THRIVING IN A DATA ECONOMY - Digital Imperatives to Unlock Value

A LEADDDING THOUGHTS SERIES

Thriving in a Data Economy DIGITAL IMPERATIVES TO UNLOCK VALUE

By Dr. Kapil Dev Singh

A INITIATIVE

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A

LEADDDING

THOUGHTS

SERIES

THRIVING IN A DATA ECONOMY DIGITAL IMPERATIVES TO UNLOCK VALUE Dr. Kapil Dev Singh FOUNDER AND CEO, COEUS AGE CONSULTING

A INITIATIVE

Thriving in a Data Economy Digital Imperatives to Unlock Value Coeus Age Consulting Š Copyright 2017 Coeus Age Consulting LLP All rights reserved. No part of this book shall be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without a written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Design: Convert To Curves Media Pvt. Ltd. Printed at: Cirrus Graphics Pvt. Ltd.

CONTENTS FOREWORD

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WHY GO DIGITAL? Imperatives for Digital Emerging Technologies (Box 1) Don’t Just Flirt with Digital Eleven Data Imperatives of Digital Transformation (Box 2) Reconciling in the Middle Disruption = Something New? What Makes a High Digital Score Enterprise (HDSE)?

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12 GEMS OF DIGITAL ENTERPRISE Nine Valuable Lessons Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited Apollo Hospitals Ashok Leyland HCL Infosystems ICICI Securities Limited KPMG in India LIC Housing Finance Limited Nitco Limited Puravankara Limited RJ Corp Sheela Foam Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

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THE FRAMEWORKS Bridging the Divide Between Growth Strategy and Digital

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ABOUT The Jury Members The Author The Editor Other Books by the Author Coeus Age Consulting LEADDDING Gems of Digital™

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03 04 05 06 10 11 13

16 18 20 22 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42

45

49 49 49 50 51 51 51

ENGAGE ENABLE

EMPOWER

EXTEND

INNOVATE BECOME EFFICIENT

FOREWORD A DATA ECONOMY IS EMERGING T

HE BUSINESS STRATEGIES AND APPROACHES of the past era are becoming redundant. Driven by the creation, capture, and analysis of data for not just decision making but also for driving autonomous processes and things, the data economy is creating new opportunities for growth. Driverless cars, digital stores, machine-human interactions, and self-learning systems are just some initial manifestations of the emerging data economy. A lot more is yet to come.

Thriving in the data economy would require that enterprise leaders have the readiness to understand and deal with the new imperatives. Value would be unlocked only for the initiated.

If the digital natives like Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon are valued at ~USD70B, USD30B, and USD400B, respectively, that’s not because they own physical assets worth those many dollars but because they own data worth that value. There also are brickand-mortar enterprises like GE, Unilever, and Toyota that are leveraging the data generated through their digital initiatives for building new capabilities to compete in a new economy.

Data has been around for quite some time, largely underutilized and underleveraged. Even today, many traditional businesses have huge piles of data waiting to be used in meaningful ways.There also are new data streams generated through use of emerging technologies such as mobility, internet of things (IoT), and operational technologies. The real question is whether the organizations are even aware of these critical resources and whether they are doing enough to unlock the hidden value.

The 12 Gems of Digital Enterprise discovered by us have a common lesson to share—data must be meaningfully exploited to unlock its value. It’s a critical organizational resource that could make a significant difference to a business’s sustenance and growth. Data could be leveraged to create the below six essential aspects of coping with the challenging environment: Engage withcustomers in new ways that helps open new sources of revenue.

Enable individuals to take right decisions with right information at the right time.

Empower the front-line field and operational staff to take decisions with lesser need for bureaucratic approvals.

Extend the enterprise beyond the physical boundaries by sharing information with partners and associates.

Innovate on the ground to identify newer sources of revenue or cost savings or both.

Become Efficient by making processes faster and transparent.

These forward thinking companies’ digital footprints allow them to collect huge amounts of data pertaining to customers, suppliers, processes, and products. The data thus collected is analyzed to gain insights into customer behaviors, supplier actions, process performances, and product functioning, which is then used to innovate meaningfully and to exploit that innovation gainfully.

Every business leader must acknowledge the value of data and explore ways in which its value could be unleashed. It’s not just about getting insights by using analytics tools but also about how data could be used to enable and empower people, extend the enterprise, innovate and develop new products and services, and make processes more efficient. Eventually data should help create a new business model with new ways to engage with customers, suppliers, and partners as well as new cost structures aligned with the emerging business risks.

Data is becoming a valuable and critical resource to build new business models in the smart economy. If one looks around and sees how these companies—new-age or traditional—are creating value, one would find that they care about collecting, analyzing, and acting upon data. Their successes lie solely in their abilities to curate the digital capabilities built atop data.

New Delhi, NCR November, 2017

Dr. Kapil Dev Singh

THRIVING IN A DATA ECONOMY

WHY GO DIGITAL 2

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IMPERATIVES FOR DIGITAL Three strong waves that are making embracing digital inevitable

Amidst muted growth, increased pricing pressures and costs, and growing disruption, businesses have no option but to explore ways to innovate new products and services as well as new delivery models, and to reduce costs by becoming more efficient. The older paradigm of ‘variable revenues and fixed costs’ is fast becoming the Achilles heel for traditional businesses, which are struggling to break free from the old shackles. According to a research by Coeus Age Consulting, more than 80% of the enterprises identifed profitable growth as the top priority for 2017.

2. A Growing Pile of Data

E

VERY BUSINESS AND ITS LEADERSHIP needs to pay adequate attention to the inevitable phenomenon of digital. There is no escaping the fact that it is no longer a choice for some industries and sectors. All sectors are impacted by the emergence of digital disruptors, which are already forcing the incumbents to act or perish.

We have been observing the phenomenon very closely as part of our research and consulting activities. We have identified three strong waves, the convergence of which makes it inevitable for business leaders to focus on exploring and exploiting digital.

1 Challenging Growth Environment The world is passing through a difficult growth phase. With economies across the globe recovering from the pangs of excessive growth and the resulting anomalies of the past decade, individual businesses are finding the going tough.

If we take the case of India, the growth engines of the past decade—the banking, telecom, and IT/ ITeS sectors—are all reeling under the pain of low growth. The automobile sector is somehow holding on, but has become enormously competitive. Retail is impacted by the rise of ecommerce players that are burning humongous volumes of cash to grow. Similarly, many other industries like media and entertainment, financial services, insurance, aviation, and FMCG too are finding growth difficult.

The environment has become extremely disruptive. Take the case of demonetization or GST rollout, businesses are constantly required to become agile and efficient.

The growth challenge is further enhanced by the digital disruption that is giving consumers multiple choices and creating new business models with better underlying economic rationale.

Many of the industries have been using IT for many years now. They have built enterprise systems covering their core operations, customer relations, and supplier management.

The ERPs, CRMs and SCMs today sit on huge piles of transactional data that is continually growing in terms of volume, variety, and velocity. This is further fuelled by the adoption of operational technologies in sectors such as manufacturing, mining and metals, and oil and gas, which are also getting integrated with the IT systems. Modern technologies such as IoT, mobile apps, social media, et al are further creating engagements of people and machines, which is adding to the data pile. For years, this pile of data has remained unutilized and unused. Against the backdrop of growth difficulties and margin pressures, insights from this data pile could potentially be much relevant and useful, when it comes to improving efficiencies and effectiveness.

3. Emerging Technologies Though touched upon in the earlier point, the emerging technologies deserve a special mention. Machine learning, artificial intelligence, cognitive technologies, speech recognition, smart grids, nanotechnology, and advanced sensors are the emerging technologies that would usher us into innovative ways to weave people, things, and processes together. These emerging technologies would also create further new constructs of data but those with the potential to drive ‘smart’ into products, processes, and people.

The three imperatives speak about a context where insights from data could be turned into opportunities that enable businesses to become agile and efficient while leveraging and keeping pace with the emerging and new technologies. The simultaneous roles of the three imperatives demand that businesses do not treat digital as a tactical issue and simply flirt with it; rather they work seriously toward aligning it with their core growth strategies.

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BOX 1: Emerging Technologies The second wave of digital is coming “The world is flat,” said Thomas Friedman. His best-selling book published in 2005 had the phrase as part of the title itself.

Most of the ten ‘flatteners’ Friedman discussed in The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, pertained to computers, internet, software, and other disruptors that were to be collectively referred to as information and communication technologies (ICT).

Looking back, ICT may rightly be termed as the precursor of what we refer to as digital today.

It all started with data, which has manifested itself in ever more evolved and complex forms.This whole evolution from standalone pieces of hardware, software, and services to the more holistic phenomena of IT and digital may be seen asnothing but an ongoing journey of the data.

As a low-down, digital should at best be seen as a very important milestone in the journey of data, which continues to unfold and reveal itself in definitive, disruptive, and transformative ways.

Technologies like cloud, mobility, social, and analytics are already past their hype cycles and have together formed a fist layer of digital atop which a new generation of digital technologies are getting constructed.

These emerging technologies, including the likes of internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI), augmented reality (AR), and blockchains, are already beginning to shape the businesses of tomorrow.

The impact of the coming next wave of digital on existing business models is expected to be both disruptive and transformative. Indeed, businesses that are able to embrace and assimilate disruptive technologies more proactively would be able to transform faster and lead better.

The emerging digital technologies also hold the potential and promise of humanization of data. Artificial intelligence, for instance, is already spawning chatbots that are able to mimic humans to a tolerable extent.

Such a development would yield two key results: one, businesses would be able to squeeze the response times to near real-time; and two, eliminate the fear of technology for the stakeholders, including customers. While offerings like chatbots do have limitations, they still represent early days of the second wave of digital.

As things move on, the newer technologies would increasingly allow companies to connect, converse, and conduct businesses more naturally with customers, suppliers, or employees. Developments in natural language processing would work toward melting interfaces such as keyboards and mice or even menus and dashboards, which require users to have certain levels of IT literacy and hence act as barriers for the larger base of customers and other stakeholders.

The new wave of digital promises to reward early the adopters with ubiquity, uniformity, and ultimacy of reach, but also threatens to push the uninitiated into oblivions. Ride it now to tackle the future.

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DON’T JUST FLIRT WITH DIGITAL

Flirting The first experience with digital happens through its adoption on a piece-meal basis. Mostly at the periphery, these are low hanging fruits and isolated initiatives. The exuberance, however, is usually high. These initiatives might only bring one-time gains, feel-good notions or localized empowerments. These could be individual-, team- or function-driven initiatives, and could be undertaken even without formally involving the CIO. However, these individual dots mostly lack a narrative that could weave them together.

Building a fitting technology platform for unleashing digital led holistic transformation

D

Building

IGITAL IS TRENDY and could cause a lot of exuberance even during an initial flirting. A lot is required to be done before it (digital) could create real value for the business.

Coeus Age Consulting’s analyses of multiple enterprises, who are at various levels of digital adoption, reveals four stages through which the journey unfolds—flirting, building, converging, and transforming. The enterprise may travel through these phases with a conscious approach or may get stuck somewhere without one. To progress toward the matured phases, i.e., converging and transforming, enterprises need to be ready on the aspects of leadership, strategic, structural, cultural, and technological.

Let us briefly understand the four phases (Figure 1).

The flirting with individual pillars of digital (social media, mobility, analytics, cloud, and IoT) by individual business functions and the resulting experience and learning could evolve into a focused build-up around one or more of the pillars.

This would be a more serious attempt at exploiting digital, though the build-up might remain largely separated and isolated by business functions. However, this might involve the CIO for backend integration.

Converging A maturity in more than one pillar of the digital and the resulting learning could prompt enterprises to look at converging two or more applications across functions or with the underlying

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FIGURE 1 Four Stages of Enterprise Digital Journey

ENTERPRISE (DIGITAL) PLATFORM

45%

37%

37%

39%

14%

46% 14%

17%

29% 3%

FLIRTING 2014

2016

BUILDING 2017

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

CONVERGING

6%

11%

TRANSFORMING

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infrastructure and applications. For example, how could mobility and social CRM, or cloud and analytics, converge. In this stage, an enterprise-wide digital platform starts evolving that could drive integrated and smart processes by linking together functions, pillars, and channels. This is both a broader and deeper play of digital through a mash-up of digital and core IT infrastructure and applications.

Catalyst technologies that could join the two distinct worlds of digital and core IT play a significant role here. They catalyze by

enabling faster access, higher availability, smoother exchange, speedier flow, and rapid analytics of data. This is achieved through a continuous analytics feed for insights as well as a meaningful presentation, better quality and higher security of data. In this phase, the technology undergoes a big transformation that prepares the enterprise for becoming more capable to compete and thrive. It creates the necessary metaphorical highways for data to flow as per the needs of the business.

This demands a bigger role of multiple functional managers, the CIO or the CTO and even the CEO. Adequate governance

BOX 2: ELEVEN DATA IMPERATIVES FOR DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION According to Eric Schmidt, every two days we create as much data as we did up to 2003. A more recent estimate indicates that 1,820 terabytes of data is created every 60 seconds. The advent of social media platforms, eCommerce, digital media, mobility, and industrial IoT has created a massive data explosion. The enterprises today have more data than they could handle. Data is fast becoming the new business currency and hence the new center of focus for enterprises. New-age businesses are creating high valuations because they have data and also the capabilities to make sense of that data and exploit it gainfully. Traditional enterprises too are increasingly spending on computing, storage, networking, applications, databases, middleware, and emerging technologies to utilize the huge piles of transactional data present in their repositories. To stay competitive, they are also recognizing the value of leveraging data for unlocking the business intelligence, which in turn would make them smarter.

As businesses undergo digital transformation, they would be required to address eleven data imperatives. These imperatives become relevant in the context of enterprises wanting to become more adept at giving the customers a new experience, while getting more efficient at managing costs and nimbler in responding to the competitive forces.

The advancements in hyperconverged infrastructure that leverage the power of cloud computing, faster networks, superior data cleaning and integration technologies, lighter mobile apps, powerful data analytics tools, emerging machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities, and strong sensors to collect operational and field data are allowing enterprises to democratize data. This democratization of data is leading to broader information consumption, process improvements, and faster decision making to engage, empower, enable, and extend it for innovating and driving efficiencies.

