OpenText’s team in India plays a critical role in how we operate as a global business: Isaac Rajkumar, Managing Director, India and Vice President, Engineering, OpenText

OpenText continues to invest significantly in India, and has plans to further expand its employee base in the coming years. OpenText also has an extensive partner network that augments and extends the company’s reach within the country. Isaac Rajkumar, Managing Director, India and Vice President, Engineering, OpenText, shares more details in an interview with Express Computer

Some edited excerpts:

Can you please elaborate on the strategic importance of India for OpenText?

OpenText’s team in India plays a critical role in how we operate as a global business, how we innovate as a company and the way in which we serve our customers locally in India and across the world. Our research and development team based in Development Centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore drives major product development programs and spearheads our global innovation efforts. A major part of what we do in India is focused on product development initiatives across OpenText’s core business areas including Content Management, Business Network, Digital Experience, Analytics and Cybersecurity.

Our India team also serves global customers on multiple fronts including product implementation, cloud deployment, cloud operations and global customer support. We have a large project services organization responsible for implementing solutions for customers locally and across the globe. We also have a large Cloud Operations team based in India that leverages best practices in DevOps to help customers transform IT into an engine for innovation that drives results – improved operational efficiency, greater security, and cost savings – at a higher velocity.

Our expansion in recent years has involved a combination of organic business growth and growth through acquisitions. The talent pool within OpenText is made up of several thousand techies with expertise in specific domains. Having originally established our Indian operations in 2009 in Hyderabad, and subsequently completed several acquisitions and invested in an ongoing recruitment drive over the last 13 years, we eventually opened a Development Centre in Bangalore. Today, we have a large footprint in India, with more than 3,000 employees that are split equally between our Development Centers in Hyderabad and Bangalore. We have added multiple India-based teams over the years through the acquired and subsequently integrated operations of Cordys, GXS, Enterprise Content Division from Dell, and Customer Experience Management Division from HP.

OpenText continues to invest significantly in India, and we have plans to further expand our employee base in the coming years. OpenText also has an extensive partner network that augments and extends the company’s reach within the country.

How have the collaborations with Indian academic institutions helped OpenText?

We understand that learnings imparted in academic institutions is sometimes not sufficient for the holistic development of prospective talent and their skillsets and needs to be supplemented by training at the workplace. We have therefore developed a strong internship program that aligns with the Apprentices Act of the government of India. There has been a strong emphasis from the government on skilling of the Indian workforce and we are committed to playing a significant role in this initiative. OpenText launched its internship program in 2010 before subsequently scaling it in 2014. Even during the pandemic, we continued our internship program virtually using OpenText’s robust digital infrastructure.

Currently, we train over 300 interns annually and this number is set to increase further by the end of this year. These interns are university students who work with us and many of them join us as full-time employees after graduating. In addition to the internship program, we have worked with IIIT Hyderabad on various research projects. We successfully completed the Year 2 research project with the Center for Visual Information Technology (CVIT) team of IIIT Hyderabad that resulted in four research papers published by IIIT of which two were accepted for academic conferences.

We have also tapped into business schools like ISB to support our hiring needs. We participate regularly in ISB (Indian School of Business) Hyderabad’s campus placements to hire product managers. We have also had our senior leadership team go through their executive education programs.

Can you take us through some of the latest initiatives at OpenText?

Digital transformation is a journey, not a destination. The past two years have shown how the business world experienced digital transformation by benefitting from existing and new technologies, a changing and shrinking workforce, security and governance, regulatory pressures, the digitally savvy customer.

The biggest drivers for information management are security and business transformation. OpenText provides a secure, stable platform, and a great starting point for the innovation roadmap for any organization. Our Cloud Editions provide customers with flexible deployment options and secure, purpose-built solutions to support modern work, connect to global commerce, and engage customers in new ways. Here, products are designed, developed, and matured, and continue to be delivered to local companies within India as well as to enterprises across the globe.

Recently, OpenText unveiled Project Titanium, the future of information management in the cloud and a further step in the company’s cloud journey. Project Titanium will improve the organization’s strategic position as a global leader in information management, giving customers the simplicity, flexibility, and trust to thrive in today’s dynamic times through cloud-based information management. As we know, disruption is accelerating, and customer needs are evolving, hence this is a massive step forward with OpenText Cloud Editions bringing an integrated set of information management suites to the public and private cloud environments. Now, organizations need an integrated, easy-to-use set of cloud products to serve as the foundation of modern work, digital supply chains, customer experiences, and secure computing. Owing to all this, Project Titanium will strengthen and improve the OpenText Cloud Platform which will provide a common platform for consuming all OpenText software and services.

