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THE RISE OF RPA
Vol 2. No. 4. July, 2019
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Chairman of the Board Viveck Goenka Sr. Vice President - BPD Neil Viegas Asst. Vice President - BPD Harit Mohanty Editor Srikanth RP* Sr. Associate Editor Sudipta Dev Assistant Editor Nivedan Prakash
Srikanth RP, Editor srikanth.rp@expressindia.com
Delhi Sandhya Michu Vishwas Dass Mumbai Abhishek Raval Mohit Rathod Salvi Mittal Bengaluru Moumita Deb Choudhury DESIGN Asst. Art Director Pravin Temble Chief Designer Prasad Tate Senior Graphic Designer Rekha Bisht Layout Designer Vinayak Mestry Photo Editor Sandeep Patil DIGITALTEAM Head of Internet Viraj Mehta MARKETING Ravi Nair Prabhas Jha Durgaprasad Talithaya Debnarayan Dutta Ajanta Sengupta Aparna Tawade Praveen Soman Vivek Thakur
PA is today at a stage where the cloud was a decade back. Research firm, Gartner predicts that by the end of 2022, 85 per cent of large and very large organisations will have deployed some form of RPA. In India, organisations have been quick to realise the huge opportunity in RPA by automating repetitive transactional processes. Take the case of HDFC Bank, which uses RPA to do eyeballing credit applications. Similarly, Yes Bank has used RPA for automation of payment processes where more than five lakh transactions are automated on a monthly basis. At ICICI Lombard General Insurance, RPA has been used to automate quote issuance, policy issuance and claims processing. With automation as the goal, RPA is now being used to solve some unique issues. For example, Vodafone Idea uses RPA to set algorithms that identifies exceptional situations. For instance, in case of a power failure, the firm has created an algorithm which identifies the nearest technician using geo-locations and dispatches the work automatically. This ensures that the site gets restored in the
minimum time possible. At Emcure Pharmaceuticals, RPA is being used for the posting of bulk GST invoices. SBI Cards uses RPA for its transaction dispute follow up process. Besides standardisation of the process and elimination of human dependencies and errors, RPA has been able to save close to 700 hours of efforts per day across processes. As user confidence in RPA systems has grown, firms have scaled up the deployment of RPA to multiple processes. ICICI Bank, which started from deploying RPA for 200 business processes in 2016, is now running 1350 business processes on RPA, which is currently being used in processes such as customer onboarding, transaction processing, post transaction servicing, reconciliation, and loan processing. Similarly, HDFC Life which started out with 8 bots in 2016 is now using running 154 bots across 24 functions. From simple tasks, bots have now progressed to handle complex queries. In the case of HDFC Life, 40 per cent of the bots handle complex tasks. In the future, one can expect more use cases of RPA combined with AI and analytics.
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Content
6 | Cover Story
11 | Cover Story
RPATO ACCELERATE AUTOMATION WAVE As India is poised to become the automation capital of the world, large enterprises have started experimenting with the power of bots, also known as Robotic Processing Automation (RPA), to automate mundane business processes. But can RPA become a catalyst for the work culture of the organisation, is something most organisations are yet to ascertain
32 | Why Dell India R&D Center questions the status quo? Rudramuni B, Vice President & India R&D Head, Dell Technologies
News Analysis Cover Story 16 | In the race to digital transformation, RPA leads the way
28 | What is so special about iValue's DNA ? Sriram Srinivasan, Co-Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, iValue InfoSolutions
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Event 34 | Alibaba Cloud Summit: Gateway for APAC SMEs and enterprises Based on the theme 'In Asia, for Asia', Alibaba Cloud Summit, held recently in Singapore, highlighted the company's focus outside China, as it looks to expand its footprint across countries like India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia
37 | Savic Technologies strives ahead on India’s cloud roadmap Senthilkumar S, Managing Director, Savic Technologies
24 | Digital transformation with WorkKey Varun Bhutani, Founder and CEO, WorkKey, Trihund Solutions
26 | Juniper Networks: Bringing simplicity to networking M. Muthukumar, MD. Juniper Networks IEC
With channel partners focusing on implementing new and emerging technologies, Robotic Process Automation is yet another excellent business opportunity for them across diverse industry verticals
Partner Corner
Startup Corner
CXO Speak
Why should we channel and partner RPA?
Thought Leader 30 | Lexmark reaffirms its commitment to the printing market in India Sanjiv Krishen, Chairman, Iris Global Services
38 | How RPA has transformed key banking functions Kunal Nagarkatti, COO, Clover Infotech
ROBOTIC PROCESS AUTOMATION The increasing adoption of Robotic Process Automation across industries offers immense growth opportunities for channel partners
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Cover Story
RPA TO ACCELERATE AUTOMATION WAVE As India is poised to become the automation capital of the world, large enterprises have started experimenting with the power of bots, also known as Robotic Processing Automation (RPA), to automate mundane business processes. But can RPA become a catalyst for the work culture of the organisation, is something most organisations are yet to ascertain 6 I COMPUTER RESELLER NEWS I JULY, 2019 I crn.in
Sandhya Michu sandhya.michu@expressindia.com
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ndia is witnessing an automation wave. There is a potential for India to become the global hub of business automation with the help of digital and human workforces, which are running data-driven operations for companies across the globe. India has an upper hand over other regions because of its history of operational excellence, experience in scaling and a large workforce. Businesses are increasing their human workforce with digital emphasis, which is driven by the growing prevalence of millennials in the labour force and the reality of a rapidly aging workforce. There is a significant percentage of global outsourcing industry and global in-house centres, with decades of process knowledge and an agile workforce. This combination provides a plethora of
RPA
opportunities to RPA players. However, the fundamental challenge before any company is to drive this fundamental shift. Today, the global RPA market has emerged as a US$ 100 billion opportunity, according to equity research firm KeyBanc Capital Markets. Gartner further estimates that by the end of next year, 40 per cent of large enterprises will have deployed RPA software, up from less than 10 per cent today. Suman Reddy, MD, Pegasystems India, says, “India’s opportunity lies in unlocking the value of RPA for better productivity, and freeing up more resource for teams to focus on complex business challenges, not mundane, rule-based reporting or data entry tasks. The challenge is, RPA is just a temporary fix. They allow incremental savings in cost and faster turn-around time for generating reports or in customer responses. However, over time, bots are bound to break as organisations do not implement them in context with outcomes, or connect them to the larger architecture between processes, systems, and applications.”
Impact on workforce culture The early 2000s saw the dawn of Global Capability Centers in India with a manpower-based model. However, with evolving markets, the global process volume has also increased. RPA aids these centres to enhance their delivery capabilities. Automation is poised to hit the mainstream, but many businesses are still experimenting. It is expected that companies will scale up to enterpriselevel implementation of their RPA journey. The challenge to scale automation or AI across an organisation may not be difficult, but it’s more of how the organisation as a culture will adapt to such a change. With jobs being supported by automation, the culture of the organisation will need to change. Employers will need to start thinking now about implications for hiring, reskilling, upskilling, lifelong learning, and reorganising. Concerns
Raghu Subramanian
Milan Sheth
President & CEO,UiPath India
EVP,IMEA,Automation Anywhere
in this area stem largely from a growing disconnect between the types of skills workers currently maintain. They will need broader and more empathic skills in order to flourish in the coming years. Nevertheless, there is a strong demand for employees skilled in RPA for automation management, analytics, AI, cloud services and cybersecurity. The average salary of a professional skilled in RPA is 30 per cent higher than salaries for general programmers and software engineers, according to a study.
One of the RPA evangelists, Automation Anywhere, looks to make India the global leader in automation, as Automation Anywhere is focused on helping customers in navigating the RPA shifts and ensuring customers are able to thrive the same. Speaking about the market opportunities, Milan Sheth, Executive Vice President, IMEA, Automation Anywhere, says, “We are witnessing a huge demand from our customers for RPA. Businesses today are increasingly augmenting their human workforce with a digital one. While early automation implementations are focused on cost, in 2019, automation will achieve multiple goals: driving both customer and employee experience; changing the nature of work; and even empowering the next generation of startup companies — tech and non-tech alike — that will employ digital labour from the getgo.” Sheth also points out, “Automation and, especially AI, comes with a unique set of trust issues; not only is the technology new, but it promises to disrupt nearly every existing industry. Many companies claim to be using RPA or AI in some capacity. This hype cycle can lead to overexaggerated marketing claims and overpromised development results, a
TODAY, THE GLOBAL RPA MARKET HAS EMERGED AS A US$ 100 BILLION OPPORTUNITY, ACCORDING TO KEYBANC CAPITAL MARKETS. GARTNER FURTHER ESTIMATES THAT BY THE END OF NEXT YEAR, 40 PER CENT OF LARGE ENTERPRISES WILL HAVE DEPLOYED RPA SOFTWARE, UP FROM LESS THAN 10 PER CENT TODAY
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Cover Story
Suman Reddy
Peter Gartenberg
MD,Pegasystems India
MD & President, Blue Prism
phenomenon currently referred to as ‘AI washing’. The issue is to promote authentic engagement and motivation across an organisation by building real and valuable relationships and not overpromising to customers or employees.” Another leading RPA player, UiPath believes that automation is the future of work — the companies that think automation-first adapt, thrive, and win while global productivity drastically increases. Raghunath Subramanian, President and CEO India, UiPath says, “We are at the beginning of the RPA revolution where several emerging technologies like AI and machine learning will converge to drive innovation and agility. With RPA not confined to a single vertical or industry, we find use cases across all industry verticals and business horizontals. On the flip side, this unprecedented market growth also poses a challenge as we need to keep pace with the rapid product evolution process and ensure the availability of an RPA talent pool.”
industries. RPA is developing as a true horizontal phenomenon for every industry. There has been significant adoption of RPA solutions by GICs, financial institutions, telecom service providers, technology and manufacturing companies. Players like Automation Anywhere have met as many as 500 clients in the last three months, most of which are from the technology side. “Companies like ANZ Global Hubs and Adani Group have started implementing RPA, as they have the objective to bring next wave of efficiency, controls, and speed of execution. The intention for organisations is to create in-house, scalable and agile Centre of
Early movers to RPA With the boom in the RPA industry, a new genre of jobs has been created. The need for trained developers in RPA and AI has increased immensely due to rapid adoption of RPA across
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Excellence (CoE), which not only caters to the finance function, but also other domains like HR, admin, procurement, stores, MDM, marketing and other corporate functions. We have seen unprecedented ecosystem growth in the first quarter of 2019, with more than 2,800 customer entities and 1,600 enterprise brands using the company’s intelligent RPA platform. This growth reinforces the company’s position as the industry’s most widely deployed, enterprisegrade RPA solution,” informs Sheth. Reddy at Pegasystems India says, “We recommend companies to identify their most critical tasks that would benefit from RPA and begin transforming processes gradually. This is resulting in a lot of traction because it helps companies get started on digital transformation and remain competitive without overhauling their entire IT system. However, to be truly digital from endto-end over time, they should look at Digital Process Automation (DPA). RPA gives them a head-start to make quick fixes while they implement ways for more permanent fixes through long-term measures like DPA. Customers like the Government of Andhra Pradesh are leveraging the power of DPA, while firms in other industries are realising the benefits of long-term process fixes, as opposed to short-term fixes that are prone to break and derail their digital transformation efforts.” Peter Gartenberg, Managing Director and President, Indian subcontinent, Blue Prism, mentions that Blue Prism's Connected RPA is being deployed across thousands of processes in every vertical sector. “More recently, organisations are leveraging Blue Prism’s deep AI expertise and ‘connected’ ecosystem to automate or completely reimagine their processes to deliver far superior customer experiences and business process execution (e.g. rapid loan processing, client onboarding, 24/7 self-service, KYC, etc).”