These eleven imperatives (Figure 2) pertain to various aspects of the enterprise digital platform and underscore the need for a holistic approach toward making data more valuable for businesses.

At the infrastructure level, these imperatives cover architectures that allow for faster data access and networks that allow for improved flow and security of data as it travels to and fro an enterprise’s boundary. The reality of today’s business is integration, not only within the enterprise but also with its partners, suppliers, and customers. To support an anywhere-anytime access to data, enterprises also need to address the need for higher data availability. With the advent of better sensor technologies and IoT platforms, a much broader approach to collecting operational and field data is also possible.

The focus at the database and application levels is increasingly on enhancing the quality of data residing in the enterprise databases by removing duplication and reconciling multiple formats, thus allowing for seamless data exchange between databases and applications, both within and across the enterprise boundaries, and handling of a variety of data, both structured and unstructured.

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structures are needed to support the collective leadership, and many a time technological overhaul becomes a must, especially when there is a strong presence of legacy.

Our yearly research in gauging the enterprises on the continuum clearly reveals that they are gradually and consistently moving up.

In 2017, 40% of the Indian enterprises were at the converging and the transforming stages, as compared to 17% in 2014. A bulk of them (46%) were still at the building phase, but many of them expressed the desire to move up in 2017 and beyond.

Transforming A highly converged enterprise (digital) technology platform means that the technological readiness is adequately high to transform at the business level. A new enterprise platform, a new leadership vision, strategy, culture, and skills are natural allies for the enterprise to gain performance benefits. An organization transforms around the new digital platform by creating new strategic orientation, new structures and new customer channels.

An introspection by the enterprises at their respective stages would help the business leaders to know what lies ahead. They should then chalk out a blue print of their digital strategies based on that awareness.

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FIGURE 2 Eleven Data Imperatives

Meaningful data presentation

Continuous data feed

Rapid data analytics

Faster data access

Better data quality

Smoother data exchange

Higher data variety

Higher data availability

Speedier data flow

Broader data collection

Higher data security

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

The next focus is on analyzing data by using a range of tools and methodologies to discover insights and hidden patterns. The insights thus obtained could be shared for use for decision making or fed back into the processes for an automated play.

The presentation of data is as important as its collection, structuring, and analysis. A good presentation could create better connect with the data and lead to higher consumption.

It’s imperative for the contemporary enterprises to seriously look at addressing each of the eleven data imperatives and, if required, work with IT providers who could help them do that.

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RECONCILING IN THE MIDDLE Creating value by converging physical and digital into a new model

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T IS ONLY A MYTH that digital is just for the new-age unicorns, i.e., the Ubers, Airbnbs, and Amazons of the world.

Digital offers benefits of improving efficiency, delivering customer experience, and building new ways of doing business— the things that make sense to both old and new.

Amidst a growing concern whether a new-age digital business model could be sustained, the relevance of digital for the traditional businesses is only becoming clearer. Recent strikes by the apps-based taxi drivers in Delhi and NCR, the constantly sliding valuations of the unicorns, and the drying up of capital for further growth are only indications that there is more to a digital business model than just connecting multiple stakeholders together using the technology.

We are not taking an extreme stand of undermining the importance of technology as it surely has permanently disrupted the market place. Yet, we believe in the reconciling-in-themiddle phenomenon, where the two extremes could create value by embracing what is good in either of the two. This phenomenon has always played out in many industries, with the product companies looking for services revenues and services companies moving the product way.

There are three aspects (Figure 3) that are common to any business and become extremely important to drive ‘reconciling in the middle’ phenomenon. These are: profits (can one burn cash incessantly); customer experience (can it be provided without addressing the physical aspects, like the availability of a cab or drivers’ behaviour); and system’s capacity (how can an optimum level of efficiency and effectiveness be achieved from the human system).

Undoubtedly, both the extreme ends need to focus on all the three aspects in their own ways to cope with the force driving them toward the middle (Figure 3). We believe that the traditional businesses are challenged by the new-age business models, but they also have an opportunity to play on their strengths. The latter too have inherent weaknesses that could be exploited by the former.

What is important is that there leaders of traditional organizations recognize the need to start a new discourse around the challenges and the opportunities so as to build a roadmap for change. Without this, their extreme positions would be untenable in the long run.

One could do that by sincerely answering three questions: #1. How does digital disruption impact impact us? #2. Are we prepared to handle the digital disruption that has manifested in our market segment? #3. How capable are we of growing profitably amidst disruption?

These questions cannot be answered by the CIO or the CTO of an enterprise and would rather require the C-suite’s involvement at the behest of the CEO. The need of the hour is to create change-generative conversations and support transformative assessment of the reality in traditional businesses that are aspiring to focus on the hidden growth opportunities.

If these questions help you get a bigger picture, the next section shall help you connect with the concept of disruption in more operational and concrete terms.

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FIGURE 3 Reconciling in the Middle

TRADITIONAL BUSINESS MODEL Is the business strategy relevent amid digital disruption? Is the business run efficiently? Will the strategic and operational orientations help future revenue streams and control costs?

How can digital help in enhancing the customers' experience?

How can digital help process improvement, learning and decision making and build capacity to perform?

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

THREE ESSENCIAL BUSINESS ASPECTS PROFIT

CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

CAPACITY

NEW AGE BUSINESS MODEL How long can the business sustain cash burning? Will the customer pay even after the discounts are discontinued?

What aspect of physical need to be addressed to sustain digital led customer experience?

What aspect of physical processes and human limits need to be focused upon to build capacity to perform?

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DISRUPTION = SOMETHING NEW Unleashing disruption by operationalizing six levers

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one-on-one interactions, customer-day seminars or other industry conferences? Are you also exploring online or digital means to engage with them? This should not be restricted to simply creating a website or launching an email campaign but entail a much broader content-driven strategy of social media presence and rendition of other pieces like videos, reports, presentations, etc. to bring them one step closer to you.

ISRUPTION IS THE LATEST BUZZWORD, but is not necessarily a very well understood term. There are no clear answers to the question: how does disruption manifest itself?

In its simplest sense, disruption may be defined as something new that could change a status quo. We have identified six dimensions of ‘new,’ addressing specific parts of a business’s value chain, which individually could create disruptions and together bring a complete value-chain transformation leading to a new business model. These six aspects are explained briefly ahead (Figure 4).

2. Giving customers something new The core product or service is important, but digital can help create a product- or service-plus approach. For example, airlines could help their passengers manage their accrued loyalty points through an app; auto manufacturers could create an app to have complete visibility on the vehicle’s

1. Engaging with customers somewhere new How do you engage with your existing and potential customers? Is it largely driven by the traditional modes of

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FIGURE 4 Six New Levers for Disruption

Engaging with customers somewhere new

Managing partners and suppliers in someways new Producing with technologies that are somewise new

Giving customers something new

Creating a working environment that’s somehow new Efficiency New Cost Structure Customization SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

SUPPLY

PRODUCTION

Servicing customers in someway new

DISTRIBUTION

Experience New Pricing Agility

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health; and heavy engineering firms could constantly watch the health of their machines through an IoT solution. All businesses could think of such approaches to give their customers something new beyond the core product or service. This ‘something new’ could be a source of additional revenue but must also be valued by customers.

3. Servicing customers in someway new Tying up with ecommerce platforms is a tested route to provide new value to the customers. A well thought out strategy of participating in third-party marketplaces versus creating one’s own marketplace must be implemented to arrive at the right decision.

4. Creating a working environment that’s somehow new A clear majority of today’s workforce already comprises millennials, and over time a sizable percentage would be represented by those born in the current century. Like the new-age consumers, the new-age employees do not care about the physical limitations of time and space, and demand a work environment that supports their needs.

Many of them today like to work at a time and place of their choice and it’s quite imperative for enterprises to balance between their employees’ needs and the business needs of productivity and performance.

5. Producing with technologies that are somewise new Today, chat bots are replacing humans to interact with customers and employees; robots are replacing skilled operators; and components can be produced faster with

3D printing. Technology is replacing human beings and automating operations, production, employee service, and customer service domains. It’s quite imperative for every traditional business to explore how technology could be helpful in enhancing productivity and performance.

6. Managing partners and suppliers in someways new There are innumerable ways in which suppliers and partners are being managed today. Creating visibility of supply or distribution logistics, redefining the price discovery mechanisms, achieving real-time inventory management, and automating mundane yet informationdriven processes like inventory or payments reconciliation are some examples of enterprises managing their suppliers and partners more effectively and efficiently.

These six aspects of ‘something new’ address the value chain holistically, by providing experience, new pricing structure, and the agility to respond to market forces at one end and efficiencies, new cost structures and mass customization at the other end. Traditional businesses must explore each dimension and address it to whatever degree and whatever extent possible.

By playing out across more number of these dimension, they would get concrete answers on ‘how to discover a new business model.’

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WHAT MAKES A HIGH DIGITAL SCORE ENTERPRISE

The research brings forth a strong relation between DS and business performance, highlights the key characteristics of a High Digital Score Enterprise (HDSE)1, and underscores the importance of CEOs’ involvement in creating an HDSE.

Digital score

A high-digital-score enterprise is also a high performing enterprise

A composite digital score2 of the five internal elements was created (Figure 5). It is the sum-total of the score on sub-items for each of the five aspects of (digital) leadership, strategy, boundary, culture, and infrastructure.

DS as an indicator of business performance

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RESEARCH BY COEUS AGE CONSULTING reveals a strong relation between an enterprise’s digital score and its business performance.

A new generation of enterprises, capable of coping with the uncertainties and dynamism of the external world, is emerging.

Driven by the triple play of three dimensions, namely, new leadership orientation, people empowerment, and digital technologies, the new enterprise is continually building unique capabilities at the center of its existence. Digital Score (DS), a metric developed by Coeus Age Consulting, is a key indicator of an enterprise’s ability to leverage digital for business benefits.

DS was correlated with the capability and business performance scores. All the five specific components of the DS were also correlated with it for understanding their relative importance.

A survey of 116 enterprises helped us unravel the relationship between DS and creation of business capabilities required for a business impact. Figure 6 clearly highlights the fact that higher the DS, greater the impact in terms of capability creation and business revenue.

The enterprises with medium and high digital scores could build process capabilities at the functional and organizational levels and claim revenue enhancement.

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FIGURE 5 Enterprise Digital Score

DIGITAL LEADERSHIP DIGITAL STRATEGY DIGITAL BOUNDARY DIGITAL CULTURE DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE

DIGITAL SCORE (DS) IS A COMPOSITE SCORE ACROSS THESE FIVE ASPECTS OF A DIGITAL ENTERPRISE

DIGITAL CAPABILITY & ITS LEVERAGE

DIGITAL MARKET PLACE/VALUE CHAIN SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

Taken from LEADDDING – a book by Dr. Kapil Dev Singh An instrument consisting of specific items was created to measure each of the five aspects of the digital score. Total number of items across the five aspects was 48. The instrument was used to measure the five aspects by rating each related item on a seven-point scale, where 1 = not present at all and 7 = present to a great extent.

1

2

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This is quite an interesting revelation and a simple one to understand: invest into the aspects making the DS and chances are high that positive impact on business capability and performance would get created.

Leadership matters most for creating an HDSE The corelation of five individual aspects with DS revealed very interesting perspectives. Broadly, all the five aspects corelated positively with the DS but their individual strengths of corelation were different.

Figure 7 shows the scores of low-, medium- and high-DS enterprises across the five aspects. For example, the overall score of a low-DS enterprise is 18.1 out of 35 (summing up the individual scores of the five aspects, on a seven-point scale each). The difference on each aspect for medium–low and high–medium DS enterprises is also calculated, which shows the relative importances of individual aspects.

Broadly, all the five aspects corelated positively with the DS, but their relative strengths varied. To take an enterprise from a low DS to medium DS, the digital boundary, digital infrastructure, digital strategy, and digital culture, all matter. However, to take an enterprise from medium DS to high DS, digital leadership becomes the most critical. The role of a digital boundary also shifts from digitalizing individual processes to creating a more integrated-processes paradigm and doing so with speed.

The importance of leadership, i.e., the involvements of the CEO and the CXOs to create an HDSE could be explained by the need for a new strategic orientation. Digital strategy is made up of two sub components—the thinking (leading to strategy formulation) and the structure (for strategy implementation).

The thinking dimension of strategy would ideally reflect in the leadership aspect. New vision, orientation, and effort toward transformation are essential requirements for creating an HDSE.

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FIGURE 6 High Digital Score Leads to Better Business Impact

IMPACT Low % 0.0 30.0 30.0 25.0 10.0 5.0

Minimal IT Impact Isolated Processes Made Efficient Multiple Processes Made Efficient Process Capabilities in Certain Functions Process Capability at the Orgn. Level

DIGITAL SCORE Medium % 1.7 3.4 11.9 20.3 35.6 27.1

High % 2.8 2.8 11.1 2.8 50.0 30.6

Revenue Enhancement

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FIGURE 7 Relative Importance of Various Aspects of Digital Score

Digital Score Low

Leadership

High

3.5 4.8 5.9

Medium - Low

1.3 1.1

Medium

High - Medium SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

Boundary Strategy Culture Infrastructure MEAN SCORE ON A 7 POINT SCALE 4.0 3.7 4.0 2.9 5.4 5.3 5.5 5.1 6.0 5.9 6.2 6.1 2.2 1.0

1.5 0.7

1.4 0.6

1.6 0.6

Total 18.1/35 26.1/35 30.1/35

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GEMS OF DIGITAL ENTERPRISE

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NINE VALUABLE LESSONS Learning from the 12 Gems of Digital Enterprise

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HE 12 GEMS OF DIGITAL ENTERPRISE were discovered through a research process that took 15 man-months of efforts and involved an intense rigour to make the final choice from a pool of 150+ nominations. That makes the hit rate to be one out of 10, which supports our assertion that only 9–10% of Indian enterprises could truly be regarded as ahead on the digital journey with transformation being inherent in their business strategies and models.

The Gems of Digital Enterprise were selected through a multi-phased process that included initial nominations (150+), screening by the analysts (47), further research and shortlisting (21), and final selection by a panel of jury members3 (12).

