Okay. I think we are live fingers crossed. Let's wait for a few people to join in. We were not expecting a lot of people today because it is 21st of December, which is a holiday. But, oh, we have our first person, first few people joining in. Awesome. we know for a fact that we are like, great. Love your...
Love your dedication for the people who joined in on a holiday to hear Koushik Jai and I talk about bringing technology initiatives to enterprises or traditional businesses. Thank you for joining in. Please subscribe. I'll make my pitch towards the end as well. But let's begin. Hello and welcome to Momentum Office Arts. My name is Yash and I'm joined by my co-founders Jai and Koushik to discuss topic of the week.
which is bringing technology initiatives to traditional businesses. Our goal with this live is to provide you with actionable insights and practical strategies that can be applied to your own business. Throughout the session, we encourage you to engage with us by asking questions and sharing your thoughts. This is a fantastic opportunity to learn from each other and give new insights that can help drive your technology initiatives forward. So let's get started. Jay, Koushik, how are we doing today?
relaxed a little bit compared to other weeks because we have no meetings so Koushik cannot get to say that doesn't get to say that we have a lot of meetings. Yeah no meetings at all so like my calendar is completely free there's just nothing that's happening. The only meeting that I had was was essentially an internal sort of a monthly check-in that I had scheduled six months ago with someone.
And that's the only like time block. But this is super free. I'm feeling nervous. I'm not afraid of this often. awesome. So Jay, take us through what, like why is bringing technological, technology initiatives bringing to traditional businesses? How and why is that different, difficult, easy than any other tech related initiatives at any other business?
Yes, so first of all if we look at the traditional businesses we are talking about you know most of these are where large amount of volume is involved with respect to human interactions and when we say traditional businesses these businesses are already well set from beforehand and so there may or may not be tech involved in the same what happens is now with increase in you know
internet consumption from people and advancement in the technology of course which I will take through in a while. What happens is lot of new things are coming in and so if we talk about why this topic is important first of all then I would say that you know it's very important that we adapt to the fast moving pace of how things are moving so as to ensure that you know like businesses are there in the market and that is one. Second would be the scalability as well. Now
because of the increase in internet consumption and things being at very ease. It's also important that a technological part is also, you know, that well international businesses so as to ensure that scalability happens smoothly. We'll go case to case from industry to industry so as to get diode deeper into the same. But it's like you cannot avoid it. If you avoid it, maybe then there are no chances even if you are a huge company.
you to stay because the new companies are always going to have their tech enablement and based on which they are going to get skilled and they can replace it even faster. So, yep, it's very crucial for traditional businesses if their technology, if they have not involved technology yet or if there is a scope of improving and increasing the usage of technology that needs to be explored. that's important. and when I was researching for our conversation today, I came across
startling and almost a frightening fact, which said that 52 % of Fortune 500 companies have shut down in the last 20 years. That's like half like, so just imagine that in 2004, the list of Fortune 500 and the 2024 the list of Fortune 500 like half of those Fortune 500, the largest 500 companies in the world, half of those
don't exist anymore and that was I'm sure technology initiatives and adoption has had some role to play in that as well. But Koushik what are your thoughts? I would be actually adding to that is that it's about how would one even go about dealing with this organizational change. So we know that we are talking about problems at scale.
Specifically, right? that's when, so we have, as you just mentioned, when multiple entities start getting involved, the technological need is, it's extremely necessary. So how does one go about having this change? Like, how do I even approach this in the first place?
Jay I am sure your answer is extremely insightful but it is un-muted. it is un-muted. I am so sorry. So, if you talk about how to go ahead with the organisational change, first of all I would like to highlight Koushik that as Yash mentioned that 52 % of Fortune 500 companies are shutting down, they have shut down because they were not able to navigate through this particular path. So the main challenge is that
come through is first of all is the resistance to change due to you know a fear of unknown because when we talk about let's say a company which is doing I won't put numbers here but let's it's operating at a fairly larger scale and if digital transformation is yet to be done but now they are at a state where you know they understand that business can only continue if digital transformation is there either their competitor is you know growing very at a faster pace and capturing markets which are already occupied by them.