RPA to redefine new jobs Given automation is intrinsic to
RPA
RPA, there is concern about potential job losses, especially in areas and processes involving lower-end tasks. This is where RPA providers and the industry can play a leadership role in providing the right guidance as the industry evolves. Industry players feel RPA can create new job opportunities in the range of 290,000 to 320,000 over the next two-three years. With the advent of technology, middle-skill jobs such as clerical workers and machine operators decline while both high-skill and lowskill roles increase. There is a positive correlation between new technology and jobs in all sectors. In fact, technology ensures that human potential is used to the fullest. Especially for India, wherein if process offshoring industry automates more, it will be on the forefront of defining the jobs of the future – rather than just doing the jobs outsourced by nations in a much
cheaper, faster and efficient way. “India is moving from a processing hub to an innovation capital. We can see this with the growth of GICs in our country. In such a scenario, RPA will, in turn, enable millions of people to focus on jobs that are truly innovative and creative. In addition,
RPA IS DEVELOPING AS A TRUE HORIZONTAL PHENOMENON FOR EVERY INDUSTRY. THERE HAS BEEN SIGNIFICANT ADOPTION OF RPA SOLUTIONS BY GICS, FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS, TELECOM SERVICE PROVIDERS, TECHNOLOGY AND MANUFACTURING COMPANIES
India is also emerging as the automation capital of the world, leveraging the power of bots to automate mundane business processes and at the same time liberating human beings from it to take on more intellectual work,” Sheth explains. Gartenberg adds, “While there will certainly be some replacement of current tasks or jobs, in many cases we are seeing Blue Prism being utilized to transform/reimagine processes to create entirely new capabilities and customer experiences. Much of these Blue Prism driven transformations are not necessarily replacing people, but rather providing a service or process throughput that was not available previously.”
Driving new RPA initiatives Most RPA players are having a mix of direct and indirect GTM and
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Cover Story
working aggressively to build a strong channel network as well as R&D capabilities. There is a significant gap between the demand for RPA experts and the supply. Companies are trying out different strategies to narrow it. In the case of UiPath, right now, the company has 60 people in product development team at the Indian R&D centre, and aims to increase this number by at least four times in the next two-three years. “We are constantly working towards the development of the RPA ecosystem by educating and upskilling the talent pool and creating awareness around RPA. We would be setting up an automation factory for global delivery and an Automation Immersion Lab to showcase the latest advances in our product capabilities,” says Subramanian. The company has numerous tie-ups with educational institutions to incorporate RPA in the
AS RPA CONTINUES TO BLOOM, INDIA IS IN A FANTASTIC POSITION TO EMERGE A FRONT-RUNNER IN THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE INDUSTRY AND BENEFIT GREATLY FROM THIS OPPORTUNITY curriculum. Its channel partners provide in-house training to customers to give them a better understanding of the technology. Automation Anywhere prefers the channel to work with partners and deliver Digital Workforce Platform as a complete solution. It has partners across categories including all the big five professional services firms, all the top five IT services and consulting firms and hundreds of value-added resellers through its distribution partner, Tech Data. “We also offer our solution online to customers through our bot-store, where our customers can download pre-configured bots by role and function. Most of these bots in the
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CASE STUDIES
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very single customer is thinking about digital transformation. They all talk about how they want to be on their journey to adopting automation and RPA by 2020-21. Most of them have already taken some baby steps, implementing at least one form of automation, exploiting one product of RPA and so on. They are now looking at expanding beyond the one or two processes they might have used as proof of concept, to take it to multiple processes, multiple bots and across functional lines of business as well. Here are some of examples:
◗ Bancolombia: With bots from Automation Anywhere, Bancolombia was able to sift through structured, semi-structured, and unstructured customer data to transform their BPM. Bots automated hundreds of processes and greatly increasing back office efficiency, saving Bancolombia a significant amount of time servicing customers. This led to an increase in CSAT numbers and created additional revenue streams. Thomas Cook Group saw a need for consolidation and standardisation of processes to make sure multiple stakeholders receive a (best in class) experience. Thus, arrived the need for standardising and consolidating the HR and finance throughout the group level. There was a need for an operational back end that responds much faster, efficiently and accurately. Thomas Cook then decided to explore the benefits of RPA. They started by doing a POC and then extended it to more processes in the finance department. In the travel business, customers expect a quick response which now RPA is helping them to achieve. ◗
The Government of Andhra Pradesh (GoAP): GoAP select edthe Pega Government Platform as the technology backbone for e-Pragati – a new centralised government portal that aims to integrate all departments, streamline services and drive higher citizen satisfaction. As one of the world’s largest and most complex government digital transformation projects, the initiative helps connect the state’s beneficiaries to 33 departments, 315 agencies, and 745 citizen services.
bot-store are developed by our partners. We are looking to sign more partners across industries and regions as we scale our business in India. We plan to hire over 300 new engineering and operations experts in India this year, to support the growing demand. We are also opening offices in Delhi, Pune and Hyderabad. We have three engineering centres in India (two in Bengaluru and one in Baroda). The Baroda centre is also the customer success centre where we work closely with the clients to better understand their needs,” Sheth adds. Similarly for Pegasystems, India forms a critical arm of growth strategy, as most of its globally-
recognised products are built from here. “We work on niche solutions from our India centres, to serve industries growing in complexity and increasing customer expectations. We leverage the latest technologies like NLP, predictive analytics and robotics through our 1600 strong developer workforce in India,” states Reddy of Pegasystems. RPA is emerging as the most affordable and flexible option for organisations to position themselves for long-term success. As RPA continues to bloom, India is in a fantastic position to emerge a frontrunner in the establishment of the industry and benefit greatly from this opportunity.
RPA
WHY SHOULD WE CHANNEL AND PARTNER RPA ? With channel partners focusing on implementing new and emerging technologies, Robotic Process Automation is yet another excellent business opportunity for them across diverse industry verticals Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com
T
oday, when businesses are multi-dimensional, technology needs to be super fluid. Organisations can't afford to be sitting in the era of technology monologues. An all-
encompassing technology dialogue is the need of hour, with adoption of technology trends like Robotic Process Automation (RPA). RPA, the offshoot of artificial intelligence, has many aspects that curate the entire system successfully, when the correct mould is fixed. And who else does the mould fitting better
than the channel ecosystem, which is the lifeline for vendors and enterprises alike. Channel partners are the ones who understand customers' requirements and capacity in terms of scale and monetary quotient. They are constantly exploring how best to satisfy a client’s latest requirements using modern tools and techniques.
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Cover Story
Amit Ray
Radhakrishnan R
MD,Protiviti India Member Firm
AVP - Solutions,Infogain
The usage of RPA is multifold; it is used to automate repetitive tasks that would otherwise require one or more persons to perform manually. RPA uses software programs and robots to do the tasks performed by humans and can therefore almost completely remove people from these business processes. Undoubtedly, it is the way forward for the future. According to Market Watch research, “With rapid advancements in digitisation and information technology in countries like China, India and Japan, the Asia Pacific region is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the RPA market.” Not only are RPA applications faster, but also less prone to errors and can work 24x7. Businesses can retrain and upskill people replaced by these bots for more creative and selfsatisfying jobs. Examples of RPA use include verification of data on forms, extraction of data from forms, automating data entry, and computing tax on invoices. “RPA has been gaining considerable traction in India over the past three - four years as organisations look to automate repetitive, tedious tasks. As is the case with most emerging technologies. We typically see
customers starting with limited tactical RPA deployments and then scaling up. In India, early adopters of RPA include financial institutions, healthcare, retailers, aviation and BPO sectors. Ingram Micro is a firm believer in the transformational power of RPA and we have adopted UiPath globally within our organisation,” says Navneet Singh Bindra, Executive Director and Head of Advanced Solutions, Ingram Micro.
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Adoption of RPA in the Indian market With gradual unfolding of the
IT IS INTERESTING TO NOTE THAT RPA WAS ONE OF THE EIGHT TECHNOLOGIES THAT WAS IDENTIFIED AND UNVEILED IN THE FUTURE SKILLS PLATFORM WHICH WAS INAUGURATED LAST YEAR BY THE PRIME MINISTER. IT AIMS TO UPSKILL IT PROFESSIONALS IN EMERGING TECHNOLOGY AREAS
benefits of RPA, and the impending market maturity, this technology is making significant inroads. “RPA technologies are in high demand from companies in India. Currently, we see more enquiries from MNCs and large Indian corporates, as compared to mid-sized companies. Within a company, different divisions are adopting RPA technologies to improve efficiencies in their processes. We believe RPA adoption in India is going to only increase in the future, in line with the global trend. Early adopters for our RPA have been finance, taxation, operations, and HR. In terms of industry verticals our customers who are early adopters are from logistics, services (consulting/media and entertainment) and manufacturing sectors. We added more than a dozen bluechip companies as our customers in the last six months,” informs Srikant Krishnan, Co-Founder & Managing Director, dMACQ Software. It is interesting to note that RPA was one of the eight technologies that was identified and unveiled in the Future Skills platform which was inaugurated last year by the Prime Minister. It aims to upskill IT professionals in emerging technology areas. “The cost-effectiveness and easing of business processes are expected to drive the large-scale adoption of RPA. And, it is evident that RPA can grow across industries and verticals – like a horizontal phenomenon. Indian companies started slow, but now the adoption is occurring at a high rate. Sectors that are leading RPA adoption include BPO, BSFI and manufacturing. ICICI had adopted software robots to process financial transactions as early as 2016, with these robots executing over 10 lakh transactions per day,” says Radhakrishnan R, AVP – Solutions, Infogain.
Importance of partners in RPA deployment There is a plethora of opportunities for channel partners in every industry vertical and across all functions. “We work closely with customers
RPA
to identify use cases which can bring value in terms of time, resource optimisation, process efficiency and decreased overhead costs. For instance, we have worked with our customers for automating their invoice processing, order fulfilment, report generation, transactions reconciliation,etc,” says Rama Krishna, MD, Bodhtree Consulting. The role of a channel partner has transformed into that of a trusted advisor on implementation of new and emerging technologies. RPA gives channel partners a great opportunity to offer services around implementation, process analysis, integration and consulting. “For us, RPA is an integral part of a larger vision of “Connected Intelligence”, which aims to help
customers by enabling their business accomplish its key goals like cost, growth, risk, customer experience by
THE ROLE OF A CHANNEL PARTNER HAS TRANSFORMED INTO ONE OF A TRUSTED ADVISOR ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF NEW, EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES. RPA GIVES CHANNEL PARTNERS AN OPPORTUNITY TO OFFER SERVICES AROUND IMPLEMENTATION, PROCESS ANALYSIS, INTEGRATION AND CONSULTING
connecting all the facets of digital experience making automation the DNA of every business process and technology across all layers of enterprise. This helps in freeing up the human talent for creativity using emotional intelligence and design thinking while the machines assist humans with all other activities that involve, but are not limited to seeing, listening, sensing, thinking, learning, predicting and acting,” says Navneet Singh, Global Business Head, Intelligent Process Automation, Zensar Technologies.
Addressing market opportunities Automation and RPA, with their impact and advantages, form a very focused area and tend to have the highest management attention.
