INDID - India Digital Innovation Dialoque (November, Issue 1)

INDID

November 2019, Issue 1

India Digital Innovation Dialogue

India Digital

Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

https://indid.leadingdigitally.com

INDID

November 2019, Issue 1

India Digital Innovation Dialogue

India Digital

Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

https://indid.leadingdigitally.com

INDID, Coeus Age Š Copyright 2019 Coeus Age. No part of this book shall be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without a written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

07 31

Let’s INDID!

All Innovations Must Lead to Better Customer Experience

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foreword

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Digital Innovation in 3s Setting a Holistic Discourse

Innovatively Squeezing Every Ounce of Efficiency!

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Embracing Non-Linearity: Moving Beyond ‘Business as Usual’

13 41

Autonomous Infrastructure for an Autonomous Enterprise

Data is Central to any Innovation!

17 45

Is the IT infrastructure pulling down your digital dream?

Innovative Ideas can Disrupt the Industry Value Chain

Innovation is a Journey and there are no Shortcuts

Building Data DNA Will be the Mantra for Success

23 51

Essentials of Creating the Right Environment for Igniting Broadbased Innovation

‘Cloud First’ is Real, 360 Degrees Automation is the Way to go

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Innovate Everywhere, Every Moment, Everyone by Automating Everything

Standardizing IT to Innovate for Growth

Contents

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Let’s INDID! let’s dialogue! let’s Innovate!

As adults, we learn on a day to day basis. Being in continuous dialogue with others like our peers, friends, and experts can be a great source of this learning. If we pursue it more consciously, dialoguing can put us into a virtuous cycle of learning, development, innovation, increased performance and self satisfaction.

But how does dialoguing can be so fruitful. There are two plausible reasons for the phenomenon THE STRUCTURATION SIDE OF DIALOGUE Ideas, concepts and worldviews often remain vague and fluid till we give them expression.

When we are in conscious dialogue with someone else or even with ourselves, deeper ideas tend to cohere together into a unified entity. Their vagueness and untenability gets exposed during the expression and hence it solidifies into a clearer and tenable concept.

Sounds familiar. Try writing your thoughts. At first it may be very frustrating, but with little persistence, the ideas tend to cohere and crystalize into a structure that is both logical and explainable. When one writes or speaks, often one gets surprised at the outcome’s clarity.

THE EVOLUTIONARY SIDE OF DIALOGUE So, when we have a concept, however clear and tenable it may be, it can always undergo change as others express ideas, and one picks up cues that appear logical to oneself. Our schema or worldview of something may also get shaped by the process of dialogue with others. And that’s learning. Have you noticed that some movies or books often leave us thinking, it actually influences our mental schema.

So, if one approaches dialoguing seriously, it can be a potent source of learning and development, which is organic and non-threatening.

Inspiration, emotional arousal and feelings are always part of this process. And that can be handled positively if there is a friendly counsellor or a mentor to help you with the dialoguing process.

INDID, India Digital Innovation Dialogue is a sincere attempt by us at Coeus Age to help technology leaders get into a constructive dialoguing process that brings forth their innovative side along with making the whole process a virtuous cycle of learning, development, and performance.

We are thankful to Micro Focus for supporting us in this endeavor of ours.

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RAJESH UPPAL SR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ( HR & IT ), MARUTI SUZUKI INDIA LTD

We are all living in a VUCA world. We must prepare our organizations, within and extended, to cope with the uncertainties, complexities and ambiguities, the new imperatives that are becoming highly prevalent. The times are quite challenging and without finding responses to the new imperatives, survival may be at stake.

foreword Today, enterprises are absolutely convinced of the role of IT. In matured organizations, IT is no more seen as another cost centre, rather the narrative has shifted to ‘what new opportunities can IT create’. With the onslaught of emerging digital technologies, the focus is more on driving new ways of doing business, both at the operational and the strategic levels.

We are all living in a VUCA world. We must prepare our organizations, within and extended, to cope with the uncertainties, complexities and ambiguities, the new imperatives that are becoming highly prevalent. The times are quite challenging and without finding responses to the new imperatives. They must innovate to survive and thrive, and one way of looking at innovation is to deal with the three imperatives of the VUCA world.

What is Innovation? To me, implementable ideas that help business leaders create right responses to the emerging challenges is Innovation. There are three broad genres that these innovative ideas must belong to – simplicity, predictability, and capacity to consume data. Let me take the opportunity to briefly define each one of them.

The first point Simplicity. It is the antidote to the growing complexity in business strategies, organization structures and operational enablers like IT. Simple ideas are succeeding all around us (think of Uber, AirBnB, and Apple) as simplicity brings in the right connect with the consumers and efficiency of communication in organizations. Similarly, simplicity is required in the operational fabric, think of the complexities in the IT environments and the difficulties it poses to the construct of agility and competitive responsiveness.

Second is predictability. There is a growing experience of business leaders that initiatives undertaken by them often produce very different results that what has been intended. It may range from producing no results to producing quite high yet very different results.

The unintended consequences are quite high. Ideas that can help individuals and teams to either reduce unpredictability or take them in the right stride are in great demand.

Third is the capacity to consume data. A lot can be driven by individuals and teams in terms of simplicity and predictability if the massive volumes of data generated in organizational systems can be consumed and made sense of. A lot of data is lying under-utilized and under-acted and more data is getting generated with each passing moment. Ideas that enhances people’s capacity to consume, make sense of and act upon data are very relevant and needed.

I believe, if business leaders can focus on these three imperatives and exploit technology to find appropriated responses, they will innovate in the real sense.

The initiative INDID by Coeus Age is certainly a simple yet powerful idea to bring multiple perspective on Innovation on the same page. I am delighted to share my opinion on the inaugural edition of the INDID quarterly and I wish the initiative all the very best.

