As changing winds prevail, few things impact an organization better than a consistent, selfless, and stable tone from the top. U.B. Pravin Rao (known as “UB” by his friends) has been the great constant at Infosys throughout his tenure, combining an understated demeanor with sheer tenacity to build, equip and continue pushing a 240,000-person entity into the future.
Notwithstanding corporate honors as Member of the Board and COO of Infosys, Pravin was well-tapped to serve NASSCOM as industry Chairman for the next year. Quite simply, he has the best of the industry at heart and a comprehensive competence to not only steady the sails through the COVID-19 storm, but to demonstrate rapid response in support of the industry and community at large. With his footing firmly set in the present and eyes fixed on the horizon, Pravin clearly sees an infinite future for NASSCOM and the Indian industry as a resilient, ever-relevant, and trusted partner for the global enterprise. So now there is no live cricket to watch, we managed to drag him away from his Sudoku puzzles to share his intentions and vision for the Indian IT industry in his role as NASSCOM chairman.
Phil Fersht, CEO and Chief Analyst, HFS Research: Good afternoon to you, Pravin. It’s always good to catch up, I enjoy our conversations, and it was good to hear about your new role at NASSCOM. Before we get to that, can you just share a little bit about you, and how you ended up as COO for Infosys?
Pravin Rao, Chairman, NASSCOM: Good to talk to you as well. I am an electrical engineering graduate. from Bangalore University and joined Infosys in 1986. Actually, it was my first job, and this is my 34th year at Infosys. When I joined, we were less than 50 people, and today we are over 240,000 people, so obviously it’s been a great journey.
When I joined Infosys, it was a very small company, and obviously not very well known. I had just two motivations. One is that I didn’t enjoy my electrical engineering stint, and I wanted to get out of it. The second one… In those days and probably even today, for a lot of people in India – and particularly for youngsters – going abroad is always an opportunity, and that was one of my ambitions. In those days, I heard Infosys was sending people to the US, so that was the added motivation.
“In those days in India, if you joined the public sector then you were supposed to be set up for life, but I rejected those offers and joined Infosys. Many people thought I was crazy. I just wanted to see the world, and the rest is history”
Once I’d graduated, Phil, I had a couple of interesting jobs, one in the public sector. In those days, in India, if you joined the public sector, then you were supposed to be set up for life, but I rejected those offers and joined Infosys. Many people thought I was crazy. I just wanted to see the world, and the rest is history. I came from a technical background, I joined as a trainee, and I have played several roles. Since the beginning of 2000, I started heading some P&Ls [Retail, CPG, Logistics and LifeSciences] with Infosys. In 2014, I was inducted to the Board of Infosys, and, at the same time, I was also elevated as COO, so I’ve been playing that role since then. For a brief period, I was named the Interim CEO before Salil’s appointment.
Phil: So tell us a bit about this role that you’ve been elected to as Chairman for NASSCOM. What does that entail, exactly?
Pravin: Phil, the Indian technology industry is one of the key contributors to India’s economy; it roughly contributes 8 to 9% of India’s GDP. This year, financial year 2020, the Indian IT industry will contribute roughly $190 billion US dollars in revenue, and it today employs about 4.3 million professionals directly. So it’s a sector with a diverse mix of companies: Indian companies, multinationals, global tech centers of international companies, start-ups, and so on, and NASSCOM is the industry body that is representing the sector.
It’s an honor and privilege, Phil, to represent the sector as Chairman, and a great opportunity for me to serve the industry. Within NASSCOM we have a leadership council, which consists of past Chairman, Chairman, Vice Chairman, and President, and this council is tasked with driving the NASSCOM vision and agenda. From an individual perspective for me, it’s a 3-year commitment – one year as Chairman, Vice Chairman (served one year, last year), and after this year, one year as Past Chairman – it’s a 3-year commitment to the industry. Obviously it’s a part-time role, we have a President who runs the forum full time.
From a Chairman perspective, my immediate priority is obviously navigating around the COVID-19 situation, and ensuring minimum impact to all the stakeholders, to our clients, to our employees, and ensuring business continuity. In the long term, I hope, once we adjust to the new normal, we will focus on some of the work that NASSCOM has been doing, in terms of transforming the industry and making it relevant in the digital era. Obviously, after the current pandemic subsides, we should also gear up for the post-digital era, which is all about distributed ledger technology, artificial intelligence, AR, VR, quantum computing, and so on.
Phil: So this is probably the most critical juncture in the history of Indian technology, what’s been happening this year with the recent paradigm shock? How do you think you can support this, and respond to this, in your NASSCOM role? What sort of things are you really looking to do here?
Pravin: Yes Phil, these are challenging times for everyone, including the Indian technology industry; however, our industry has, time and again, proven its resilience in the past, and I’m very confident that this time, too, we will emerge stronger and wiser. And, as I said earlier, during this time, maintaining business continuity and keeping in mind the safety and wellbeing of the employees was the topmost priority for the industry. Our industry has been enabling work from home since the first week of March and has been shifting assets and configuring the internal networks to make this possible. Today, roughly 85 to 90% of the workforce has been enabled to work from home – it’s much higher on the IT services side, and on the BPM side, it’s slightly lower. A small percentage of staff is working from our office, typically on mission-critical applications and dealing with sensitive data. And, considering the size of the industry, $190 billion dollars, and the scale, a 4 million-person workforce, the speed at which we have achieved this, I think, is a very remarkable achievement. We are also in regular touch with our clients and going the extra mile to ensure minimal business and service disruption.
