India’s Digital Business Transformation By Design: Deepali Nayar, Rohit Pandey, Sanjay Menon
Interview by John Maeda @ Publicis Sapient
We bridge strategy and engineering.
JM: The world is looking to Asia for how to manage towards recovery in the C-19 era.
First of all, how have you seen conditions changing in the last month on a personal level, and for businesses over there in India?
With the entire country of India being in a complete lockdown, this is definitely a surreal context for people and businesses.
For me personally and the rest of family (wife and son) this has meant operating from our home as our individual workspaces while also grappling with how we keep our lives running with a semblance of normalcy — in spite of only limited access to essentials and more restricted access to the non-essentials.
Personally its like adapting to the new normal, taking each day at its own pace and adopting techniques of meditation to keep the balance maintained.
Here in India, businesses are working to run at the same pace they did before. But this pandemic has surely accelerated digital transformation in businesses as we can see that people from all backgrounds, creeds, and classes are now getting accustomed to the digital services at large.
The definition of “essential” services & commodities changed overnight. The country was in a lockdown except for access to “essential” things.
It was not about your economic status anymore, rather the word “essential” truly meant the same for everyone. God bless the digital retailers for innovative contact-less home delivery methods but still the term “essential” remained the same. Essential — meant absolutely necessary stuff for daily living for us.
“India is largely associated with crowded streets, trains and public places. Lots of businesses are modeled to take advantage of this fact. Now, things will change as the assembly of a crowd is an unreal thought. The one thing common across India business is — resilience. So, we will bounce back!” — Rohit Pandey
Personally, I realized that the government and authorities have been doing their bit, but we as individuals need to do our bit as well. For example, my wife worked with the authorities to enable 150 underprivileged families get free food supplies from the government. It is very basic, but the fact is that migrant laborers do not have registered addresses that enable services to reach them. So, someone has to locate them. If we are better off than others then we need to find ways to give back .
JM: What are a few practices that you see are being fully leveraged for greatest impact? And where do you see a few practices failing?
Deepali Nayar: I see three practices becoming more common: meetings with better preparation, easier collaboration, and a shift towards leadership instead of micro-management.
Let me be specific:
- Documentation for meetings. Earlier people would come in unprepared or with some rough sketches, notes. Now, since everyone is remote, there is more rigor in preparations.
- Ease of collaboration. One could walk up to a person and have a 2 minute conversation. This has now morphed into 15 minute planned meeting.
- Leadership vs Management. It’s impossible to micro manage in a remote working. How long can I keep following up. Now, one relies more on inspiring Leadership & the power of communication to do that
Rohit Pandey: I definitely agree with Deepali’s third point. Empowerment as a leadership practice is what’s creating great impact right now.
Teams that felt empowered took control and transitioned to working from home seamlessly. The outcomes expected of them did not see any change. They went about enabling themselves with newer skills, knowledge of fresh tools to navigate the fact that they were not co-located anymore but still had to collaborate.
The contrarian practice of command and control seemed to fail as it created bottlenecks and slowed decision making. People who suddenly became bottlenecks felt overwhelmed with the increasing number of queries aimed at them each day.
JM: Given the SARS outbreak earlier in this century, there’s the strong belief that Asia is more ready than any other part of the world. Do you agree or disagree? I know India wasn’t impacted the way that China was, but I’m sure it was felt.
Deepali Nayar: I feel that India’s traditional strength and knowledge about health has been overlooked in modern western medical perspectives.
Ayurveda, has long advocate the use of herbs such as Tulsi (Holy Basil), Turmeric and Ginger towards the development of a strong immune system. Similarly, Yoga has also nourished the body & mind. So rather than looking just outwards, I believe that India needs to look within and towards its spiritual roots to move forward
Rohit Pandey: I will not say that India is more ready than any other part of the world to deal with COVID-19. What I will say is that people in India by and large have a higher level of tolerance to deal with hardship.
We adapt to change very quickly. These couple of traits will play a large role to ride over this crisis.
The one thing we have managed to do well is ensuring our public health services are not overwhelmed. It is critical to keep the infection impact in control. A full lockdown was tough on us, but people accepted it and that has helped.
“SARS did not hit India as hard, but I do feel we have had our share of calamities like the floods in Kerala, etc. But as Rohit pointed out, in India we are a culture of resilience. For example, many local Indian businesses have leveraged the micro-commerce paradigm. On their own, they quickly pivoted to leverage ordering over Whatsapp to connect and deliver non essentials. For all essentials we quickly moved to contactless delivery and education into how hygiene is being ensured.” — Sanjay Menon
JM: Design is an important aspect of many Asian cultures, but it often looks backwards towards the classics of how it is predominantly practiced: primarily to “make things pretty.” How do you think that the perception for design might be changing right now due to the need to digitally transform businesses?
Deepali Nayar: I feel lucky that our company has managed to grow out of the ‘make things pretty’ stereotype or the ‘make the brand logo bigger’ kind of mindset 😀.”
Education in India is rapidly evolving, and there’s new ways of teaching across age groups. The younger generation has taken advantage of these self-paced learning opportunities with the realization it’s “no holiday time” anymore. I proudly see them counting their blessings with every tool they master to make each day count.
Rohit Pandey: In my viewpoint, Design is poised to be a wedge that enables the last mile adoption of digital technologies as businesses look to transform.
The disruption owing to COVID-19 has jolted non-believers of digital transformation into action. They desire to transform quickly to remain competitive, invest wisely to maintain business health and establish a distinctive advantage when the dust settles.
India has been transitioning to appreciate simplicity and convenience. Design is what makes technology meaningful — so India’s demand for better design is set to increase.
For instance, many Indians found digital payments convenient — which created a parallel banking eco-system here. Technology, as in the mobile internet, is what definitely enabled it. But the simple design of peer-to-peer money transactions to use our cellphones as a wallet is what enabled widespread adoption.
JM: What are your hopes for the way that experience design capabilities can make a greater impact for clients’ specific needs in the global markets that India serves — including its own?
Rohit Pandey: Our India business has always been known as an engineering hub backed with solid understanding of the changing needs of our client’s businesses. Experience Design capabilities, while still in a developing stage in India, will be aided with strong engineering and product management capabilities.
A simple example today is how many of our clients need greater operational efficiency to enable faster outcomes. Their business operations have already been automated using systems that we built for them. Now, if we were to re-wire their operations while keeping their business functioning to create a significant efficiency impact then there is only one answer: design. The business consultants, engineers and designers will have to work together to make this happen.
“Experience design as we all know is the key to any successful product, as it can help mend the gap between strategy and engineering.” — Deepali Nayar
Sanjay Menon: I think experience design in India is still in its nascent state. India as a market has usually been slow to start on new trends, and then leap frogging others.
I think the size of this market will drive a steep trajectory for the importance of experience which will allow for depth in thinking and capability to develop very quickly. India as a culture has a strong sense of empathy as an embedded value in the culture. I think that has not been tapped into beyond maybe movies and other modes of storytelling.
The real differentiator for India, I feel, is the unbeatable combination of deep engineering talent and strong business understanding that can be bridged with design to create breathtaking outcomes.
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