INTERVIEW OF THE MONTH

INTERVIEW WITH MS. DEEPA RANJEET,
Head of Digital, Group Technology Office,
Mahindra Group.

The term digital transformation has different connotations for different enterprises. What is your view of digital transformation? Do you believe that the term digital transformation itself has evolved in the past couple of years and if so, how?

Yes, I believe the term ‘digital transformation has evolved significantly evolved in the past couple of years. Digital transformation initially started with a focus on customers i.e., transformation of anything online that was customer-facing and then it eventually extended to other stakeholders like suppliers, partners, so on and so forth. In due course, we saw emerging digital-native business models such as Ola, Uber, Zomato, Swiggy. But essentially, for anything online, it could be a mobile app or a web service, the power of emerging technologies has predominantly transfigured what digital transformation is.

For example, the application of Artificial Intelligence to provide the right content in terms of marketing or the use of RPA at the back end to improve the process and reduce turnaround time to customers. So, these emerging technologies have really contributed to the original definition of digital transformation in so many ways that I see them being an integral part of digital transformation today.

There are several examples of lots of digital transformation initiatives failing. Is there a rule book or equivalent when followed increases the chances of success?

There are two critical success factors for digital transformation (much like any business transformation). The first one is carefully picking the initiative to work on and understanding if there is a solid business case there. What does the transformation promise? What business problem are we trying to solve? OR what potential impact are we expecting? Like any other area, the business case or the return on investment of the initiative is very critical to know upfront. There could be variations as we go along, but this is definitely a crucial starting point.

The second important factor in digital transformation projects succeeding or failing is ‘people.’ Digital transformation consists of two aspects, the digital aspect, and the transformation aspect. Often, enterprises pick the right processes or do the right pilot projects/POCs and undermine the transformational aspect of the whole process which is people. Starting with people, identifying the sponsors, working with the change agents, checking scalability by ensuring buy-in and adoption is now almost a hygiene factor for digital transformations.

Could you please detail a few key digital initiatives that you led at Mahindra Group and what kind of business impacts these have delivered?

There are multiple digital initiatives taken by the Mahindra group, some of which I have led. I would like to highlight an area where we have demonstrated the power of most emerging technologies as IOT and AI to the most traditional sector of automotive manufacturing. In one such area, we deployed artificial intelligence to reduce the defects in the painting process by evaluating the impact of the ambient conditions on the 10+ types of defects.

The second initiative is predictive maintenance. We have been able to demonstrate impact for Class A (mission-critical) machines i.e., machines that are critical for Mahindra group manufacturing. Using IoT and AI, we have been able to predict failures at the machine and component levels.

The third initiative has been AI in quality to demonstrate how we can move away from a quality check or a testing process. AI can also act as an additional layer of quality check before we ship vehicles of premium quality. In this case, we attempted this at the engine plant. We correlate the testing data to the known 4Ms of manufacturing (man, method, material and machine). Here, AI helped us to predict the need for testing basis input parameters of 4M. This results in cost savings and improved quality prediction.

What does the future of RPA hold with respect to technologies?
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of these digital transformation technologies are coming together to solve common business problems. For example, if I am deploying RPA for a particular process, can we, along with improvements brought about by automation through RPA, also deploy AI to identify improvements in RPA.

We are no longer thinking on the lines of RPA vs AI vs ML vs NLP vs process analytics. Rather we are matured enough as an organization to look at it through the lens of business problems and see how different technologies will come along to solve some of the business problems. I see technologies like RPA, AI, ML etc. merging/ being co-used to provide business-centric solutions.

Have you read or experienced any unique ways to incentivize people towards faster adoption of digital within enterprises?

I think digital transformation is like other business transformations and which is why we start with ‘business focus’ and ‘people’ first. It partially covers the fact that there will be better adoption because we are starting from a business problem and not from a tech solution. Like other transformations, it is imperative to get the right sponsors and stakeholders on board, keep them engaged /updated, and ensure that we benefit from their expertise as well. Involving them right through the transformation is key. Typically we have change agents from various stakeholder groups who ensure the successful adoption of any new technology. As we keep scaling, it is also important to have those change agents from different units. The more and more people get involved while scaling, the easier it is to manage change.

What are the critical success factors to maximize returns from RPA?

Firstly, like any other technology, it is important to know why we are adopting RPA. Are we solving for experience, are we solving for time or are we solving for productivity? What are we solving for? What is the impact? What is the impact on various stakeholder groups?

Secondly, change is difficult in any context. Therefore the benefits that we should be reaping, as a result, should be far higher than the efforts that we are putting in for establishing the change.

Thirdly, even when we have identified the use case and we see that there is a higher ROI or benefits for the entire organization, we have to ensure that we do not miss out on any key stakeholder groups. The change may be simplifying a problem for one area but is it making it messy for some other group. For example, we may be trying to solve for customer experience. But in doing so, are we making the process cumbersome for the people in the organization managing the process. If this happens, the affected stakeholder group will go back to previous ways of working, and adoption will be a concern. This will eventually go back to hampering the experience and the purpose will be lost. So, it is critical to ensure the pain points/ experiences of all stakeholder groups are covered in the transformation.