“Our industry has, time and again, proven its resilience in the past, and I’m very confident that this time, too, we will emerge stronger and wiser”
The industry has worked very closely with the government during this period, both the central government as well as the individual states. First and foremost, we got IT and IT-enabled services categorized as essential services. That cleared a lot of hurdles. Then we had a lot of policies around moving assets out of campuses and policies around taking calls from home, so we worked with the respective departments and got it enabled as well. We are also working with state governments in terms of enabling ease of people movement, transfer of assets. The industry has actually worked very closely.
I think what is very heartening is that we have also come together in supporting the government in leveraging technology to fight COVID-19.
What’s more, Phil, I think what is very heartening is that we have also come together in supporting the government in leveraging technology to fight COVID-19. Each of our companies, individually, have been working both at the central and individual state levels, coming up with apps and other solutions. In addition, NASSCOM has created a taskforce with several companies together, working closely with the government in areas of containment, tracking, testing, and recovery. And, in fact, NASSCOM has also published a compendium of all the solutions that the Indian tech industry has put together to help various stakeholders in terms of dealing with this crisis.
Phil: So, as we look through the other side of this Paradign Shock, Pravin, do you think India will come out the other side unscathed? And do you see a different landscape emerging from this?
Pravin: I think, from a global perspective, the situation at this stage is pretty stark. There are still multiple scenarios being debated and discussed in terms of the global economy and the shape of the recovery. People are talking about V-shaped, U-shaped, L-shaped, and so on, and it’s very difficult to predict. Given the complexity and challenges which are unique to India, I think the government has done a good job so far, and the lockdown, as you are aware, has been now extended until May 3rd, although some activities will start opening up starting April 20th. For IT and IT-enabled services, wherever possible, the government has recommended up to 50% return to work. However, our industries will take a very phased approach. We want to be very responsible, so in the first few weeks, we expect only a maximum of 15 to 20% of the workforce back in the office, and it will actually take a few months before we get back to the old ways of working, probably close to 100% working in the office. From a country perspective, I think it’ll take about three, four months for things to stabilize.
The other aspect is that this industry is part of the global value chain, and any disruptions in that will have a ripple effect on both India and the Indian IT industry. Overall, I’ve seen forecasts talking about GDP being lowered by 1 to 2% than what it was forecast before the virus outbreak, and COVID-19 is obviously creating disruptions globally where businesses across countries and geographies are facing major demand-side challenges. For our industry, it will be impacted by the demand-side shifts as opposed to any supply-side issues, so from that perspective, I think that in the short to medium-term we will see some fall in demand, some of the discretionary spend being pushed out, and so on.
However, I believe that in the medium to long-term the industry will bounce back because as we get into a new normal, every enterprise will start looking at reimagining their ways of working. They’ll look at transforming talent and building resilience into their existing business models, and some changes will probably be permanent and be part of new normal, in these cases, technology and technology services will be very integral in all these models. Even today, technology is playing a huge role in enabling businesses to run remotely, and in the new normal this will be only amplified. So, in some sense, COVID-19 is a tipping point of the digital transformation of the workplace. The sudden shift to remote, digital work has the potential to accelerate digitally-enabled environments and workplace transformations.
So, I’m very confident that in the long-run, Indian technology industries and providers will be more relevant than ever to organizations globally. While what is short term, what is medium and long-term are difficult to predict, I think the industry will bounce back and will continue to be relevant.
Phil: We’ve obviously spoken a lot about the potential challenges this is going to cause and impacts on the economy, etc. What good things do you think are coming out of this? Do you think there’s going to be some positive behaviors, positive outcomes that we’re going to take away from this experience?
Pravin: Phil, I think the speed at which we have been able to ensure business continuity given our size and scale and enabling work from home, and without compromising on employee safety, for me that has been the most impressive one. And NASSCOM has worked closely with the government to enable this. That has been extremely positive.
Secondly, all the industry players….are coming together. I think sometimes adversity brings the best of you, and it’s been amazing how people have come together and shared best practices. And even, I talked earlier about some of the tech solutions that they have provided, working closely with the government, in terms of dealing with the COVID-19 crisis. So from that perspective, I’m very proud of the way the industry has come together to deal with the crisis. And some parts [of this] will become the new normal. In the past, I think clients were very reluctant to allow work from home; hopefully, this experience will help them look at it differently. If we are able to demonstrate productivity and good quality without compromising security, I think clients will get adjusted to this way of working, and that will also help the industry in the long run.
“Sometimes adversity brings out the best of you, and it’s been amazing how people have come together and shared best practices”
In terms of infrastructure side, the country has to improve telecom infrastructure, particularly the last mile connectivity, I think that many people still don’t have fiber connectivity, so that’s one area where I’m sure government and even the telecom providers will focus. And the second area reflects some of the policies, … the government has to make some changes to enable work from home [to be] more permanent. So these are some of the areas where probably we need to improve a lot, mostly from an infrastructure perspective but otherwise on the ability to do stuff and adjusting to the new model – those seem to be going on well.
Phil: How do you think this paradigm shock is going to impact the role of NASSCOM? What do you think its role should be, as things develop, Pravin?
Pravin: I think NASSCOM will continue to play a critical role, Phil, and more so than ever before. Right? Once the new normal happens, it’s important for NASSCOM to play a leading role, in terms of shaping the narrative around how the Indian technology industry was able to respond and with very minimal impact to the business continuity of clients. So, in some sense, NASSCOM has a crucial role in reaffirming India’s technology industry as a trusted partner for global enterprise. So that’s one role it will continue to play.