What have been some of the learnings from the pandemic?

The last two and a half years have been exceptionally tough for all of us. We have learned during this time that we should always be ready for disruption. Who could have thought that it would be possible to successfully work from home for an extended period?

Despite all the challenges, we at OpenText were able to support work from home by giving our employees the right infrastructure and systems that lead them to be successful and have a truly positive experience of working remotely. We leveraged OpenText collaborative technologies that played a very important and authentic role in facilitating the rapid transition to remote work.

After the extended remote work period, we are seeing a great enthusiasm among employees to be back in office. Most of our employees are working a few days of the week from the office. While we plan to give our team flexibility, the feedback from the team suggests that face-to-face interactions positively contribute to innovation and help minimize any risk of social isolation. This has also strengthened teamwork, relationships, and individual development.

What are some of the key technology trends that you have observed?

In terms of technology trends, today organizations face massive waves of disruption, including distributed workforces, cybersecurity threats, changing customer expectations and global regulatory shifts, creating a need for new digital transformation strategies.

There is a data deluge that many are struggling to manage. The domain explosion of information is real—across business, wearables, cars, transportation, logistics, shipping, agriculture, medical, sports, communications, behaviour and everything else! Machines generate 1000x more data a day than humans, and it is only accelerating. It has become mission-critical for organizations to not just manage but take advantage of the data they gather. This can give them the competitive lift that comes from using information to its full potential.

Can you highlight some of the recent partnerships in India?

OpenText partners with the most prominent organizations in enterprise software, hardware and public cloud to enhance the value of customer investments. SAP is one such strategic partner for us in India and is helping us deliver expertise our customers need.

We also work with global system integrators (GSIs) who provide digital transformational services around OpenText technologies. Working with partners, such as TCS and Capgemini, OpenText extends its business and technical credibility to customers. We also work with multiple boutique partners in India to expand our reach and engage specialist partners for some of our security solutions.

Please give us some examples of your customers in India?

We have some successful customer stories from India. Tata Power Delhi Distribution Ltd, a leader in power utility, is serving a populace of 7 million in North Delhi, India’s national capital. The company has implemented OpenText Documentum as part of its digital transformation journey. When the pandemic struck and approximately 70% of its employees shifted to remote work, the company needed to ensure employees, customers, regulators, and external stakeholders retained access to mission-critical content and business processes. With help from Documentum, Tata Power-DDL was able to automate complex, information-centric processes, maintain productivity and keep ¬¬¬¬critical business moving forward during the pandemic. Leveraging Documentum’s ability to integrate with key business applications, Tata Power-DDL was also able to help customers by implementing digital self-service payment options so they could easily view and pay their bills on time via the web, SMS, and apps such as WhatsApp and Paytm. This resulted in a lasting increase in electronic payments via mobile channels. It was reported that digital payments increased from 61% to nearly 96% during the pandemic and remained at 89% when lockdowns were lifted. SAP users got seamless access to the information they needed to get their jobs done. The Documentum xCP especially has cut development time and resourcing requirements by two-thirds. With OpenText Documentum and OpenText Documentum xCP, customer connection time has reduced from 14 days to just 1 day.

Syngene International Limited is a global scale Contract Research and Manufacturing Organization offering integrated discovery, development, and manufacturing services for novel molecules. The company needed OpenText’s assistance in adhering to strict audit and compliance regulations, which is common in its industry space. Also, the paper-based record keeping was causing delays and proving inefficient. The company started using OpenText Documentum, OpenText Documentum For Life Sciences and OpenText Documentum for Quality and Manufacturing. By using these products, Syngene International reported improved customer service, enhanced audit compliance, and a much greater degree of automation.

DHFL Pramerica Life Insurance Co. Ltd, is one of India’s most progressive life insurers, with 126 branches across India and more than 3,900 employees and $550 million assets under management. The company offers a comprehensive suite of products to cater to the varied insurance needs of its customers. It has a focused and segmented approach to distribution and is a leader in certain niche markets, such as the armed forces, micro-financing, and housing finance segments. In a bid to ensure even more people can access the right level of life insurance quickly and easily, DPLI looked to OpenText to complete a large-scale transformation project to digitize its key business processes. This included supporting the creation of insurance policy documents and managing new insurance agents and channel partners.

With the implementation of the OpenText Content Suite and OpenText AppWorks solutions, OpenText displaced the current vendor as part of a multi-year contract to support DPLI. OpenText Managed Services also provides ongoing support to maintain the company’s new digital solution and encourage long-term user adoption and satisfaction.