Your Robot Will Emote Too

the moment. Pepper also will show its emotions–based on different colors and motions–on a chest display.

Send feedback to Shubhra_rishi@idgindia.com.

—Sharon Gaudin

•••••••••••• 80% of Indian CISOs say their organizations’ security spending is allocated according to its most profitable lines of business. GISS 2015 •••••••••••••

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Meeting the Enterprise’s Security Challenges Head On At an exclusive breakfast gathering with India’s top CIOs, Michael A. Brown, President and CEO, Symantec, spoke to Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-inChief, IDG Media, about how organizations can deal with today’s enterprise risks.

S

ecurity is an ever-changing game of cat-and-mouse, where attackers are trying new methods and we have got to make sure we are keeping up,” said Michael A. Brown, President and CEO of Symantec, during an interview with Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-in-Chief, IDG Media, at a breakfast gathering organized with some of India’s top IT leaders.

During the course of the conversation with Ramachandran, Brown covered a variety of topics surrounding enterprise security, including new threats surfacing from SMAC technologies, how enterprises can protect themselves against these threats, some of Symantec’s future plans, and the place of government in security.

As more businesses invest greater amounts of time and money in going digital, he said, the threat surface of an organization is increasing exponentially. That’s something more businesses need to take into account.

“Every time we deploy new technologies, we should allocate some investments for the protection of information used by that technology, be it cloud or BYOD,” said Brown.

EVENT REPORT SYMANTEC

He added that companies need to study—not only the productivity of a product or new technology—but also how to protect them. By doing this, enterprises can ensure they are ready for new attacks.

Brown highlighted the need to keep up with new security technologies to avoid breaches, especially since the average cost of recovering from a breach is 10 times more than what it costs to put that security in place. Symantec’s solutions, he said, helps protect companies using new and old technologies.

Ramachandran questioned him on the role of governments in creating more secure environments. Brown said governments play an important role. Governments, he said, can work together with private companies and share security insights.

He added that governments need to ensure that people are aware of the importance of security while using new

Every time we deploy new technologies, we should allocate some investments for the protection of information used by that technology, be it cloud or BYOD.” — Michael A. Brown, President and CEO, Symantec

technologies, both at an individual and at an organizational level.

“However, we don’t believe that any government, around the world, can anticipate technology transitions. So it is very dangerous to believe that we can regulate our way to safety,” said Brown.

While governments can be a force for positive change, Symantec believes that an increased awareness of newer threats and finding better security against them are the most important steps towards security.

“Every sector of the economy really needs to think about protection. It is no different from physical security; we invest so that criminals don’t get their hands on valuable information,” Brown said.

Brown also shared some of the security best practices Symantec itself uses. Inside Symantec, he said, the company’s chief information security officer (CISO) meets with the executive team every four to six weeks to review and improve its existing protection. It’s a method Brown strongly advises other companies adopt.

He added that an attacker can stay in a network for an average of 200 days once they are able to enter. That makes it important to understand who the attacker is targeting and let appropriate technology play its role.

Ramachandran quizzed Brown on Symantec’s future plans. Brown expounded on how the company will provide the skills to manage security, in addition to providing products. E-mail protection, unified security analytics, and network protection, he said, will now be provided using the cloud.

Brown added that Symantec crossleverages its learnings to better protect its clients. If, for example, one bank is attacked, Symantec will protect other banks by studying the first attack.

Finally, Brown praised Narendra Modi’s digitally aware leadership and said that as a growing economy, initiatives like Digital India enable further economic growth.

The company, he said, will continue to invest in I ndia as Brown expressed his excitement at the technical depth and capability of the workforce in the country.

Holistic Appraoch to Security

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ymantec has global visibility when it comes to security threats. It scans 30 percent of world’s enterprise e-mail everyday, gets two billion Web requests a day to check which websites are safe, and has 500 researchers worldwide.

The company’s Symantec Endpoint Protection, safeguards enterprise from security threats. “Symantec Endpoint is our biggest enterprise security business and we protect 200 million end points,” said Michael A. Brown, president and CEO of Symantec. The strategy brings extraordinary security and smarter management across both physical and virtual environments.

Brown also added that Symantec secures its datacenter located at Pune and gateways—Web and email.

Symantec also protects information on the cloud as people access workloads from mobile devices. It protects core information through a combination of data loss protection, encryption, and behavior analytics to understand what users are doing. “This gives us a global view of what is happening in the cloud,” said Brown.

Brown spoke about Symantec’s simulation services which helps security professionals train better to protect themselves in case of advanced attacks.

This event report is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Symantec

IT SECURITY

Security Innovation’s New Home grow

Are startups the best and only place to bring true security innovation to the market? BY TO M PAT T E R S O N

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ilicon Valley, where I live and work, is the very strong technologies that will never get their chance to obvious answer as to where to find the most save the world due to these factors. innovative security products. Money flows up For years, security innovation rarely came from large and down Sand Hill Road, showcase offices established companies, due to the Innovators Dilemma, spring off of University, startups gather on which Clayton Christensen described so well in his besteither side of the 101 from San Jose to San Francisco, and selling book of the same name. The premise of protecting deals are being made daily at coffee shops one’s current customers and products, like Philz, RedRock, and Coupa (where a My belief is that big at the cost of innovation, was a very real latte costs .007 bitcoin!). thing back in the day. Companies that sell companies—if they When I started my innovative IPv6 embrace innovative buggy whips are the last to embrace the company 10 years ago, I chose the DC internal combustion engine. practices—can area, as it had the one thing that Silicon My belief (and I’ve just voted with be an important Valley was missing back then—custommy feet by just joining 129 year old Uniers. Since I was there, great new incubasys Corp to head their security business, force in innovative tors have taken off, like 1776 and Mach37, instead of a much shorter commute down security products. and there is strong governmental support the 101) is that big companies—if they for security startups across the region, as truly embrace innovative practices—can well as the remains of the AOL zillionaires to fund. be an important force in innovative security products by Austin has the Dell-ionares eco-system, and Israel has combining that new style with their existing substance of the Mossad mystique running full speed in support of their mission-critical people and practices, large IP portfolio, security startups. And Silicon ‘fill-in-the-blank’ cities have global scale, customer intimacy, routes to market, finantaken that (very outdated) moniker about as far as credcial trustworthiness, and long-term outlook. It was that ibility will permit.

IP portfolio, strong talent team, and integrated routes to But this question is not about geography, and I’ve no market, that were worth more than an A, B, and C round interest in sparking an east-west gang cyberwar (though it combined. Sure there are different sets of challenges at a would make a good reality show Thom Beers!). I’ve posed big company, which is why this approach isn’t for everyone, this question to discuss if startups are the best and only but being able to take a long term approach to earn trust place to bring true security innovation to the market. with a company over years is a great luxury few VC’s allow This question arose at a reception after a DHS tech trana startup. In the end, there must be balance. sition council meeting at SRI (in the heart of Silicon Valley) I believe not that there is room for everybody, as most last night (March 2015). Are startups, which are highly new products never see the light of a major deployment, but innovative in approach, truly meeting the needs of the great there should be input from both camps. Many people in the enterprises around the world? We’d just heard from major security business today are in it for all the right reasons— CISOs explaining how difficult and time-consuming it is we want to do good and help save the world. As it happens, to introduce new disruptive tech into his company. I know if you do that you’ll probably make a buck or two for you I’ve tried as a systems integrator to bring emerging tech and your stakeholders, but the ‘do good’ part is clearly what companies into certain situations only to be challenged by gets us out of bed every morning. the CISO with questions of their longevity, mission critical practices, real quals, and trustworthy future. I know many Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

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VIEW from the TOP

Spinning the Growth Fiber grow

There’s no loose thread in Sterlite Technologies’ plan to strengthen India’s digital infrastructure.

BY S H U B H R A R I S H I

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When Anand Agarwal took over the reins of leadership at the loss-ridden Sterlite Technologies in 2003, there’s wasn’t even a bit of doubt in his head on how he would bring it back on its rails. Agarwal says just being a product company in a particular domain could have restricted our growth potential. But today, the company is not just India’s only fully integrated optical fiber producer and one of the largest suppliers of optical fibers to overseas markets, but it has also diversified into several other profitable businesses.

potential. Today, we are pretty happy with what we have, and the growth it can create globally.

Sterlite is in talks with the government for overall implementation and execution of Digital India infrastructure. That looks like a mammoth task. Tell us about your company’s Digital India vision?

Clearly, it’s about putting a billion people on the internet. Our role in the government’s digital India initiative is to create the infrastructure. We realize that providing broadband connectivity for a billion people is a huge vision of the government, and From being a manager to the CEO of Sterlite Our role in the we are capable of playing Technologies, what made you stay (given your rich academic background) to the company government’s that large role in the broad vision. We plan to create the since its inception? digital India entire digital infrastructure I took over the CEO role at Sterlite during the time when by providing end to end the company was going through a downturn – sufferinitiative through our ing losses worth Rs 70-80 crore that year. At the time, is to create the equipment system integration capawe were only producing optical fibers in some parts of the world. Our immediate goal was to bring the cost infrastructure. bility. Sterlite is already a key optic fiber cable supdown, focus on new geographies, convert the losses into plier for the national optic a breakeven, and then gradually to a profit. Therefore, we fiber network (NOFN) project that will expanded our product portfolio–adding power, solutions and infraprovide high-speed Internet to about 2.5 structure–to our offerings. Therefore, if you know the background lakh village blocks across India. Initially, and the culture of the organization, it helps you steer the role and the our plan was to connect 50,000 gram organization in a direction that you want to. panchayats, and later, about 200,000 of them. Once this gets realized, it will So why did you feel the need to diversify? empower the country like never before.

At the time, we were the only large player in the optical fiber industry (which is a USD 5-6 billion dollar industry). So we didn’t want to be a large company in a small industry. Our ambition and vision was to create a large solutions company globally. It was a requirement from a customer base which prompted us to embark the system integration business, or emphasize our move to telecom and power sector.

We understood the gaps in the industries and matched them with the opportunities in the market to the capabilities we had. Just being Send feedback to Shubhra_rishi@idgindia. a product company in a particular domain can limit your growth com.

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grow

Anand Agarwal, CEO, Sterlite Technologies

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[Q+A]

Pushing the E-Com Cart grow

Shamik Sharma, CTO and CPO, Myntra, makes a case for the e-commerce industry and shares why this is a good time for CIOs to be a part of it. B Y S H A R D H A S U B R A M A N I A N

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Why do you think this is the best time for CIOs to be in the e-commerce industry?

In this e-commerce boom, it’s just an unprecedented time. And as a CIO you get to witness this first hand.

It’s exciting and challenging and I don’t think there’s any other domain in which you can witness this kind of growth and excitement.

It’s a fast growing industry where new opportunities are being created every day.

Apart from being the CTO, you’re also the product head of Myntra.

Do the two roles complement each other?

One has to understand when you are building a product, you have to understand what kind of technology limitations there are and what kind of opportunities that tech innovations are building. Especially in e-commerce where there a lot of changes happening to the underlying technology itself.

More and more people are going mobile, so understanding what the technical choices are help inform what the product choices are. And the reverse is also true. If you have a very good understanding of the product and the

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business you can then mold your tech choices and product choices to those specific requirements. So the two roles complement each other.

As more companies go mobile, do you think CIOs need to play a dual role, rather than just being IT heads?

Yes. In the e-commerce industry, every leader actually, in any function say, sales or marketing, needs to have a strong technical understanding. Primarily because, e-commerce is a technical, product-oriented industry and not a physical store. You are relying on customer experience that is delivered through online channels. Likewise, it

is the responsibility of all CIOs in the e-commerce industry to think of themselves not just as CIOs but as executives who inform the business about what the opportunities are and how to leverage them.

What are the challenges?

The business are doubling, tripling, quadrupling every year which means your systems need to hold up and not go down. There are always big sales and lots of events that every company is running. This again puts a lot of stress and introduces challenges on how your infrastructure keeps up. You also need to hire the best talent because it’s competitive landscape. Also, the technology itself is changing as we are moving from Web to mobile and this requires both nurturing and building new talent. In an industry so driven by customer experience, you need to build and design products and that requires an eye for detail and a sensibility of aesthetics.

That is also often a challenge because if you don’t meet your customers’ expectation in that regard, you can’t really serve them well.

What’s your advice to CIOs who want to join the industry?

This is the best time to do so. It’s a fast growing industry where new opportunities are being created every day. You have to be ready to learn new things as every day throws up a surprise or some area that you may not be familiar with. But if someone is curious and is willing to take a leap then this is definitely an area where a lot of innovation is happening.

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Barcoding Saved Havells run

Havells decided to use barcoding to synchronize the motors and their blades during the packaging process. B Y M A D H AV M O H A N

Do you have a Havells fan at home? Have you ever wondered about what goes into the packaging process of its motors and blades before it reaches your home? Probably not.

Havells India has a fan manufacturing unit in Haridwar that’s spread over 10 acres and employs around 1,300 employees. Havells produces around 4.5 lakh fans a month with around 600 SKUs. The unit manufactures ceiling fans, pedestal fans, wall-hanging fans, and exhaust fans.

It’s ceiling fans have two major components—the motor and a set of blades. Both of these components are manufactured on different production lines. It was a challenge to synchronize the motors and their blades during the packaging process. It’s a tedious job to match the size, colors and model of motors to their respective blades.

“There are different sizes of fans: 56 inches, 48 inches, 36 inches and 24 inches. There

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Vivek Khanna, CIO, Havells, says, “We’ve been able to eliminate repetitive labor process and managed to save on annual replacement costs.”

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could be where a 48-inch motor is attached to a 56-inch blade.

Another problem was when blades and motors of the same color are matched but they are different model,” says Vivek Khanna, CIO, Havells. “There’s always a risk of getting the wrong combination and we’ve seen rejection rates of around 3.5 percent on account of product mismatches.”

One solution was to use manpower to cross check. But manually screening was problematic. “We manufacture 3 lakh fans a month, that’s 1,250 fans a day. It’s a tough task for people to physically match, and then pack,” says Khanna.

The question on Khanna’s mind, and that of this team’s, was: What kind of technologically innovative approach could Havells implement to get around this challenge?

To automate the manufacturing process at the factory, Havells already used barcode technology, mobile readers, which was integrated with SAP production orders and warehouse management functionalities. Since the sub-assembly of ceiling fan motors and the blades move on separate production lines, “we created child barcodes for the motors and the blades for each final ceiling fan SKU; with a final item code detail acting as common link between them. These barcodes are attached on respective sub-assemblies and keep moving in their production line,” says Khanna.

After that, when different components reach the packaging stage, SAP’s warehouse management functionality helps pickers picking related material as they need to be placed in separate areas. “This relieves the picker from having to go and search for a product,” says Khanna. Then, packers check the barcodes of the two components of final assembly, the motor and the blade. At the end of the packing, if they are in sync, “the barcode reader, an HHT Motorola mobile device, signals an affirmative sound,” says Khanna.

Havells began working on the project in March 2013 and went live with it in September, investing Rs 25 lakh. Maventic Innovative solutions provided barcode solutions, integrated printers and Motorola switches with SAP. “We chose them because they have exposure to integrating SAP with Motorola devices and barcode solutions,” says Khanna.

One of the challenges the project faced was that Motorola devices and the Zebra label printers become slow. A simple upgrade of their firmware solved the problem.

Havells have had a marvelous run after implementing the project. Barcoding technology provided numerous benefits. “We have been able to eliminate repetitive labour process prone to errors and managed to save on annual replacement costs of Rs 2.18 crore” says Khanna. It has also improved the brand value of the company’s products by shrinking field rejections, and saving dealers from embarrassment in front of customers.

Send feedback to Madhav_mohan@idgindia.com.

