DQ DigitalNext: How Organizations Can Scale Their Digital Transformation Efforts?

Digital transformation is not just a buzzword anymore. Organizations now realized the importance and necessity of building a digital core, to which is not only essential for sustaining the competitive advantage but also crucial on the journey to digital transformation.

The day-long DQ DigitalNext, part of Dataquest’s Digital Leadership series of conferences held in Mumbai on August 23 aimed to capture the different aspects of implementing digital and how to scale the efforts going forward through various interactive sessions.

Digital, technology, and innovation leaders along with CEOs, CSOs, CIOs, and CISOs from different industries and enterprises across the country were present in the conclave, who deliberated and discussed the progress of digital efforts across their organizations and the path forward and gave strategic and actionable advice for CIO's and CXO's to accelerate digital transformation to scale in their respective organizations.

The sessions touched upon the different areas of considerations for building a digital business -how organizations can rely on new and emerging technologies such as intelligent automation, IoT, AI, analytics, AR, and VR and at the same time can take the necessary measures to protect and secure the digital business from unknown threats and attacks. 

The distinguished speakers and the IT veterans from different industries who participated in the panel discussion also highlighted the fact that building a truly digital business means is not just about adopting cutting-edge technologies or piecemeal solutions to a set of problems. Rather it is about changing your mindset towards digital -understanding the changing dynamics and knowing how to take advantage of digital to gain competitive advantages. It’s also about seeing how these changes impact the workplace, people, and processes.  

Here’s the snapshot of each session and panel discussion:

Managing Risk in Digital Transformation

Digital exposes enterprises to new risk scenarios. Hence, for an effective digital environment, it is more critical to consider risk areas beyond traditional risks, said Vishal Jain, Partner- Risk Advisory, Deloitte India. He spoke about how a 10-point risk management framework recommended by Deloitte to its clients.

Accelerating Business Decisions with AI and Analytics

Sameer Dhanrajani, Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal Analytics, and the author of the book, AI and Analytics- Accelerating Business Decisions spoke about how algorithms and analysis of image, video, text, and voice are being used for real-time as well as strategic business decision-making in different industries with specific use cases. He also highlighted the importance of humanizing AI.

Operating at The Digital Edge with Industry 4.0

Divya C. Bhatt, Business Head- SEA, MEA & India, L&T Technology Services spoke about how digital is increasingly getting infused into the physical with a number of use cases under the Industry 4.0 initiatives. For example, how digital technologies such as IoT, analytics, robotics, AR/VR, additive manufacturing, etc. are delivering real business benefits hitherto unknown.

Lessons from the Digital Transformation Playbook

Bhuwan Lodha, Vice President – Digital | Group Strategy Office, M&M Group spoke about how scaling digital transformation efforts is becoming increasingly crucial for the organizations these days and share pointers on how companies can move beyond incremental change to transform the business at its core.

Proactive Intelligence in Cyber Defense

The architectural complexity of layered defense approach the organizations follow today is not effective for the proactive security monitoring. Security Operations needs to be proactive in their approach to deal with the increasing security threats, said Sameer Mathur, Managing Partner, Vehere touching upon the importance of network forensics.  

Factory to Finance through IoT and Intelligence

Embracing digital is increasingly becoming vital for manufacturing organizations. Tarun Mishra, MD, Covacsis spoke how digital transformation at scale powered by, IoT, AI and Analytics are helping manufacturing cos in mining locked knowledge which is deep inside the machines on the shop floor and converting them into actionable knowledge reports in real time.

Digital Transformation at scale poured by AI and analytics

Digital is not a project anymore, but at the core of any business strategy. Also, as the technologies such as AI and analytics are not just enablers for business anymore, the discussion threw lights on how they can be turned into the key drivers for the business. The discussion was moderated by Gaurav Khera, Director, Deloitte India and the other participants were Bhuwan Lodha, Vice President – Digital | Group Strategy Office, M&M Group, Ninad Raje, Director and CIO, HealthAssure, Divya Bhatt, Business Head- ME, Africa, SEA & India, L&T Technology Services, and Sameer Dhanrajani, Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal Analytics.

Securing Digital Business

The discussion was centred around the growing importance of defining the security postures in this digital era. To protect the business from attacks and breaches, security should be baked-in, not bolted-on. The discussion was moderated by Sameer Mathur, Managing Partner, Vehere and the other participants were Manoj Purandare, General Manager - Security Services, Isolarix Technologies, Ajay Bhayani, Director- IT Security, Ambisure Technologies, and Smitesh Valanju, Head-Cybersecurity, Vodafone.

Lessons from the Digital Transformation Playbook

The participants shared their experiences from their digital projects and shared pointers with the audiences on aligning people, process, and technology with their digital transformation efforts. The discussion was moderated by Sandeep Raut, VP and Head Digital-APAC, NIIT Tech and the other participants were Sarbani Bhatia, Sr. VP-IT, Jagran Prakashan, Mukesh Mehta, CIO, B&K Securities, Suresh Shan, Head- Business IT, Innovation, and Future Technology, M&M Financial Services, and Prasanna Lohar, Head Technology- Innovation, DCB Bank.

DQ DigitalNext was supported by L&T Technology Services, Cisco, HPE- Swan Systems, Checkpoint, and Vehere Interactive.