40 Under 40 Innovators of 2021

ISSN 2582-127X

Transforming Life: Technology and Our Future

Under Leaders Should Know These Ways to Implement Innovation in the Workplace

AUGUST 2021

Good Corporate Leadership Boosts Innovation & Creativity Right from the invention of the wheel, the first airplane, the first mobile phone, to the first automated machine, innovation is what drives the world. Geniuses come together to create an extraordinary concept that changes the coming years. With the advent of disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence, which led to other technologies like robotics, machine learning, natural language processing, and data analytics, innovation has reached new heights. Tech giants from their respective industries are finding new ways to optimize business processes, new software to improve performance, and new devices that will ease our human lives.

While the end result of hard work is innovation, the process behind that is run by many smart

EDITORIAL

individuals and leaders who motivate them to collaborate. Good leadership is not just about getting work done, good leadership reflects in the way work is innovated, which leads to employee satisfaction. Anything mundane tends to make the atmosphere dull and gloomy, when innovation is encouraged in an organization, spirits and lifted and confidence is doubled. That is what corporate leadership should be all about.

Moving forward in the tech era, innovation and stagnation will distinguish companies from each other. To promote innovation, an effective leader will encourage collaboration. A critical part of leadership is motivating and inspiring people while identifying areas worth exploring and form development teams for long-term plans.

To carry on innovation, defining the pain point is important. It's a leader's job to define problems and outcomes along with aligning them to a mission. But this doesn't imply that innovation should be limited to a specific purpose. Expert leadership dictates that corporate leadership must create a culture of innovation where new ideas and processes are encouraged, no matter what.

Strong leaders, in today's tech world, are aware that staying ahead requires change and new products in the pipeline. Organizations must be open to change and not consider it as a waste of time. To survive long term, the cost of innovation makes a world of a difference than any shortterm benefits.

Innovation and leadership also help uplift the reputation of the companies. The identity of many of the tech giants we know now is related to innovations and forward-thinking leadership.

Innovative leaders are always involved in the creative process, guiding the teams correctly, and giving valuable feedback. Innovative leaders have the expertise, intelligence, ability to think critically and creatively, being open to new ideas, and cultivate self-discipline within the teams to pursue the idea. While these are the characteristic requirements, it is safe to say that innovation is also driven by appreciating people's strengths and helping people work on their weaknesses. This also helps leaders understand their employees and create positions for the right people at the right places to effect change.

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Editor-in-Chief

Senior Analyst

Apoorva Komarraju

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Senior Analyst

Content Analyst

Disha Sinha

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Content Analyst

Content Analyst

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Content Analyst

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Research Analyst

Sales Manager

Kushagra Gupta

Anusha Polneni

Crea ve Head

Marke ng Analyst

Jyothi Pandey

Pravallika Thammana

SEO Analyst

Web Developer

August 2021

Vincenzo Marchica

Marcus Cheng

Disha Indrakant Mishra

Saurabh Goenka

Vincix Group

Acclivis Technologies and Solu ons

Aureus Analy cs Pvt. Ltd.

MindMap Digital Co-Founder & CEO

Managing Director & CEO

Analy cs Engineer Machine Learning

Industry

Industry

Industry

Industry

Informa on Technology & Services

Healthcare

BFSI

Informa on Technology & Services

Focus Area

Focus Area

Focus Area

Focus Area

Providing Exper zed Solu ons for Intelligent Business Opera ons

Machine learning, cloud compu ng

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analy cs

IT Consul ng, RPA, AI, Automa on, Process Transforma on, Digital Transforma on, Digital Consul ng, Analy cs Outsourcing, RPA Outsourcing, RPA CoE, Digital Contractor Resources

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Providing Exper zed Solu ons for Intelligent Business Opera ons

Leading the Healthcare Industry in the Pandemic with Top-Notch Innova ons

Finessing the Insurance Industry & Customer Experience with Modern Technology

Helping Organiza ons with Only the Best Digital Transforma on Strategies

www.vincixgroup.com

www.acclivis.com

www.aureusanaly cs.com

www.mindmap.digital

Tobias Margarit

Ashish Kumar

Roman Rafiq

Steven Davis

Diconium

Indium So ware

IGT Solu ons

Innodata Inc.

Managing director

Principal Data Scien st

Vice President & CIO

VP of Engineering

RPA, AI Expert & Chief Evangelist

Industry

Industry Industry

Industry

IT & Services

Informa ontechnology & services

BFSI, Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, Legal, Media & Communica ons, Energy & Resources, Transporta on & Logis cs, Educa on, CPG/ Retail

Informa on technology & services

Focus Area

Focus Area

Focus Area

Focus Area

Growth Management, Digital Process Automa on

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing

Technology and digital transforma on

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

The Specialist of Data-Driven Growth Management and Digital Process Automa on

Pushing Teams to Innovate Faster-to-deploy Tech Solu ons for Businesses

A Transforma on Leader Steering IGT Solu ons through the Pandemic

Data All Star Driving AI Innova ons

www.diconium.com

www.indiumso ware.com

www.igtsolu ons.com

www.innodata.com

Anuj Sehgal

Ben Locke

BayOne Solu ons, Inc.

Kofax

Vice President of Strategic Accounts

Vice President

Industry

Informa on Technology and Services Focus Area Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Robo cs, RPA/Chatbots /Automa on, Big Data Analy cs, IoT, Cloud Compu ng, Cyber Security

Industry Avia on, Manufacturing, Retail, Energy & Resources, Transporta on and Logis cs, Construc on.

Focus Area Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, RPA/Chatbots /Automa on, Cloud Compu ng

Innovation

Innovation

Innova ng beyond excellence and accelera ng diversity in workplace

Helping Organiza ons A ain Success through Technology Deployment

www.bayone.com

www.kofax.com

Content/Data Enrichment, Machine Learning, Digital Data Solu ons, Ar ficial Intelligence, Data Labelling, Data Annota on, Data Prepara on, Data Transforma on, Data Extrac on, Data Enrichment, Data Acquisi on, Intelligent Automa on, Image Annota on, Video Annota on

Ashutosh Singh

Pradeep Kumar

Mobcoder Technologies Pvt. Ltd.

Apolis

Co-founder & CEO

Director & Client Partner

Industry

Healthcare, Educa on Focus Area

Machine Learning, RPA, Chatbots, Automa on, IoT

Industry

Informa on Technology, HR, Automa on Focus Area

Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, Robo cs, Big Data Analy cs, IoT, Cybersecurity, AI

Innovation

Innovation

Revolu onising Educa on Sector with the Convergence of AR, IoT, and AI

Strategizing Unique So ware Solu ons Specialized for IT Sector

www.mobcoder.com

www.apolisrises.com

Samay Kohli

Shawn Li

Ryan Bosshart

Parris Barron

GreyOrange

Conversica

phData

Medallia

Co-Founder & CEO

Senior Director

CEO

Director

Industry

Industry

Informa on Technlogy & Services

Public Sector

Focus Area

Automo ve, Energy & U li es, Financial Services, Governement, Healthcare, Insurance, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Restaurant & Food Service, Retail, Technology & Services, Telecommunica on & Media, Travel & Hospitality

Industry

Industry

Warehousing

Business

Focus Area

Focus Area

Focus Area

Ar ficial intelligence, Robo cs

Conversa onal AI, Intelligent Virtual Assistant

Ar ficial Intelligence, Data Science, MLOps, Machine Learning, Cloud Compu ng, DataOps, Data Analy cs, Data Engineering

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Using Advancement Fulfillment Science to Evaluate Order Data and Compose Best Decisions

Leveraging Coversa onal AI Solu ons to Scale Produc vity

Building a Data-driven Future to Support Machine Learning and Data Analy cs

Turning Customer Signals into Ac onable Insights

www.greyorange.com

www.conversica.com

www.vincixgroup.com

www.medallia.com

Oren Kaniel

Ori Lev-Ran

Boaz Elgat

Anthony Lempelius

AppsFlyer

Iguazio

Datorama

Wavicle Data Solu ons

Co-founder & CEO

VP

Director

VP

Industry

Industry

Gaming, Shopping, Food & Dring, Entertainment & Music, Finance, Health & Fitness, Travel

Financial Services, Telecommunica ons, Smart Mobility, Manufacturing, Retail, Ad-Tech & Gaming, Healthcare, Energy & U li es

Publisher & Ad-Tech, Retail, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services, Consumer Goods

Focus Area

Focus Area

Data Science, Big Data

Marke ng Intelligence

Data Management, Cloud Engineering, Data Visualiza on, Data Science & Analy cs

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Providing Analy cs and Fraud Protec on Technologies for Be er Business Experience

Using Data Science to Impact Business Growth

Making Every Marke ng Decision Data-driven

Taking Informed Business Decisions Using Disrup ve Trends

www.appsflyer.com

www.iguazio.com

www.datorama.com

www.wavicledata.com

Focus Area

SaaS Mobile Marke ng Analy cs, Marke ng Analy cs, Fraud Protec on

Industry Industry

Manufacturing, Retail/CPG, Financial Services, Insurance, Healthcare, Hospitality, Restaurant Focus Area

Sindhu Joseph

Jeffrey Kinsey

CogniCor Technologies

Dataminr

CEO

Co-Founder and CTO

Industry

Industry

Focus Area

Business, Public Sector, Financial Services, Retail, Consumer, Transporta on, Insurance, Healthcare, Energy, Media

Digital Assistant

Focus Area

Wealth Management

Ar ficial Intelligence, Data Science, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Sta s cal Modeling

Innovation

Innovation

Using Digital Assistant for Wealth Management

U lizing Real- me AI for Event and Risk Detec on

www.cognicor.com

www.dataminr.com

Tobias Malbrecht

Stian Brekke

Tim Waegeman

Nick Elprin

RapidMiner

Visolit

Robovision

Domino Data Lab

VP

Director

Co-Founder and CTO

CEO

Industry Automo ve, CPG, Retail & eCommerce, Communica ons, Energy, Financial Services, Healthcare

Industry

Industry

Construc on, Property, Trade & Services, Mari me, Organiza ons & Unions, Professional Services,

Agriculture & Food, Manufacturing, Smart City, Healthcare

Focus Area

Focus Area

Robo c Process Automa on, Ar ficial Intelligence, Data Science, Machine Learning

IT Opera ons, Cloud Compu ng, CRM, Data Analy cs,

Focus Area So ware Development, Ar ficial Intelligence, Industrial Automa on, Robo cs, Visual Inspec on, Video Analy cs, Computer Vision

Data Science

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Unleashing Data Science Pla orm to Drive Revenue Growth