“NASSCOM has a crucial role in reaffirming India’s technology industry as a trusted partner for the global enterprise”
Secondly, as I said earlier, the Indian technology industry will continue to be relevant in the global context, post-crisis, so NASSCOM has to continue its role of policy advocacy with various governments, ensuring ease of doing business, articulating Indian tech and the technology industry contribution to the global economy and to creating jobs in the local economies. India technology industry is investing millions of dollars in these economies, how its increasing competitiveness of enterprises. So, these are some of the things which we are doing, and they are some things which we will continue to do.
The third aspect is that the skills gap that is there globally will continue, and so NASSCOM has to play a large role in terms of promoting skilling and reskilling, not only in India but globally as well. So that’s a role it can play, and it can bring the Indian technology industry expertise to that. And, in some sense, NASSCOM, NASSCOM in the future will be much more broad-based. It will probably represent companies across the industry. For instance, in India, when there’s been a debate on data privacy law, data strategy, and so on, the NASSCOM voice is heard. So that’s a role I think it can start playing there, and globally, as well. In some sense, every organization today is a tech organization, and NASSCOM can play a huge role in representing the technology industry voice.
“In some sense, every organization today is a tech organization, and NASSCOM can play a huge role in representing the technology industry voice”
My sense is that NASSCOM’s role will continue to be very crucial and as the Indian industry gets adjusted to the new normal – and we are very optimistic and positive about the future – NASSCOM will have a large role to play in that.
Phil: Good. Well, thanks for this, Pravin. I think there’s one final question I want to put to you. If we meet again in a year’s time when you’re finishing your tenure, what do you think we’ll be talking about?
Pravin: I hope, by then, COVID is done with, though sometimes I get scared when people are talking about two, three cycles of COVID, and things like that. But anyway, jokes apart, I hope at the end of one year, we will probably be talking about looking back at crisis how we dealt and we dealt with the crisis and how successful the Indian IT industry has been able to navigate around the situation, ensuring business continuity for our clients and proving our resilience. Hopefully, with COVID behind us, we’ll also be talking about how seamlessly we have adjusted to the new normal, and we’ll probably talk more positively around the growth prospects of financial year 2021, I think, at the end of this year.
Phil: Well, thanks very much for this time, Pravin. This was really insightful to hear your views, and how you’re going to tackle this. And it’s been very heart-warming to hear how the Indian community, in particular, has come together with the government to tackle this crisis so quickly, and I think you guys will all come out of this fairly unscathed, and actually, in a more robust place. I very much hope we’ll all be together, physically, in a few months at your big India Leadership Forum event in February, so I look forward to it very much.
Pravin: Of course, Phil, thanks a lot. I also hope that very soon this will be behind us, and I look forward to more positive conversations in the future. Stay safe.
Best wishes to you and your colleagues and family.
Phil: Yes, absolutely, Pravin. Same to you guys. Stay healthy. Stay sane! We’ll talk again very soon. Take care.
What better to blame – when all goes wrong – than the evil robotic thing you just inserted into your system. Many of you saw the recent article in ABA Banking Journal where they blamed RPA for the “burden on their processing system and diminishing of its capabilities”. We will discuss this debacle in a more detailed POV (stay tuned) but the crux of the issue here is a poorly run government IT function tinkering with software to try and process a mad scramble for many thousands of small business handouts from the recent Covid-19 stimulus package – and most likely in some weird virtual lockdown vacuum. And it appears woefully understaffed.
In short, APIs + humans + bots need to work within system parameters, or we’re always going to have failures of scale like this one.
RPA is a highly useful tool to support this environment, but please let’s start deploying it as part of the overall tool-box
As we’ve said of late, the digital workforce that wasn’t finally has its burning platform chance to shine. Since global lockdown commenced, we’ve been tracking, talking, and learning about the ways in which enterprises and their service and technology partners are using automation to help them function. One of the most prevalent use cases in recent weeks is in the banking and financial services sector where lenders are using automation, largely, RPA, to support loan processing for government-backed loans. RPA is helping lenders grapple with massive loan volumes and get them submitted quickly so loans can be approved and dispersed.
Insert monkey wrench.
The U.S. government’s Small Business Administration (SBA) application and approval portal was overwhelmed with demand as a second tranche of government funds were made available on April 27. The funds are intended to support loans for small and medium-sized businesses (administered via banks) as part of the Payroll Protection Program (PPP) during the Covid-19 pandemic. The SBA E-Tran system receives the loan applications and then the SBA processes and approves them. The system struggled to handle the new surge of applications coming through and repeatedly crashed. As of Tuesday, April 28, the SBA prohibited the use of RPA bots in the application process.
RPA fail, right? Not exactly. It is actually the overwhelming success of a blunt instrument.
The HFS team dug in and spoke with a variety of ecosystem players – banks, software companies, and service providers to get the straight scoop. We also reached out to the SBA, but they have not responded. We view this as a case of RPA being used as a blunt instrument allowing any bank that invested in RPA to automate loan application submissions. RPA very legitimately helped banks and lenders process scads of PPP loans. This presented two immediate issues:
The SBA E-Tran system crashed – it was way overburdened with hundreds of thousands of loan applications.
Banks with automation were potentially able to submit more loan applications than those without thus more effectively accessing a limited pool of stimulus funds.
The SBA responded in a super butt-covering mode with its “NO RPA!!” edict. It will still allow loans to be automatically processed through APIs. So now banks are scrambling to convert their RPA processes to API-led. And the SBA assigned one person. Yep, one person to field all requests for API access. We hope this poor beleaguered contact has some help, but banks have reported the API access option is “very slow”. To address the potential of access bias for those firms with automation – deemed to be the larger banks – the SBA designated an eight-hour window on April 29 for lenders with less than $1 billion in assets to submit loans.
