Posted by “Digital transformation is a complex process and transformative efforts fail due to multiple reasons. The complexity increases manifold if the organisational departments, people, systems, and devices are not working in sync,” says Newgen’s Diwakar Nigam.
Certainly, digital transformation has become one of the megatrends across business verticals globally. However, when it comes to the execution of digital transformation projects, enterprises and organisations face not only many challenges but their projects fail as well. And that’s where they need to take help from consultants and experts or can rely on cloud-based platforms.
In this interview, Diwakar Nigam, MD – Newgen Software talks to TechHerald.in to discusses various aspects of digital transformation including execution, challenges, project failures and drivers. He also shares insights on his company’s recently launched cloud-based digital transformation platform Newgen ONE and the benefits it brings to enterprises and organisations as well as growth in SaaS revenues and more...
Edited excerpts…
Q1.Digital transformation remains a major trend globally today. But in terms of its execution, which route enterprises and organisations are taking? Can you shed some light on the execution aspect of the digital transformation trend?
Diwakar Nigam: The pandemic has increased the urgency for digital. Organisations are prioritising their IT investments and are focused on providing a secure remote working environment. Different enterprises are taking distinct routes to accelerate their digital transformation journey. Some relying on consultants for implementing an internal IT infrastructure, while others are investing in cloud-based platforms.
We, as an organisation, are witnessing increased traction in cloud deployments of our digital transformation platform. The low code and cloud capabilities of our platform are helping organisations in quickly responding to their evolving business needs, efficiently automating their broken processes, and enabling anytime, anywhere operations.
Q2.Which are the key drivers of digital transformation among Indian enterprises and organisations?
Diwakar Nigam: In recent times, digital adoption has taken the centre stage for enterprises across the globe. Enterprises are actively leveraging digital to meet the dynamic market requirements and deliver a seamless employee and customer experience.
Uninterrupted operations, cost optimisation, and efficiency maximisation have been the key drivers behind the accelerated pace of digital transformation. Also, the organisations are keeping no stone unturned to stay competitive. They are enabling business continuity for anywhere, anytime operations, embracing enterprise agility and innovation to stay future-proof and increasing penetration of new-age technologies to simplify complex business processes.
Q3.What are the major challenges enterprises and organisations mostly face on their digital transformation journey?
Diwakar Nigam: Businesses face different types of challenges and roadblocks in their digital journey, such as industry disruptions, demand for new technologies, security and compliance issues, and changing customer needs. Some of the other common challenges include high IT dependency and legacy IT systems, fragmented data sources and enterprise-wide silos, lack of contextual automation and inefficient processes.
It is imperative for organisations to recognise these challenges and effectively address them by building the right digital framework and investing in the right tools.
Q4. Industry surveys point out that a very high percentage of digital transformation projects actually fail during execution or falls short of delivering desired outcomes. So what’s your take on the failure of digital transformation projects?
Diwakar Nigam: Digital transformation is a complex process and transformative efforts fail due to multiple reasons. The complexity increases manifold if the organisational departments, people, systems, and devices are not working in sync.
Enterprises must manage their processes, content, and communications—as they develop business applications—solving for end-to-end customer journeys. Some of these business applications are simple, with limited customer interactions. While there are other business applications that are complex, content-driven, and involve sophisticated, omnichannel customer interactions. Organisations need to solve the latter complexities in their digital transformation initiatives by investing in the right technology.
Q5. Recently, Newgen launched its new digital transformation platform NewgenONE. So how does it benefits organisations and fulfill their requirements of digital transformation?
Diwakar Nigam: Today, the digital transformation requirements of an enterprise are complicated. They have complex business processes that span multiple business areas. The information these business processes manage is also complex, with unstructured data that includes images, videos, and documents. And, finally, the engagements needed for these processes are complex, with multiple channels, including emails and texts.
NewgenONE is a true digital transformation platform that is powerful enough to handle any level of complexity—simplify even the most complex business processes, manage the messiest information, and drive customer engagement based on changing demands.
NewgenONE, combines existing process automation, content services, and communication management capabilities. The platform enables enterprises to leverage low code to develop and deploy complex, content-driven, and customer-engaging business applications on the cloud. NewgenONE provides users with information while empowering professional IT developers with speed and agility.
Furthermore, it enables seamless integration of business applications with back-end and third-party systems. It helps enterprises perform millions of transactions, enable remote access to hundreds of thousands of employees, and handle billions of documents and communications.
Q6.The newly launch platform is available across 72 countries. So can you talk about tie-ups with cloud providers and system integrators in taking the platform’s reach to customers globally?
Diwakar Nigam: We strongly believe in the capabilities of our NewgenONE platform. Leading enterprises globally rely on our digital transformation platform and we look forward to its increased adoption across the globe.
We have partnered with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure to provide secure, scalable, and cloud-ready solutions to our customers. Furthermore, our relationships with system integrators have played an integral role in customer acquisitions in our joint markets.
We are seeing increasing traction in the developed markets of the US, Europe, and APAC with a focus on sales through Global System Integrators (GSIs). We have won 8 large customer orders through GSIs during FY’21 and look forward to continuing this growth trend.
Q7.The company’s SaaS revenues have grown 29% Y-o-Y in Q1, FY22. So what is driving the cloud business overall? And how much impact the new platform offering will have on SaaS revenue going ahead?
Diwakar Nigam: People are realising the importance of digital to weather the COVID storm and are opting for a unified platform to streamline their processes and meet business requirements. This has led to an increased demand for our low code digital transformation platform. We expect the momentum to continue across all industries globally in the medium and long term.
We continue to see the rapid adoption of cloud across verticals and geographies. The pandemic has brought in a new kind of uncertainty to the business environment. Cloud has been an enabler in these critical times, allowing for faster and agile implementations and secure remote operations. Our cloud revenues witnessed a growth of 29% Y-o-Y during Q1 FY’22 and with increasing demand across geographies, we expect a further uptick in the coming quarters.