How Covid-19 Spurred Unprecedented Collaboration Among Indian CIOs 

In early April, a self-deprecating meme began spreading on WhatsApp groups for business IT leaders and observers. Styled as a multiple-choice question, the meme asked: “Who led the digital transformation of your company?”, with possible answers being the CEO, the CIO or Covid-19. The virus was highlighted as the right answer. It was meant to be funny, but it was ironic in more ways than one.

IT buying has traditionally followed a rigorous process in each company and can take between weeks to months. But when Indian companies realised in March that Covid-19 would drive an unprecedented wave in remote working, and by April realised that this new normal was here to stay for the foreseeable future, chief information officers had to drastically change traditional buying methodologies. Business leaders wanted employees to deliver the same levels of productivity from home as they did at work, and secure applications had to be deployed almost immediately to ensure remote working at scale. It was a scenario most companies had never even imagined, leave alone plan for. As Mrinal Chakraborty, executive vice president, technology and innovation at DTDC Express Ltd., puts it, whether companies had business continuity plans in place or not—and few have business continuity plans at scale—CIOs had to deliver business continuity.

Yogesh Zope, chief digital officer at the manufacturing-driven Kalyani Group which has over 10,000 employees, says manufacturing companies were even further behind the curve than others. His immediate challenge was to ensure that their employees could move beyond mere virtual meetings to collaboration. While some companies never used the Teams application in the Microsoft Office suite till Covid-19 took them by surprise, Zope decided to deploy the tool from scratch and neither he or his colleagues had the time for a steep learning curve. Traditional consulting models wouldn’t work too. Hence, he needed to find fellow CIOs who had deployed Teams and were already familiar with its collaborative workflows. And he had to ensure deployment happened almost instantaneously, with best practices shared within the organisation to kick-start collaboration among remote employees. He turned to CIO groups on WhatsApp for help and found useful advice and collaboration strategies. In turn, Zope had considerable expertise to share in deploying virtual desktop infrastructure, and he helped other CIOs set up VDI solutions that enabled workforces to gain secure access to corporate servers without data being stored on home PCs.

CIOs like Anjani Kumar, who leads technology at Strides Pharma Science Ltd., a global pharmaceutical company headquartered in Bangalore, helped others deploy collaboration tools. “Since I come from a consulting background, I could use my experience to guide others,” he says. He even provided tips to some CIOs on conducting company-wide town halls, not exactly rocket science, but something many IT departments had simply never done. “And of course, VDI, which became very big, very quickly in the early days of the lockdown—many companies needed help on VDI on specific cloud platforms and especially when it came to quickly deploying solutions.”

Pertisth Mankotia, CIO at Sheela Foam Ltd., known for the Sleepwell brand of mattresses, says the Covid-19 led disruption meant his company needed immediate business model innovation. “Because of the lockdown our 6,000+ showrooms across India were shut. My challenge was ensuring that we could reach customers even when they couldn’t visit our shops.” And now that India is opening, he needs to ensure technology tools can help protect staff and customers across these showrooms from Covid-19. As a member of the governing body of a CIO Club, he had access to a range of informed perspectives from others in the association.

For one of India’s large auto companies, employee wellness became the key mantra during the lockdown. This was especially important because this company leveraged its acclaimed supply chain to help an Indian startup manufacture thousands of much-needed ventilators for hospitals across India. According to their CIO, who did not want to be named, they created a comprehensive health tracking app in March and soon realised that CIOs of suppliers, many of whom didn't have the expertise to quickly build such apps, could use it to ensure their managements had visibility on employee wellness. The auto major used the cloud to give suppliers access to custom versions of the app that were accessible only by that supplier. Today, the company has also rolled out the app to dealers.

While CIOs helped each other out with quick deployments, sharing experiences with various solutions, they also exchanged tips on reducing IT costs and making a business case to boards for urgent buying requirements. But all of them realised that Covid-19 disruption meant that business IT vendors would also have to support their immediate cost reduction imperatives. And that meant asking for moratoriums on payments for services that were not used, for instance office telecom services, or better payment terms for IT hardware and software. Renegotiating licence fees, renegotiating service contracts and the like also became important. And that’s where many CIOs realised that presenting a united front with sound, well-researched proposals might help them get better outcomes.

These CIOs discussed what their companies needed in the light of the massive economic disruption, developed common frameworks on asks from vendors, and then each CIO made their own requests to vendors on behalf of their companies. While no CIO is willing to discuss the names of vendors on record, citing confidentiality clauses, almost everyone admits that thanks to their collaborative approach, some business technology vendors saw the writing on the wall and supported them by agreeing to concessions and renegotiations. From deferred payments, to warranty and license extensions, to discounts where hardware or telecom services were not being used, many CIOs managed to get significant concessions from some vendors.

“CIOs democratised their requirements. They adopted a common tone and pitch and exchanged notes on managing pressure on costs and contract renegotiations, even as they made separate requests to vendors. It was clear there was a united front, even if actual representation happened individually,” explains the CIO of the auto major. Adds Zope of the Kalyani Group, “Taking up issues independently during an unprecedented crisis such as this would have meant some CIOs might have lost potential opportunities to rationalise costs, renegotiate contracts and the like. Thanks to informal collaboration we could request and sensitise vendors about our urgent needs.”

All the CIOs BloombergQuint spoke to believe that collaboration—from knowledge sharing to helping with quick deployments, to a united front with vendors—was possible because CIOs are among the best networked set of business leaders. “India has a unique CIO networking model that builds upon our Indian sense of community. Thanks to this, CIO relationships have always been stronger in India as opposed to other countries, and networking forums and bodies such as CIO Clubs have only helped strengthen bonds. One way of approaching IT buying decisions is to go to a big-name, global IT advisory firm, but the far more cost-effective way may be to simply pick up the phone,” explains the CIO of the auto major who is considered a mentor to many other CIOs across India.

IAs India reopens for regular business, it will not be business-as-usual. Most CIOs believe that collaboration among CIOs will continue given the new business and technology realities. “In this new normal, people engagement will be very important. Earlier, coming to the workplace and working together was normal. In remote working scenarios, the ability to engage and track productivity will a huge area and demand for employee-related services and products will rise,” says the auto sector CIO. He expects trends like these to continue the collaboration drive among CIOs. Zope from the Kalyani Group agrees. “We simply can't continue with traditional ways of deploying technology in the current situation, which demands frugal, agile IT, with minimal investments and a high level of accountability towards business.”

Sanchit Vir Gogia, chief analyst & CEO at Greyhound Research and one of India’s keenest observers of CIO trends, says: “There is a dramatic shift in mindsets within organisations. Expectations from IT are changing, and boards want same or better delivery from IT at a lower cost. This is getting translated into demands for additional business SLAs (service-level agreements) from the earlier requirement of just technical SLAs from vendors, and outcome-based models are taking centre-stage.”

Gogia sees a greater focus on private and hybrid cloud and continuing high levels of investment in security as remote working becomes well entrenched. At the same time, he sees CIOs facing greater workloads than in the pre-pandemic days and, therefore, working longer hours with little time for learning. In such an uncertain scenario, the only way to go forward with some level of certainty is through a collaborative approach. Strength lies in numbers and Indian CIOs are making the most of it.