Corp America March 2017

74 CORP AMERICA / MARCH 2017 , The IT industry has grown on the back of labor arbitrage for a whopping 20 years. Organizations, in the past two decades, have matured with a DNA, a culture of creating labor at scale, high quality, low cost and in the right places at a fast pace . The future, however would not be the same. The era of eliminating people through automation is approaching. Hexaware, thus, moving at the speed of change, is equipped to accommodate the changing needs of its clients in this era. A New Story Is Unfolding in the Global IT Landscape R Srikrishna, CEO, and Executive Director, Hexaware Technologies, talks about Hexaware’s change journey with high velocity that disrupts the future of the IT industry, and what automation means to all. Finally, R Srikrishna describes the inhibition of traditional players to automation, from a social and cultural perspective. We live in a world where technological advances like Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, driverless cars, drones, wearables are disrupting the way we live, work and interact. Hexaware’s journey has been ingrained with these technological advances, acting as a catalyst for enterprise transformation, most of the time disrupting the space with newer innovations & automation, all while being customer centric. “Traditional IT service providers have been growing at scale, leveraging labor arbitrage model of adding more resources to solve a particular problem. These providers will struggle to unlearn what they have been doing for the past 15 years and tune their middle managers to use machines to solve problems. Our leadership team, has witnessed the growth phase of IT industry and believes that it’s indeed ripe for disruption.” Riding the automation paradigm shift Hexaware is on a transformation journey. A new chapter for IT engagements is unfolding at Hexaware, wherein the company is helping organizations reimagine their businesses, shrink IT costs, enhance business operations, accelerate digital transformation and maximize returns using its Shrink IT Grow Digital strategy. This strategy with a clear focus on reversing the pyramid engagement model and infusing the flavors of digital & automation helps clients to shrink their budget by 30% for application support and maintenance (ASM), testing, infrastructure management services (IMS) and business process outsourcing services. Hexaware’s Grow Digital services help in delivering differentiated customer experiences by rethinking user experience, redesigning omnichannel process and by incorporating straight through processing. While the outcome of shrinking IT through automation is catastrophic for larger outsourcing providers, Hexaware is willing to risk cannibalizing its own revenues for mutual trust, transparency, and long-term commitment. BIG BET in digital The company’s growth strategy is deeply grounded in the firm belief that by transforming the underlying IT infrastructure, rearchitecting the current systems into composable enterprises, harnessing the power of data and finally building systems of engagement, will bring about a digital transformation. “Organizations focus on multi- channel, voice, UI and apps will now take a U-Turn. Ultimately UX will be driven by customer experience and interactions will take the most natural form using ubiquitous devices,” said R Srikrishna. Infusing a cultural and social change to build a truly ‘automation first’ organization Automation is not about technology or platform, it’s about culture. Hexaware has defined a simple vision for itself. “We want to be the first IT services company in the world to have half of our labor as digital. That’s our rallying cry. In the last few months, we have transitioned four customers from top three IOPs.” Automation, anxiety and the impact on jobs Speaking on this critical aspect, R Srikrishna opines that their employees have had apprehensions like, “If I help in automation, how is it going to effect my job? We tell our employees not to be scared of automation. You will be our most valued personnel if you enable that journey for us. Because you will have 10 times the opportunity to do the same job, with each of our customers “ Another cultural aspect that Hexaware is very proud of is that in 2015 the company started a bottom-up innovation program 1703CA19