CloudVersations Episode 1 SAP on Google Cloud Brings End to End Digital Experience Mohit Kapoor

Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

The Mahindra Group is a diverse set of businesses. In the last two years, it's been proven that products and services can be consumed remotely, and that's where digital transformation becomes a top priority to the company. So the company across the group is focusing on three areas. One is the core transformation, which is how do we do it faster, better, cheaper in some ways. The second is around driving the innovation agenda, where the customer expectations, the power in the cloud, and the experiences need to be transformed. Third is around digital businesses, that other than transforming existing business to be more paperless, to be more straight through. So a lot has happened in the last few years, and it's accelerating at a breakneck speed. And many of these things, I think, are irreversible transformations.

I think four which come to my mind. One is focusing on customer and employee experience. It is true that our customer likely has become more digital than how we are offering the service and the product, which I normally call CX and the EX journey. So that has to be catered to. Second point on the agenda is around better use of data and AI, where I think how to price a product, where to launch a product, what color to make it in, how to sell it, how to do outreach, how to engage the customer better, how to continue to improve quality. That's the agenda, so data and AI. The third point which is in the priority is around agility and doing it faster, and that's where the cloud comes in very handy. And last but not the least is the cyber security and the data privacy agenda, where with things getting more digital, we have to see to it that we don't lose the trust of the customers. So that I see as a four-point agenda for us: CX and EX, data and AI, cloud and DevSecOps, and cyber security and data privacy.

You're right, it is a very important role because lots of what I am talking about around reimagining the experiences is a front-to-back transformation. Many companies think that making a portal or making a mobile app is digital, but that's not necessarily true. And that's where the cloud connection back into SAP or recomposing SAP on the cloud matters, because it brings in more predictability, end-to-end digital experience for the customer. We are able to do things which we are not able to do earlier, like customer data platforms. We are able to make predictions better. Imagine you can predict when your food is going to arrive. We don't predict so well when the car is going to arrive if you're buying a tractor or a car, etc. And hence in this era you have to be more predictable. The advantage of a front-to-back transformation, the advantage of using microservice architecture, the advantage of using a DevOps toolchain on the cloud with Google Cloud, and running SAP on the cloud gives us better agility, better innovation quotient, higher customer centricity. That's the whole agenda, how can you do it faster for the customer, keeping the customer the center of it, using data and AI.

The biggest business benefit I see is on our ESG agenda. Moving to a green cloud helps the carbon footprint. We are a company which is prioritizing the environment and sustainability as the foremost agenda, so that surely is an enabler, the cloud is an enabler for that agenda. Second, I think, is about digital businesses. I spoke about earlier that if you try to start a digital lending business in rural India, in semi-urban India, and scale it, it has to be a resilient cloud offering and the time to market of that is greatly reduced, I would say around 30 to 40 percent, by using the Google Cloud by running SAP on the back end. So that's a measurable impact. Also, we are leveraging the BTP platform, if you are aware of that, on the SAP side, which is a business transformation platform, which is a low-code no-code platform which will help us move things a lot faster, again 30 to 35 percent leverage there as well. So I see agility in a measurable fashion, time to market in a measurable fashion, total cost of ownership, the green and sustainability agenda, and the ecosystem play of digital platforms through API gateways as the big reason for the cloud. And all this will help us to be more affordable for the customer. It is all for the customer, where the cost of service or cost of product becomes comparable. So that's the advantage we're playing on. It's not just running an infrastructure service on the cloud, it's about transforming front to back, bringing in new businesses, and doing it faster and cheaper and better for the customer.

Well, I think gunning for a cloud native architecture, to me, is a better one. I already spoke about it's not about an infrastructure service or moving just your workloads to the cloud. That's an easy way out sometimes, the cop-out I would say. But the better way to realize the gain is using a microservice architecture, using open source to develop a cloud native architecture. That's one. Second, I think using native services in the cloud, and Google Cloud has so much to offer. Native services in the cloud, whether it's computer vision or machine vision, or Industry 4.0 if you're a manufacturing company like us, or data and AI if you're any kind of company which believes in using data for differentiation. Those have to be on the table. Second, I think business and stakeholder engagement, very important. So as a CIO or a CTO, engaging the CFO organization, engaging the business right up front makes a lot of sense.

Thank you very much and thanks for inviting me. A pleasure speaking to you.