that could be one or if there can be other reasons as well. Right. So what happens is like main one of the challenges which companies typically face is like their own employees are resistant to this particular change because you know, there is one thing is that routine can change from operational standpoint and the other thing could be like a fear of unknown. They don't know that when they would get replaced. whenever any such things are coming in, as I mentioned at the start,
volume is involved even not from the customer standpoint but on a larger extent even from the employee number of team members standpoint that is there so that is one of the challenges second is make a tanks like what it typically needs is a clear form of communication and along with that it also needs a leadership support which is missing at the tanks so what happens is as you mentioned how do one do it we typically since we also provide digital transformation
we typically provide as a consultation part we typically suggest to go for Kotra's 8 step framework which is basically how you need to eventually do this transformation process so it's not like that okay we know that we need to let's say it's a retail industry and they need to implement ERP so it's not just like they will just implement it there are ways to do it first of all Womso ever is responsible
for this particular site, you need to make them advocate for the same so that the other employees are also ready for that. And there are proper ways in which we can go in detail later on, but the frameworks need to be utilized so that things operate smoothly, which many companies don't do because when we are talking about digital transformation to traditional businesses, traditional businesses don't have much idea about the technological side and that's where
They don't have the exact process on how to get these things done. Even if they recruit the team on their own for their own selves, they would still need some form of consultation so as to make sure how things go ahead. This is one of the challenges why, you know, people don't operate. This is where the organization change doesn't happen. But once you follow the process, then it could happen as well. That's interesting because very often we see this thing where you would have been a brick and mortar business.
and there is a level where from that brick and mortar stage to you, you are still scaling within that model but realizing that systems are not working the same way it used to be you know when you were small and people are not working, people are that technology interaction is not happening the same way there is somewhere something is going wrong but you have no idea where is it going wrong or what is going wrong so yeah yeah yeah completely I mean
lot of things are there because the operations are complicated, people's emotions are also not easily understood, you might not know that why this person is going through this particular phase and everything so there are ways to do it and to sum it up in short one is the framework that needs to be followed through there are standard frameworks which needs to be followed you can choose either of them whichever works best for the organization and then need to implement it accordingly the second is
Even the training and involvement of employees need to be there from scratch so that this thing happens smoothly. So those are the initial steps one should be taking care of and then it can move on. And so one of the things that we've noticed while some of the projects that we've also undertaken and as consumers or as customers we've seen other businesses sort of transform themselves from
how we've been consuming their products and services. There's a lot of talk about companies being completely physical in store in general and then moving to digital and then over a period of time sort of offering this thing called FIGITAL, which is a mixture of physical and digital sort of seamlessly coming together. And so one of the things that I wanted to understand was that the biggest...
pushback that comes whenever some amount of technology initiatives need to be implemented is from the team, right? Which is where they would agree to a lot of things when meetings are going on, when conversations are being had. Then there's a passive sort of resistance or passive rebellion of sorts in terms of not cooperating, just not letting the project go through. How do you view it?
How do you sort of advise owners of these or founders of these traditional businesses that have been around for a few decades or more? How do you advise them to sort of overcome this? This is a good question. So let's try to understand. One challenge we already talked about is where the employees themselves are against it. And that's where you're stating that how do we overcome this?
but I would like to also highlight that it's not just always about the employees but it could be from the leadership standpoint as well so for instance let's consider a case where an organization has been doing great and all of these things were operated through certain set of people but then let's say one of the main owners was the one involved in this and he or she has a thought process that you know
basically whatever frameworks I have set up for the organization this is how the business is to be done and they themselves are not ready to you know opt for this change so there can be two things one is employees themselves and the second could be this set of people who are also in board of directorship and then they are controlling this change however for the people who already know that you know these set of changes are needed to be happen because it is either a need for improved visibility
or for improved operations or it could be an improvement from the experience and from the users as we mentioned the cases so how to work on this as you asked would be again to work on the model but along with that they also need to showcase the ROI right so what can be done is there has to be ways on know projecting this set of ROIs once you actually since it's a business so
when you are going to present this to a board of directors that okay this particular change is going to help us in these many ways and if you are going to project the numbers with the right set of KPIs it would be helpful. So that is one from handling the challenge with respect to a senior person who has already been a part of the board and who is the decision maker. When it comes to employees as I mentioned
more focus is to be given on you know the message has to be passed in unified way what happens is people are not at times people are not that much comfortable in communicating something because of the oppose that you as you mentioned but how it could happen is let's say an idea is being cooked upon digital transformation from you know in a particular company what can be done is it can be first discussed among senior hierarchy
the poor people who are in a VP position they need to be indicated with this idea and they need to be given the ownership of this. What happens is that it's not just an owner talking about these but ultimately the VPs are also becoming advocates for the same and then since ownership is given and also the merit can be given on how they are enabling this particular thing so it will become their own mission to pass this message.
owners or the directors can themselves just put on the philosophy on how you know they are planning to take the company ahead and how it would since more business will come through it will be beneficial for all the employees but however the VPs are the people who should inculcate the training aspect of it and the other benefit aspect for it so it should pass from hierarchy to hierarchy is what I am trying to say and then the
subordinate if we become advocates of this then things can become easier as well.