Things You Need to Know ABOUT GEOFENCING

1

IT CAN ENGAGE LOCAL SHOPPERS. Geofencing is a location-based service that sends messages to smartphone users who enter a defined geographic area. Some companies send promotions to customers’ smartphones when they enter a store, mall or neighborhood. It’s easy to get started: “All you need is an app and GPS coordinates,” says Tony Costa, an analyst at Forrester Research.

2

DEALS CAN BE HYPER-LOCAL. Knowing that customers are nearby lets businesses tailor offers based on local events or holidays. For example, 1-800-Flowers deployed targeted ads for 20 percent off bouquets in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Their ads could pop up in any app someone was using when they entered a specified area.

3

IT LEVERAGES YOUR LOCATION. By sending a targeted offer to a customer in a parking lot, you may be able to steer them away from competitors. Apps such as Shopkick give customers rewards, such as gift cards or coupons, for walking into participating stores. Companies can also work with businesses that offer complementary products.

For example, 1-800-Flowers geofenced the area around jewelry stores that are close to their flower stores. Shah says if people are shopping for jewelry, they may want to pick up flowers as well. When a customer walks up to a jewelry store, they receive a discount offer for a bouquet from 1-800-Flowers. “Figure out what situation [customers] are in and attack that context,” he says.

4

IT ADDS DEPTH TO ANALYTICS. “If you have behavioral models, location gives you another layer of understanding,” Costa says. Using data analytics, companies can see whether targeted offers actually bring people into stores and result in more sales. Other metrics include how often a customer visits the store, how long they shop, and how well a window display works.

5

YOU NEED MORE REWARDS. When you know where customers are and how they behave, you can not only customize offers but also give them rewards and a personalized experience. Neiman Marcus is piloting geofencing in its stores so salespeople can see when VIP customers are in store, look at their purchase history and provide more personalized service.

But Costa warns: “Make sure it’s not intrusive, make sure it’s additive. The value exchange has to be there.”

-Lauren Brousell

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POPULAR SCIENCE

Track your Teen driver

GM announced it will be rolling out a “Teen Driver” system that will allow parents to see data about their teens’ driving behavior. BY LU C A S M E A R I A N

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M has announced that it will be offering

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a way for parents to track their teens’ driving behavior in order to help cut down on accidents. In the US, the fatal crash rate per mile driven for 16- to 19-year-olds is nearly three times the rate for drivers aged 20 and over, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

“Teen Driver,” as GM is calling it, will debut in the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu. The new system can be set to track the distance driven, the maximum speed traveled, any over-speed warnings issued during a drive, stability control events, antilock brake events, forward collision alerts and forward-collision braking events (if the vehicle is equipped to offer them).

To use Teen Driver, a parent needs to unlock the feature by creating a PIN in the “settings” menu of their available MyLink system, which then allows them to register their teen’s key fob. The system’s settings are turned on only to registered key fobs. After a car is driven, a parent can enter a password on MyLink and see a report card of the driving event. “We developed this system so parents

WaterGenius helps Fight the Drought Can California survive the drought? The state desperately needs water conservation. California is in the fourth year of a record draught, and things are getting scary.

According to an Association of California Water Agencies survey, “The vast majority of Californians— some 90 percent—are willing to make significant changes to conserve water.”

One Oakland-based company thinks it has part of the solution.

could use it as a teaching tool with their kids—they can discuss and reinforce safe driving habits,” GM safety engineer MaryAnn Beebe said in a statement. “As a mother of two, I know anything that has the potential of keeping one’s family safer is of great value to parents.”

Driver-tracking systems are nothing new. A vehicle’s Engine Control Unit (internal computer) and on-board diagnostics (OBDs) already allow insurance companies to track driver behavior in order to offer lower rates to good drivers. Those systems, however, require a dongle to be plugged into any vehicle’s OBDII port, which is located under the driver-side dashboard.

GM is calling Teen Driver the first built-in system of its kind that lets parents view on a display how their teenager drove the vehicle. The new system not only tracks what happens in the car, but also supports safe driving by muting the audio of the radio or any device paired with the vehicle when front seat occupants aren’t wearing their safety belts.

Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

BKi’s free WaterGenius website could help homeowners cut down on water consumption.

If it works as advertised, this free online service will help California homeowners figure out how best to change their homes to cut water use, and calculate how much money they can save by making these changes.

The first thing the WaterGenius website asks you for is your city. It needs that information so it can recommend plumbers, gardeners, contractors, and other local professionals.

But your location also tells WaterGenius what you’re paying for a gallon of water, so it can calculate what you’ll save if you make

recommended changes. The differences can be severe. According to Gitt, a gallon of water in Palo Alto costs seven times what it does in Gilroy.

Once the site knows where you are, you’ll get a list of seven items that you might want to replace with something more efficient, including showerheads, kitchen and bathroom faucets, dishwashers, and toilets. You can check and uncheck these options, to concentrate on what you want or to see what will provide the biggest savings.

—Lincoln Spector

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HIRING MANAGER

Raising the Expectations’ Bar

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Students today, have high hopes for their careers and a clear vision of what they want from the companies that hire them. BY S A R A H K . W H I T E

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t’s no secret that graduating college students are beverages, as well as regular social activities and a relaxed burdened with debt and are facing a challenging dress code were important to job-seeking seniors. job market.

“Despite kicking their job search in full swing Startups Aren’t as Appealing as You’d in the spring semester, the majority of students Think have yet to see traction with interviews or job offers-a Even with this nontraditional list of work-place wishes, concerning conclusion with graduation season upon us,” students report that they are open to working in a number says Robert Angulo, CEO of AfterCollege. of diverse environments. While the desired perks seem to Here are some surprising facts about what graduating fit with a startup, two out of three respondents reported seniors face in the current job market and what they want they would consider a job within the federal or state from a company, according to a survey by AfterCollege. government. More than half also stated they would work Technology Degrees Offer More Security at a nonprofit, while less than half chose a startup as their Although the market might be tough for some desired workplace. graduating seniors, technology degrees may offer students more success in finding a job They’re Looking Online While the job right out of college. The survey found This one isn’t surprising, but recent that nontechnology and female students graduates are turning to the Internet market is tough, fared worse than their technology and for their job search, which has become recent graduates male student counterparts in the job norm for most job seekers. But have a clear picture the market. college grads aren’t just looking to of what they want online job boards, they’re interested Results also found that one-quarter, from a company. or 28 percent, of students with a in networking sites and leveraging technology degree had a job by the time personal connections. they graduated college. Students with College students reported that the degrees in business and life sciences were second in line, top three social networks they turn to when looking for with 18 and 15 percent having secured a job by the time a job includes LinkedIn, their school’s social network and they graduated, respectively. When looking at gender, Facebook. The career fairs and company information only 11 percent of female students have a job lined up after sessions of the past aren’t top of the list for student’s job graduation, compared to 18 percent of male students. search.

Forget Stock Options and Sign On Bonuses While the job market is tough, recent graduates still What’s the Future Outlook? have a clear picture of what they want from a company.

The class of 2015 is certainly graduating into a tough The study found that the most important aspects of a job for economy, and as research supports, this can result in graduation seniors are salary, advancement opportunities, lower wages and more unemployment in comparison to office location and a work-life balance. What do they care classes that graduated into a stronger economy. Even still, the least about? The size of the company, sign on bonuses these students have a clear vision of what they want from and stock options. a company and their own careers.

Respondents also pointed to flexible schedules as an added perk when considering a company, with the option to work from home at least once a week. Free snacks and Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

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Twitter: The Next Job Hotspot

You might not think of Twitter as a recruitment tool, but companies are integrating it into their hiring strategies. B Y S A R A H K . W H I T E

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images of funny celebrity tweets and corporate PR gaffes rather than job searching and recruiting. However, there is an emerging pool of job candidates on Twitter. In fact, 45 percent of job seekers report that they use Twitter, compared to 40 percent who use LinkedIn, according to 2014 research from JobVite.

Passive Job Seekers There’s a highly sought-after demographic on Twitter—the passive job seeker. “I think it’s the point of inception often times in the relationship that grows from a passive job seeker to an active job seeker to a candidate and, eventually, an employee at your company,” says Matt Singer, CMO of JobVite.

Progressive Insurance, for example, has found success reaching passive job seekers through Twitter chats. “We got some people who started following us, following the hashtag and engaging in the conversation, and one of them actually has just recently applied for a position,” says Mary Foley, IT hiring manager at the company.

It’s More About Branding Using Twitter in recruitment isn’t necessarily about reaching out directly to potential candidates. In fact, only 17 percent of employers report using Twitter specifically to search for candidates. Rather, companies are more focused on plant-

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ing the seed for future job seekers; 44 percent of companies report using Twitter to build a company’s brand, 39 percent report using it to post jobs and 32 percent to generate employee referrals, according to a survey from JobVite.

Companies that engage with prospective candidates on Twitter can help give potential employees a better idea of what it’s like to work at their company.

strategy can be ruined by one simple thing: mobile. Mobile is where everyone is turning to consume content, which is a big part of why Twitter is becoming an important recruitment tool. “We know that the newspaper that [job seekers] used to use on their way to work to look for jobs has now been replaced with their smartphone.

And you’re obviously not going to—unless you’re very bold—be

Mobile is where everyone is turning to consume content, which is a big part of why Twitter is becoming an important recruitment tool.

Twitter for Company Research Companies can stand to gain a lot of insight from Twitter’s consumers and employees, whether it’s how to improve the customer experience or confirmation that people are happy with their products or service. When an employee considers taking a job with a new company, he or she is going to set out to do some research first.

Twitter might be the best place to make this first impression, with 24 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds and 17 percent of 30- to 39-yearolds reporting that they turn to Twitter to look up information on a company. That’s more than LinkedIn, Facebook or Google Plus.

A Mobile Strategy is Key Ultimately, a company’s Twitter

doing job searches at your office on your company-issued computer.

So you will use your smartphone,” according to Singer.

But companies that are active on Twitter, but haven’t implemented a mobile strategy, might be missing the mark on branding. A tweet might be the first impression, but once a prospective candidate clicks into a careers page, or a company website, if it isn’t mobile friendly, chances are that you’ve lost them. “If your careers page isn’t mobile, then you’ve actually just sort of done your brand a disservice and left a very negative impression on a job seeker, who’s basically making their first attempt to connect with your company,” says Singer.

Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

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Eash Sundaram, CIO of JetBlue Airways, says, “We put people in front of our processes and look at all of our products through the customer lens.”

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e e in ok at he

COVER STORY :: IT Management

ABOUT

FACE!

CIOs are giving their teams new marching orders to turn their attention from internal matters to external customers, who have ultra-high expectations. B Y J U L I A K I N G

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ersonal. Helpful. Simple. None of those words is typically associated with the process of checking in for a flight at the airport. That’s precisely why JetBlue Airways is getting rid of check-ins entirely.

“We went through a mapping of our processes and decided check-in was meaningless in that it added no value to the customer,” says CIO Eash Sundaram. So IT rolled out a new system whereby certain customers are automatically checked in 24 hours prior to their flights. (The automatic check-in service will be extended to all JetBlue passengers in the next year or so.)

The no-check-in initiative is part of JetBlue’s all-out push to deliver superlative customer service, which the airline sums up in its mantra of “personal, helpful, simple.” In addition, Sundaram says IT focuses on being proactive rather than reactive.

“At the airport, we don’t ask the questions of ‘What’s your name? Where are you going,’” he says. “We have already mapped all the touch points and eliminated those that add no value to the customer. We put people in front of our processes and look at all of our products through the customer lens.”

Increasingly, a customer-centric approach is a matter of competitive advantage, even business survival. By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to Walker Information, a national consulting firm focused on customer intelligence.

Thanks largely to the explosion of digital technologies and the acceleration of innovation, “customers will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive,” Walker says. To be relevant in 2020, companies “must emphasize proactive and personalized service.”

At JetBlue, says Sundaram, getting IT to this level of customer focus involved “a big mindset shift [because] IT was accustomed to thinking in transactions. Instead, we wanted to look at the customer’s airport experience.”

For guidance in making this leap, Sundaram says he and

his IT team looked to—and continue to emulate—highly regarded, customer-focused companies like Google, Apple and others outside of the airline industry. JetBlue also partnered with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at the Stanford School of Engineering on multiweek projects to immerse JetBlue leaders, including many from IT, in a customer-focused case study of the airline. The program included classroom training plus field research at San Francisco International Airport to help executives better understand customers’ needs and JetBlue’s practices.

At the company’s headquarters in New York, IT is a standalone organization, but IT employees are integrated into various functions, like marketing and operations. Sundaram also leads the company’s multimillion-dollar customer experience innovation program, along with JetBlue’s chief commercial officer and chief customer experience officer.

To gain a deeper understanding of new customers, JetBlue dispatches IT staffers and other employees on trips to expansion markets. In the Dominican Republic, for example, many people pay in cash instead of using credit cards, “so IT is now working on a next-generation kiosk to act like an ATM,” Sundaram notes.

Internally, JetBlue also has made customer satisfaction a key factor in employees’ compensation. One-third of Sundaram’s job performance rating is based on how much customers enjoy traveling with JetBlue, he says.

“When you peel the onion back, every goal we have for our IT members is tied to customer experience, too, not to IT systems,” Sundaram says. Ultimately, JetBlue “wants to be a lifestyle brand, not just an airline,” he explains. “Apple and Nordstrom are great brands, and customer experience is what they really focus on. We’re trying to do the same thing.”

Shifting IT’s mindset to look beyond company boundaries and focus on paying customers changes the equation entirely, according to Eric Singleton, CIO at Chico’s FAS, a $2.6 billion

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When the Business Hires Away IT People

W

ould you be comfortable taking an apps developer or an IT architect along on a sales call with one of your company’s new customers? How about inviting them to dinner with a prospective business partner or supplier?

Those are the kinds of situations that CIOs leading customer-centric IT organizations say they try to imagine when they’re recruiting prospective IT employees.

PulteGroup CIO Joe Drouin recently interviewed applicants for 35 IT jobs, many of them spots on the homebuilder’s customerfacing business engagement teams. “From the very beginning, I had the notion that I didn’t need [just] a .Net developer, I needed a .Net developer who I could sit with and have a conversation that had nothing to do with technology,” he says.

“I’d envision this person sitting across the table from another business leader or in a model home or in a construction trailer interacting with a construction manager. What I was looking for is an ability to explain things in a nontechnical, non-intimidating way,” he says.

But not everyone in IT is cut out for face-to-face interactions with external customers. It’s part of an IT leader’s job to identify those who are and then encourage them to move into customer-facing roles.

“It’s more of an art than a science,” says Chico’s CIO Eric Singleton. Key characteristics he seeks include an entrepreneurial spirit, a gregarious nature and an ease with conversation.

—Julia King

34

(about Rs 15,600 crore) specialty retailer with 1,547 stores. “You think about things differently,” he says. “You ask different questions that you don’t ask if you’re in a basement writing code for internal customers.”

That’s why Singleton and other members of his 250-person IT organization regularly visit the company’s stores—to get up close and conversational with shoppers. Singleton is especially keen to observe how women interact with a 24-in. touchscreen that’s mounted in a cabinet near the back of the store. Known as the “tech table,” the touchscreen lets shoppers browse beyond the 60 percent of inventory displayed in physical stores to view and buy hundreds of additional products online.

He describes the table as “a social watering hole” and “an augmented shopping experience that is fueled by the customers’ social energy around it in the moment.”

Best of all, tech table sales routinely add 15 percent to 20 percent to in-store sales totals every day--a figure that’s higher than anyone at Chico’s anticipated.

IT also regularly collaborates with marketing and merchandise managers to come up with new ways for customers to interact with the company. Next up from IT, for example, is an augmentedreality catalog that shoppers can browse, using their smartphone to mix, match and buy different pieces of clothing shown in different photos.

Changing the Mission At PulteGroup, achieving customer-facing IT required “a significant rebuild of the IT organization,” says Joe Drouin, CIO at the $5.8 billion (about Rs 34,800 crore) homebuilder.

