Digital Leader 2018: HARNATH BABU:KPMG India

KPMG India | PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

HARNATH BABU, CIO

Heading: IT vendors need to focus on the solution rather than products.

Key IT Spending Areas FY 2018-19

Applications Development
IT Infrastructure
Information Security

5 KEY SOLUTIONS DEPLOYED IN 2017-18

Striving to constantly innovate and grow while meeting business objectives, KPMG in India recently deployed emerging technologies viz., Bots, Robotics Process Automation (RPA), and voice-based digital assistants – bringing together a smart combination of skilled human resources and digital workers. Here is the brief on how we are bringing in digital transformation:
Project 1
Name: Chat Bot
Project brief description: Leveraging Cognitive Computing technology, we have developed and introduced Chat Bot, a powerful conversational messenger bot to make it easier for users to get their IT-related queries resolved from wherever they are via a chat interface on their systems. The chatbot addresses generic IT queries and concerns in real time.

Project 2
Name: RPA
Project brief description: Taking a step further, we have implemented Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in a number of Finance and Tax-related processes, thereby eliminating the most time-consuming and tedious manual processes as well as saving employees’ time and efforts. For instance, we automated the invoice generation and digital signing process for Finance division – saving close to 18 man hours per day (around 4800 man hours per year in one process).

Project 3
Name: Data Center Modernization
Project brief description: An early adopter of ‘cloud’ amongst the big four of the professional consulting world, KPMG has made rapid strides in embracing a modern approach. While on one hand, we are consolidating existing infrastructure to a co-located data center, we are also moving to the Hybrid cloud and have partnered with Microsoft Azure.

We modernized our data center environment by consolidating existing infrastructure to a robust and efficient co-located data center. This has led to the following benefits:

• Simplified management of data centers
• Facilitated growth of the KPMG business ecosystem
• Enhanced information security
• Ensured compliance with safety standards
• Maximized efficiency of servers with reduced operational and maintenance costs
• Optimized demand and meet computational requires on ‘pay per use’ basis

Project 4
Name: Service Desk Analytics
Description: With 18000-strong workforce, offering valuable services to some of the world’s leading companies, increased productivity is all about continuous collaboration today. Any disruption in service is deemed as a lost opportunity. The IT Service desk at KPMG aims to provide business users with best-in-class customer experience for all their IT service-related queries and concerns. In the absence of consolidated MIS for IT Operations, it was difficult to assess the actual service desk performance and get a clear picture of C-SAT from the work done.
The implementation of service desk visual analytics along with the mobile application is aimed at:
• Providing feedback through a mobile app for the services availed
• Reducing the average ticket ratio for incidents logged and bringing it to an optimum range of .12 - .18 per week
• Increasing the overall C-SAT by at least 30%
• Providing a significant service up-time to business users and increasing SLAs to 99%
Handy visualizations from the service desk dashboards provide precise, detailed insights about the SLA dropping incident categories, service desk engineers, time frames and a variety of other parameters. Understanding obtained from such dashboards has led to the creation of a variety of service improvement plans such as:
1. Data Cleansing
2. Formulation of appropriate service categories
3. Creation of books of knowledge for both business users and service desk engineers
The dashboards are designed for use by the executive, management and operations levels and are being rolled out to other departments as well in a bid to achieve process efficiency.
Outcome: After the launch of Service Delivery Analytics tool and mobile application, significant improvements have been witnessed in the IT operations landscape. Here is a quick glimpse at a few notable business results achieved so far:
1) Increase in service up time for all business users with a reduction in average ticket ratio by ~17%
2) C-SAT has increased to 92% & SLAs to 1% within the first quarter
3) Operations and management can now pitch for prudent service improvement plans, policy changes armed with visual and actionable intelligence

Project 5
Name: Mobility and collaboration
Description: Taking forward our mobility initiatives to enhance customer experience, we implemented a Mobile Device Management system which enables employees to access official emails right on their hand-held devices. Our teams also built a feature rich corporate mobile application that makes it easier for our staff members to perform routine tasks while on the move.
We deployed BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) policy to enable all staff members to use their personal mobile phones at work and access the firm’s network. We have also implemented collaborative solutions within the firm to enable employees to stay connected and work together from wherever they are through audio/video conferencing, knowledge management and document sharing tools.
Outcome: The mobility and collaboration solutions have been adopted by over thousands of employees and has yielded in huge costs as well as time savings. It has helped the employees stay connected from wherever they are. Furthermore, the implementation of modern workforce trends has led to increased employee satisfaction.

WHAT DOES DIGITAL MEAN FOR YOU?

Being digital means being connected to each other through platforms available 24/7. It is about being futuristic and making the most out of today’s emerging technologies to engage with the customers and implementing a completely new way of doing businesses – thereby creating value and driving improved performance.

NAME 3 BEST PRACTICES FOR ALIGNING IT WITH NEW NORMAL BUSINESS DEMANDS?

• Understanding business and their specific requirements
  • Delivering differentiating products or services – focused on the market niche
  • Strengthening ties with customers and suppliers

WHAT IS THAT ONE KEY MESSAGE YOU WOULD LIKE TO GIVE TO IT VENDORS?

IT vendors need to focus on the solution rather than products.

SIGNIFICANT MILESTONES AS CIO (CURRENT AND PAST ROLES)

Having led a number of companies through IT transformation, I have received the following accolades:
• CIO 100 - Year 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013 and 2010
• CIO Power List Award – 2017 and 2018
• IDC DX Award 2018
• IDC - ICONIC awards 2014 and 2017
• DC LIVE-Business Technology awards 2015
• EDGE – 2014 and 2012
• India Top 10 CIOs award for the year 2014 – Hitech
• India's most respected CIO - 2011