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A Coeus age analysis

Experience For the Customers

Broadbased

Automation

Defined in the Context

Driven

By Motivation

Artificial Intelligence

Digital Innovation 3S A Holistic Model

Value

Efficiency

Determined

Of Operations

By Goals

Analytics

For Leveraging Data

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For Autonomy

India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Supportive

Environment

Digital Innovation in 3s – Setting a Holistic Discourse A holistic debate on digital innovation is unfolding.

INDID gives voice to the innovative side of the senior technology leaders and the organizations they work for.

It’s indeed delightful to get an opportunity to weave multiple perspectives together and create a complete discourse on innovation. We started the journey with a hazy picture of innovation as a multi-faceted construct, and as we make progress, this picture is becoming clearer.

Putting together perspectives of 14 thought leaders has been quite an exercise but worth every bit of it. Many sides of innovation have emerged. Three dimensions – Ds, As and Es of innovation have been captured.

A big thank you to them for their participation and support. We believe the discourse will only get stronger as we continue this exercise in the weeks to come.

Businesses are harnessing digital technologies to both innovate and help individuals innovate.

Innovation in 3s 3 essentials of innovation – drive of motivated individuals, defining context and value determination by organizational goals (Ds).

3 distinct and broader objectives of innovation – efficiency, customer experience and conducive environment (Es).

3 digital technologies for innovation – automation, data analytics and artificial intelligence (As).

Our analysts believe 3 Ds are basic to any innovation.

Belonging to the bigger realm of the organizational being, it’s essential to have motivated individuals with a drive to innovate, sharing a common dream. An idea is innovative or not is defined by the context which it is embedded in, the same idea may be innovative for one and not innovative for another context. Similarly the value of innovation is determined by the superordinate goals of the organization. E.g. if cost leadership is a strategic goal, any innovative idea that helps enhance

efficiency on a sustained basis will be valuable. We expect to witness more discussion around these elements over time that will help us operationalize them in concrete terms.

Then there are 3 Es as objectives. Efficiency is seen as strategic. Gone are the days when it was considered as an operational construct, not the cup of tea for the elite strategists. Today, being ruthlessly efficient is a war cry, a strong strategic intent from the highest levels of an organization. Creating new experiences for the customers, often a result of innovative interfaces, continuous behavioural analysis and use of bots, is another side of innovation. How customers’ lives can be made easier throughout the life cycle is the prime focus of automation, analytics and bots. It often requires continuous innovation as customers’ demand does not remain static, it constantly increases. A conducive environment for individuals and teams to innovate is the third but an equally important strand identified.

Freeing people from day to day operational hassles, giving them the data and insights that they need and granting them the power to act faster helps people to devote their energies and mental bandwidth to better things. It helps them innovate.

And finally there are three As that are fundamental technologies for innovation. Digital innovation is made possible by relentless automation, focus on data for analytics, and use of artificial intelligence to build autonomy. The 3 As of digital innovation have relevance across business levels and domains. E.g. they are relevant for finance as well as IT management.

The fourteen thought leading pieces by the senior industry leaders bring forth one of more of the Ds, Es and As of innovation. We hope you will enjoy reading their perspectives.

If you have a story or a perspective to share, we would love to hear and include that in the discourse.

Let’s INDID!

November 2019, Issue 1

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Mr. Saurabh Saxena Country Director, Micro Focus

Hybrid IT has become the new reality. It is disrupting many processes in IT organizations and contributing to its complexity – it brings with it a complex combination of traditional and cloud computing, along with IoT and edge computing.

Autonomous Infrastructure for an Autonomous Enterprise Business Enterprises and Governments are struggling to cope with the relentless speed of change. Though information technology has helped them in the past in becoming more efficient and effective, the pace of emergence of digital technologies is continually putting pressure on their IT infrastructure and services management.

Competing agendas, like speed and security, need to be addressed together. It’s like juggling many balls together and do so adeptly. The traditional designs and methods of managing the IT infrastructure and services are becoming irrelevant in meeting the growing and competing demands on IT. Hybrid IT has become the new reality. It is disrupting many processes in IT organizations and contributing to its complexity – it brings with it a complex combination of traditional and cloud computing, along with IoT and edge computing.

To enable the disparate entities work in tandem and seamlessly with each other, organizations have to take a holistic, analytics-driven approach. They have to master hybrid IT with new agility—bridging traditional and transformational IT services from mainframe to mobile, from corporate to cloud while securing what matters most – i.e, identities, applications, and data.

That’s the biggest challenge the tech leaders are facing today, for which a digital transformation drive is undertaken by many. What they need is an automated and simplified IT Infrastructure and services management platform that can help them meet the big ask. There are five key technology imperatives that such platform must help the tech leaders achieve – 1. Simplify the existing IT infrastructure and applications 2. Modernize the legacy applications and account for cloud-native ones 3. Improve software development and delivery mechanisms and processes 4. Enhance the cybersecurity posture across all processes, and 5. Generate adequate insights about business operations for efficiency as well as discovery of newer business models With an extensive suite of applications developed internally, and through acquisitions (most notable of which was the merger of the Hewlett Packard Enterprise [HPE] Software business in 2017), Micro Focus envisions to serve organizations in four distinct areas: Enterprise DevOps, Hybrid IT management (including IT operations, and cloud management), Security, Risk and Governance, and Predictive Analytics.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

• Enterprise DevOps — Build and deliver better software faster: To win the race to innovate requires a high-speed approach and our solutions in this field unleashes the power of DevOps across the hybrid IT landscape, quickly bringing innovative ideas to life at the pace of business to securely deliver high quality software and services faster and smoother.

• Hybrid IT Management — Run and transform: Information technology is evolving at a very fast pace – that include IT Infrastructure, services and even purchasing models.

Maximizing business value and accelerating outcomes provokes enterprises to find new ways to extend existing investments and take advantage of new platforms – from containers to public clouds to IoT. We, at Micro Focus help organizations run ITOps at the speed of DevOps, delivering services on demand and generating operational and business insights, all while helping corporates address security, compliance and governance requirements. OpsBridge, our IOps platform, is the world’s first containerized, serviceoriented, and autonomous monitoring solution that is enterprise-grade, highly scalable, and comprehensive.