It all started in 2010 when Pulte launched a new companywide mission to become more “consumer-inspired.” “The company as a whole made a commitment to getting closer to what our customers and potential customers want from a home,” Drouin explains.

“You would assume that there is nothing more personal than a person’s house, but for a long time we just built homes the way we always did, from standard floor plans.”

At the time, IT was recovering from a very long period of “just keeping the lights on,” he says. “We were coming out of a long

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downturn, as homebuilding was one of the last industries to recover from the big recession.”

A major break came when PulteGroup decided to relocate its headquarters from Detroit to Atlanta. Drouin says that, after he arrived in 2013, he seized the opportunity to overhaul the IT organization, hire about 35 new people in Atlanta and “bring IT out from behind the curtain to engage on the front lines of the business.”

“We created new roles that would be visible to the rest of the business and engage with our customers and partners,” he says.

“We hired a director of customer engagement and a team of people under him. Technology skills were table stakes. We brought people in from a variety of places with the notion that we were looking for people who could sit across the table from a marketing person or homebuilder, or walk into a model home and sit with a sales consultant and have a conversation about what they needed, all in a non-technology-focused way.”

Drouin was personally involved with interviewing every one of the serious candidates for the new roles. “I was the last stop. I was looking for an ability to communicate, to engage, interact. I wanted to know I’d be comfortable putting this person in front of a customer,” he says.

But before candidates made it to Drouin, they had been vetted by recruiters who were well versed in what he wanted in a customer-focused IT staffer. Drouin and his top managers had spent two full days with a recruiting company, outlining precisely the kinds of people they wanted to hire.

“It wasn’t 35 technology job descriptions. We built this profile of the kind of person we were looking for, including some of the experiences we wanted them to talk about to demonstrate those characteristics,” he recalls.

“We viewed every single hire as a critical hire,” he says. “It was so important to make this [customer-centric] shift and this transformation that we couldn’t afford to say ‘This guy is strong technically, but I can’t imagine his ability to really engage.’ So we didn’t make any exceptions to the picture of the person we were trying to hire. It was critical enough to me personally to be in the room and spending time personally because I couldn’t afford to have one person slip by that wouldn’t be there to drive this major

COVER STORY :: IT Management

shift in the organization.”

Another huge change was redefining the word customer as it applied to IT. “There was this very traditional idea that IT was a service provider and the customer was everyone else inside Pulte,” Drouin says. “Today, we don’t talk about IT and the business. We talk about IT as part of the business--as ingrained and as tightly woven as any other function, and contributing to business strategy. Our customers are [the company’s] end customers.”

Aiming to Please More than a few CIOs make the point that precisely defining the word customer is a critical first step toward customer-centric IT. “We make a big point of defining the word customer. A customer is the same in IT as it is for the rest of the business. A customer buys cars, buys services and buys parts,” says Barry Cohen, CIO at Asbury Automotive Group, a $5.9 billion (about Rs 35,400 crore) automotive retailer with 82 dealerships. “We don’t even say ‘internal customer.’ In fact, we make a big point of saying IT is part of the business and not like an island off by itself. These are small but important nuances because we’re trying to build a culture where everybody is thinking the same way.”

Asbury’s IT infrastructure is made up mainly of automotivespecific systems and software developed and provided by third parties. The company’s 39-person IT group is focused on man-

Raising the Bar Anuj Dhanda, CIO and head of digital commerce at Giant Eagle, a $9.3 billion (about Rs 55,800 crore) supermarket chain with 418 stores, keeps close tabs on brands like Apple and Google. Both of those companies, he says, have played a huge role in setting the bar on what customers expect.

Dhanda says IT teams are facing new pressures in how they serve both internal and external customers. “We have to treat all of our customers differently because they’re customers of other companies that have set the bar very differently,” he says. Progressive companies, he adds, “don’t make a huge distinction between internal and external customers.”

For example, Dhanda says that, at many companies, an employee may need to touch 10 different systems to do a job. So Giant Eagle is using workflow technology to create a better internal user experience that rivals an external customer’s experience.

For customer-facing technologies, IT has upgraded its qualityassurance and user-interface testing to get insight into what customers want, Dhanda says. Giant Eagle conducts workshops with customers that IT teams observe. All IT staffers also work in one of the company’s stores to experience firsthand how IT works on the front line for both employees and customers.

At Agco, a $9.7 billion (about Rs 58,200 crore) maker of global agricultural equipment, CIO Sheryl Bunton is just setting out on the road to customer-centric IT. “Every company has to take that

Increasingly, a customer-centric approach is a matter of business survival. Thanks largely to the acceleration of innovation, customers will be more in charge of the experience they receive. aging the service providers and handling field engineering and support at dealerships.

For now, IT staffers don’t work directly with people who are shopping for cars but with employees in the dealerships and in other departments who work directly with customers.

The IT team is focused on taking some of the hassle out of the car-buying experience. “If you’ve bought a car, you know that you can spend an entire day in the dealership, so we’re working on customer-facing things like digital signatures and removing some of the paperwork in that process,” Cohen explains.

Cohen himself travels to each of the company’s dealerships at least twice a year and also has IT staffers work in the field at the company’s stores and dealerships. “We walk into a store and meet the parts people and the accounting people. We make ourselves very visible,” he says.

One of the surprising things Cohen and his team have learned at the dealerships is that, although they do have store hours, they have no set closing time. “I’d always ask what time they go home and they always said ‘When the last customer leaves.’ So, my IT staff is really focused on that now,” he says.

journey, and every company has to stop at all the waypoints,” she says. “We have a toe in the water.”

“The days of [merely] building a product and bringing it to market don’t work anymore. One of the biggest shifts everyone in IT has to make is getting from an IT focus to a customer focus,” Bunton says.

Much of the shift has to do with dropping the traditional IT command-and-control attitude and adopting the role of influencer. “The perspective that was here was very much of an old-school technologist,” she says. “IT would tell the business what they needed instead of listening to business people and coming back with strategies and recommendations. What I’ve told people is we have to remember we’re a tractor company with an IT function. We’re not an IT company that makes tractors.”

To get there, IT has to prove its status as a valued partner to the business over and over again. “You have to do it enough so that you build trust. It’s becoming very strong at execution that keeps the business engaged and builds that trust,” she says.

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Agile Skills are Here to Stay

Businesses struggling to align their IT projects with larger strategies are emphasizing on agile skills. By Sharon Florentine

I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y T H I N K S TO C K

Demand for mission-critical IT projects is increasing as the economy improves, but the supply of resources available to handle those demands isn’t keeping pace, according to the recent annual Project and Portfolio Management Landscape survey conducted

by Innotas, a cloud portfolio management (PPM) solutions provider.

The survey was conducted online this year with 126 organizations with project and portfolio management responsibilities responding. Results indicated that resourcing is a major source of worry for IT professionals, with 37 percent this year and 51 percent of respondents last year citing it as their most pressing challenge. In fact, 61 percent of those IT professionals polled did not have enough resources and/or staff to manage demand for IT projects in their business or organization.

Simply put, IT professionals cannot keep pace with IT project demands, says Tushar Patel, vice president of marketing at Innotas.

“Budgets have loosened up for most organizations, and hiring has increased for many of our clients. But what we’re seeing is, even though they’re hiring more, they’re still struggling to make sure those people are working on the right things - the projects and initiatives that are most strategic to the larger business goals,” Patel says.

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Adopting an Agile Mindset

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To help ensure alignment—that available resources are being used strategically to advance the most critical business goals and drive growth—many of Innotas’ clients are adopting an ‘agile’ mindset instead of a more traditional waterfall approach to project management and are hiring project managers with the same agile approach.

“Traditional project management certifications are taking a backseat to professionals who can look at the organization holistically and see how they can squeeze the most value out of the limited supply of resources. They’re the ones who can see the big picture of how specific projects and initiatives are more strategic to the business,” says Patel.

Without Agility, Expect Business Failures There’s been a huge shift toward this mindset in the last year, according to Patel. “With limited resources available, our customers are seeing that if they don’t have business agility to adapt to the rapid changes in IT markets, then they’re going to fail. A traditional, process-heavy approach to project management where they’re heavy on planning and it’s taking lots of time to map out a waterfall approach to IT projects just isn’t going to work,” he says.

Hire Agile And those rapid changes are even affecting how organizations source, recruit and hire project management professionals, says Jennifer Jaffe, vice president of product and marketing at Jama software. Traditional certification of project management skills isn’t as important nowadays as real-world, on-the-job experience with the agile methodology and business agility in mind, she says.

“For me, personally, as a hiring manager I don’t necessarily look for these certifications when I’m trying to fill a project manager or product manager role; there’s just no substitute for that kind of experience analyzing larger business trends and breaking that down into tangible requirements and actionable steps in the process,” Jaffe says.

Adopting an agile project management mindset is a lot like running a microbusiness, according to Jaffe. While traditional project management tends to focus on individual projects in a vacuum, an agile approach can place projects and initiatives with the larger context of the entire business so project managers can see how their work impacts the entire organization.

“Good, experienced, versatile project management talent is where businesses should invest the most money. You aren’t spending on infrastructure anymore—it’s all in the cloud. You aren’t spending on office space—most people work remotely. You aren’t even spending on software as much—a lot of its SaaS. So what you are spending should go toward making sure you’ve got the right people with the right mindset to work on the right things,” says Patel.

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How to do M2M Right

WATCH New Holland Fiat India’s e-tractor created differentiation and helped the company stand apart. But how did the project deal with connectivity issues, regulatory hurdles and hardware investments? Parna Ghosh, Head-ICT, India, Far East and Japan, CNH Industrial, shares a behind-the-scenes peek. Watch the video to know more about how the project fared.

http://www.cio.in/cio-tv/howdo-m2m-right-learnings-new-holland-fiat-india

Stuck in the IT Maze ANALYZE Whoever thinks that a CIO’s job is easy has no idea of the challenges that trouble the IT department. With the ever-changing technology landscape and increasing expectations from LoBs, these challenges are hanging like a sword over CIOs’ head. But what are these challenges, which sector faces most of them, and what are the CIOs doing to overcome them? Read to know more.

http://www.cio.in/by-the-numbers/ all-roads-lead-it-blocked

Digital India Will Help the IT READ With a welcome step to create a digitally empowered India, and to create the opportunities for unleashing India’s creative talent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the start of the Digital India initiative. With the push for digitization, EY is upbeat about the initiative taken by the government, which will provide a strong impetus to the growth of the IT industry.

Read to know more

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Marketing Tech: A House Divided

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Marketers and techies working together can make huge difference to their companies. But first, they must overcome the great divide. BY TO M K A N E S H I G E

B

Send in the Techies y now, it’s pretty clear that marketing tech scares the bejesus out of modern marketers.

Flash forward a week later to the second conference, called Technology stacks, integration layers, APIs, oh MarTech, hosted by Scott Brinker, a technologist and my! Techies add to these fears by throwing tech creator of a popular marketing tech vendor landscape jargon in a marketer’s face, explaining technolgraphic. There were no tears shed among more than 1,000 ogy to a marketer in a condescending way, and even snickering attendees. Most of them came from the technical ranks with at the perceived simplicity of the marketer’s craft. job roles similar to that of a chief marketing technology It’s too bad, because marketers and techies working together officer. Attendees quietly took notes over laptops or checked have the power to change the destiny of their companies. First, out a showroom of some 60 marketing tech vendors. though, they must overcome the great divide between marketing Speakers talked at length about architecting the technology and IT summed up in two conferences in stack and crafting a marketing tech strategy San Francisco. While both conferences Techies add to a to counterbalance a marketer’s penchant for purport to be about marketing tech and the making impulsive, tactical decisions. Lack marketer’s fears digital consumer, one is for marketers, the of order is a serious problem that can lead by throwing tech other for techies. to a “frankenstack,” says speaker Cynthia jargon, explaining Gumbert, vice president of digital and new accounts marketing at CA Technologies.

Tale of Two Conferences Speakers rallied around the theme of The first conference, called Advocamp, technology in a marketing technologists exerting control in hosted by advocate marketing software condescending a hyperactive market. Joseph Kurian, head vendor Influitive, was clearly aimed at way. of marketing technology and innovation marketers. There was a camping theme at Aetna, laid out keys to success, which with fake trees and campfires scattered includes owning the marketing tech budget. throughout the rooms. Attendees could put merit badge stickers In what’s become a tech conference’s signature trait, on their name tags. Influitive employees called themselves presenters threw up slides cluttered with small print and “guides,” and CEO Mark Organ dressed up as a park ranger in detailed diagrams—virtually unreadable by most in the a Yogi Bear cartoon. subdued audience.

The majority of speakers were CMOs, with the keynote given Then social-selling expert Rowley took the stage and gave

by Fred Reicheld, creator of marketing’s popular net promotor the same presentation at Martech as she gave at Advocamp. In system. Presenters told stories about winning customer striking contrast with previous speakers, Rowley offered the advocates in the digital world and showed slides of happy viewpoint of salespeople and marketers faced with reinventing customers and easily digestible stats on the business value of themselves in the age of social networking and marketing tech. customer advocacy. They glazed over the technology platform At Advocamp, Rowley’s passionate message was received with and services needed to pull this off, instead relying on a small cheers; at Martech, an attendee and his friends made fun of her showroom of marketing tech vendors to explain their products. sales presentation style. So goes IT and marketing’s cultural Attendees and speakers alike were fully engaged, excited divide. and oddly emotional. For instance, Organ flashed a picture of his children on the main screen and choked up, saying, “I hope they become my biggest advocates.” Speaker and social selling expert Jill Rowley also became emotional, saying, Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

“We can humanize business.”

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A GLOBAL AUDIENCE OF 280M IN 97 COUNTRIES

CULTIVATING RURAL EFFICIENCY

Fullerton arms rural India with financial efficiency. 11

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REACHING OUT TO THE UNBANKED

Canara Bank's GM on how tech can help the unbanked.

4 TYPES OF GEEKS YOU NEED

Experts share advice on how to atrract these geeks. 27 THE DATA-DRIVEN CFO

B U S I N E SS T EC H N O LO G Y L E A D E R S H I P

Lupin's CFO on managing the information supply chain.

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Not Competing with LogisticsStartups Rubal Jain, MD, Safexpress, on why it isnt in competition with logistics startups. 15

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The much-awaited State of the Mart Survey tells you what your peers are planning for 2015. Page 16

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Software-defined networking is here to stay.

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Questions to the Future 42

Things IT leaders need to be thinking about to prepare for what’s coming BY T H O R N TO N A . M AY

I recently have been sounding ahead-of-the-curve executives about the questions we should be asking about the future. Here are some.

Do you understand that it’s the transition, not the trajectory?

As someone who studies the history of the future (that is, how organizations have historically tried to prepare themselves for what comes after what comes next), I have learned that it is critically important to differentiate between technology trajectory stories and technology transition realities.

Moore’s Law and Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns are technology trajectory stories. Nokia’s essential disappearance from the commercial landscape is a technology transition story.

tensen believes this failure rate can be significantly improved upon if product and service development teams start to look at products as a way to get a job done. In the professor’s words, “We actually hire products to do things for us.” Christensen suggests migrating away from “segment-the-market” questions and asking “jobs-to-be-done” questions.

We realized that the causal mechanism behind a purchase is, ‘Oh, I’ve got a job to be done.’ And it turns out that it’s really effective in allowing a company to build products that people want to buy.”

Is your dream big enough?

What should you learn from Google Glass?

During the frenzied dot.com era, strategists and planners were told that we had entered a “new normal,” where none of the old rules applied. It turns out that some patterns persist. One such persistent pattern is the adoption cycle associated with technology products. Google Glass was targeted at consumers at a price—about $1,500 (about Rs 90,000)—more appropriate for professional markets. As longtime Silicon Valley watcher Tim Bajarin points out, “While Google was playing with Glass, Apple brought out the ideal extension of your smartphone in the form of a watch.” One of the questions to ask about the future is what not to do when creating a product for the consumer.

