Digital will empower organizations to be customer centric: L&T Infotech

Digital enterprise 2.0 will help organizations to become customer centric as the set of cloud, analytics and mobility will allow them to understand the demand. Aftab Zaid Ullah, Whole-Time Director & Chief Operating Officer, L&T Infotech Ltd shared his insights about the role of digital enterprise 2.0 in today's hyper active world.

What, according to you, is digital enterprise 2.0?

As application of Digital matures, we are witnessing enterprises enter a phase of rapid adoption. This phase is really the Enterprise Digital 2.0 (ED 2.0) where leaders are demanding to see the outcomes from their respective digital pursuits. ED 2.0 is also being accelerated by the fact that customers these days are also demanding an 'uber' like experience from enterprises. Additionally, we are also seeing that several organizations realize the potential of using digital inside the company for employees. So in a sense, DE 2.0 is about solving the demand coming from three places - the management or leadership for sharp outcomes, the customers for experiences and the employees for productivity & a new way of working.

In fact, LTI has also recently launched LTI 2.0 program which is about helping our clients be successful during this ED 2.0 phase where we are partnering with them to ensure that they successfully solve above mentioned challenges that we see globally.

What are the traits of a digital enterprise 2.0? Do you have global or local examples of Digital 2.0 organizations to share, not necessarily your clients?

Organizations that will really be successful in this 2.0 phase are the ones that become customer centric in true spirit. Besides being responsive and agile, another key element that is gaining momentum is designing experiences for customers. Concepts like design thinking are helping drive this agenda.

Another key pillar for DE 2.0 is Industrialization where concepts like Automation, Machine learning and Cognitive are driving the ability of doing things that were not possible for machines to do. So an organization’s ability to have the discipline and rigor to drive industrialization for efficiency is critical.

Last but not the least, organizations that have the ability to innovate iteratively as well as frugally which enables it to test the applicability and also the adoption of digital are the key to success.

Few examples where we are seeing some significant outcomes of using Digital are :

• One of the largest CPG companies disrupting their Shared Services using Digital
• Supporting Digitization of L&T which is one of the largest IoT implementations in India
• Our own usage of tools like Facebook Workplaces to drive digital employee engagement

What is the market size and the growth rate for digitization market?

We are one of the seven global research patrons of MIT’s Centre for Information System Research (MIT CISR). As part of that we do some very deep research on how the market is transforming.

A research done with MIT CISR indicates that average revenues under threat from digital is around 33% with larger organizations facing bigger disruptions.

What are the market opportunities and threats faced by the vendors in the digitization IT spending market?

With more than 50% of the Fortune 500 companies disappearing in the last decade itself, the rate of change has never been higher. Digital is one of the key reasons that is making this churn happen so fast. Companies that are adopting digital and entering the DE 2.0 phase are successful as against companies that are slow to embrace this change. This change is reflected in IT as well. The vendors who transform themselves are the ones who will emerge as the leaders. The current scale and the past glories, as we are seeing with companies in other industries as well (Nokia, Kodak), have no relevance in the Digital era. The ability to innovate and do it quickly with laser sharp customer focus will make all the difference.