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Cover Story
Navneet Singh Bindra
Navneet Singh
Srikant Krishnan
Executive Director & Head of Advanced Solutions,Ingram Micro
Global Business Head,Intelligent Process Automation,Zensar Technologies
Co-Founder & Managing Director, dMACQ Software
“Our RPA team has almost tripled in size in the past one year. Our bot portfolio has increased and so have the capabilities of our bots. Most of our bots run on customer premises with no connection to the internet this significantly reduces any cybersecurity risks associated with using our bots. We can create structured information from unstructured data sources including the web. Our latest bots can also extract information from images. We have a client-side solution called dMACQ Studio, in addition to our server-side solution called dMACQ VisualParser - both of these solutions allow end users to directly customise bots on their own without any help from our customer support team,” says Srikant Krishnan. The RPA bots generally come with built-in data analytics capabilities that permit customers to visualise the current data profile. Experts are also working on multi-lingual bots that can extract information from several Indian and foreign language documents. “Like in any technology, skilled manpower is the main component in gearing up for any opportunity. It is one of the major success factors in good execution too. Having a constant
touch with customer challenges and knowing the software industry direction, we could predict an upcoming need for skilled resources in RPA long back. We have initiated an RPA practice much early, trained and enabled our teams. Immediately after training, we have started automating all our internal processes. Doing so gave us an insight into the real world issues quite early. It was a great indispensable learning experience. Once the practice is matured, the team is strengthened with addition of experts from the industry,” says Krishna.
Up-skilling and re-skilling of partners
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THE RPA BOTS GENERALLY COME WITH BUILT-IN DATA ANALYTICS CAPABILITIES THAT PERMIT CUSTOMERS TO VISUALISE THE CURRENT DATA PROFILE. EXPERTS ARE ALSO WORKING ON MULTI-LINGUAL BOTS THAT CAN EXTRACT INFORMATION FROM SEVERAL INDIAN AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE DOCUMENTS
A lot of the focus is on up-skilling and re-skilling. “We believe in democratisation of technical skills within our firm, hence we have a lot of programs, such as Build Your Bot hackathons, online training programs, partner run webinars, classroom programs and the likes, to promote awareness and familiarity with the technology across the firm at all levels. We have launched several programs which are open to all staff members with incentives to get themselves certified within a specific period of time. The success has been overwhelming. These technologies are not hard to pick and it becomes an important tool to keep the millennials and the Gen Zs engaged and motivated to work with us,” states Amit Ray, Managing Director, Data & Analytics, Protiviti India Member Firm. “Training sales teams and partners is crucial to a successful channel strategy for any product, especially for an emerging segment like RPA. We are fully cognizant of this need and are duly supported by our RPA vendors to meet the training needs. It is also very encouraging to see everyone take much interest in learning about this
RPA
Rama Krishna MD,Bodhtree Consulting new technology,” says Bindra.
How profitable is RPA for solution providers Though RPA implementation brings in lot of cost savings and other benefits to customers, it is not the same with service providers. “RPA engagements are short term based and will not run into long running contracts like in other technology. So, we don’t see RPA generating huge profit margins when an individual engagement is concerned. However, low profit margins can be compensated by volume of implementations. We keep the teams agile for swift implementations,” says Rama Krishna. RPA market is in a nascent stage in India and hence pricing standards vary. “With the presence of several foreign companies the pricing is competitive. Our charges are typically associated with the savings that the customer can achieve and range between three to five per cent of the savings (also depends on the volume). The potential to exponentially increase profit margins in this business is very high,” states Krishnan. “The business is profitable for sure. We typically works with our client on a full service model, which essentially
means that Zensar consultants help find opportunities for automation within the client enterprise, prioritise them with a business case, procures licenses, automates (implements) them and maintains the bots for a three to five year period. The profitability is built into the end to end managed service model,” mentions Singh of Zensar.
Deployment challenges Success of RPA deployments
THE PERFORMANCE OF THE SOFTWARE IS LIMITED TO THE SLOWEST PERFORMING APPLICATIONS IN THE ENTIRE VALUE CHAIN, HENCE DUE TO LEGACY APPLICATIONS, THE FULL POTENTIAL OF BOTS ARE OFTEN NOT REALISED. RPA HAS ACCESS TO A LOT OF INFORMATION SUCH AS FINANCIAL INFORMATION, PASSWORD, ETC., HENCE SECURITY MUST BE THE TOP PRIORITY
depends upon the process champions sharing their knowledge openly and accurately. “However, there is still plenty of mistrust, even fear, that they are helping in making their own jobs redundant, which causes resistance,” shares Ray. He further points out that the software needs to know all variants of a process to handle all possible scenarios, however, often no single person in the organisation would have the systemic knowledge. Moreover, process documentations often capture only the happy path scenario. RPA should not be used to automate a broken process. Technology cannot fix the process, contrary to inflated expectations about RPA. The performance of the software is limited to the slowest performing applications in the entire value chain, hence due to legacy applications, the full potential of bots are often not realised. RPA has access to a lot of information such as financial information, password, etc., hence security must be the top priority. Change management and operation of RPA is often a challenge, as though businesses own the asset, they have no experience managing the technology.
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IN THE RACE TO DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION, RPA LEADS THE WAY
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n the digital economy, enterprises are increasingly looking at automating every process that can help them improve their productivity and efficiency. As a technology, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) has come at the absolute right time, with many enterprises looking at RPA as a quick and easy way to automate manual tasks. In India, as expected, firms in the BFSI sector are leading the race, with many insurance and banking firms being the early adopters of RPA. Understanding the critical importance of RPA in the digital journey of enterprises, CRN India invited the views of CIOs from diverse industry verticals. We present below some of these perspectives.
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e are deploying portal technology for our public website, which also powers our mobile application. There is a process for deploying the 900 odd pages, from an editorial layer to a publishing layer. It goes through a three step process. Now, if it is to be done manually, it will take 100s of our marketing executives to deploy this from editorial to subscribe to the publishing layer, in the portal technology. and on the portal platform. We have used RPA where dozens of robots run in parallel and pick up 10s and 20s and 30s of these pages and complete this process in the matter of hours and days. So 900 pages we could publish within a period of three days, across this three-step process. This has helped us speed our time to market and
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MUNISH MITTAL GROUP HEAD-IT & CIO,HDFC BANK
speed up our go live. What this also does is that it gives us an opportunity to do this multiple times without human fatigue or errors. This is just a DevOps example. From an operations perspective, we have a de-duplication API that all the credit applications are subjected to multiple times for multiple levels of fraud screening, it is subjected to computing application scores, checking if it is a good credit / bad credit, etc. Earlier, the eye balling wherever there is not a perfect match, it was done by a human credit underwriter. We were able to introduce RPA where this eyeballing is done by robots. Today, 70-80 per cent of these eyeballing activities are now processed by the robots. So the turnover time for credit undertaking has drastically come down.
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VISHANT VORA CTO,VODAFONE IDEA
A ANUP PUROHIT CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER,YES BANK
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ome of the key processes that have been automated include the payment process where more than five lakh transactions are automated on monthly basis. Branch users upload two files (pdf and excel) on a BPM tool from which users download the files and process payment of the customers. RPA will automatically read requests uploaded on BPM by branches, perform OCR on the pdf file and compare it with the excel file. OCR review is followed by CBS review where records in the file are compared to CBS giving a list of matched and mismatched records. After CBS review, an API request file is generated by RPA which is then processed after completing the maker/checker. We have also used RPA and BPM for electricity expense claim automation for more than 1000 branches
automation of regulatory requirements. Overall, RPA has helped us improve our customer service significantly. We have also automated repetitive and mundane tasks related to GUI automation (Excel data, screen scraping, etc.) Already more than 50+ processes have gone live with 148 bots active in production till date
Evolution of RPA As with every wave of technology, expectations for RPA were higher than the practical capabilities of firstgeneration RPA tools warranted. Early automation programs were rushed into production without the benefit of analyst research, peer advice or published case studies. Some of these early programs have met expectations, but some have not.
RPA 2.0 at Yes Bank Benefits Today, there are near zero errors while processing transactions in 54 processes which have been automated. We have achieved a 12x boost in efficiency in most of the Excelbased processes. This has led to improved data governance, and improved quality and security. This has also helped in achieving
We are confident of more to come in the days ahead, including capabilities such as tightly integrated OCR, artificial intelligence and machine learning with RPA as a combined group of tools which can achieve the organisations’ goals of optimising business activities and address IT challenges in the digital age or fourth industrial revolution.
t our Network Operations Center in Pune, we have implemented RPA in a big way – we have been on this journey for years. However, there are human beings doing a significant amount of work to ensure that machine algorithms serve the needs of our business. We are doing similar things in network planning, network designing. We are using machine learning to ensure that decisions are much more predictable. Across Vodafone Idea, we have more than 200,0000 locations where we have cell sites operating. Each site creates hundreds of alarms, in case of incidences such as power failure. Earlier, we faced the challenge of proper analysis of these alarms, due to a huge number of alarms and inadequate manpower. However, using RPA, we have set clear algorithms to co-relate alarms with their respective incidents. This enables us to get intelligent analysis of these incidents. RPA is very crucial when you're dealing with high volumes of data. We have also used RPA in several other functions. For instance, in case of a power failure, we have created an algorithm which identifies the nearest technician using geo-locations and dispatches the work automatically. This ensures that the site gets restored in the minimum time possible. At Vodafone Idea, we are doing a massive transformation of our networks. As the networks of Vodafone and Idea have come together, we are ensuring that we implement the latest generation of technologies.
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Cover Story
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he service industry is evolving very fast, and technology has become the biggest boon for it. Given this, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), which is the use of software programmes with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning capabilities, has fast found favour with companies looking to upscale their systems and improve processes, to provide a better experience for users and customers. It is highly advantageous to handle manual, high-volume, repeatable tasks which require fixed logic, such as queries, calculations, reconciliations, refunds, automated responses, and acknowledgements, through RPA. By facilitating increased efficiency, rationalisation of manpower, and a significantly reduced turnaround time for such tasks, it is able to respond faster, better, and more accurately. Thus, we at Thomas Cook India decided to explore RPA and its benefits for our shared services. The aim of the shared services was to enable the consolidation and standardisation of HR and finance processes, and deliver an enhanced experience for our stakeholders. Our first objective was to identify the processes that could be integrated into the shared services setup. These included multiple units, which were accompanied by their own unique processes, highlighting the need for an operational back-end that has standard processes, responds fast to changing customer requirements, is more efficient, thus reducing overall cost of operations, and delivers accurate output impacting the business outcomes through measured metrics. This is where RPA was brought in where manual intervention in processes can be automated to make them more efficient and effective. We first conducted an end-to-end analysis of the process, in order to identify the best approach to implement RPA. However, our goal was not just to implement RPA, but also transformation. This required us to look at all the processes from end-to-end, and
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GEETA DEGAONKAR SENIOR VP SHARED SERVICES,THOMAS COOK (INDIA) carefully consider the aspects that needed to be fixed. As a result, we were able to ensure that only those processes were automated which were efficient, and had a maximum impact on customer experience, and not those which were broken. This is because the automation of a bad process cannot improve it, but instead, only result in repeated faulty outputs, with no beneficial impact on the efficiency; hence, we excluded them. RPA can be utilised by most of the currently existing processes, including HR and finance, which will help create maximum impact for our internal and external stakeholders. We have implemented RPA on critical reconciliations to help us assess potential risks on open items on a real-time basis. Currently, we have three RPAenabled processes and three bots in use, which have shown an improvement in efficiency by 40-50 per cent. By the end of this year, however, we aim to implement as many as
10 to 12 bots. Our pilot project has also been quite a successful experience. Our selection method for the pilot project was designed to prioritise inputs on our customer-facing process and transactional process. Our Proof Of Concept (POC) was quite successful, following which, we then presented it to our senior management, conducting an end-toend video documentation of how it helped maximise efficiency. This gave us tremendous confidence to move forward with the project. The alignment of the entire team within the organisation was another critical requirement, as RPA is a new technology. So, following the presentation with the senior management, we interacted with our HR teams, IT teams, and internal operation managers, among others, showcasing the POC and the efficiencies that could be gained by utilising it. This helped us bring in the necessary alignment within the organisation, along with gaining the support and backing of the senior management. We also needed to ensure that our IT department was aligned with the infra requirements, and other elements necessary for RPA implementation. This is because a large part of the existing infrastructure in organisations might be sufficient for certain transactions or processes, but for RPA, the requirements are more specific. Information gathering is a very critical step, since the subject matter expert (SME) or team leader's failure to provide the appropriate information to an RPA developer can significantly hinder the success of the coding and logic involved in it. Detailed planning, and a watertight project management plan, along with a team that could coordinate within the organisation and other stakeholders, while also looking at all the various milestones, raising red flags as necessary, and ensuring adherence to the appropriate time constraints, have together helped us achieve our first milestone on our RPA journey.