Helping Customer's Cloud Journey from Planning to Innova on

Introducing Human-machine Revolu on to the Leaders of Tomorrow

Helping World's Most Sophis cated Companies Run on Models

www.rapidminer.com

www.visolit.no

www.robovision.ai

www.dominodatalab.com

John Box

Taras Vervega

Mohsin Syed

Ido Monshri

Meltwater

So Serve

KiwiTech

Taldor

EVP

President

EVP

Director

Industry

Industry Healthcare & Life Sciences, Financial Services, Retail, High Tech, Energy, Oil & Gas, Manufacturing, Agriculture

Industry

Industry

Business

Finance, Public, Commerce, Defense, Healthcare

Informa on Technlogy & Services

Industry

Financial Services, Insurance, Media & Technology, Health & Life Sciences, Manufacturing Focus Area

Ar ficial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, Blockchain, DevOps-as-a-Service

Innovation

Focus Area Engineering Services, Cloud & DevOps, Big Data & Analy cs, Ar ficial Intelligence, Machine Learning, IoT, Cybersecurity, Robo cs Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Pumping Value to Tracking, Monitoring, and Analyzing online news

Solving Business Challenges with Innova ve Technology Solu ons

Aiding Start-ups by Providing a Wide Range of Techhnology Services

Providing Comprehensive and Advanced Business and Technological Solu ons

www.meltwater.com

www.so serveinc.com

kiwitech.com

www.taldor.co.il

Focus Area

SaaS, Online Media Monitoring

Focus Area

Focus Area

Hybrid Cloud, Cybersecurity, Hardware, So ware

Umang Nahata

Shelly Zhu

Karl Redenbach

Sumit Gupta

Evosys

Wicreso

LiveTiles

MatchPoint Solu ons

CEO

VP

Co-founder & CEO

CEO

Industry Public Sector, Manufacturing & Distribu on, Engineering & Construc on, Hospitality, Travel & Tourism, Retail, Banking & Financial, Higher Educa on, Oil & Gas Focus Area

Industry

Informa on Technlogy & Services Focus Area

Industry Industry

So ware & Tech Services Focus Area

Informa on Technlogy & Services Focus Area

Cloud Services, So ware

Cybersecurity, Cloud Services, DevOps, IoT, Analy cs

Oracle Cloud Consul ng

Talent Acquisi on, Managed Microso Services

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Unleashing the Power of Digital Transforma on

Streamlining IT Infrastructure and Cloud Solu ons

Offering Exper se and So ware Products to Boost Produc vity

Using Digital Transforma on to Convert Customer Ideas into Reality

www.evosysglobal.com

www.wicreso .com

www.live les.nyc

www.matchps.com

Chad Rodriguez

David Cline

Carmen Vidal Gil

Rightpoint

So Nice

Paradigma Digital

VP&MD

EVP

Founder

Industry

Industry

Informa on Technlogy & Services

So ware & Tech Services

Industry

Entertainment, Finance, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Insurance, Manufacturing, Retail, Transporta on Focus Area

Focus Area

Data & Analy cs, AR/VR, Digi za on

Analy cs, Business Intelligence, Cybersecurity, Applica on Development, Data Science

Focus Area

Innovation

Innovation

Innovation

Ensuring Market Relevance with Data and Crea vity

Driving Business Transforma on through Digital Technologies

Turning Technology into Clients' Superpower

www.rightpoint.com

www.so nice.com

www.paradigmadigital.com

Jocelyn Teo

Florian Pasquier

Xilinx

Quan um

Director

SVP

Industry

Aerospace & Defense, Automo ve, Consumer Electronics, Data Center, Healthcare & Sciences, Wired & Wired Communica ons

FMCG/CPG, Retail, Banking & Wealth, Property, Insurance, Healthcare, Public Sector

Focus Area

Focus Area

Networking, Video AI Analy cs

Data Science, Ar ficial Intelligence

Innovation

Innovation

Accelera ng Innova on at the Edge

Combining Human and Ar ficial Intelligence to Power Possibili es

www.xilinx.com

www.quan um.com

Industry

Cloud Services, Data Intelligence

12 Anuj Sehgal BayOne Solutions, Inc.

16 Ashish Kumar Indium Software

24 Ashutosh Singh Mobcoder Technologies

30 Ben Locke Kofax

34 Disha Indrakant Mishra Aureus Analytics Pvt. Ltd.

28 Transforming Life: Technology and Our Future

42 Marcus Cheng Acclivis Technologies and Solutions

46 Pradeep Kumar Apolis

52 Roman Rafiq IGT Solutions

58 Saurabh Goenka MindMap Digital

64 Steve Davis Innodata Inc.

70 Tobias Margarit diconium

74

62

Vincenzo Marchica

Leaders Should Know These Ways to Implement Innovation in the Workplace

Vincix Group

Anuj Sehgal

Empowering Women in Technology: Innovations Beyond Excellence

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, Robotics, RPA/Chatbots/ Automation, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing, Cyber Security.

Information Technology and Services

Accelerating Diversity in the Workplace

A

ccess to technology plays a huge role in giving birth to gender inequality. Women

are confined to traditional roles and have limited access to capital, training and

technology that could enhance their lives. Technology always played a variety of

roles in supporting the development of women's capacities and resources. Technology and social media can be powerful tools for women and girls to take part in democracy, civic action and peacebuilding, as well as to fight for their basic rights and gender equality.

Adapting programming and investing in digital literacy for women and girls is the key to ensure that they can meaningfully participate in these newly opened public spheres.

With a constant process of innovation Anuj Sehgal, the Vice President of Strategic Accounts at BayOne Solutions, has served in empowering women in the field of technology.

As the IT workforce is very heavily dominated by men and women are not getting fair representation in the workplace, he invested a lot of effort in working with the customers in educating them through their hiring process to get more diversity and inclusion in their ranks.

Marking the Beginning of Making the Difference IT Consulting and Staffing is a very people-heavy industry that focuses on solving real-time problems of hiring key personnel for the customers and delivering value to ensure business continuity for the organizations. But focusing on personnel problems, the industry tends to lose the goal of efficiency and value proposition for all the stakeholders involved.

Anuj Sehgal has been instrumental in evolving and innovating the relationship-building process as well as creating a robust environment for key stakeholders, customers, consultants or partners, to share ideas and ensure that the hiring process keeps getting better and more inclusive. As the IT workforce has been very heavily dominated by men and women were not getting fair representation in the workplace, the company invested a lot of effort in working with the customers in educating them through their hiring process

12

Anuj Sehgal Vice President of Strategic Accounts

BayOne Solutions, Inc. 13

to get more diversity and inclusion in their ranks. The company has also put a lot of focus on 360-degree engagement for the workforce. This ensures that a lot of variables are taken into account when deploying personnel with the customers which leads to higher employee satisfaction, and further leads to higher customer satisfaction and retention. All the efforts have led to some fantastic recognition from internal and external partners and stakeholders.

Modernism that Caters to the Industry Demands The innovation made in the workforce has enabled the company to have long-term visibility on how the industry evolves and where it is heading in the near, short, and long term. This insight helps the company to invest back in their skills, processes, and employees to get ahead of the curve and continue to create value for their existing and new customers and workforce. For example, the company had foreseen a lot of demand and skill gap for UX Designers and Product Managers 5 years back and had started a Design Lab to help retool and re-skill some of the workforces and also help their customers scale up their core teams better. Similar efforts have been done by the company for Big Data, Cloud computing technologies, and Data Science.

Supporting women in technology, the company has been involved in retooling and helping in re-skilling women and other minority groups who were looking to get into the IT workforce. The company has hosted free boot camps, meetups & webinars in cutting-edge technologies to deploy them faster and to ensure that there is support that is needed to get fair representation during the hiring process. These efforts have led to greater diversity and inclusion in the workforce where the company operates, with the customers. For example, for the last 3 years, there is an increase in women and minority hiring by 12% to 15% year-on-year. The existence of women in technology is only about 25% of the workforce on average, but the company has been able to increase that number to 44% with their customer base. Since 2016, the

14

company has also trained 1000+ corporate participants under the LevelUp program in the areas of Data Science, DevOps, RPA, Full stack programming, and Cloud computing.

Such innovations and investments have helped BayOne Solutions to become one of the leading go-to consulting and staffing partners in North America. The company has been increasing its revenues 300% year-on-year before the pandemic and has been recognized by some

continue to innovate and be a leader in their industry.

prestigious organizations such as INC5000, San

Along with this, the company is also partnered with

Francisco Business Times (SFBT) Fastest growing

Automation Anywhere for RPA work that it needs to

private companies since 2017. BayOne Solutions has

deploy to help the customers engineer.

also been recognized by a number of its customers for the efforts that the company has done over the years.

The leader leading the charge & change Anuj Sehgal, the Vice President of Strategic Accounts,

Adoption: The Key Challenge for Advancements

has been working with BayOne Solutions since 2013 and

The biggest challenge for the company is always

in the industry since 2004. He plays a key role in scaling

adoption. Change is never easy for anyone, whether they

up the company's customer base, leading and building a

are an individual or an organization. But change is a

team of Business Development Executives and Account

requirement. All the efforts of the company are designed

Managers, ensuring that the company's cutting-edge

to help the stakeholders, customers, or the workforce to

processes and tools are in place to execute on plans and

overcome those challenges and see the value and the

focusing on building brand value with the existing and

community impact that it brings in. This will only be

new customers.

successful if all the stakeholders are collectively involved

He started his career with a start-up, back in 2004 in the

in making a difference. The company is changing and the

IT consulting and staffing industry after graduating from

positive impact is being felt on the ground.

the University of West Georgia with an MBA in Marketing and Finance. He realized that the consulting

Key Partnerships Driving the Initiative

and staffing industry was a fast-paced and evolving beast

BayOne is involved with some key partners to ensure

with new technologies and opportunities coming up

that it is able to deliver its promise. The company is

almost every year. He continued to work on his craft, his

working closely with the procurement and diversity

relationships, and his knowledge over the years. This led

offices of all of its key customers to drive the change.

him in scaling up start-ups to mid-sized and large

BayOne also has internal stakeholders who are industry

enterprises.

leaders in their own right and have been investing their

Anuj understood the need to build relationships, build

time and efforts in leading boot camps to ensure that the

personal brands and provide high value to the customers.

process with the workforce is a smooth one.

He spent a lot of his early career working on the same.

The company has partnered up with one of the premier

This helped him work over the years with some

schools in the world for Data Science efforts. It has

prestigious customers (large and small) from Fortune 10

access to 100+ Ph.D. mentors that are helping some of its

companies such as Apple, Google, and CISCO to unicorns

customers to level up their core teams and executives to

such as Zoom Video, Pinterest, Palantir, and many more.