Bottom line: This SBA debacle is why you need nuance and a toolbox approach to automation to get desired results.
It’s too easy to say RPA failed. It’s more complicated than that. Really RPA was a blunt instrument here – for its speed to solution and ability to swiftly process loan applications and it worked remarkably well. Too well. It swiftly overwhelmed SBA’s E-Tran system – which was doomed to be overwhelmed anyway by these unprecedented volumes in a short period of time. But RPA exacerbated it and potentially gave access advantage to automation-savvy firms. While access through SBA’s XML API may allow for more efficient loan submission rather than the RPA model of going through the user interface and clogging the narrow pipes, this did not have to be an ‘either or’ situation. APIs versus RPA is not the point. Automation always lives in an ecosystem with upstream and downstream impacts and these were not adequately addressed. A better approach would have been a toolbox approach that leveraged RPA for loan preparation and access into legacy systems in the lenders’ shops, APIs for submission and humans for oversight with some substantial volume throttling to give the SBA’s system half a chance at doing its job. Automation cannot live in a vacuum.
For those of you who follow HFS closely, you’ll know we have a small but extremely focused and competent analyst team in Bangalore. And if one region has shown all of us in the services industry how we can pivot fast to keep the wheels on IT delivery… it’s India. So we couldn’t be more excited to add Ram Rajagopalan to the team who will lead many of our consulting studies in addition to getting stuck into our coverage of AI, IoT and supply chain. And one thing I love about this guy… have can he smile with actually smiling? Maybe he learned that during his time with IBM, Wipro and Genpact…
Welcome, Ram! Can you share a little about your background and why you have chosen research and strategy as your career path?
Thanks Phil! I am excited to be part of HFS.
I am a professional with 18 years of experience spanning across strategy consulting, market research, business development, and executive program management of initiatives. Most of my experience has revolved around consulting assignments for either opportunity growth or internal issue resolution. I have worked with hi-tech clients in banking, automotive, electronics, public sector, and instrumentation industries in Europe, North America, Japan, and India.
I have always loved strategy consulting irrespective of the variety of roles that I have done in my career, and have been keen to get back into strategy and research after gaining experience in marketing and business development roles in the industry.
What are the areas and topics that you’re initially focusing on with your HFS analyst role?
Initially, I am focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on IT companies. This involves understanding how IT/ITES enterprises are responding to the COVID-19, and planning to counter COVID-19 in short to medium term. I will also be working on a consulting project on Automation. This will focus on the future of automation in the new normal situation.
What trends and developments are capturing your attention today in technology and business operations?
I believe that companies will explore automation and security solutions. This is attributed to the adversity due to COVID-19. The large companies will look at an integrated approach to leveraging automation, artificial intelligence and analytics based on their client needs. Permutations and combinations of these activities will result in new use cases to serve the evolving needs of customers. This will take a while as the enterprises are focusing on their impending needs to sail through the stabilization phase of COVID-19 effectively.
How are the India-heritage IT service providers dealing with the current COVID-19 crisis, Ram? Do you foresee some major issues with clients occurring as a result of moving so many staff into home-working situations? And do you see this eventually returning to the same delivery model as before when all this is over… is will we see something different emerge?
We should look at this aspect by tiers of IT companies, end-user businesses and the types of services. Clients in industries such as BFSI, government, and manufacturing will not want this situation forever. They would be keen to see their supplier side employees back in the onshore, offshore and nearshore centers. The nearshore focus might increase as clients would want to stay closer and adopt new ways of working with the suppliers. Secondly, the large companies have the advantage to convince their clients and get more of regular application development and maintenance work transitioned to them. Clients will have a lot to handle after the current situation. IT suppliers can help them by sharing their load in regular IT services. This may not be easy for mid-tier and small IT companies due to the typical challenges around cash flow management and scale of operations.
Secondly, “Work from Home” situation will depend on the level of trust established with the client and the lack of time-tested security solutions.
When the COVID-19 ends, the IT world will be business as usual. This does not mean that the companies will not carry the lessons learned from the current situation. The large and mid-tier companies will start in-house activities to improve the ways of working remotely. Large companies have already started looking at strengthening their security solutions either organically or inorganically. We will get to see Agile increasingly becoming mainstream across the majority of suppliers.
And, what do you do with your spare time (if you have any…)
I watch cricket, specifically test cricket. I also love outdoor jogging, and reading books on a variety of subjects. One thing that I have been trying since my college days is to understand more about this world from a non-linear perspective than just feeling convinced with linear theories.
Well… certainly an interesting time to make a career change Ram… we eagerly await the result of our COVID-19 work and seeing your first pieces!
Well, we can’t deny it was noisy, loaded with more hype than a Vegas heavyweight boxing match, and backed by more investment dollars than the GDP of a small country. Yes, folks, that was quite the automation ride we all recently experienced. And what a dogs’ breakfast that all turned out to be…
Sadly, nearly nine out of ten enterprise adopters simply didn’t get past piecemeal projects, pilots, and lots of very drawn-out evaluations. In fact, most simply didn’t have a burning platform to do very much at all with it. The lethargy to do anything more than hype up RPA at conferences with bullshit such as “a bot for every desktop” drove us to proclaim (quite correctly) that the RPA value proposition was dead.