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GURURAJ RAO CIO,MAHINDRAAND MAHINDRA FINANCIAL SERVICES LTD (MMFSL)
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efore implementing RPA, it’s important to recognise, when RPA should be implemented. RPA is brought into action only in the absence of a standard API to transfer data between two systems, or when, one of the systems doesn’t permit an integration. Secondly, the process has to be adequately manual to be RPA enabled. It has to bring in minimum business benefits in terms of the man hours saved, accuracy of information, etc. The company has automated three processes. A post loan disbursement document collection process; The company has also automated bank statement reconciliation process. A couple of insurance processes are also in the process of getting automated. “In our case, RPA is implemented to automate process with regards to taking data from the document, submitted as a proof by the customer after the loan is disbursed. The data
has to be imported from an external website. There was no API enablement to this process. Every loan related document is downloaded after entering the Reference and key number. This is repeated for every document, which is done thousands of times on a monthly basis The RPA keys in the necessary numbers to make the numbers in the file available for download and stores in the required destination. This process has given us benefits because it works round the clock, provides the necessary controls with accuracy. Hitherto, this process was done manually. Dedicated human resource would key in the number and download the document from the website. The said process was supposed to be completed within days but the backlog was running into weeks. The activities now, are completed within the stipulated timeline and with accuracy, with a potential to operate at a much larger scale than before. The staff has been redeployed for other business activities.MMFSL is currently working with one vendor and the plan is to add one more. “The tools are bought and run by us on a subscription basis, over a cloud model and there is no perpetual license arrangement, whatsoever. Technically, the way it works is our system calls the cloud based tool which interacts with the external systems from which data has to be received and transferred,” explains Rao.
Learnings on implementing RPA Choose the right processes: The problem and the business benefit comes first and then accordingly, the tool has to be decided upon. We cannot decide to use RPA just because it’s an emerging technology, and then go about searching for the use case. Only if in case there are pain points such as if the systems you have, cannot be modified or integrated, then RPA is the right choice.
SHIV KUMAR BHASIN CTO,NSE
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iven that RPA is an emerging technology in the service industries, there are no standards or formally agreed upon industry controls specific to RPA. Indeed, this has been given little focus to date as the drivers have been around cost reduction and the adoption has been modest to date. There seem to be two starkly different ways that people think about automation and cyber security. While some believe that bots are basically invulnerable, since they never deviate from rules and are immune to the kind of curiosity that makes you click on a phishing email, others have nightmares about increasingly smarter robots going rogue on their networks, making them resist RPA altogether. Suddenly, your bot doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. It’s a fearful scenario that can be panic inducing. What do you do? Well, you obviously unplug it, but don’t leave it at that. There’s a reason the bot lost its mind, and it’s not because it has one of its own. You have to go back and reconstruct what happened (i.e. malicious or change in code/business logic or not appropriate change management or other misuse by an employee), which is why it’s so important to make sure that you have an audit log that records all activity. RPA is often promoted as a solution that can be deployed independently by a business unit. But like any other software solution, the IT and the information security departments must be critical stakeholders in planning, deploying, and managing the solution throughout its life cycle.
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Cover Story
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CICI Bank, in 2016, announced the deployment of ‘Software Robotics’ in over 200 business processes across various functions of the bank. The bank was one of the first in the country and among few, globally, to deploy ‘Software Robotics’ that emulates human actions to automate and perform repetitive, high volume and time consuming business tasks cutting across multiple applications. The software robots at ICICI Bank are configured to capture and interpret information from systems, recognise patterns and run business processes across multiple applications to execute activities including data entry and validation, automated formatting, multi-format message creation, text mining, workflow acceleration, reconciliations and currency exchange rate processing among others.
RPA Journey at ICICI Bank After three years, the bank is running 1350 business processes on RPA, which is currently being used in customer on-boarding, transaction processing, post transaction servicing, reconciliation, loan processing, where it involves moving data between systems. “RPA is used in a big way at ICICI Bank. In the area of operations, the bank, on a daily basis does 6.5mn transactions. Mammoth organisations having a baggage of legacy systems, have high use cases for RPA. The reason being, legacy setups are not tuned to work with API in many cases and thus RPA can be leveraged; they don’t have good data upload functionalities and even if it’s doable, conducting validations is an issue,” says Anubhuti Sanghai, Head – Operations and Customer Service, ICICI Bank. The actual building of the RPA tool began with the inhouse team working on it since 2012. The official announcement was made in 2016. ‘Corporate limits setup’ was the first process, that RPA was enabled for. The sanction for the corporate limit for fund and non fund based products is complex. Once the sanction is received, the disbursement is done. Subsequently, the data is stored in the
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BALAJI V V HEAD – BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY GROUP,ICICI BANK core banking solution (CBS). Hitherto, post the sanction, the processes were manual i.e the data was posted manually in the CBS after doing the necessary validations. With an investment of just two subject matter experts, a robot was built in a week to automate the process. Currently, close to 1350 business processes are running on RPA. In technology operations, there are thousands of processes that are RPA enabled. It involves, data being transferred from and to unconnected IT systems. In 2016, ICICI Bank announced automating over 200 processes. “However, they continued to be RPA enabled until they were fully dissolved into an automated system. So, the 200 processes were reduced to, for example 100 processes. They have now gone upto 1350. The function of the number of processes being run through RPA is dependant on the amount of digitisation of the overall systems in the bank, for example, the case of corporate
limits mentioned earlier, is now being API enabled. The sanctions system is now connected with the CBS via an API and thus no longer is there a need for it to be run through RPA,” says Balaji VV, Head – Business Technology Group, ICICI Bank. The more deep rooted an organisation moves towards digitisation, the more nuanced, the need for RPA. Currently the systems are partially digital and partially physical requiring the information take off and hand off. This is where the need of an RPA arises. However, the more business processes are digitised, removing the physical systems, it will take away the need for RPA kind of systems. “ICICI Bank is moving towards a service based architecture, which is primarily API based. Wherever API comes in, there is no need for RPA,” says Balaji.
Major RPA use cases ◗
Bank reconciliation: Faults in bank
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deployment of Software Robotics, the same activity is being performed in less than a minute,” states Balaji.
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ANUBHUTI SANGHAI, HEAD – OPERATIONS AND CUSTOMER SERVICE,ICICI BANK. reconciliation can lead to fraud. “ICICI Bank has acted in this regard. The bank is using RPA to reduce manual reconciliation and at times completely eliminate it. We have been using RPA over and above an automatic reconciliation team in the operations department. We use RPA to further bring down the false matches, which are coming in,” informs Sanghai ◗ Form 15G / 15H : Software robotics has been deployed to perform end to end process involving resolution of queries related to Form 15G / 15H. This form is a self-declaration form submitted by an individual for nondeduction of tax on interest income. There are lakhs of such forms that are processed annually in Q1 of the financial year. The activity would take around three days, but with software robotics, the turn-aroundtime has reduced from three days to same day closure with 100 per cent accuracy.
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ATM query resolution: This is the process of handling ICICI Bank customer queries who have encountered unsuccessful cash withdrawal while using an ICICI Bank ATM. Earlier, the turn-around-time for resolving such queries was seven days. Now, with software robotics, the resolution time has come down to four working hours Similarly, there are significant time efficiencies that have taken place for many business processes like, mobile number updation for internet banking alerts, ECS presentation for loan repayments, Aadhaar details validation importer-exporter code validations, debit card re-issuance to name a few among many others. “We have a process which involves fetching vehicle registration details field by field from the central motor registration repository (Vahan) and updating manually in our core system. Each record in a manual process used to take 10 minutes. With the
The automation team at ICICI Bank has 60 developers (30-35 fulltime with the bank and the rest are at vendor locations), who work on RPA and other kinds of automation like bots, AI, ML and physical bots. The same set of developers work on RPA for across functions like treasury, trade, retail, corporate, international operations, etc. Apart from developers, there are product, process experts, business analysts and a testing team. The testing cycle involves, IT, users (customers and employees), security testing done through a change management software. The RPA is put into production only after it passes through these cycles. The bank is working with 6-7 vendors for RPA. “We work on two models. Firstly, the development is given out to the vendor and secondly, the operations and the technology team work together,” says Sanghai. There are four levels of automation operational at ICICI Bank: RPA, bots, AI and ML and physical bots. “RPA is handled by three-four teams working under the operations team and one team under IT,” mentions Balaji. Technology and the operations team has graduated to a level where the IT team provides the front end access and the operations team has the people with the required skill sets to run the automation on their own without any help from IT.
Future roadmap and learnings ICICI Bank is moving into more complex automation, which is RPA + OCR + AI, ML. “It involves, going through multiple processes, picking data through OCR, running AI, ML on it and also validating the same data and updating an altogether different system,” says Sanghai. Companies should ultimately go for a services based architecture. Moving towards an end to end automated platform, which eliminates RPA over a period of time.
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Cover Story
RPA IS PERFECT FOR ELIMINATING NON VALUE ADDING TASKS In the intensely competitive insurance sector, HDFC Life is banking heavily on its technology strengths. Parvez Mulla, COO, HDFC Life, shares with EC, on how his firm is using emerging technologies such as AI and RPA to its advantage By Srikanth RP Can you take us through some of the recent technology initiatives that you have taken that has led to huge business impact? The world is changing at an accelerated pace enabled by spate of technological disruptions. These disruptions have matured in their life cycle and now have scalable use cases for enterprises. At HDFC Life, three years ago we saw the pace of these disruptions in evolving insurance market in China and started investing in technology initiatives. Our large scale tech enabled digital transformation gave us mobility platform across our sales journey. It digitised all our onboarding processes and made the journey smooth. We progressed from there to plug and play partner integration through APIs. We then built our data platform, started our cloud journey and then invested in data lake. We created multiple cognitive engines within HDFC Life. Separate technology teams were focusing on different areas. Our emerging tech team, ADCAT, developed a spate of tech products which could be use to simplify journeys. Nudge engine, Recommendation engine, Dedupe, Customer 360 were developed to enable personalising customer journeys. The Data Labs team worked on predictive modelling across the value chain helping us to reduce our claim settlement time from weeks to days. Our fraud analytics model and customer
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VOICE EMOTION ANALYSIS AND VOICE AUTHENTICATION ARE GOING LIVE SOON. WE ARE IN THE PROCESS OF DEVELOPING A RISK MITIGATION SOLUTION TO STRENGTHEN THE PAYOUT PROCESS AT OUR BRANCH OFFICES - THESE INCLUDE FACE MATCH AND SIGNATURE MATCH propensity models are extensively used by us and our partners. Our online learning platform mLearn, Geo based sales solution like InstaGo and people app mConnect have helped us drive better people engagement and satisfaction. We have launched a threeclick PASA (pre- approved sum assured) journey which shortens the customer buying process and makes it seamless on partner systems. HDFC Life has believed in using technology, not as an end in itself, but to serve to smoothen the customer journey and simplify the process for the customer.