The jury verdict was followed by deep interactions with the 12 Gems of Digital Enterprise, each interaction being very insightful and immensely learning in multiple ways. It helped us not only to create individual case studies on each of the Gems but also unravelled a common narrative that could guide those who are working toward treading the digital path.

We present here a set of nine common themes visible across the 12 Gems of Digital Enterprise (Figure 8).

1. Strong connect between digital and growth strategies A strong connect between the digital and growth strategies, both in the narrative and the operative, was found in all the Gems of Digital Enterprise. Digital initiatives are being driven by a well thought-out growth strategy that puts the business and technology on the same page.

2. Collaborative leadership for leveraging digital assets The strong connect between digital and growth strategies must be supported by structural aspects that build collaboration between various CXOs and the CIO or the CTO. It was observed across information shared by the winners that in almost every initiative, CXOs and CIOs are actively involved.

3. ‘Engage, enable, empower, and extend’ is at the core of transformation The transformation, either evolutionary or revolutionary, is focused on how customers are engaged; how people, internally and externally, are enabled and empowered; and how the enterprise is extended beyond the traditional physical boundaries. That is at the core of transformation in the Gems of Digital Enterprise and in the potential areas for innovation and efficiency.

4. Efficiency and innovation coexist Efficiency and innovation are often considered as poles apart, requiring very different mindsets and approaches. Yet, a common theme across the Gems of Digital Enterprise is the coexistence of the two seemingly opposing concepts.

In fact, efficiency spurs innovation by providing the necessary capacity and management bandwidth to focus on improvements. Inefficiency consumes a lot of vital resources, which could be diverted toward innovation.

5. 360-degree relevance of digital The Gems of Digital Enterprise doesn’t focus on digital in a limited way; there is a much broader relevance. It covers the entire value chain of a business including sales, marketing, distribution, HR, operations, supply chain, and IT. The theme of ‘enable, empower, extend and engage’ could be applied equally across various stakeholders like the customers, employees and partners.

3 T G Dhandapani, Ex Group CIO, TVS Motors, and Advisor, Sundaram Clayton Group KK Tulshan, Chartered Accountant; Member, Accounting Standards Board, ICAI; Director, Cyber Media; Sr. Partner, GSA & Associates Chartered Accountants; Past Sr. Partner, S S Kothari Mehta & Co. Chartered Accountants Koushik Chatterjee, CEO, iThink Learning Dr. Kapil Dev Singh, Founder and CEO, Coeus Age Consulting

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6. Strong technology platform is a given Though technology is ever evolving and new developments are happening quite regularly, a common theme among the Gems of Digital Enterprise is that there is a highly functional and converged technology platform capable of supporting a variety of digital initiatives. These include a high convergence infrastructure, application modernization, infrastructure as a service, middleware technologies, etc.

7. Digital technologies experimentation

for

continuous

The Gems of Digital Enterprise have already adopted or are in the process of adopting new and emerging technologies like bots, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and big data to drive new business competencies through an innovative convergence of people, processes, and technologies.

8. New digital players Digital is about both the smaller dots of emerging technologies and the bigger rocks of infrastructure and

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applications. The smaller dots of emerging technologies are often developed by smaller and newer players, who often have a focus on a specific technology or process or both. The Gems of Digital Enterprise were found to be consciously identifying these smaller players, working with them, and supporting them to develop innovative products and services.

9. CIO leadership The CIOs at the Gems of Digital Enterprise have a unique flair that enables them to influence the management’s thinking around embracing digital; to collaborate and work closely with their CXO peers; and to enable (not just support) the business by technology. The positive attribution by the CEO and other CXOs is a testimony of their efforts to put digital at a higher pedestal and make a difference to the organization’s health.

We have included interesting case studies on each of the 12 Gems of Digital Enterprise in the book. The nine common points mentioned above would become clearer as you read through these case studies.

FIGURE 8 Nine Lessons from the

Gems of Digital Enterprise Strong connect between digital and growth strategy

Collaborative leadership for leveraging digital assets

Efficiency and innovation co-exist

Strong technology platform is a given

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, ultin lting ting, ng, g, 2017 201 20117

Digital technologies for continuos expérimentation

‘Engage, enable, empower, and extend’ is at the core of transformation

360 degrees relevance of digital

New digital players

New CIO leadership

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AGRICULTURE INSURANCE COMPANY OF INDIA LIMITED Taking crop insurance to the door steps of poor farmers

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GRICULTURE INSURANCE COMPANY OF INDIA LIMITED (AIC) is the largest crop insurance provider to the Indian farmers. The core focus of AIC is to bring the small and marginalized farmers under the umbrella of crop insurance, in an efficient and economical manner. At present, out of the 13.9 crore farm holdings in the country, only 3.09 crores are covered under crop insurance, thus leaving most of them uninsured.

With a big push by the current government in the form of Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) to protect the farmers from the vagaries of the Nature, there has been a big surge in the number of farmers getting insurance covers for their crops. The millions of farmlands to be insured, the complexities of the business processes of crop insurance, the huge scales of operations, and the difficulties in reaching every nook and cranny of the country, require a technology platform that could automate and integrate multiple processes, is highly flexible, and offers the services to the farmers at their doorsteps with the help of the internet and common service centers (CSCs). This case study narrates the success achieved by AIC in building a platform that meets the complex requirements of the agricultural insurance business.

That’s where technology becomes relevant. The technology platform developed at AIC has the capability not only to create suitable crop insurance offerings in a situation where there is no similar standard product but also to reach out to every nook and cranny of the country in a cost-effective manner. In other words, by harnessing the latest technology through the platform, it is possible to reach the last-mile farmer with minimal premium loading.

Toward this end, project Annapoorna, and other supplementing IT projects—the GIPSA Integration and the Online Portal Window—were all conceived, planned, designed, and executed with one ultimate vision of developing a safety net for the poor farmers of the country, and to protect them from crippling financial losses arising out of the vagaries of the Nature (Figure 9).

Project Annapoorna The project encompasses 11 application baskets, cuttingedge hardware, a robust network, and a multi-layered security architecture, all integrated and synced together. It has harnessed the latest technologies to develop an ecosystem of care & support to the poorest and most deprived of the farmers of India.

Annapoorna has brought about standardization of operating procedures and evolution of policies across the company for various business and administrative processes. These standardized and automated processes have allowed the management to measure process efficiencies, identify bottlenecks, and undertake process redesigns.

The business process reengineering has speeded up turnaround times of various critical activities such as claims processing.

As an end-to-end, web-based integrated system, project has streamlined the business processes of the company and

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FIGURE 9 Project Annapoorna and

Supplementing Initiatives at AIC

Using Technology for Resolving a Paradox There is an inherent paradox in providing crop insurance to the crores of small and marginal farmers across the country.

There is a need for the capability to handle the complexity of a suitable product that could cope with the fast-changing policy environment and reach out to the widely dispersed farmers on one hand, and to be cost effective, especially for the small and marginal farmers on the other hand.

This challenge is heightened by the fact that AIC operates out of only 17 regional offices, but has to deal with around 150,000 bank branches and primary agricultural cooperative societies at the grassroots level.

In the traditional physical model, it is extremely difficult to achieve both the objectives together.

CROP INSURANCE PORTAL ECOSYSTEM GIPSA INTEGRATION

PROJECT ANNAPOORNA (end-to-end, web-based, integrated system to automate and integrate the business, administration and IT processes) SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

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Technology is like your wife; though she is serving you, you feel as if you are serving her. She is always a step ahead of you, knows all your secrets, keeps you on strict regimentation, and costs a bomb for upkeep. But at the end of the day, she makes your work easier, keeps your home safe, protects your reputation and generally makes your life smooth and easy.

Can you do without her?

Avinanda Ghosh, General Manager, Chief Information Officer (CIO), Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Agriculture Insurance Company of India Ltd.

automated the operational and administrative functions. It covers the whole gamut of IT needs, from hardware and software to networking and support. It is the foundation on which the operational capabilities to serve the farmers has been built.

GIPSA Integration The General Insurance Public Sector Companies’ Association (GIPSA) project was to extend the implementation and administration of crop insurance to remote areas by utilizing the rural presence of the 40,000-strong insurance agency force of the four GIPSA companies. This system integration project allows the diverse systems of the four GIPSA companies to talk to each other as well as to the central Annapoorna system of AIC, and allows a free flow of data, thus facilitating a more efficient service in a larger catchment area. To keep the management costs grounded and to not load the insurance premiums with administrative overheads, this synergizing tie-up with GIPSA companies was conceived.

Crop Insurance Online Portal Window The Crop Insurance Online Portal Window on the company website is in fact a bouquet of offerings, tailormade to meet the needs of different stakeholders, who can access it from their respective locations and avail the services offered. The services include: a) Farmer portal – Farmers can choose from the product menu and take insurance coverage. b) Banker portal – Banks can directly and instantaneously submit business data into the company’s system. c) Intermediary portal – Agents and brokerd can directly submit business data collected by them. d) Grievance portal – Public can log in their grievances and track the status thereof.

Business Impact Project Annapoorna and other supplementing initiatives have brought about the following benefits: 1. An Online Portal Window is available for the last-mile farmer.

2.. Premium is electronically and instantaneously credited to AIC’s bank account.

3. Tagging of premium data and collection helps in reconciliation.

4. Direct benefit transfer and online claim payouts to farmers are made directly into their bank accounts.

5. There is an increase in transparency and accuracy in the administration of crop insurance.

6. It is possible to capture insurance data at the individual farmer-level .

7. The ‘know your customer’ objective is realized.

Emerging Technologies The Oracle Private Cloud Appliance (OPCA) has been deployed, which is an integrated infrastructure system engineered to enable rapid deployment of converged compute, network, and storage technologies for hosting applications or workloads on a guest OS.

Key Vendors These include TCS, Oracle, Dell, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise, Cisco, McAfee, Credence, Microsoft, Nxtra Data Centre, Sophos, IBM, and Juniper.

About AIC Agriculture Insurance Company of India Limited (AIC) has been formed at the behest of Government of India, consequent to the announcement by the then Hon’ble Union Finance Minister in his General Budget Speech FY 2002–03 that, ‘to subserve the needs of farmers better and to move towards a sustainable actuarial regime, it is proposed to set up a new Corporation for Agriculture Insurance.’

AIC has taken over the implementation of National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (NAIS), which until FY 2002–03 was implemented by General Insurance Corporation of India. In addition, AIC also transacts other crop insurance businesses that are tailor-made for niche segments of farming and crops, among others.

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APOLLO HOSPITALS Connecting the dots digitally for breaking new grounds

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TARTED IN 1983, INDRAPRASTHA APOLLO HOSPITALS has scripted one of the most magnificent stories of success that the country has ever seen. Not only is the Apollo Hospitals Group one of the largest integrated healthcare groups in the region, it also successfully catalyzed the private healthcare revolution in the country. The Apollo philosophy rests on the pillars of technological superiority, a warm patent-centric approach, a clear and distinct cost advantage, and an edge in forward-looking research. The Group continues to break new grounds in adopting modern technology. From leveraging new-age mobility to getting futuristic equipment, Apollo has always been ahead of the curve.

Currently, the group believes in the tremendous potential of robotics and is investing heavily in making it a real and robust option for all.

Digital for Efficiency and More

it is working on digitizing and automating back-office processes, which would help it in becoming efficient and gain critical digital competencies. In its journey of digitizing the enterprise, it has adopted concepts such as Tele-Stroke ICU, Digitized Nursing Stations, and E-Signatures by the doctors on discharge summaries, that are reflective of its focus on digital.

The business focus for digital has been on process efficiency and improved patient care by streamlining the IT management function, automating routine processes, adding new functionalities, and building innovative services (Figure 10).

A few exemplary initiatives under the four pillars include the following:

Task Management Application In the hospital, there are several routine tasks and predefined checklists maintained by various departments as per specific roles and responsibilities. More than 1,200 checklists were digitized under this initiative, and the tasks can now be accomplished using mobile devices. The result of process and workflow automation is higher speed and better control and efficiency.

Digitization of Registers

At Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, the core strategic relevance for digital is to deliver ground-breaking solutions toward enhanced patient-care experience. At the infrastructural level,

The hospital operations generally require various paper-based files and registers to be maintained to record critical data. It is a time taking process that makes it possible not only to record

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FIGURE 10 Four Pillars of Digital Strategy at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals

STREAMLINING IT MANAGEMENT

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

AUTOMATING ROUTINE PROCESSES

ADDING NEW FUNCTIONALITIES

BUILDING INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS

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Leading Indraprastha Apollo Hospital’s IT is a huge sense of responsibility since Apollo is always forerunner in digital transformation & redefining healthcare to provide high quality service at the point of care and delivery.

Vishal Gupta, Head – Information Technology, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals

patient arrives at any of these locations, the CT scan and other reports can be uploaded through a high-speed link for review by an expert consultant in the central office to see and prescribe the initial medication. This is very crucial for saving the precious lives. As of now, there are 50 such locations connected in the periphery of 300 km in and around Delhi and NCR, which is expected to grow and spread over time.

Business Impact The digitization drive at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals has brought in benefits in terms of speed, efficiency, and better patient care.

The digitization of paper-based registers and files has helped in eliminating over 1,800 of those, leading to a substantial reduction in operational costs while also creating digital competencies by making the information available at the touch of a button.

The E-signature drive has helped in reducing the time taken for discharge summary from six to eight hours earlier to flat 10 minutes.

Emerging Technologies but also to retrieve and meaningfully use the information. These registers, which were used for various heads such as patient related records, staff, and inventory records, were digitized with information now being fed and used digitally.

E-signatures A frequent problem across hospitals is that it takes six to eight hours for completing the formalities before issuing the discharge summary. It’s a lengthy process that involves multiple approvals.

To make the process faster and convenient for the patients, e-signatures of consultant doctors were enabled on the discharge summary workflow, which empowers them to review, edit and sign the discharge summaries of the patient from anywhere, anytime on their mobile devices. It has tremendously helped in reducing delays, and the entire process can now be completed in just 10 minutes. This initiative has also helped in reducing the printing and manpower costs.

