NextGen Digital Leader: P V J Prasad, Hafele India

Can you give an overview of emerging technologies you have deployed?

Recently we have deployed Travel & Expense Management System – SAP Concur to automate and digitize the manual process of claims. This has eased a tremendous amount of manual scrutiny by the admin team of the heap of claim documents. It was also leading to errors in detecting any false claims which go unnoticed. With SAP Concur, everything is policy driven and validated at the entry stage itself with no chances of deviation. The approval process also has become simple and quick, enabling the managers to apply on mobile while on the move. This resulted in releasing the claim payments to employees much faster without waiting for hard copies, especially from upcountry employees.

Which are the functions/departments in your organization that is starting first with the emerging technologies?

The functions that are enabled with the emerging technologies are Admin and Financial Reporting. For financial reporting, Business Analytics – Qlikview dashboards were developed and distribution automated to key stakeholders. These dashboards contain Sales analysis, warehouse KPI’s, Daily Sales Outstanding and many more. Analytics being a key driver for decision making, MTD and YTD sales provide clear visibility to the goal at large.

How will emerging technologies like AI, Machine Learning, IOT, Big Data, Augmented Reality, Analytics etc will change the fabric of IT organizations?

Hafele is exploring Robotics in emerging technologies to be deployed for sales order capturing to reduce monotony and increase accuracy and speed. This initiative alone will provide order processing team to focus on customer relations and address larger issues to improve customer experience. IT Organisation, on the other hand, will become a business enabler becoming a contributor to bring a smile on the face of the customer

What are the key factors to be factored (best practices) in an emerging tech deployment strategy?

The most important factor in technology deployment is the Customer. The fact to be borne in mind is that what benefits can it bring to the customer which will ultimately result in the more top line. Any solutions deployed without a proper use case will be like a journey without a destination. Emerging technologies should be explored purely based on strong potential for the business and not because they are the buzzwords.