The pandemic has thrown open the floodgates of innovation and rewritten the rules of doing business at an unprecedented level. Covid-19 has not only fundamentally changed the day-to-day lives of people, but it has also spurred innovation across businesses and markets.Mohit Kapoor, Group Chief Technology Officer, Mahindra Group believes that the digital transformation has been led by the customer.
“The customer expectations were changing anyway fast enough irrespective of the type of the business or industry domain and that has further accelerated in the last 15 months,” said Kapoor.
As a conglomerate, Mahindra Group was predominantly involved in selling through storefront dealership branches across its automobile, agriculture, finance, real estate, logistics, and used cars divisions.
While some businesses like Mahindra Finance were more mature where consumers can consume more digitally in an online manner, the rest still need some physical aspect.
“Hence, something which I call digital last mile was always open for innovation and that’s what we have been busy doing at a fast pace and I don’t see the future going back to the old normal,” he added.
According to Kapoor, the new normal is enabled by four digital transformation pillars that will help the Mahindra Group achieve growth.
Digitising the customer and employee journeys
The first focus area of digital transformation for the Mahindra Group starts with mapping the customer journey using a design thinking approach and then laying out how digital can make the experience into an outstanding one.
There is a similar approach and priority for the employee journeys too.
“By looking at the pivots of the collaboration and communication for the employee, how do we look at employees freeing up their time so that they are more productive and innovative, focusing really on the customer,” said Kapoor.
Data Analytics
Data analytics is helping companies around the world mitigate risks, drive revenues, drive customer experience, decrease cost and put better options on the table. The conglomerate is extensively using data analytics to make the right decisions, both big and small.
“Data analytics is our second focus area because what to offer the customer and employee at what place and at what time, at what size or at what price, all of that is about data and analytics and how do we use data in an ethical manner to make the right decisions,” he maintained.
Modernising IT
In the past few years, cloud computing has been a big enabler for all kinds of businesses. Mahindra Group’s purpose of the cloud is three-fold.
One is around optimising its infrastructure (from the perspective of energy being spent and cost of ownership.Second is modernisation. “How do we modernise our technology so that customer partner ecosystems can be quickly connected with an open stack architecture? And Third is around using the power of the cloud whether it is computer vision, analytics, Customer 360, many of these powerful features which come built in the cloud for driving transformation.”
Cybersecurity
As things get more digital, Cybersecurity and data privacy becomes the fourth pillar in Mahindra Group’s digital transformation journey.
“For our company, good governance and doing good business is the bedrock. I believe that doing good business is about protecting the interest of the customer and the employee. And anything else we do around modernisation, digital journey is not good if it is not good for the customer from a data privacy point of view,” Kapoor added.
