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SETTING FORMIDABLE BENCHMARKS

FINESSE CONTINUES TO BE A TRAILBLAZER IN DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SERVICES AND IS STEADILY GROWING ITS REACH GLOBALLY

— By: R. Narayan

In the past several years, perhaps only a handful of companies in the region have consistently created a trailblazing trajectory of growth and innovation in the systems integration and consulting business like Finesse. Inside the last decade, Finesse has set a scorching pace of growth and has grown from a niche focused software SI to a company that is today established as a premier enabler of digital transformation for enterprises across sectors.

The company has expanded its domains of focus, added an extensive number of domain experts, and has been quite focused in tapping into all those new promising growth areas. Along the way, it has broadened its market coverage with operations globally across the MENA, APAC and Americas, in over 10 global locations. Steadily, the company has built strong customer credentials whether in the BFSI sector or healthcare or any other sectors. It has allied with several pioneering technology vendors that has helped it broaden its portfolio and keeps itself attuned to the newer demand trends. Finesse today has partnerships with leading global technology vendors such as Microsoft, IBM, Automation Anywhere, Salesforce, Qlik, Kyriba, Ui Path, Kofax, Equifax, Capillary among others. ENABLING AND SECURING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION The company is focused on helping enterprise customers steer their digital transformation journeys, offering their expertise across technologies including AI Chatbots, BI & Analytics, Blockchain, CRM / CEM, Cloud, Corporate Treasury Management, E-Commerce Enablement, Mobility, RPA, Infra & Applications Managed Services and much more. Trusted by over 300 enterprise clients across BFSI, Education, Energy, Healthcare, Public Sector, Telecom, Travel & Logistics and more, Finesse is helping them transform into more agile and resilient organizations, by helping them leverage the best tools and practices of digital transformation relevant to their Business models.

“At Finesse, we do not only see ourselves as enabling technology transformation for our clients but rather also help them culturally adapt to the new digital processes, as required on case to case basis. We understand that digital transformation has to be an all-inclusive journey and people working in the organizations play a crucial

role to make the transformation truly successful,” says Sunil Paul, Co-Founder and MD of Finesse.

To ensure that digital transformation initiatives of the clients are heading towards the right direction, Finesse helps with training users onsite at the client location on the new tools and also helping drive awareness as required. These proactive measures are quite critical in ensuring that that digital transformation initiatives are accepted well, and the outcomes are quite satisfying.

Finesse ensures that while clients are engaging with them for Managed services, they take away their worries around the functioning of their IT Business processes and services.

Sunil adds, “We help our clients to focus on their core business by providing end to end managed services for their technology environment & non-core business processes. Finesse proposition goes far beyond the transaction benefits of resource outsourcing and focus on delivering business efficiency & results by bringing to bear our deep technology and domain expertise to all our engagements. This model helps our clients to optimally manage costs & risks and at the same time improve efficiency with their core business.”

In addition to extensive digital transformation solutions & services that Finesse offers today, the onsite, offshore and hybrid managed support services from Finesse covers proactive monitoring, preventive maintenance, SLA monitoring, asset / resource management and vendor management.

Finesse complements its wide portfolio with a dedicated Cyber security practice, that overs Infrastructure & Cloud Security, Application security assurance, Security intelligence & analytics, Digital Identity, Data protection & Privacy. As organizations embrace cloud services from multiple providers, they cannot afford a compromise in their security options and must choose the best.

Sunil says, “Native security tools offered by cloud providers, while advantageous, are not sufficient to work across clouds. An ideal approach is deploying security tools such as a unified platform; security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) technology to gain a centralized view and control of the threats and vulnerabilities across a multi-cloud environment. This will provide security teams with the capability to analyze threat data better and prioritize alerts."

He adds, “The COVID-19 pandemic has been a wake-up call for most organizations in terms of evaluating where they are in digital journeys and how prepared they are to tackle cyber threats. Cybersecurity strategies also need to be ever-evolving to stay in tune with ongoing market developments.”

BUILDING EXPERTISE TO MEET EXPECTATIONS Finesse has actively recruited some of the brightest talents across domains and built itself an extensive team of experts that are responsible for planning out and executing the digital transformation destinies of its clients.

The journey has not been without challenges. The constant churn in the Technology landscape demands solutions providers to keep their competencies updated in all relevant emerging areas as well. Sunil Paul Co-Founder & Managing Director, Finesse

Sunil says, “The biggest challenge that we are facing in the SI space is the rapid changing of technologies and toolsets. It takes considerable amount of time to build up the skills sets in certain technology / tool sets and by then it’s up for a revival. This constant change in the technology landscape put pressure on SIs like us who will need to constantly upgrading our skillsets.”