• Predictive Analytics — Analyze in time to act: Data lakes can be valuable only if businesses can surface the insights hidden within its depths. Micro Focus helps leverage ML to transform unlimited and huge amount of data into accurate, actionable and automated insights at the speed of any business. It helps corporates to be in a position to make predictions and influence business outcomes quickly and efficiently with comprehensive and relevant realtime intelligence.

• Security, Risk, and Governance — Secure what matters the most: With the rise in technology usage and data security – as a major concern, cyberthreats have escalated at an exponential level. Aging apps and processes (along with new ones) are full of unforeseen risks and privacy and compliance requirements are mounting too. Micro Focus provides the industry’s broadest set of integrated security, risk, and governance solutions, with an analytics-driven approach to securing what matters most – identities, applications and data.

By delivering a complete set of customized solutions that can be integrated together and with existing legacy systems, we have differentiated ourselves by constantly matching the current and future reality of Enterprise IT. The breadth of the portfolio, depth of enabling analytics and proven ability to protect the organization’s most important assets gives customers the confidence they need to transform their business rapidly on their own terms and conditions.

At the end, it’s all about greater speed and flexibility with lower overall risk, in short meeting competing demands adeptly.

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DR KAPIL DEV SINGH CEO, COEUS AGE

That’s the voice I have heard from many other CXOs, who wish to fly on the wings of digital, but are drawn downward by the gravity of legacy infrastructure.

Is the IT infrastructure pulling down your digital dream?

A large global telecom giant has laid down a clear 2022 vision to emerge as a digital telco.

The dream is carved out on four important pillars of Cloud, Open Source, APIs and DevOps. That appears like ‘the formula’ to transform digitally and evolve a new business model that thrives on customer experience on one hand and operational efficiency on the other.

But a casual interaction with the CIO was quite revealing. He shared the presence of a fifth pillar, often not talked explicitly with the external world. That pillar is of ‘exploiting the current IT infrastructure’ and the ‘investments’ already made into them, to the hilt.

And in more than one way, the piece was not completely aligned with the digital dream (as operationalized in the form of four pillars). Well that’s the challenge, a real business challenge.

That’s the voice I have heard from many other CXOs, who wish to fly on the wings of digital, but are drawn downward by the gravity of legacy infrastructure. But then other side of a challenge is an opportunity. As CIOs, that’s an opportunity to innovate. The India Digital Innovation Dialogue, INDID program aims at identifying these innovations that technology leaders are creating in their respective organizations. We intend to many others to be informed, inspired and initiated to define an action plan.

Let us understand what the typical challenges with legacy infrastructure are! I have noticed five broad types of challenges.

1. Broken processes in the IT management domain that leads to inefficiencies due to manual interventions, delays and fatigue induced mistakes 2. Multiplicity of technologies that require patches for them work together, increasing the complexity involved. Imagine if there is a problem, it becomes an uphill task to determine the route cause, leading again to inefficiencies, delays and mistakes 3. Separation of ‘development’ and ‘operations’ leading to delayed response to business requirement, often resulting into competitive disadvantage 4. Lack of insights that can help determine the causes or issues, both after and before they occur, the higher end of sophistication is when the system can be made autonomous 5. All physical hardware, that does not allow for tight integration, data from, speed of management and ease for people Every organization, to varying degrees is facing these downward pressures on their digital dreams and it is extremely important that they be addressed in innovative ways.

INDID is discovering such innovative ways from those who have done and share it many others who may want to do.

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jagdish kumar senior vice president, it & technology sertice at ciginiti technolgoies

Many believe it to be the responsibility of R&D or specific functions tasked out for the purpose. They must understand that innovation is not the same as invention and that it is not a few people’s responsibility.

Innovation is a Journey and there are no Shortcuts Innovation is very strategic for us.

Innovation and Excellence are the two pillars on which our new growth story is being built.

These are being cultivated as part of our culture with the whole environment gearing up in support.

What is Innovation (and what it is not)?

The biggest task in undertaking a journey around Innovation is to dispel various myths associated with it.

Many believe it to be the responsibility of R&D or specific functions tasked out for the purpose. They must understand that innovation is not the same as invention and that it is not a few people’s responsibility.

Rather, it’s a way of life, looking at one’s immediate work environment and thinking how it can be made better. For example, someone raising invoices in the finance department may find an efficient, faster, and a more effective way of doing the job.

The culture must empower her to take proactive steps and undertake the change. That’s the vision of innovation we are in the process of building. Every member of the organization must think that innovation is meant for all roles, persons, and functions. It is not the task of a few.

Excellence is the competency part whereas innovation is the thinking part. If people can think innovatively and feel empowered to act on their ideas, excellence at individual, function and organizational level will be created.

Operationalizing Innovation Creating a culture of innovation is easier said than done. It takes time to build a momentum that involves the whole organization and is sustained over time. Many organizations undertake it on a piecemeal basis, often representing an effort that is nothing more than a flash in the pan.

In our experience, innovation and excellence are being driven by communicating the vision repeatedly and creating a structural support so that it becomes a focus for each member.

That structural support comes from making it part of every employee’s key result area in the performance management system. It gives them a platform to showcase the ideas that they have undertaken on the ground.

It takes sustained efforts at running the program for employees to start participating in the process. In our experience, the quality of ideas is maturing over time, thus reflecting the crystallization of the initiative.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Mainstreaming Innovation Making it a part of PMS is one thing, but how does this help a breakthrough idea to surface and scale up for a bigger impact. We have decided to identify a few good ideas and publish them for others to know and promote those ideas so that they get adopted at a larger scale. If operationalization through PMS is one form of structural support to catch good ideas on the ground, promoting great ideas is another form of structural support to boost their benefits across the length and breadth of the organization.

