Consumers today are connected and are better informed. They want mobile shopping, personalized services and instant gratification. To cater to these demanding needs of the digital shopper, organizations continue to innovate and launch exciting new products. IT and Shared Services groups are transforming to become more agile, providing a standardized service catalogue to the business with a need to quickly integrate acquisitions, grow in new markets and enable digital.
Further, technology disruption requires service providers to reimagine engagement models and deliver integrated services and solutions to customers. As expectations increase to deliver synergies across Process and IT, the role of the cross functional service integrator becomes increasingly important.
To stay ahead of the curve, global leading companies will require an "Integrated Operational Model", "Modern Future Proof Technology Platforms", and "Transformational Skills" to be continuously efficient, quickly respond to the business, and handle disruption effectively.
Operational Synergies & Integration
Customers expect integration between applications, infrastructure and business processes for increased efficiency across the value chain and enhanced user experience. This means ability to have integrated monitoring, dashboards & reporting, and automation of tasks. Operational synergies enable real-time visibility and interactive decision making when resolving/preventing issues - whether it's caused by a server, network, application or process. This in turn improves responsiveness to the business, whether it's an issue with a purchase order in the back office, or at the store point of sale in the front office.
Modern Outlook
Consumer goods companies are starting to embrace Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Software-as-a-Service platforms. Agile methods of development are now common at least for many front office solutions. While complexity continues within the IT landscape, there is a need for an enterprise architecture strategy that drives simplicity in the regions. This would mean rationalization of the application portfolio, hybrid cloud broker model to provide variable on-demand services and integration of the best of breed technologies to deliver business metrics that matter most to the users.
Transformational Skills to handle a Disruptive Future
Organizations today need to look at IT as a way to increase value for their business and fast track next generation technologies adoption. The future environment has to be secure and scalable with a strong Service Integration Management governance for end to end accountability. Once the basics are taken care of, next step for leading organizations is to strengthen transformational skills to enable faster achievement of digital transformation and business KPI outcomes across corporate, operations and marketing functions.
Hiral Chandrana - Sr. Vice President & Global Head For Business Application Services, Wipro Ltd.
Hiral is Sr. Vice President & Global Head for Business Application Services (BAS) in Wipro with end-to-end responsibility for the Applications related strategy, development, implementation and management. BAS is Wipro’s largest Service Line and the portfolio includes following areas across all business units:
Hiral has extensive experience in P&L management, leading Global Teams and Delivery, Executive Relationships, Large Complex Pursuits, and growing Applications, Infrastructure, Analytics, BPO, PLM businesses in Retail, Manufacturing, Consumer Goods and Life Sciences. He is an active member at leading forums including CGT, GMA & developed partnerships with SAP, Oracle, Microsoft, CISCO, etc.
Prior to the current role, Hiral was VP & Global Business Head for Consumer Industries in Wipro with end-to-end P&L responsibility including Delivery, Sales, & Solutions. He also played leadership roles as US Head for Retail, Consumer Goods, & Transportation and Americas Head for Business Technology Services at Wipro where he won multiple awards. Before Wipro, he had progressive client/program management roles with Electronic Data Systems (EDS), Parametric Technology Corp. and Tata Motors.
Hiral is based in the US for the last 21+ years managing long term strategic customer relationships with global organizations, driving transformation initiatives and leading large teams. He has published various thought leadership papers and articles through his career. Hiral has an Engineering background, with a Master of Science (MS) from Washington State University and Executive MBA from Iowa State University.
Enabling the Apparel and Fashion Industry to transition to the Next-gen Digital World
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