What job are we hiring Products and Services to do?

The general consensus is that about 95 percent of new products fail. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Chris-

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Danuta Hübner, Poland’s minister for European affairs, was concerned. “We keep seeing ourselves as a small country. In fact, Poland is a big country. We should have the responsibilities that come with being a big country.” How do organizations perceive themselves and their future? Is Uber merely a software-enabled replacement for the local taxi monopoly, or is it a logistics software company?

we need?

Will we have the skills

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2020, there will be 1.4 million computing jobs and only 400,000 computer science students to fill those roles. According to McKinsey, in the United States alone there is a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytical expertise and 1.5 million managers and analysts with the skills to understand and make decisions based on the analysis of big data. Should enterprises create ”corporate universities” to guarantee a pipeline of appropriate skills?

[CXO AGENDA]

Being Customer-centric

Rajeev Sawhney, President-Strategic Business, Mphasis, talks about the need to get more customer centric and what it takes to get there. BY MAYUKH MUKHERJEE Can you describe Mphasis’ go-to market strategy?

Our approach, primarily, is to serve the customer, and serve them well. Our intention is to have delighted customers and it’s evident we are succeeding from the feedback we’ve been getting.

We have deliberately chosen a smaller set of customers and given them all our attention.

lenge as you shift strategies?

A change in strategy has to reflect in every execution in that area because only then will we be able to realize the value of the strategy.

What we really need to do is retrain the workforce. We have to get them to understand new technologies, understand our new offerings, and understand that we now have to talk to

“We have deliberately chosen a smaller set of customers.”

We are also taking a suite of products and services and putting them under the umbrella of customer experience management. In the customer experience management suite, we have many technologies and service offerings which help our customers deal with their customers. This is the first part of our go-to market strategy.

The second part is to focus on risk and compliance, particularly in banks and capital markets and insurance. I’m told that banks paid almost $100 billion in penalties because they were not compliant with regulatory norms.

We are able to help them save some of those penalties by solving some of their risk and compliance issues.

What’s been your biggest chal-

a different set of people. The language that needs to be used can no longer center around technology, it has to be about solving customer problems.

Pricing is another major issue.

Earlier, you had a rate card, and hourly rates for off-shore and on-shore work.

Today, life has gone beyond even outcome-based pricing. You need to have a hybrid pricing system that would compose of some part being self-serviced-based pricing, another part being value-based pricing, while another part would be outcome-based pricing. All this needs to be packaged into one composite pricing.

which will help any interim ticket coming in be serviced automatically and pushed out of the queue. These tickets don’t even reach the service desk.

If, in a normal scenario, there were 10,000 tickets in queue, now you’ll only end up getting only 60 percent of that. A lot of the tools we have introduced helped us reduce work, cost, and have helped customers achieve their objectives.

How are you leveraging digital to meet your objectives?

We start first with the customers and the customers’ needs and then find the best way to fulfil them. Digital is only a vehicle to deliver a service to the client, it’s not a goal in itself.

If you’re looking at customer experience management, there are a host of things that are digital and which will help us solve customer requirements.

They help our clients provide a richer experience to their customers.

The one thing I see happening is that digital technologies will come into all walks of our life. Every industry in every geography, and every device with the Internet of Things will have an IP address. These devices will be able to communicate; they will be able to connect. People, devices and things will start getting connected. Digital technologies will exponentially accelerate traffic in the world. That will throw out a lot of data, which needs to be analyzed. This will lead to more digital marketing opportunities and more digital payments.

How is IT helping?

We are using new unique tools, which we call autonomics. It’s an algorithm

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finish

leadership and operational excellence

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Robots’ new destination A fleet of floating bio-robots will be deployed between Christmas Island and Madagascar to help gain an

understanding of the physical and biological workings of the Indian Ocean. The BioArgos, being released

by CSIRO, are equipped with tiny sensors that can measure biological indicators within the ocean including dissolved oxygen, nitrate, chlorophyll, organic matter and particles. It will be the first time CSIRO has used the new BioArgo robotic floats to measure this under-sampled part of the world. “These can tell us about the growth of plankton, how much carbon they take up, how much gets used up the food chain and how much gets buried,” CSIRO project leader, Dr Nick Hardman-Mountford, said in a statement.

—Mike Gee

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From the Editor in Chief 2 Trending 5 Quick Fix 6 Career Path 8 World View 10

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About Face!

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How an employee-friendly app increased efficiency 11 Security innovation finds a new home 16 Sterlite spins India’s digital growth fiber 20 Myntra pushes the e-com cart 22

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CIOs are giving their teams new marching orders to turn their attention from internal matters to external customers, who have ultra-high expectations.

Run

BY JULIA KING

L E A D E R S H I P & O P E R AT I O N A L E XC E L L E N C E

How barcoding saved Havells millions 24 Five things you should know about geofencing 25 Now it’s easy to track your teen’s driving behavior 26 WaterGenius helps California fight drought 26 Graduates raise the expectations bar 28 Twitter is the new job hotspot 30

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Connect P E E R A DV I C E

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Agile skills are the new norm 37 Marketing technology is a house divided 40 Questions about the future 42 Mphasis focuses on being customer-centric 43

Finish

Robots to deep dive in Indian Ocean. 44

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PUBLISHER, PRESIDENT & CEO

FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

EDITORIAL EDITOR-IN-CHIEF CONSULTING EDITORS EXECUTIVE EDITOR DEPUTY EDITOR FEATURES EDITOR CONSULTING ASSISTANT EDITOR ASSISTANT EDITORS PRINCIPAL CORRESPONDENTS VIDEO EDITORS LEAD DESIGNERS SENIOR DESIGNERS TRAINEE JOURNALISTS

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The Hunger Game 2

In the grasslands of eastern Africa, before the hyenas have stopped cack-

ling in the dark and before the sun has risen, Thompson’s gazelles wake up knowing that they’ll have to outrun the fastest cheetah in order to stay alive. And, not so far away from them, the cheetahs stir and stretch knowing that they’ll have to run faster than the slowest gazelle in order to stay fed.

Cheetahs can reach 105 kilometers an hour in just three strides, but they can maintain that speed only for half a kilometer. A typical hunt is over in about 15 to 20 seconds leaving a winded, tired and highly vulnerable cat that’s open to attack by just about any animal.

Interestingly, the second fastest animal on the grasslands is the gazelle.

So, it’s no surprise that a cheetah hunt succeeds only about 40 percent of the time.

Those aren’t good odds for the smallest of the big cats. With miniscule fat reserves compared to say a leopard or a tiger or a lion, a cheetah needs to run and hunt over and over till it finally snags prey. It’s either that or death by starvation.

You wont ever hear cheetahs whine about motivation, buy-in, limited resources, or even the number of hunts they need to go on. They just focus and stay determined. Giving up isn’t even an option despite successive failure.

Why this lesson in ecology? Because life whether in the African savannah or within an enterprise is a Darwinian contest. The ability of organizations and lines of business to buy or rent IT skills and services has already begun to shrink IT teams. A fresh struggle looms large for you and your colleagues to prove business value.

I’m not suggesting CIOs are heading for extinction.

But, irrelevance is certainly a possibility.

So learn from the way of the cheetah. Stay hungry. Stay lean. Roll out multiple pilots. Do so fast. Take failure in your stride. Sink your teeth and claws into the latest technology without letting legacy dull their edge. Win. Adventure calls. A new day is dawning. Let the hunt begin.

Louis D’Mello

Vijay Ramachandran Sudhir Narasimhan, T. M. Arun Kumar Yogesh Gupta Sunil Shah Shardha Subramanian Balaji Narasimhan Radhika Nallayam, Shantheri Mallaya Aritra Sarkhel, Shubhra Rishi Kshitish B.S., Vasu N. Arjun Suresh Nair, Vikas Kapoor Unnikrishnan A.V., Laaljith C.K. Ishan Bhattacharya, Madhav Mohan, Sejuti Das, Vaishnavi J. Desai

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ADVERTISER INDEX Accenture Services Pvt. Ltd

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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission from the publisher. Address requests for customized reprints to IDG Media Private Limited, Geetha Building, 49, 3rd Cross, Mission Road, Bangalore - 560 027, India. IDG Media Private Limited is an IDG (International Data Group) company.

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Editor: Louis D’Mello Printed at Manipal Press Ltd., Press Corner, Tile Factory Road, Manipal, Udupi, Karnataka - 576 104.

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BUSINESS TRANSFORMERS 2015

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3 - 4 SEPTEMBER 2015 | JW MARRIOTT, PUNE

Ti

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without rints to

start TRENDING

Now 3D-printed Limbs Within Reach

Fancy an Electronic Brain?

If you’ve ever wondered whether wearable computers might one day turn into computers that are implanted in our brains, research at Harvard University suggests it’s a possibility.

Flexible electronics can be injected directly into brain tissue, allowing for brain cells to be directly monitored and stimulated, according to the researchers from Harvard and China’s National Center for Nano science and Technology.

The technology could open up new applications in medicine and brain-machine interfaces, which can read thoughts and act upon the external world, such as controlling a wheelchair by thought alone.

Harvard chemist, Charles Lieber and collaborators worked with tiny, flexible mesh structures that are made of conductive polymer strands and embedded with transistors and electrodes. The mesh was rolled up, inserted in a syringe measuring 100 micrometers in diameter, and injected into the brain tissue of mice, where it unfurled.

Reporting in a study in the journal Nature Nanotechnology, researchers said the mesh is mostly porous and can expand to fill biological cavities. It integrated with the brain tissue and the mice did not show significant signs of immune reaction to the material after five weeks.

Extremely thin electrical wires connected to the mesh were connected to external computers so that brain cells in the mice could be recorded and stimulated. But the researchers want to refine the design to make it wireless.

The technology could potentially be developed to treat brain damage from stroke and Parkinson’s disease, Lieber said in a Nature.com news article.

–Tim Hornyak

If you lose your hand in an accident, a prosthetic could cost well over US$10,000. But 3D printing holds out the promise of making simple replacement hands available for far less.

The founders of robotics startup Exiii pore over the designs for their latest prototype. It’s a basic mechanical hand and forearm made from materials that only cost about $200. It’s also open source.

The Exiii Hackberry, as it’s called, has a flexible wrist, partially motorized fingers and low-cost parts such as an Arduino controller and a digital camera battery, all housed in a white 3D-printed plastic shell.

During a demo, co-founder Genta Kondo strapped an infrared distance sensor to his inner forearm and plugged it in to the Hackberry. The sensor measures the distance to the skin, so when a muscle contracts, it detects a change and sends a signal to the Arduino board.

The sensor can be attached on a user’s upper arm, for instance, so that flexing biceps would activate the hand.

Kondo flexed his forearm by making a fist and the fingers on the Hackberry closed, mimicking the movement. Although the servomotors emit a fairly loud screech, the grip is delicate enough to hold a business card without crushing it.

Compared to the previous, fourthgeneration prototype hand, the Hackberry is now more compact and functional, with the battery use time extended from two hours to a full day.

The number of servomotors has been reduced from six to three, one for the thumb, one for the index finger and one for the other three fingers, to keep it as light and simple as possible. Its plastic can now be printed on a consumergrade 3D printer instead of an industrial one.

—Tim Hornyak

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oad,

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I M A G E S O U R C E : T H I N K S TO C K . C O M

Kumar

quiFIX ck Refresh Your Memory

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Nantero, a developer of Nano-RAM (NRAM), said fabrication plants are beginning wafer production.

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A

new type of non-volatile memory known as NanoRAM (NRAM)—it’s based on carbon nanotube and sports DRAM speed—is now being produced in seven fabrication plants in various parts of the world. According to Nantero, the company that invented NRAM, it also has more than a dozen corporate customers lined up to begin experimenting with the memory once it begins rolling off production lines. “So those fabs have been and are indeed producing large numbers of wafers and chips,” said Greg Schmergel, CEO of Nantero. NRAM has the potential to create memory that is vastly denser than NAND flash, which is used to make thumb drives and solid-state drives today. NRAM can reach densities of below five nanometers, according to Schmergel.

—Lucas Mearian

For more articles, see: www.cio.in/article

WORTH READING BOOK

Cracking the Tech Career

By Gayle Laakmann McDowel Become the applicant Google can’t turn down Cracking the Tech Career is the job seeker’s guide to landing a coveted position at one of the top tech firms. A follow-up to The Google Resume, this book provides new information on what these companies want and how to show them you have what it takes to succeed in the role. Amazon.in Rs 374.

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How to Assess a Potential Employer’s Corporate Culture?

ALWAYS: Identify the culture where you thrive, and pursue that culture. Do you excel in more formal hierarchical organizations or informal, loosely organized structures? And remember, when leadership changes, the culture changes, too. Often, the address of a company will tell you all you need to know about the company culture. If they are located in the business district of a city rather than a funkier part of town, there is a good chance the office is more likely to be business professional than business casual, for instance. Is the receptionist working with an equipment of current communications technology plan? If it’s outdated, that may be an indication of where the investments in technology fall as a business priority.

SOMETIMES: Ask current employees to describe the culture. If there are differences between what former employees have said, ask about that, and identify why.

Take note of private office space. Are cubes or offices used? Are there many private conferences rooms being used? Also notice whether office doors are open or closed.

This is a good indication of the how well the company collaborates on projects. And note the technology each person has. Are they limited, or part of each person’s repertoire of tools to work more effectively?

NEVER: Don’t compare one company to another and don’t disparage other companies. Don’t be threatening, judgmental or hasty in your assessments. If you find things lacking or not up to par, remember that those short comings may provide tremendous professional opportunities if you take a position with the company.

Elaine Varelas is managing partner at Keystone Partners.

CIO-The IT Hero

Anthony Thomas, CIO, Vodafone India

This feature is brought to you

by IDG Services in association with VMware

Digitizing Traditional Framework Gradual, seamless transition from legacy to state-of-art, open technologies has defined Vodafone’s digital roadmap

Interview by Shantheri Mallaya How has your role as the IT decision maker influenced the IT journey at Vodafone?

Since a CIO owns the data stores and technology infrastructure of the organization, it is a given that he/she has to lead innovative technologies–be it open source, virtualization, big data, or analytics– anything that calls for enablement and empowerment of the business.

In the last few years here, the focus at Vodafone has been on Transforming business capabilities, improving customer experience and centralizing IT infrastructure and Applications.

Since we are a telecom provider, operating in many circles, we have to deliver consistency in customer experience at all touch points, including the call centers, and through online and mobile apps.

All of this were cases of technology enablement. We had to bear in mind the intricate synergies between functions, while retiring old technologies. After lat retail, we are currently at the cusp of billing transformation systems. The CRM is also going through a massive overhaul. Internally too, we had to think ahead of the curve in terms of championing technologies that would create a workforce that could think differently, think ahead of the curve, through the adoption of BYOD, Virtual Desktops, etc.

So, has the move to the digital enterprise been gradual? How did you effect the process step-wise?

While the digital enterprise shift has been seamless, VMware has been instrumental in catalyzing the virtualization and the cloud journey at Vodafone.

Anthony Thomas, CIO, Vodafone India

Yes, undoubtedly the transformation is slow, seamless, and not a rip and replace approach. With lakhs of subscribers at stake, there can be no unplanned risks whatsoever.

In addition to application and process transformation, we also began adoption of open technologies to shift from traditional UNIX-based OS to Linux-based OS. Now we are looking at virtualized compute, besides overhauling the storage environment.

We are firm believers in cloud infrastructure and have large investments there. We have been able to reduce 25 percent of our technology footprint by virtualizing and moving to the cloud.

VMware has played a pivotal role in virtualizing your IT platforms. What has been their contribution to the overall journey?

VMware has been instrumental in catalyzing the virtualization and the cloud journey at Vodafone. As required, we have evolved a more hybrid approach, combining our own private cloud with a hybrid cluster approach for a couple of clients.