Digital as the Fulcrum Digital is a great enabler of innovation and excellence. While on one hand it helps measure, track, and monitor the multiple local-level innovations that people are undertaking, on the other hand it allows for continuous vision sharing and communicating updates with the larger organization. The idea is to scale up good ideas that are replicable across multiple customer engagements that our organization undertakes.

Transforming Core IT to Complete the Circle Creating capabilities in the form of digital that enables an organizational drive on innovation and excellence requires a modern IT and applications foundation.

It is required not only to discover and scale up innovative ideas but also to implement those new ideas, many of which are based on defining a unique use case for technology. Our journey started four years ago, with investments in modern compute and network technologies, business automation, integration, and cloud enablement. The circle shall get completed with capabilities to handle a multi-cloud environment with tight integration between domain-specific systems at the workflow and information levels.

Digital transformation means a holistic journey that starts with top-led vision, cultural change, structural enablers, digital enablers, and core IT transformation. It takes time, perseverance, and sustained efforts. And there are no shortcuts.

November 2019, Issue 1

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GOLOK KUMAR SIMLI CTO, MINISTRY OF EXTERNAL AFFAIRS

We hear of Artificial Intelligence quite often nowadays, but very few realize that it requires high volume, variety, and veracity of data to result into the right output. AI, in all its depth and breadth can create autonomous system, but imagine autonomy based on low-quality data, it may be quite counter productive.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Essentials of Creating the Right Environment for Igniting Broadbased Innovation It’s been quite some time since the Passport Seva Project (PSP) has been delivering excellent services to millions of Indians. It is being considered as a big transformation initiative in the eGovernance domain across the globe. I always say, the journey of delivering excellence is a never ending one and innovation is the only way in which it can be sustained over time.

The application is continuously evolving with addition of new functionalities that make the lives of the citizens and the government administrators easier. Innovative thinking is reshaping it with the prime objective of identifying effective and better ways to do everything, small or big. A new focus on outcome-based approach in governance is becoming a norm.

However, a more matured IT driven operating environment is required for broadbased Innovation to become a norm. Without the right base, it may not simply be a sustainable drive. Based on my long association with the PSP, I would like to highlight four key lessons that are important to build a good base: Think New Business Model The whole transformation drive may take its own time, but it must start with a holistic blueprint as a guiding element. I have seen many transformation drives reaping suboptimal results as they go piecemeal within the realm of ‘as is’ practices. Ideally one must start from the end users’ perspective instead of what is possible with the IT system as it exists today. For example, citizens want passport service closer to where they, or administration demands a complete visibility on the process. The whole process of determining ways to provide these functionalities takes time and effort, but it’s important to get the desired results.

Understand Data Holistically A lot is being talked about the value of data, but the biggest problem is that it is not understood holistically. Where is the data coming from, what is its veracity, how clean it is, how it combines to create new data points, etc. are some questions that need deeper introspection and resolution. Without this holistic thinking, the quality of insights that one gets will not be of high level. Building a data governance model within is utmost important and deals with MDM, Compliances, Execution Model, Ownership and Privacy Concerns, Implementation Tools, and Business Rules.

We hear of Artificial Intelligence quite often nowadays, but very few realize that it requires high volume, variety, and veracity of data to result into the right output. AI, in all its depth and breadth can create autonomous system, but imagine autonomy based on low-quality data, it may be quite counter productive.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Deal with Core First Any digital transformation initiative will have a ripple effect over time; it will not only impact the core but also the adjoining domains. It’s bound to happen and that’s the way it should happen. But it is advisable to first focus on streamlining the core domain and address the adjoining domains later. A lot is required to put in place within the core domain (ministry or organization) before one could extend it to the external or adjoining domains. Many aspects of the adjoining domains may be beyond your control or require huge efforts, which ideally should be placed first on the core.

Finally, Think of Technology for Mass Empowerment We must envisage the potential use of technology as creator of business value. Mere deployment of some hardware or software without proper alignment with business requirements creates more inconvenience than achieving tangible outcomes. Digital has huge potential to bring in efficiency and enrich customers experience, but it’s only when it empowers masses that the true impact of technology can be realized.

We shall witness a physical world in future that is more and more digitally connected.

Softer skills would play a major role in redefining and leveraging technology for a bigger cause. It will create collective wisdom that’s more than the knowledge we all preserve individually. The way we collect data, access and harness information, perform constructive tasks, and above all, plan and think for the short- and long-term initiatives would lead to digital innovation and exploitation of latest technologies that emerge.

That future possibility can be made real only if we create the right base for technology to work cohesively and data to unleash its true potential. I think these four lessons can be very valuable in building the right environment that triggers broad-based innovation by skilled and empowered people.

It’s a journey and we must undertake the journey with awareness.

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DEBASHISH SINGH GLOBAL CIO, Mphasis

I believe, IT can create an environment that is so high on ease of working that individuals can invest their efforts on thinking of better ways of doing work and thereby creating more value.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Innovate Everywhere, Every Moment, Everyone by Automating Everything Innovation in simple terms is doing anything better, differently and faster than the competition. At the collective level it may even be a competitive advantage. Innovation must be part of the day to day life and at all levels. It’s not the responsibility of the few, but that of all. When it takes on a cultural dimension, it has the capability of giving sustainable results.

Now, that’s easier said than done. Let me speak on behalf of IT that stands to play a crucial role in creating an innovate everywhere, every moment and everyone culture. And the simple logic is that when mundane things get done in an automated manner, people have the time and energy to devise new ways and create new value.

That’s the mantra IT must follow. Automate every bit of a process, function and the value chain so that information flows smoothly for speedier decision making and process rendition. Many follow partial automation like one or few task automations in any existing process, which is more like putting a patch as and when required. But that’s not even close to the benefits that an end to end automation can provide. End to end process automation can essentially translate the big picture into business outcomes as well as customer experience. Given this, one may ask why enterprises still struggle with IT. The biggest challenge that enterprises face, especially the large ones, is that of legacy. While legacy represents older generations of technology not built for the digital applications of today, it also represents huge investments into core IT infrastructure and applications that cannot be done away with. I wish enterprises had the option of throwing out the old and getting the new overnight. But that is not possible. Apart from dollars already spent, it’s also time consuming to change lock stock and barrel. And more importantly, it can be very disruptive to the business. Even if IT can be changed overnight, user habits and practices cannot. It is here that requires an approach that goes beyond traditional task based automation.