However, if there’s ever been a time we needed a digital workforce to augment humans, it’s now as 54% of major enterprises we surveyed this month seek to increase their process automation investments. Yes, people, there is a realization of the importance of process automation technologies to support these rapidly evolving digital workplaces, which is only superseded by the need to invest in cybersecurity:
As we all adjust to the new abnormal, this is finally the time for the digital workforce to shine
The COVID-19 global pandemic is challenging our fundamental ability to keep businesses across all industries up and running while ensuring employee safety, preserving employees’ livelihoods, and meeting customer needs. Massive portions of the global workforce are being told to work from home, creating the most widespread operational crisis in modern business history. These rapidly emerging, globally distributed, remote, virtual workforces are creating a huge need for effective automation and a digital workforce. Yes, folks, the burning platform has arrived, and it’s literally ablaze.
As the following data from a few months ago reminds us, we’ve seen far less scale of Triple-A Trifecta (automation, AI, and smart analytics) technologies than we’d like (and need). Despite having spent the better part of a decade investing in digital transformation and loads of slick emerging technologies, we missed the boat on addressing process debt and replacing moldy legacy systems. It is what it is at this point, as we have no time to lament what we should have done. Now it’s all hands on deck to leverage what we do have to help businesses function during the pandemic. The need of the moment is operational impact; thus, the implored imperative is to get creative and figure out how to quickly re-use and, more broadly, deploy your proven digital workforce assets.
Learning to share during the pandemic—toilet paper, hand sanitizer, and automation assets
We’ve all seen unsavory images and headlines showcasing human nature at its self-centered worst—hoarding toilet paper, buying up 10 years’ worth of hand sanitizer (just in case!), and creating a dearth of surgical masks when healthcare professionals urgently need them. We need to remember how to share and be equitable despite the uncertainty. As we evaluate how enterprises built their automation programs over the past few years, we see loads of siloed activity—functional groups fending for themselves. On the one hand, there has been a notable surge of business operations leadership playing an active role in technology-led change. However, many of these siloed initiatives are those that have stalled or plateaued, stuck at low levels of task automation with little to no process change. The pandemic has presented an urgent need to break down enterprise silos and share proven digital workforce assets.
Operations leaders currently don’t have time to develop new digital workforce solutions. Anything that’s in the planning, pilot, or implementation stage is on indefinite hold while operational triage takes place. Enterprises need to take swift inventory of what they have amassed in terms of Triple-A Trifecta assets, determine cross-functional potential, and deploy them. This task-focused rollout is not fulfilling the grand vision of orderly enterprise digital transformation; it is being practical and opportunistic when we need it the most. And practical and opportunistic is what is clearly on the minds of many enterprise leaders as they realize they should have paid a lot more attention to changing and automating processes to support real business needs. But better late than never…
Tactical, practical task automation inspiration from the trenches
For those enterprises who have invested in Triple-A Trifecta technologies and have proven assets to work with and disseminate, here are what some of your compatriots are doing as part of their now and near-term strategies:
Cross-functional assets are king. Operations leadership from one global financial institution described deploying cross-functional AI platforms to new functions or similar functions in new departments for tasks such as document digitization, email management, and automated exception resolution. We are playing a leverage game at the moment—take the proven digital workforce assets you have and find ways to deploy them to a wider user base, generating leverage through repurposing.
Bots built with reusable code and accelerators. Reusable components are helping enterprises in a diverse array of sectors, including airlines, healthcare, financial services, and retail, deal with massive spikes in volumes of calls, emails, and forms. The replicated skills cover functionality such as reading, categorizing, routing, prioritizing, responding, and consolidating, and enterprises (or helpful service partners) can spin them up relatively quickly to address massive peaks and atypical working conditions. Here is a link to a public domain example from the NHS. There are also loads of downloadable assets available on various marketplaces to complement existing implementations, such as UiPath’s health-screening bot.
Donated resources. We’ve seen some examples of service providers and automation technology firms offering gratis access to their resources and technology to help those in need. We could use more of this! Accenture supported the NHS example above; Appian is offering complimentary access to its COVID-19 Response Management application for customers and any enterprise over 1,000 people, and Blue Prism just announced it would donate resources and digital workers to automate processes related to COVID-19.
Digital assets can remain on site. We’ve heard a few instances where remote workers are unable to access legacy systems off-site and are leveraging onsite bots to remotely manage access systems, enabling work to continue.
Cloud-based business process platforms with intelligent workflows. Many service providers have sizable operations centers in offshore, nearshore, and onshore locations. Aside from a lack of laptops, many service providers have been successful in allowing client-facing resources to work from home due to secure access to cloud-based business process platforms enabled by Triple-A Trifecta-enabled technologies. Resources are supporting functions such as finance and accounting, procurement and sourcing, and customer experience.
Leverage analytics and process mining to understand what’s working. Meanwhile, while you are more broadly disseminating your digital workforce, you can leverage analytics to help you quickly understand what’s working and what’s not so you can make informed choices about where to spend your time and effort. Tools such as workforce analytics, process mining, and predictive analytics are proving particularly helpful here for many enterprises.
The Bottom Line: This wasn’t the digital workforce revolution we’d hoped for, but let’s harness what we can now and ensure we make re-invention happen post-pandemic
The global pandemic is making us realize just how reliant we still are on humans and antiquated processes and technology. Despite having spent the better part of a decade investing in “digital transformation” and loads of slick emerging technologies, we missed the boat on addressing process debt and replacing moldy legacy systems. Thus, here we are, knee-deep in the most widespread operational crisis in modern business history, and we’re being laid low by our unwillingness to change how we execute work. Which has now come back to slap us in the fact with one very slippery wet kipper… and over half of you intend to do more with automation than any other tech investment bar cybersecurity.
