Dhaval Mankad, Vice President IT, Havmor Ice Cream Private Limited, discusses Havmor’s digital transformation and what to focus on in 2021.
How would you describe digital transformation strategies these days? What is your outlook for acceleration of the digital transformation being undertaken by you?
We at Havmor have been working on Digital Transformation over last 2 years and have had significant progress so far. We established Digital core SAPS4 HANA in 2019 and subsequently other Sales & Distribution, Point Of Sale software have been enhanced or newly implemented. All our Sales IT processes are streamlined with 75% processes completely digitized covering 10+ major processes.
In 2021, focus continues to be on process simplification, reducing TAT, and having ‘Mantra’ of not only do more with less but do better. Success of past initiatives is driving more demand and this year we will be covering more processes for digitization initiatives mainly in the areas of Finance, Sales & Distribution and manufacturing. The idea is to help people use data rather than they spending time in preparing data.
For all Digital Transformation projects/initiatives Success mantra should be – it has to be top-down, one need to rediscover new WoW (way of working) to simplify and then digitize.
Can you please share some of the unique lessons learned from Covid-19?
Covid-19 gave lessons of life time to everyone, be it individual or organizations. I think developing resilience is most important, with VUCA phenomenon at peak, reflective leadership is most important thing to learn. Taking decisions for short term bets are important than strategical ones.
Another point is never procrastinate, we did take many steps to optimize cost be in cloud landscape configuration or services or many other business decisions, however these steps could have been taken earlier as well but Covid-19 forced us to take risky bet and taught us to take decision on fast track.
And last but not the least, need to keep calm & be part of solutions amidst all the problems.
What technologies and trends will your organization be focusing in 2021?
Technology aided business transformation is the way to survive in highly competitive world. We already have Cloud-first strategy in place and focus is to move 100% cloud from current 70-80% adoption.
Our journey with SAP, systems enhancements likes of Sales tools, distributor management and Point of sale system will continue. New processes simplification, digitization and automation will continue to be in our focus.
In the new year we would be focussing on newer digital interfacing like WhatsApp for consumer engagement, Data analytics and Smart Factory-Manufacturing initiatives. Data modernization along with Analytics is something which we are looking at so that we can leverage cloud native capabilities.
With increased cyber threats, we will continue to drive multi-cloud data management, backups, cloud security and disaster recovery initiatives to ensure 100% availability of systems
How will the cybersecurity sector look in a post-COVID-19 world? What do you expect to be different when it comes to cybersecurity and hiring in a post-COVID-19 world?
I believe cyber security world was no different pre-COVID-19 as well, whether one is on cloud or on-premise, security continues to be top concerns for CIOs/CISOs. Post COVID-19 we have increased concerns as with WFH and large scale cloud adoption has made the Internet a new corporate network, it is boundary or perimeter less network now.
One need to be alert, aware to remain protected. There are number of tools available, one need to be selective and adopt tool which fits in requirement rather than making any unwarranted investments.
On the hiring front since we work with outsource model, would advise the same. With so many efficient SOC/NOC players it gives organizations peace of mind with 24×7 monitoring , CIOs need to worry about upskilling, people dependency or process,