Innovation culture encompassing everywhere, every moment and everyone becomes critical here to solve for these complex environments. The challenge can be met only by thinking innovatively, not just as a one time activity, and building functional bridges between the front end (which is often new and at the periphery) and the back end (which is often legacy and at the core) through holistic automation of the connecting processes.

This leads to the development of a very context specific solution, that is often the genesis of competitive differentiation that cannot be easily replicated.

Though we have undertaken numerous initiatives that have come to define our way of marrying legacy with the modern, let me discuss two of them here.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

1. Creating a layer of automation that surrounds the legacy system of a client. If the latter cannot be changed and must be managed ‘as is’, a lot of efficiency has to be squeezed out of it. That’s the only way to create value. The surrounding layer of automation ensures that the process of managing the system is handled in the most automated fashion, which is not only efficient but also secure.

2. Creating a layer of automation that surrounds any off the shelf product that manages a particular task in the IT management landscape, e.g. compliance. Though the thirdparty product comes with its own set of features, a lot more can be done that is context specific and hence capable of unique processes that cannot be replicated easily by the competition. The adaptation may require automation of every tiny bit of the processes that are involved in interfacing with the product, information flow between people and processes and decision making.

A similar kind of automation of processes, decision making and communication can be done in almost every domain of business, e.g. payments, collections, inventory, customer service, recruitment, training and development, performance management, and talent management. The list can be quite long, and possibilities endless.

Of course, there is also a gradual transition that is happening towards modernising the infrastructure and in principally moving towards the cloud. But a broad and deep agenda on automation shall always remain relevant for getting the best out of thirdparty software and hardware infrastructure. Moreover, an end to end automated IT management environment must also be built for efficient, secure, optimized and agile IT landscape.

I believe, IT can create an environment that is so high on ease of working that individuals can invest their efforts on thinking of better ways of doing work and thereby creating more value.

With digital applications constantly changing consumer behaviour and expectations, it is a tremendous advantage to have a culture of innovation across all levels. More than anything else, it is about nurturing a collective mindset that does not shy away from challenges but rather is focused on finding solutions and committed to continuously improving them.

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Priyan Nair cio, future lifestyle fashion

I personally believe, when we talk of innovation, customer experience must be put at the centre. In our organization a lot is being done to innovate for enhancing customer experience.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

All Innovations Must Lead to Better Customer Experience Customer Experience has really caught the attention of new age marketers. They are relentlessly identifying ways in which the experience of the customers while evaluating, procuring and availing the products or services is enhanced. Digital stands to play a big role in augmenting this drive, but there is a lot more to it than just scratching the surface.

Let me build that argument.

I personally believe, when we talk of innovation, customer experience must be put at the centre. In our organization a lot is being done to innovate for enhancing customer experience.

Examples would include running loyalty programs consistently and transparently, locating store merchandize with speed, allowing for a convenient exit for the customers, providing a digital wallet, and making the transaction and billing information readily on the mobile phone.

These are ‘at the edge’ initiatives and a strong focus on the complete value chain is a must to support the former. Using digital to track the movement of products from suppliers to our stores, inventory management within the store and outward movement when a customer buys them must be tracked for the right information to be available ‘at the core’ to strengthen the customer experience drive.

Though technologies exist today for innovating for customer experience, it involves huge investment and efforts towards the change management involved. Apart from investing in a modern infrastructure, reskilling seems to be a very important task.

The range of contemporary technologies, spanning mobility, analytics, DevOps, APIs, data management, virtualization, micro services, cyber security etc need training and development of skills of technical people.

It also requires preparing line of business managers in appreciating the new ways to conduct business and enhancing their capacity to consume exponentially growing data.

Digital offers a lot of opportunities, but to exploit these opportunities to the hilt, ‘the core’ infrastructure and applications need to be overhauled for customer centric innovations to run effectively and efficiently.

While we are on a journey towards building a holistic and well-integrated IT platform that allows for standardized data definition, cross domain data flow and process integration to create innovative customer centric applications, the dream seems to be unfolding gradually. We are in the middle of running pilot projects aimed at streamlining the value chain for gaining better efficiencies and driving better customer experiences. The initial results are very encouraging but mostly on account of gaining efficiencies.

Sustaining these gains along with improving customer experience over time is a goal that is challenging but not impossible.

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abhay bapna avp-new solution engagement, adani wilmar

Organizations must build an information culture. They need to create a paradigm of organizational working where information becomes the currency of every aspect of operations.

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India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Innovatively Squeezing Every Ounce of Efficiency!

Efficiency is strategic and broad-based automation is the trend. Today, businesses are on a relentless battle to save every penny they can by automating every process possible. It’s a never ending strive and business leaders must cope with the demands.

But is automation enough? May be not! I believe unless information becomes the basis of every transaction, both reactively and proactively, it’s very difficult to continue in the battle, leave alone winning it. The information culture must evolve. Businesses need to create a paradigm of organizational working where information becomes the currency of daily operations.

While the margins are under pressure, especially for businesses that work on wafer thin margins, it’s important to address the efficiency drive holistically. Not every cost element is under control, many (and majority) of the cost elements are subject to market forces, further narrowing the scope for intervention. But in my experience, it may be a difficult proposition but not an impossible one. And this very nature makes being innovative a necessity.

I would suggest a three-pronged approach for technology leaders to address the challenge.

Automate, Automate, Automate Firstly, identify the areas which are in your control and rank them based on relative ease.

