Decoding the Imperatives to Drive Digital Transformation By CIOReviewIndia Team

Decoding the Imperatives to Drive Digital Transformation

CIOReviewIndia Team | Thursday, 25 June 2020, 04:11 IST

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Decoding the Imperatives to Drive Digital Transformation

Enterprises across industries are looking to embrace digital transformation in a bid to boost their business growth and expand their reach. However, in order to derive the desired business outcomes, they must strategize before jumping on the digital bandwagon. CIOReviewIndia brought together experts from different industries through Tech Panel Webinar wherein they shared their experiences and explained how businesses need to define their approach towards digital transformation. Experts on the panel were:

  • Manikantan Dakshinamoorthy, AVP – Sales Enterprise Security Solutions, eMudhra
  • Arun Karna, CEO and MD, AT&T Global Network
  • Kavita Viswanath, General Manager, JFrog India
  • Rakesh Ravuri, CTO, SVP Engineering and Global Retail Engineering Lead, Publicis Sapient 

Electronic signatures for business continuity      

Manikantan explained the importance of electronic signatures for business continuity. “In the digital future, the manual intervention is going to diminish. As a result of the pandemic, it has become imperative for enterprises to go completely paperless. Electronic signature for business continuity has become the need of the hour today. Moreover, as there are a lot of devices that are getting connected to the companies’ networks, there needs to be proper security in place to allow access to the devices in a secure manner. Secondly, in the customer segment, we must look at a contact less scenario.

Manikantan Dakshinamoorthy, AVP – Sales Enterprise Security Solutions, eMudhra

"As there is a plethora of documents in every department, it is important to make the process paperless and improve efficiency. This is where eMudhra comes in. We enable this through our expertise in four domains: secure online access, public key infrastructure, paperless office and customer behaviour analytics."

When there is no contact, authenticating the users and providing good customer experience is a major concern. User identity authentication is becoming important for organizations to enable remote working for their employees. Moreover, the market is shifting towards solutions that are scalable, robust and capable of meeting the specific requirements of businesses. Analytics is also becoming important so as to improve the business systems and processes rather than just making it paperless. That is where intelligent systems are playing a huge role in the current market scenario.

When there is a plethora of documents in every department, it is important to make the process paperless and improve efficiency. This is where eMudhra comes in. We enable this through our expertise in four domains: secure online access, public key infrastructure, paperless office and customer behaviour analytics. We have a product called emSigner which is an AI enabled document processing automation solution. It takes inputs from various applications, allows modification and finally the digital signing of the document in an efficient manner. It accepts inputs in a dynamic form wherein the inputs can be manual as well. Then our integrated machine learning based decision pipeline comes into play which helps make sense of the data while bringing an AI element into it.”  

Role of DevOps in Digital Transformation

Throwing light on the ways to leverage DevOps for digital transformation, Kavita elaborated on what it means to ensure continuous delivery and update of software. “All the software today is powered on the backbone of deployment and updates which keep happening to the software.

Kavita Viswanath, General Manager, JFrog India

Be it any industry vertical, as long as you are using technology, DevOps is relevant to you and it is important to understand what role it can play in your digital transformation journey. When it comes to release management, it has to come with trust and ensure security.

"High availability is important in the context of DevOps because when you are talking about releasing software seamlessly, you must ensure that your infrastructure supports the release management in the right way. Developer efficiency has become a super critical metric for organizations."

High availability is important in the context of DevOps because when you are talking about releasing software seamlessly, you must ensure that your infrastructure supports the release management in the right way. Developer efficiency has become a super critical metric for organizations. An emerging trend is ‘Super DevOps.’ Traditionally, organizations have a large team that support DevOps and drive DevOps transformation.

When you have a unified end-to-end platform, it takes care of all the DevOps processes, allowing more automation. Thus, you form a lean team which is capable of supporting thousands of customers. You need a platform that supports a language and infrastructure that the developer or organization chooses and works within the guardrails of security guidelines.”    

Digital Transformation in Retail

Rakesh suggested the approach for retailers to move forward. “Retailers are looking at the changing customer expectations. They need to adapt and meet those customer expectations.  The line between the digital and physical experience is getting blurred.

Next thing is speed and transparency in supply chain and the need for it to be data driven.

Rakesh Ravuri, CTO, SVP Engineering and Global Retail Engineering Lead, Publicis Sapient

"Customers expect your systems to be smart, understand the market trends and show them the right products at the right time."

Customers expect your systems to be smart, understand the market trends and show them the right products at the right time. The last need is to know how to attract customers to come back to the store. The first step is to ‘adopt’ which involves automation. The next step is to ‘evolve’. Once you are working faster, you should aim at improving business outcomes.

The last step is becoming intelligent wherein you anticipate what the customer wants. This is where AI, ML and data analytics come in to empower the retailers to transform their decision making.”  

Digital Transformation in Telecom 

Arun elaborated on the impact of digital transformation on telecom industry and the way forward for telecom businesses. “These unprecedented times have accelerated the need for businesses to undertake digital transformation. With the advent of new technologies like 5G and IoT, the telecom industry is evolving very rapidly.

We can view digital transformation in telecom in four facets: network transformation, business transformation or the business value, operations transformation, and experience transformation.

Arun Karna, CEO and MD, AT&T Global Network

"We can view digital transformation in telecom in four facets: network transformation, business transformation or the business value, operations transformation, and experience transformation."

In the case of network transformation, SDN is coming to the fore. Network service providers like us are harnessing the power of SDN technologies, converting them into products and services that are greatly benefiting the customers. What it seeks to deliver is edge to edge capability. It is an ecosystem of technologies that amplify your ability to move with greater agility all across the board. The combination of Network Functions Virtualization and SD-WAN capabilities is transforming the whole space.

So, service providers like us are virtualizing network functions that were earlier delivered using purpose specific boxes or hardware. They are now being virtualized. Routing, firewall, application optimization, all these are running on what we call the intelligent edge now. These capabilities rely on connectivity. They must account for the cloud and data transport and yet the aim is to cultivate powerful processing and analytics at the end points. The beauty of SDN really is application aware routing.

The customer’s platform should have the capability to shift workloads instantaneously and seamlessly right to the very edge of the network. This is what we as service providers are seeking to do by providing the intelligent edge strategy. Moreover, AI and AR are making their presence felt in the customer and enterprise space. Network providers like us are deploying AI and AR to prioritize automation.

When you combine all this with IoT, a lot of use cases are being brought to life across industry verticals. 5G in combination with edge computing and AI would be a great enabler of truly connected experience.”

All in all, there was a lot for the audience to incorporate into their businesses and assess their digital transformation initiatives based on these insights by the experts.

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