15

Ashish Kumar

Pushing Teams to Innovate Faster-to-deploy Tech Solutions for Businesses

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION Tex.ai (SaaS Product)

Machine Learning,

BFSI, Manufacturing,

Deep Learning,

Retail, Healthcare, Legal,

Computer Vision,

Media and

Natural Language

Communications,

Processing

Energy and Resources, Transportation and Logistics, Education, CPG/ Retail

D

ata Science and Artificial Intelligence have brought about a remarkable

transformation in businesses. Disruptive technologies are strengthening every

aspect of global industries, starting from retail, manufacturing, finance,

education to defense. AI technologies are driving businesses towards efficiency and success through advanced analytics, machine learning, and deep learning.

Anchoring advanced analytics, Indium Software is providing technology solutions with deep expertise in digital and QA services. The company provides advanced digital solutions to its customers through big data, data engineering, stream processing, advanced analytics, and other services.

Ashish Kumar is the Principal Data Scientist at Indium Software. With over 8 years of experience in the field of data science and advanced analytics, Ashish is anchoring the advanced analytics practice to drive ML-based business solutions, which include project delivery management & team-building, presales & architecting ML solutions, and R&D and innovation on tougher problems.

Besides this, Ashish is also responsible for building and growing the company's outstanding

16

Ashish Kumar Principal Data Scientist

Indium Software 17

innovation, which is the NLP framework called TeX.ai.

Ashish is highly experienced in data science consulting.

He has solved ML problems across industries such as semiconductor, consumer finance, transportation and logistics, pharma, real estate, etc. He is well-versed with different data science packages in Python, advanced SQL with a deep understanding of the mathematics of data science algorithms.

He has authored books (Learning Predictive Analytics with Python and Mastering Pandas) in the data science domain. He is a mentor/SME at several leading online data science training companies. Also, Ashish has a degree in B. Tech from IIT Madras and a Postgraduate Diploma in Leadership from Ashoka University.

Defining Success through Innovation Under Ashish's leadership, the company invented a new SaaS product called teX.ai. It offers end-to-end text analytics services including but not limited to text extraction from a variety of documents viz. PDF, images, and website, text summarization on a large corpus of documents e.g. customer reviews, legal documents, and text classification on a large corpus of text data into various pre-defined categories for better cataloging and/or targeted marketing. teX.ai builds upon popular machine learning, natural language processing, and deep learning techniques and algorithms to power its core. The company has contained its innovation in creating different recipes, like unusual combinations, hyper-parameter optimization, new variant creation of these techniques and algorithms to get efficient business insights. A hybrid of linguistic and ML approaches for key-phrase extraction is the perfect example of this.

Few other examples of novel usages of these algorithms are: Ÿ

Using CNN-like methods for identifying table or chart-like areas and using pre-trained OCR methods to extract tabular data. Marking non-tabular data as

18

peripheral and using Conditional Random Fields for Ÿ

Extraction of tabular and selected peripheral data

structuring.

from vendor invoices stored as a PDF in JSON, XML,

Using edge detection methods to identify cell

and other formats for further analytics pipeline

boundaries of a table to extract each cell and then

automation.

OCR it at a cellular level for high accuracy. Train a new Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Extraction of text data from images containing the

CNN for handwritten digit and character recognition.

marks of students in different subjects for automatic

Using K-means clustering on ELMo embeddings of

storage in a structured format.

extracted key phrases to semantically cluster these

Ÿ

key phrases.

Extraction of credit information tabular format credit reports published by MLCB to be used in credit scoring.

Ashish was proud to share with us that teX.ai was

Ÿ

Extraction of tables and charts from PDF reports

recognized as one of the top machine learning products

prepared by BFSI or BFSI research agencies to usable

by Forbes in 2019.

CSV formats. Ÿ

Automated Contextual Extraction and ML (CRF) -

Meeting Demands with Industry-Centric Solutions

powered conversion of Metes and Bounds PDF files

Indium Software's innovation teX.ai handles various use

to Traverse files to be fed into GIS tools like ESRI.

cases in a world inundated with unstructured data,

Ÿ

The extraction of bank statements with each

especially text. This has led to an ever-growing market

transaction as elements of nested JSON. With it, the

for easy-to-use NLP solutions, especially given that NLP

extraction of peripheral data like bank name, account

skills are quite tough to learn and implement. The

holder name, account holder address, and such other

company's innovation caters to that demand by giving

information by using custom NER powered by CRF

faster-to-deploy solutions for the following use cases:

and LSTM-CRF algorithms with F1 score as high as

19

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

over 90%. This can handle any structure of tabular

The innovation has proved to be a major success for the

and peripheral data as long as the quality of PDF is

company and has also helped the organization by

good.

opening up an additional revenue stream, increased

Extraction of tabular data (like the percentage

visibility, and increasing the number of leads from large

composition of chemicals, etc.) from the Certificate of

Fortune 500 companies. It also led to the creation of an

Analysis PDF files. And extraction of peripheral data

in-house talent pool and CoE for NLP and ML problems,

like organization name, certificate number,

opened up and materialized several cross-sell with many

manufacturing date using custom NER powered by

of our customers, and build an R&D and detail-oriented

CRF and LSTM-CRF algorithms. This can handle any

rigor in the company's solution delivery.

structure of tabular and peripheral data as long as the

The company also partnered with AWS for hosting the

quality of PDF is good.

innovation as the cloud platform. AWS also listed Indium

Find positive and negative sentiment distribution

Software in their marketplace to increase visibility. The

about selected attributes of the product (s).

company also engaged with various growth consultants

Competitor analysis of similar products from

to increase the sales footprint and used a lot of open-

different brands.

source Python libraries and open-source hugging face

Find negative and positive key phrases in reviews

modules.

under areas like service quality, delivery, product

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

Ÿ

quality, and others to identify the improvement and

Challenges that Paved the Road to Success

reinforcement areas.

Ashish mentions that their innovation would need few

Perform unsupervised semantic clustering of the

changes like the selective extraction of entities from

extracted key phrases to visualize the phrases in 2D

documents would need retraining for extracting a new

and the similar phrases together.

entity. The different kinds of documents would give the

Create a semantic search engine to find reviews,

best results with different methods. Therefore, some

chats that are contextually similar to the query term.

trial and error would be needed to reach the best result.

Automatically categorize the product catalog of an e-

Also, the key-phrase identification would yield the best

c o m m e r c e c o m p a ny b a s e d o n t h e p r o d u c t

result if it is trained on a dataset that is specific to the

description for better conversion.

prediction use case, i.e. training on a new dataset needed

Automatically flag off spam emails, messages, and

for best results.

other errors to help mass advertisers only send relevant information to their potential and existing customers.

Laurels and Recognition Ashish states that the company's latest innovation has created several positive effects in the industry including faster go-to-market for NLP solutions, faster processing of and insights generation from unstructured data like PDFs, customer reviews, logs, images, and automation of unstructured data processing reduces the costs and time taken.

20

Ashutosh Singh

Revolutionising Education Sector with the Convergence of AR, IoT and AI

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Machine Learning, RPA, Chatbots, Automation, IoT

Healthcare and Education sector

Videobomb, Re4m

T

and Maro App

he emergence of new technologies and scientific breakthroughs is relentless and is

unfolding on many fronts, transforming industries and organizations. Mobcoder

Technologies is one such company that has contributed some revolutionary

innovations to the domain of disruptive technologies such as IoT, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence. The company has successfully developed a “Videobomb” that combined the concept of augmented reality and machine learning. It enables users to scan the popular tied-up products and play with their latest videos and objects. This platform allows them to share their AR experiences by sharing locations. The company has also combined the right blend of technology with the world of fitness and healthcare. It is an ecosystem where different fitness machines can be handled with a smartphone through IoT. It assembled different standards protocols of varied fitness machines and breaks the monotonous nature of the workouts.

Mobcoder is also known for developing a parent companion for child development called Maro App. The app utilizes AI-enabled technologies to revolutionize the way K-8 kids and adults shape them to engage with mental health, wellness as well as sex education.

The IoT solutions of Mobcoder act as an essential driver for customer-facing innovation, data-driven optimization, and automation as well as driving digital transformation in the

24

Ashutosh Singh Co-founder & CEO

Mobcoder Technologies 25

fitness industry. The augmented reality solution allows people to experience the exciting world of AR through realistic, animated, and 3D objects in the real world.

Meanwhile, artificial intelligence solutions are revolutionizing the engagement between K-8 kids and adults. Machine learning chatbots have started preventing student suicides by engaging them with personalized lessons.

The innovation tends to promote a culture of learning and collaboration for employees to get out of cubicles and share ideas and strategies in an open space. This culture of learning leads developers to learn new cognitive technologies for taking their career graphs to a whole new level. The company puts innovation at the center of its culture for employees to feel more empowered to come up with their unique initiatives. The innovative approach and speed to market development models have helped Mobcoder to achieve a 56% growth rate last year despite the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The team did not have sufficient motivation to take up new challenges in the early stage of the adoption of innovation. Unfortunately, there were no business use cases models to learn in the early adopter stage. One is required to find solutions through multiple experiments and trials. So this was also a significant challenge of acting as an innovator. The team feels more equipped and empowered to work with new technologies through rigorous training sessions by senior team members. The team starts to put their perspective to make the development process much faster than usual.

Additionally, they missed the innovation strategies that misaligned the company's innovation efforts and put them at risk.

Mobcoder has key partnerships with Transcend 360, to help organizations in a better understanding and management of direct and indirect channels, transformation of the marketing management, empowerment of local sales as well as marketing processes. The partnership is developing a tool to help an

26

organization collaborate on visuals and designs with

Engineering (CSE) in 2012 and started a professional

clients and team members in real-time known as Re4m.

career as an Android developer since this domain

The AI-enabled features can speed up the design

i n t e r e s t e d h i m a l o t . A f t e r w o r k i n g f o r m a ny

c r e a t i o n p r o c e s s by 5 0 0 % a n d e m p o w e r t a s k

organizations for almost six years, he decided to start his

management by utilizing an auto-generated 'to-do list'.

venture known as Mobcoder in 2018. Mobcoder is

The company is also working rigorously to achieve

Ashutosh's third start-up, the other two were failed. But

annotation ability on PDF, Word, and PPT format that is

the failure didn't change his mind to give up and he was

an innovation in this domain.

determined.

