In a recent exclusive interaction with Partha Protim Mondal, Chief Information Officer, Berger Paints, he shares the company’s dynamic digital transformation journey. Celebrating a century of trust, Berger Paints continues to spearhead initiatives that not only enhance operational efficiency but also elevate customer experience. From implementing AI-powered tools and advanced cybersecurity measures to exploring the transformative potential of GenAI in customer interactions, Mondal shares how Berger Paints is strategically positioned to lead in the digital age while staying ahead of industry disruptions.
Please talk about any recent digital initiative you’ve undertaken and your digital transformation journey.
Berger Paints is the second largest paint company in India, fourth largest paint company in Asia and the seventh largest decorative paint company in the world. This year we are celebrating our centenary year – a trust of 100 years. Historically, we have always been very focused on technology and underscore the very aspect of driving business through technology. Like past many years, this year too, we have taken up many versatile digital initiatives for our revenue growth, cost optimisation, customer experience enhancement and secure our ecosystem. We are currently implementing Salesforce CRM to improve upon business top lines. SDWAN across all locations of Berger resulted in substantial reduction of operation cost alongside giving an edge to our business user on network efficacy. AI-powered ‘My Color’ mobile app guides our consumers to paint their imagination by simulating myriad colour combination of their houses and interior walls. MDR (Managed Detection and Response), EDR and ‘overwatch’ strengthen the security posture of our ecosystem.
How is Berger Paints leveraging AI and ML in cyber security and other domains?
Berger Paints leverages AI and ML immensely in the domain of cyber security. The new-age MDR solution implemented at Berger Paints has an AI engine to actively monitor the ecosystem and an advanced AI-ML powered threat hunting mechanism. AI-ML enabled methodologies and rules have been widely used in our network security solution.
AI, LLM are very useful in defining Medallion data architecture commonly known as Data Lakehouse architecture which process the huge volume of data form disparate systems and organises the data into multiple stages like Bronze (raw data ingested from myriad sources), Silver (clean and transformed data) and Gold (curated and optimised for business). Subsequently real-time exception-based analytics can be developed for focused analysis.
Another useful arena of AI, LLM use case would be Network optimisation and security using AIOps, which is immensely beneficial to achieve full stack network visibility, reduce false positive alerts, reduce mean time to discovery (MTTD) and mean time to recovery (MTTR) and enhance network efficacy by predictive analysis of your ecosystem.
Can you elaborate on how GenAI can revolutionise customer experience, from product recommendations to virtual colour consultations?
GenAI can significantly be used to revolutionise the customer experience, that GenAI powered chatbot or virtual assistant can analyse vast volume of customer data like preferences, purchase history, demographics, customer behaviour analysis and many more aspects to curate the specific product recommendation for the consumers. The AI and big data enabled tools (for example in Einstein AI engine in Salesforce) can empower business with identifying sales opportunities, deliver personalised consumer experiences and metamorphose customer experience into customer delights which results in customer retention and revenue growth. AI powered app like ‘My Color’ app by Berger Paints can drastically improve the customer experience by empowering consumers to paint their imaginations by simulating multiple colour combinations for their walls at home.
Given the increasing volume of data, how do you ensure data security and privacy while deriving valuable insights for business growth?
Berger Paints has a very strong and robust security posture, we are amongst one of the early adopters of nextGen security solutions like MDR (Managed Detection and Response), EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response). We have always been very focused towards strengthening our security landscape and ensure cyber resiliency. With plethora of data from disparate systems, it is of paramount importance for us to safeguard our business-critical information residing on our i-house DC, cloud infrastructure and endpoints. Cutting-edge email security system strengthened the most vulnerable arena of cyber attack and eliminates the risk of phishing, spoofing and spamming.
With growing concerns about supply chain attacks, what measures have you taken to protect its supply chain from cyber threats?
As I mentioned, we have impeccable security measures implemented at Berger Paints to ensure our DC, cloud infrastructure and endpoints are fully secure and immune from recent cyber threats. However, we truly believe and understand that security is a journey and not a destination, thus, we always strive to strengthen our ecosystem with latest security measures. The enforcement of zero-trust architecture certainly brings a sea change to the organisation and eliminates the cyber risk of supply chain to a significant extent. Wherein, the ‘Secure Web Gateway’ ensures secure internet access across your supply chain, the ‘Cloud Access Security Broker’ ensures your cloud facing applications are safe from cyber threats. ‘Zero Trust Network Access’ ‘Zero Trust Network Access’ safeguards traversal of your data and ensures authorised access of your business-critical data across your supply chain.
Most critical and weakest link on your supply chain is – the employees. We keep training our employees on latest cyber threats like phishing, spoofing, spamming and make them aware of other cyber threats. This improves the overall awareness of cyber security and its mitigative measures and thus help us to be vigilant against and cyber threats.
What steps are you taking to build a skilled workforce to harness the potential of AI, ML, and other emerging technologies?
We always encourage the team to experiment with latest technologies and create an ambience of empowering self and always be up to date to keep pace in this VUCA (Vulnerability, Uncertainty, Complexity, Ambiguity) world. We keep training our employees with the latest technology and encourage them to do certification on these technologies such as AI, ML, Oracle OCI, Azure Data Lake and many more emerging technologies.
What technology trends do you see as the most disruptive for the paint industry, and how are you preparing to capitalise on them?
GenAI, LLM (Large Language Model), Data Lake House, AIOps – especially on security and edge computing are going to be most disruptive in forthcoming days, not only for the paint industry alone, but for the other manufacturing industries as well. We are the early adopters of such nextGen technologies to ensure we drive business through technology and innovations and get competitive edge over our peers. Continuous learning model for the team, creating awareness amongst users and early adoption of cutting-edge technologies to drive business are the crucial success parameters for us.