Using design-thinking, we help customers build best user experiences and technology: Rohit Madhok, GlobalLogic

What’s your assessment of the Covid crisis, in terms of challenges and opportunities?
The COVID-19 crisis has undoubtedly been a watershed moment in the living history and like any other crisis, it comes with a unique set of challenges and opportunities. From the tech world’s perspective, COVID came as a sharp reminder that digitisation and modernisation of software systems will pave the way for businesses in the future and will provide a significant acceleration in the efforts to go Digital for various organisations.

Think of how COVID-19 has impacted the decision-making conversations of the board rooms. Budgets for transformative programmes, which either modernise business processes and move away from physical forms or provide significant newer business models which are software enabled, will get the right trigger points for spends getting approved in the right areas.

Forward looking organisations which had already envisaged the enhanced productivity of work-from-home (WFH) policies, highly resilient business continuity planning and systems which enable secured remote access were able to cope with the crisis and adapt fairly seamlessly to the new normal.

What have been the key IT/Digital trends among your customers during this period?
As we continue to move forward and steadily enter the post-COVID world, our customers across industries are planning and re-strategising to ensure business continuity and innovations that can shape the future of technology. Most of our customers have accepted the current way of life and have by now, set the foundation for what technologies and solutions they would be rolling out in the coming quarters. What we are witnessing right now is an emerging momentum towards:

• Automation of most manual processes
• Cloudification and acceleration towards SaaS based business models
• Acceleration of alternative digital revenue streams. For instance, in media, publishing and education spend is directed towards e-learning AI/ML based upliftment
• Network and security upgradation programmes enabling secure remote and enhanced experience
• Strong movement towards open source based solutions, including the highly regulated telecom sector

What’s the role of design led product engineering in tech ecosystem as a practice and how important is it for digital transformation of businesses?
Our organisation is a strong proponent and believer of building unique end customer experiences. In many ways, our organisation has set the standard on how design-led engineering plays a pivotal role in any complex digital transformation programmes. By keeping the end consumer or business experience as the central focal point of our transformation journey, we end up creating easy and intuitive solutions, while deploying complex engineering concepts.

When it comes to design, we believe that it is a fundamental and tactical part of the entire journey of any digital transformation programme. Digital transformation is all about creating new avenues to build innovative business models or revenue flows or bringing a change in the way business is conducted. Design allows you to visualise and comprehend the end consumer’s or client’s need. At GlobalLogic, by using design-thinking, we help our customers build the best user experiences and technology. Our strategic design studio, Method, takes a holistic approach towards experience design. From considering a business’ brand and relationship with its customers to defining coherent and intuitive services, we help create engaging user experiences that are as strong as the technology behind them.

How Indian IT industry is leveraging technology expertise to combat ongoing virus outbreak and the overall economic challenges?
The Indian IT Industry has been very proactive and has played a major role in using its large workforce and significant global connections for the greater good of the industry. By using predictive analytics and AI/ML based algorithms to identify the next potential virus hotspot, creating contactless solutions for seamless access to buildings, thermal scanning of elevated body temperatures, working with the local SME micro industry in building ecommerce platforms are just some examples which our organisation has devised and implemented.

To give a relative example, an Indian robotics start-up has been re-purposing its robots into screening and diagnostics robots that collect essential data such as name of the patient, symptoms exhibited and validation such as temperature checks in a contactless manner. Furthermore, other Indian start-ups have deployed robots at entrances of office buildings and other public places to dispense hand sanitizer and deliver public health messages about the virus, providing Covid-19 tests at home and online consultation with doctors through different platforms and developing low-cost, easy-to-use, and portable ventilators that can be deployed even in rural areas of India.

Overall, the industry has a multiplier effect in building numerous such solutions for the local administrative authorities and governments, but not limited to even converting their large office infrastructure as temporary medical facilities and their significant reach with international clients to bring in global best practices into India.

Whivh are the technologies that are creating the next wave of disruption in retail, healthcare, telecom and manufacturing industry, and how is your company complementing this?
Every business sector has its unique disruptive need. To cite some examples, the retail sector disrupts itself by bringing more online experiences into the offline world. With a combination of “smart aisles”, “smart shelves” and “digital mirrors”, our company has helped some of the largest retailers in changing their business model to a unique online / offline hybrid model.

In the healthcare world, we have worked on solutions which allow telemedicine, body implants measuring body vitals, administrating insulin pumps, enabling smart hearing aids and end-to-end optimisation of the supply chain of controlled drugs that enable the pharmacists and hospitals  to constantly administer patients with the right drugs and the right time with no pilferage.

The telecom sector’s ability to provide a robust network infrastructure which keeps people and businesses connected all the time has a greater significance now than ever before. Our predictive solutions which can detect blind spots or do predictive call centre management has saved millions of dollars while providing superior customer experience.

We have also fundamentally helped transform the business model of a large heavy machinery equipment manufacturer by enabling them to shift from products to services which now brings in a significant revenue stream into the organisation and future proofs its business.

What will be the key focus areas for your company in the post Covid world?
Fundamental to our company culture, our first objective is to ensure the health and safety of our employees. As we enter the post Covid era, our strategy is to tap into the Horizon 3 technologies and continue to focus on building thought leadership and invest in the right areas.

DARQ era will play a pivotal role in the way the future gets defined. We are already seeing PoCs in the blockchain arena, scaling of AI/ML solutions and augmented reality is already fundamental to our clients. We will continue to drive this from a leadership position while collaborating with the industry at large. Our biggest impetus would be in developing digital transformation playbooks and to lay a solid foundation that our resilience to post Covid world makes our digital footprint so deep that it lasts for decades and centuries to come.