How do you look at the usage of AI in your organisation? What is the impact that AI is making or has made? Long term businesses are built by
constantly focusing on understanding evolving customer needs. We have not searched for a use case for AI and force fitted it. We wanted a customer or business problem to be solved and we applied the relevant technology which served to address the problem. We have a data labs team created within HDFC Life having AI/ML specialists. We started with customer facing bots. Elle is a chat bot for customers, which handles 70 per cent of customer chats. The email bot handles 20 per cent of emails and Twitter bot was recently launched. We are in process of integrating all the bots on a common platform and adding Facebook and WhatsApp to the suite. We have an email sentiment analysis being used to understand customer complaints and queries. We are using voice bots for the revival calls to customers. We have worked on various machine learning algorithms to well as enable/augment underwriting, determine customer propensity, product recommendation and optimum ticket size, as well as predict future premium payments (persistency). Voice emotion analysis and voice authentication are going live soon. We are in the process of developing a risk mitigation solution to strengthen the payout process at our branch offices these include face match and signature match. Our process bots have enabled us to rationalise and relook at our processes. We have recently gone live with a beta launch of our new
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ELLE IS A CHAT BOT FOR CUSTOMERS,WHICH HANDLES 70 PER CENT OF CUSTOMER CHATS.THE EMAIL BOT HANDLES 20 PER CENT OF EMAILS AND TWITTER BOT WAS RECENTLY LAUNCHED. WE ARE IN PROCESS OF INTEGRATING ALLTHE BOTS ON A COMMON PLATFORM AND ADDING FACEBOOKAND WHATSAPPTO THE SUITE
hyperpersonalised incentive program which incentivises input triggers and desired behaviour amongst sales team member in our proprietary sales channels. This uses segmentation and dynamic programming to ensure that each sales team member is incentivised to maximise his individual achievement.
Relevance of RPA for your organisation? In what areas/business processes is it now being used? Insurance is a process centric, customer oriented business and a strong process drive creates predictable customer experience. The focus is not only to create documented processes across the functions, but also identify forms of waste in the processes by understanding the type and nature of activities as Value Addition (VA) and Non Value Adding (NVA), and its impact on quality, cost, time, etc. Also, we track the performance gaps/ opportunities through rigorous business reviews. RPA becomes the perfect approach towards eliminating the NVAs in the processes and bridge the gaps in performance through a non-
invasive, speedy delivery and cost efficient way. We have bots deployed in 26 functions of the organisation, spread across insurance value chain of new business, policy servicing, persistency, payout, claim enabling various touch points for customer facing and support functions. We are now processing our transactions, ranging from expert scrutiny of a new business case, providing a surrender quote, policy loan decisions, process payouts, etc., through bots.
Evolution of RPA in your firm - do you see RPA handling more complex operations now or in the future? Given the complexity of the insurance products, spread of processes across geographies, dynamic workforce, different partners, multi-distributor model and eco systems/ platforms; we at HFDC Life have strategically identified, experimented and deployed leading edge technologies including RPA to create a scale and competitive advantage. Hence after evaluating 40+ vendors, built first set of eight
bots in Oct’16 for our most complex process (customer initiated payout) and second set of three bots with the most complex function (actuarial). Post these two deployments and successfully ‘managing the change’, in next six months, we deployed 22 bots in FY17. Post this, we have been growing strength to strength in our bots penetration and used case complexity. Currently, there are 154 bots running across 26 functions, out of which 40 per cent of the bots are complex in nature! Further, we manage the real time adherence of these bots through a Super Bot and each of our bot has specific tangible benefits viz. TAT reduction, accuracy improvement, risk reduction, productivity improvement, etc. Now we are looking at RPA in conjunction to AI/ML, analytics, all put together, as ‘Cognitive BOTs’ to reimagine the processes and create a significant shift in the customer experience and business value creation. The future is all about how effectively we use technology to simplify complex scenarios of the value delivery processes.
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Startup Corner
DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION WITH WORKKEY WorkKey significantly reduces the time spent on tracking items and helps in planning and execution with its patent-filed infinite level nested task structure By Moumita Deb Choudhury orkKey, the flagship software brand under the parent company Trihund Solutions, is an enterprise communication product. In an exclusive interaction, Varun Bhutani, Founder and CEO, WorkKey, Trihund Solutions, talks about the digital transformation possible with workflow management solutions and the company's roadmap.
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also allows organisations to quickly evolve these processes and implement them. WorkKey enables such experiences for enterprises and saves countless hours for leaders and team members. Startups are leveraging deep tech knowledge to power ahead, A new breed of startups that have proprietary high technology are hoping they are part of the next big wave.
What is the role of Digital India for tech startups?
What are the essential guidelines for digital transformation, from legacy systems to platforms of the future?
Digital India initiative, for startups, is a good start but needs to be supported by conscious efforts by the government for it to be a huge success. What is required is more transparency on how Digital India can be beneficial to startups, entrepreneurs and providing more opportunities to showcase their products. A sapling which is planted but not nurtured dies. Similarly, the Digital India plan needs to nurture the startup ecosystem by watchful individuals, which is still missing as of now.
How are you delivering the most simple and effective workflow management experience to corporates and SMBs? An SMB is usually a founder/owner led business where few people are wearing multiple hats; this translates to agility which is a desirable and needed aspect in IT. The processes do change rapidly and it is important to address the ever changing needs of the customer in the simplest effective manner. We are also able to smoothly manage legacy systems and integrate seamlessly.
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Varun Bhutani, Founder and CEO,WorkKey,Trihund Solutions
Tell us about your Robotic Process Automation initiatives? RPA involves the computerisation of mundane rules-based business processes done manually. These tasks are often data-heavy and include, but aren’t limited to data entry, transactions, and compliance. In RPA, AI tools coupled with process automation aim to enhance the current processes, RPA replicates the current processes but does not really look at the structure. This is where WorkKey comes in. Its patent filed infinite level nested task structure has the capability to consume any process. WorkKey also allows the user to radically rethink the current processes, make changes and its simple nature allows it to rapidly integrate with current legacy systems. This flexibility
The process of digital transformation is enhancing the manner in which companies and startups perform and work, create products and services and reach out to the customers. In today’s fast paced, digitally powered world, keeping up with technology has never been more important. The need to stay on top of the game is powered by the need to keep data safe and secure, have continued access to old data even while new systems come into play; this is in essence the key need for digital transformation. From blockchain, AI, machine learning, automations, layoffs, culture, values, retention, strategy, tactics, especially when it comes to software as a service, digital transformation can illustrate a tremendous upsurge in development. Technology changes at a very rapid pace. When talking about digital, we can think of discovering new frontiers and using innovation and technologies to push business. It’s about finding new possibilities of an existing service in order to design and deliver a better
WorkKey
experience. This is an iterative process. After a few cycles, it will stabilise and your organisation will be on the way.
How, according to you, has patented technology turned out as a key competitive moat in the startup world? We are being recognised for a technology friendly approach for our customers, that is the reason we came up with our patent filed infinite level nested task structure. This task structure, coupled with customised reporting capabilities, ability to create discussion boards seamlessly for organisation wide communication and measure the impact coupled with AI capabilities affect the company's performance and employee engagement by leaps and bounds in a short span of time.
How are technology solutions providers attracting talent? Technology plays an important role in harnessing the true value of the team and can be used to develop a unique culture to suit the needs of your organisation. The quest for talent is a
never ending one. For example, our employee number count is 2.5 times the actual team size and this is only in the last couple of years. It is important to define great talent, especially when the organisation is in a startup phase. Of course, like attracts like and you need to have the essential core members who stay.
talent acquisition. Blockchain has the potential to make classical resumes and career networking websites like LinkedIn, Naukri.com, etc, obsolete and redundant. Through blockchain, the recruitment process can be heavily streamlined, making it easy for HR professionals to verify an individual’s past work history, experience, and education.
Is right talent hunting a challenge? Challenges include identifying, hiring and retaining talent. Every person is an important piece in creating great efficient teams. Finding the right talent that can align with your organisation’s visions and goals is not an easy feat.
Please give some insights on blockchain manpower and hiring trends? Blockchain is a digital ledger of economic transactions that can be programmed to record not just financial transactions but virtually everything of value. The opportunities are endless in incorporating blockchain technologies in various HR processes, especially when it comes to recruitment and
What is your roadmap for 2019-2020? The roadmap for 2019-2020 will be ongoing positioning of SaaS version for the large enterprises. While AI has been in use for a while now, its usage was quite limited. AI is already becoming a key area for driving innovation and is set to become pretty big. It has the potential to influence almost every facet of human lives — from what you purchase, to what you watch, to how you commute. Innovations like blockchain is the most secure form of storing and sharing information online that we’ve discovered so far. That’s why we are also in the process of figuring out how to apply the technology in different sectors.
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CXO Speak
JUNIPER NETWORKS: BRINGING SIMPLICITY TO NETWORKING US based networking solutions company, Juniper Networks, focuses on tackling network complexity for its clients. Complexity leads to billions of dollars of lost productivity. It exposes to security risks; it traps talent stuck keeping the lights on instead of innovating, which downright cripples some companies. It is the new hard problem to solve in IT. Juniper, which has as its hall of fame in its customer base with 17 of 20 world’s largest banks; seven of 10 top global universities; more than 1400 locations for national governments; 10 of 12 top technology companies; nine of 10 top global web service providers; and 10 of 10 world’s largest wireline and wireless telecom companies, is readying itself for more at all instances. In an interaction with Moumita Deb Choudhury, M Muthukumar, MD, Juniper Networks IEC spells more on Juniper’s forthcoming plans What are the networking industry trends in various domains and how is Juniper looking at addressing these trends through its products and solutions? The trends in networking are dynamic and interesting at the same time. The top trends can be elaborated as: ◗ Cloud networking: Cloud is engulfing the world whereby 50 per cent of enterprise applications will be in the cloud by 2020. Every single company is leveraging the cloud. Of course, the drivers here are economics (sometimes cheaper, but also you pay for what you use so you avoid stranded capital) and agility (you have a nearly limitless, on-demand resource pool). As the world moves digital and companies are afraid of getting disrupted (as many industries have), leveraging cloud is the way to play defense and ultimately offense for any business. ◗ Security: We are aware that every company must combat cyber threats. In fact, it will be a US$ 8 trillion-dollar fight
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JUNIPER NETWORKS AND MIST HAVE JOINED FORCES TO AUTOMATE SEVERAL KEY ELEMENTS OF THE IT STACK, CREATING A POWERFUL, COHESIVE SOLUTION THAT ENSURES A SUPERIOR ENDUSER EXPERIENCE—FROM THE WIRELESS EDGE, ACROSS THE WIRED LAN, TO THE WAN by 2022. Why is that? The number of threats continues to grow rapidly. And the bad actors are highly sophisticated and well-funded – they are nation states and organised cyber-crime. Cybersecurity is a Board of Directors level issue for every company because they don’t want to end up on the front page (in a bad way). The other challenge companies face is a severe shortage of qualified cybersecurity professionals (estimated that in 2020,
there will be two million unfilled cyber security jobs globally). More threats and fewer people mean that a new, automated approach is needed to stay ahead of the bad guys. ◗ Economics: People have an insatiable desire for new applications, video, etc., and enterprises are seeing their network traffic grow rapidly while their IT budgets are flat (if they are lucky). This puts a severe strain on existing networks, and this is where Juniper innovates to help its customers keep up with this traffic growth while not breaking the bank. There are also some emerging trends that will fundamentally shape how businesses approach IT and their networks as below. ◗ IoT is coming: Over 75 billion connected devices in 2025, that’s up from less than 10 billion today. Every business will have their infrastructure connected. We’ll have connected cities, cars, and manufacturing plants. All of this is a huge opportunity for new
Juniper Networks
applications and benefits, but it also will fundamentally change how networks need to run – many more endpoints and many more sessions to connect and to secure.
directly and enable service providers to offer them, enabling them to transform from connectivity providers to cloud service providers using MX and Contrail products. Fourthly, we build the cloud delivered enterprise whereby we enable enterprises to consume cloud infrastructure and services securely using EX, SRX, NFX and CSO offering.
