Role of CIOs in championing innovation, Make in India story

India is not merely a growing IT market but a dominant global player with businesses fast adopting digital technologies, paving way for highly-personalised customer service. The market and businesses in the country are also driven by the adoption of next-generation technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and big data analytics on the one hand and the traditional ERPs that are driving the manufacturing and the Make in India story.

This summarises the interaction at the India edition of the World CIO200 2022 Summit held online on 04 November 2022. The Summit was organised by the GEC Media Group and Global CIO Forum, along with the Global CIO Manufacturing Forum. This year’s Summit revolved around the theme of LeadX, leading through transformation; where technology is borderless, ambitions are fearless, and leadership is limitless.

Established in 2017, the World CIO200 Summit is a multi-country CIO felicitation ceremony that recognises the achievements of digital leaders of today who have transformed the IT infrastructure of their organisations driving growth and change. The Summit has completed Africa, Europe, Qatar, UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, and Egypt editions. The Summit which is touring 40+ countries will culminate in the Grand Finale on 23–24 November 2022 in Thailand.

The virtual India event culminated with the presentation of the World CIO 200 Awards to recognise the achievements of CIOs and technology leaders driving IT infrastructure adoption in their organisations. The awards were presented in four categories of Legend, Master, Leader, and Next Generation CIO.

Welcoming the delegates Ronak Samanataray, Co-Founder and CEO, GEC Media Group highlighted the importance of India for the GEC Media group. “India is an important market not just for us but for the entire world. The way technology has evolved in India, the country is leading the digital transformation across the world,” he said.

He also highlighted that most global technology companies are laying high importance on the technology market in India. Sharing an example, he talked about the recent launch of 300,000 sq ft datacentre in Noida by the Hiranandani Group-owned Yotta Infrastructure.

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“India is an important market and the way technology has evolved in the country, it is leading the digital transformation across the world”

Ronak Samanataray,
Co-Founder and CEO, GEC Media Group.

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“It is really great to see Indian technology companies like Yotta flying high and firing all cylinders to compete with the rest of the world,” he said adding that GEC Media Group has always believed in taking the game to the next level and the World CIO 200 is a step towards recognising the game changers.

Delivering the Summit’s Opening Keynote, Pratap Patjoshi, Global CIO Manufacturing Forum highlighted that the CIO Manufacturing Forum has come a long way from a small group of 10-12 members and evolving into a global organisation in a short span, to focus on concerns related to the use of digital technologies in the manufacturing sector.

“From a small group of 10-12 CIOs, the forum evolved to become a 100+ CIO organisation focusing on manufacturing units in Pune alone. A partnership with GEC Media this year has, however, helped us become a global organisation. We launched the Global CIO Manufacturing Forum or GCFM in Dubai earlier in 2022 and later in other cities. Overall, we are now an organisation with 500+ members in India and expect to add 2,000 more members from across the globe,” he said.

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“Digital technologies can help convert the four factors of VUCA into vision, understanding, clarity and agility, the components that can drive growth”

Pratap Patjoshi,
Global CIO Manufacturing Forum.

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“The manufacturing processes across the sectors, irrespective of whether it is the manufacturing of a small component like a screw or products like a car or a truck, is the same. Barring things that may be unique to a product, all manufacturing companies follow the same process of raw material procurement, processing, and manufacturing a product is almost the same. This brings in synergy and GCFM has emerged as a platform for sharing experiences of technology deployments in the manufacturing sector.”

“This is also very important, particularly since the country and the Prime Minister have a lot of focus on Make in India and the organisation is looking forward to contributing to the momentum and taking forward the manufacturing journey in India,” he added.

Talking about the imperative of the VUCA or the world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity, Patjoshi stressed that the digital journey is important for any organisation. “Many organisations indicate the limitation of budget, manpower, process, and access to technology. However, it is important to start the digital journey by taking whatever smaller steps possible and growing it at one’s pace,” he said, adding that the forum can help such organisations in deciding on the correct technologies and processes, and the right partners.

“The digital journey can help change volatility into vision. Uncertainty can be dealt with through innovation and a new way of doing things like the work-from-home that enabled the non-core staff to support running the manufacturing units with minimum shop-floor teams. The changing nature of customer needs and their demands is increasing complexity, which can be turned into an opportunity if the organisation has clarity on the needs,” he explained.

Patjoshi also touched upon the ambiguity factor stating that manufacturing companies will continue to face challenges of processes, changing market dynamics and scenarios. “Digital technologies can help convert the four factors of VUCA into vision, understanding, clarity and agility, the components that can drive an organisation’s growth,” he stated.

Improving consumer experiences using data

With organisations adopting digital technologies in a big way, data has been projected as the new oil and data mining as the new way of driving growth. However, not all organisations are able to harness and utilise data in the same way. Talking about the issue Khushru M Mistry, CIO and Senior Vice President of Eureka Forbes India shared his insight into how organisations can democratise data to enhance their consumer experiences.

Sharing an example of the intricate pattern of a leaf, he explained that like the lines or the arteries on a leaf, businesses have a complex structure including services, direct sales, retail, B2B and e-commerce sites, and digital marketing. Besides, companies also have manufacturing, R&D, supply chain, human resources, finance, and admin functions to deal with. “All of these are interconnected with the customer at the centre,” he said, adding that the strength and loyalty of the customer, like the central artery of the leaf is critical for the success of a company.