Significantly, VMware’s approach has helped balance out the opex-capex ratio of IT infrastructure.

Will a software defined enterprise be the journey going forward?

While it is easy to say that storage and compute can be a commodity, the fact is that the real power lies in the abstraction of the layer above it. Being a telecommunications company, a software-defined approach holds tremendous potential to us. n

careerPATH

Negotiate a Better Salary start

Successful salary negotiation is as much an art as a science. Here are some tips that will help you get paid what you’re worth. BY S H A R O N F LO R E N T I N E

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Salary negotiation is nerve-wracking, but don’t let fear get in the way of being paid what you’re worth. After the 2008 financial crash and during the ensuing recession, many people were happy to have a job at all—any job, at any salary, says Lydia Frank, senior director of editorial and marketing, at PayScale. com. As the economy improves, businesses have more flexibility in their budgets and are starting to loosen the purse strings.

You have to be confident that you deserve a raise and provide specific examples as to why you deserve more money.

- MICHELLE JOSEPH, CEO OF PEOPLEFOUNDRY.

“Many people were afraid to ask for more money, or to ask for a raise in an existing position - and they didn’t have negotiating power.

But what we’ve seen more recently is that a significant portion of people who take that risk and ask for a salary increase do get something,” Frank says.

Know your Value Make sure you know—and can demonstrate with tangible examples—exactly what your value is to your company. “First, you have to be confident that you deserve a raise and provide specific examples as to why you deserve more money. They key is to show

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why you’re valuable rather than just saying it. Tangible examples of previous projects are good, but quantifiable examples—like how those projects have made money or saved money or man-hours for the company—are better,” says Michelle Joseph, CEO of PeopleFoundry.

If you don’t ask for a raise, or don’t negotiate starting salary based on your value, you’re giving your employer a major break by undervaluing what you’re worth.

Salary.com and Glassdoor.com are great places to start doing in-depth research about what type of salary range you should expect.

“Make sure you understand the going market rate for the position you want within a range, and take into account the external factors that can affect that range,” says Frank. “Where’s the position located? How many years of experience do you have? What’s the size of the company? What’s their financial state? What industry do you work in? Taking into account these factors gives you a pretty realistic read of salary range, and then you can walk in with confidence and facts to back up your assertions,” says Frank.

Don’t Just Consider Salary Finally, if your salary requirement is rejected, don’t lose hope.

See what other options you have to negotiate benefits and perks.

“Remember, it’s not just about salary; it’s a compensation package.

If you end up with a higher salary but horrible benefits, you’ll end up paying for that out of pocket— things like healthcare, vacation time, matching 401k programs, gym memberships,” says Frank.

Do your Homework Hard data is your best ally as you negotiate a starting salary or a raise. Sites like PayScale.com,

Sharon Florentine covers IT careers and data center topics. Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

LEADERSHIPCONVERSATIONS

AGILITY IS KEY TO

MODERNIZATION Understanding the organization is crucial for pushing tech transformation, says Manish Choksi, CIO at Asian Paints.

Manish Choksi, CIO, Asian Paints What have been the key challenges you have faced as an IT decision maker?

As an IT decision maker, one has to ensure that one can realize the business value from IT investments. This entails striving to keep abreast of the advances in technology, while aligning and mapping the relevant ones to business. The other important piece for a CIO would be to match timelines, expectations and deliver the best fit for a requirement, factoring in all the lines of business.

One has to also look at the security challenges—which can proliferate from anywhere—and fortify IT infrastructure in the organization.

What is innovation in IT, as you see it? Can you articulate any specific instances of innovation management that you have driven for Asian Paints?

Innovation in IT cannot be function without complimentary investments in building the capability of people and change in the organization culture. A thorough understanding of the organization is what ultimately drives the right kind of innovation, such that change and change management are being pulled by the business and not pushed to the business.

Our recent migration to SAP HANA platform has been significant in terms of innovation. HANA allows us to extract

By Shantheri Mallaya

benefits from enormous volumes of new data and delivers agility through in-memory computing. For instance, the improvement in throughput of analytics using HANA has enabled better utilization of real time data.

This has ultimately helped to ensure customer satisfaction. We believe SAP HANA will help us enhance the delivery infrastructure considerably for both internal and external customers.

evolve beyond the technology. In effect, he doesn’t remain merely a technology advisor, but his role requires a holistic understanding of business and how to use technology as a key driver to enhance business performance. An IT decision maker must have vision and foresight to navigate the fast changing world of technology. He must be a leader and must actively drive change within the organization rather than being seen only as a support.

How do you view the changing role

"Our recent migration to SAP HANA platform has been significant in terms of innovation. HANA allows us to extract benefits from enormous volumes of new data and delivers agility through in-memory computing." of CIO? How do you see this evolving further?

Organizations must recognize the need to have the CIO when making decisions affecting business. With the rapid changes in technology, a CIO needs to

How has and how will SAP continue to be a catalyst to move IT to the next level?

In our journey on business excellence, our investment in SAP has played an integral role. It began and continues to be the backbone of our information technology infrastructure and powers all transactions. However, in recent years, with a change in strategy, we have seen SAP launch new services and solutions in the on-premise world and in the cloud that have allowed us to innovate in enhancing our customer engagement and increasing the people connect. We are launching many more services based on the throughput and combinations derived from SAP solutions.

With the move to HANA, we are looking to embark on a journey to increase innovation without disruption.

Powered by

This interview is brought to you by IDG Services in association with SAP

world Fresh Ideas from Around the Globe

vıew

start

How Kenya is Making Sense of Government Data

B E I J I N G N A I R O B I Governments are known to be big generators and keepers of data, but bureaucracy in most African nations has blocked public access to and use of government-gathered information.

Kenya’s Open Data Initiative (KODI), has been at the forefront of efforts to make government data accessible to the public and third-party service providers. Citizens can now get information on all health facilities in Kenya, see government spending from 2005 to the present, compare HIV/AIDs reports from various years and access retail fuel price trends on the KODI website. The KODI site has 65,000 to 80,000 monthly views and has had more than 190,000 downloads of its 500 data sets. IDG News Service

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North Korea Said to Block Instagram

PYONGYANG Days after photos leaked of a fire at one of

North Korea’s biggest and best-known hotels, the country has begun restricting access to Instagram. Attempts to connect to Instagram’s website via PC or smartphone were met with a message saying the site was on an Internet block list, according to an Associated Press reporter in Pyongyang. While Internet access is impossible for all but a handful of the country’s 25 million people, foreigners have enjoyed Internet access through cellular connections for just over two years. IDG News Service

Mobile Web a Hit Among Poor

ZAMBIA Eighty-seven million people in Nigeria browse the Internet on mobile phones, according to figures from the country’s telecom regulator that confirm that even among lowincome people, the mobile Web is big in Africa. About 25 percent of the people who use mobile phones to browse the Web in Nigeria, more than 22 million users, are from low-income households, according to an NCC official. IDG News Service

Microsoft Predicts China’s Air Pollution with Data Analysis

BEIJING Microsoft has taken its big data analysis to China, with computing models that can forecast the air quality across 41 cities in the country. Pollution continues to be a major problem in China. To bring some clarity to the situation, Microsoft has come up with a mobile app that can predict the air quality two days in advance. The Your Weather app works by first taking official data from government air quality monitoring stations across a 300 kilometer distance, and then using weather data to predict the pollution levels. The weather data used includes forecasts, along with current information on humidity, temperature and wind direction in a selected city. IDG News Service

–Compiled by IDG News Service from CIO magazine affiliates worldwide

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grow innovation and business value

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Powering Mobility Mahindra Group launched company-wide an all-purpose mobile app to improve mobility adoption by its employee. By Shubhra Rishi In this digital age, do you feel you have been living a double life? On one hand, you’re a consumer enjoying the convenience of spectacular user apps. On the other hand, you’re an employee in an organization struggling with poorly made mobile apps with limited functionality, and bad UI. The IT folks at the US $16.9 billion (about Rs 106,400 crore) Mahindra Group were aware of this gross contradiction. So when Mahindra & Mahindra’s core IT team and Bristlecone, its wholly-owned subsidiary, decided to build a mobile app in May last year, the company’s aim was to effectively mobilize each and every Mahindra employee with a mobile app that offered its employees, the best of both worlds.

The company had three active portals: MConnect, the Intranet Portal which gives information on the latest developments at Mahindra; The Rise Portal, the Mahindra Group platform that creates better crossbusiness engagement among employees, and an Employee Portal that enables transactions from various internal systems such as expense reimbursements, payroll, travel, and leave approvals among others.

••••••••••••• 81% of Indian CIOs say the increasing number of business-critical applications is leading to an increase in DC complexity. SOTC 2015 •••••••••••••

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grow

In 2014, security didn’t have much

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The mobile app, christened MeConnect, inteto write home about. New threats grates the three portals and provides a single lurked in every corner giving gateway which can be accessed through a Indian CISOs sleepless nights. mobile device. The mobile app can be accessed Their biggest source of grief? on Android-based phones, iPhones and the iPad. Insider threat.

“It’s now all available in the palm of your hand and can be accessed on the run,” says V Current employees 48% S Parthasarathy, Group CFO, Group CIO & Former employees 39% President, (Group Finance and M&A), MemCurrent service providers 22% ber of Executive Board, Mahindra & Mahindra.

Former service providers 21% MeConnect is a bouquet of over 70 apps Customers 15% built using a blend of multiple technologies SOURCE: GISS 2015 from Native, Phonegap, SAP Fiori and integrated with SAP and SharePoint.

For instance, the MeConnect app allows an employee to check company updates, connect to news apps, and browse social media apps. In case of an emergency, an executive can choose from various hospitals listed on the app and look for directions “Our goal was on the maps while driving to one to focus on of the hospitals.

Since the app is integrated enabling people with the company’s SAP portal If there was any question as to whether people were excited to get their own perin the backend, an M&M execu- to rise through sonal robot, the answer is clear now. tive can instantly browse for solutions that SoftBank Robotics Corp., an internapassport information, frequent power mobility,” tional company based in Japan, put 1,000 flier number, CTC details, PF balpersonal robots, dubbed Pepper. Pepper ance, and leave balance among —V S Parthasarthy, Group not only can read and respond to human CFO, Group CIO & President, other things, with this app. emotions but it will have its own emoMahindra & Mahindra.

He can perform business tions. According to SoftBank, the robot transactions such as approving leave requests and claim can autonomously generate emotions by requests. The mobile app, integrated with the travel agent’s site, processing information from its cameras also allows the executive to place request for tickets ‘on the run’. and sensors. “With this emotion function, Pepper’s emotions are influenced by peo“Our goal was to focus on enabling people to rise through soluple’s facial expressions and words, as well tions that power mobility, drive rural prosperity, enhance urban as his surroundings, which in turn affects lifestyles and increase business efficiency,” says Parthasarathy.

Pepper’s words and actions,” the company The development and execution of this app took a mere 10 said in a statement. “For example, Pepmonths and has over 4,000 active users from M&M. The comper is at ease when he is around people pany is still in the process of integrating all the employee portals he knows, happy when he is praised, and across the Mahindra Group. “In the next few months, our vision gets scared when the lights go down.” is to surge adoption of mobility within the entire Mahindra The robot is designed to raise its voice Group,” says Parthasarathy. or can sigh depending on its emotions at

Your Robot Will Emote Too

the moment. Pepper also will show its emotions–based on different colors and motions–on a chest display.

Send feedback to Shubhra_rishi@idgindia.com.

—Sharon Gaudin

•••••••••••• 80% of Indian CISOs say their organizations’ security spending is allocated according to its most profitable lines of business. GISS 2015 •••••••••••••

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Meeting the Enterprise’s Security Challenges Head On At an exclusive breakfast gathering with India’s top CIOs, Michael A. Brown, President and CEO, Symantec, spoke to Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-inChief, IDG Media, about how organizations can deal with today’s enterprise risks.

S

ecurity is an ever-changing game of cat-and-mouse, where attackers are trying new methods and we have got to make sure we are keeping up,” said Michael A. Brown, President and CEO of Symantec, during an interview with Vijay Ramachandran, Editor-in-Chief, IDG Media, at a breakfast gathering organized with some of India’s top IT leaders.

During the course of the conversation with Ramachandran, Brown covered a variety of topics surrounding enterprise security, including new threats surfacing from SMAC technologies, how enterprises can protect themselves against these threats, some of Symantec’s future plans, and the place of government in security.

As more businesses invest greater amounts of time and money in going digital, he said, the threat surface of an organization is increasing exponentially. That’s something more businesses need to take into account.

“Every time we deploy new technologies, we should allocate some investments for the protection of information used by that technology, be it cloud or BYOD,” said Brown.

EVENT REPORT SYMANTEC

He added that companies need to study—not only the productivity of a product or new technology—but also how to protect them. By doing this, enterprises can ensure they are ready for new attacks.

Brown highlighted the need to keep up with new security technologies to avoid breaches, especially since the average cost of recovering from a breach is 10 times more than what it costs to put that security in place. Symantec’s solutions, he said, helps protect companies using new and old technologies.

Ramachandran questioned him on the role of governments in creating more secure environments. Brown said governments play an important role. Governments, he said, can work together with private companies and share security insights.

He added that governments need to ensure that people are aware of the importance of security while using new

Every time we deploy new technologies, we should allocate some investments for the protection of information used by that technology, be it cloud or BYOD.” — Michael A. Brown, President and CEO, Symantec

technologies, both at an individual and at an organizational level.

“However, we don’t believe that any government, around the world, can anticipate technology transitions. So it is very dangerous to believe that we can regulate our way to safety,” said Brown.

While governments can be a force for positive change, Symantec believes that an increased awareness of newer threats and finding better security against them are the most important steps towards security.

“Every sector of the economy really needs to think about protection. It is no different from physical security; we invest so that criminals don’t get their hands on valuable information,” Brown said.

Brown also shared some of the security best practices Symantec itself uses. Inside Symantec, he said, the company’s chief information security officer (CISO) meets with the executive team every four to six weeks to review and improve its existing protection. It’s a method Brown strongly advises other companies adopt.

He added that an attacker can stay in a network for an average of 200 days once they are able to enter. That makes it important to understand who the attacker is targeting and let appropriate technology play its role.

Ramachandran quizzed Brown on Symantec’s future plans. Brown expounded on how the company will provide the skills to manage security, in addition to providing products. E-mail protection, unified security analytics, and network protection, he said, will now be provided using the cloud.

Brown added that Symantec crossleverages its learnings to better protect its clients. If, for example, one bank is attacked, Symantec will protect other banks by studying the first attack.

Finally, Brown praised Narendra Modi’s digitally aware leadership and said that as a growing economy, initiatives like Digital India enable further economic growth.

The company, he said, will continue to invest in I ndia as Brown expressed his excitement at the technical depth and capability of the workforce in the country.

Holistic Appraoch to Security

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ymantec has global visibility when it comes to security threats. It scans 30 percent of world’s enterprise e-mail everyday, gets two billion Web requests a day to check which websites are safe, and has 500 researchers worldwide.

The company’s Symantec Endpoint Protection, safeguards enterprise from security threats. “Symantec Endpoint is our biggest enterprise security business and we protect 200 million end points,” said Michael A. Brown, president and CEO of Symantec. The strategy brings extraordinary security and smarter management across both physical and virtual environments.

Brown also added that Symantec secures its datacenter located at Pune and gateways—Web and email.

Symantec also protects information on the cloud as people access workloads from mobile devices. It protects core information through a combination of data loss protection, encryption, and behavior analytics to understand what users are doing. “This gives us a global view of what is happening in the cloud,” said Brown.

Brown spoke about Symantec’s simulation services which helps security professionals train better to protect themselves in case of advanced attacks.