I think as a follow up to that Jay, so when you just mentioned initiatives with respect to ROI, so what technological initiatives are we talking about here that would have a direct or a maximum impact upon my ROI?
No, so we just need to understand like if the technology is included then what sort of impact it's going to bring. So for example, let's discuss it in the format of examples, right? So let's say a logistic company is there and it's operating in a traditional aspect where everything is being fulfilled through traditional way. Now, if their owner is getting an idea that okay,
in the market this is a trend where they are using route optimization through AI and GPS now if the same idea is being transformed over there what will come up what would happen is that even the let's say truck drivers are there they are supposed to you know do some entries or make sure that the technological tool which is used inside the truck is running up to the mark and they are marking the entries and all of these things right so
These challenges will come up but what I trying to say is if the ROI is measured in a way where everyone is getting benefited these messages need to be passed upon and that's how it would follow. So if this idea is to be presented you could say that this amount of investment would come through but after that projections need to be showcased that after 1 year or 1.5 years after implementing this particular technology.
these are the results which would come up and this is how it could benefit you as well as all of us. So let's assume that I am a let's define a traditional business right so let's say I'm a you know chemicals company or a textile company or for a manufacturing setup that does let's say 20 million in annual rendering and I've been doing this business
slowly sort of growing at 8-10 % a year. I've been doing this for let's say 15 audience. And up until now, I have a system that I have set up, which is sort of very people-centric. There are some processes in certain places, but largely it is people-centric. And in traditional organizations, one of the things that we've also noticed is that the median tenure is significantly higher of employees. So median tenure of employees is significantly higher.
it's typically four years, six years, eight years. And so I have certain senior leaders who have been around for a while and they've been working a certain way. In such a scenario, and again, this is a very biased question, in such a scenario, what is advisable? Should it be an in-house initiative to digitally transform the whole organization? Or should you have a third party vendor sort of come in, look at
how the system is set up and then offer consultation or should it be essentially trial and error where we start with one department or we start with one geography and then we see sort of what is working, what is not working, what should be the approach. So let's say 20 million run rate, textiles or slash manufacturing company been working since 15 years, I'm the owner.
I know that there are certain inefficiencies. We are very people-centric. We are not process-oriented. How do I go about bringing tech initiatives to my traditional business?
Again, great question. Yes. So I would like to highlight one important aspect to this, right? This business is already doing great. So it cannot afford first of all to, you know, anything getting reduced. Business cannot reduce it. It always has to go up or improve. What happens is with these many years of expertise that they have in their particular domain. Now, if they are coming up with an idea that, okay, let's have our own team and let's have
all of these processes getting done. They may hire or recruit someone in-house directly but what would happen is there is no person who knows well from their own organization on whether these things are going right or wrong. So they may do this trial and error thing but it may or may not work out and when we talk about measuring the projections it could be difficult because they don't have the KPI's to measure.
So what happens in this particular area is it will be trial and error and it will be obviously a lot of amount of money will be used but again if you are hiring these people it's a bigger challenge as well directly right so good way to go about it would be to get a consultant who is already an expert in this particular field and get these things going so obviously having a consultant and then getting your team ready through them is more advisable.
It may vary from business to businesses of course but at least moving ahead with having a consultant is important and that's how it should typically go because we need to ensure that you know the new implementation which is going to come should not impact the existing operations that are there and for this there needs to be a seamless integration of digital part that is coming through. If it's a retail business an ERP has to be implemented in a way where
Traditional businesses are not impacted, mean the typical flow is not impacted and everything is running smoothly for that matter. yeah, this only a consultant would be able to assist and not the other way around. And so for people who are watching this, if you are taking Jay's advice and if your next question is, okay, thanks Jay, where do I find them? Then I want to add that you found them. So you're already on the...
in the right area, Koushik Jay and I do this for a living. so wherever you're watching this, you'll be able to find the link to our website, fill out the form, we'll get on a call and we'll take the next steps from there. So just to add to what Jai said, right? So there are very experienced, mature people in the organization bring in the expertise that is required to run the business and third-party consultants bring in the subject matter experts.
right and you want to as a business owner you want to sort of figure out a way to bring both of them together and then without affecting the general business operations you want to slowly and gradually sort of transform and then so third party is way to go. So if you're taking up Jaya's advice click on whatever it is that you see below this video and you'll come to the website.
