Technology Management Continuum 2015 was organized on 14^th March 2015 with a theme reflecting the role of technology in transforming the businesses in a dynamic world. The Continuum saw a series of lectures centered on the theme:

 

Transforming businesses through Technology Management:

“How emerging trends in technology have impacted Business environment”

 

Following luminaries participated for delivering lectures at HR Continuum 2015 on March 21st, 2015 at SJMSOM, IIT Bombay:

Ø  Mr. Sudhir Kumar Mittal – Vice President and Chief Architect, (Integration & Data) - Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd.

Ø  Ganesh Gupta – Global Delivery Head – Banking and Financial Services, Vice President, Syntel

Ø  Mr. Vikas Malpani – Head – CF Groups, Co-Founder, CommonFloor.com

Ø  Mr. Himanshu Laiker – Director, Business Development and Strategy accounts, Medtronic South Asia

Ø  Mr. Nadir Bhalwani - Director, Technology Operations CRISIL Ltd.

Ø  Mr. Ashok Jambur – DGM – HRD and Training, Indian Oil Corporation Ltd.

Ø  Dr. Anand Deshpande - Founder and CEO of Persistent Systems

Ø  Mr. Siddhartha Das, Director, Product Management, Capillary Technologies

 

Listed below are the some of the suggestive and non-restrictive sub-themes for discussion:

 

Design thinking and business innovation:

Over the years of experience a question arises, what makes a company so successful or so creative, when all the people start from the same point with same resources to share?

No company was built with great ideas and No company started innovating from day one but was built from lots of iterations and failures. Hence, when you dig deeper into the subject you find out there in fact is a process and set of tools that all these companies used and others can learn to use in order to excel in this competitive world. This process and set of tools is called Design Thinking.

Design Thinking towards innovation has spectacularly changed the face of many companies. It has accelerated Apple and IDEO towards breathtaking growth and success. It is one of the most proven tool for accelerating towards success bringing a compelling set of arguments in convincing a top level executive in face of uncertainty. It provides with great tools for invention and commercialization of innovation.

Design Thinking methodology for practical creative resolution of problems or issues look towards an improved future result in terms of innovation, strategic capabilities, and processes and, in the broadest sense, management.

It is a form of solution-based or solution-focused thinking that starts with the goal or what is to be achieved, instead of with a problem.

Era of Personal Cloud in IT industry:

For the last 30 years or so, we have been living in what some refer to as the "Personal Computer Era." During this period, the Personal Computer (PC) became the center of

everything and it became more important every day. In many cases, it has also become the sole device for access to corporate information.

But for a couple of years, a surprising new entrant has created something quite different from what we knew in the past—the tablet, and its arrival in the enterprise space is a symptom of a global transformation.

The tablet heralds a future where the terminal is nothing more than the access point to individual and personal content. The content will be stored in a "space," available from anywhere, any device, anytime.

It will mark a power shift away from devices toward services. In this new world, the specifics of devices will become less important for the organization to worry about, although the devices will still be necessary. Users will use a collection of devices, with the PC remaining one of many options, but no one device will be the primary hub. Rather, the personal cloud will take on that role. Access to the cloud and the content stored or shared from the cloud will be managed and secured, rather than solely focusing on the device itself.

We have entered the Personal Cloud Era.

SMAC (social, mobile, analytics and cloud) – A new wave of IT innovations:

Every 15 years, the IT industry has seen new innovations that changed the way services are delivered to businesses and end users. We are witnessing the fifth wave of IT innovations after mainframe, mini-computing, personal computer & client-server and the Internet era. This fifth wave is characterized by a new master IT architecture comprised of social, mobile, analytics and cloud technologies collectively known as SMAC.

By 2020, around 100 billion computing devices will be connected to web and organizations will be managing 50 times as much of data they are managing at this point of time. So SMAC will have multiplying effect on the business and overall increase in productivity of the organizations.

Today, customers are expecting a new way of commerce and collaboration that is social, mobile, analytics and cloud enabled. They’re looking for the any-time, anywhere, and any-device convenience that they’re familiar with in their personal lives through applications from companies such as Amazon and Facebook.

In this SMAC era, businesses have to embrace this same approach to enhance the user experience, convenience and productivity. As part of this architecture IT departments will need to enhance their capabilities to support this architecture.

It is not just about the mobile applications, social platform, analytics or cloud individually, but the integration of all these into a seamless user experience.

Big data analytics in Health care industry:

We all know that, Business intelligence and analytics have gone from a 'nice-to-have' to a 'must-have' in today's challenging healthcare environment. To fulfill short-term analytics needs, many providers report shifting more consideration to vendors with healthcare-specific solutions. However, a clear market leader has yet to emerge. McKinsey & Company is one of management consulting firm using big data in advising healthcare executives.