◗ 5G is happening: We will start to see a ramp in deployments in 2019, starting in Asia and the U.S. And most mobile operators will be deploying by 2021. 5G will bring a new level of throughput and low latency to wireless. It will mark the first time where wireless can truly be an access replacement for wireline. It will fundamentally change how metro networks are built. ◗ AI/ML, Automation and Analytics: AI will be a critical differentiator for businesses. 72 percent of business leaders believe this because they know that data is the new currency. The companies that figure out how to harness the vast volumes of data they have access to, will have a competitive advantage because they’ll make smarter and faster product decisions and be able to deliver a differentiated customer experience. And companies that figure out how to monetize that data will be much more valuable than their competitors (for instance, Google, Amazon, Apple)
How is Juniper Networks developing a more scalable, reliable, secure and cost-effective solutions to their customers? Juniper Networks brings simplicity to networking with products, solutions and services that connect the world. Through engineering innovation, we remove the constraints and complexities of networking in the cloud era to solve the toughest challenges our customers and partners face daily for instance using a common operating system and a single, open orchestration platform, Juniper solutions help our customers manage the complexity of operating in different environments. Our strategy is about enabling cloud transformation around the four pillars. Firstly, Power public or private cloud data centers by using QFX, Contrail, SRX, PTX products and Enterprise Multi-cloud.
Juniper recently acquired Mist systems, provider of cloudmanaged wireless networks powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI). How has this acquisition enhanced Juniper’s enterprise networking portfolio?
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PEOPLE HAVE AN INSATIABLE DESIRE FOR NEW APPLICATIONS,VIDEO,ETC., AND ENTERPRISES ARE SEEING THEIR NETWORK TRAFFIC GROW RAPIDLY WHILE THEIR IT BUDGETS ARE FLAT (IFTHEYARE LUCKY). THIS PUTS A SEVERE STRAIN ON EXISTING NETWORKS, AND THIS IS WHERE JUNIPER INNOVATES TO HELP ITS CUSTOMERS KEEP UPWITH THIS TRAFFIC GROWTH WHILE NOT BREAKING THE BANK
Secondly, connect users and devices securely to the cloud and each otherwe build the best core, edge and metro network infrastructure for connecting users to the cloud using PTX, MX, ACX, SRX products. Thirdly, by building and managing distributed clouds whereby we build SaaS deployment models for our Enterprise offerings. We offer them
Juniper Networks and Mist have joined forces to automate several key elements of the IT stack, creating a powerful, cohesive solution that ensures a superior end-user experience—from the wireless edge, across the wired LAN, to the WAN. Working together, Juniper and Mist deliver end-to-end visibility, simplicity, and exceptional performance to streamline IT operations powered by AI.
What is your road map for the rest of 2019 and early 2020? We are actively open sourcing some of our technology like contrail via Tungsten Fabric, and building open source communities around various automation mechanism for Juniper products like healthbot, JET etc. We are also enabling partner as well as open ecosystem software like SONiC etc. on Juniper platforms while enabling pieces of Juniper technology on third party hardware. The biggest differentiator for us has been the assurance with which we have delivered these solutions to the production. Contrail is the classic proof of that, and we are replicating the same at a rapid pace as we take it to SDWAN, SDEnterprise. We have partnered with seasoned solution providers like RedHat, Nutanix couple with our powerful professional services arm to ensure our solutions reach the deployments with the assurance that customers have traditionally come to expect from Juniper.
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News Analysis
WHAT IS SO SPECIAL ABOUT IVALUE’S DNA ? It is a rarity for a home grown distributor to attract international investments, and the fact that iValue InfoSolutions has made it possible, is a a mark of significant achievement Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com
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ome grown value added distributor, iValue InfoSolutions which provides solutions around data, network and application (DNA) for businesses, has direct partnership with over 35 OEMs and has over 6,000 customers through over 700 partners. The company boasts of over 100 complementing offerings in the digital transformation area and adds over 600 new customers every year, which are then leveraged for cross and up sell of other OEM offerings on an ongoing basis. Yes, the customer and partner base numbers are conspicuous. But it's not just the numbers which set the distribution company apart. The brand power of iValue has made it possible to corner international investments, which is a rarity for distributors and hence a notable achievement. Recently, Sundara (Mauritius), an affiliate of Creador, has invested US$ 18 million for a significant minority stake in iValue. The investment will provide further momentum to iValue’s efforts in gaining superior market share in the cybersecurity market, by expanding to newer geographies, adding newer technology OEMs to their portfolio, executing larger projects for the current OEMs and growing inorganically through acquisitions. iValue has grown four to five times the market growth rate in the last 10 years. “We have reached a critical stage wherein this investment would actually help us transform to the next level,” says Srinivasan Sriram, Co-Founder and CSO, iValue InfoSolutions.
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THE COMPANY ALSO PLANS FOR INORGANIC GROWTH – IT IS ACTIVELY LOOKING AT CONSULTING AND PLATFORM BASED CYBERSECURITY SERVICE FIRMS WHICH WILL COMPLEMENT ITS CAPABILITY AND ADD TO PARTNER AND CUSTOMER NEEDS IN THE DNA MANAGEMENT AREA Market position iValue is a technology enabler in the DNA management space with skills in consulting, design, deployment and integration based on the partner needs to meet customer business and IT challenges. “Our approach is consultative. We understand the key business and IT challenges and offer customised and optimised solutions in partnership with a partner as per the customer's choice. The team at iValue has been focused on DNA management for the past 20 years. This focused approach has helped in building expertise across technologies, verticals, compliances and geographical needs. This helps develop industry contacts and relationship across the OEM, customer, partner and consultants base, resulting in over four times market growth rate consistently over the years,” claims Sriram. “iValue’s unique GTM strategy aligns business development activities in line with offerings' maturity in product life cycle evolution, thus creating a scalable and sustainable business. Also, customer lifecycle
adoption through analytics provides a ready-made platform for current and new OEMs to target the right set of customers in all the geographies for specific set of solutions, across more than 6,000 customers. This helps in focused and targeted business development leading to faster growth for both OEMs and partners with iValue,” he says.
Leveraging partnership with Creador The partnership is aimed at five broad focused investment and growth areas. The company is expanding its Data Network and Application offerings with greater focus on corporate and enterprise sector. From a geography perspective, it is planning to further invest and expand to new geographies in India, SAARC, Middle East and Africa. “The VAD also plans to invest in transforming internal capabilities on the technology front, focusing around governance, risk and compliance areas, with an objective to complement the skill sets of our OEM and partner teams for effectively addressing emerging customer needs in their digital transformation. It focuses to build consulting and service revenues around its OEM and partner needs,” Sriram adds. iValue plans to strengthen its GTM team across locations, countries and verticals including BFSI, enterprise and government practices with partner focused teams, solution focused teams and technology focused teams with a view to maximise big ticket opportunities. It is also making its digital sales engine strong with a view to provide validated leads to its focused partners.
iValue
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FROM A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE,CUSTOMERS ARE CONCERNED ABOUT HOWWELLTHE DATA GETS STORED,MANAGED, ENRICHED,AND LEVERAGED FOR ANALYTICS PURPOSE SO THATTHE BUSINESS CAN LEVERAGE THAT FOR THEIR GROWTH AND PROFITABILITY SRIRAM SRINIVASAN CO-FOUNDER & CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER AT IVALUE INFOSOLUTIONS
The company also plans for inorganic growth – it is actively looking at consulting and platform based cybersecurity service firms which will complement its capability and add to partner and customer needs in the DNA management area.
iValue's solutions around DNA iValue's focus around DNA covers solutions in data protection and management, network protection and management and application protection and management. “Predominantly customer buys IT for application. So from an application standpoint, we try to focus on the criticality of application, application availability, application performance, application security, and application scalability. Underlying the application is the network, which hosts the application. Now data has moved from text to video and due to this the networks are getting clogged and performance of application is getting impacted. So we put a lot of emphasis on how to optimise the network so that
application performance doesn’t get impacted due to the underlying change in the type of data which is going through the application in the network. That is what we try and do at the network layering” comments Sriram. “Since data is the new oil and the new intelligence, it is the only differentiator for any business. From a business perspective, customers are concerned about how well the data gets stored, managed, enriched, and leveraged for analytics purpose so that the business can leverage that for growth and profitability,” he further adds. iValue has also categorised the offerings from digital transformation initiatives of the customer such as security analytics, availability performance management from application and network perspective and next-gen security as the type of threats at the present scenario are tremendously high. India has been growing very consistently in the last 20 years. Over the period, the customer network and
security data centres have become complex through multiple initiatives, wherein some technologies become obsolete and new applications are being added with time. Data centre refresh, hence, is an ongoing activity at most companies transitioning to a hybrid model for greater flexibility to leverage both private and public cloud. “A hybrid scenario where data can be moved from private to public cloud or between public clouds or vice-versa that is the architecture and flexibility customers want in their data centres and we work with them to fulfill that objective,” he says. The company has already cemented its position in 10 locations in India. “In the East, we have had presence for over seven years. So from India we are looking at SAARC, and beyond SAARC we are looking at Africa, where we already have established a presence for the last three years. And we are also adding Middle East to our geographical coverage,” Sriram concludes.
