The pandemic demonstrated the importance of digital transformation and how it can accelerate progress.
The Middle East has much to gain from digital transformation, and this is something businesses across the region have caught onto. In this interview, Umesh Moolchandani, Group IT Head – Bin Dasmal Group, talks about the importance of investing in low-code/no-code tools, process automation, cybersecurity, and the advantages of data-driven decisions.
Excerpts from the interview:
Tell us about your digital transformation journey and your future tech investment plans.
Organisations’ long-term challenges will be to remain digitally relevant to their customers, vendors, marketplace, and emerging business models. Digital technology must be at the core of any strategy and roadmap for business today. Companies that have successfully implemented digital transformation have proven to be more competitive, agile, and innovative.
In the past few years, several digital transformation initiatives have been undertaken at Bin Dasmal Group; the leadership is keen on innovations to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. We are among the companies that adopted cloud technology when it was emerging. Digital technology is at the centre of our business processes, we have taken initiatives to modernise business applications such as mission-critical CRM and ERP software, and have a hybrid environment. Few of our critical workloads are running in the cloud.
We have re-engineered our processes, and also adopted workflow automation and digitisation in many of our projects, especially for remote work enablement during the pandemic. We redefined our cloud strategy, refreshed our tech infrastructure and backup and disaster recovery to support the digital transformation.
We are looking at low-code/no-code tools, process automation, cybersecurity, and solutions that enhance the customer experience for future tech investments. Low-code/no-code will improve agility, help in faster response to business requirements, and improve the organisation’s capabilities by having the processes digitised faster. It will also help reduce cost and improve productivity, and provide a better customer experience.
Digital transformation has increased security concerns, the surface area of attacks has grown tremendously in the last few years, so it’s crucial to invest in cyber security solutions. It will reduce the risk of remote working, safeguard the most critical data, and help in protecting the company’s bottom line. We also plan to invest in new data and analytics technology and AI.
Can companies solve operational efficiencies using data analytics and AI?
AI can be used in various segments and verticals, such as operational management. Over the past few years, organisations have collected a massive amount of data, which helped AI technology evolve even further, increasing its accuracy and efficiency.
Data requires a tremendous amount of computing power to analyse it, and AI algorithms provide solutions. In supply chain management or operational management, AI algorithms offer efficient and accurate information, allowing us to make correct decisions. Decision-making is now totally dependent on data that can be churned efficiently, analysed, and used.
Tell us how you are instiling an organisational shift towards data-centric decision-making.
When we talk about moving to data-centric decision making, we have to look at every activity and decision that aligns with the business goal. We have to find where the data will be gathered from, where the relevant data is present, and combine the data from various sources, including ERP and CRM systems, unstructured data and images, to analyse it and make our decisions.
We are using data extensively to calculate ROI, generate KPIs for different segments, including finance, sales operations, procurement, and benchmarks have been set. These KPIs are compared with the benchmarks, and based on that, we decide to move forward.
According to you, what are the future trends shaping the AI/ML landscape?
In the AI/ML space, colossal advancement has been made. The best thing that has happened is robotics. It has a wide range of applications and usage across various industries. We see robotics deployed in space mission programmes and healthcare. We have seen doctors performing surgeries using robotics.
AIOps is also evolving, and AIOps providers in the near future will empower cross-team collaboration to enhance digital experience by collating data and integrating IT operations and various other operations where AI will be used on a vast scale. In the near future, all these operations will depend on AI.
*The second edition of the Enterprise Cloud And Data Center (ECDC) Forum will be held on May 25-26, 2022, in Dubai. For more information and to register, please visit: https://ecdc.datatechvibe.com
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