This event report is brought to you by IDG Services in association with Symantec

IT SECURITY

Security Innovation’s New Home grow

Are startups the best and only place to bring true security innovation to the market? BY TO M PAT T E R S O N

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ilicon Valley, where I live and work, is the very strong technologies that will never get their chance to obvious answer as to where to find the most save the world due to these factors. innovative security products. Money flows up For years, security innovation rarely came from large and down Sand Hill Road, showcase offices established companies, due to the Innovators Dilemma, spring off of University, startups gather on which Clayton Christensen described so well in his besteither side of the 101 from San Jose to San Francisco, and selling book of the same name. The premise of protecting deals are being made daily at coffee shops one’s current customers and products, like Philz, RedRock, and Coupa (where a My belief is that big at the cost of innovation, was a very real latte costs .007 bitcoin!). thing back in the day. Companies that sell companies—if they When I started my innovative IPv6 embrace innovative buggy whips are the last to embrace the company 10 years ago, I chose the DC internal combustion engine. practices—can area, as it had the one thing that Silicon My belief (and I’ve just voted with be an important Valley was missing back then—custommy feet by just joining 129 year old Uniers. Since I was there, great new incubasys Corp to head their security business, force in innovative tors have taken off, like 1776 and Mach37, instead of a much shorter commute down security products. and there is strong governmental support the 101) is that big companies—if they for security startups across the region, as truly embrace innovative practices—can well as the remains of the AOL zillionaires to fund. be an important force in innovative security products by Austin has the Dell-ionares eco-system, and Israel has combining that new style with their existing substance of the Mossad mystique running full speed in support of their mission-critical people and practices, large IP portfolio, security startups. And Silicon ‘fill-in-the-blank’ cities have global scale, customer intimacy, routes to market, finantaken that (very outdated) moniker about as far as credcial trustworthiness, and long-term outlook. It was that ibility will permit.

IP portfolio, strong talent team, and integrated routes to But this question is not about geography, and I’ve no market, that were worth more than an A, B, and C round interest in sparking an east-west gang cyberwar (though it combined. Sure there are different sets of challenges at a would make a good reality show Thom Beers!). I’ve posed big company, which is why this approach isn’t for everyone, this question to discuss if startups are the best and only but being able to take a long term approach to earn trust place to bring true security innovation to the market. with a company over years is a great luxury few VC’s allow This question arose at a reception after a DHS tech trana startup. In the end, there must be balance. sition council meeting at SRI (in the heart of Silicon Valley) I believe not that there is room for everybody, as most last night (March 2015). Are startups, which are highly new products never see the light of a major deployment, but innovative in approach, truly meeting the needs of the great there should be input from both camps. Many people in the enterprises around the world? We’d just heard from major security business today are in it for all the right reasons— CISOs explaining how difficult and time-consuming it is we want to do good and help save the world. As it happens, to introduce new disruptive tech into his company. I know if you do that you’ll probably make a buck or two for you I’ve tried as a systems integrator to bring emerging tech and your stakeholders, but the ‘do good’ part is clearly what companies into certain situations only to be challenged by gets us out of bed every morning. the CISO with questions of their longevity, mission critical practices, real quals, and trustworthy future. I know many Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

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VIEW from the TOP

Spinning the Growth Fiber grow

There’s no loose thread in Sterlite Technologies’ plan to strengthen India’s digital infrastructure.

BY S H U B H R A R I S H I

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When Anand Agarwal took over the reins of leadership at the loss-ridden Sterlite Technologies in 2003, there’s wasn’t even a bit of doubt in his head on how he would bring it back on its rails. Agarwal says just being a product company in a particular domain could have restricted our growth potential. But today, the company is not just India’s only fully integrated optical fiber producer and one of the largest suppliers of optical fibers to overseas markets, but it has also diversified into several other profitable businesses.

potential. Today, we are pretty happy with what we have, and the growth it can create globally.

Sterlite is in talks with the government for overall implementation and execution of Digital India infrastructure. That looks like a mammoth task. Tell us about your company’s Digital India vision?

Clearly, it’s about putting a billion people on the internet. Our role in the government’s digital India initiative is to create the infrastructure. We realize that providing broadband connectivity for a billion people is a huge vision of the government, and From being a manager to the CEO of Sterlite Our role in the we are capable of playing Technologies, what made you stay (given your rich academic background) to the company government’s that large role in the broad vision. We plan to create the since its inception? digital India entire digital infrastructure I took over the CEO role at Sterlite during the time when by providing end to end the company was going through a downturn – sufferinitiative through our ing losses worth Rs 70-80 crore that year. At the time, is to create the equipment system integration capawe were only producing optical fibers in some parts of the world. Our immediate goal was to bring the cost infrastructure. bility. Sterlite is already a key optic fiber cable supdown, focus on new geographies, convert the losses into plier for the national optic a breakeven, and then gradually to a profit. Therefore, we fiber network (NOFN) project that will expanded our product portfolio–adding power, solutions and infraprovide high-speed Internet to about 2.5 structure–to our offerings. Therefore, if you know the background lakh village blocks across India. Initially, and the culture of the organization, it helps you steer the role and the our plan was to connect 50,000 gram organization in a direction that you want to. panchayats, and later, about 200,000 of them. Once this gets realized, it will So why did you feel the need to diversify? empower the country like never before.

At the time, we were the only large player in the optical fiber industry (which is a USD 5-6 billion dollar industry). So we didn’t want to be a large company in a small industry. Our ambition and vision was to create a large solutions company globally. It was a requirement from a customer base which prompted us to embark the system integration business, or emphasize our move to telecom and power sector.

We understood the gaps in the industries and matched them with the opportunities in the market to the capabilities we had. Just being Send feedback to Shubhra_rishi@idgindia. a product company in a particular domain can limit your growth com.

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grow

Anand Agarwal, CEO, Sterlite Technologies

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[Q+A]

Pushing the E-Com Cart grow

Shamik Sharma, CTO and CPO, Myntra, makes a case for the e-commerce industry and shares why this is a good time for CIOs to be a part of it. B Y S H A R D H A S U B R A M A N I A N

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Why do you think this is the best time for CIOs to be in the e-commerce industry?

In this e-commerce boom, it’s just an unprecedented time. And as a CIO you get to witness this first hand.

It’s exciting and challenging and I don’t think there’s any other domain in which you can witness this kind of growth and excitement.

It’s a fast growing industry where new opportunities are being created every day.

Apart from being the CTO, you’re also the product head of Myntra.

Do the two roles complement each other?

One has to understand when you are building a product, you have to understand what kind of technology limitations there are and what kind of opportunities that tech innovations are building. Especially in e-commerce where there a lot of changes happening to the underlying technology itself.

More and more people are going mobile, so understanding what the technical choices are help inform what the product choices are. And the reverse is also true. If you have a very good understanding of the product and the

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business you can then mold your tech choices and product choices to those specific requirements. So the two roles complement each other.

As more companies go mobile, do you think CIOs need to play a dual role, rather than just being IT heads?

Yes. In the e-commerce industry, every leader actually, in any function say, sales or marketing, needs to have a strong technical understanding. Primarily because, e-commerce is a technical, product-oriented industry and not a physical store. You are relying on customer experience that is delivered through online channels. Likewise, it

is the responsibility of all CIOs in the e-commerce industry to think of themselves not just as CIOs but as executives who inform the business about what the opportunities are and how to leverage them.

What are the challenges?

The business are doubling, tripling, quadrupling every year which means your systems need to hold up and not go down. There are always big sales and lots of events that every company is running. This again puts a lot of stress and introduces challenges on how your infrastructure keeps up. You also need to hire the best talent because it’s competitive landscape. Also, the technology itself is changing as we are moving from Web to mobile and this requires both nurturing and building new talent. In an industry so driven by customer experience, you need to build and design products and that requires an eye for detail and a sensibility of aesthetics.

That is also often a challenge because if you don’t meet your customers’ expectation in that regard, you can’t really serve them well.

What’s your advice to CIOs who want to join the industry?

This is the best time to do so. It’s a fast growing industry where new opportunities are being created every day. You have to be ready to learn new things as every day throws up a surprise or some area that you may not be familiar with. But if someone is curious and is willing to take a leap then this is definitely an area where a lot of innovation is happening.

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Barcoding Saved Havells run

Havells decided to use barcoding to synchronize the motors and their blades during the packaging process. B Y M A D H AV M O H A N

Do you have a Havells fan at home? Have you ever wondered about what goes into the packaging process of its motors and blades before it reaches your home? Probably not.

Havells India has a fan manufacturing unit in Haridwar that’s spread over 10 acres and employs around 1,300 employees. Havells produces around 4.5 lakh fans a month with around 600 SKUs. The unit manufactures ceiling fans, pedestal fans, wall-hanging fans, and exhaust fans.

It’s ceiling fans have two major components—the motor and a set of blades. Both of these components are manufactured on different production lines. It was a challenge to synchronize the motors and their blades during the packaging process. It’s a tedious job to match the size, colors and model of motors to their respective blades.

“There are different sizes of fans: 56 inches, 48 inches, 36 inches and 24 inches. There

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Vivek Khanna, CIO, Havells, says, “We’ve been able to eliminate repetitive labor process and managed to save on annual replacement costs.”

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could be where a 48-inch motor is attached to a 56-inch blade.

Another problem was when blades and motors of the same color are matched but they are different model,” says Vivek Khanna, CIO, Havells. “There’s always a risk of getting the wrong combination and we’ve seen rejection rates of around 3.5 percent on account of product mismatches.”

One solution was to use manpower to cross check. But manually screening was problematic. “We manufacture 3 lakh fans a month, that’s 1,250 fans a day. It’s a tough task for people to physically match, and then pack,” says Khanna.

The question on Khanna’s mind, and that of this team’s, was: What kind of technologically innovative approach could Havells implement to get around this challenge?

To automate the manufacturing process at the factory, Havells already used barcode technology, mobile readers, which was integrated with SAP production orders and warehouse management functionalities. Since the sub-assembly of ceiling fan motors and the blades move on separate production lines, “we created child barcodes for the motors and the blades for each final ceiling fan SKU; with a final item code detail acting as common link between them. These barcodes are attached on respective sub-assemblies and keep moving in their production line,” says Khanna.

After that, when different components reach the packaging stage, SAP’s warehouse management functionality helps pickers picking related material as they need to be placed in separate areas. “This relieves the picker from having to go and search for a product,” says Khanna. Then, packers check the barcodes of the two components of final assembly, the motor and the blade. At the end of the packing, if they are in sync, “the barcode reader, an HHT Motorola mobile device, signals an affirmative sound,” says Khanna.

Havells began working on the project in March 2013 and went live with it in September, investing Rs 25 lakh. Maventic Innovative solutions provided barcode solutions, integrated printers and Motorola switches with SAP. “We chose them because they have exposure to integrating SAP with Motorola devices and barcode solutions,” says Khanna.

One of the challenges the project faced was that Motorola devices and the Zebra label printers become slow. A simple upgrade of their firmware solved the problem.

Havells have had a marvelous run after implementing the project. Barcoding technology provided numerous benefits. “We have been able to eliminate repetitive labour process prone to errors and managed to save on annual replacement costs of Rs 2.18 crore” says Khanna. It has also improved the brand value of the company’s products by shrinking field rejections, and saving dealers from embarrassment in front of customers.

Send feedback to Madhav_mohan@idgindia.com.

Things You Need to Know ABOUT GEOFENCING

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IT CAN ENGAGE LOCAL SHOPPERS. Geofencing is a location-based service that sends messages to smartphone users who enter a defined geographic area. Some companies send promotions to customers’ smartphones when they enter a store, mall or neighborhood. It’s easy to get started: “All you need is an app and GPS coordinates,” says Tony Costa, an analyst at Forrester Research.

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DEALS CAN BE HYPER-LOCAL. Knowing that customers are nearby lets businesses tailor offers based on local events or holidays. For example, 1-800-Flowers deployed targeted ads for 20 percent off bouquets in the days leading up to Valentine’s Day. Their ads could pop up in any app someone was using when they entered a specified area.

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IT LEVERAGES YOUR LOCATION. By sending a targeted offer to a customer in a parking lot, you may be able to steer them away from competitors. Apps such as Shopkick give customers rewards, such as gift cards or coupons, for walking into participating stores. Companies can also work with businesses that offer complementary products.

For example, 1-800-Flowers geofenced the area around jewelry stores that are close to their flower stores. Shah says if people are shopping for jewelry, they may want to pick up flowers as well. When a customer walks up to a jewelry store, they receive a discount offer for a bouquet from 1-800-Flowers. “Figure out what situation [customers] are in and attack that context,” he says.

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IT ADDS DEPTH TO ANALYTICS. “If you have behavioral models, location gives you another layer of understanding,” Costa says. Using data analytics, companies can see whether targeted offers actually bring people into stores and result in more sales. Other metrics include how often a customer visits the store, how long they shop, and how well a window display works.

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YOU NEED MORE REWARDS. When you know where customers are and how they behave, you can not only customize offers but also give them rewards and a personalized experience. Neiman Marcus is piloting geofencing in its stores so salespeople can see when VIP customers are in store, look at their purchase history and provide more personalized service.

But Costa warns: “Make sure it’s not intrusive, make sure it’s additive. The value exchange has to be there.”

-Lauren Brousell

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POPULAR SCIENCE

Track your Teen driver

GM announced it will be rolling out a “Teen Driver” system that will allow parents to see data about their teens’ driving behavior. BY LU C A S M E A R I A N

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M has announced that it will be offering

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a way for parents to track their teens’ driving behavior in order to help cut down on accidents. In the US, the fatal crash rate per mile driven for 16- to 19-year-olds is nearly three times the rate for drivers aged 20 and over, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.

“Teen Driver,” as GM is calling it, will debut in the 2016 Chevrolet Malibu. The new system can be set to track the distance driven, the maximum speed traveled, any over-speed warnings issued during a drive, stability control events, antilock brake events, forward collision alerts and forward-collision braking events (if the vehicle is equipped to offer them).

To use Teen Driver, a parent needs to unlock the feature by creating a PIN in the “settings” menu of their available MyLink system, which then allows them to register their teen’s key fob. The system’s settings are turned on only to registered key fobs. After a car is driven, a parent can enter a password on MyLink and see a report card of the driving event. “We developed this system so parents

WaterGenius helps Fight the Drought Can California survive the drought? The state desperately needs water conservation. California is in the fourth year of a record draught, and things are getting scary.

According to an Association of California Water Agencies survey, “The vast majority of Californians— some 90 percent—are willing to make significant changes to conserve water.”

One Oakland-based company thinks it has part of the solution.

could use it as a teaching tool with their kids—they can discuss and reinforce safe driving habits,” GM safety engineer MaryAnn Beebe said in a statement. “As a mother of two, I know anything that has the potential of keeping one’s family safer is of great value to parents.”

Driver-tracking systems are nothing new. A vehicle’s Engine Control Unit (internal computer) and on-board diagnostics (OBDs) already allow insurance companies to track driver behavior in order to offer lower rates to good drivers. Those systems, however, require a dongle to be plugged into any vehicle’s OBDII port, which is located under the driver-side dashboard.

GM is calling Teen Driver the first built-in system of its kind that lets parents view on a display how their teenager drove the vehicle. The new system not only tracks what happens in the car, but also supports safe driving by muting the audio of the radio or any device paired with the vehicle when front seat occupants aren’t wearing their safety belts.

Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

BKi’s free WaterGenius website could help homeowners cut down on water consumption.

If it works as advertised, this free online service will help California homeowners figure out how best to change their homes to cut water use, and calculate how much money they can save by making these changes.

The first thing the WaterGenius website asks you for is your city. It needs that information so it can recommend plumbers, gardeners, contractors, and other local professionals.

But your location also tells WaterGenius what you’re paying for a gallon of water, so it can calculate what you’ll save if you make

recommended changes. The differences can be severe. According to Gitt, a gallon of water in Palo Alto costs seven times what it does in Gilroy.