The company's flagship product “Videobomb” was

Entrepreneurship was always on the back of Ashutosh's

featured in the news because it raised nearly US$3

mind due to his passion for innovation. He believes that

million and added a former Apple CEO to the board.

anyone can contribute better in this space as an

Mobcoder has started venturing into some new domains

entrepreneur.

to add more partnerships and strategic alliances for more effective contributions to the tech industry.

About the Innovator Being the Co-founder and CEO of Mobcoder Technologies Pvt. Ltd, Ashutosh Singh is responsible for strategic planning, defining the roadmap of the future, and ensuring that every resource gets adequate support and a sound environment to deliver the best.

Ashutosh completed his B. Tech in Computer Science and

27

TRANSFORMING

LIFE TECHNOLOGY AND

OUR FUTURE

T

here is a little doubt that we are locating

decade. The domains of our life under such tech-induced

ourselves in a tech-driven world, not just

life-changing process include space and planets,

increasingly but irrevocably. The promise of

transportation, communication, public infrastructure,

better and most convenient living lies at the heart of

home architecture, home appliances, home chores,

futuristic projections of cutting-edge technology. The

workplace, human body, personal hygiene, food, gaming.

great momentum that new technology has today is

The range is unbelievably wide. The private journeys to

sourced from its relentless efforts at innovations marked

space have already begun and soon sightseeing trips to

by the advent of incredibly sophisticated items. The

another planet may become a reality. Robots are already

following account of some of the premier items of

gaining credibility as office assistants and as helping

cutting-edge futuristic technology not only unpacks an

hands at home. Knowledge of driving may not be

astonishing variety. It also reveals the way such

necessary to drive a car. A deadly mix of artificial

technology is going to transform our very existence in

intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality and 5G

near future. The near future may be as close as the next

connectivity that lies at the base of such incredible

28

ventures is making it possible to reshape the world as

world. These robots are determined to surprise society

never before.

with different functionalities in multiple industries. It is a myth that robots will take over human job

Different Ways in Which Disruptive Technologies can

opportunities. But robots are ready to make work more

Transform Our Future

efficient for humans with their smart intelligence and

Exoskeleton

flexibility. There are different kinds of robots ready to

An exoskeleton is known as the external skeleton to

transform workplaces in the nearby future; industrial

support any disabled body part for free movement as a

robots, micro-robots, wall-climbing robots, nano-

normal person. The mix of artificial intelligence and

robots, medical robots, mechanical robots, humanoid

robotics has started helping robotic exoskeletons in

robots, soldier robots, autonomous robots, and many

collecting real-time data through high-sensor cameras to

more.

eliminate obstacles in the front. These self-controlled arms or legs are about to assist elderly patients or

High-rise Farms with Lab-grown Meat

disabled persons in regular tasks efficiently.

Smart cities like Singapore have already started vertical

5G Connections in Industries

farming or high-rise farms due to the lack of space for

The advent of the 5G wireless network holds a massive

agricultural fields. The cutting-edge technology has

potential of boosting productivity in multiple industries

started growing crops hydroponically under artificial

across the world. 5G network provides a great speed

lights to keep those warm and fresh. This holds the

with the lowest latency and increased bandwidth to

potential to reduce transportation costs for farmers in

efficiently and effectively complete remote execution

the future. The increasing efficiency of LED lights is

through multiple connected devices or IoT/IoMT

making this plan viable. There is also an aim to grow

devices. This will transform the productivity rate of

lab-grown meat with modern livestock technology.

industries such as manufacturing, healthcare or power.

Smart Cities

Hyper-fast Train

Multiple regulatory authorities and governments can

The world-known entrepreneur Elon Musk is always

integrate Geographic Information System (GIS) or

focused on developing some new products and services

other geospatial systems with aerial photography to

by leveraging disruptive technologies. The

enhance the standard of living in smart cities. There are

technological future is almost dependent on him

various smart cities across the world built with

through his craziest ideas. He has planned to launch

different technologies, high sensors, and electronic

hyper-fast trains to avoid traffic jams on busy roads to

methods. These cities combine real-time data with

be known as Hyperloop. It will be a super-speed

digital transformation to boost the economic growth of

ground-level train like a vacuum tube with a speed of

a country. GIS will help in building 3D models for

760 mph through magnetic levitation.

further improvements in specific areas of smart cities

Yes, that being said, these disruptive technologies are

efficiently.

set to transform our future with smart and efficient functionalities to make our work faster and smoother.

Diverse Kinds of Robots

Let's all wait to have different immersive experiences

The constant advancements in artificial intelligence and

with cutting-edge technologies in the nearby future.

robotics are launching diverse ranges of robots in the

29

Ben Locke

Helping Organizations Attain Success through Technology Deployment

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Machine Learning, Natural

Aviation, Manufacturing,

Solutions and

Language Processing,

Retail, Energy and

Marketing

RPA/Chatbots/Automation,

Resources, Transportation

Cloud Computing

and Logistics, Construction.

K

ofax is an Intelligent Automation company. The company's Intelligent Automation Platform helps its customers to unlock document intelligence and connect disparate systems. It helps companies, through AI, RPA, Process Orchestration, & various other means, to bring humans and technology together to deliver amazing results.

Kofax intelligence automation enables organizations to digitally transform information-intensive business workflows so that they can work today as tomorrow. Customers can realize faster time-to-value along with increased competitiveness, growth, and profitability by merging Kofax's cognitive capture, RPA, process orchestration, analytics, and mobile capabilities by increasing business resiliency and mitigating compliance risk. Kofax has helped industries such as Aviation, Manufacturing, Retail, Energy and Resources, Transportation and Logistics, Construction to deploy technologies effectively. The focus of the c o m p a ny l i e s i n M a c h i n e Le a r n i n g , N a t u ra l L a n g u a g e P r o c e s s i n g , RPA/Chatbots/Automation, Cloud Computing.

Kofax, provides a rapid return on investment for over 25,000 customers in financial services, insurance, government, healthcare, supply chain, business process outsourcing, and other markets. It delivers software and solutions through direct sales, services organization, and more than 650 indirect channel partners and integrators in more than 60 countries throughout the Americas, EMEA, and the Asia Pacific.

Driving Forces Behind the Innovation Kofax has a breadth of many successful partners in the Middle East & Africa. This is

30

Ben Locke Vice President

Kofax 31

essential to ensure that the company has the scale that is needed to effectively serve the market. The most distinctive part is that partners of Kofax are innovators in themselves.

With Kofax, a wide range of software solutions can be deployed in the cloud or locally and include Intelligent Document Capture, Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Business Process Management, Digital Signature, and many more. Kofax also has partner channel across the region. These authorized partners can provide local support, certified training, deployment, and licensing solutions and services for Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and other areas in the Middle East region. Many organizations have accelerated their efficiency with Kofax software solutions which also improved customer satisfaction, productivity in a costeffective manner. This also resulted in a reduced number of errors in the organizations.

Meet the Innovator Ben Locke serves as the Vice President of Kofax.

Ben is a highly successful sales leader and innovator, with more than 15 years of experience helping organizations achieve great success through technology deployment. He has worked his way up through the ranks in Kofax by consistently delivering high performance and succeeding with his customers. Ben started his career at Kofax as a Senior Sales Account Executive, and four promotions later he currently serves as the Vice President for Kofax Middle East & Africa, based in the HQ for the region in Dubai.

Ben has worked with some of the largest public and private organizations across the Middle East & Africa to deliver real innovation where it matters.

He ensures that his strategy benefits his customers to be successful and fits directly within their own business, or, strategic agenda. For example, Ben has helped some of the largest companies in the Middle

32

East to be compliant with, and, take a leadership position in various government initiatives such as Paperless Smart Dubai, Dubai 10x, & AI for Dubai.

The industry in which Ben is in, is rapidly experiencing growth with an increase in customers' demands. They expect solutions that they invest in g o b e y o n d s i m p l e R PA ( R o b o t i c P r o c e s s Automation) or document capture. It is about applying intelligence and having a platform-based offering that can grow with a company, he adds.

Ben and his team have helped companies to be far more efficient through the adoption of Kofax technology. Let's take something like customer onboarding in a bank. A typical process would involve several manual or indeed completely manual steps, to check all of a customer's documentation and approvals to then enable the opening of an account, loan, or mortgage. Ben has helped many enterprise organisations automate entire processes, using the various products within Kofax's platform. The results have delivered unprecedented savings, and revenue growth, as well as factors, such as customer service, and compliance for their customers.

Ben takes a consultative approach concerning his customers to ensure that the company minimizes its challenges and drawbacks. It's simple, by asking questions, listening more than speaking, understanding a customers' business and challenges in detail, before recommending any solution. This is how Ben and his team at Kofax sets themselves apart from their competitors. As a result, Kofax has been able to grow and delight customers in the Middle East & Africa due to the relationships and customers that Ben and his team have created in the Middle East, positioning the company a leader in the software solutions field in the region. The success of Kofax in the last five years alone in the region have been phenomenal.

Including multiple multi-million dollar transactions and savings for customers, and the largest transaction globally in Kofax history.

The emerging regions are a fantastic place for intelligent automation companies such as Kofax to make a real impact and difference, and will continue to do so in the growing digital transformation market.

33

Disha Indrakant Mishra 34

Finessing the Insurance Industry & Customer Experience with Modern Technology

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analytics

BFSI

Predictive Business Models

T

he current business landscape is highly dependent on data and analytics. We

witnessed how digital transformation and rapid technology adoption

revolutionized industries, especially BFSI. With complex data sets and financial

data involved, the industry needed better analytics to foresee the outcomes. This is where predictive analytics steps in. Predictive business models have proved to enhance customer experience, revenue, risk management, and provide a competitive edge.

Disha Indrakant Mishra is currently employed as the Analytics Engineer- Machine Learning at Aureus Analytics. Aureus Analytics Pvt. Ltd provides Artificial Intelligence solutions to the insurance industry. The company offers customer intelligence to its wide client base and enables them to deliver the best customer experience through customer retention, loyalty and lifetime value.

Disha has been driving several innovations through her portfolio. According to her, the key to these innovations is curiosity and a desperate need to solve a pressing business problem.

She is influenced by three major factors when providing innovative services to her clientele-

Disha Indrakant Mishra Analytics Engineer - Machine Learning

Aureus Analytics Pvt. Ltd. 35

a. Existing infrastructure of the customer/client b. Availability, volume and quality of data c. Capability and capacity to consume the solution offered An example use case is a Cross-sell (XSell) predictive model suite, built on data. This is intended to improve the sales through existing customers of the company's client.

