Technology during this pandemic has helped us to manage the crisis, both professionally and personally, in various ways. COVID-19 has encouraged technology innovations that are changing our world. To stay competitive in this new business and economic environment requires new strategies and practices. But how much the organizations are willing to adopt the new practices?

The Telegraph Online, We-Bridge Solutions and NTT Netmagic organized a CIO virtual session with the focal theme ‘Transforming Today’s Business through Innovation’. CIOs from several companies attended the session and discussed various topics like delivering exceptional user experience,enterprise applications on Google Cloud Platform, digital transformation post pandemic and adopting a digital first mindset.

Let’s find out what our CIOs said during the session:

Prasenjit Roy

Sr EVP and Chief Marketing Officer, NTT Netmagic

Prasenjit has more than two and half decades of experience on the business side – spanning across several multinationals in India and abroad. An accomplished and dynamic Strategic Marketing and Strategy specialist - he is a Council member and mentor to NASSCOM’s 10,000 Start-ups and nationwide SME program and Council member of CII. He is the winner of numerous industry awards and advisor of many institutes and universities. He has advanced degrees in Engineering and
Business Management, and also did a Post Graduate certificate course in Modern Information Systems from IIT Mumbai.

“In the digital age, consumers are looking at personalized, frictionless and effective mediums for communication. With new delivery channels emerging every day, it is challenging for enterprises to establish a consistent customer experience across different delivery channels. This is imperative in the digital age where customers expect their companies to interact with them in real-time.

A Walker study states that by 2020, customer experience is expected to overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator. This is reflected in the huge success of companies like Amazon, Airbnb, Uber and closer home, Ola, which have redefined customer experience.

The CIO is at the center stage of this digital era where customer experience is extremely critical in a brand’s success. From measuring the satisfaction of the customer to understand the true voice of the customer, the CIO has a critical role to play.

Prasenjit Roy

Globally, and in India too, we have examples of several firms that have used digital technologies to truly transform the customer experience. Technologies like IoT, Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence are being widely used in various sectors for improving customer experience. Understanding that account opening is a tedious process, many banks in India have smartly used a combination of different technologies. As more customers actively engage themselves on digital channels, expect virtual assistants or bots to be the norm than the exception.

Thanks to the combination of technologies such as AI, analytics and IoT, enterprises can proactively enhance customer experience and deliver hyper-personalized experiences at every touchpoint.”

Subir Hore

GM-IT, Berger Paints India Ltd

“During the COVID-19 crisis, we had a paradigm shift of meetings from face-2-face to virtual environment. In this field we made extensive usage of MS Teams including the various training programs and product/scheme knowledge with dealers and painters. We increased the internet bandwidth of the central location to accommodate more remote users through VPN connectivity. We have been migrating more and more users to O365 platform from On-premise exchange. Almost 70% of the relevant employees has been shifted to WFH (Work From Home) environment with laptops/desktops and hotspots. We have no plan in changing the landscape of ERP, and shall continue as On-premise. With introduction of virtual platform like NTT-Netmagic and Google Cloud, there is huge saving potential in travelling expense.”

Sujoy Sen

CIO, Linde Group

“We have done some extensive work using Robotics Process Automation (RPA) and AI based technology solution adoption. Also with the integration brought us opportunity to re-engineer the IT application landscape and make the solution more suitable for current business needs.

Digital first mindset is a change in the management process. We in IT, have a major role to play in adoption of the same. We need to ‘walk the talk’. On one hand constantly communicate the benefit of digital solutions, and on the other, welcome the ideas that come and see through the realization.

In future, we plan to deliver exceptional user experience with information whenever required and faster processing.”

Sanjay Prasad

CIO, RP-SG, CESC Power group

“Besides COVID-19 which was global in nature, we had our fair share of one of the gravest cyclonic impacts not seen in recent times, in the form of Amphan. Unprecedented damage to trees and poles brought physical and virtual connectivity to a standstill. Amidst the lockdown, the teams on the ground worked round the clock to bring restoration of service in about a week’s time, comparing favorably with restoration of similar catastrophes even in the developed world.

Providing secure, reliable and scaled up work from home and collaboration services during COVID was a big challenge unless you were already operating in the knowledge and IT services sector. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has also taught us to behave differently and for a cause, especially during the lockdown by taking care of team members, both professionally and personally, especially those who were not in the forefront of day-day interaction; acceptance by business and user stakeholders of cloud-based services, including virtual collaboration platforms and for statutory meetings which require recording and heightened confidentiality and adapting to new ways of working whilst using these tools.

I see the maturity this roadmap in three stages for any utility: 1) Delivery – reliable and consistency –as the base levels 2) Convenience – enabling interaction, querying and transacting using the internet and ecommerce platforms and 3) Enhanced customer experience roadmap – some examples - be it exploring beyond our existing chatbot service to voice interactions given the challenges of vernacular phonemes maturity in our market, or planning GIS-CRM-Asset maintenance last mile integration to improve uptime, or exploring home automation solutions with consumers for greater
engagement, etc.

Extending these initiatives to the workforce in terms of team work through virtual collaboration,support to secure work from home setup and aiming towards more democratization of analytics at source of operation, will also lead to productivity and higher work fulfillment.”

Sumit Dutta Gupta

Group CIO and Head-IS, Haldia Petrochemicals Ltd

“The COVID-19 pandemic has completely disrupted the business scenario and established a new normal in conducting our business. A new normal business model is getting evolved and some business scenarios it is getting shape. The business-technology landscape across the world is also changing with more emphasis on Cloud and mobile based technology. To stay relevant in today’s changing business scenarios and stay functional and productive, businesses must navigate the
operational and financial challenges, while rapidly addressing the needs of their customers, suppliers and people.

In the current situation, enterprise technology leaders will have to display strong leadership abilities and commitment to drive the digital journey with positive business outcomes. An enterprise technology decision maker will also have to set up an IT resiliency team with digital dashboards across functions, ensure there is a seamless information exchange across stakeholders and in essence make all stakeholders feel confident to adapt more of the digital solution in day to day life
including work from home scenario. This also calls for a strong cyber security framework, be proactive about phishing scams and above all leverage data in a secured way to emerge as Data Centric organization.

Digitalization as a whole has helped and is helping our organization to tide over the present business disruption due to COVID 19. The Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in lot of business function is driving contactless process and thereby increasing the operational efficiencies of the business. The predictive technology is proving to be a game changer in the way to see and run the business. Technology has also enabled remote monitoring of the plants and has also pushed collaboration among stakeholders to a different level ensuring seamless operations with improved reliability and operational efficiency. Technology has also enabled new business model like Financial or HR Shared services across group companies and large organizations. The Digital chain of seamless information flow across the organization right from PLANT to BOARDROOM is an important milestone achieved.”