Finesse has been more than equal to the challenge however and has built a large team of over experts. These technical experts and consultants approach the task of undertaking execution of digital transformation for a client with a holistic outlook, looking into and deciding on those business processes which need to be reengineered, prior to initiating digital transformation. Finesse follows a comprehensive approach to make sure that customers have measurable outcomes from digital transformation and ensuring that they are deploying trending products and solutions used by world leaders in their respective domains.

“Finesse believes in helping clients orchestrate unique and strategic approach to enhance their business value. Improved operational efficiencies, cost optimization and realizing business goals that sustain the business in a transforming landscape are some of the key goals of what we seek out for our clients while they embark on a digital transformation journey,” says Eljo JP, Chief Business Officer, Finesse.

In the BFSI sector, Finesse has unquestionable credentials where a huge list of customers of over 120 Banks and Financial institutions

Eljo JP Chief Business Officer, Finesse

include more than 80 such entities operating in the UAE. Finesse has for long been strongest in the BFSI segment, where not surprisingly it also has a vast array of offerings that include solutions & services for Core Banking, API / Digital / New Generation Banking, Trade Finance, Treasury, Payments, Governance, Risk, Compliance, Regulatory Reporting, Basel III, IFRS- 9, Credit Control; Management, Fraud Management, Multilevel Authentication, Secured App Protection, PIM / PAM, Banking Process Outsourcing & IT Managed Services, and more.

“We have been working with banks & financial institutions to help enhance their efficiencies and optimize costs in their operational business functions by introducing automation and managed services. We are today positioned as a preferred and trusted provider of high performance, reliable, and sustainable digitized business solutions,” adds Eljo.

Success has come in plenty from other sectors as well. Finesse has been able to replicate its strengths built around its focus and early success within the BFSI sector in the others as well with a clear vision.

Sunil says, “Fundamentally we have a double-sided approach to this. First, we keep hiring domain experts and also engage with senior industry stalwarts to help us as we craft vertical specific solutions. Second, we keep creating frameworks, from which part of the technology components and operational business knowledge can be reused as we build foundation layer for other verticals. This approach has indeed helped us to adapt to newer verticals such as Education, Energy, Healthcare, Retail, Public Sector etc.” These include healthcare where it has been involved in deploying RPA solutions for instance that help achieve those organizations in a very critical sector achieve extensive enhancements in their Business processes. Finesse recently deployed Automation Anywhere’s Intelligent Automation platform for Fujifilm. Effective Solution design was key to this successful RPA implementation. Finesse designs and develops highly efficient digital workers, or bots, that deliver the expected output accurately, consistently, on-time and on-demand saving a lot of man hours.

Even in a sector like Aviation for instance, Finesse has proven its credentials by helping an airliner achieve greater operational efficiencies through the deployment of a Business intelligence solution. Finesse continues to demonstrate an extensive width in terms of competencies across verticals and technology domains.

With cloud services achieving mainstream acceptance across verticals, Finesse has also focused on ensuring its clients are leveraging the best of cloud-based solutions in their respective domains. While offering end to integration and support of cloud-based services, Finesse offers value to its clients through cloud- ready solutions, mobile devices and social media platforms.

In the current year, driven by the pandemic, companies have been compelled to accelerate their digital transformation. From cloud services to edge networking, all have witnessed a massive growth to enable remote working.

“Remote working models, digital technologies and virtual meetings and interactions have been the way of life this year, prompting the demand to fast embrace digital transformation technologies. The setting up of local data centers by cloud majors has resulted in fast rolling out products and services which will create better customer experience and take the banking comfort to a different dimension,” says Sunil.

As Finesse looks to thrive on demand for more cloud delivered digital solutions, from RPA to chatbots, the SI is also looking to help their clients deliver hyper personalized services to customers by deploying digital transformation technologies. In this direction, Finesse has joined hands with Capillary Technologies, a cloudbased Loyalty platform that leverages AI and Machine Learning to automatically create high-conversion campaign for clients.

Finesse is not resting on the multiple laurels that have come its way over the recent years. The company intends to make a mark as a global vendor over next few years.

Sunil adds, “We see ourselves growing into global Tier-2 digital SI in in the next 3-5 years. We already have projects from US, Europe and the Fareast and have been supporting clients such as Boeing, Sunlife Insurance, Marriott, Genpact, Amway etc. We will be focusing further on our global expansion in the coming years.”

Even as Finesse builds and enhances solutions and services it offers, holding on to a robust customer focused vision is possibly what will help drive the company’s growth to help it achieve a more formidable stature in the years ahead.