PRASAD PATE

Head – ITS (Corporate), KSB Pumps

WE AT KSB BELIEVE THAT INNOVATION IS NOT ONLY ABOUT DESIGNING A NEW PRODUCT… IT IS ALL ABOUT DELIVERING EXPERIENCE

oing Digital - what does it mean to you and your organization?

With rapidly changing environments; markets; preferences and expectations from customers; we recognize that use of technology as a competitive advantage in our internal and external operation is the “mantra of the day”. We should be able to both understand and respond to people’s rapidly changing needs, habits and expectations. Having said that; we do recognize and acknowledge the slip between the “lip and the cup” due to the various situations of not able to respond to this understanding in an effective way. That’s because: It’s sometimes hard to make quick, effective decisions at the right time and at the right level in the organisation because of excessive or inappropriate bureaucratic and technological controls. Even if one part of the organisation knows what’s needed, they can’t get everyone else’s attention (digital marketing teams often find themselves in this position)

What is your Digital Transformation plan, strategy and the deliverables you expect or are already coming in?

We at KSB believe that Innovation is not only about designing a new product… it is all about delivering experience which is – “orders of magnitude better than the existing accepted level”. The process starts with understanding the end user need. This is to say that Innovation is born and nurtured in the womb of customer experience.

At KSB India, we have embraced Industry 3.0 completely; and are now in the journey to digitize our supply chain; taken baby steps towards smart manufacturing; embraced the low hanging fruits of Digital marketing; digital services and business models and currently are more focused to build on our abilities and infrastructure on Data analytics as a core competency, as this area would make all our actions worth our being a successful digital organization.

Maybe a decade or more away in the future horizon, we understand we will be up against newer challenges; that of to embrace “Digital Ecosystems” encompassing flexible and integrated value chain networks; Virtualized customer interfaces and manufacturing processes and finally - the industry collaboration as a value driver.