Those that can be addressed directly and easily and would result into sustainable gains must be the first candidates. Make the situation visible, automate what can be automated, collect data and analyse the same to check the impact and identify further scope of improvement. Automate whatever you can is the mantra. And believe me, there is not end to automation. E.g. machines capacity utilization could be one area, it’s a general problem across manufacturing set ups. While some plants have machines that are over utilized, another plant may have machines that are completely idle. The bigger problem is that it is not even in the knowing of those concerned. If it can be mapped on a single frame, not only can the single machine, but the collective capacity can also be better utilized. Similar examples can be taken from electricity consumption, field sales force efficiency, packaging etc. More automated data, better insight/foresight for better timely decision making and gain competitive advantage.

Build a Culture where Information is the Currency Secondly, it is not enough to simply automate, but a culture that thrives on information must also be developed. Can discussions be held, and decisions be taken based upon concrete information? So much so that it becomes a part of day to day functioning. It requires the skills and the capacity to understand, consume and act upon data at the

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individual level and a leadership vision that emphasizes upon data centricity, structures and interventions that helps operationalizing and a modern IT environment that supports the vision.

Exploit Cloud for Automated and Autonomous IT Environment Everything around us is changing fast and one must align with the change and respond at fast speed. If you partner with world class IT platforms such as Amazon or Uber, your IT platform must be equally robust. Moreover, the customers, both external and internal, today demand a very different experience. One cannot do that with archaic and traditional IT models, that involve lot of manual and tedious tasks for maintaining and changing. The speed that is demanded today warrants that a cloud based, end to end automated and autonomous IT environment is required. Both maintenance and change can then be handled automatically, predictively and with almost no disruption.

In my stint with various enterprises across the globe, I have found strong resonance of the three approaches for success and if done together in a well synchronized manner, it is bound to produce results.

And innovation is going to be a necessary ingredient in this endeavor.

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VISHNU CHANDRA DEPUTY DIRECTOR GENERAL, NIC

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The need of the hour is to build a holistic approach towards creating a system where even smaller events can lead to bigger implications. New wave of digital can do that and if not exploited in the right way, it will be a gross waste of its potential.

India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Embracing Non-Linearity: Moving Beyond ‘Business as Usual’ The world is moving beyond simple and linear automation required for carrying out basic transactions. A more complex, non-linear and converged world driven by data is taking shape. And it is happening quite rapidly.

The need of the hour is to build a holistic approach towards creating a system where even smaller events can lead to bigger implications. New wave of digital can do that and if not exploited in the right way, it will be a gross waste of its potential.

Government is not immune to this new reality that is disrupting the ‘business as usual’ approach and forcing policy makers to come to terms with it. New technologies like Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are exposing the areas of unpreparedness in exploiting data meaningfully and steering us towards a more contemporary and nonlinear version of eGovernance. The realization may be latent as of now, but it will dawn upon us very fast. That’s the way the world is evolving today. We need to be ready when that happens and the time for preparing ourselves is NOW. The new paradigm makes it quite imperative to build a data layer that can be enhanced by using cloud computing, is amenable for broader and deeper analytics, and can drive micro services in the form of apps. In the current scheme of things, it may be extremely difficult for a single entity to handle all the four essential aspects i.e. data layer, cloud enhancement, analytics and apps. Capacity building as we know today may be apt for a linear world, but innovative ways may be required for coping with the demands of a nonlinear reality.

Building upon the learnings from the GIS domain, I think there are three key areas to focus upon for building capacity for handling and exploiting data.

Breaking the Walls of Data Siloes– AI, ML, Big Data Analytics are forcing government entities to standardize the data for it be uniformly understood across application domains.

Take for example, in an outreach drive in the MSME sector, we found variety of industry classifications by different government departments. Nothing much can be done without building a common or standard classification across the concerned departments/ ministries/ stakeholders. The problem is present in almost all the initiatives that involve multiple entities to provide a unified and converged service to the end users.

Conceptualizing Capacity as an Integral Part – It is almost an established fact that IT teams alone cannot drive eGovernance. It may have a bigger role in defining guidelines, driving adherence and ensuring security of data. But beyond that a more open approach to handle and analyse data and drive micro services for the citizens may be required. Let me elaborate upon one area, that of capacity building. Technology can help in capturing the tacit knowledge of process owners, both government and non-government, which may be

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used meaningfully. Conceptualizing capacity as separate structures of consultants may be relevant as a add on approach in the ‘business as usual’ linear thinking, but it must become an integral part of the core governance structures in the nonlinear reality that is emerging. How can that be done? Can platform-thinking help in encoding policy and processes as integral parts ensuring adherence and security yet involving all. Without taking a holistic approach, government may always lag the technology curve, losing the potential for better governance.

Defining Policies that Support the New Reality – New policies that allow for both sharing of data and ensuring its security and privacy is the need of the hour. What must also be addressed is the flow of data across governance siloes, a common data language and ability to combine or recombine data to form new data points.

The GIS platforms today are in a way driving lot of convergence yet may need impetus in the form of the three essential aspects as discussed, for the user departments/ ministries/ stakeholders to meaningfully exploit data.

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HARISH NAVRATHNA IT HEAD, BRITANNIA

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Two perspectives that I would like to highlight here. One is the strategic impact of such initiatives and other is the evolution that enterprise would be required to go through to make them tenable.

Both are long term phenomenon but IT leaders must remain aware to derive positive outcomes.

India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Data is Central to any Innovation!

TwitterLinkedInYouTubeFacebookFollow by EmailRSS The external business context today demands innovative ways to harness the power of digital. Be it for competitive move, customer experience or employee engagement, digital can be deployed towards solving many problems. E.g. IOT can be used to adjust plant equipment to continually measure product specifications (like weight) and readjust automatically in case of deviance. Another example is the speed at which the field sales guys need to decide and act, demands that they have information not only readily available but also in an actionable form.

Any kind of manual interventions, as was the practice in the past, can mean inefficiency and serious competitive disadvantage. There are myriad of such examples of automation that enterprises are thinking of and implementing on the ground. Automation is slowly evolving with analytics and AI into an autonomous system that requires no or minimum human intervention.

