The world is suddenly facing business continuity challenges. Now, it’s the greatest challenge the world has faced in decades. In just a few short months, the pandemic transformed people’s lives on an unprecedented scale, impacted every industry, and altered the course of companies’ growth. But the pandemic has not slowed innovation — it is rather boosted to historic levels.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, technologies are playing a crucial role in keeping society and businesses function in a time of lockdowns and quarantines. Organizations are now highly dependent on digital platforms. Work from home is a new trend and companies are getting adjusted to the new normal. But the question is: Are the organizations ready to seize these opportunities?
To address this, The Telegraph Online and We-Bridge Solutions had conducted a CIO virtual session in association with NTT Netmagic with the focal theme ‘Transforming Today’s Business through Innovation’.
Some of the topics for discussion were:
- Digital Transformation post-pandemic
- Adopting a digital first mindset
- Delivering exceptional user experience
- Enterprise applications on Google Cloud Platform
Let us see what the CIOs from different organizations who were a part of the virtual session has to
say:
Seema Ambastha
Senior Executive Vice President - India & Global – Sales & Business Development, NTT-Netmagic
Seema is a strong industry leader with over 30 years of experience across various roles in IT industry. At NTT-Netmagic, Seema spearheads India and Global Business. She is also in charge of developing and executing strategic plans to maintain existing business partnerships and develop new business relationships. Seema holds master’s degree in Computer Science and Applications from Mumbai. Seema is a swimmer and a gold medalist for 100 meters breaststroke style. She is also a passionate globetrotter.
“COVID-19 has impacted every life. CIOs roles and priorities have changed drastically as this pandemic is forcing them to consider its long term impact on their IT organization and business as a whole. CIOs are expected to concentrate on strategic projects enhancing capability internally and with stakeholders. Resilience and customer experience have taken the central stage now. Companies across diverse industries are fully dependent on cloud. We are talking about hybrid cloud
for last 4 years. Now it is the most important consideration for infrastructure strategy and selection of appropriate vendor.
Companies that adapt to the changing needs of customers will have faster path to recovery than others. Digital engagement has accelerated tremendously leading companies to innovate quickly to replace or complement traditional models. Data and analytics, in the next normal, companies will need to be more proactive and nimbler as well as able to anticipate customer expectations and needs well ahead of time. Rethinking contactless commerce to promote safety across products, services and processes will be critical to put customers at ease and increase their satisfaction. Cyber security, cloud, AI, ML and analytics will play significant role in shaping the future of companies’ digital roadmap.
Seema Ambastha
The change in customer behavior is quite reversible for foreseeable future. Organizations have to quickly change gear from traditional approach to market to building trust and confidence, which is way more important than ever before; Virtual and digital workforce; Every business will have angle to health, safety and security; Move every product and service to digital channel; Adopt newer and more agile IT; Reorient the current skills to cloud first, AI and ML driven innovation and more
proactive approach to technology adoption for customer experience.”
Amit Khan
CIO, Mjunction Services Ltd
“Current pandemic has created huge opportunity for e-Commerce. Digital and platform driven business model has become an obvious choice for any business. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of digital transformation in true terms - there is a sense of urgency not only to ride the digital wave but the enterprises are desperate in adopting design thinking, leveraging technologies like AI and ML and innovating new digital offerings.
Some of the initiatives of last year which we are working on are Remote work and Virtual collaboration; Cloud adoption; Leveraging the Open Source solution. The challenges that are being faced are bandwidth and quality of connectivity which is still a problem specifically at home; work life balance is a growing area of concern and resistance to change.”
A R Pal
CGM (Technical), GRSE
“COVID-19 has caused huge business disruption. During complete lockdown, GRSE could manage many of its operation, viz. Materials Management, Finance, HR & training through online mode by using its DC at Kolkata and DR at Mumbai. Business critical IT platform like SAP ECC, MS-share point, MS Exchange were running unaffected.
In addition, we did video calling through Webex, Zoom, MS teams extensively. We are also using cloud services like Google Cloud, Webex, etc. where ever allowed under the company policy.”
Atul Pandharpurkar
Sr VP-IT, NU Vista Ltd
“COVID-19 did not impact much on our business working environment. Only traditional work culture has changed from office environment to work from home. There was a drop of revenue but also a push to technology innovation for bringing down the operating cost. In terms of customer experience, sales force used to visit regularly but now that has been reduced drastically. However, through sales force automation we have built the connectivity. Our ERP is on premise application but
sales force application is based on cloud. At present we need to focus on Cybersecurity which is now a bigger challenge.”
Bibek Maity
CIO, LUX industries
“Our management always aims to implement various innovations through digital platforms which are cost-efficient, flexible and secure analytics cloud solutions with micro services across the company. The management's mindset is radical digital transformation across the company to achieve the financial target and customer benefits with speed, transparency and experience.
Though poor internet connectivity at few areas made accessibility difficult, the overall business functioning was smooth during this unforeseeable situation. Invoices are being raised for any customer from anywhere and payment receipts were done without a hitch. Customers could access their order, invoices and payment data, etc. from anywhere through web portal or mobile application.
We conducted board meetings, AGM, internal office meetings, distributor meets and many more using Microsoft Teams. In addition, our employee attendance and salary processing structures were already on an online platform.
We have ERP - SAP HANA at 54 locations with 5 legal entities for efficiently managing the entire process chain. We have planned for SAP HANA frontend application update in 2021. Also, we have developed various mobile apps to enhance the data transparency, business intelligence, and analytics for internal and external customer. We are also planning to get connected with our more than 3 lakh retailors through digitalization by use of mobile apps.
Majority of our systems were already cloud based before this unfortunate circumstance. ERP - SAP HANA, HR System, Distributor Management System (DMS), and Salesmen Ordering Systems were already cloud-based. Our SAP disaster recovery (DR) server is also on cloud.”
Biswajit Bosu
CTO, RICE Group
“During COVID-19, university and schools were the very first institutions who have transformed almost the entire classroom teaching into effective digital classrooms. All effective and efficient IT services and solutions are being provided timely and in a helpful manner and as a result, all our teachers are taking classes online through various online teaching platforms (like Microsoft Team,Google Meet, Zoom, etc.) and by using LMS (Learning Management System) services and also other social media platforms.
RICE Group uses state-of-the-art ERP software for universities and other in-house developed software packages and CRM solutions hosted both in cloud and on-premises.
Some of the challenges faced to adopt a digital-first mindset were inadequate knowledge of mobile uses, non-availability of high speed internet, unavailability of smart devices for students and knowledge of online classes for non-metro students.
In future for an exceptional user experience, we are planning for a complete shifting of on premise applications to cloud and deployment of integrated university management software.”