The Tele Stroke ICU initiative Tele Stroke ICU is a unique initiative by Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals. The biggest enabler of course is technology, which enables neuro stroke-related cases to be addressed by an expert consultant within the golden period of the first 20 minutes. Many smaller hospitals/ nursing homes are connected with the central system at Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi. When a

Apollo Hospitals is exploring to implement advanced business intelligence techniques to get more filtered data, which would eventually help in further improving the quality of patient care.

Key Vendors Microsoft, VMWare, and Hewlett-Packard.

About Apollo Hospitals The Apollo group has been a forerunner in integrated healthcare not only in India, but globally as well. Its presence encompasses over 10,000 beds across 64 hospitals, more than 2,200 pharmacies, over 100 primary care and diagnostic clinics, 115 telemedicine units across nine countries, health insurance services, global projects consultancy, 15 academic institutions, and a research foundation with a focus on global clinical trials, epidemiological studies, and stem-cell and genetic research.

Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi is a multi-specialty tertiary acute care hospital with 710 beds. A state-of-the art modern facility in the heart of the capital, it is spread over 15 acres and has a built-up area of over 600,000 square feet. It offers 52 specialties under one roof.

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ASHOK LEYLAND

models. All aspects of the business in this new phase are envisaged to be connected seamlessly using a mobile-first philosophy, with ‘rapid data analysis’ for smart working.

Ushering in an IT-led business model powered by rapid data analytics

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SHOK LEYLAND, THE LEADING COMMERCIAL VEHICLES MANUFACTURER, is an exceptional example of attaining market leadership by leveraging digital technologies.

Competing in the highly competitive automobile industry in an uncertain environment requires an organization to be agile, efficient, and innovative—all at the same time. Ashok Leyland has been continually leveraging digital technologies to build new capabilities to sustain its market position. Its current focus on leveraging the power of data is ushering in a completely new IT-led business model.

Transforming by Unleashing Power of Data The use of IT at Ashok Leyland has evolved from being a basic business support function to a business enabler through enterprise systems connecting customers, employees, dealers, and other stakeholders. This has been achieved through an increased focus on analytics and data management, backed by extensive process automation, for not only reimagining and reengineering business processes but also for exploring the prospects of reinventing business

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FIGURE 11 Connected Ashok Leyland for

Empowerment, Enablement and Efficiency

Connected Board

The power of connected devices and the potential of IoT could result in information being available in real-time on mobile devices. By leveraging the power of data and analytics, Ashok Leyland has built new capabilities to meet the competing demands of a contemporary environment.

Ashok Leyland has embraced data analytics for insights that promote empowerment, enablement, and efficiency, and open new avenues of revenue growth. For this case study, let us take a sample of four major digital initiatives impacting the board, the associates, customers, and vehicles, which are like the four sides of a connected enterprise (Figure 11).

1. Connected board By bringing all the board members on the same page (read the screen of a tablet), ‘Connected Board’ is an initiative to make vital information available to all board members for collaboration and better decision making. The complete trail of information can be made available to members electronically with key decisions taken at different points in time.

2. Connected associates The shop-floor associates can now obtain HR information pertaining to them through an intuitive and user-friendly touch screen. It is placed in kiosks across various plants and is a major source of empowerment and enablement. By using their access cards or using biometric authentication, the associates can now interact with technology without feeling threatened by it.

3. Connected customers Customers can now interact through an app or the website to configure their own products. Though limited as of now with pre-configured options, it gives power in the hands of customers to select the products suiting their needs. Over time, with process maturity and technological feasibility, the path is being laid for highly personalized products that can be configured by individual customers and manufactured on demand.

4. Connected trucks

Connected Products

EMPOWERMENT, ENABLEMENT AND EFFICIENCY

BY LEVERAGING DATA

Connected Associates SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

Connected Customers

With the help of sensors built into the trucks on the road, their health can be tracked, traced, and monitored through a telematics application. It helps collect vital data that can be analyzed to decipher patterns and unveil hidden trends for predictive feedback, which can open new sources of revenue. The use of IT not just means marketing trucks through apps, but using it as an effective tool to eliminate waste in a customer’s cost structure and enhance profitability. It is about developing applications for ‘telematics’ as part of the ‘Connected Truck’ initiative for: • The ability to address issues before a truck fails, and to connect a mobile service van though an app to reach the

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truck with speed, thus moderating downtimes.

The ability to do pit-stops for customer vehicles along their drive route, thus enhancing asset utilization.

• Developing technologies so that an electronic engine ‘talks’ to the vehicle’s transmission, potentially creating an infinite combination of driveline behaviors to fundamentally shift the power mileage curve.

• Engaging in an ongoing connect with the customer following product sale (only 20% vehicles were brought to dealer workshops for repairs).

• Exploring the opportunity to incorporate ‘Voice of the Product’ (data captured through telematics) insight to enhance customer value.

•

“In today’s connected world, digital disruption is transforming not just the products and services that are offered, but is also shaping the future expectations of customers. The pace of innovation, exponential idea generation, the anticipated speed of responses and the technology-led integration of the value chain is impacting businesses in an unprecedented way. We at Ashok Leyland have envisioned such scenarios in time and a roadmap for the ‘Data Driven Ashok Leyland’ has already been put in place.”

Vinod Dasari, CEO, Ashok Leyland

Business Impact Delighted customers, empowered associates, informed board, and newer sources of service revenue are all results of the use of digital for a 360-degrees connected enterprise. Digital has unleashed five aspects of a new culture at Ashok Leyland—process culture, information culture, collaboration culture, cost culture, and mobility culture, with deep impacts on the business capabilities.

Emerging Technologies Bots are being deployed in call logging, and machine learning tools like Dr. Watson are piloted in service call logging. 3D information management tools like data visualization, and predictive analytics and smart manufacturing technologies are being deployed.

Key Vendors Infosys, Hinduja Technologies Limited, Capgemini, and TCS.

About Ashok Leyland

“Digitization will no longer feature as an additional component or an added value but will be the basis on which all the future products and processes would evolve. Ashok Leyland is rapidly embracing technology and establishing robust business processes across the company for taking big strides into the digital age. Technology is not new at Ashok Leyland, but it has evolved from being a support and enabler to enter a new paradigm of IT Led business model for re-imagining, re-engineering and even re-inventing the way business is carried out.”.

A Sathyanarayanan, GM- IT, Ashok Leyland

Ashok Leyland is the second-largest manufacturer of commercial vehicles in India, the largest bus manufacturer in India, the fourth-largest manufacturer of buses in the world and the twelfth-largest manufacturer of trucks globally. With a turnover of more than US$3.2 billion (2016–17) and a footprint that extends across 50 countries, it is one of the most fully-integrated manufacturing companies in this part of the globe.

Over 70 million passengers use its buses to get to their destinations every day while over 700,000 trucks keep the wheels of economies moving. It has the largest fleet of logistics vehicles deployed in the Indian Army and is in significant partnerships with armed forces across the globe.

Ashok Leyland has nine manufacturing plants, with seven located in India, and bus assembly plants at Ras Al Khaimah (UAE) and Leeds (UK). Its manufacturing facility at Pantnagar in India won the prestigious Deming Prize in 2016. This is the first facility outside of Japan to have won this prize.

The Search Is On!

www.leadingdigitally.com

www.maximumgovernance.com

We are constantly in search of the Gems of Digital Enterprise & Gems of Digital India (Governance) initiatives that have put digital to an innovative use with sustained value creation.

If your organization has an interesting story to tell the world, talk to us.

Yours could be a Gem that could come to light. kds@coeusage.com +91 9811771187

ENTRIES ARE OPEN FOR THESE CATEGORIES:

Customer Engagement Digital Marketing New Workplace Supply Chain Digitization Management Dashboard Core Operations eGovernance #gemsofdigital #gemsofdigitalenterprise #gemsofdigitalindia

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HCL INFOSYSTEMS Sustaining market leadership by walking the digital talk

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CL INFOSYSTEMS, A LEADING IT SERVICES PLAYER is literally walking the digital talk. It does not only sell the idea of digital to its customers and help them to undertake a transformative journey, but has also embraced digital and is transforming the way it itself works. By adopting a mobile-first philosophy for rendering business processes, migrating the IT infrastructure to a secured cloud, and promoting usage of social media by people for both internal and external communications, HCL Infosystems has all that exemplifies Gems of Digital Enterprise.

Digital for Leadership HCL Infosystems, founded in 1976, has been a market leader throughout its 40 years of existence. It held the leadership position as the PC maker in India for long, before deciding to embrace services as the mainstay of growth. In an increasingly digitized world, the decision to become digitally ready has only been a natural move, as the customers demand IT Infrastructure that leverages the power of analytics, mobility, and cloud to support their needs for agility and speed.

With digital being the core strategy, social, mobile, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) are the basic hygiene aspects of that strategy. For example, all leaders have Twitter Accounts. It is mandatory for at least one leader to do a tweet chat every week. While all new software is on the cloud, existing systems are also gradually being moved to the cloud. Similarly, in the next three years, all the processes will be on mobile. In fact, the mobile-first approach is mandatory for all the new initiatives.

Digital transformation has also changed its core offerings and solutions, and the website (hclinfosystems.com) now clearly showcases Enterprise 360 offerings of Cloud, Analytics, IoT (Emerging technologies) along with Network & Security, Data Centre and Workplace.

The digital strategy at HCL is operationalized through the five pillars shown in Figure 12. This helps it to become digital in the way it works, which also help when it comes to make its customers understand digital in a more meaningful way.

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FIGURE 12 Five Pillars of HCL Infosystems' Digital Strategy

MOBILE FIRST PHILOSOPHY

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

MARKETING AUTOMATION

SOCIAL MEDIA FOCUS

SOFTWARE DRIVEN INFRASTRUCTURE ANALYTICS

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During the last 2 years the organization is on a digital transformation journey and various digital initiatives have optimized business processes. From the basic hygiene of the corporate website to creating a niche for senior leaders as thought leaders. We have successfully mapped the digital priorities with the company strategic vision.

Premkumar Seshadri, Executive Vice-Chairman & Managing Director, HCL Infosystems

Mobile-first Philosophy

Business Impact

All the existing processes are getting mobile ready and by 2020, all processes must be migrated. Any new process or application must have a mobile-first approach. If it cannot be made mobile-ready, it cannot be adopted.

The business impact can be assessed by the simple fact that HCL’s First Cloud Day which took place digitally in seven locations with 80 participants generated 59 leads worth Rs 62 crore, while 67 new business logos were added.

Marketing Automation

Emerging Technologies

Implementation of marketing automation, social, design workflow, mobile apps, and data-driven marketing campaigns are ensuring that HCL Infosystems is becoming a digital enterprise.

Social Media Focus Social media leverage is not left to be an individual’s personal choice. It is an institutionalized practice at HCL Infosystems today. The key initiatives include the following:

Marketing automation, social automation, design workflow automation, and chat bots for events, website and HR are in evaluation stages. The solutions are being piloted with customers in the IoT area involving artificial intelligence (AI) as well.

Key Vendors Eloqua, Hootsuite, Invisionapp, Sketch, and Slack.

Facebook@work – It is like Facebook but for work. As everyone is familiar with Facebook, it has been adopted by 85% of the workforce. Town halls, live videos broadcasting, and everyday news is shared on workplace. Teams across countries participate and ask questions in town halls to the leadership.

Tweet Chat (#HCLILeaderTalks) – A weekly tweet chat is held on various topics with leadership @ HCL. From 2,000 followers in April 2016, it had grown to 29,000 followers by March 2017.

This helps in organic growth and generating new business leads.

Digital HCLite (https://www.linkedin.com/company-beta/7240/) – HCL has created a property internally to promote social advocates and thought leaders. Unified experience is created through employees’ presence on LinkedIn. Entire sales team’s LinkedIn profiles are updated and refer to HCL offerings. Techniques of social selling are used that assist in generating inbound leads.

Analytics Analytics form an integral part of the digital applications, both internal and external, as well as the core infrastructure.

Software-driven Infrastructure The core infrastructure and applications are put into the cloud with a very high component of software-driven automation and remote management.

About HCL Infosystems HCL Infosystems is India’s pioneer IT services, solutions and distribution company providing the choice of multi-brand global technology products and the capability of best-in-class, businessaligned IT services and solutions. Its offerings portfolio spans IT and system integration services, value-added distribution of enterprise technology, and consumer mobility products.

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ICICI SECURITIES LIMITED

needs of its customers. It has continuously strived for making the process to be as customer friendly as possible. E-contracts may be a norm today, but it was launched first by ICICI Securities. It launched ‘trade racer’ for the daily stock market traders, which keeps them connected to the stock market by the minute, and also the intensive financial literacy programs that are available through video conferencing at the convenience of customers.

It was one of the first broking firms to offer a low-bandwidth website focused purely on the trading functionality. It was also the first to introduce online bond trading, when earlier the clients had to walk into a branch for bond-related transactions.

Using digital to help customers make sensible investments

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N TIMES WHEN ONLY 4% of India’s population invests in the stock market, enabling them to start investing in financial products looks like a Herculean task. That’s how the ICICI Securities’ journey towards digital transformation began—to create a platform that would make it easy for individuals to participate in India’s growth story and invest in the right products to meet their financial goals. The 16-year old financial institution wanted to make it easy for its four million customers to trade in the stock market without being hassled by the complexities.

For ICICI Securities, a fast, responsive and flexible IT infrastructure and constant interaction between technology and business functionaries are key to maintaining its leadership position in the market. The task was achieved by focusing on core product development through the company’s internal technology team. ICICI Securities also encourages and engages with various start-ups for some of its product innovations.

ICICI Securities has been extending the power of the core platform by embracing social, mobility, analytics, and cloud (SMAC) and empowering multiple stakeholders through process automation and information (Figure 13).

Digital Innovation as Core Business Strategy ICICI Securities has continuously innovated by tailoring its offerings across platforms and devices to meet the growing

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FIGURE 13 Innovations Around the Platform for Enablement and Empowerment of Stakeholders at ICICI Securities

ENABLEMENT AND EMPOWERMENT

DIGITAL INNOVATIONS

Customers

Brokers Core

Mobile

Platform

Social Media

Cloud Data Analytics

Dealers

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

Employees

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For the past two decades, ICICI Securities has been one of the pioneers in using technology to service its customers with easy and informed access to the capital markets. Using technology to build innovative financial products, we have been helping our 40 lakh customers in planning and realizing their financial goals. Technology has also helped us in building a structured and highly effective workforce by enabling them with market information at the tip of their mobile phones. Being recognized as a Gem of Digital Enterprise is a testament of our commitment toward customer centricity.