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News Analysis
LEXMARK REAFFIRMS ITS COMMITMENT TO THE PRINTING MARKET IN INDIA Lexmark is partnering with Delhi based IT distributor house, Iris Global Services, for positioning its range of printers in SMB, enterprises and the government sector Sandhya Michu sandhya.michu@expressindia.com
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fter US printer manufacturer Lexmark was bought by a Chinese-led group and recent rijig at global management, the Indian arm of Lexmark International has renewed its focus on the local market. The company has partnered with 23-year-old IT distributor house, Iris Global Services, as a part of the value-added distribution agreement. Under the new partnership, Iris will be responsible for positioning the Lexmark range of printers into SMB, enterprise and government tendering opportunities. To mark this partnership, the global team of Lexmark including Paul Merritt, Vice President, Worldwide Velocity Channel Sales; Sabrina Hall, Director, Worldwide Channel Business Development; and David Tay, General Manager, Channels, Asia Pacific from the US and Singapore respectively, visited India to reaffirm their commitment towards the channel market in the country. The company launched two A4 laser printers - Mono and MFP models, as part of the GoLine series. The company has priced these two printers aggressively and looking to have a decent market share in the SMB and enterprise segments with the support of Iris' partnership. Speaking to CRN, Merritt said, “The new Lexmark is all about Empowered, Enabled and Incented. In the past, we were more focused on enterprise led partner fulfillment, but with new
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WE EXPECT OUR BUSINESS TO GROW BYANOTHER 25 TO 30 PER CENT IN SCS MARKET IN THE FY 19-20.WE HAVE BEEN INVESTING SPECIALISED STANDARDS BASED TCAPABILITIES SIGNIFICANTLY SANJIV KRISHEN, CHAIRMAN,IRIS GLOBAL SERVICES
Chinese ownership, we have been working towards channel and distribution go to market. We started this indirect sales model last year in North America, followed by Europe and now in Asia Pacific. In North America, we have moved back 2000 direct accounts to our channel and we are building channel collaborations and tapping new markets. In India, we will exhibit our global market leadership in MPS and enterprise and will replicate the expertise and solutions in India by adding Iris on board.” The company unveiled the Lexmark Two Series that has been designed to securely print, copy, fax and scan, all within a compact and easy-to-use device. Its rapid printing capability of 34 pages per minute (A4), option of standard two-sided printing and Standard Wi-Fi enhanced connectivity supports mobile users. Its full-spectrum security ensures protection for enterprise-class devices. The printers are compact, lightweight, easy to move or tuck into tight spaces, and weigh around 6.8 kg and 10 kg respectively. In addition to printing, the latter also scans up to 25 pages per minute.Hall, further stated “Lexmark is helping customers minimise costs by intentionally engineering devices to be tough workhorses, packed with power, speed, and built to last,” he says. In the last 10 years of Lexmark's presence in India, the company has largely been catering to corporates and enterprises with selected partners. But with the new range of printers coming into the fold, starting under `10,000, the
Iris Global Services
company has opened its market for SMBs, education, retail, government as well as enterprise. “Despite the small size and weight of our printers, we have retained the signature Lexmark features that our customers know and love. Their energy management features reduce power consumption and is friendly both to the environment and small business budgets,” added Chris White, Lexmark’s Director of Product Marketing. Giving the perspective of local business, Rajesh Onkar, Country Manager, Lexmark India, who is with Lexmark for the last seven years in Bengaluru, informed, “Previously, we were centered around the enterprise, but as the printing market holds more opportunities in SMBs. We have entered into this price-sensitive segment with the competitive range of single function printer (B2236) at `6900 and MFPs (MB2236), priced at `17,000. So far, we have an installed base of 50,000 devices and we are working with 120 existing partners. With Iris, we will align our existing as well add new partners into our business. While the product after sales service and support will be handled by Lexmark directly.”
Operationally, Lexmark India’s business will be part of Asia Pacific region under David Tay in Singapore. “The Lexmark takeover would allow reaching the next level of growth and innovation faster than as a standalone company. With the consortium’s resources, we will be able to continue to invest in and grow the business to more fully penetrate the Asia-Pacific market for hardware, software and managed print services,” said Tay. Since Iris is a new distributor for Lexmark printers, it has set a target to close revenue of over `50 crore with Lexmark this fiscal year and is looking to grow by 35 per cent. Sanjiv Krishen, Chairman, Iris Global Services, stated, “Lexmark printers technologically and commercially are more reliable. Being a part of IBM, it has the strength and applicability of technology and we see intent and seriousness from Lexmark’s global team to grow its India business. In the US, all major banks and industries use Lexmark. In India, they have not been actively present. We are well prepared with our channel and distribution experience to position Lexmark printers for SMBs.”
Krishen highlighted, “We are excited to bring Lexmark printers into our distribution network. Though they have already been in the market for the last decade, their special interests in the Small Micro Workgroups makes their potential phenomenal. Following the recent elections and as India enters a growth trajectory, business is looking up and we are expecting to close revenue of over `50 crore with Lexmark this fiscal year.” Kamini Talwar, Director, Iris Computers added, “In India, we have not seen any major technology disruption in printing space in the last one decade. The market for laser A4 printers has been witnessing a growth and printing needs have been on the rise. We will help Lexmark printers and supplies grow in the channel business.” Currently, Iris has a portfolio of 16 IT and non-IT brands. The company has made its foray into Iris Woods and is looking to clock `1800 turnover in this fiscal year. The Delhi based distributor has started doing dollar billing for some of its brands. Among all the brands, Dell is one of the strongest brands for Iris, with which it does `300 crore worth business annually.
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CXO Speak
WHY DELL INDIA R&D CENTER QUESTIONS THE STATUS QUO? Dell Technologies spends US$ 4.5 billion annually on research, with India's R&D facility in Bengaluru playing a significant role in bringing forth innovation Moumita Deb Choudhury moumita.choudhury@expressindia.com
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ell Technologies' commitment to innovation and R&D is US$ 4.5 billion annually. This, along with the right culture and nurturing ideas, and producing brilliance from the incubation stage, is part of the organisation's ethos. The India R&D facility is of global level, both in terms of magnitude and the potential of spinning out innovations. “For Dell Technologies, the conversation inside the organisation is about having the culture of questioning the status quo,” says Rudramuni B, Vice President & India R&D Head, Dell Technologies. “By doing this, we encourage team members to question why are we doing a particular thing in a certain way, or can it be done better, and are there other options which can be explored. These options are nothing, but ideas. Each one of them can result in something very large and can bring a change to the entire ecosystem. Dell’s R&D unit has been here for 18 years now and thus the culture of innovation has been well established,” he adds.
Pioneering innovation Dell is faced with competition for most of its products. “For every product and solution – for instance switches or servers – there is competition. Now the catch is that products of several other companies can do one task at a time; where we stand out is that we table all of them under one umbrella – starting
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IN INDIA THERE EXIST A NEED TO ASSIST THE SMALL TO MEDIUM ENTERPRISES. THERE ARE SEVERAL THOUSANDS OF THEM IN THE COUNTRY NOW WHO MAY BENEFIT FROM DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION from an end-user machine, which is the client machine desktop/laptops and that’s outside of the data centre. Inside the data centre, all the three major components – servers, storage and switches – we are putting them together knowing that convergence is the trend, or may be convergence of the hyper-convergence” remarks Rudramuni B. “That is at the infrastructure level. Now, at the same time, the usage or the so-called use cases are of different types compared to how it used to be a couple of years ago. The decision makers who build IT infrastructure are also changing. Earlier, we used to get involved with CIOs to buy server, storage or networking solutions. But now there are service providers to whom the CIOs go and buy the compute needs or storage needs. So there is one hop in between. This means the set of service providers would offer the infrastructure as a service or software as a service. This way, the service providers are becoming the decision makers and
they are the ones who we would go and work with. So, it is changing in that direction,” he adds. Dell is in tune with the modern day technology demands and shaping products and solutions accordingly.
All about motivation In India, it is not about the R&D alone when Dell spells innovation. “We have a huge footprint of a variety of business units across cities and centres in India. The members of each centre have been trained and motivated. Ofcourse, the result coming from each one of them may not give rise to a product feature, because all of them are not directly contributing to the product. Some of them are purely for internal applications. The culture of innovation has gone way beyond R&D, which has been very well established. Now several more things have to be done to make sure that there is constant encouragement,” says Rudramuni B. “When the idea owners actually see the success of implementing their idea, it’s a time to celebrate, award and reward,” he informs.
Trend trotting Today the so-called immersive and collaborative technologies along with the set of processes that organisations are always using along with the resources that they have, is changing the way new technologies like AR, VR, IoT or AI are being deployed. This also influences how they will function at a task level. “What all can be automated versus
Dell R&D
how much more efficiently can it be done is the question. Also, to what extent can they be done remotely. As per the trend a variety of such such possibilities are emerging in the AR and VR domain. It completely depends on whether the industry is trying to use it; or what is the size of the workforce. All of these are actually making a difference in how businesses would transform themselves,” he states. Rudramuni informs that the backend of it is the IT infrastructure, which is running AR, VR type of applications and in a way that can be highly reliable, and meets certain expectations of the performance. So that’s where it touches the infrastructure part. Another trend again is more to do with IoT, which is extremely data-oriented. “We keep on hearing that data is the fuel. So if data is the fuel, computation becomes the engine. If that fuel is becoming larger, as huge amount of data is getting generated, we need to ensure that the engine is also getting ready to either store the data or scrub the data, manage the data or analyse it. And all of that happens finally in computation. So we ensure that our servers are getting ready for it,” he points out. “That’s where it touches the infrastructure again. Considering cloud and its elastic nature, the multi-cloud environment kicks in and it is very practical from an end user perspective. To depend on multi-cloud for businesses is very useful as they do not have to depend on one type of cloud because a number of times, it may not meet all of their requirements,”he says. Speaking about AI trends, Rudramuni explains, “AI, obviously, has more to do with whether it is compute intensive or IO intensive or memory intensive. All that depends on what kind of AI algorithms will run on it. Thus, these are the emerging workloads, or the middle wares, which run TensorFlow is some of them. Now, it has to be compute intensive to run such a highly mathematic- oriented algorithm. If the regular CPU is going to be used for that purpose for large data models or data sets, it may not be sufficient. And this is where we go and
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BY DOING THIS WE ENCOURAGE TEAM MEMBERS TO QUESTION WHY ARE WE DOING A PARTICULAR THING IN A CERTAIN WAY? OR CAN IT BE DONE BETTER? AND ARE THERE OTHER OPTIONS WHICH CAN BE EXPLORED? THESE OPTIONS ARE NOTHING BUT IDEAS.EACH ONE OF THEM CAN RESULT IN SOMETHING VERY,VERY LARGE AND CAN BRING A CHANGE TO THE ENTIRE ECOSYSTEM.DELL’S R&D UNIT HAS BEEN HERE FOR 18 YEARS NOWAND THUS THE CULTURE OF INNOVATION HAS BEEN VERYWELL ESTABLISHED RUDRAMUNI B, VICE PRESIDENT & INDIA R&D HEAD,DELLTECHNOLOGIES
study a lot more in depth and work on designing our servers considering how the memory subsystem, compute subsystem or the IO subsystem has to be changed.”
India index According to Rudramuni, in India there exist a need to assist the small to medium enterprises. There are several thousands of them in the country now who may benefit from digital transformation. “Now, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Dell, along with a couple of more partners have launched a
Center for Digital Transformation, a nonprofit initiative under the umbrella of CII. The intention is to bring together the so-called technology seekers, technology users, technology provider,” he mentions. “Together we are trying to ensure a knowledge transfer, because the small to medium organisations need to be educated on what is the meaning of a digital transformation. It has to be a multi-year journey since cash flow is always a constraint. There is a need to practice phased investment method which will reflect well for their return on investment,” he states.
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Event
Representatives from Alibaba Cloud launched China Gateway Program with eight local partners in Singapore
ALIBABA CLOUD SUMMIT: GATEWAY FOR APAC SMES AND ENTERPRISES Based on the theme 'In Asia, for Asia', Alibaba Cloud Summit, held recently in Singapore, highlighted the company's focus outside China, as it looks to expand its footprint across countries like India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia and Malaysia Sandhya Michu sandhya.michu@expressindia.com
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libaba, a Chinese multinational conglomerate holding company specialising in e-commerce, retail, payments, internet, and technology, has set the roadmap to accelerate its growth outside the China market. The company has been eager to scale its operations beyond China. The
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company has announced a slew of initiatives taken for Asia Pacific markets at the recently held Alibaba Cloud Summit in Singapore. The new initiatives will help grow its cloud ecosystem and allow entrepreneurs in the APAC region access to the China market. Interestingly, it was a first-of-its-kind regional summit, which Alibaba organised, to showcase its commitment for the Asia Pacific markets.
