Surviving in times of rapid technological change: Harjit Singh, Tata Teleservices

Harjit Singh, CEO, Tata Teleservices delivered a leaders keynote address at the 21^st edition, Voice&Data Telecom Leadership Forum on March 22, 2022. His talk was on Surviving in times of Rapid Technological Change.

“The last two years have been anything but normal.” Singh spoke about the pandemic’s toll on enterprises, “The pandemic has been equally harsh for enterprises. For small and medium enterprises mortality is a factor.”  These are enterprises that don't have the benefits of, large enterprises. In the last two years, a number of these companies have ceased to exist.” Singh lamented.

He emphasized the need to learn from businesses that weathered the pandemic storm. "It's important  to draw lessons from those who thrived in these difficult times.” Singh said.

We've seen a sea change in customer experience over the last 4-5 years. Companies that are focused on customer as the core of their existence, are the ones who are thriving.” Mr. Singh highlighted the impact of digitization of workflows on companies. “Digitization is a fairly common theme, every Industry forum would have some focus on digitization and how it is shaping industries and our lives.” The early adopters of digitization, digitized workflows, which were more of the nature of support processes, focus was more on productivity and efficiency gains where supply chain management or any of the other support processes digitize to make the organization more productive, more efficient.” What we see now is a theme accelerated by COVID. "Number of companies are now focusing on the front end, where value is actually created, where we interface with the customer," Singh said.

The digitization agenda of successful companies has customer at the core of the effort, at front end, where engagement with the customer is not transactional, but more in the nature of relationship, where the engagement is continual. “Companies which are putting digitization effort initiative, with customer and customer journey as key are the ones who are ahead of the lot, thriving in these new paradigms,” Singh said.

The operative word is companies that are re-imagining workflows, working on digitization at the customer end, able to transform the customer interaction from just a transaction to an engagement, where actionable insights, data - structured and unstructured is pooled through a variety of technological tools be it AI, ml, IoT, and then the entire process of value creation begins from there, are the ones which are successful.

Singh summarised, “Companies, which are looking at digital as an important element to simplify the customer journey, and participate in the value creation process, embarking on models which are more contemporary, asset light, and leaning on cloud platforms, focusing on employee skill upgradation at all levels, are the ones who are surviving or thriving and creating the technology agenda”. He further added, "technology is evolving, because the customer is evolving, because we as service providers are understanding what the customer needs, and creating technology to fulfill that need in the fastest, simplest form, possible”.

Singh concluded his talk by drawing on the human spirit and human values by saying, “When the lights go down, and occasionally when even technology fails us, it is the innate ability of us humans to adapt, improvise. It is the human values of empathy, hope, kinship, and collaboration that are as valuable a building block to success, as is technology.”