Shilpa Kumar, MD & CEO, ICICI Securities Limited

Digital transformation is a journey and not a destination for the company that works in a highly dynamic environment. Our digital transformation goal is to continuously improve and innovate. We continuously assess our processes to improve lead time and think innovatively to offer best-in-class products to the customers in order to help them meet their financial goals.

Yagnesh Parikh, CIO, ICICI Securities Limited

Internal Social Networking Platform

Business Impact

‘I Network’ is an application that allows employees pan-India to communicate and collaborate for work. This has, over time, resulted in increased interactions that are enabling employees to learn from others’ experiences.

Digital transformation has helped the company optimize costs, rearrange its workforce and improve operational productivity on the ground. It has also increased the basket of product offerings, thereby directly contributing to the top line.

Mobile Trading Application

Emerging Technologies

It launched a mobile version of the trading platform that allows customers to log trades from anywhere. All one needs is a handset that supports the application and an internet connection. The move has been a direct contributor to the top line, with more than 20% trade orders now being placed over the mobile devices.

CRM on Mobile A mobile friendly version of the CRM allows sales team to log sales reports and record revenues on the move. This has digitally empowered the team with an app that helps them to engage with the customer with a ready reckoner on various products and market information.

Analytics for Decision Making For its own sales team, ICICI Securities uses analytics tools such as SAS and SAP Business Objects to provide insights to the team directly and reduce the dependency on IT for reports or data analysis. The objectives include increasing cross-selling of various products on offer; automating the data generation and validation and delivery process; and more adaptability in changing tactical or strategic business needs.

The result is that decision-making has become quicker, with bettersuited products being pitched to the right sets of customers.

RoboAdvisory Powered by Analytics ICICI Securities launched Track-n-Act, a first-of-its-kind RoboAdvisory in India that helps customers in taking informed financial investment decisions from time to time.

It is in process of evaluating in-memory database management systems for making the platform more agile and responsive.

Key Vendors Most of the development is done in house.

About ICICI Securities Limited Started as a division of ICICI Bank in 1999, ICICI Securities is today an integrated securities firm with a wide range of services, including investment banking, institutional broking, retail broking, private wealth management, and financial product distribution. The company is most popularly known by its retail trading brand name and platform www.icicidirect.com. With a network of over 250 branches, it employs over 4,500 people and serves a retail customer base of around 4 million—the largest across all brokerage firms in India. ICICIDirect is the No. 1 broking portal in the country, having won several accolades since its inception.

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KPMG IN INDIA Building a digital work environment with 360-degree transformation

innovatively used digital technologies like mobility, analytics, cloud, and artificial intelligence, and paradigms like bring your own device (BYOD) to build new business capabilities.

Extending the Enterprise on the Mobile

K

PMG IN INDIA IS AN INTERESTING STORY of leveraging advanced digital technologies that enable its knowledge workers to be more productive and efficient at work.

Innovative enterprise-grade digital technologies have been deployed in the firm, thus boosting enterprise productivity and enhancing communication and collaboration while also reducing costs and time. It has also overhauled our core IT to support a plethora of digital initiatives that foster agility, collaboration, productivity, and efficiency. In short, the firm is moving toward a 360-degree transformation (Figure 14).

Becoming the Next-gen Digital Enterprise KPMG in India has aptly leveraged advanced technology and laid out a digital transformation roadmap to become the next-gen digital enterprise. It has embraced modern workforce trends and

Among the mobility initiatives, BYOD policy has been implemented to enable all staff members to use their personal mobile phones at work and access the firm’s network. Corporate applications have been modernized into feature-rich, easy-touse mobile applications that meet self-service requirements of business users while on the move. Further, collaboration tools, audio and video conferencing, document collaboration, and knowledge management portals enable them to communicate and collaborate, irrespective of their locations.

Leveraging Hybrid and Public Cloud KPMG in India is one of the early adopters of cloud among the professional services firms. Existing infrastructure is being consolidated to a new infrastructure with a hybrid-cloud model, which is easily accessible and designed to scale on demand, thus offering virtually unlimited computing power. The environment is being utilized for production and a host of other environments such as those used for system integration, large-scale proof of value, and development of a variety of products.

It has also partnered with leading cloud service providers for services that are being leveraged by its various business and

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FIGURE 14 Building an All-Inclusive Digital Work Environment at KPMG in India QUALITY EFFICIENCY COST

AGILE WORKFORCE A NEW DIGITAL WORK ENVIRONMENT

COLLABORATION

DIGITAL LAYER Mobile Apps BYOD Collaboration Tools Service Desk Analytics Artificial Intelligence

CORE IT Modernizing the Applications to Support Self Service Mobile Apps Overhauling the Datacentre (Hyper Converged Infra in the Hybrid and Public Cloud)

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

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With the introduction of new digital technologies every day and the increasing trend of mobile and remote working, the way work ‘works’ today has changed drastically over time. Keeping this in mind, we are always at the forefront of embracing advanced solutions, driven by technology, for the workforce of tomorrow.

Harnath Babu, CIO, KPMG in India.

consulting teams to rapidly build prototypes and services, and demonstrate these as proof of value to the customers. These services are rapidly scalable and deployable, based on the payper-use model and offering greater agility to the business.

Service Desk Analytics on the Mobile Service desk analytics solution has also been deployed with an aim to improve service desk and IT operations efficiency, as well as to drive business value through mobility. It encompasses delivering the operations team with real-time visual analytics of the performance with regard to the service level agreements (SLAs). Parameters such as service desk or engineer’s performance, average response or resolution times, and customer satisfaction index highlight both the current and previous status.

Business Impact Data center consolidation with hyper-converged infrastructure has resulted in reducing the infrastructure footprint by approximately 50% while also leading to faster response, better network resiliency, and direct cost savings to the tune of a few million dollars.

Furthermore, services desk analytics has resulted in a decrease in the average ticket ratio by 17%, reduction in resolution time per ticket by 31%, and surge in feedback submission from a dismal 8% to a staggering 94%. Consequently, C-SAT has doubled within three months of the tool’s launch and stands at an alltime high currently.

Emerging Technologies KPMG in India is also one of the early adopters of artificial intelligence among professional services firms. It has introduced a ‘chatbot’ for internal employee-related services. It is a chatbased virtual assistant that would instantly address users’ generic IT queries right while they are sitting at their desks. It is based on cognitive computing technology, is self-learning, and has a conversational interface. There is a plan to extend it to other support functions such as human resources (HR).

About KPMG in India KPMG in India, a professional services firm, is the Indian member firm affiliated with KPMG International and was established in September 1993. Its professionals leverage the global network of firms, providing detailed knowledge of local laws, regulations, markets, and competition. KPMG has offices across India in Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chandigarh, Chennai, Gurugram, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kochi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Noida, Pune, and Vadodara. KPMG in India offers services to national and international clients in India across sectors. It strives to provide rapid, performance-based, industry-focused and technology-enabled services, which reflect a shared knowledge of global and local industries and its experience of the Indian business environment.

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LIC HOUSING FINANCE LIMITED Treading the path of creating a digital value chain

H

OUSING IN INDIA HAS MUCH HEADROOM left for growth, and that augurs well for the banks and housing finance companies (HFCs) that lend to the home and commercial buyers. Though there are challenges in the sector, those can rightly be termed as corrections, as the need for housing is still very basic. The drivers for housing demand in India have remained unchanged, particularly due to a favourable demographics and rising prosperity. As against the banks, the HFCs have been consistently gaining ground. Their shares have consistently grown from 30% to 40% between 2008 and 2014 (Source IDBI Capital Sector Report, 2016).

LIC Housing Finance Limited (LICHFL), the second-largest HFC in terms of sales, according to moneycontrol.com, is consistently growing while also becoming more efficient, agile, and responsive to home buyers’ needs. Toward this end, it has been leveraging IT and digital to build new process capabilities and extending those capabilities to create a digital value chain that enables every stakeholder transaction digitally, be it customers or business associates.

I

Three Simple Steps for Creating a Digital Value Chain The technology enablement of business at LIC HFL has evolved through three stages—internal automation, customer engagement, and external linkages (Figure 15). By taking initiatives in the three important domains of business, it is truly on its path to create a digital value chain for continuing to compete and thrive.

Internal automation – It started with what is most logical to do—automating and integrating the business and administrative processes for better visibility and management. That also provides efficiency, effectiveness, agility, and systemic control on various activities it undertakes. Today, almost all the operations and processes are automated end to end.

Customer engagement – Building upon the internal readiness achieved, the digital drive was further extended to offer customers multiple ways to engage with the company through the digital interface. These included, online payment facility, online application for new loans, customer portal showing latest status of the loans, and other necessary services online to the customers, along with the CRM portal for resolving customer grievances.

External linkages – The digital drive was also extended to integrate with third-party services, e.g., customer on-boarding verification by integrating with UIDAI, CERSAI, CIBIL and NSDL, which has helped to make the business secure and agile.

It also provides mobile apps for business associates to do property verifications and for recovery agents to recover the loan due amounts, using e-payments. This drive enables the company to ensure quality business with growth and profitability.

LIC HFL has embraced multiple technology solutions to undertake the three steps for building a digital value chain.

These include mobility solutions, online applications, online payments, CRM, DR on Cloud, Central IT Help Desk on Cloud, Email on Cloud, and integration with UIDAI, CERSAI, CIBIL and NSDL, among others.

FIGURE 15 Focus on Three Domains to Create a Digital

Value Chain at LIC HFL

From the basket of the above initiatives, the latest three include the following:

VyOM – (VYOM collections and VYOM Valuations) Internal Automation

Customer Engagement

External Linkages

Mobile application for recove ry agents, valuers and verification agencies that enables to update various contact and residential details of the borrowers.

Centralized IT help desk

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

The solution is hosted on cloud. Users can log any type of software, hardware, application, or email-related issues via the mobile app or email. It also helps maintain asset life cycle and manage the vendor, and has helped in reducing the down time.

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FAR DR FAR DR has been built for business-critical applications and databases that are hosted on cloud with burstable capacity, which can be used in case of necessity.

CKYC (Parichay)

Digital transformation is in the core of our strategy encompassing customer relationship, internal processes and operational areas.

We will continue on the path of sustainable growth and be perceived as a value-driven organization. LIC HFL has been transforming its businesses successfully through digital means over the years. Creating digital value chain is a compelling transformative vision for LIC HFL and thereby, gaining cutting edge in the industry. This would enable us to have seamless integration of people and processes eliminating duplication and enhance operational efficiencies, thus improving engagements at every level with all our stakeholders..

Vinay Sah, Managing Director and CEO, LIC HFL

This application provides a direct integration with CERSAI— the nodal agency for CKYC initiative—and helps in generating the CKYC number for each and every customer who is availing a loan facility.

Business Impact The organization’s internal and external operations have become largely paperless to the extent possible. The organization is more efficient, responsive, and fast in going to market with new products, and is better at serving the customers.

Emerging Technologies These include chat bots for customers and hyper-converged infrastructure for new applications, and compliance management solution for further augmenting the internal automation.

Key Vendors HCL, Symphony, Mobicule, Nxtradata Limited, and Alpha FinSoft.

About LIC Housing Finance Limited

Strategic IT planning to identify the technical gaps and mitigating the risks associated with it is at the core of our digital transformation planning. Creating a digital value chain has helped us to keep our focus on superior service delivery and competitive advantage by identifying, managing, and successfully implementing such projects. We are sure to leverage new technologies through innovation and in-house development for driving business transformation and building cohesive empowered teams of business enablers.

Kiron Singh, General Manager (IT & Accounts)

LIC Housing Finance Limited is one of the largest housing finance companies in India. Incorporated on 19th June 1989 under the Companies Act, 1956, the Company was promoted

by LIC of India and went public in the year 1994. It launched its maiden GDR issue in 2004. The main objective of the company is to provide long-term finance to individuals for purchase, construction, repair or renovation of their houses or flats for residential purposes. The company possesses one of the industry’s most extensive marketing network in India. Registered and headquartered in Mumbai, it has nine regional offices, 22 back offices and 240 marketing units across India. In addition, the company has appointed over 11,452 intermediaries to extend its marketing reach. The 22 back offices spread across the country accomplish the credit appraisal and administrative functions.

The company has also set up representative offices in Dubai and Kuwait to cater to the non-resident Indians in the GLCC countries covering Bahrain, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia. Today the company has a customer base of over two million prudent house owners who have enjoyed the company’s financial assistance.

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NITCO LIMITED Engaging digitally with the customers to bolster its premium positioning

N

ITCO HAS BEEN A PIONEER in the tiles and marbles industry when it comes to rolling out multiple digital initiatives in a short span of time. It is undertaking layered initiatives to mobilize the sales force and first-level customers (resellers and influencers) with information and tools for them to engage with the end customers. The mobile app that links the resellers and influencers with the organizational system is very effective in connecting them with the sales and backend support teams and in helping them to face customers with prompt answers and information. Product visualization tools have been very effective in providing the rich experience to customers, whether on the website, through the app, or in-store. This has been a key differentiator, as it facilitates customers in making the right choices. Customer service has also been improved with the introduction of social media marketing and a quick-response approach. All put together, the use of digital FIGURE 16

in engaging with the resellers, influencers, and consumers is in alignment with and supporting the premium positioning of the brand.

A Multi-layered Approach AT Nitco, the key for business growth lies in exploring different channels of marketing and product visualization to facilitate the home-decoration buying process, and providing extremely rich experience to resellers, influencers (such as architects, interior designers and contractors), and consumers. In the tiles market, the quality of presentation, along with the speed of execution, are very critical factors for engaging buyers in making choices. Hence, a multi-layered approach for a seamless information flow and for providing new experiences to resellers, influencers, and consumers has been designed (Figure 16).

Nitco had begun digitizing the tiles and marbles content long back. Now the entire product cataloguing happens digitally, and resellers, influencers, and consumers can visualize products digitally through the app or on the web.

