In an interaction with Express Computer, Satyamohan Yanambaka, CEO, Writer Information Management Services, delves deep into the various enterprise technology trends and how the company is maximizing on the opportunities by embarking on digital transformation journey.
Q. Can you give a brief overview of WIMS? What are your growth plans for 2022?
Writer Information Management Services is a strategic Business unit of Writer Group, a conglomerate in existence from 1953, delivering Relocations, Cash Management & Information management services and winning unconditional trust of our 3000 plus clients. Writer Information is on a mission of Managing Data – Process, Store, Secure and Analyze data of our customers in an environmentally sustainable way.
Apart from being a market leader in information management, WIMS is growing fast as a technology-driven BPO services provider, servicing high volumes of all major commercial banks and insurance entities in India. As part of its growth strategy, Writer Information is committed to invest in setting up its own 10 MW Data Centre at Mahape, Navi Mumbai and has allocated adequate capital to complete this green field project. Further, Writer Information has set up an eco-system of partners for delivering Intelligent Hyper Automation platform using AI/ML and RPA technologies. These new age Cloud and Hyper Automation platforms are projected to give exponential push to the growth journey of Writer Information.
Q. How can the right data strategy can help in the implementation of AI?
Data is all over in data lakes, data oceans and most of the times enterprises aren’t even aware of the existence of data despite the best technology solutions & platforms are used. The challenge is the enormity of data and ever-changing data classification expectations of business needs. In this complex and demanding data environment having the right strategy for data organization is a very important & critical requirement for effective implementation of AI. Having a right data strategy ensures accuracy of results, best possible ROI, and room for continuous improvement.
I suggest three simple steps for data organization for delivering effective results:
- Create a mission statement for the outcomes that are expected to be generated. Mission statement should be specific, certainty of period for forecast, segmentation and be as specific as possible. For example, if we can develop a model for probable default portfolio in SME Lending space, the mission statement for data organization can be: “Forecasting Loss portfolio of SME Lending micro customer segments for next 5 years.”
- Identify all data sets that influence the mission statement. Make a data map of all possible data sets – data set that resides within the organizational data portfolio; data that resides in SaaS provider data base; data with partners/vendors; social media data sets; and regulatory/compliance data bases. Make a data network map with captions of data identification, relevance, and complexity of data availability.
- Build a real time ETL process for pooling data from all the possible data sets and create a organization data governance model to ensure data is current and accurate. Once the governance model is established and regulated, data integrity is ensured and then the AI model can be refined over the period to deliver ever improving insights.
Q. What are the trends in E-waste Management Services and Secured Destruction Services? How is WIMS contributing to this segment?
The positive impact of COVID as we all would have followed on global media, in a way, allowed nature to plough back its territory from ruthlessly abusing humans. Pollution levels dropped, animals wandered with freedom, reduced carbon emissions so on and so forth. It is also a known fact that hybrid working environments are here to stay post COVID and digital adaptability, especially cloud has gained momentum like never before. The digital acceleration has come with its compounded challenge of e-WASTE management. Secure and environmentally friendly handling of e-waste is of utmost necessity for us to protect our global sustainability model.
e-WASTE management services is an important component for Writer Information not only in terms of commercial implications, but more importantly from an eco-balance contribution perspective. With Writer having access to more than 3000 plus corporates, which are hubs of e-Waste generation, we are best placed to create awareness for sustainable destruction models and render such services. At Writer, we are committed to ecological contributions and hence e-waste management services is an important area for us. We expect to handle significant tonnage of e-waste over next 2 years.
Q. How is WIMS maximizing opportunities that come with digital transformation efforts?
Digital Transformation at Writer Information is two pronged – firstly, to get better operationally by leveraging latest digital trends and secondly, use emerging technologies to drive our services portfolio.
As part of our effort to transform Writer Information digitally, we have completed quite a few digital initiatives including Sales Force Rollout, Zing HR for HRMS, procurement solutions, etc. and overall automation is touching 87% as on date. This resulted in us becoming operationally efficient and hence significant improvement in bottom line.
However, the most important transformation is in the space of digital service offerings we launched at Writer Information where we moved from a pure play brick & mortar setup to more a “phygital” enterprise today. We have launched technology driven BPO services, Cloud Managed services, Hyper Automated content services platform. We have also recently piloted a Blockchain offering for healthcare with one of the prominent Mumbai-based hospital network and commercial launch should be in near future.
As such, Writer Information’s digital initiatives has positioned itself with a new identity and as a niche service provider in data management space.
Q. How are you leveraging data analytics and AI to create new revenue streams during your digital transformation journey?