Disha reveals that apart from the problem statement of 'whom to sell', the company delivers recommendations on 'what to sell'. Recently, it has deployed the final phase of this pipeline project with the problem statement of 'how much to sell,'. This suite will eventually provide a holistic picture to the clients, helping the client in targeting existing customers for more product penetration, increase in revenue and customer stickiness.

Among other noteworthy innovations spearheaded by Disha is the use of government data available in the public domain to provide assistance to businesses, who were in the strategy and planning phase, with no data generated from within. Here solutions like market potential and business expansion models helped to identify striving geographical locations for the business.

Algorithms like K-Means helped in finding similar viable locations for business operations. Data points like the census demography, population density, the smart city plan of the government, RBI data showing financial capability and competition penetration helped in decision-making. This novel solution, also assisted in recruitment forecasting, by identifying the skilled labour & talent required to support the business.

An example of designing predictive “new-business” models, that used a bucket intervention technique as a deployment strategy, also comes to mind. It was based on the risk or chance of the event. The innovation within this suite was with the model evaluation (test and control) strategy. Since approximate average revenue of INR 1520 lakhs per lead could not be ignored for a control group, leads were categorized as hot, warm and cold basis predicted conversion probability across groups and

36

shuffled. The approach focussed on the extent of

performance of top / high probability advisors while

intervention essential for the lead based on the capacity,

improving the performance of the low probability

the volume and availability of resources. It also gave

advisors, thereby optimising their effort.

attention to strategy for utilising various communication

Additionally the ingenious use of statistical concepts like

platforms preferred by the client for maximum returns.

inflection points diversified her portfolio. This initiative

Amongst other compelling use cases is the use of CLTV

by Disha was a part of the descriptive analysis on agent

(Lifetime Value) with segmentation by Disha. This

selling behaviour and the end trajectory of the agent

leveraged basic segmentation on the demographical,

lifecycle. This particular innovation proved beneficial for

geographical and purchase behaviour of the client's

the insurance industry in sustaining agent performance.

customer universe, thus helping in better business

It was also instrumental in effective planning of the

management and understanding. Customization and

various reward & recognition programs that assist in

relevance of campaigns improved communication

motivating and elevating agent morale, thereby backing

between the client and customers. Disha shared that this

business and aiding in a desirable longevity, even in times

specific CLTV innovation in sync with the cohorts

of a crisis like the Covid-19.

obtained had a positive impact, with better KPI

All the solutions and innovations mentioned above

management.

anchor the demands in the industry. Most of the

With an intention to increase engagement among life

solutions Disha developed were a result of the

insurance advisors pro-actively, an advisor model suite is

requirements that support the business problems faced

outlined to target and prioritise the advisors in terms of

while others resulted from observing struggles faced by

productivity and revenue KPIs. The suite prioritises

her clientele. Disha acknowledges that most of the

advisors basis a predicted probability, giving an added

clients use deployment strategies provided to handle the

advantage compared to a scenario without the model.

problem better, operationally. These businesses are

Extensive and in depth feature engineering for the model

better equipped in dealing with the challenges faced

overcame the challenge of lack of data dimensions. It

since they have a clearer picture in prospect.

helped in validating the business hypothesis, influence

BFSI industry, in particular, is still in transition from a

and improve the results. The client focus on retaining

traditional system to a digital system on the focus.

37

Analytic solutions and services developed by Disha aid in

team used primitive and free open-source tools to enable

the change, along with providing intelligent solutions for

integration and smooth camouflaging of the service with

the problems.

the existing client infra, which influenced the extent of innovation.

A Sea of Benefits Driven By the Innovations

Disha promptly mentioned the potential drawbacks of

ROI maximisation, efficient KPI management, intelligent

her innovations. This includes instability and below-par

decision-making processes, benefits in operation

performance of the predictive models due to delay in

management, etc. are the potential positive impacts of

deployment and implementation. She affirms that

the innovations. Most predictive models developed by

sometimes interventions are not designed based on the

Disha give an edge in handling the volume of data points.

suggestions prescribed, and hence leads to below

Disha cited an example of a product that was going to be

expectation and unsatisfactory ROI management.

discontinued and the client's need was to focus on generating maximum number of sales before closing. In

An Inquisitive Talent Delivering Intelligent Business

this case, the predictive model developed by her, helped

Solutions

the client identify up-selling or cross-selling

Disha describes herself as a self-driven human with an

opportunities within the customer universe, collecting

insatiable thirst for answers. Disha brings with her the

approximate revenue of Rs.100Cr through the model. It

collective expertise of over 5 years in the field of machine

also helped the client achieve his goal before deadline.

learning and AI to date. Her role mainly revolves around

T h i s d e p l oy m e n t s t ra t e g y a i d s i n b e t t e r RO I

solving business problems using technology and

management.

analytics. She is largely involved in building predictive

Disha reveals that the solutions developed by her have

models, performing descriptive analysis, and prescribing

helped the firms in the conversion of a few POCs,

deployment strategies as a consultant for the company

retention, and upselling of services offered to the

clientele.

existing clientele along with better client management

She is recently awarded as the Young Data Scientist of

by building long-lasting relationships. She brings to

the Year – 2021 by India's most prestigious Inflection

notice that the automation done inside the company has

awards, partnered by NASSCOM, for her innovations

helped in speeding up deliveries by decreasing the

and excellence. She is also one of the recipients of AI &

project timelines and better resource (employee)

Analytics Rising Star 2021.

utilization per client.

Disha is a graduate from NMIMS Mumbai in Computer Engineering and is certified in the field of Information

Fighting the Challenges with Keen Observation

Storage and Management, Cloud as well as Big Data

During the development of these innovations, Disha

Analytics and Data Sciences by Dell EMC.

faced challenges that mainly revolved around the

She believes in counting on experience that is gained out

capability and extent of consumption of services

of quality work done, passionately. Disha has also

provided to the business stakeholders. Since analytics is

previously been a College Ambassador to Dell EMC in

used to influence decision-making, she identified the

her degree college because she understands that

prevalence of inhibitions to incorporate solutions

learning enables having worthwhile contributions to life,

amongst the business users. Another challenge she

and hence as an ambassador it serves as an opportunity

encountered is the IT infrastructure limitations of the

to make learning accessible to as many lives as possible.

BFSI client seeking the solution. Disha shared how the

38

Marcus Cheng

Leading the Healthcare Industry in the Pandemic with Top-Notch Innovations

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Machine learning and cloud computing

Healthcare

AIVMS (Acclivis Intelligent Visitor Management Solution)

D

ue to COVID-19, the healthcare industry took a transformative hit as patient

care became the highest priority. The need for quick diagnosis, drug

development, vaccine research, remote patient care tools was at its peak and

several pharmaceutical and health tech companies scrambled to get the pandemic situation under control. To play its critical role in stabilizing the healthcare and patient care industry, Acclivis Technologies and Solutions stepped up with its innovative solutions.

Over the years, Acclivis Technologies and Solutions has been called the “IBM Powerhouse”, “Southeast Asia fastest-growing system integrator” and the “trusted cloud service provider”.. Based out of Singapore, since its inception in 2009, Acclivis has grown beyond expectations, with an annual revenue in the region valued at more than S$100 million (US$73 million) and employee strength of over 150 and presence in major Southeast Asian cities.

Founded by Marcus Cheng and two others of his ex-IBM peers, Acclivis earned the reputation of being a trusted partner with organizations across healthcare, financial, manufacturing, transportation industries and the public sector. The company's core strength lies in building and implementing cloud solutions, as the company concerns itself

42

Marcus Cheng CEO

Acclivis Technologies and Solutions 43

with system integrators and cloud services providers.

Acclivis Technologies, headed by Marcus Cheng, focuses on making solutions that can help businesses embark on digitization projects using state-of-the-art technologies, confidently. Its latest breakthroughs are for the healthcare industry, case in point the AIVMS. Perceived as a virtual receptionist that can do so much more, the Acclivis Intelligence Visitor Management Solutions is fully powered by the cloud with artificial intelligence, facial recognition and machine learning features. In just a few seconds, this innovation is capable of receiving visitors and employees while supporting social distancing activities like performing contactless temperature screening, issuing alerts when a fever is detected or if a face mask is worn incorrectly and informing the building of other identified threats.

For its many innovations, Acclivis Technologies and Solutions is a proud recipient of the 2020 IBM Singapore Innovation Award which serves to recognize and facilitate the achievements of IBM Business Partners.

Taking a Transformative Leap to Serve the Industry Some of Acclivis's clients are renowned healthcare groups in Singapore and the company's smart healthcare solution, called the Acclivis Intelligent Visitor Management Solution (AIVMS), is geared towards transforming the visitor management system and patient care for the hospital. This solution utilizes video analytics, otherwise known as micro-expression AI, to reduce fatalities in hospitals. The visitor management solution further combines real-time temperature screening, facial recognition entry and exit and contact tracing to offer an end-to-end solution.

Innovating to Solve a Problem The Covid-19 pandemic has changed the healthcare industry and it now demands better ways of caring for patients and healthcare workers.

As Acclivis, the company recognized this industry demand and pioneered AIVMS fully powered by the

44

cloud, machine learning and video analytics. In a few

Bracing Challenges with Solutions

seconds, it receives visitors and employees, supports

According to Marcus Cheng, facial recognition

social distancing, performs contactless temperature

technologies always pose challenges in different

screening, issues alerts when a fever is detected and if a

countries and different regulations due to data privacy.

face mask is not worn and informs the building

As a solution, Acclivis Technologies has partnered with

management team.

influential clients who hold the ability to give inputs pertaining to behavioral insights and data to help track

Impacts that Leave a Mark

patient care.

The much-talked-about AIVMS helps to protect medical workers from coming into contact with coronavirus

About the Innovator

patients. The video analytics features detect patients'

Marcus Cheng is the Managing Director and CEO of

falls in key waiting areas of the hospital which has the

Acclivis Technologies and Solutions, an enterprise cloud

added benefit of reducing the fatality rate of patients.

provider with a niche in systems, network integration

Innovations in the healthcare industry have positioned

and managed services. Marcus has extensive experience

Acclivis as a tech company that can come up with reliable

in enterprise IT solutions and business development

solutions to solve the industry's pressing problems. This

which led him to co-found the company in 2009. Starting

innovation also allows the company to serve other

in sales at IBM, Marcus continues to work with a

established healthcare companies with similar needs in

dedicated, driven team to power Asia's next-generation

the future.

cloud with strong business acumen and steadfast leadership.