Nitco has taken several digital initiatives as part of its multi-layered approach, with the notable ones beign discussed below.

Turbo Mobility App for the Sales Force The front-end sales teams and business development teams use the mobile app on Android or iOS platforms, which gives them online visibility of business transactions and business insights on

I Focus on Three Domains to Create a Digital Value Chain at NITCO

IN STORE PRODUCT VISUALIZATION

CORE ERP

FACTORY LEVEL INVENTORY DATA

MOBILE APP FOR COMPANY SALES FORCE

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

MOBILE APP FOR RESELLERS & INFLUENCERS

ONLINE PRODUCT VISUALIZATION SOCIAL ANALYTICS FEED INTO CUSTOMER SERVICING

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Thrust on digital technologies and continuous exploration are helping Nitco in delivering enriched customer engagement experiences and improving sales effectiveness

Digital is the future and we look forward to bringing significant transformation using digital technologies

Satej Revankar, CIO, Nitco Limited

Bhaskar Borkar, CFO, Nitco Limited

aspects such as stocks, prices, orders, and customer performance.

An integration with the ERP that has near real-time information from the factory system on stocks and inventory has been made.

As a result, sales support costs have come down by 15%, and order fulfilment time is now 50% less.

Business Analytics Collating key information on business performance centrally has helped create views that raise effectiveness of the periodic management reviews. The review timeframe has been reduced from 10 days earlier to one day now. The quality of decision making has improved drastically, with a 360-degree view of analytics being available.

Customer Engagement Customer engagement is focused on assisting customers to choose the right product and in helping them to get the right support. Customer engagement is attempted through the product visualizer app as well as through website visualization tools. The in-store experience is getting revamped with digital displays and apps for facilitating customers in shortlisting products. It is also tapping into social media threads through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Instagram for ensuring quicker responses to customers. Google Street views are in place for its 15 instores, viz, Le Studio, pan-India, which gives 360-degree views of each of its showrooms. Skype and Google Videos are used for online conversations with team members and customers.

Sales closure times have improved by 30% while customer walk-ins are up 22%, which shows greater acceptance to digital product visualization.

Also being offered are online chats and in-house web portals for customer care and in-store showroom experience. Process times for addressing customer grievances and requirement handling have reduced from one-to-two days to an almost instant response.

Business Impact Sales effectiveness in terms of closure time, number of walk-in customers, and customer servicing turnaround has improved.

Decision making for front-line sales teams has also become faster.

Emerging Technologies Nitco is exploring richer customer experiences through emerging digital technologies and tools.

Key Vendors Intellect Bizware Private Limited, B3 Infotech Private Limited, Network Techlab Private Limited, NxtGen Technologies Limited, Datamatics Limited, Chrome Infotech Private Limited.

About NITCO Limited NITCO (established in 1953 by Pran Nath Talwar) is among the top premium tile companies in India. The Company manufactures a vast portfolio of tiles (floor and wall), marble, mosaic and metal craft. NITCO Ltd., which is a limited liability company in India, is today traded on two stock exchanges; Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Stock Exchange (NSE). NITCO was established in Bombay (India) in 1953 and is today one of the largest manufacturers of floor tiles in India. It has a volume market share of around 6% and a value market share of around 10% among organized players. The Company is headquartered in Mumbai, India. Its pan-India presence is facilitated through 22 offices. Its strong distribution network comprises more than 1100 direct dealers. The Company also exports tiles to countries like Belgium, The Netherlands, Muscat, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman and other European and African countries. The NITCO Group consists of NITCO Tiles, NITCO Marble, NITCO Art (Mosaico and Intarsia), NITCO Wall Tiles and NITCO Earth (Real Estate).

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PURAVANKARA LIMITED Leveraging digital for generating more bang for marketing bucks

regulatory environment. On the one hand, the need is to engage with the customers in new innovative ways that are useful in addressing their customised needs. Whereas, on the other hand, to become more efficient in terms of project completion and a robust customer service mechanism.

How new customers can be acquired and served effectively and efficiently needs a holistic approach to connect, converse, engage and serve. There are three layered approaches taken by Puravankara towards this end (Figure 17)

Online Customer Engagement and Acquisition

P

URAVANKARA HAS WITNESSED AN EVENTFUL journey since it made its debut 42 years ago. Since then, various innovative sales, marketing, customer service, and engagement initiatives have been undertaken by the organization. To move a notch above its contemporaries, the brand has synced all its efforts with digital marketing campaigns to scale newer heights.

In today’s highly competitive real estate industry where marketing plays a pivotal role in generating more business leads and opportunities, diverting spends on the digital channels seems to be an approach that works. It opens new avenues for customer engagement with better process insights and ability to serve multiple segments. Hence, it is of paramount importance that the spend on digital space produces optimum results.

Puravankara has embraced the digital platform to not only engage with customers but also make the process of engagement effective and efficient.

A Holistic Digital Marketing Approach Puravankara is relentlessly working towards the core objective of becoming a household name the world-over. It envisions a future wherein the brand symbolises unique landmarks and superior community living of the highest standards of quality and customer delight. The journey to the realisation of the vision is not easy, as it is full of challenges - steep competition, fragmented customer segments with varied needs and a strict

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FIGURE 17 Three Layers of a Holistic Digital

Marketing Approach at Puravankara ONLINE CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT AND ACQUISITION DIGITAL MARKETING SPEND OPTIMIZATION CORE CRM

SOURCE: S OURCE: Co Coeus oeus Age Consult o Consulting, 2017

Puravankara has developed a self-driven sales engine to boost overall performance in the sub Rs 50 lakh housing segment. The ask for efficiency has always been at the top (in this segment) as the margins are small and material costs cannot be brought down beyond a point. Though the initial success has been seen among the NRIs in the Middle East, the plan is to make almost 100% sales through online by 2020.

In 2017, an online booking platform had been introduced for a couple of projects, and campaigns were run to encourage customers to the use this platform, through various incentivized online booking plans. The customers also have the option of cancelling and altering the bookings later on. The initial booking amount is as low at Rs 999. The early experience regarding the potential customers exploring the platform has been quite encouraging with 10% of targeted individuals landing up on the platform. It is only a matter of time when the real sales in terms of online booking also witnesses traction.

Marketing Spend Optimization The customer engagement platform needs to be matched up with an optimized digital marketing campaign for efficient usage of resources. These include spending on the campaign across different streams, targeting customer segments uniquely, e.g., rendering different creatives for different audiences, and modeling the budgets using a linear programing model.

Core CRM Core CRM (Salesforce.com) implementation for lead management, case management, and inventory management has helped providing the backbone to support the front-end initiatives of customer engagement and acquisition. Lead management has become a seamless process, which has reduced the turnaround time to reach a potential customer. Additionally, organizational functioning has become more efficient and productive with maximum utilization of time and efforts as compared to the manual processes.

Business Impact Implementing Salesforce.com for lead management and tools like Adespresso & Optmyzr to optimize digital campaigns has helped in lowering the cost of acquisition. Cost per qualified

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Puravankara is at a cusp of exponential growth and is poised to leverage its expertise in the digital platform to enhance productivity and efficiency while providing a simplified hassle-free customer experience. Our strategy has been to reduce the typical anxiety that a consumer goes through while buying a home, as the simple and easy selection process on our website is one of the key contributing factors to the success of our online bookings. We are confident that our diverse digital initiatives will provide access to consumer markets across geographies and grow our business manifold in the coming years.

Ashish R Puravankara, Managing Director Puravankara Limited

Digital innovation and transformation are changing economies and markets, reinventing the way business is done. Digital is already proving to be a dynamic catalyst that is transforming the real estate business by enhancing its overall efficiency. We at Puravankara are leveraging this transformation of the digital reach and are focusing on platforms like online digital acquisition through a self-driven sales engine, optimized digital marketing campaigns, rendering different creatives for a different audience, and modeling the budgets using a linear programing model.

Be it generating leads and converting those or the redressal mechanism, each of these has a digital connection.

Digital transformation has emerged central to all our communications, internal or external. Also, going forward, it will play a significant role toward implementing our future strategy.

Anand Narayanan, President, Sales & Marketing Puravankara Limited

lead has been reduced by more than 50% due to the combined effort of all these digital initiatives.

Emerging Technologies These include predictive algorithms to organize the marketing efforts including spend, time, and productivity; developing strong logistic regression models to predict customer payments with an understanding, and the collection of demographical data and customer behaviour.

Key Vendors Salesforce, FOYR, AdEspresso, and Optmyzr.

About Puravankara Limited Puravankara Limited is one of India’s leading listed real estate company headquartered in Bengaluru. The company embarked

upon its remarkable journey 42 years ago in the year 1975 with a clear vision and mission to meet the aspiration of teeming millions by offering quality homes. Today, Puravankara has a presence across India, in cities of Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, Coimbatore, Mangaluru, Mumbai, Pune, and Goa, and also has an overseas presence in GCC and Sri Lanka.

The company has completed and delivered 30.72 million square feet of projects while 24.92 million square feet of projects are under development. The total land asset of the company is 75 million square feet. The company is listed on the National Stock Exchange of India Limited (NSE), and on the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE).

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RJ CORP

• Building agility in the organization to identify revenue growth opportunities; addressing those with the right decisions; and further using this capability to address new growth businesses.

• Providing real-time data and information for driving people by monitoring performance at the organization, team, and individual levels.

• Enabling and empowering the distributors and their sales teams to sell more and serve their customers (the retailers) better and faster.

• Structuring the task across the supply chain by automating the processes and embedding policies (like tax calculations, scheme details, and incentives) for a transparent and accountable working.

Transforming by data democratization for growing profitably

RJ

CORP IS A LEADING NAME in the business of aerated drinks, ice creams, restaurant chains, and retail and healthcare services. Apart from being the largest bottler and distributor for PepsiCo in India, it also represents other leading global brands like Pizza Hut, KFC, and Costa Coffee. It has also recently forayed in its own range of convenience stores chains branded J-Mart.

For diversified businesses that RJ Corp manages, most of which are in the consumer domain, and are highly competitive and extremely sensitive to margin pressures, it is quite imperative that it keeps an eagle’s eye on the business operations for elevated levels of effectiveness (read revenue) and efficiency (read cost saving). By using IT and digital to extend, enable, and empower the organization and to make it more effective and efficient, it has demonstrated that profitable growth is possible amidst ‘moderating growth and rising input costs.’ It has embraced a new paradigm of business management by democratizing data for driving people and processes.

A 360-degree Focus on Digital for Business One of the defining characteristics displayed by the Gems of Digital Enterprise is a holistic approach to using digital for business advantage. RJ Corp can be termed as the epitome of that spirit as it has put a 360-degree focus on digital and data leverage for meeting the four core objectives (Figure 18):

To create the best experience for its customers, RJ Corp has focused on internal processes that support efficient operations. It has automated most of the mundane tasks and provided powerful tools to salespeople to serve customers better. It is also doing social listening and sentiment analysis and taking corrective actions based on that feedback. It is also providing customerfacing apps and websites so that customers can get in touch with it directly without any intermediaries. Social, mobility, analytics and cloud are essential parts of its digital strategy.

Some of the recent key initiatives that support the digital for business drive at RJ Corp include the following:

Project Connect RJ Corp is into the business of icecream marketing under the brand name of Cream Bell. It is one of the fastest growing brands of icecream in India, with its manufacturing units at Baddi (HP), Goa, and Kosi (Mathura). It has a large sales force for taking the orders from retailers and for ensuring right deliveries. The company uses SAP for managing its entire business processes.

Sales to distributors is handled in SAP but there was no system for capturing sales from distributors to retailers. There is also a set of secondary distributers who operate icecream push carts.

Sales force was earlier taking manual orders from the retailers that was prone to errors and unavailability of real-time sales data, distributor inventory, promotional sale, stock availability,

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Agility for Addressing Growth Opportunities

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, ng, g, 2017 20 201 017

Enabling and Empowering Front Line Sales Staff and Retailers

Monitoring Performance to Drive People

Structuring by Automating Policies

OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

REVENUE GROWTH

FIGURE 18 Balancing Growth and Efficiency at RJ Corp

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For us, information technology is always an integral part of the business.

In most of our businesses, we are touching consumers and IT plays a very important role in providing better, allround consumer experience. IT is one of the strong pillars of growth at our organization and we are continuously leveraging new technologies by making new investments in IT.

We are always at the forefront of technology.

We believe IT is a partner for change in our organization and IT is always there to fuel the growth of the organization. With strategic input from top management, IT helps the business to achieve new goals and make it sustainable for longer period.

Kamal Karnatak, Group CIO, RJ Corp

Varun Jaipuria, Director, RJ Corp

etc. To streamline the process, a salesforce automation solution was implemented. The sales persons have been given Androidbased handheld devices with pre-loaded applications. They follow the complete process of order fulfilment using that device only. Currently 200 devices have been rolled out and there is a plan of rolling out around 4,000 devices in the first phase.

The initial results are quite encouraging. There is improves sales productivity through automation of the order taking process, better allocation of stocks, better visibility into distributor sales and inventories, centralized discount administration, deeper visibility of racks and planogram adherence, and measured impact of sales capability initiatives.

NLP-based Analytics RJ Corp is using natural language processing-based BI software where users can simply type their queries in a Google-like interface in plain English and the software understands and provides the detail reports. For example, one may type a query ‘tell the brand wise sales of last year in Goa and compare that with Delhi.’ The software helps get the data accordingly to address the query. This has led to democratization of data, thus leading to a data-oriented culture for monitoring and managing business performance.

Business Impact The various digital initiatives have helped RJ Corp to expand its business through acquisition of new territories and manage profitability by reducing sales and distribution costs by 3–4%.

Emerging Technologies RJ Corp is using NLP-based analytics, predictive analytics, forecasting techniques and pilot projects started in IoT, artificial intelligence, chat bots, and machine learning.

Key Vendors SAP, Microsoft, HPE, Accenture, Acxiom Consulting, Open Soft Technologies, and Ampersand Design Studio

About RJ Corp The story of RJ Corp began more than two decades ago, when the foundation of the group was laid in 1990s. Seeking out the best in the world and bringing it home through successful alliances has been at the core of RJ Corp’s triumph. With businesses ranging from beverages and fast food restaurants, icecreams, dairy products, retail, convenience store chain, and education, RJ Corp has also made pioneering forays into emerging sectors like stem cell banking and modern healthcare.