Once the site knows where you are, you’ll get a list of seven items that you might want to replace with something more efficient, including showerheads, kitchen and bathroom faucets, dishwashers, and toilets. You can check and uncheck these options, to concentrate on what you want or to see what will provide the biggest savings.

—Lincoln Spector

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HIRING MANAGER

Raising the Expectations’ Bar

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Students today, have high hopes for their careers and a clear vision of what they want from the companies that hire them. BY S A R A H K . W H I T E

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t’s no secret that graduating college students are beverages, as well as regular social activities and a relaxed burdened with debt and are facing a challenging dress code were important to job-seeking seniors. job market.

“Despite kicking their job search in full swing Startups Aren’t as Appealing as You’d in the spring semester, the majority of students Think have yet to see traction with interviews or job offers-a Even with this nontraditional list of work-place wishes, concerning conclusion with graduation season upon us,” students report that they are open to working in a number says Robert Angulo, CEO of AfterCollege. of diverse environments. While the desired perks seem to Here are some surprising facts about what graduating fit with a startup, two out of three respondents reported seniors face in the current job market and what they want they would consider a job within the federal or state from a company, according to a survey by AfterCollege. government. More than half also stated they would work Technology Degrees Offer More Security at a nonprofit, while less than half chose a startup as their Although the market might be tough for some desired workplace. graduating seniors, technology degrees may offer students more success in finding a job They’re Looking Online While the job right out of college. The survey found This one isn’t surprising, but recent that nontechnology and female students graduates are turning to the Internet market is tough, fared worse than their technology and for their job search, which has become recent graduates male student counterparts in the job norm for most job seekers. But have a clear picture the market. college grads aren’t just looking to of what they want online job boards, they’re interested Results also found that one-quarter, from a company. or 28 percent, of students with a in networking sites and leveraging technology degree had a job by the time personal connections. they graduated college. Students with College students reported that the degrees in business and life sciences were second in line, top three social networks they turn to when looking for with 18 and 15 percent having secured a job by the time a job includes LinkedIn, their school’s social network and they graduated, respectively. When looking at gender, Facebook. The career fairs and company information only 11 percent of female students have a job lined up after sessions of the past aren’t top of the list for student’s job graduation, compared to 18 percent of male students. search.

Forget Stock Options and Sign On Bonuses While the job market is tough, recent graduates still What’s the Future Outlook? have a clear picture of what they want from a company.

The class of 2015 is certainly graduating into a tough The study found that the most important aspects of a job for economy, and as research supports, this can result in graduation seniors are salary, advancement opportunities, lower wages and more unemployment in comparison to office location and a work-life balance. What do they care classes that graduated into a stronger economy. Even still, the least about? The size of the company, sign on bonuses these students have a clear vision of what they want from and stock options. a company and their own careers.

Respondents also pointed to flexible schedules as an added perk when considering a company, with the option to work from home at least once a week. Free snacks and Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

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Twitter: The Next Job Hotspot

You might not think of Twitter as a recruitment tool, but companies are integrating it into their hiring strategies. B Y S A R A H K . W H I T E

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images of funny celebrity tweets and corporate PR gaffes rather than job searching and recruiting. However, there is an emerging pool of job candidates on Twitter. In fact, 45 percent of job seekers report that they use Twitter, compared to 40 percent who use LinkedIn, according to 2014 research from JobVite.

Passive Job Seekers There’s a highly sought-after demographic on Twitter—the passive job seeker. “I think it’s the point of inception often times in the relationship that grows from a passive job seeker to an active job seeker to a candidate and, eventually, an employee at your company,” says Matt Singer, CMO of JobVite.

Progressive Insurance, for example, has found success reaching passive job seekers through Twitter chats. “We got some people who started following us, following the hashtag and engaging in the conversation, and one of them actually has just recently applied for a position,” says Mary Foley, IT hiring manager at the company.

It’s More About Branding Using Twitter in recruitment isn’t necessarily about reaching out directly to potential candidates. In fact, only 17 percent of employers report using Twitter specifically to search for candidates. Rather, companies are more focused on plant-

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ing the seed for future job seekers; 44 percent of companies report using Twitter to build a company’s brand, 39 percent report using it to post jobs and 32 percent to generate employee referrals, according to a survey from JobVite.

Companies that engage with prospective candidates on Twitter can help give potential employees a better idea of what it’s like to work at their company.

strategy can be ruined by one simple thing: mobile. Mobile is where everyone is turning to consume content, which is a big part of why Twitter is becoming an important recruitment tool. “We know that the newspaper that [job seekers] used to use on their way to work to look for jobs has now been replaced with their smartphone.

And you’re obviously not going to—unless you’re very bold—be

Mobile is where everyone is turning to consume content, which is a big part of why Twitter is becoming an important recruitment tool.

Twitter for Company Research Companies can stand to gain a lot of insight from Twitter’s consumers and employees, whether it’s how to improve the customer experience or confirmation that people are happy with their products or service. When an employee considers taking a job with a new company, he or she is going to set out to do some research first.

Twitter might be the best place to make this first impression, with 24 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds and 17 percent of 30- to 39-yearolds reporting that they turn to Twitter to look up information on a company. That’s more than LinkedIn, Facebook or Google Plus.

A Mobile Strategy is Key Ultimately, a company’s Twitter

doing job searches at your office on your company-issued computer.

So you will use your smartphone,” according to Singer.

But companies that are active on Twitter, but haven’t implemented a mobile strategy, might be missing the mark on branding. A tweet might be the first impression, but once a prospective candidate clicks into a careers page, or a company website, if it isn’t mobile friendly, chances are that you’ve lost them. “If your careers page isn’t mobile, then you’ve actually just sort of done your brand a disservice and left a very negative impression on a job seeker, who’s basically making their first attempt to connect with your company,” says Singer.

Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

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Eash Sundaram, CIO of JetBlue Airways, says, “We put people in front of our processes and look at all of our products through the customer lens.”

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e e in ok at he

COVER STORY :: IT Management

ABOUT

FACE!

CIOs are giving their teams new marching orders to turn their attention from internal matters to external customers, who have ultra-high expectations. B Y J U L I A K I N G

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ersonal. Helpful. Simple. None of those words is typically associated with the process of checking in for a flight at the airport. That’s precisely why JetBlue Airways is getting rid of check-ins entirely.

“We went through a mapping of our processes and decided check-in was meaningless in that it added no value to the customer,” says CIO Eash Sundaram. So IT rolled out a new system whereby certain customers are automatically checked in 24 hours prior to their flights. (The automatic check-in service will be extended to all JetBlue passengers in the next year or so.)

The no-check-in initiative is part of JetBlue’s all-out push to deliver superlative customer service, which the airline sums up in its mantra of “personal, helpful, simple.” In addition, Sundaram says IT focuses on being proactive rather than reactive.

“At the airport, we don’t ask the questions of ‘What’s your name? Where are you going,’” he says. “We have already mapped all the touch points and eliminated those that add no value to the customer. We put people in front of our processes and look at all of our products through the customer lens.”

Increasingly, a customer-centric approach is a matter of competitive advantage, even business survival. By 2020, customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator, according to Walker Information, a national consulting firm focused on customer intelligence.

Thanks largely to the explosion of digital technologies and the acceleration of innovation, “customers will be more informed and in charge of the experience they receive,” Walker says. To be relevant in 2020, companies “must emphasize proactive and personalized service.”

At JetBlue, says Sundaram, getting IT to this level of customer focus involved “a big mindset shift [because] IT was accustomed to thinking in transactions. Instead, we wanted to look at the customer’s airport experience.”

For guidance in making this leap, Sundaram says he and

his IT team looked to—and continue to emulate—highly regarded, customer-focused companies like Google, Apple and others outside of the airline industry. JetBlue also partnered with Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at the Stanford School of Engineering on multiweek projects to immerse JetBlue leaders, including many from IT, in a customer-focused case study of the airline. The program included classroom training plus field research at San Francisco International Airport to help executives better understand customers’ needs and JetBlue’s practices.

At the company’s headquarters in New York, IT is a standalone organization, but IT employees are integrated into various functions, like marketing and operations. Sundaram also leads the company’s multimillion-dollar customer experience innovation program, along with JetBlue’s chief commercial officer and chief customer experience officer.

To gain a deeper understanding of new customers, JetBlue dispatches IT staffers and other employees on trips to expansion markets. In the Dominican Republic, for example, many people pay in cash instead of using credit cards, “so IT is now working on a next-generation kiosk to act like an ATM,” Sundaram notes.

Internally, JetBlue also has made customer satisfaction a key factor in employees’ compensation. One-third of Sundaram’s job performance rating is based on how much customers enjoy traveling with JetBlue, he says.

“When you peel the onion back, every goal we have for our IT members is tied to customer experience, too, not to IT systems,” Sundaram says. Ultimately, JetBlue “wants to be a lifestyle brand, not just an airline,” he explains. “Apple and Nordstrom are great brands, and customer experience is what they really focus on. We’re trying to do the same thing.”

Shifting IT’s mindset to look beyond company boundaries and focus on paying customers changes the equation entirely, according to Eric Singleton, CIO at Chico’s FAS, a $2.6 billion

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When the Business Hires Away IT People

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ould you be comfortable taking an apps developer or an IT architect along on a sales call with one of your company’s new customers? How about inviting them to dinner with a prospective business partner or supplier?

Those are the kinds of situations that CIOs leading customer-centric IT organizations say they try to imagine when they’re recruiting prospective IT employees.

PulteGroup CIO Joe Drouin recently interviewed applicants for 35 IT jobs, many of them spots on the homebuilder’s customerfacing business engagement teams. “From the very beginning, I had the notion that I didn’t need [just] a .Net developer, I needed a .Net developer who I could sit with and have a conversation that had nothing to do with technology,” he says.

“I’d envision this person sitting across the table from another business leader or in a model home or in a construction trailer interacting with a construction manager. What I was looking for is an ability to explain things in a nontechnical, non-intimidating way,” he says.

But not everyone in IT is cut out for face-to-face interactions with external customers. It’s part of an IT leader’s job to identify those who are and then encourage them to move into customer-facing roles.

“It’s more of an art than a science,” says Chico’s CIO Eric Singleton. Key characteristics he seeks include an entrepreneurial spirit, a gregarious nature and an ease with conversation.

—Julia King

34

(about Rs 15,600 crore) specialty retailer with 1,547 stores. “You think about things differently,” he says. “You ask different questions that you don’t ask if you’re in a basement writing code for internal customers.”

That’s why Singleton and other members of his 250-person IT organization regularly visit the company’s stores—to get up close and conversational with shoppers. Singleton is especially keen to observe how women interact with a 24-in. touchscreen that’s mounted in a cabinet near the back of the store. Known as the “tech table,” the touchscreen lets shoppers browse beyond the 60 percent of inventory displayed in physical stores to view and buy hundreds of additional products online.

He describes the table as “a social watering hole” and “an augmented shopping experience that is fueled by the customers’ social energy around it in the moment.”

Best of all, tech table sales routinely add 15 percent to 20 percent to in-store sales totals every day--a figure that’s higher than anyone at Chico’s anticipated.

IT also regularly collaborates with marketing and merchandise managers to come up with new ways for customers to interact with the company. Next up from IT, for example, is an augmentedreality catalog that shoppers can browse, using their smartphone to mix, match and buy different pieces of clothing shown in different photos.

Changing the Mission At PulteGroup, achieving customer-facing IT required “a significant rebuild of the IT organization,” says Joe Drouin, CIO at the $5.8 billion (about Rs 34,800 crore) homebuilder.

It all started in 2010 when Pulte launched a new companywide mission to become more “consumer-inspired.” “The company as a whole made a commitment to getting closer to what our customers and potential customers want from a home,” Drouin explains.

“You would assume that there is nothing more personal than a person’s house, but for a long time we just built homes the way we always did, from standard floor plans.”

At the time, IT was recovering from a very long period of “just keeping the lights on,” he says. “We were coming out of a long

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downturn, as homebuilding was one of the last industries to recover from the big recession.”

A major break came when PulteGroup decided to relocate its headquarters from Detroit to Atlanta. Drouin says that, after he arrived in 2013, he seized the opportunity to overhaul the IT organization, hire about 35 new people in Atlanta and “bring IT out from behind the curtain to engage on the front lines of the business.”

“We created new roles that would be visible to the rest of the business and engage with our customers and partners,” he says.

“We hired a director of customer engagement and a team of people under him. Technology skills were table stakes. We brought people in from a variety of places with the notion that we were looking for people who could sit across the table from a marketing person or homebuilder, or walk into a model home and sit with a sales consultant and have a conversation about what they needed, all in a non-technology-focused way.”

Drouin was personally involved with interviewing every one of the serious candidates for the new roles. “I was the last stop. I was looking for an ability to communicate, to engage, interact. I wanted to know I’d be comfortable putting this person in front of a customer,” he says.

But before candidates made it to Drouin, they had been vetted by recruiters who were well versed in what he wanted in a customer-focused IT staffer. Drouin and his top managers had spent two full days with a recruiting company, outlining precisely the kinds of people they wanted to hire.

“It wasn’t 35 technology job descriptions. We built this profile of the kind of person we were looking for, including some of the experiences we wanted them to talk about to demonstrate those characteristics,” he recalls.

“We viewed every single hire as a critical hire,” he says. “It was so important to make this [customer-centric] shift and this transformation that we couldn’t afford to say ‘This guy is strong technically, but I can’t imagine his ability to really engage.’ So we didn’t make any exceptions to the picture of the person we were trying to hire. It was critical enough to me personally to be in the room and spending time personally because I couldn’t afford to have one person slip by that wouldn’t be there to drive this major

COVER STORY :: IT Management

shift in the organization.”

Another huge change was redefining the word customer as it applied to IT. “There was this very traditional idea that IT was a service provider and the customer was everyone else inside Pulte,” Drouin says. “Today, we don’t talk about IT and the business. We talk about IT as part of the business--as ingrained and as tightly woven as any other function, and contributing to business strategy. Our customers are [the company’s] end customers.”

Aiming to Please More than a few CIOs make the point that precisely defining the word customer is a critical first step toward customer-centric IT. “We make a big point of defining the word customer. A customer is the same in IT as it is for the rest of the business. A customer buys cars, buys services and buys parts,” says Barry Cohen, CIO at Asbury Automotive Group, a $5.9 billion (about Rs 35,400 crore) automotive retailer with 82 dealerships. “We don’t even say ‘internal customer.’ In fact, we make a big point of saying IT is part of the business and not like an island off by itself. These are small but important nuances because we’re trying to build a culture where everybody is thinking the same way.”

Asbury’s IT infrastructure is made up mainly of automotivespecific systems and software developed and provided by third parties. The company’s 39-person IT group is focused on man-

Raising the Bar Anuj Dhanda, CIO and head of digital commerce at Giant Eagle, a $9.3 billion (about Rs 55,800 crore) supermarket chain with 418 stores, keeps close tabs on brands like Apple and Google. Both of those companies, he says, have played a huge role in setting the bar on what customers expect.

Dhanda says IT teams are facing new pressures in how they serve both internal and external customers. “We have to treat all of our customers differently because they’re customers of other companies that have set the bar very differently,” he says. Progressive companies, he adds, “don’t make a huge distinction between internal and external customers.”

For example, Dhanda says that, at many companies, an employee may need to touch 10 different systems to do a job. So Giant Eagle is using workflow technology to create a better internal user experience that rivals an external customer’s experience.

For customer-facing technologies, IT has upgraded its qualityassurance and user-interface testing to get insight into what customers want, Dhanda says. Giant Eagle conducts workshops with customers that IT teams observe. All IT staffers also work in one of the company’s stores to experience firsthand how IT works on the front line for both employees and customers.

At Agco, a $9.7 billion (about Rs 58,200 crore) maker of global agricultural equipment, CIO Sheryl Bunton is just setting out on the road to customer-centric IT. “Every company has to take that

Increasingly, a customer-centric approach is a matter of business survival. Thanks largely to the acceleration of innovation, customers will be more in charge of the experience they receive. aging the service providers and handling field engineering and support at dealerships.

