Gurgaon, October 2019: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, a premier B-school in the country recently hosted its Annual Management Conclave ‘SAPIENCE 2019’ at its campus. The day long conclave, themed around – “Industry 4.0 : Managing Downstream Innovation” witnessed 18 eminent industry leaders participating in the panels and discussing on the downstream domains leveraging Industry 4.0 tools, techniques and strategies to discuss innovations that are taking place to integrate the areas of Marketing, Operations, Finance & Analytics in this new industrial era.
Delivering the keynote address, Mr. Dushyanth Sekhar explained the theme of the conclave and quoted “innovations without executions are hallucinations”. He later on explained that, “Data is the core for all decision making and everything starts with Data”. He explained that “though Data has been there since ages, over the years three major innovations have emerged – Storage: which has become cheaper, Processing Power: Which is cut above older versions & Data: which is not available easily as it largely remains in unstructured form.”
Panel Discussions:
The first panel discussion on the topic “ANALYTICS – ‘Industry 4.0’ Through the prism of Data Science” comprised of industry veterans such as Dr. Atul Tripathi, Chief Data Scientist, Cyber Security, Tech Mahindra, Mr. Jayatu Sen Chaudhury, Lead Data Science, Global Commercial & Merchant Business, American Express, India, Ms. Ajapa Gupta, VP, Consumer Banking Analytics, Genpact, Mr. Akash Singh, Director, Business Solution Technology Vertical, Cognizant, Ms. Aarti Bharadwaj, Head Analytics, Essence Global & Dr. Bappaditya Mukhopadhyay, Professor, Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon.
The panel opined that organizations today have access to a lot of personal data via mobile phones and various apps. Banks and even the Government are leveraging this data and moving towards building a sustainable environment for the growth of the nation. The panel also pointed out that there must be a 360-degree view of the entire business ecosystem for an organization to leverage data. The panel stressed out that Hyper Personalisation, required to deliver targeted products, analyse search behaviour and subsequent needs of the consumers, and has become the need of the hour in a Business to Consumer scenario.
The second panel discussion on the topic – “Operations – Leveraging Exponential Technology for Sustainable Operations” comprised of experts from operations domain experts such as Mr. Amit Mukherjee, Director, Ciena, Mr. Hemant Bishnoi, EVP & Head of Customer Experience, Ecom Express, Mr. Harish Pant, Chief Business Transformation Officer, NTF India, Mr. Anand Bhadauria, Senior GM, Supply Chain, Osram (Siemens Lighting Division), Dr. VP Singh, Professor Economics & Director PGDM, Great Lakes Gurgaon (Moderator).
The panel began by stating that considering the ever-changing consumer behaviour, business prospects are also changing. Whether it is Telecomm, Mobility or Manufacturing, industries are moving toward more sophisticated technologies to deliver products and services with improved quality at a cheaper price. In this era of extreme supply, demand and design variability there is a growing need of innovation. Industry 4.0 caters to that need to innovate. Artificial intelligence, facial and voice recognition, time-of-flight technologies, IoT, actuators, cameras and sensors can enable almost every imaginable service to be delivered into homes, offices and even cars, said the panel.
The third panel discussion on the topic – “Marketing- Leveraging Marketing Technology for Downstream Value Innovation” comprised of industry stalwarts such as Mr. Shashank Sharma, Principal, DAN Consult, Mr. Subhranshu Rout, Head, Consumer Insights & Intelligence, Bharti Airtel, Mr. Dippankar Haldar, Founder, Jalongi & Mr. Vivek Mehra, Founder & Director, Accelerity & Dr. Umashankar Venkatesh, Professor, Marketing & PGPM Director, Great Lakes Gurgaon (Moderator).
The panel discussion shed light on how there is a shift to multiple positioning from single positioning. In order to become consumer centric, it is important to understand the consumer which can only be achieved by listening. Marketers need to shun the age old practice of averaging and follow the de-averaging approach in order to market products and services more effectively to customers and cohorts of customers. The panel explained that Marketers have to track all consumers’ behaviour across the funnel and make sure the right content reaches to the right consumer at the right time.
The fourth Panel discussion on the topic – “Financial Services- Innovation to meet downstream economic challenges” comprised of domain experts like Mr. Nipun Madan, CEO, 3i Finserv, Ms. Meenal Bansal, COO, AIG, Mr. Sameer Garg, VP & Group Head, Multi National Corporates & New Economy Coverage, Wholesale Banking, Axis Bank, Mr. Amitabh Singh, Post Master General, Kolkata, Mr. S.S.K. Pradhan, GM, RBI (NBFC) & Dr. Preeti Goyal, Professor, Finance, Great Lakes Gurgaon (Moderator).
The panel opined that new tools and technologies are being brought in by Industry 4.0, bringing a major overturn of events in the finance industry of the country. Even with the current rapid growth of technology, human intervention will always be elementary in the success of any industry. The discussion further touched base on various topics such as economy slowdown, causes of NPAs, financial inclusion of all segments of the society in digitization, the role of private banks and how technology is affecting them, artificial intelligence in insurance and the role of technology to omit human biases in the field of wealth management.
