Web 3.0, Metaverse & ChatGPT will be disruptors

Atanu Pramanic, COO & VP (IT), RPSG Ventures Ltd (A RP-Sanjiv Goenka company), speaks about the changing role of the CIO, the CDO, the future state of our readiness post-Covid and of course emerging tech like ChatGPT. Edited excerpts from a video interview.

Can you speak about the changing role of the CIO?

Conventionally we know the CIO’s role was set up as a support function. Initially the CIO was supposed to provide laptops, desktops, and connectivity. Gradually applications and then ERP came into the fold. Off late, maybe 5-7 back, when the digitization and then digitalization concepts started coming in, businesses started looking at IT from a different angle.

The “value addition” of the IT function within an organization started changing. From a support function to an enabling function to probably business partner is what IT teams are aspiring to be within an organization (if they’re already not there).

A digital business cannot be achieved with either IT driving it, or some partners driving it without the active participation of the business and the users. Digital business or digitalization is a kind of a concept where people, process, technology must take part together. That’s where actual value comes from. That’s what businesses are looking at more and more. The IT functions are kind of optimizing and reskilling themselves to provide this value to the business.

What about the CDO versus the CIO?

It’s a bit sensitive. My friends across the organization are either CIOs or CDOs or CTOs. But I believe that ultimately, it’s one function.

When I passed out of college there was just the mechanical engineering department. Now if you got to the same university, within mechanical engineering itself, they have introduced so many specializations and they all have become departments: Like power engineering, printing engineering etc.

Similar to that where an organization is highly technology oriented, they might give the name CTO. Where it is kind of orthodox company that had a Head of IT and CIO, and they are kind of transforming to the new age, they would still give the name CIO. A digital native company will not mind giving it the direct name CDO. Somewhere in between comes CIDO.

But if you look at the skills and the evolution of skills of the human resources, it is not very different. Ultimately, they deal with the same kind of stuff all across, whether you call them a CIO or CIDO or CDO or CTO. I think it’s a company’s choice.

There are companies who have a parallel CIO and CDO. There are companies where the CIO does the role of a CDO. There are companies who have a CDO with a CIO reporting to them. It’s just jargon used by a specific company and has nothing to do with the actual work to be done, which remains the same.

What is the future state of readiness and BCP post-Covid?

I’ll be very candid here. We know what we know. The future is to an extent a percentage of making an estimate or guesstimate. The industries are at an inflection point where they would have done all kinds of cost, process and skill optimization. The last lever left with any organization is now to do a technology ingestion or techceleration or you can simply call it digitalization.

Technologies will evolve. Taking an example, 7-8 years back, when the manufacturing companies in India started digitalization, some of the key technologies were not really available in India. We needed to look into partners coming from outside from Western countries. Today thanks to the demand that we have in the Indian business world, every single technology is not only available in India, but there are skilled partners who can support you in implementation. This is going to get to a master track given the government’s push, given the businesses’ own internal push and given in which direction the world is moving.

How are businesses and CIOs looking at ChatGPT?

Look at the jargon that came 10-15 years back. In the 2000s first we had SOA and then BPM. For a few years they pretty much held a level of interest in the industry. Then cloud adoption came in. Two to three years back we had Web 3.0, Industry 4.0 & 5.0 and now Metaverse. Not all of these took the driver’s seat. Not all of them were as successful as the others.

A few things like IoT took off and it’s kind of a commodity today. Blockchain 5 years back was so highly prized. Today it has come down and is kind of within the range of any organization which can implement it. Drones are available for almost everyone to use. But it took us time to understand these technologies, use cases and to deploy them at the proper time and cost.

It will be similar with Metaverse, Web 3.0 and obviously with ChatGPT. We need some more time. ChatGPT is definitely a disruptive technology. Simply put, if Google gets 20 responses out of which you have to go through and take the best, ChatGPT only gives you one response, which is probably the best.

Now how much is that going to disrupt? How much of that is going to be commercially viable? Today we are testing out ChatGPT. How will it get into very complicated technology solutioning and very complicated science and futuristic questions, only time will tell.

How much will it be relevant to the industry at a commercially viable point? But it will definitely disrupt a lot of other businesses and OEMs. Some of them might even go out of business.

Which of these emerging techs will go forward?

Web 3.0. Metaverse. ChatGPT. Some of the organizations are just implementing them for the sake of implementing without a proper used case. So where is the actual utilization of these high-tech solutions, it will have to be thought through and will have to be seen how commercially viable they become in the short run. But these going to be disruptive.

What is your advice to new CIOs?

Number one, there is no short cut. The primary thing for a business CIO is to understand the business. In today’s world, every technology is available even in Indian markets. There are enough players, enough partners, enough skilled resources who can support you with technology.

But unless you understand your own business well enough and identify the proper use cases for a particular solution to be implemented, you are not going to succeed. In most of the cases, where there are failures of technology implementation, 9 out of 10 cases were due to lack of user adoption, awareness or acceptability.

Why does that happen? Either by the choice of a wrong technology solution for a wrong use case or at times even visionary decisions fail. When a visionary decision becomes acceptable, that person becomes a genius. But 9/10 of those decisions fail due to the reasons mentioned above. We are married to learning. You must continue to learn every single day.

Are we ready for India’s techade?

India is in the right slot for both an economy boom and a technology boom. For the first time in history, the numbers that India has is favouring us. Look at consumerism or FMCG goods or technology, the high numbers are really boosting matters. Whether you look at the government’s Atmanirbhar Bharat, media or technology ingestion, the sheer size of Indian numbers (not the economy yet), they are helping India. From that perspective, to make a solution commercially viable is much easier. The eagerness in the newer generation to use technologies is going to push India to the next level.

Check out the complete interview...

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