45

Pradeep Kumar

Strategizing Unique IT Consulting and IT Workforce Solutions specialised for IT Human Capital FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

SAP, Oracle , Microsoft

IT Consulting,

Specialized IT

Technologies , Machine Learning,

Professional

Workforce Solutions

Natural Language Processing,

Services and

Robotics, Big Data Analytics, IoT,

in SAP

HR Automation

SuccessFactors/HCM

Cybersecurity, and AI.

A

polis is the next-generation IT and Digital services market leader in ERP , E-

Commerce , SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services powered by Cognitive Practices. Apolis

has been a pioneer in project implementations in SAP, Oracle, Microsoft

technologies and other emerging technologies like AI, automation, robotics, IoT, blockchain as well as XR, AR also VR. The newly emerged remote work lifestyle has brought along a high demand for platforms that could efficiently assist in vital business operations such as HR and management tasks.

With team members working from different locations, it has become arduous to follow up with various management operations which hold great importance. Specialized SAP HCM and SuccessFactors solutions of Apolis have proved to be one of the most effective software solutions in the industry to assist with work- related functions throughout the past several months. The platform is specialized in the market allowing employees to feel encouraged and determined to excel in their work at all times. Especially after the COVID 19 outbreak, businesses from all industries and sizes are using Apolis' HCM solutions to effectively manage and direct HR strategies. Some of the benefits and uses of these platforms and solutions are training and managing employees efficiently, creating unique employee experiences, analysing feedback and operational data to understand people's emotions, HR management and operations, on-boarding activities, performance reviewing, development planning, collaborating with social interaction, cost-efficiency as well as user-friendly interface.

HCM solutions of Apolis are ready to augment a team or any client's team, no matter the industry, company size, or technical requirements.

One of our large MSP partners had recently won the bid with a huge banking and financial

46

Pradeep Kumar Director and Client Partner

Apolis 47

institution. The company needed to assemble a supplier base outlined by the end user that focused on diversity and inclusion, specializing in supporting IT requirements across the country.

It was not an easy task, in the meetings with MSP before the implementation , Apolis inquired about operational efficiencies and expectations for the team to create an extensive analysis of current operations and identify two a r e a s o f i m p r ove m e n t . We d eve l o p e d a c l e a r understanding of the client's workforce challenges and implemented a dedicated team model and a reporting structure which was designed to increase the number of successful placements and the client's focus on business priorities.

Apolis's dedicated team and reporting structure worked to pinpoint experienced local and national resources across multiple metropolitan markets; surpass quarterly hiring expectations to become a preferred program supplier, outscoring 53 other suppliers in the program; and expand the scope of the partnership to engage on additional hiring verticals.

When a senior IT leader at a $950 million oil and gas company identified a potential future challenge for his team, he immediately reached out to Apolis to assist him in building an actionable plan to circumvent the potential pitfall. In addition to building a plan, Apolis went to work identifying the ideal solutions and resources who could lead the client to certain success.

What the client needed was a fast, efficient way to process data points with a visualization tool, resulting in a road map to help the company identify a higher probability of successful exploration. This challenge could only be overcome by a professional with a very specific skill set. Apolis got to work.

Apolis partnered with the client and embarked on a professional approach to find a Senior Data Analyst who could work within the client's current platform while creating and migrating data into a new visualization tool.

In no time, Apolis uncovered resources who developed a new data strategy using a visualization tool. It resulted in

48

the ability for the company to identify a higher

process & cost optimization. His multi-cultural and

probability of successful exploration going forward.

global experience in India , US, UK/EU, EMEA and APAC

Major challenges the team faced were resistance to

regions have helped him manage global talents

change, data sanctity (poor, unorganized data), absence

effectively and seamlessly synchronize the team

of proof-of-concept and prototypes, post-

strategies in a global environment. Pradeep's project

implementation issues, closed apps and platforms data

delivery and deployment experience spans across the

security challenges etc. In order to overcome these

industry/client verticals of IT, ITes, BFSI, Telecom ,

barriers and challenges and for a seamless

Pharma ,Aviation/Avionics, BPO/KPO/RPO, Healthcare,

implementation , Apolis employed subject matter

Media, Retail, Energy & Utilities, Automobiles and Govt

experts and partnered with major MSPs (Managed

clients.

Service Providers) and VMSs (Vendor Management

In his existing role as Director & Client Partner at Apolis ,

Systems) for highly time and mission-critical projects ,

he is currently invested in automation of IT workforce

handling niche requirements of the clients and sorting

management , professional services (HR and staff

out the process challenges coming along the way.

augmentation), IT consulting, process improvement and cost optimization.

Purview of his responsibilities

I T L e a d e r w i t h ex p e r t i s e i n H u m a n C a p i t a l

include handing mission critical & complex workforce

Management , IT Consulting and Professional Services

projects for Global Fortune 500 clients, HR automation

An MBA by education and a Technocrat by profession,

(powered by inhouse tool Kinestry), process re-

Pradeep Kumar is people-passionate person and is

engineering and mapping , training & development ,

deeply passionate about building the businesses which

contract negotiation & management, customer

are talent focussed. Pradeep has a diverse experience in

acquisition & retention, talent supply chain

Sales, Delivery & Operations which encompasses

management, building & executing talent, and IT

customer acquisition & retention., business

workforce strategies.

development and account management , cross-

Apart from Information Technology, Pradeep has keen

functional team management, supply chain

interest in Advertising, Sports and Music as well.

management, vendor & procurement management ,

49

Roman Rafiq

A Transformation Leader Steering IGT Solutions through the Pandemic

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Technology and digital transformation

Information Technology and Services

Latest desktop

R

virtualization, effective security coverage for WFH, cloud telephony

oman Rafiq is a Passionate technologist & digital transformational leader with

20+ years of experience in Information Technology and Business Process

Management. He has in-depth expertise across a wide range of technologies, as

well as business acumen to understand both external and internal business drivers. He possesses a solid understanding of all phases of a healthy IT ecosystem including strategy, architecture, engineering, implementation, and operations. He has demonstrated critical thinking and planning at a strategic & global level. He can also translate strategic plans into specific business objectives and implement effective IT processes.

Roman has a proven track record in techno-commercial roles, committed to excellence at individual, group and organisational levels. His professional acquisition includes People Management along with broad experience in operations, implementing policies and procedures, strategic planning, vendor management, cost reduction, budgeting, end-toend technology project design & planning, development and deployment. He also possesses knowledge of applicable laws and regulations. Roman has been felicitated with the “Indian Achiever' Business Leadership Award”, “Super CTO Award”, “Best CIO Award in The Age of Disruption” and “CIO Next Award” from distinguished establishments.

Responsibilities at IGT At IGT Solutions, Roman is responsible for delivering end-to-end Technology, Security and drive Digital service worldwide for the company including planning and identifying opportunities for automation, service quality improvement with continuous improvement.

He is known for his implementation of the IT risk and security strategy program, managing information security controls and implementation across global delivery locations and compliant with most of the international data security and privacy regulations. His governance has achieved a continuous improvement of Security Operation Centre (SOC), covering VA-PT, DLP, Endpoint Security, SIEM, Cloud Computing, End-point Security and

52

Roman Rafiq Vice President & CIO

IGT Solutions 53

Enterprise Security. He verifies the effectiveness of the organisation's IT Security Controls against - ISO 27001, PCI-DSS standards, ISAE and country-specific regulations, legal compliance along with technology and security controls to comply with GDPR. He leads an extremely talented team of 130+ infrastructure and security engineering professionals who define, manage and support the entire operations infrastructure globally (Across the USA, India, Philippines, UAE, Romania, China, Columbia, Malaysia & Indonesia). He is also responsible for the design, implementation and maintenance of the business continuity management system for global IGT operations. The ensured comprehensive disaster recovery architecture is maintained to ensure compliance with required RPOs and RTOs during business continuity events Implementing Innovation in the Company With Roman's leadership, the development of various rapid solutions have occurred based on the latest desktop virtualisation, effective security coverage for WFH, cloud telephony, quick development of work at home while ensuring cyber security – all these solutions were quick to implement and designed to scale and at the same time securing a sustainable future for the business.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted life and businesses across the globe. Amid this crisis, enterprises need to revamp their strategy toward remote means of working and collaboration. The IT team at IGT Solutions was armed to handle this precarious situation using agility, speed, and innovation to address business continuity to serve customers while enabling and safeguarding the interests of its employees. They stood together with their clients and partners to equip and enable business normalcy.

Their topmost priority was to help their customers meet and overcome their challenges. To help businesses adapt during this fast-moving pandemic, the company developed various rapid solutions based on the latest desktop virtualization, effective security coverage for 54

WFH, cloud telephony, their solutions were quick to

compliance, risk management and cybersecurity.

implement and designed to scale, at the same time

For Roman, optimizing cost while delivering new normal

securing a sustainable future for the business. Nearly

was a key task at hand. Instead of investing in upgrading

50% of the production forces were targeted in March 20

older infrastructure and data centres, measures were

and finally achieved 95%+ by mid-April 20. IGT leveraged

taken to conserve capital and make the move to cloud

digital solutions for its home-based users, notably

services to satisfy near-term demand. Quick deployment

activated within weeks of enacting initial safety

of additional digital capabilities was carried to keep

measures, in compliance with security standards and

business running and employees and customers

certifications.

connected. With the new emerging reality, the company

COVID also increased the likelihood of cyber-attacks.

continued to build a digital backbone using cloud-native

Some of the risk areas that were looked upon and

solutions, anywhere connectivity, hybrid multi-cloud

addressed on priority to keep the data safe & secure

architectures and an automated & secure delivery chain

include insecure remote connections to the office,

with the speed and flexibility to meet rapidly evolving

increased personal use of company devices and

business needs.

confidentiality at home. Data breaches and leaks also occurred a lot. During this time, IGT introduced a new

The Positive Impact of Innovation in the Company

Security Controls and Assessment Tool to ensure

COVID-19 has been the largest experiment of testing

ongoing surveillance of the risk environment, monitoring

the need for a flexible, remote-ready workforce. The

internal and external threats via a digitally intelligent and

experience and success which IGT was able to achieve

advanced analytics capability. The combination of

with the above approach are evident. It can provide a

process & tools leverages advanced analytics to calculate

template for other organizations having similar

inherent and residual risks, associated with regulatory

challenges to navigate successfully and achieve their 55

objectives. They built a hybrid cloud environment to flex

of sink or swim, and IGT will have to accelerate digital

capacity as needed d. The crisis highlighted the need to

transformation strategies to enable users to continue to

quickly determine the health to prevent downtime of

connect to customers. From the increased shift on

systems serving their customers in their time of need.

remote services, the need for fast and secure digital

They conducted business impact assessments to identify

access has never been greater. To accelerate the digital

critical applications and map to underlying

transformation, IGT will have to prioritize cross-

infrastructure and network components. They aimed to

functional collaboration and strategic partnerships.

determine additional infrastructure and network

Digital transformation projects post-pandemic will focus

capabilities and solutions needed to keep the business

on improving the remote work experience. This will

running and the users productive. They developed a

include moves as simple as moving away from traditional

hybrid, multi-cloud strategy, including cloud-native

PBX phone systems in favour of Unified

capabilities, starting with a vision, guiding principles, and

Communications as a Service (UCaaS), or as complex as

architecture design principles. They updated the service

migrating from legacy to cloud solutions.

management processes (incident, change, request,

In the post-COVID-19 world, cyber attackers are

event) to address infrastructure changes due to the

increasingly seeking to exploit vulnerabilities in an

current situation and introduced self-service channels to

organization's security infrastructure that is being

end-users. Before calling the IT helpdesk, users are given

shifted to remote working. All these will uplift the

the option for self-service with a single portal of

cybersecurity sector with the technology enablement

controlled access. Chatbots are to be introduced for

and strategies that businesses should adopt in the post-

simple communication and requests.