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SHEELA FOAM Sustaining market leadership through a holistic platform strategy

in multiple ways in the way engagement happens with the customers and the way operations are carried out.

A Business-centric Approach to Digital Digital transformation at Sheela Foam has a well rounded focus.

It means either of the following: • Use technology to drastically or radically improve business processes (efficiency).

• Simplify working for the employees and partners (enable).

• Making information available for decision making (empower).

• Completely transform the business initiatives (innovate).

S

HEELA FOAM IS A LEADER in the foam and foambased products market. At this 45-year-old organization, IT has played a significant role in creating effectiveness and efficiency of processes. Its homegrown ERP, GreatPlus, is a rare example of a well-integrated enterprise system that could beat any world-class product. The evolution of GreatPlus has been in automating and integrating the core manufacturing operations and extending it to the 100-odd distributors and thousands of dealers.

On one hand, it has gone digital in interactions with consumers, with seamless link-back to the dealers, distributors, and ultimately the factory. On the other hand, it is using 3D cameras, sensors, etc., in the core operations to enhance the quality, bring in efficiencies, control processes, and automate manual work.

Figure 19 depicts the key platform components—the core ERP and other enterprise applications (with the underlying infrastructure); the digital layer that is well integrated with the core layer, and a common user-friendly interface (both web and mobile).

GreatPlus now stands as a complete supply chain application with every value chain process mapped into it. The process metrics helps the management stay on top of things with critical decisions being made in time. With the extension of the core ERP to include critical support domains like the performance management system, and integration of digital elements like social media, mobility, analytics, and cloud, a complete business platform is in place. Sheela Foam is a rare example of a platform strategy in action in a mid-sized manufacturing company, not only in India but in the entire world. It is today innovating

Some of the recent innovations include the following:

Perfect Match With the implementation and launch of ‘Perfect Match’ concept, Sleepwell has pioneered a comfortable personalized ‘sleep solution’ for every individual customer. It is a technological

I

FIGURE 19 A Common Interface With the Well Oiled Platform at Sheela Foam

MANAGEMENT

EMPLOYEES

PARTNERS

CUSTOMERS

INTERFACE SOCIAL MEDIA

Operational Efficiency

MOBILITY MOBILITY

ANALYTICS ANALYTICS

CLOUD CLOUD

GreatPlus Grea Gr eatP tPlu luss Core ERP and Supply Chain Performance Management System and HR

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

INTERNET INTERNET OF OF THINGS THINGS

Product/ Service Innovation

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Technology not only brings speed and innovation to the business but is also a lot about bringing standardization and harmony to integrate everyone Perthisth Mankotia, CIO, Sheela Foam

For us IT is INTEGRITY—continuously unifying the entire enterprise and strengthening every link of value chain Rahul Gautam, MD, Sheela Foam

solution that is available at Sleepwell stores and helps map body pressure points of an individual to offer the right product match.

It is a great tool for engaging customers and a big attraction, which has resulted in increased sales and customer experience.

Auto Sizing and Image Processing This is a technology solution that helps produce innumerable sizes to match each customer’s bed size. In India, bed size is not standardized, so a mattress manufacturer needs to manufacturer mattresses of sizes that fit the beds. With hundreds of sizes under production, putting a correct label and supplying it to the correct customer is a challenge. Thus, with the help of 3D cameras it started measuring the sizes and producing the right packing slips and MRP labels for each order. The cameras are also used for finishing accuracy and quality checks.

Complaint Automation A completely integrated app, integrated with the homegrown ERP, is deployed spanning the distributors and dealers, and helps capture the customer complaints from the marketplace.

The app also has the provision to capture product pictures on a real-time basis for the back-end customer care, sales, and factory teams to analyze and take corrective actions.

Emerging Technologies These include IoT-based solutions for selecting the right mattresses, 3D cameras for product sizing and image processing, and mobile apps for convenience, and real-time information collection.

Key Vendors Mostly done inhouse.

About Sheela Foam A leader in polyurethane (PU) foam, Sheela Group is a multi-billion-rupee entity. It has a nationwide presence in manufacturing PU foam, with a global marketing perspective and an impeccable track record, since 1971. Sheela Group is committed to a one-point program of bringing comfort, convenience, and luxury to enhance the lifestyles of modern people. The winning brands of Sheela Group include: Sleepwell – The flagship brand for mattresses and comfort accessories.

Feather Foam – Pure PU foam.

Availability of real-time accurate information helps automate the entire chain of activities, and has resulted in increased channel confidence and customer satisfaction, thus impacting the speed and cost of complaint redressal.

Lamiflex – A superior quality polyether or polyester foam for lamination.

Business Impact

These are ranked as the largest selling PU foams in the country.

Today, Sheela Group leads with more than 35% market share in the flexible PU foam market in India as well as Australia.

Each of the above innovations, powered by the core ERP and digital layers of the platform, helps boost revenue, improve quality, decrease costs and time, and enhance channel confidence and customer satisfaction.

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SIR GANGA RAM HOSPITAL Staying focused on core vision by smartly embracing IT and digital

S

IR GANGA RAM HOSPITAL (SGRH) in India continues to maintain its charitable character in accordance with the wishes of its founder. Funds generated from the hospital services are partially utilized for providing free healthcare to the poor and needy patients. All development activities of the hospital are financed from internal resources, with no financial assistance provided by the government or other external agencies.

important. IT and digital provided a natural recourse toward that end, with IT building the foundation and digital opening new possibilities for SGRH to transform into a smart hospital. A new approach to weaving people (with new skills and mindsets), processes (digitized and automated), and technologies (IT and digital) resulted into a completely different working environment with a strong focus on the patient care, in OPD, IPD as well as beyond the hospital boundaries. Smart SGRH is a result of four layers—of operations, IT, OPD, and new services (Figure 20).

Smart Operations The hospital information system (HIS) and other enterprise applications like the HR and payroll management suit provided the foundation for building a smart SGRH. This was strengthened further by enabling people, digitally tracking file movements, and digitally managing the critical assets of the hospitals.

Smart HR – A self-service portal for employees enables them with the required information at a mouse click.

• Smart File – A barcode-based file tracking system tracks the physical movement of files from the location where they are created till the fulfilment of the requirements. There is a web and mobile interface through which users of the system can create, assign, approve, reject, hold or close a file in the system. All movements are captured on a central server along with relevant dashboards.

• Smart Assets – a RFID or sensor-based solution keeps track of the critical assets of the organization for their optimum utilization and effective management.

• Smart Energy – A completely automated electricity consumption dashboard and reporting helps manage the critical resource efficiently.

•

Managing in the Digital Age Managing a self-funded hospital with charitable intentions is not an easy task. With a plethora of options evolving, especially in the private sector, and yet healthcare remaining elusive to the poor, becoming extremely effective and efficient is quite

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FIGURE 20 Four Layers of Smart SGRH

SMART NEW SERVICES

SMART OPD

All initiatives under Smart Operations provide effectiveness in terms of faster processes, agility, and efficient usage of vital resources.

Smart IT SMART IT

SMART OPERATIONS

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

This is aimed at improving the competencies of the IT team so that the dependence on vendors can be reduced. It also includes strengthening the skills by reskilling inhouse or hiring people with new technology and business analysis skills.

Smart OPD This is a mobile platform that automates patient management and patient journey before, during, and after one’s visit to the hospital.

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Sir Ganga Ram Hospital has a sharp focus on research and development. India holds a huge potential in this area and we encourage doing and publishing original research. The reason why less number of Indian researches get published in international journals as compared to other developing countries is because there is a lot of duplication happening in the field. In developed countries, doctors have the freedom to divide their time between research and clinical practice, with 20% of the time devoted to clinical practice and 80% to R&D or vice-versa.

Indian doctors often do not have this liberty.

However, the R&D landscape in India is transforming fast and we are now having some of the best facilities in the world to carry out quality research.

Prof (Dr) D S Rana, Chairman, Board of Directors, SGRH

This is ensured by deploying qualified patient care coordinators.

The OPD service areas are managed by uniformed, skilled, and qualified clinical and administrative staff who ensure that from the time patients walks in and till the time they leave the hospital, they are well taken care of. Smart OPD is a combination of smart technologies and smart processes run by smart healthcare providers—a combination of people, processes and technologies.

Smart New Services These represent the innovative services that add immense value and are enabled by the earlier three layers. Examples includes corporate telehealth system, medical tourism portal, virtual patient visit, portable personal health record, eICU, and clinical trial data management system, among others. A notable one is the patient’s movement and vitals monitoring solution with the help of sensors and RFID-based tracking in wards.

Business Impact The Smart SGRH is aimed at achieving balance among the three key agendas of affordability, availability, and accessibility. It has helped the hospital create a viable balance required to continue with its bigger vision of running a self-funded hospital that has charity for poor at its core.

Emerging Technologies SGRH has successfully harnessed the emerging digital technologies, namely, mobility, analytics, RFID and sensors, analytics and cloud.

Key Vendors InterSystems Corporation, MTech India Private Limited, Fujifilm India Private Limited, Inspace Technologies Private Limited, and mCURA Mobile Health Private Limited.

About Sir Ganga Ram Hospital

Be it IoT, SMAC, or artificial intelligence, any innovation has the power to convert the conventional automation strategy to a dataintelligent future-proof platform by connecting people, processes, data, and things in smart ways to faciliate innovative business models and appropriate decisions. Healthcare data being the most complicated and life critical, it is extremely important to handle it smartly for the benefit of affordable and accessible healthcare, which is a need of the hour in India.

Niranjan K Ramakrishnan, CIO, SGRH

Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH), a 675-Beded multi-speciality state-of-the-art hospital, was founded initially in 1921 at Lahore

by Sir Ganga Ram (1851–1927), a civil engineer and leading philanthropist of his times. After the partition in 1947, the present hospital was established in New Delhi. The foundation was laid in April 1951 by the then Prime Minister of India Jawahar Lal Nehru and inaugurated by him on 13 April 1954.

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FRAMEWORKS THAT ORGANIZATIONS CAN USE TO GO DIGITAL

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BRIDGING THE DIVIDE BETWEEN GROWTH STRATEGY AND DIGITAL Abstract The divide between growth strategy and digital is commonplace.

Very often digital initiatives in organizations are patchy landscapes of isolated and unrelated attempts. Equally often, they are collectively inefficient and ineffective in supporting the growth strategy. It is essential to bridge this divide. This thought paper introduces two powerful frameworks for enabling business leaders to bridge it and exploit digital for growth. It also proposes a Digital Strategy Workshop for creating a blueprint of how digital can support the growth strategy.

Introduction The word strategy is often associated with elitism and thought to be the prerogative of a few at the top. It is also considered as the force that drives an organization toward its bigger goal. Often, strategy and organization are treated as two different entities, with the former being the driver of the latter. We have lived long with this distinction, but its inadequacy is only becoming obvious in the present era of widespread disruption.

has become quite inevitable amidst the imperatives of agility and innovation to meet customers’ needs efficiently. But it is yet to be leveraged in its true strategic import. In the survey cited earlier, 67% of the enterprises claimed digital as one of the top two IT priorities for 2017, yet more than 70% were simply flirting with it or building it in isolation.

Digital initiatives are being driven at the periphery by the IT or business managers, often in a piece-meal basis for tactical gains.

The result is often a patchwork of multiple digital initiatives across the organization, while a central driving force remains missing. This happens due to the age-old distinction between strategy and organization, etched so deeply in organizational thinking and practice. The patchy fabric of digital initiatives often means duplicated efforts, lack of structural support, and limited impact.

In short, such digital initiative are often collectively inefficient and ineffective.

The Growth Challenge

The Strategy–Digital Divide

Growth is becoming difficult today amidst a plethora of choices for the customers. Profits are eluding many businesses due to moderating revenues and rising costs. The chinks in the armours caused by the hidden inefficiencies, sub-optimal resource utilization, and the inability to change fast enough are coming out in the open. The phenomenon is not restricted to just one or a few industries but businesses across industries and geographies are grappling with the challenge. A recent Coeus Age Consulting survey observed that more than 80% of the enterprises claimed profitable growth as their top business priority for 2017. It’s a stated priority because it is becoming difficult to achieve.

The divide between strategy and digital is clearly visible, with the two existing in their respective isolated domains. The need of the hour is to integrate them together if an organization must truly exploit digital for business advantage, growth, and profitability.

In its long research on the Gems of Digital Enterprises, Coeus Age has studied enterprises that have transcended this distinction (in varying degrees) to put strategy at the center of their digital drives (the construct of putting digital at the center of strategic thinking is a more matured one).

Rise of Digital Digital is contributing significantly to the disruption affecting businesses, and is also emerging as a solution. Embracing digital

The initiatives may remain tactical, yet they collectively represent a bigger thought—strategy. The quest was to identify a framework that underlies their ability to integrate strategy with digital. Though many strategic frameworks may exist, none happens to link strategy with digital initiatives at an organizational level.

The terms Growth Strategy and Strategy have been used interchangeably.

Digital represents a range of emerging technologies—social media, mobility, analytics, cloud and internet of things (IoT). They work in tandem with the enterprise systems and have the capacity to weave people, processes, and things in ways that were not possible earlier. This opens a plethora of opportunities for businesses to create new customer experiences and build operating models that are far more efficient and effective.

7 Digital Strategy is a conscious, deliberate, and well thought out application of digital, in line with the business strategy.

5 6

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Here’s why: First, strategic thinking has largely remained in two isolated schools of thought—an ‘outward-in’ looking perspective of market determining strategy (Positioning by Michael Porter, 1985) and the other ‘inward-out’ looking perspective of core competency influencing strategy (Core Competency by Gary Hamel and CK Prahlad, 1991). Very little work has been done to integrate these two seemingly opposing yet potentially reconcilable positions. This has a long-lasting impact on the leadership orientation and business practices in the enterprises.

