Tell us about the year 2017. What changes/evolution did it bring to your thinking or mindset as a CIO?
Digital Transformation is happening and we need to move quickly with this change. We are focused towards mobility and cloud adoption within our organization. Already using IaaS from Microsoft Azure where all our development and Test Servers are migrated. Similarly, using SaaS from SAP for Mobile Applications.
Were you able to stick to your New year resolutions? Did you achieve/over achieve/ under achieve?
Yes, we were able to achieve our targets particularly on new adoption of technology as mentioned above. One of the areas we are focused is User Interface and using three-way strategy for our SAP Application with the objective of helping users to have simple and friendly interface for their day to day work –
Mobility – All the business areas, we have delivered one or more mobile app for internal users thereby improving their productivity.
Fiori App – Wherever possible we are trying to use SAP Fiori App to help users in doing things in much improved and easier way.
SAP Persona – Providing Easy to use Persona Screens for Power Users.
Which technology of 2017 attracted you the most? Have you planned to implement the same in your organization?
Block Chain. Yes, but may be sometime in year 2019. I personally believe that Block Chain will be a Game Changer for many of the processes and one of the process which we have started studying is Supply Chain where we think it will provide a detailed view of each step and complete transparency to all the stack holders.
In contrast, which technology of 2017 did you find futile/non-relevant for the present and why?
Artificial Intelligence is not relevant for the current market scenario and will be useful only after 3 years in our business areas where we would like to move from big Physical Showrooms to Digital Showrooms.
How active are you as a CIO on social media platforms? Do you find them a good platform to share knowledge or has it become too monotonous?
I am not very active. It is a good platform for knowledge sharing but definitely, it is monotonous. Actually, it takes a whole lot of time and reduces the overall productivity. I believe that use of Social Media is good to certain extent, which helps you in increasing the awareness but most of time it is very repetitive and addictive. We need to strike a balance as a user of Social Media.
What is your 2018 resolution? What goals do you have for your organization?
Two major targets:
DR On Public Cloud – The cost of maintaining Dedicated DR is very high and we need to maintain / replace the infrastructure based on ageing. Now we have started our journey to move the DR on Public Cloud which is not only reducing our cost but helping us to get rid of Infrastructure challenges and will be more focused on data availability.
IOT Project – We want to do the pilot for two of our business scenarios in this area. One in the Automotive Service and another in Electronics Home Appliances business by analysing and recommending the preventive maintenance before failure.