For now, IT staffers don’t work directly with people who are shopping for cars but with employees in the dealerships and in other departments who work directly with customers.

The IT team is focused on taking some of the hassle out of the car-buying experience. “If you’ve bought a car, you know that you can spend an entire day in the dealership, so we’re working on customer-facing things like digital signatures and removing some of the paperwork in that process,” Cohen explains.

Cohen himself travels to each of the company’s dealerships at least twice a year and also has IT staffers work in the field at the company’s stores and dealerships. “We walk into a store and meet the parts people and the accounting people. We make ourselves very visible,” he says.

One of the surprising things Cohen and his team have learned at the dealerships is that, although they do have store hours, they have no set closing time. “I’d always ask what time they go home and they always said ‘When the last customer leaves.’ So, my IT staff is really focused on that now,” he says.

journey, and every company has to stop at all the waypoints,” she says. “We have a toe in the water.”

“The days of [merely] building a product and bringing it to market don’t work anymore. One of the biggest shifts everyone in IT has to make is getting from an IT focus to a customer focus,” Bunton says.

Much of the shift has to do with dropping the traditional IT command-and-control attitude and adopting the role of influencer. “The perspective that was here was very much of an old-school technologist,” she says. “IT would tell the business what they needed instead of listening to business people and coming back with strategies and recommendations. What I’ve told people is we have to remember we’re a tractor company with an IT function. We’re not an IT company that makes tractors.”

To get there, IT has to prove its status as a valued partner to the business over and over again. “You have to do it enough so that you build trust. It’s becoming very strong at execution that keeps the business engaged and builds that trust,” she says.

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Agile Skills are Here to Stay

Businesses struggling to align their IT projects with larger strategies are emphasizing on agile skills. By Sharon Florentine

I L LU S T R AT I O N B Y T H I N K S TO C K

Demand for mission-critical IT projects is increasing as the economy improves, but the supply of resources available to handle those demands isn’t keeping pace, according to the recent annual Project and Portfolio Management Landscape survey conducted

by Innotas, a cloud portfolio management (PPM) solutions provider.

The survey was conducted online this year with 126 organizations with project and portfolio management responsibilities responding. Results indicated that resourcing is a major source of worry for IT professionals, with 37 percent this year and 51 percent of respondents last year citing it as their most pressing challenge. In fact, 61 percent of those IT professionals polled did not have enough resources and/or staff to manage demand for IT projects in their business or organization.

Simply put, IT professionals cannot keep pace with IT project demands, says Tushar Patel, vice president of marketing at Innotas.

“Budgets have loosened up for most organizations, and hiring has increased for many of our clients. But what we’re seeing is, even though they’re hiring more, they’re still struggling to make sure those people are working on the right things - the projects and initiatives that are most strategic to the larger business goals,” Patel says.

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Adopting an Agile Mindset

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To help ensure alignment—that available resources are being used strategically to advance the most critical business goals and drive growth—many of Innotas’ clients are adopting an ‘agile’ mindset instead of a more traditional waterfall approach to project management and are hiring project managers with the same agile approach.

“Traditional project management certifications are taking a backseat to professionals who can look at the organization holistically and see how they can squeeze the most value out of the limited supply of resources. They’re the ones who can see the big picture of how specific projects and initiatives are more strategic to the business,” says Patel.

Without Agility, Expect Business Failures There’s been a huge shift toward this mindset in the last year, according to Patel. “With limited resources available, our customers are seeing that if they don’t have business agility to adapt to the rapid changes in IT markets, then they’re going to fail. A traditional, process-heavy approach to project management where they’re heavy on planning and it’s taking lots of time to map out a waterfall approach to IT projects just isn’t going to work,” he says.

Hire Agile And those rapid changes are even affecting how organizations source, recruit and hire project management professionals, says Jennifer Jaffe, vice president of product and marketing at Jama software. Traditional certification of project management skills isn’t as important nowadays as real-world, on-the-job experience with the agile methodology and business agility in mind, she says.

“For me, personally, as a hiring manager I don’t necessarily look for these certifications when I’m trying to fill a project manager or product manager role; there’s just no substitute for that kind of experience analyzing larger business trends and breaking that down into tangible requirements and actionable steps in the process,” Jaffe says.

Adopting an agile project management mindset is a lot like running a microbusiness, according to Jaffe. While traditional project management tends to focus on individual projects in a vacuum, an agile approach can place projects and initiatives with the larger context of the entire business so project managers can see how their work impacts the entire organization.

“Good, experienced, versatile project management talent is where businesses should invest the most money. You aren’t spending on infrastructure anymore—it’s all in the cloud. You aren’t spending on office space—most people work remotely. You aren’t even spending on software as much—a lot of its SaaS. So what you are spending should go toward making sure you’ve got the right people with the right mindset to work on the right things,” says Patel.

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How to do M2M Right

WATCH New Holland Fiat India’s e-tractor created differentiation and helped the company stand apart. But how did the project deal with connectivity issues, regulatory hurdles and hardware investments? Parna Ghosh, Head-ICT, India, Far East and Japan, CNH Industrial, shares a behind-the-scenes peek. Watch the video to know more about how the project fared.

http://www.cio.in/cio-tv/howdo-m2m-right-learnings-new-holland-fiat-india

Stuck in the IT Maze ANALYZE Whoever thinks that a CIO’s job is easy has no idea of the challenges that trouble the IT department. With the ever-changing technology landscape and increasing expectations from LoBs, these challenges are hanging like a sword over CIOs’ head. But what are these challenges, which sector faces most of them, and what are the CIOs doing to overcome them? Read to know more.

http://www.cio.in/by-the-numbers/ all-roads-lead-it-blocked

Digital India Will Help the IT READ With a welcome step to create a digitally empowered India, and to create the opportunities for unleashing India’s creative talent, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced the start of the Digital India initiative. With the push for digitization, EY is upbeat about the initiative taken by the government, which will provide a strong impetus to the growth of the IT industry.

Read to know more

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Marketing Tech: A House Divided

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Marketers and techies working together can make huge difference to their companies. But first, they must overcome the great divide. BY TO M K A N E S H I G E

B

Send in the Techies y now, it’s pretty clear that marketing tech scares the bejesus out of modern marketers.

Flash forward a week later to the second conference, called Technology stacks, integration layers, APIs, oh MarTech, hosted by Scott Brinker, a technologist and my! Techies add to these fears by throwing tech creator of a popular marketing tech vendor landscape jargon in a marketer’s face, explaining technolgraphic. There were no tears shed among more than 1,000 ogy to a marketer in a condescending way, and even snickering attendees. Most of them came from the technical ranks with at the perceived simplicity of the marketer’s craft. job roles similar to that of a chief marketing technology It’s too bad, because marketers and techies working together officer. Attendees quietly took notes over laptops or checked have the power to change the destiny of their companies. First, out a showroom of some 60 marketing tech vendors. though, they must overcome the great divide between marketing Speakers talked at length about architecting the technology and IT summed up in two conferences in stack and crafting a marketing tech strategy San Francisco. While both conferences Techies add to a to counterbalance a marketer’s penchant for purport to be about marketing tech and the making impulsive, tactical decisions. Lack marketer’s fears digital consumer, one is for marketers, the of order is a serious problem that can lead by throwing tech other for techies. to a “frankenstack,” says speaker Cynthia jargon, explaining Gumbert, vice president of digital and new accounts marketing at CA Technologies.

Tale of Two Conferences Speakers rallied around the theme of The first conference, called Advocamp, technology in a marketing technologists exerting control in hosted by advocate marketing software condescending a hyperactive market. Joseph Kurian, head vendor Influitive, was clearly aimed at way. of marketing technology and innovation marketers. There was a camping theme at Aetna, laid out keys to success, which with fake trees and campfires scattered includes owning the marketing tech budget. throughout the rooms. Attendees could put merit badge stickers In what’s become a tech conference’s signature trait, on their name tags. Influitive employees called themselves presenters threw up slides cluttered with small print and “guides,” and CEO Mark Organ dressed up as a park ranger in detailed diagrams—virtually unreadable by most in the a Yogi Bear cartoon. subdued audience.

The majority of speakers were CMOs, with the keynote given Then social-selling expert Rowley took the stage and gave

by Fred Reicheld, creator of marketing’s popular net promotor the same presentation at Martech as she gave at Advocamp. In system. Presenters told stories about winning customer striking contrast with previous speakers, Rowley offered the advocates in the digital world and showed slides of happy viewpoint of salespeople and marketers faced with reinventing customers and easily digestible stats on the business value of themselves in the age of social networking and marketing tech. customer advocacy. They glazed over the technology platform At Advocamp, Rowley’s passionate message was received with and services needed to pull this off, instead relying on a small cheers; at Martech, an attendee and his friends made fun of her showroom of marketing tech vendors to explain their products. sales presentation style. So goes IT and marketing’s cultural Attendees and speakers alike were fully engaged, excited divide. and oddly emotional. For instance, Organ flashed a picture of his children on the main screen and choked up, saying, “I hope they become my biggest advocates.” Speaker and social selling expert Jill Rowley also became emotional, saying, Send feedback to editor@cio.in.

“We can humanize business.”

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A GLOBAL AUDIENCE OF 280M IN 97 COUNTRIES

CULTIVATING RURAL EFFICIENCY

Fullerton arms rural India with financial efficiency. 11

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REACHING OUT TO THE UNBANKED

Canara Bank's GM on how tech can help the unbanked.

4 TYPES OF GEEKS YOU NEED

Experts share advice on how to atrract these geeks. 27 THE DATA-DRIVEN CFO

B U S I N E SS T EC H N O LO G Y L E A D E R S H I P

Lupin's CFO on managing the information supply chain.

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Not Competing with LogisticsStartups Rubal Jain, MD, Safexpress, on why it isnt in competition with logistics startups. 15

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The much-awaited State of the Mart Survey tells you what your peers are planning for 2015. Page 16

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The Internet of Things will be extremely vital for the digital India initiative.

Software-defined networking is here to stay.

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The next year will see a paradigm shift from an ‘enduser’ focus to a ‘user-first’ approach.

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Questions to the Future 42

Things IT leaders need to be thinking about to prepare for what’s coming BY T H O R N TO N A . M AY

I recently have been sounding ahead-of-the-curve executives about the questions we should be asking about the future. Here are some.

Do you understand that it’s the transition, not the trajectory?

As someone who studies the history of the future (that is, how organizations have historically tried to prepare themselves for what comes after what comes next), I have learned that it is critically important to differentiate between technology trajectory stories and technology transition realities.

Moore’s Law and Ray Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating Returns are technology trajectory stories. Nokia’s essential disappearance from the commercial landscape is a technology transition story.

tensen believes this failure rate can be significantly improved upon if product and service development teams start to look at products as a way to get a job done. In the professor’s words, “We actually hire products to do things for us.” Christensen suggests migrating away from “segment-the-market” questions and asking “jobs-to-be-done” questions.

We realized that the causal mechanism behind a purchase is, ‘Oh, I’ve got a job to be done.’ And it turns out that it’s really effective in allowing a company to build products that people want to buy.”

Is your dream big enough?

What should you learn from Google Glass?

During the frenzied dot.com era, strategists and planners were told that we had entered a “new normal,” where none of the old rules applied. It turns out that some patterns persist. One such persistent pattern is the adoption cycle associated with technology products. Google Glass was targeted at consumers at a price—about $1,500 (about Rs 90,000)—more appropriate for professional markets. As longtime Silicon Valley watcher Tim Bajarin points out, “While Google was playing with Glass, Apple brought out the ideal extension of your smartphone in the form of a watch.” One of the questions to ask about the future is what not to do when creating a product for the consumer.

What job are we hiring Products and Services to do?

The general consensus is that about 95 percent of new products fail. Harvard Business School professor Clayton Chris-

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Danuta Hübner, Poland’s minister for European affairs, was concerned. “We keep seeing ourselves as a small country. In fact, Poland is a big country. We should have the responsibilities that come with being a big country.” How do organizations perceive themselves and their future? Is Uber merely a software-enabled replacement for the local taxi monopoly, or is it a logistics software company?

we need?

Will we have the skills

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2020, there will be 1.4 million computing jobs and only 400,000 computer science students to fill those roles. According to McKinsey, in the United States alone there is a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with analytical expertise and 1.5 million managers and analysts with the skills to understand and make decisions based on the analysis of big data. Should enterprises create ”corporate universities” to guarantee a pipeline of appropriate skills?

[CXO AGENDA]

Being Customer-centric

Rajeev Sawhney, President-Strategic Business, Mphasis, talks about the need to get more customer centric and what it takes to get there. BY MAYUKH MUKHERJEE Can you describe Mphasis’ go-to market strategy?

Our approach, primarily, is to serve the customer, and serve them well. Our intention is to have delighted customers and it’s evident we are succeeding from the feedback we’ve been getting.

We have deliberately chosen a smaller set of customers and given them all our attention.

lenge as you shift strategies?

A change in strategy has to reflect in every execution in that area because only then will we be able to realize the value of the strategy.

What we really need to do is retrain the workforce. We have to get them to understand new technologies, understand our new offerings, and understand that we now have to talk to

“We have deliberately chosen a smaller set of customers.”

We are also taking a suite of products and services and putting them under the umbrella of customer experience management. In the customer experience management suite, we have many technologies and service offerings which help our customers deal with their customers. This is the first part of our go-to market strategy.

The second part is to focus on risk and compliance, particularly in banks and capital markets and insurance. I’m told that banks paid almost $100 billion in penalties because they were not compliant with regulatory norms.

We are able to help them save some of those penalties by solving some of their risk and compliance issues.

What’s been your biggest chal-

a different set of people. The language that needs to be used can no longer center around technology, it has to be about solving customer problems.

Pricing is another major issue.

Earlier, you had a rate card, and hourly rates for off-shore and on-shore work.

Today, life has gone beyond even outcome-based pricing. You need to have a hybrid pricing system that would compose of some part being self-serviced-based pricing, another part being value-based pricing, while another part would be outcome-based pricing. All this needs to be packaged into one composite pricing.

which will help any interim ticket coming in be serviced automatically and pushed out of the queue. These tickets don’t even reach the service desk.

If, in a normal scenario, there were 10,000 tickets in queue, now you’ll only end up getting only 60 percent of that. A lot of the tools we have introduced helped us reduce work, cost, and have helped customers achieve their objectives.

How are you leveraging digital to meet your objectives?

We start first with the customers and the customers’ needs and then find the best way to fulfil them. Digital is only a vehicle to deliver a service to the client, it’s not a goal in itself.

If you’re looking at customer experience management, there are a host of things that are digital and which will help us solve customer requirements.

They help our clients provide a richer experience to their customers.

The one thing I see happening is that digital technologies will come into all walks of our life. Every industry in every geography, and every device with the Internet of Things will have an IP address. These devices will be able to communicate; they will be able to connect. People, devices and things will start getting connected. Digital technologies will exponentially accelerate traffic in the world. That will throw out a lot of data, which needs to be analyzed. This will lead to more digital marketing opportunities and more digital payments.

How is IT helping?

We are using new unique tools, which we call autonomics. It’s an algorithm

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leadership and operational excellence

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Robots’ new destination A fleet of floating bio-robots will be deployed between Christmas Island and Madagascar to help gain an

understanding of the physical and biological workings of the Indian Ocean. The BioArgos, being released

by CSIRO, are equipped with tiny sensors that can measure biological indicators within the ocean including dissolved oxygen, nitrate, chlorophyll, organic matter and particles. It will be the first time CSIRO has used the new BioArgo robotic floats to measure this under-sampled part of the world. “These can tell us about the growth of plankton, how much carbon they take up, how much gets used up the food chain and how much gets buried,” CSIRO project leader, Dr Nick Hardman-Mountford, said in a statement.

—Mike Gee

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