We’re definitely not building the digital workforce revolution we thought we were, but now we have no choice but to digitize global digital workplaces and technologies such as process mining and RPA are crucial to support these transformations. But we need to leverage what we do have, so get to work and repurpose task automation and algorithms and other gems you may have cultivated. Remember to share and get creative across your enterprise and externally where needed. And, above all, when we start to have a line of sight to the other side of the pandemic, we must be resolute in changing. For real this time.
Sometimes platforms smolder, sometimes they burn, and sometimes they even rage with flames… and one example that’s genuinely flaming in this current paradigm shift is the world of chatbots and their more sophisticated cousins, Digital Associates. With this urgent need to augment customer-facing services with the locking down of call centers and corporate offices across the world (or even just keep them functioning at all), to keep IT help desks operating, or even internal needs such as basic finance, procurement HR and payroll services, the opportunity to have digital “workers” with whom to engage is in high, high demand.
Melissa, which products have the capabilities to develop really effective digital associates, and quickly?
Our recent report analyzed voice of the customer feedback on the most important elements of enterprise products and platforms for developing digital associates, from functionality to the ability to embed intelligence. The 13 software products we have included in this study highlight the vendors that play in the three most important ecosystems for digital associates: developer tools and platforms, enterprise products, and niche products:
I am assuming, in today’s environment, ease of deployment trumps intelligence?
At this moment, the most important element for digital associates is the ease of use and relative ability to get up and running quickly. Google’s Dialogflow scored at the top overall and also is #1 for ease of use and functionality. Our VOC survey respondents indicated that the ease of implementation was a major strength for Dialogflow and its “out of the box” capabilities that are able to be quickly plugged into communication channels like Slack and Twitter. Runners-up for ease of use were Conversable and IBM Watson, where pre-trained modules and solid UI make it easier for users to stand up the DA’s in shorter amounts of time.
The pandemic will drive adoption of digital associates in the short term, and enable a greater acceptance of them as communication tools as part of business strategy in the future
Since the outbreak, there have been a plethora of chatbots that stood up in varied use cases. Perhaps the most felicitous ones we’ve seen have been the Coronavirus ‘self-checker’ bots created, which are actively in use in chat functions by major health organizations. We’ve also heard of digital associates being deployed by HR departments to run through work from home ‘checklists’ with employees. And as the rush to work from home begins to stabilize, we’ve also been hearing a lot more about customer-facing bots being deployed for contact deflection in customer service functions.
In the coming weeks and months, we’ll continue to see companies of all shapes and sizes rustle up some digital bandaids to throw on a very big wound. At some point when the dust settles and a new normal emerges, companies will be re-assessing and designing everything from their customer engagement models to BCPs to internal processes. And that’s when it will become clear that a digital-first approach is likely the easiest, most sustainable and least “disrupt-able” approach for many processes and communications.
And, it’s also the time that the ease of use for digital associates will become hygiene and digital associates tools will need to be agile and intelligent. This is where vendors’ investments in creating digital associates tools that can adapt quickly, learn and apply more advanced techniques like sentiment detection. A standout in the innovation category is IPsoft, which ranked at the top across the board all innovation categories of embedding intelligence, scalability, and flexibility. Dialogflow is well poised to rise to the challenge as well, with powerful abilities for modeling large and complex flows using intents and contexts.
The Bottom Line: A ‘digital first’ approach could become the post-pandemic new normal. The tools that are being quickly developed now need the potential to become more intelligent.
As companies start to move out of survival mode, we will start to see a much more strategic use of emerging technology. People need to start thinking in new ways – not just about today’s problems at hand – but also about responding to future disruptive events in a way that uses important technological tools like digital associates in effective ways.
As a leader, it’s so easy to obsess with operational functions of the business during times of disruption or distress – in this case, a global pandemic – that it can create knee-jerk, often short-term decisions that could inherently damage your long-term vision, your business’ culture and your raison d’être.
Having lived and worked through four recessions, I personally understand the rapid change in leadership mindset that can occur when a firm goes from peacetime and growth to one of survival and all-out war. According to author Simon Sinek, people look to leadership to serve and protect, to “set up their organizations to succeed beyond their lifetimes1.” But in the modern landscape, most organizations place an unbalanced focus on near-term results that may ultimately prove to be self-defeating, like casting aside your umbrella in a storm because you haven’t been getting wet. In short, business is no finite endeavor. This pandemic lays plain for all to see the game we are really playing.
Finite vs. the Infinite: What is the Infinite Game?
A finite game is one with fixed rules, objectives and time horizons, the goal quite simply is to win1. But how do you “win” in business, or against a virus for that matter? Did Singapore “win”, or did they have strategic measures in place that allowed them to move through the disruption more smoothly? Is New York City “losing;” has Italy “lost”? Of course not – there is no metric or rule by which a city or country would lose to this disruptor. They can be battered, bruised, decimated even, but they will persist and stay in the game.
With no defined time horizon, no clearly-defined rules, and with players that may enter and exit at any time, the primary objective of an infinite game is quite simply to keep playing1. The goal for businesses, just like cities and countries, is to have the will and resources to stay in the game, through thick and thin.
Getting through the thick of it: running towards bad news
Forget about technology for the moment, bad news is the preeminent change agent. Even Winston Churchill espoused the transformative powers of bad news with his dictum, “never waste a good crisis.” Let us not be mistaken – we are in brutal times, and I would prefer not to have this type of bad news for anyone to run towards, but let us continue…
“People take their cues from the leader, so if you’re okay with bad news, they’ll be okay, too. Good CEOs run toward the pain and the darkness; eventually, they even learn to enjoy it.”