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“In order to ensure a satisfactory customer journey organisation, need to ensure that the customer data that it is collecting is democratised”

Khushru M Mistry,
CIO and Senior Vice President, Eureka Forbes India.

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So, what happens in the real-world organisation? “You may find yourself in a mess where a customer complains online or on social media about a product or its features and the post go viral. This drives the online reputation management or ORM team into action which tries to minimise brand damage. At the same time, however, the marketing team is bombarding the customers with the same product details,” Mistry elaborated.

“In order to ensure a satisfactory customer journey organisation, need to ensure that the customer data that it is collecting is democratised. In other words, an organisation must share relevant data with everyone involved in delivering simplified user journeys and improved customer experiences,” he said.

“An organisation may collect a lot of data, regardless of whether it is in a silo or centralised data lake or in a data warehouse, data democratisation is what really creates value because by shares the information with everybody involved within the organisation and even the customers. Its purpose is to enable everyone to access user data so they can make data-driven decisions to transform customer engagement.”

He, however, cautioned that data democratisation or sharing of data must be done with utmost care without compromising the data security and any leak of the PII or a customer’s Personal Identifiable Information. “Democratisation of data if done properly with adequate security measures provides a major opportunity to create a unified omnichannel customer journey by allowing organisations to improve customer experience based on data and not on assumptions or hunches.”

Mistry further highlighted that data democratisation empowers business teams to quickly enable behavioural segmentation and accordingly craft a response for the customer. “More importantly, it combines the efforts of ORM, marketing, sales, and services teams to work collaboratively to resolve the problem at hand,” he said.

Sharing insight into the steps that organisations need to take to reap benefits from the vast data, Mistry said that they first need to implement CDP or a common data platform that can integrate with the organisations’ CRM, data lake, ORM system, etc. This will help an organisation get a 360-degree view of the customer, their needs and the level of satisfaction and offer a highly-customised solution. He also advised that organisations can blend their AI and ML engines to segregate and identify customer cohorts to provide personalised recommendations.

“The end result is unlimited customer attributes that offer visibility per customer. It also helps speed up the brand’s time to market and create a lifetime value or CLTV for the customer, besides providing self-service orchestration at scale for the business and their customers,” he stressed, adding that all this will enable the wow experience for the customers.

Driving enterprise success through ERP

Integration of material movement with finance is critical for any organisation and a proper ERP solution provides the right tool for the stakeholders to be on top of the information. Talking about the rapid deployment of SAP, Allauddin F Mohamad, Global Head of Information Technology, Camlin Fine Sciences shared insight on the template-based approach to rolling out the solution.

“SAP has sector-specific ready-to-use roll-out templates that make implementation less risky as these have been customised by the domain experts by breaking the entire process into smaller modules. They also have different modules including in-house, cloud-based, and business-by-design,” he explained adding that the first step for an organisation is to set up a project committee, including an external resource to take the first step.

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“The success and failure of an ERP implementation depends on the organisation’s ability to select a partner with the right capabilities and experience”

Allauddin F Mohamad,
Global Head Information Technology, Camlin Fine Sciences.

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Talking about the key considerations while selecting an ERP partner, Mohamad pointed out that choosing the right partner for is as important as selecting the ERP solution itself. “The success and failure of your ERP implementation depends on the partner’s capabilities and experience. It is also important to trust and stick with the partner for the long term. Frequent change is a sure recipe for an ERP disaster,” he stressed.

He, however, pointed out that organisations must take adequate research before finalising the partner. “It is important that the partner has adequate industry experience in the vertical that your company operates. One must certainly take into consideration the number of roll-outs in the vertical to understand past experience. CIOs must also take feedback from the partner’s customers on the service quality and offerings, their customisation and integration capabilities, involvement and participation, the support capabilities, and the relationship with the ERP vendor.”

Mohamad also stressed the need of setting up of right implementation team comprising functional experts from each operational team who would work with the implementation partner to define to process and the changes, an in-house project manager with strong cross-function business process and database knowledge, and an infrastructure manager with firewall and network architecture expertise.

“The other aspect is to conduct a gap analysis and define the scope of the project and break the rollout into phases. For example, Phase 1 can include the rollout of the standard modules so that there is no disruption in business transactions. Phase 2 can focus on third-party integration while Phase 3 can take care of enhancements for customisation. Organisations should consider any additional raptors for the last phase of the rollout,” he advised. He also pointed out that weekly target review meetings should be held to ensure the rollout meets the timeline.

The World CIO 200 Summit in India concluded with the felicitation of CIOs and Industry leaders who have accelerated digital and business transformation, creating a better future for their businesses and driving growth.

The World CIO 200 Summit India edition awards

Legend CIO: Life time achievement awards for more than 20 years of experience.

Master CIO: Experience of more than 15-20 years and unparalleled technological experience in a career life span.

Leader CIO: Experience of 10-15 years and multiple domain expertise.

Next-generation CIO: Experience of 5-10 years or less and undertaken mammoth projects in a less span of time.

By Shubhendu Parth.