Writer Information is essentially a data management entity. We sit on huge and unique data sets of our clients in various forms and these data sets when combined with other owned data sets of our clients, we can provide unique insights that Writer Information alone can generate. This is our strength, and we are in the process of building a strong analytics work bench for offering solutions to our customers. We believe our analytics offering should contribute close to 20% to our bottom line in next few years and this is our prime focus area.
Q. Highlight the key, emerging trends in the cyber security domain?
In this digitally turbulent and vulnerable world, cyber security is just not a trend but a necessity for every enterprise irrespective of its size and contours. Let us get this straight, we are all exposed and our data can never be safe despite the best security layers we build around. At the end of the day, any layer that is built, is again a piece of code that can be cracked by smart hackers. Therefore, the best defense is to build a preventive cyber security model as per the enterprise specific demands, ensure end-point security, and establish a real time cyber incident monitoring and alerts mechanism preferably establish a SOC (Security Operations Centre). These steps will ensure all incidents are tracked, acted upon before a breach occurs and thus minimize data leakages.
As an evolved cyber security services provider, we are product agnostic and use whatever is the latest and best defense mechanism that is available globally. We have, therefore, tied up with multiple cyber security global partners including solution providers from Israel. At one end of spectrum, we offer standard and simple firewall tools to allow selective secured access to application infra landscape. On the other side, we have partner tools where we secure system reg. files from any kind of meddling so that hacker/malware cannot access any application or data sources.
Although we have a broad range of tools that are being offered to our clients, we believe cyber security requirements are very custom. We conduct a consulting engagement with our clients before recommending the right tool sets, after taking into consideration data privacy standards we need to establish for our client data. One size never fits all and hence a neutral player like us is handy in ensuring a right cyber security solution model is installed and operations monitoring services are established.
Q. What’s your outlook for hybrid, multi-cloud?
The increased adoption of cloud infrastructure and the ease with which hyperscalers are able to ramp-up and down the resources is pushing lot of growth enterprises towards migrating and living on cloud. Cloud is also seen as an effective, most times ignorantly, cyber risk mitigating solution. The future will be hybrid, multi-cloud for the following scenarios:
- Burgeoning SaaS product portfolio in every space from ERP, CRM, supply chain, logistics, etc. SaaS is an inevitable scenario today for every enterprise. Depending on the product vendor arrangements and compatibility, multi-cloud would be necessity.
- Increasing adoption of cloud implies having a second Cloud Player to balance the risk of single service provider failure.
- Recent frequent outages of AWS are forcing the world to rethink multi-cloud environments as a necessity rather than luxury.
- Regulatory frameworks require DR setups, which gives another reason for having multiple cloud environment.
- Hybrid cloud also ensures better control and fallback plan. Hence, having a DR on own infrastructure and production environment on cloud hyperscaler is also a preferred option for future.
- With so much competition in Cloud hyperscalers, cost will also play a critical choice in being a single cloud or multiple cloud users.
- Data Backups being stored in a different setup other than production is another reason for Multiple Cloud scenarios.
In summary, Multiple and Hybrid cloud environments are given in future. Restricting to one hyperscaler is being perceived as a big risk and enterprises will tend to diversify their risk in times to come with more awareness and more defaults happening.
Q. Can you shed some light on Digital Lending-Ecosystem and Adaptability?
Digital Lending ecosystem is now far more evolved, and speed is the name of the game. Crazy TATs like loans in 2 minutes are the order of the day and achieving speed is possible only through near 100% automation. Automation solutions should be intelligent enough to keep straight trough cases north of 95% and exceptions less than 2%. Unless we achieve stats like these TAT of 2 minutes can never be attained.
Interfaces with all players in ecosystem – platform providers, credit risk agencies, social behavioral data, consumer retailer, financer, KYC regulatory agencies etc., should be seamless to conclude on credit underwriting decision within 2 minutes. Introduction of RPA along with machine/reinforced learning modules will help improve accuracy of process as sufficient cases are processed through the platform. The bottom line, however, is the right investments on platform and ensuring a model to continuously improve both technology and data integrity for optimal results.
Today’s scenario while most lenders are aware of the fact to go digital, but majority of underlying processes are done manually starting rom KYC document collection. This defeats the purpose of digital lending portfolio while financial institutions have their own constraints of fraud handling and geography & clientele digital profiles. But a significant portion of leads sourcing happens through digital channels today and this is almost common with very lender. Fulfilment part needs to get digital and seamless in times to come, while tech enablement is available, adoption must improve.
Thank you so much for sharing your knowledge.