Based on the theme ‘In Asia, for Asia’, the company looks to go deeper into regions like Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and others. It has been investing in technology capabilities like AI, business analytics and building local data centres for penetrating into newer markets. Besides the launch of the latest products and solutions portfolio, the launch of China Gateway and Saas Accelerator Programs for its partners
Alibaba
and customers' ecosystems, were among the two big announcement by the Alibaba Cloud Intelligence international team.
In Asia, for Asia Alibaba Cloud has the largest infrastructure footprint in the Asia Pacific region, with 15 availability zones outside mainland China, covering Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, Malaysia, Indonesia, India, and Japan markets. It is also the only global cloud provider with local data centres in Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as launching the first cloud-based Anti-DDoS Scrubbing Center in Malaysia last year, as an additional layer of protection for customers. Lately, Alibaba Cloud has been ranked by Gartner as the top cloud service provider in Asia, in 2018. Starting its journey from Singapore, Alibaba Cloud launched a landmark China Gateway Program with eight local partners. The program leverages the accumulated technological knowledge and experience of Alibaba Cloud, which has powered Alibaba Group’s growth into a world-leading the company, to help local businesses capture and capitalise on growth opportunities in Asia and China. Through the local partners in Singapore and around the region, Alibaba Cloud will provide firms of all sizes with an indepth immersion program on doing business in China, connecting them to Chinese companies and consumers via the Alibaba ecosystem. In her first public appearance, Selina Yuan, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence for International said, “We are fulfilling Jack Ma's mission to make business easier everywhere. Alibaba Cloud has been paving the way for a digital era across Asia Pacific by building cloud infrastructure. Together with our partners, we are confident of helping local businesses of all sizes and from all backgrounds to grow in the region. We will be collaborating with local partners and leverage the digital transformation and smart cities initiatives.” Alibaba Cloud continues to empower its partners to thrive in the
Selina Yuan, President of Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International
Yudi Hamka, CTO, MNC Group ecosystem by better capturing and capitalising on growth opportunities in Asia Pacific. Selina highlighted that there are 700 enterprises, including SMEs, who will have the benefits from this year. “We will have more customers and SMEs to extend their business in China market,” she stated.
SaaS Accelerator for local partners SaaS Accelerator is a platform where technology partners can easily build and launch SaaS applications and leverage proven business and
technology know-how in the Alibaba economy. The accelerator helps SaaS providers quickly deploy and test their applications on the cloud, shorten the implementation lifecycle, and accelerate time-to-market. It enables ecosystem partners, such as enterprises in the e-commerce, lodging, and travel industries, to quickly reach their customers on Alibaba platforms. It also defines three centres for the SaaS ecosystem: the commercial centre, the capability centre, and the technology centre.
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Event
Alibaba
Ma Jin, General Manager of Product and Solution Management Department, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence, said, “We had officially announced it first for the Chinese market. Now we are bringing it for the first time outside China for our international partners and application developers. With our SaaS Accelerator, it takes less than five days to develop an app. We have also developed mini-programs to connect with the local partners.”
India - a key cloud market Alibaba Cloud has been the most active business in the India market, with growth in terms of investments and talent, and had aggressively backed Indian startups including Paytm, Zomato, BigBasket, DLF Shopping Malls, Snapdeal, etc. In 2018, Alibaba Cloud launched two availability zones in India with product offerings such as elastic computing, storage, database, network, application services, and big data analytics to cater to the requirements of local governments and enterprises. Speaking about the Indian market Yuan mentioned, “India is an important market and we have a dedicated local team and customers like Paytm and other local customers are using Alibaba Cloud. The company is looking to work with startups and enhancing products and services localisation capabilities.” Henry Zhang, Chief Product Officer, Alibaba Cloud Intelligence International stated, “We have a dedicated localisation team, which delivers localised messaging and enhances the end-user experience. Localisation testing, language, and communication interface have been the core focus for the Indian market. Indian customers are very much on the cutting edge side. Some of the fastest growing startups can be next-gen enterprises, with Paytm and BigBasket leading the charge. We have learned a lot by working with these fast pace Indian customers. We will continue to work with some of these startups and on the continuum, we will ensure that we build products and features that will benefit Indian customers.”
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Alibaba Group VP Lancelot Guo (left) with WeWork Asia Vice Chairman Christian Lee
Executives from Alibaba, Paytm, MNC Group and Tokopedia speaking at a session during Alibaba’s summit held in Singapore
Alibaba - WeWork partnership Under the China Gateway Program, Alibaba Cloud made its strategic partnership with workplace platform major, WeWork. Christian Lee, Vice Chairman, WeWork Asia said, “When we began our journey here in China back in 2016. We had to adopt a very localised approach to navigate in this very unique business environment, and we are grateful that we have developed a successful strategy and build the largest workplace platform in China.
WeWork plays a critical role in the China Gateway Program as WeWork’s workspace is standardised and localised at the same time - there is no learning curve nor preparation in using the space, just the same as bringing their laptops to WeWork spaces in other parts of the world. This is especially important for the program participants because they can focus their attention on growing their businesses rather than worrying about real estate and the upfront office setting costs.”
Partner Corner
Savic Technologies
SAVIC TECHNOLOGIES STRIVES AHEAD ON INDIA’S CLOUD ROADMAP Recently recognised as the ‘Best Debut Partner of 2018’ at SAP India Partner Summit 2019, Navi Mumbai based Savic Technologies has achieved over 63 SAP S/4HANA customers with as many as 50 projects gone live Sandhya Michu sandhya.michu@expressindia.com
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avi Mumbai based Savic Technologies has been driving digital transformation for a varied set of customers. This partner’s mainstream business focus is SAP, SAP S/4HANA, SAP Success Factors, ByDesign, C4C, SAP Cloud. Recently, Savic Technologies has enabled customers from India’s leading automotive industry, consumer packaged goods, engineering construction and operations, retail, chemical industries and many consumer brands solve complex business problems. Offering a seamless integration across finance, HR and IT, sales and marketing, supply chain, etc., has helped them create real revenue proposition for customers and enhance the brand value. As a SAP Gold Partner, Savic Technologies facilitates SAP S/4HANA implementations, support, and conversion and cloud-based services. Within three years of incorporation, Savic Technologies has achieved over 63 SAP S/4HANA customers with approximately 50 projects gone live on SAP S/4HANA. In terms of turnover and employee base, Savic Technologies has been doubling year-on-year (100 per cent growth). Recently, SAP was recognised and awarded Savic as the 'Best Debut Partner of the year 2018' at SAP India Partner Summit 2019.
Senthilkumar S, Managing Director,Savic Technologies “As an SAP Gold Partner, we have worked aggressively with SAP during GST times, cloud platform and cloud products apart from SAP S/4HANA products. Going forward, we are investing heavily on artificial intelligence and IoT for the current year. The key differentiator is a continuous focus on modern generation technologies, thus we achieved the distinction of first SAP partner to make a go-live on SAP S/4HANA 1610, 1709 and 1809 editions. We are already investing in IoT with use cases from manufacturing industries, across regions,” says Senthilkumar S, Managing Director, Savic Technologies.
“We have been extensively working with customers in migrating them to the SAP cloud platform and, hence achieving their goal. Our heart is at the digital core of the eco-system where we are providing various technology services. We are determined to disruptively impact the way businesses are conducted today. We aim to help customers receive digital exposure, therefore, our esteemed customers get accurate data insights, real-time analysis, which is cost cutting and time-saving, desired business growth, quickly and seamlessly,” states Senthilkumar. Some of the customers include large, mid-sized and growing enterprises. The partner has been successfully catering to the changing needs and IT requirements of construction and real estate segment, dairy, travel, healthcare, FMCG and manufacturing. EVEREST Masala, Globus, Go Colour, Thomas Cook, Shriram Properties, Casagrand, ALF Engineering and GRB Dairy Foods and many others are among the clients. Digital transformation is imperative for an organisation as well as employees to upskill themselves. Savic has kept employee training as its core activity. The company continuously invests in cross skilling all its employees in nextgeneration technologies. The workforce is given opportunities to undergo training in soft skills; various SAP training programs offered online as well as in-person.
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Thought Leader
Clover Infotech
HOW RPA HAS TRANSFORMED KEY BANKING FUNCTIONS From daily operations to customer service, loan processing to risk and compliance management, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is transforming the banking industry By Kunal Nagarkatti
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obotic Process Automation (RPA) is growing at a rapid pace and transforming every industry. The banking industry is no exception. Banks are increasingly adopting RPA to become agile, competitive and profitable. ICICI Bank, one of India’s leading private sector banks, is among the first in the country to adopt RPA on a large scale. It has integrated robotics with automate manual and repetitive tasks such as IT support, customer email response and portability of accounts. They have deployed 750 robots to facilitate processing of more than 20 lakh transactions per day. In addition, redressal of ATM cash disbursal grievances has come down to four hours as against 12 hours, with 100 per cent accuracy. Following are the key banking functions getting transformed by RPA: ◗ Daily operations: Manual processing of data is a time-consuming and error-prone process. Further, manual input of data from legacy software to newer models delays daily operations. RPA facilitates seamless communication and transfer of information from legacy to newer software. Recently, the largest bank in Japan made headlines for implementing RPA to save labour costs and gain operational efficiency. Leading banks in India such as ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Axis Bank have implemented RPA to improve their efficiency and productivity.
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operational agility to scale up or down as per changing regulatory expectations.
◗ Customer service: Banks deal with multiple queries every day, ranging from general information to account enquiries to complaints and so on. RPA helps in resolving the low priority queries, freeing up the staff to focus on high priority queries that require human intelligence. That is not all, RPA fast-tracks the customer onboarding process by reducing the time taken to verify customer details from disparate systems. ◗ Risk and compliance management: With stringent regulatory guidelines, banks are looking at RPA solutions to increase efficiency and reduce compliance costs. RPA solutions automate manual and repetitive reporting requirements of upcoming and existing regulations that mandate frequent disclosures. It also enables
◗ Loan processing: Underwriting is the most crucial step in lending. It means predicting if a potential borrower would be able to pay back. However, often banks get it wrong because they rely on inaccurate information. Manual process of collecting information is tedious, complex and error-prone. RPA powered software enables compilation of a prospect’s record from multiple systems, websites, channels and service providers. Once the data is collected, it is entered into a company’s systems for underwriters to analyse it. Moreover, customers today want instant responses to enquiries. They expect online portals. When they have questions, they look for a chatbot to help them out. RPA helps in reducing loan processing time by automating processes such as data entry, document routing, task assignments and email notifications. Online portals are being created for customers to submit requests using electronic forms. In conclusion, the banking industry is highly data intensive and operates in a highly regulated environment. It deals with mounting customer expectations and needs to maintain as lean an operation as possible, while also delivering exceptional customer experience at lower costs. (The author is the COO, Clover Infotech)
REGD.NO.MCS/220/2018-20, PUBLISHED ON 7TH OF EVERY MONTH & POSTED AT MUMBAI PATRIKA CHANNEL SORTING OFFICE, DUE DATE 8TH, 9TH & 10TH OF EVERY MONTH, REGD. WITH RNI UNDER NO. MAHENG/75607/2018.