In business, we have to open ourselves and our teams to embrace bad news to get ahead of it. From bad news, roadblocks are revealed and underlying issues come to light, many times sparking momentous shifts in approach and innovation. But it is the initial willingness to dive into discomfort that is the defining characteristic of personal leadership, it shows up “in all kinds of essential ways: making difficult decisions; taking responsibility for them; apologizing for mistakes.2”
Welcoming bad news fosters resiliency and allows transparency to appear through a different lens. And with that, trust flourishes. According to Sinek in his 2019 book, The Infinite Game, “Trusting Teams, it turns out, are the healthiest and highest-performing kind of teams.” He continues, “Good leadership and Trusting Teams allow the people on those teams to do the best job they can do. The result is a culture of solving problems rather than putting Band-Aids on them1.”
So get going, start running.
Building trust, resiliency and culture through a bias for people and an “experience” architecture
There is much to be said about driving culture in an organization, and at the very core of culture, is human nature. People are hard-wired to feel that they are valued and are part of something bigger than themselves; that they are contributing to the core purpose, or “Just Cause1”, of the company.
“When hard times strike (and hard times always strike), in companies with a bias for [people], the people are much more likely to rally together to protect each other, the company, the resources and their leaders. Not because they are told to, but because they choose to. This is what happens when the will of the people is strong.”
It is no wonder we are seeing employee experience a critical component to success within the enterprise today from two different consideration sets – the heart and the mind.
At the heart of the impetus is the foundation of trust, enablement, and partnership that truly fulfills not just the Way people work but the Why. When people are given responsible freedom and provided with the support to flourish, when they can work within a trusting team – safe to express ideas, ask for help and be open to learning – people will put forth the will to give their all. Likewise, the business reciprocates and fosters the relationship, their environment and their growth.
The mind on the other hand is the model linking customers to the core of the business – its purpose for the services and products it provides – which is essentially service-oriented, i.e. customer-centric. The Digital OneOffice is the “experience” architecture, bringing customers and employees together into a unified state where supporting customers and anticipating their needs is native to the entire organization. At its core, OneOffice is about making customer, employee and partner experiences the centerpiece of the strategy, playing host to the new duality between who is servicing the customer and who is the customer:
Service is the tie that binds the heart and mind. Teams who are connected to the company, its leadership, its customers and each other are far more likely to come together for the greater good in the face of adversity and hardship. “The same things that help the company survive and thrive during good times help make the company strong and resilient in hard times.1”
Beware the “imposter cause” as your point of purpose
According to Sinek, finite-minded companies espouse what he considers to be an “imposter cause,” confusing growth, arbitrary metrics, or successful products and services with a strong company, which may very well become obsolete. They understand customers change, but safeguard resources and existing operating models in the face of disruption. These elements can be particularly true in the enterprise technology arena, where deep resources and services are modeled around two interconnected enterprises – the client and the service provider itself.
Just Cause
Imposter Cause
Directs the business model, with products and services advancing the cause. Its attributes are durable, resilient, timeless, beneficial and idealistic.
Examples
Whole Foods: Our Purpose is to Nourish People and the Planet
Netflix: We want to entertain the world. If we succeed, there is more laughter, more empathy, and more joy. (Netflix > Culture)
Business model is directed by existing resources or the relevance of current products and services
Examples
Garmin: We will be the global leader in every market we serve, and our products will be sought after for their compelling design, superior quality, and best value.
Vizio: To deliver high performance, smarter products with the latest innovations at significant savings that we can pass along to our consumers.
We are riding the massive new wave of outsourcing transformation – changing the way services are delivered. Who can guide us through the new abnormal? Who is prepared for the future?
An infinite mindset is crucial to current and long-term success. As noted by TCS’ Rajesh Gopinath in my recent “…In the flesh” interview, “The formula that has worked, and which will continue to work, is this unrelenting focus on the customer and unwavering belief in our own talent. The waves will keep changing, but you need to define yourself as surfing the current wave. And, as the wave changes, you’ve got to keep on readjusting yourself. But the value proposition is unwavering in its focus; it’s to make technology work for our customers.”
Partnering in this space is critical for the current wave and those to come. Even as the pace of digital-first has vastly accelerated, we are in a journey – not a race. In today’s environment, enterprises and provider partners need to stay tuned to the vision, look at business continuity in a virtual model and then apply the technologies that can best advance the organization through the turbulence and beyond. “An inifinite-minded leader does not simply want to build a company that can weather change but one that can be transformed by it.1”
The Bottom-line: Transformation finally has its flaming platform. The phoenix has arrived.
Did you ever think your enterprise could move to a 100% work-from-home environment with less than three weeks’ notice? This crisis is forcing businesses to flex – vastly accelerating the digital-first environment, dramatically cutting redundancies and improving processes at scale. There is a massive amount of change happening, and out of change comes real transformation. After years and years of complacency due to the relentless growth (and papering over the cracks of 2008), all of today’s organizations now finally have a burning platform to change how they operate globally. In fact, the platform is positively on fire!
Within the chaos of transformation, even a highly disruptive one, the core is steady and still; it is what you ultimately serve through your work – the direct connection between the business, what it purposefully provides, and its customers. An infinite mindset in business is essentially customer-centric, it’s your model, resources and processes that will shift in response to the environment. Technology, quite simply, is the great enabler.