Two perspectives that I would like to highlight here. One is the strategic impact of such initiatives and other is the evolution that enterprise would be required to go through to make them tenable. Both are long term phenomenon but IT leaders must remain aware to derive positive outcomes.

The long-term result of such initiatives can be strategic, if business and IT leadership treads consciously. Though such initiatives are largely isolated, localized and tactical in nature today, over time they may have the power to provide a collective capability that can be strategically harnessed by the business leadership. Be it for competitive advantage of differentiation or cost leadership or for providing unique experience to the customers and employees, strategic leverage can mean ability to charge higher premium or provide at lower cost or both. The result will be successfully be safeguarding the revenue and profit.

To support the strategic dimension, the IT must evolve towards a holistic framework that can provide agility, efficiency, and security, all together. A strong focus on data is what will drive the business outcomes. The biggest problems with data are fragmentation, multiplicity and underutilization. The fragmented data must be unified together, deduplicated and standardized. It’s a humungous task given the legacy that large enterprises carry but must be done.

It may also require integration of various digital initiatives with their respective domain specific systems and between different systems. E.g. IoT may require integrating with the Plant Management System or the mobile for sales may require integrating with the sales management system. Again, the sales management, ERP, plant management and other systems will require integrating. Without the holistic integration, the full potential of the

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digital initiative may just remain sub optimal. While the footprint of digital applications is low, a patchy approach may work, but over time without a centrally driven platform with the right software it may be quite untenable.

Enterprises will increasingly require a steady and continuous flow of data, from and to the enterprise systems, it must also be secured. The IT framework must also gear up for broad-based automation, analytics to take proactive actions and continuous evolution of applications.

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MANOJ SHRIVASTAVA SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT - IT AIRLINES TECHNOLOGY

An innovation like NDC can disrupt the value chain, thus changing the older equations and the entire paradigm of customer experience. It may cause realignments as new strategic dimensions emerge and get exploited by the market participants.

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Innovative Ideas can Disrupt the Industry Value Chain Innovation can have far-fetched impact when it has the capability to disrupt the industry value chain.

IATA’s initiative, the New Distribution Capability (NDC) is a travel industry supported program to introduce a new distribution standard and modernize the industry value chain.

APIs based NDC integration solution proposed by Airlines Technology is one such example.

It is a cloud-based application that allows for faster and secured data flow between the airlines, travel agents and the consumers. It is fast emerging as a strong and rich contents distribution alternative to the legacy-based distribution systems that have been running for many decades now.

The NDC disrupts the existing value chain that has been in place in the airlines industry, as explained below. A large chunk of the industry is mapped onto the legacy-based distribution systems, but a cloud-based solution has been the real need of the hour.

Firstly, the NDC disrupts the aviation industry value equation. It gives the airlines the ability to design product options (seat + ancillary services) more efficiently, effectively and publish their inventory faster. it allows for a speedier data flow to 100s of travelling agents’ systems. It works on a single API being published that is not cacheable, which gives it the ability to be real time data exchange. Any change is propagated in real time. The airlines can now design products in multiple ways, based on needs of different market segments and operationalize those products with relative ease. In an industry where airlines face a double whammy of bearing the highly market driven cost elements on one hand and working at arm’s length with the customers as online travelling agents (OTAs) dominate on the other hand, an initiative like NDC is a big and disruptive innovation.

Secondly, it gives power to the consumers to decide on ‘seat + ancillary services’ according to one’s needs, giving the consumers real grip on their decision making. The application works on a real time basis, with no surprises springing up at the last moment in the consumer’s decision cycle. It also allows for the consumer to cancel, change booking directly, something that is not a norm today, especially for corporate customers.

Thirdly, since the system is real time, financial settlements can also happen faster, reduction in the float again favouring the airlines. The feature can have deeper implications on the current industry practices, e.g. moving away from commissions to performance-based bonus, a win win for both the airlines and the OTA’s.

Fourthly, the core system is extremely secured and designed for ensuring data privacy.

Given the stringent requirements by the regulators, e.g. PCI-DSS, GDPR, the security and privacy features are real differentiators.

An innovation like NDC can disrupt the value chain, thus changing the older equations and the entire paradigm of customer experience. It may cause realignments as new strategic dimensions emerge and get exploited by the market participants.

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ABHISHEK SHYNGLE SENIOR VP-ENGINEERING

Organizations that can successfully build a data DNA or data as a way of life will surely emerge as winners in the times to come.

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Building Data DNA Will be the Mantra for Success Innovation is an important agenda for us, at all levels, across the organization. Being part of an organization that was born during the dotcom boom at the beginning of the century and being among the few who survived and thrived, IT is in our DNA. But then there is a lot that can be done today that was not possible a couple of years ago.

A lot of our focus now is on exploiting the huge heap of available data and continually develop solutions that can collate, store, integrate, analyze and build business cases. The data comes from multiple sources and in multiple forms and formats, which need to be standardized and made interoperable.

Organizations that can successfully build a data DNA or data as a way of life will surely emerge the winners in the times to come.

This has four important imperatives: 1. Data modelling and analysis is an extremely evolutionary process, with a sense of completeness eluding most of the time. New data streams, new possibilities to model them, and new use cases that can be supported by it are all continually emerging and getting redefined. As part of the engineering team, we also ensure that the solution must evolve in tandem with the data and algorithm. Innovative mindset, strong sense of perseverance, openness to experimentation, and staying open to newer possibilities are some traits that people must possess to continually work with data and related use cases.

2. Data storage, modelling, access, and retrieval must be supported by apt databases, data warehousing, data structuring and data processing tools. Though AI and ML are still in nascent stage, their relevance will certainly grow over time. Contemporary technologies like DevOps will also prominently become part of the environment for embracing continuous upgradations and mainstreaming small-sized innovations.