Covid-19 world to improve the security of their remote users and devices along with the data associated with

Benefits of Applying Innovation in the Company

them. While IGT will be investing more in security

Working from home showed a 13.5% increase in agent

automation so that networks can be run with the least

productivity compared to working from the office There

amount of human intervention and human errors. But

was a 50% reduction in employee Attrition compared to

that doesn't mean that we will no longer need human

Q4 and a 46% reduction in shrinkages (Domestic

resources, far from it. To be successful, companies need

Customer wants the agent to WFO). 92% of the training

to rely on people that can oversee their automation

throughout we're achieved compared to ~76% in Q4.

programs, analyse data, and develop insights. This may

There was a 16% reduction in AHT with NVA reduction.

mean retraining security professionals whose jobs are

There was a consistent Quality of delivery, stable at 92%

side-lined by automation so they can help run and

before and after the WFH shift. Almost 7-10% reduction

manage new programs.

occurred in price compared to WFO. There was also 33% faster recruitment owing to an extended hiring pool.

The Entities Involved in Partnership with IGT IGT holds enterprise partnerships with Microsoft, Cisco,

Facing off with the Challenges

Zscaler, ServiceNow & Salesforce to enable the WFH

While the company has taken a lot of measures to

services effectively, efficiently & securely. IGT has

implement various tools and measures to support the

partnered with all these OEMs to deliver to changing

business and the customers, the rapid migration to digital

business needs aside from introducing certain internal

technologies driven by the pandemic will continue into

processes & policy changes. There have been changes in

the recovery. The pandemic has created an environment

the technology processes from WFH 1.0 to WFH 2.0.

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Saurabh Goenka

Helping Organizations with Only the Best Digital Transformation Strategies

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

IT Consulting, RPA, AI, Automation, Process Transformation, Digital Transformation, Digital Consulting, Analytics Outsourcing, RPA Outsourcing, RPA CoE, and Digital Contractor Resources

Information Technology and Services

ROQS framework

T

(RPA Opportunity Qualification System)

he impact of modern technology on businesses cannot be overstated. From

manufacturing, retail, and healthcare, to pharmaceuticals, logistics, and

transportation, every industry is conducting business in a data-driven world where

it has now become essential to incorporate disruptive technologies into their work processes through digital transformation. With advanced technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT, RPA, data science, and robotics, technology is less of a choice and more of a necessity. It drives efficiency and lowers operational costs, motivating business leaders to achieve a competitive edge.

To assist organizations through the journey of digital transformation, MindMap Digital is a digital transformation enablement services and consulting organization. The company helps its customers in rapidly assessing their state-of-the-art digital operations, assessing processes for digital maturity, and supporting a sustainable and scalable end-to-end transformation leveraging RPA, analytics, and AI. Saurabh Goenka is the Co-Founder and CEO of MindMap Digital. A Chartered Accountant

58

Saurabh Goenka Co-Founder and CEO

MindMap Digital 59

and a Digital Transformation professional with more than a decade's experience in process automation, process improvement, digital transformation, and strategy leadership, Saurabh has worked on multiple process transformation initiatives for large organizations. Apart from helping organizations in scaling and democratizing digital transformation, he also shares this knowledge across multiple conferences and industry events on digital transformation.

Touted as a go-to-expert for digital transformation solutions, Saurabh has founded a unique framework known as the ROQS framework (RPA Opportunity Qualification System), which helps in creating an accelerated and accurate methodology for process mining and identifying potential processes for any organization that can be automated and transformed using AI and RPA. This framework is copyrighted and is based on an underlying algorithm as a result of assessing more than 2,000 different types of business processes across multiple industry verticals and functional areas.

This algorithm helps any organization who is thinking of venturing into process automation at getting a very accurate hawk eye view of the entire organization's automation potential.

Innovation That Relieves Industry Demands Today's pandemic-ridden industry finds itself with a deep need to automate processes both to ensure business continuity as well as to lower operating costs. According to Saurabh, one of the biggest roadblocks for any organization planning to venture into the world of automation is when it tries to assess which processes/departments and business functions should it try to automate. Typically an organization spends a ny w h e r e b e t w e e n $ 2 0 , 0 0 0 - $ 1 0 0 , 0 0 0 o n a comprehensive assessment process for a medium-sized enterprise business within a timeframe of 6-8 months to create an assessment report.

Using the ROQS framework by MindMaps Digital, the same can be achieved in a fraction of the cost and time -

60

with most assessments taking not more than 3-4 weeks

with large digital transformation tool providers as well as

at an enterprise level. This significantly changes the

startups and mid-size players who focus on RPA, AI,

automation game where organizations can accelerate

Blockchain, and Analytics to be a part of the whole

their RPA assessment journey.

ecosystem.

A Bundle of Innovation, Benefits, and Opportunities

The Growth and Recognition

Saurabh states that the ROQS framework speeds up

As MindMap Digital's ROQS framework got the industry

process assessment for RPA and automation potential

recognition it deserved, it has helped the company

and comes up with accurate first-time-right assessment

secure many more customers from across the world and

reports along with measurable concrete ROI benefits,

industry verticals. The innovation has also helped

which businesses can use to prioritize potential digital

M i n d M a p D i g i t a l t o b ra n d i t s e l f a s a p r o c e s s

transformation opportunities. It helps in giving a high-

transformation and automation expert. For its successful

level as well as a low-level view for all potential

innovation, the company was recently awarded the Top

automation projects across an organization and acts as a

10 RPA consulting firm in India.

comprehensive automation charter for any organization.

Saurabh has also created a very large digital skilling academy in the form of MindMap Learning and is

The Brains Behind the Innovation

working on an EdTech platform to give access to a world-

According to Saurabh, MindMap Digital has created a

class, affordable, and job-oriented digital skills

very rich team of functional experts with subject matter

ecosystem to at least 1 million users by the year 2022.

experts from many industry verticals such as BFSI,

Additionally, he is also working on incubating an

Manufacturing, Telecom, RCTG, Healthcare, Pharma,

accounting and compliance management SAAS based

Consulting, and IT to name a few. The strength of the

product for SMBs and MSMEs to hyperautomate back

team is a key to bring in years of consulting and process

office processes. MindMap has been successful in

transformation experience.

serving enterprise customers and now aims at bringing

Saurabh's company also forged multiple partnerships

the same quality of automation services to the masses.

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LEADERS SHOULD KNOW THESE WAYS TO IMPLEMENT INNOVATION IN THE WORKPLACE 62

C

oming up with a new and unique idea that would

Keeping an Eye to the Future

benefit the organization can be an instance of

Leaders shouldn't be overly precious about their goals

innovation. Leaders have a vital role to play

for the future of the company, but they should set some

when it comes to the implementation of innovation in the

milestones. Providing a rough roadmap doesn't stifle

workplace.

creativity, but it can gently guide it toward a desired general outcome, even if the innovation part happens in

Time for Innovation

the finer details.

Out of the box, thinking is not a quick matter. It requires a good amount of time to come up with an innovative idea.

Trust over the Group

Some of the biggest companies in the world make a point

Trust is one of the most important currencies in the

of building unstructured exploration and innovation time

modern workplace. But it's about more than feeling

into their regular schedules. At Google, for example, this

confident that the team members will do the “right thing”

free time is called “20 percent time” because it's a full 20

in matters of ethics. Trust is also about leaders finding the

percent of employees' time on campus resulting in the

confidence to let their people be themselves. There's a

creation of Google Earth and Gmail. The 3M company

choice to make when an employee's thinking or practices

has had its own “15 percent time” for years as well.

start to diverge from business as usual.

Communication should be Encouraged

Listening Goes a Long Way

The companies should focus more on keeping a flow of

Not every idea arrives fully formed. For example, there

communication. On the other hand, the employees

will probably be lots of times where, if the leader is

should also feel free enough to suggest any kind of

actively listening to the team, specific hints will come up.

innovative idea they might. have. Leaders are in a unique

Maybe it's dissatisfaction with company standards, or

position to build an environment where employees can

maybe there's another barrier to progress where the

speak freely with one another and with leadership. The

employees are stumbling over, but don't quite know how

more ideas that get thrown around, the more likely you

to bring to the reader's attention. Becoming a mindful

are to hit upon a winner.

listener means the leader will be better able to pick up on innovative opportunities, or barriers to progress, that

The Ownership Problem

might've flown under the radar.

There can be a strong desire among leaders to feel a certain ownership over progress within the company.

Collaboration of Branding

Some leaders even stifle dialogue and potential change in

Co-branding between Nike and the Apple Watch yielded

the name of the status quo. Among executives, 84

the Nike Run Club. And when Sherwin-Williams and

percent indicate innovation is critical for growth. And

Pottery Barn put their heads together, they came up with

yet, just 6 per cent say they're satisfied with the rate and

a whole new family of colours and a selection of original

quality of innovation. This disparity is potentially,

decorations and furnishings to accompany them. The

because they're too close to the issue and don't want

point is, sometimes the intersection of two great ideas, or

things to stray too far from their vision, or they have too

two great companies can yield something unexpected

“fixed” an idea of what progress can look like.

and wonderful.

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Steven Davis

Data All Star Driving AI Innovations

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Content/Data Enrichment, Machine Learning, Digital Data Solutions, Artificial Intelligence, Data Labelling, Data Annotation, Data Preparation, Data Transformation, Data Extraction, Data Enrichment, Data Acquisition, Intelligent Automation, Image Annotation, and Video Annotation

IT and

Data Annotation

Services

Platform

S

teven Davis is the VP of Engineering at Innodata Inc, with significant experience in

designing and developing complex, Big Data processing and analytics systems. He is

the founder of multiple software start-ups and has designed and implemented

corporate organisational structures as well as personnel management procedures.