As borders close and cities continue to shelter in place, the alarming and far-reaching impacts from this pandemic can ultimately be seen as a unifying event. If our goal is truly to stay in the game, then let go of what needs to go, embrace the brutal, protect and empower your people and restructure the new normal with laser-focus on the Cause and your customers – all of them. “Disruption is not going away anytime soon, that’s not going to change. How leaders respond to it, however, can.1”
Pictured: HFS CEO Phil Fersht with The Infinite Game author Simon Sinek, circa 2017
Coronavirus cruelly exposes the fragility of the offshore outsourcing industry: Will clients trust all their eggs in one basket again when this is over?
The outsourcing industry is fast-becoming be the first vital piece of the global economy to come under the microscope as nations, businesses, and societies try to build a blueprint for what the post-coronavirus economy may look like.
India and Russia, in particular, are now being widely seen to have the slowest response to the coronavirus pandemic across all the major economies, and the situation is forecasted to worsen rapidly in the coming days and weeks – perhaps at the most alarming scale of all the current major global economies.
In addition, the current curfew (just announced) in India is going to have serious and immediate consequences for the smooth delivery of IT and business process work conducted for both overseas and local clients. Many IT support staff are poorly equipped to support work-at-home staff, not owning laptops, often living in unsuitable accommodation for work, and often with poor internet / wireless connectivity.
In short, like our governments and healthcare systems, the offshore outsourcing industry just wasn’t prepared for this. All the warnings were ignored and now some very sick chickens are coming home to roost…
We’re running out of global locations to source service delivery, while work-at-home measures are proving woefully inadequate for offshore IT service provision
In short, the global industry is quickly screeching to a halt as a consequence of this pandemic. Most of the leading service providers have been instilling “safe distancing” in their centers, increasing onsite medical facilities and sanitary measures. However, with the death rate spiraling massively in Italy (almost 800 per day and rising) and US and UK expected to accelerate significantly because of their slow response to locking down public gatherings, workplaces and travel, the increased curfew measures just announced in India render these efforts from services firms pretty much moot.
In short, all global businesses are being significantly disrupted because of major restrictions mandating employees to work at home, and not having sufficient resources in India is going to exacerbate the situation for supporting critical IT delivery. Global enterprises may be forced to source local service providers to plug critical gaps, such as security monitoring, disaster recovery etc. which is going to put a strain on their budgets and my least to some major contract disputes (although many of the IT service contractors should be protected by Force Majeure provisions). In addition, service providers with strong delivery resources in locations such as Russia, which is resisting a lockdown, may take on additional business at this time, though most nations with strong IT delivery, such as Poland and Ukraine, are already in lockdown situations. The Philippines is also seemingly open for business, which is keeping the lights on for delivering a lot of voice-based services, but we expect them to shut down their centers soon with Duterte discussing emergency measures with the Philippines Congress on 23rd March.
Finally, the robustness of outsourcing will be tested to its maximum. And – most likely – well beyond its maximum
Discussing the issue with multiple executives in leading offshore IT Services firms paints a telling picture of how broad and painstakingly detailed business continuity plans are now. And, by inference, how woefully inadequately designed they were for a situation of this magnitude. Executives are telling us they have never seen such widespread implementations of business continuity in their multi-decade long careers. For their clients, while more measures from key offshore locations are understandable and, frankly should be applauded given their laissez-faire approach thus far, could still not come at a worse time. Outsourced service desks are already overwhelmed as they move to support huge volumes of end-users trying to access systems remotely and, in some instances, using technology stacks with which they have no training or familiarity. While it’s not clear how the curfew will impact these engagements, one possible outcome is enterprises – out of desperation – start to develop and stand-up their own in-house capabilities to handle the glut in core IT work.
In terms of outsourced customer support, leading call center firms are showcasing their ability to shift a lot of work to their WAHA (Work at Home Agents) if the need arises, and most are still able to utilize their large Philippines centers because of Duterte’s confusing attempts at a lockdown. However, we will only witness the true reliability of whether WAHA can actually deliver at a massive scale, when these workplaces are finally locked down… which is surely coming very soon. In addition, after more than a decade of hype surrounding crowdsourcing, we will finally witness whether that can really do more than plug a few gaps for occasional developer needs.
The Bottom Line: Will enterprises still have an appetite to keep outsourcing when this is all over, or are those days fading fast?
Should this become widespread – we may emerge from this situation with a very different outsourcing landscape and a reluctance from enterprises to put all their eggs in one basket again – in-line with broader comments about de-globalizing supply chains. In short, the outsourcing industry may be the first vital piece of the global economy to come under the microscope as nations, businesses, and societies try to build a blueprint for what the post-coronavirus economy may look like.
Keeping enterprise clients’ critical support services functioning is becoming the biggest challenge ever facing India’s IT industry as it tackles this exacerbating health crisis. Provisioning laptops to essential IT staff, ensuring internet infrastructure is functioning under the strain while enforcing staff takes the necessary self-distancing and hygiene precautions are the critical functions of service provider management at this time. They have to operate on an immediate short-term footing to keep the lights on for enterprise clients, and with a medium-term focus on surviving the next few weeks with the right emergency provisions in place to keep staff healthy and a financial fallback to keep the wheels on the track as we go through these very painful motions. Whether governments will be bailing out outsourcing firms and laid off contract staff is very fuzzy right now, and the concern is whether there is an outsourcing industry to save after all this is over – even if there are some emergency financial relief measures in the interim.
What better to blame – when all goes wrong – than the evil robotic thing you just inserted into your system. Many of you saw the 
