Platforms of the Future
At Technoviti 2020, CIOs and CTOs share their perspectives on selecting and leveraging a variety of platforms that suit their respective organizations:
Low code platforms accelerate new product engineering
Shashank Sathe, Seni o r Vi c e President- IT, Edelweiss Financial Services:
Edelweiss Financial Services has an 8-12 year-old legacy system. We have challenges like reducing the technology spends and adopting new frameworks. Our approach is to go for open stack, full stack and application development, which have near zero cost of ownership. We have chosen this as a roadmap, and we are working on it. Additionally, we are moving on to low code platforms. We are trying not only to have the infra and networking elements, but also to adopt low code engineering platforms, which allow significant amount of efforts from an engineering perspective. From my experience, it saves 70% of coding/engineering time and effort while building a product.
We are currently halfway through our digital transformation; our infrastructure runs on the data centers and we are making efforts to move as many of these into a survivalist framework. Our systems are 30% on cloud, 50-60% on AI & analytics, and we are using RPA technology in 35-40% of our operations. We have adopted infrastructure and cloud as a core model, and we are getting benefits as it adds phenomenal amount of savings in our operations. We have already started adopting serverless computing.
We have tried to automate the entire documentation supply chain management system. We have also started overhauling our document management system, which was based on our legacy setup. We have started moving onto an in-house developed solution which is a huge cost saving for us. In most of our engineering projects, we have frontend development, middleware, back-end analytics and MIS delivery. We have applied multiple models in the alternative fashion to gain inside out, which leads us to the data lake related activity. We have approached this problem in a dual-purpose mode. Relational data is something that is analyzed and used by our business teams for gaining business intelligence about the customer. Unstructured and non-relational data helps to enhance and better our products.
We have an entire mechanism which works as a micro service module with user status, user elements and user journey mapping. It helps in micro-level visibility in terms of how the product is functioning and how the user is behaving. And all these add in creating the user persona-based algorithm. We are making extremely limited use of blockchain technology; we have implemented it in our distributor ledger system for doing financial transactions.
Extrapolate the data while testingto avoid platform failure
A Shiju Rawther, Executive Vice President - Technology, IIFL Finance:
Technology is the complete enabler for t he business. When we talk about future technologies in terms of finance companies a n d NBFCs, the complete paradigm will change. Today, we are working on a complete virtualized setup, where consumer will not have to come to the branch, they will get everything on their mobile or doorstep. The peer-to-peer l ending platforms are changing and these are purely platform-based transactions with no branches.
Most of the organizations are using
readymade platforms because the days are gone when everything used to be set up in-house and then used to deliver to the customers. The speed of the market is changing today and delivering first is the base of the demand. Analytics is the key element for any financial service provider to decide who will be his customers in nano seconds. In the next couple of years, we will see banks and NBFCs moving towards online transactions and even the lending business will become online.
We will see numerous transformations and when transformation matures, it becomes a commodity. We have started getting lot of amenities, but unless we choose those platforms, we will not be able to deliver to the customers. There is a demand from the customers side, based on which we adopt platforms. For example, the cloud brings lots of cognitive services, analytics platforms and security services, which are very costly to implement inhouse. So, there is no excuse for any organizations for not adopting the cloud. We are 75% on the cloud, and 100% on analytics platform.
Customers want fast and superior experience. Unless you come up with innovative solution to the customer, they will not come to you. No organization can ignore RPA technology. We have 30,000 employees in our organization and for all the screening and salary processing, HR needs to have RPA. So, unless you have automation, you won’t be able to do things faster. There is no way we can avoid any of the emergingtechnologies, and the technologies will keep evolving. After few years, RPA will become a commodity.
Testing the platform is important which has been emphasized in most of the organizations, because no one wants to fail after going live. Failure is a setback for the organization and the customer will never come back to such an organization. There is more emphasis on the investments and there are many fintechs which provide testing through automated processes - it goes from various testing phases from load testing to functional testing to security testing.
There are number of processes involved in the complete lifecycle development. Before going live, companies should extrapolate the data and with all those testing companies to avoid failure when their platform is live.
Choosing platforms that maximize CX
Tejas Shah, Head- IT Infrastructure,
Axis Finance:
Platform is a very broad term; we have started our j ourney initially with customer experience. Firstly, we have adopted the cloud platform and now we are focusing on RPA. AI bots will provide the omnichannel experience to our customers. AI and ML help to predicts customer requirements. There are many things coming and we need to take one step at a time. Blockchain technology is currently not applicable to us, we are using other technologies like cloud, AI and ML. Further we are focusing on chatbot and WhatsApp for a customer-centric response. We are 10% on the cloud and around 35-40% on analytics and other platforms.
App is the future platform
Prakash Bhatia, Head IT, Muthoot Housing Finance Company:
Muthoot Finance has 14 diversified business units like MSME, microfinance, 2-wheeler loans, consumer durables loans, gold loans, housing finance and many others. We are into the transformation mode; our legacy systems are running since the last 15-20 years. The younger generation of the Muthoot team wants to transform themselves into the digital age and we are not targeting the niche market segments; we are basically targeting the lower income and middle-income groups. Business is run by the people and they run the show, IT is just a driver for the business. The future generation of the technology is into apps and customers should understand on how to make use of the app. Our applications are 100% on cloud platform. Also, our usage of analytics is 70%, AI is 85% and RPA is 85%. Muthoot has adopted the cloud technology, considering the i nfrastructure required for the future generation.