The main goal of using big data analytics in healthcare sector is to identify patients at high-risk and ensure they get the treatment they need and to develop algorithms to predict the number of days a patient will spend in a hospital in the next year.

The benefits of using big data analytics is health care providers can develop new strategies to care for patients which can reduce the number of unnecessary hospitalizations. With the large amounts of heterogeneous medical data available in various healthcare organizations (payers, providers, pharmaceuticals), it could be an enabling resource for deriving insights for improving care delivery, reducing waste and also increase personalized care of the patients.

E-learning platforms in Indian Education System:

The face of education has experienced a sea change over the decades. Once characterized by the traditional classroom model, education has digitalized and metamorphosed into learning that is instant, online, self-driven and on the go.

The journey of education in India, too, has been dotted with innumerable milestones—the most recent among these is e-learning. The rapid increase in internet connectivity has been an important catalyst for the growth of e-learning. A robust internet ecosystem, with a multitude of local and global players, will help online learning make further inroads.

With the number of internet users in India expected to reach 250 million, rivalling the US and second only to China, India’s potential as a huge market for e-learning is enormous. A large number of new users are accessing the internet for the first time from their smart phones, which is an ideal, personalized and commerce-enabled platform for e-learning adoption.

The developing wave of adaptive learning through digital platforms will help students with various levels of intellectual capabilities to glean the best from the learning process at their own pace, without feeling left out.

Green technology in Modern Logistics:

Over the years logistics has evolved from being a tactical requirement into a strategic activity of a firm. Based on various roles of logistics, logistics can be placed at the focal point of economic activity and this makes innovation in logistics a key element to improve efficiency and effectiveness across all industries.

In the present scenario firms worldwide are continuously seeking ways to innovate to enhance their global competitiveness. The integration of green technology with logistics has helped improve efficiency and effectiveness of the system.

For instance, United Parcel Service (UPS), a global logistics service provider adopted a system of route-planning software and an internet matching system in their logistics service process to reduce the emission of greenhouse gas as well as to save fuel consumption

Many logistics infrastructure firms are reaping benefits of reduced energy bills and low fuel consumption by employing fuel-efficient vehicles, electricity management systems and other green practices and technologies.

Today businesses and their managers are increasingly becoming aware of the environmental impact of logistics activities and they are engaging with logistics providers to green their supply chain and their environmental performance.

Knowledge Management through Information Systems:

The concept of treating organizational knowledge as a valuable strategic asset has been popularized by leading management and organization theorists. Organizations are being advised that to remain competitive, they must efficiently and effectively create, locate,capture, and share their organization’s knowledge and expertise, and have the ability to bring that knowledge to bear on problems and opportunities.

Nowadays Firms are showing a tremendous interest in implementing knowledge management processes and technologies, and are even beginning to adopt knowledge management as part of their overall business strategy.

Although knowledge management is becoming widely accepted, few organizations today are fully capable of developing and leveraging critical organizational knowledge to improve their performance. Many organizations have become so complex that their knowledge is fragmented, difficult to locate and share, and therefore redundant, inconsistent or not used at all.

Given that advances in information technology (IT) have made it easier to acquire, store, or disseminate knowledge than ever before, many organizations are employing IT to facilitate sharing and integration of knowledge.

But considering the complexity of KM initiatives and the variety of IT solutions available on the market, executives must often confront the challenging task of deciding what type of IT solutions to deploy in support of their KM initiatives.

How technology will drive ‘Make in India’ campaign?

India has seen a huge upsurge in IT industry in last two decades, however, manufacturing sector has not been able to match that pace and the growth has been quite stagnant for the past few years. Globally also India’s image in manufacturing sector has taken a hit and has failed to attract investments from businesses around the world.  

The launch of ‘Make in India’ campaign is seen as a major initiative by Indian government to revamp the India’s manufacturing sector while transforming India into a ‘global manufacturing hub’. It is a national level program designed to facilitate innovation, enhance skill development and project India as an attractive investment destination globally, through building a world class manufacturing infrastructure.

In a largely populated country like India, technology can be the answer to the major infrastructure roadblocks such as transportation, storage, energy. Tech-enabled frameworks which include the time-bound project clearances through a single online portal to facilitate answering investor queries and addressing key issues including labor laws etc. could help a great deal in managing and expediting the processes involved in building an infrastructure. Therefore, adoption of technologies such as ERP into the manufacturing processes is necessary to remain competitive in the global scenario.

The winds of change are blowing in the right direction. Technology has been at the forefront of India’s recent economic resurgence and in technology lies the answer to many of our challenges as ‘Make in India’ is eventually realized into ‘Made in India’.