3. The underlying IT infrastructure and applications architecture also need to evolve in order to support the data focus for making innovation a holistic initiative. It’s very common to see piecemeal initiatives in many organizations that lack a common thread to weave them together for an organization level impact. Physical in-premise infrastructure has its own limitations, it cannot grow elastically with the need. It fails to cope with the demands of a data-centric world. Hence a balanced approach that balances out in premise and in cloud infrastructure must be adopted. In short, a hybrid approach is the way forward. One must continuously do cost benefit analysis to be able to strike the right balance.

4. Building predictability into IT management is going to be a critical aspect of embracing a data-centric approach. The server, network and application logs itself produces so much data that can be harnessed to predict the systemic behavior, analyze the impact of any change, and initiate change across the spectrum with minimal efforts.

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In short, to support innovation, a dual focus must be put by organizations. First, on continuously crunching new algorithms, reimagining new models of data, and creating new solutions that serves the emerging needs of business users. How fast innovative use cases are built and scaled up are critical questions that may define newer competitive advantage for the businesses. Second, on building a high-performance IT infrastructure that is capable of successfully coping with the demands of the business in terms of elasticity, predictability, efficiency, and security.

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ASHOK KAUL SCIENTIST F, INC

Cloud based services are providing a scalable platform for hosting government applications to reach citizens across the country. It has resulted in significant reduction in time to go live.

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‘Cloud First’ is Real, 360 Degrees Automation is the Way to go NIC National Cloud, set up as part of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology’s ambitious initiative Meghraj, offers services to various government ministries, departments, and district administrations to host websites, portals, and web applications. There has been exponential demand from the government sector for NIC Cloud Services since its launch.

Various ministries and departments are now focusing on service delivery instead of devoting their time and energy in procurement and management of IT infrastructure. Cloud has provided a huge support in the government’s progress towards digital transformation, and now government applications on cloud are focusing on mobile first to reach the citizen.

With the establishment of cloud services and adoption of ‘cloud first’ policy by the government, there has been a major shift in the data centre hosting patterns. New applications are now being hosted on the cloud and existing applications are being gradually moved to the cloud.

National Cloud Services are being offered from National Data Centres of NIC. Hosting services from NIC National Cloud are being provided for various critical e-Governance projects such as e-Vidhaan, e-Hospital, PM-Kisan, Manav Sampada, e-Transport, Aadhaar Enabled Biometric Attendance System (AEBAS), Swachh Bharat Mission, National Portal of India, Jeevan Pramaan, CCBS, NREGA, MyGOV, Digital Locker, JoSSA (Counselling), ORS, National Scholarship, e-NAM, mFMS, Cyber Swachhta Kendra, AirSewa, Digital India Portal, Shram Suvidha Portal, Prime Minister Office website, eNAM, Govt. Websites, e-Sahaj, UMANG, etc.

Cloud based services are providing a scalable platform for hosting government applications to reach citizens across the country. It has resulted in significant reduction in time to go live. Other benefits include OPEX in place of CAPEX, rapid deployment, optimum utilization of IT infrastructure, environment friendly, and higher compliance.

The future evolution of the NIC Cloud will see 360 degrees automation of various processes for management and provisioning of the cloud services. The applications in future will require greater agility, responsiveness, reliability, scalability and security. Moreover, a complex array of multi-vendor, multi-generation technologies and multi-location cloud environment will make the task of management more challenging in the future.

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ARUN SHAKYA GM - CORPORATE IT, ACG WORLDWIDE

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IT is expected to evolve to fuel the growth strategy. But the evolution must be gradual and not big bang. That’s the story in many organizations, who are unfolding their growth strategy in a rather gradual manner.

India Digital Innovation Dialogue Thought Leading Perspectives by 14 Tech Leaders

Standardizing IT to Innovate for Growth Our organization is on a rapid growth path. Innovative products are being developed and new markets, especially new geographies like the west that have huge untapped opportunities, are being targeted as a part of the growth strategy. With regulatory requirements gaining prominence in the pharma sector, innovation is on high priority.

IT is expected to evolve to fuel the growth strategy. But the evolution must be gradual and not big bang. That’s the story in many organizations, who are unfolding their growth strategy in a rather gradual manner.

The overall culture in the organization is now transiting into ‘think global’ mode as we look at foraying into newer geographies with innovative products. And there are ample opportunities to innovate.

For us the biggest opportunity for IT is to support innovation led growth by standardising IT platform that scales business’s systemic capacity to handle complexity, build customized products and enhance speed to market. With addition of new products and geographies, there is a rise in complexity as it brings newer market contexts to deal with. And with many new ideas, the biggest imperative for success is reaching the market before others do and align with the needs of our pharma customers.

The task for IT is well cut out. The current focus is on setting the base of applications that can be easily replicated across businesses and geographies. The core application is matured, there are domain specific peripheral applications being rolled out and integrated with the core for smooth data flow and value chain visibility. PLM – being deployed. The specific domains being addressed are production, CRM, and customer service, each one of them are in the process of tight integration with the Core ERP. Data standardization is happening as we gradually roll out the applications.

Gaps are being discovered and filled with automation and integration. For example, the customer servicing team needs visibility of manufacturing details of the products, which in turn needed data integration from production system to customer support system. Similar needs are being felt across the organizational value chain and a holistically integrated system is the vision for not so distant future.

But that’s not all. We are also conducting small pilots on emerging technologies like Internet of things so that they can be scaled up in future. The base of the integrated applications layer shall help the initiatives with optimal results.

From the infrastructure point of view, the direction is very clear. Gradually more and more infrastructure will transit into cloud, which will require a management framework for

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governance, speed and security. I believe the automation story will be application here too, making change faster amid growing complexity and multiplicity of technologies, often from different generations. A multi cloud or a hybrid cloud environment is a big possibility, which needs to be managed well.

So, in short, though we are gradually moving ahead with application integration, data standardisation, experimentation and infrastructure evolution, the speed will exponentially increase as a template gets developed. This will be highly organization specific and replicable across geographies and markets with the ability to absorb local customization needs.

IT can then truly support innovation and the growth strategy that the organization has identified for itself.

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