Innodata Inc. is an experienced data engineering company focused on innovation, quality, and service to help solve the biggest data challenges. Serving some of the largest enterprises to the most promising start-ups across industries, Innodata powers artificial intelligence and machine learning projects at scale. The team combines advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence with a global workforce of 3,500 subject matter experts to take a technology-first approach and apply services and solutions in innovative ways.

Steven has built a career on Data for AI as a force multiplier for data scientists. He notes that “Data scientists currently spend 80% or more of their working time on data preparation stages, leaving only the remainder to experimentation and developing models.” At Innodata, Steven is leading a team in the development of an end-to-end data annotation platform to reduce the data preparation stage, so data scientists can increase focus on developing their models.

Tailoring Tools for Data Science Teams Many times, data teams cobble together tools and ad hoc workflows to create a sufficient amount of high-quality training data for their models. Demand is rising foradvanced tooling to take the burden off these internal teams with out-of-the-box, ready to purchase solutions to support their machine learning efforts.

Innodata's newly developed Annotation Platform is an all-in-one solution that includes advanced tooling for top-notch model development in a scalable way.The comprehensive

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Steven Davis VP of Engineering

Innodata Inc. 65

workbenches including inline, records, and document classifications help manage or sort complex information.

The workflow management dashboard centralizes all data and project processes, so you can configure projects and allocate workloads in one place. Steven's team is also focused continually advancing this product to ensure that is easy to use, intuitive, and designed with the end-user in mind.

A Multi-talented Trendsetter with Specialisation in Big Data Being the VP of Engineering at Innodata, Steven Davis leads the development of AI/ML platforms and products focusing on Data for AI and Applied AI to solve customer needs and wants in innovative, effective, and scalable ways. He has significant experience in designing and building complex Big Data processing and analytics systems including cloud ETL architectures, AI/ML services and web applications for enterprise search, collaboration, and analysis. Steven Davis has received a BS with the highest distinction in Systems and Information Engineering and an MS in Systems and Information Engineering from the University of Virginia.

Steven has worked at a Federally Funded Research and Development Centre (FFRDC) before Innodata and other data analytics start-ups. He directly supported an elite U.S. Special Operations Command Innovation and Fusion Cellwhere he worked directly with all-source, human terrain, geospatial and different other specialised intelligence analysts for rapidly developing tools and techniques to integrate and exploit enormous volumes of real-time data. Steven was well-known in the US Special Operations due to his ability to flexibly develop new technologies for supporting war fighters in extreme situations, deploying new technologies on a vastly accelerated schedule. He also deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan as well as received multiple awards from the Defence Intelligence Agency and the National GeospatialIntelligence Agency for his efforts to integrate systems, implement novel solutions and support deployed forces.

66

Tobias Margari

The Specialist of Data-Driven Growth Management and Digital Process Automation

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Growth Management and Digital Process Automation

Information technology and services

Data Value Chain

T

he success of data initiatives is determined by the domain, the

organizational context, and the motivation to create a positive impact. The

enablers of this impact are data capabilities and methods. Tobias Margarit,

the Managing Director of diconium has set up the company with a focus on Growth Management and Digital Process Automation. It covers data analytics, data engineering, data architecture, data science & AI, data performance, and business design. Tobias believes that scaling data methods in exchangeable tech stacks will transform organizations from the inside out.

The Grit to Innovate At diconium, Tobias has set up the core focus on data literacy and it's multiplying effect. He believes that as the world is gradually moving into an automated world with self-driving cars, chatbots, and shopping, data literacy is going to be the key to differentiating the most successful organizations. He is confident that his initiative of setting a data competence and literacy unit within diconium will be able to serve the partners worldwide in achieving value creation. Diconium's DATA VALUE CHAIN consists of seven capability multipliers: User, Data, Analytics, IT, People, Process, and Performance. The strong link to Data literacy allows clients to scale their data maturity holistically. By activating data along with their growth and digital process funnel, clients are enabled to impact their business value. Thereby, the general principle is the universal method applied to each business process E2E independently, from erratic technology development.

In Tandem with the Industry The value chain of each organization is determined by its ability to grow its business and automate its digital processes in parallel. Diconium's capability

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Tobias Margarit Managing director

diconium 71

multipliers have a data productivity factor to add to them. The value principles of these capability multipliers are users, data, analytics, IT, people, process and performances. The interactions with the users is measured and segmented in anonymous cohorts to establish a foundation of a data-driven business steering.

Each interaction is extracted by a data sensor and stored in an engineered structure aligned with criteria of efficiency and computability. By applying privacy, legal and IT security matters, a reliable activation is made feasible.

The creation of tangible results requires a set of skills in advanced statistics, digital analytics, supervised/unsupervised training of machine learning or neural networks models, cognitive modeling, or simulations like Digital Twins. Cloud sourcing, horizontal scaling, edge computing, and embedded pseudonymization are supporting capabilities to streamline data workflows. Analytics and Data Science workbenches are exchangeable and adaptable to the critical availability of competencies. Data-driven decision making, the cultural adoption by data-driven training, upgrade of role profiles, anchoring of data specialists by business domains, and attraction of a n a l y t i c a l t a l e n t a r e key s t o t ra n s f o r m i n g a n organization.

The adoption and automation of business processes that are framed by a technical and organizational governance model, process mining, and cross-device encapsulated data services are generating business value measured by predefined KPI's. The technical requirements, people's management, and the process model are transformed by clear metrics to follow a plan stepwise. Agile management, continuous experimentation, and dynamic testing create personalized user experiences to drive performance consequently.

Leading Industry Performance Diconium's clients are enabled by applying data in their

72

daily work. It supports their overall team by increasing their data literacy and enriching their traditional job profiles for long-term success. Consequently, the company can grow its channel performance substantially, adapt its products by digital enrichment and personalized digital offerings based on segmented user cohorts. Incrementally, company processes are digitized and automated with methods of process mining. This leads to a better financial performance with increased revenues and cost savings. Based on these learnings, its clients can create long-term business value by activating data every day. Therefore, their organization and culture become resilient and adaptable to erratic developments by transforming their clients' value creation.

Leveraging Existing Capabilities Within the Diconium network, the company has

terms of data initiatives, it is very crucial to understand

integrated the product “Diconium value chain” into the

the current organizational context with its advantages

existing services. During the last 4 years, the

and disadvantages. Diconium's data value chain and its

competencies and capabilities of data services have been

multiplying effects can integrate into both extremes -

improved and expanded strategically. Now, the company

vertically within an organization considering the seven

can manage complex data initiatives with multiple data

factors or horizontally around business processes. The

sensors like vehicles, smart city data, or production

most successful data-driven organization can combine a

facilities. Consequently, they are contributing to

horizontal and vertical approach. From an operational

innovative shifts like autonomous driving, development

perspective, this can be organized by vertical specialized

of smart cities, and digital twins in autonomous

data teams and central data teams as a connector for the

production facilities. The data culture that they have set

overall business process.

up is attracting highly educated data experts. Today, diconium has become a key market player.

Noteworthy Collaborations To drive productive data initiatives, client's business

Challenges Affront

domain experts are very crucial. They define the

Traditional organizations are structured in functional

relevant business challenge and with the requirement

domains like Controlling, Production, Sales, etc. Each

engineering, a detailed understanding and a draft of

domain creates business processes to streamline its

possible outcomes are predefined. Continuous learning

collaboration within its team. This leads to the

of the latest developments together with Diconium's

disadvantage of organizational islands. Hence

technology partnerships is critical. This has let the

communication becomes critical. If one needs to manage

company improve its setup, portfolio within the

a business process across islands like client satisfaction,

equation, and its teamwork continuously to further

this disadvantage is a hurdle to achieve a common goal. In

improve its performance.

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Vincenzo Marchica 74

Providing Expertized Solutions for Intelligent Business Operations

FOCUS AREA

INDUSTRY

INNOVATION

Robotic Process

Information Technology & Services

Intelligent

Automation, Intelligent Automation, and Artificial Intelligence

M

Automation

any recent advances have made today's workplace unrecognizable as

technology has revolutionized the way we do business, and has had a

transformative effect on the modern office concept. Technical advances can

have a significant impact on how a company operates and how competitive it is. Numerous business challenges can be tackled with technology and organizational advances can greatly improve a company's performance. Vincix Group is one such company that focuses on solving business problems with technology.

Vincenzo Marchica, RPA, AI Expert and Chief Evangelist of Vincix Group has worked with many of the companies to introduce AI and RPA techniques for process optimisation, operational excellence and business efficiency. Over the past 13 years, he has worked with large companies where one can count millions in savings and work produced.

According to Vincenzo, intelligent automation has been a much-used and sought-after technology for years. The explosion in demand for this innovation in recent years is evident in numerous reports at a global level (Gartner, Forrester, etc.).

The need for process optimisation, customer care and attention to business costs is increasingly urgent and mandatory both to improve one's position in the market and to keep up with competitors. Vincix Group believes that the pandemic situation has reinforced these needs.

Strategic Innovation to Boost Relationships Vincenzo's recently published book aimed to share the introspection on intelligent automation. This allows people to understand the positive and essential impact of the

Vincenzo Marchica RPA, AI Expert and Chief Evangelist

Vincix Group 75

solution. As a result, some clients were able to improve the competitiveness in their areas and allow the employees to benefit from the change and focus their time on actions with a higher added value.

Vincenzo innovates, suggests, and implements corporate solutions within Vincix Group and its clients along with the company's in-house R&D department that focuses daily on the development of increasingly challenging solutions.

Over the years, the innovation has cultivated relationships and knowledge with leading vendors in the market, establishing both technical and commercial relationships. It was also able to dialogue with top management to discuss strategies and visions for the future and with the R&D to address more technical operations.

The greatest difficulty one may encounter in creating such innovation is the “it has always been done like this!” statement. It means that one is not ready to face the change and is incapable of understanding the real benefit.

Leadership Enriched with Power RPA, AI Expert and Chief Evangelist of Vincix Group, Vincenzo Marchica was an early adopter of RPA. He is one of the few people in the industry who can genuinely claim to have a fair decade of real-world RPA experience.

Vincenzo is an experienced professional with a clear focus on solving business problems with technology.

Vincenzo invests his time in researching new solutions and new technologies that can help and speed up business innovation processes.

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