Placeholder canvas
BESPOKE

DigitALL Dialogues – Raising the Bar

By CIO Dialogues Team
DigitALL Dialogues – Raising the Bar

The inaugural edition of Elevate saw the country’s leading ICT business leaders come together to discuss path-breaking strategies for digital transformation.

Spread across two-days, Elevate 2018, powered by Dimension Data with CIO Partner CORE Media, was a resounding success. Over 100 ICT thought leaders from around the country, and across industries and verticals were on hand to participate in the interactive DigitAll Dialogues at the Hyatt Regency in Pune.

Kiran Bhagwanani

The event kick-started with a informative keynote from Kiran Bhagwanani, CEO-South Asia, Japan, and New Zealand, Dimension Data, on how the company is harnessing the power of digital transformation to help organisations accelerate their digital journeys and achieve better business outcomes. With an increasingly open world, Kiran stressed on the need for robust security practices and highlighted the company’s record in keeping the Tour de France secure, without a single outage, over the last four years despite increasing cyber security attacks.

John Lombard

John Lombard, CEO, Dimension Data APAC, shared some key insights while speaking about the global trends he’s seen shaping the digital transformation journeys of enterprises around the world. He highlighted voice biometrics, beacon technology, deception technology, blockchain, hybrid cloud, and quantum computing as some of the game changers.

Mrutyunjay Mahapatra

Mrutyunjay Mahapatra, Deputy MD and CIO, SBI, took the stage for an eye-opening session with Kiran Bhagwanani and discussed the continuous cycle of innovation the bank has undertaken to deliver complex projects. Mrutyunjay emphasised the need for technology professionals to lead from the front and drive change in their organisations. A key component he mentioned was selecting the right partners, who will help you innovate on your feet, be agile and help in creating a revolution.

Nina Simosko & Ravi Srivastav

The NTT i3 story was highlighted by Nina Simosko, President and CEO, and Ravi Srivastav, Managing Director, who spoke about their uniqueness—of being purely an investment in innovation. Its aim is to evangelise and try to holistically harness the power of NTT group. Ravi discussed some of their key learning projects that include the Toyota Prius Challenge, where they used data and ML to hack car mileage, and providing racing analytics on data collected from telemetrics and human sensors for IndyCar. Ravi also spoke about CloudWAN, an NTT i3 innovation that will soon launch in India.

Panel discussion on ‘Using Digital to Elevate Enterprise IT from the Mundane’
Panellists: KN Murali, Head-Solutions, Dimension Data, Vineet Bahal, SVP, Nihilent, Kalpana Maniar, President and Group CIO, Edelweiss, and Meenakshi Vajpai, CIO, Vodafone,
Moderator: Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst, Founder and CEO, Greyhound Research

Elevate 2018 also featured two informative panel discussions with industry thought leaders. The first revolved around digital transformation and the necessity to constantly engage with business. Panellists addressed various aspects of its key benefits, including improved stakeholder experience, new revenue streams, and ability to manage risks proactively, reduce costs and improve efficiencies. They also stressed that digital transformation means different things to each organisation as they are at different levels of maturity, with different digital capabilities. While customer experience is no longer a new goal, the panel emphasises that the need and speed to deliver it have changed. This means strong management of the backend, or else there will be no transformation of the customer experience. Drawing from this, KN Murali shared how Dimension Data has reengineered itself to align with the new digital dialogues and changed how they converse with clients.

Panel discussion on ‘Playing with Boundaries for a Digital Customer Experience’
Panellists: Raghuveer HR, Director Sales, Dimension Data, N Jambunathan, CEO, C-Edge, Sachin Jain, CIO, Evalueserve, Achal Kataria, VP IT, EXL, and Anil Shankar, CIO, Shoppers Stop
Moderator: Anoop Mathur, President, CORE Media

This panel brought to light how customers expectations are constantly changing, increasing the importance of customer journey mapping, and the need to use the latest tools/technologies available to deliver a superior experience. Panellists discussed the importance of the move from SMAC to BRIM (bitcoin, robotics, IoT and machine learning), and the need to find the right partners who can work collaboratively to achieve goals.

Chhavi Rajawat & Vijay Ramachandran

Also on hand to offer their perspectives were Chhavi Rajawat, Sarpanch of Soda Village in Rajasthan, and Vijay Ramachandran, business storyteller. While Chhavi shared insights on transformation and change gleaned from her years collaborating with different sectors to create a modern village, Vijay busted some myths surrounding digital transformation and revealed the ground realities.

ICT leaders Ritu Madbhavi, CIO, FCB Ulka, Deena Dayalan K, Senior Director, Sears IT and Management Services, Rajendra Deshpande, CIO, Intelenet Global Services, and Balaji Subramaniam, National Manager – Security Business, Dimension Data, present the outcomes of their Sandbox sessions.

The event ended on a high with four truly innovative Sandbox sessions (hybrid cloud, digital infrastructure, digital workplaces and CX, cyber security) that encouraged ICT leaders to share knowledge, discuss their experiences, the challenges faced, and ideate for possible solutions. This led to many animated discussions with CIOs eagerly coming together to present the way forward. The interactive Sandbox sessions also drove home a key point of Elevate 2018—that the future of technology lies in collaboration and co-creation, through which the depth of knowledge and innovation can truly be explored.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

About Post Author

CIO Dialogues Team

See author's posts