Second, the dichotomy can be observed in case of strategy and digital as well. It is a well evident fact that digital and strategy are generally not discussed in the same breath. Digital is treated as a tactical and operational construct with a specific function endowed with a responsibility. The function is supposed to do the needful to make digital a part of the organizational operational fabric, based on localized needs. That simply does not work as digital requires a much broader participation of business. When CIOs and CTOs are not able to drive digitaloriented conversations at the bigger organization level, they remain tied to the tag of a functional head. Many organizations try to resolve this problem by bringing in a CDO, who may fail in appreciating the need of a highly effective and efficient IT platform. The focus on digital remains scattered across the organization in the absence of a binding force. This is true of many incumbent and traditional enterprises that are struggling to cope with the onslaught of new-age business models espoused by the likes of Ola, Uber, Amazon, Makemytrip, and YouTube.

Bridging the Divide The dichotomy needs a resolution in two ways. One, by integrating the two opposing schools of strategic thinking; and two, by using the integration to drive digital through the lens of a core strategic thinking. Coeus Age Consulting has synthesized a solution to address both the aspects of resolution. Based on its empirical work and appreciation of the contemporary voices on strategy, it has created the ‘Five Approaches Framework.’

This framework would go a long way in resolving the distinction between strategy and digital. It is both theoretically tenable and practically feasible.

The framework integrates two related questions. One, what’s the route to profitable growth amid disruption? Two, how can digital help enable that route?

The answer to the first question must address two vital aspects— strategic orientation, and transformation focus.

What’s your dominant strategic orientation?

We have observed that enterprises follow two broad strategic orientations—they defend their market positions or they tend to disrupt the status quo for creating and exploiting niches.

Generally, market leaders like Maruti Suzuki, HeroMoto Corp

and Life Insurance Corporation follow a ‘defend’ orientation, either through leading product and service innovations or by devising cost reduction strategies for tactically responding to competition. They strive to stay ahead of the curve. For example, defending an almost 50% market share by Maruti Suzuki, that too in a fiercely competitive auto market, is not an easy task and appropriate steps must be taken to defend the leadership position. The market challengers, like Max Life Insurance or Air Works, on the other hand follow a ‘disrupt’ orientation. They figure out chinks in the leaders’ strategies with the objective of identifying niches that could be profitably exploited. These are two extremes of strategic orientation. An organization may also follow a mix of the two but one of those will remain dominant.

What’s your transformation focus?

Organizations need to continuously manoeuvre themselves in the competitive battleground. Coeus Age has observed two extremes with respect to this manoeuvring. Either there is a gradual evolution or there is a big-bang revolution. When evolutionary focus becomes untenable or there is a new leadership that comes at the helm that is unhappy with the status quo, an organization tends to adopt a big-bang approach of holistic transformation.

The constructs of strategic orientation and transformational focus together define five approaches of growth strategy, as also illustrated in Figure 21.

1.

Tactical adjustments This is a business-as-usual approach, defined by a defensive orientation for evolutionary change. The enterprise reacts to actions taken by the competitors to minimize the effect of that action or for catching up.

2. Functional initiatives This approach is a disruptive orientation for evolutionary change. The functional leaders in marketing, supplychain or HR may see the role of digital to create temporary disruption in the market for creating a small window of competitive advantage.

3. Strategic overhaul This approach represents a business’s attempt at defending its market leadership or niche by transforming itself in a holistic manner. This may be driven by the need to arrest a falling performance or be led by the infusion of new leadership that is proactive to change. It entails a much broader and deeper role of digital across business functions.

4. Value chain disruption Though risky but capable of delivering bigger returns, this approach is about disruption with revolutionary change. The resultant enterprise is based on a completely new idea to

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Revolutionary Evolutionary

TRANSFORMATIONAL FOCUS

FIGURE 21 Five Approaches Framework

3

4

STRATEGIC OVERHAUL

VALUE CHAIN DISRUPTION

5

BALANCING EXTREMES

1

TACTICAL ADJUSTMENTS

Defend SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

2

FUNCTIONAL INITIATIVES

Disrupt STRATEGIC ORIENTATION

create products and services or deliver those to the customers or both. Very often, such disruptors are new-age digital natives like the Uber or Ola, but then some incumbents may also unleash their true potential by taking this approach.

We have so far discussed four pure-play approaches.

However, for many enterprises, a middle path may also work. That is a fifth approach, which attempts at balancing the extreme poles of the spectrum.

5. Balancing extremes An enterprise may take multiple functional initiatives, which over time may add up to revolutionize the business for a strategic overhaul. Similarly, an enterprise may defend its market position but also disrupt in pockets to stay ahead of the competition. Many incumbent banks, auto makers and insurance providers balance between exploiting existing bases and exploring new ideas. This requires an organization capable of integrating the two extreme poles in a rhythmic manner for better business performance.

The choice of a business to adopt one of the five approaches to digital strategy may be the result of a leadership’s take

on the emerging competitive landscape, the risk that the business can take, its ability to lead change, and performance sensitivity. Each of the five approaches can be mapped with leadership style, the context in which it fits, and the consequences of choosing it over others.

The Five Approaches Framework thus helps us resolve the first challenge, that of integrating the strategy and the organization in the same narrative. The five generic growth strategies thus identified are results of choice between strategic orientation and organization transformation focus.

Now, we come to the second question: how can digital enable the route to profitable growth?

There may be multiple digital initiatives in the organization like an HR mobile app or a social media customer engagement program or an IoT solution in the production environment.

These must be mapped in detail with the operational focus of the strategic choice made in the earlier question.

Coeus Age has created the Strategy–Digital Fit Framework (Figure 22) as a tool that helps put business imperatives behind an organization’s strategic choice (one of the five approaches),

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FIGURE 22 Strategy Digital Fit Framework

BUSINESS IMPERATIVES

OPERATIONAL FOCUS

DIGITAL INITIATIVES

PROJECTS SCOPE

OPERATIONAL FIT

The imperatives that underline the strategic choice as one of the five approaches

The operational demands/ priorities that support the strategic choice

Digital (SMAC+) initiatives across the organization, small or big and shallow or deep

The scope of each project in terms of functions/ processes, commonalities

The fit of each project with the operational demands/ priorities

SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

the operational focus supporting the choice, and the fitment of each of the digital initiatives with the operational focus areas.

The insights will help identify ways in which the fitment can be enhanced, and also help decide on phasing out low-fit initiatives or designing new digital initiatives.

For example, an organization may have identified capacity utilization (of the machines) as an operational focus as part of a strategic choice of making the production function more cost effective, which is underlined by the imperative of efficiency in a price sensitive market. That may sound too simplistic and obvious to the naked eyes, but very often what is obvious may not be easy to implement, given the gap between the strategy and the organization. The digital initiative of rolling out an IoT solution in one of the several factories and analytics for data that gets generated from the IoT solution has only a moderate fit with the operational focus and the strategic choice made. The fitment

I

STRENGTH OF ALIGNMENT

FIGURE 23 Four Decisions Based on Fit Strength

HIGH

Operationalize the Idea

Discard LOW

Leverage

Garner Support

HIGH

STRENGTH OF IMPLEMENTATION SOURCE: Coeus Age Consulting, 2017

can be enhanced if the solution can be rolled out across factories and functionally integrated with the enterprise system and the management dashboard. That’s where strategy and digital get wedded for results.

Deep insights and action points will come out of the deliberations using the Five Approaches and the Strategy–Digital Fit frameworks. There are new tools available that can help you gauge the strength of the Strategy–Digital Fit. Using two broad dimensions of strength of alignment and strength of implementation can help you to take one of the four decisions for each of the digital initiatives—discard, operationalize deeper, garner support or leverage (Figure 23).

Digital Strategy Workshop for Your Organization Coeus Age Consulting has designed a Digital Strategy Workshop for businesses wanting grow profitably amid disruption. The workshop is ideally designed for 2–3 hours of brainstorming led by our experienced consultants. It may pave the way for a more structured approach involving the broader organization.

The idea is to make the discussion specific to your organization by initiating a conversation with your C-Suite leadership.

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ABOUT JURY MEMBERS

T G Dhandapani,

K K Tulshan

Koushik Chatterjee

Ex Group CIO, TVS Motors and Advisor, Sundaram Clayton Group

Chartered Accountant; Member, Accounting Standards Board, ICAI; Director, Cyber Media; Sr. Partner, GSA & Associates Chartered Accountants; Past Sr. Partner, S S Kothari Mehta & Co. Chartered Accountants

CEO, iThink Learning

AUTHOR

Dr. Kapil Dev Singh is the Founder & CEO, Coeus Age Consulting. He has over two decades of rich experience, and has headed IDC in India for close to eight years as the Country Manager. He has been tracking the ICT industry for 21 years now.

Dr. Singh is currently spearheading path breaking research on digital enterprise and new technologies. He is passionate about driving a new discourse among the contemporary business leaders on managing business in the digital age. He is also advising them on the change with respect to vision, strategy, structure and culture toward embracing the paradigm of digital.

Dr. Singh is an engineer, and an MBA. He is also a doctorate from Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India. He regularly writes blogs and articles, which are read by business leaders across the globe.

EDITOR

Deepak Kumar is Founder Analyst and Chief Strategist at B&M Nxt, and Consulting Editor for Voice&Data 100. Earlier, he has headed telecom and other research practices at IDC in India.

He has edited several books and reports, both by Indian and international authors and researchers. A prolific columnist, blogger, and keynote speaker, he regularly writes, blogs, and presents thoughts on digital and other emerging trends.

He is also involved in related areas of strategic business messaging, go-to-market advisory, and sales enablement. He may be reached at deepakk@bmnxt.com.

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OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR Dr. Kapil Dev Singh has authored six books in the past—Looking Inward, CIO Leading Change, 21 Jewels of Digital, The Platform Edge, LEADDDING, and 41 Gems of Digital India.

This book is for the CEOs, Business Heads, and IT Heads who are looking for answers to the question, “how can IT create business value?” Looking Inward is a big departure from the business thinking of the stable era. It requires CEOs to focus on generating business capabilities to become agile and nimble. The book brings fresh and unique perspectives around exploiting IT for creating business capabilities. It describes the new business paradigm, discusses the strategy, structure, leadership, and new technology issues and presents an empirically validated framework for building business value from IT.

CIO Leading Change brings a holistic approach to enabling CIOs to acquire a new leadership orientation in their respective contexts. It employs a three-pillar approach of leading change— becoming self-aware, being able to assess the larger situation, and becoming empowered to create change generative conversations. Designed for CIOs and aspiring CIOs, this book comes with a highly usable CIO Leadership Roles and Competencies Inventory Framework developed

by Coeus Age Consulting. The framework and the associated instruments can be used by CIOs to assess themselves on 24 roles and related competencies. The assessment will equip them with the necessary insights and set them on a Leadership Development plan that suits their needs.

21 Jewels of Digital showcases how some of the truly transformative Indian enterprises, spanning across the industry spectrum, have defied the myth of being averse to risk and taken the required bold steps to join the global bandwagon. These stories collectively present a picture where one can say that Indian enterprises also possess the wherewithal of creating a fully digitally enabled business. It’s about working on it with the right leadership, right technology, right culture and right mindset.

21 Jewels of Digital should work as a guide for thousands of aspiring organizations, who want to thrive in the emerging global digital economy.

A lot has been talked about Platforms, but none is for the traditional enterprises. These enterprises, across industries, are facing huge onslaught from the new-age digital startups.

The need of the hour for them is to build a digitally-enabled business model, which can add capabilities for agility, efficiency, and ever-readiness for the fleeting market opportunities. The Platform Edge – Building a Digital Enabled Business Model, by Dr. Kapil Dev Singh, is the firstof-its-kind book to present a framework for the traditional businesses to become future-ready.

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Are you wondering how digital resources can help your business create high valuations like start-ups? Is your board asking difficult questions around the digital? Do you feel disruption is imminent but do not know how it will impact your competitive position? Are you worried about dealing with the legacy built over the years? Do you want to transform, yet are hesitant in taking the associated risks? If such questions are bothering you, then LEADDDING – leading digitally to disrupt, innovate and grow – can help you get answers. Harnessing rigorous research, the book weaves a compelling argument necessary for incumbent businesses to successfully transform themselves with the help of digital resources.

Digital India is the dream to empower every Indian and emerge as a guiding force towards creating a New India. While the journey is on, it becomes very relevant to document and celebrate the successes that are taking us closer to that dream. 41 Gems of Digital India is one sincere attempt at documenting the transformative story of 41 eGovernance initiatives under Digital India.

The book is a result of thirty man-months of rigorous research to discover the shining gems of Digital India from a vast repository of 1600 eGovernance initiatives. Each of the gems presents an inspiring tale of success that can be a guiding light for others.

COEUS AGE CONSULTING

Coeus (Koios) was the Greek Titan of intelligence, the axis around which the heavens revolved. In the current age, enterprise intelligence is the axis around which organizing takes place, a true source of strategic advantage and success.

Coeus Age Consulting is a next-generation knowledge domain service provider.

Coeus Age Consulting intends to bring the latest thinking in the field of leadership, strategic management, economics, process management, information management, and organizational development to enterprises; and enable them to build business value from IT.

LEADDDING

Digital is a big phenomenon today and businesses need to build a agile and change enabling digital platform and exploit it strategically to compete in the marketplace. But that cannot be done without an active participation of all the C-Suite members- CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CIOs, CHROs, supply chain heads and other business leaders.

LEADDDING is a Coeus Age Consulting initiative to start a meaningful conversation around digital and its relevance to business strategy and growth. The conversation will not be just about technology but also about business growth, leadership and strategy..

GEMS OF DIGITAL™

Gems of Digital™ is an innovative initiative by Coeus Age Consulting to discover, document and felicitate the innovative use of digital by the governments and business enterprises across the world. Gems of Digital™ India uses the spirit and know how of the Gems of Digital™ initiative.

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A DATA ECONOMY IS EMERGING The business strategies and approaches of the past era are becoming redundant. Driven by the creation, capture, and analysis of data for not just decision making but also for driving autonomous processes and things, the data economy is creating new opportunities for growth. Driverless cars, digital stores, machine-human interactions, and self-learning systems are just some initial manifestations of the emerging data economy. A lot more is yet to come.

Thriving in the data economy would require that enterprise leaders have the readiness to understand and deal with the new imperatives. Value would be unlocked only for the initiated.

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THRIVING IN A DATA ECONOMY

By Dr. Kapil Dev Singh