Koushik, any questions from your side? Jay, you wanted to add something? please. Just very small thing. So we talked about certain set of challenges, right, with respect to getting things done. So mainly, I just want to reiterate what sort of challenges are there for the digital transformation. First, as I mentioned about integration capability, has to be very smooth. So that is there. Apart from this, there's a large amount of data that needs to be managed, right? So if it's a digital data that needs to be managed,
You need to have those set of people who already know how to do this. You might be really good at your business, but you don't know how that data needs to be managed digitally. there's a lot of even cyber security needs to be there at place. So that particular thing needs to be taken care of. The third would be organizational management. You know how to run your organization for sure. But when the changes like these, there are certain frameworks which needs to be followed up on. So that was the other part that we discussed.
and the last one would be more about the skill set as well right so if you are recruiting someone in-house directly and you know getting things done there could be a good chance that that particular person which you are hiring as your maybe a tech lead what happens is they may be you know comfortable with a particular set of language for instance let's say you want to develop certain in-house software for your operational needs
What happens is just because they are comfortable in a particular tech they would recommend you certain tech and you are hiring someone expert so there are slight chances that even this technology which this person is comfortable with is the one which is not going to have that amount of talent pool coming in. So it is always advisable to go for someone who already is in the market helping with these particular solutions at least it will help you with getting the idea on where you stand and what needs to be worked upon so you can
see a complete overview of how things are going to operate first and get more details over it.
Yeah, could you give us any example of such traditional business that went ahead and implemented such a digital transformation and it has led to some change. Do we have any case theory that we could talk about? All Fortune 500 companies that are alive today, please Jayan, any examples of cases will be helpful. So,
One I can recall, I mean there are a lot of cases for sure but one I can recall and which many people would correlate especially is Asian pains. So it was very early in the market I would say even when digital transformation kind of discussion used to happen but even before that it understood implemented business intelligence and data analytics in a very nicer way where it gets to know that you know
which particular area. For people who might not know what is Asian paints, if you can talk a little about what is Asian paints and then what they would have done. Yeah, yeah, sure. So Asian paints is basically, it basically provides the paints for
Residencies and commercial buildings as well so if you want to paint any of the buildings you can get the paint from the same What it did was I mean there can be many details that can be there but I would just like to sum it up real quick and that is it set up a system where it was able to understand
how and what sort of colours are needed, amount of colours are needed it implemented BI so that you got to know that where particular set of colours are needed and so that you know it can deliver exactly that amount of it can just apply that amount of paints to that particular store so that was one and it also implemented technology in which it in a way where you know that particular colour gets developed real fast
so that there is no challenge with supply and only that amount of paints are being you know shipped to that particular store so yeah that was one the second example which I could I could recall right now is about Zara so Zara's retail chain got a great amount of you know response but it was not having these type of digitized you know operations first but while doing this form of ERP solutions and implementing it for its own
We made sure that the brand value is not going down and the transformation is going smoothly. So these are the two pieces which I could make.
Yeah and so like sorry Kashi you were saying. No, I was just Asian Paints is a good example because I remember a friend of mine shared me a Harvard paper on how Asian Paints is a data company in disguise of know paint company so I was also curious I think that's a very good example because I think that has entirely made them the predominant player in the market at least I guess.
You can't have someone who is next to them, mean who is in the same level as how they are playing at a larger level. Yeah, no for sure. like Asian Beans, to, so their digital transformation obviously was done by IBM. And they are a leading paint and decor company, know, subsidiaries in 15 countries, 27 manufacturing facilities, serving with customers in 60.
countries and have like 70,000 dealers all across the world. And so to digitize all of them, mean, while digitizing all of that is a big question, I'm not even sure as to without digitization, how was that company running? How do they make the, so I think that digitization journey has been very documented by Harvard, by IBM, by a lot of companies with their just in time delivery with their
As Jay mentioned, the speed with which they were able to bring out new colors and decor and stuff like that. But I think that's a great case study to sort of look at as well and Zara for sure. But with that, we come to the end of our conversation for today. For all the people who joined in, thank you. And it was a pleasure catching up.
with you on the holiday season that we have ongoing and thank you Jay for the insights that you shared. Just if you have still not subscribed, please consider subscribing, sharing it with someone who you know who runs traditional business, who's looking for any sort of digital transformation, building digital experiences or bringing technology initiatives into their organizations as well.
We run Momentum 91 where we use AI and technology to solve meaningful business problems. If you got value from this video, do subscribe or follow. If you did not get value from this video, still do subscribe and follow so that we can reach to a meaningful number and then we have resources to bring more value in the future videos that we do for you, right. But until then, until next week.
Until next time, thank you for joining in. See you soon. Bye. Bye.
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