Digital Transformation is not a one-time intervention - it is a journey

Hero MotoCorp Ltd. (Formerly Hero Honda Motors Ltd.) is the world’s largest manufacturer of two - wheelers, based in India 

Going Digital - what does it mean to you and your organization?

Going Digital is about creating or unlocking value for the business by leveraging advancements in technology. It can be about the new way of doing business, new business models or explore newer areas, delivering better customer experience across the value chain, re-engineering the way of working within an organization including collaboration and decision making. It is not just about using technology but also about changing mindsets of the various stakeholders including employees especially about using data to make better and faster decisions, changing the organizational processes, policies, and way of working to enhance the customer experience.

What is your Digital Transformation plan, strategy and the deliverables you expect or already coming in?

We at Hero embarked on this journey a few years back - starting with a huge focus on SMAC and changing our processes and other systems. As part of this, we also modernized our IT infrastructure and applications and gave a huge thrust on enhancing  competence levels of team. While that was the basic step, as we progressed by making it more structured. First step was to prioritise the areas that we will start - of course, customer experience being the central theme -but there are many other areas that impact the overall experience - be it sales, service, operations, planning, supply chain, logistics, etc and decided as to what our objectives of digital transformation are. As a next step, it was about looking at the possible technology solutions and interventions that can help us achieve those objectives. Now, we are on this journey where a number of steps have been taken but the reality also is that it is not a static plan. With continuous evolution of technology, changing customer needs and expectations and the organizations increasing digital maturity, the roadmap and the Digital Transformation Plan in itself is a live document that is evolving. There have been many successes (and failures and learnings) on the way thus far but I will call them as stepping stones in our Digital Transformation journey and the journey continues.