Lenovo aiding Businesses transform Workforce

Rohit Midha,
Director, Commercial Named Account Business, Lenovo India

Customer centricity is of prime importance to every organization which is directing the transformation in IT. Another factor that has come into play in the last couple of years are the latest technologies, compute capacity and mobile devices. These when brought into forefront triggered the digital transformation.  

So to keep pace with the transformation, Lenovo has come up with its latest Think portfolio with advanced PC performance with Intel 8th Gen Intel Core processors and a powerful ThinkPad experience. The new and robust Thin and Light range of ThinkPad X1 along with the T, X and L series provides the perfect solution for professionals on the go who are looking for the latest ThinkPad features in a sleeker package.

Rohit Midha, Director, Commercial Named Account Business, Lenovo India said, “The digital transformation has catapulted businesses to transform their workforce. The latest Think portfolio is in line with the changes that new technologies have brought about. With the new Intel processor coupled with the legendary attributes of our Think product, the latest thin and light range is well equipped for the mobile workforce of today and tomorrow.”

To better understand the transformation that is happening in technology and the role of a CIO which has evolved big time over the period, Lenovo organized a panel discussion with a few eminent CIOs of the industry. 
 

Panel Discussion:

Vijay Sethi
Chief Information Officer, Hero MotoCorp

“Customer centricity has always been at the centre of the organizations for last 15-20 years. The way digital transformation is happening today over the last three to five years the amount of digital technology, compute capacity and smartphones that are available has been brought to the forefront.

Earlier what used to happen 10-12 years  back, IT department used to propose a solution to other department.  But what has happened in last couple of years is nearly everybody in each organization is fully aware of what digital technology can bring to the table, what value it can give to each organization, department and individual. This has led to a situation that now people are asking for solutions and second, from a CIO and CXO perspective or even in lower levels from IT manager to other business manager’s perspectives, earlier it was you are a provider and others are a taker but now you are a co-creator of the solutions.  So we sit with them, discuss business issues, what my business objective, what are the strategies.  

Today every household even a kid of two years proudly carries a phone or an iphone or probably any such device. Secondly, if you go back to five- six years back you take home a laptop and chances of the laptop that you brought in is slightly better than what you have in home but now it’s just the other way around, the laptops provided by most of the organization or enterprises to its employees are not that better when compared to what they possess personally. It means the enterprise also need to evolve from thick old, heavy laptops to thin, light, smart laptops. This is the change that is happening in the enterprises that laptop which used to be a utility device in some time back is not just a plain utility device but it is a kind of an ornament you carry and flaunt its specifications rather than just having a laptop.”

Somnath Mukherjee
Vice President - IT, CRM Services India

“Gone are the days when everything was working in silos. Today, right from manufacturing to selling the end product, everything needs to be integrated. And that’s where you see lot of data, computing and security coming in. So the core essence lies on customer centricity and I think that is moving the transformation in IT.

Today there is a lot of emphasis on data and the security accompanying it. Five years back when I had to work on my desktop in my organization, I never looked into having a TPM chipset. But now it has become more of a hygiene, and have to have things like bit lockers coming into play. So that’s a significant evolution I have seen taking place.

As a CIO, we need to be an innovator and a business enabler, because that’s what we have to work for in the coming time.

Today’s generations - the millennials, X generation, the Y generation are looking at having a smart, sleek and lightweight product. So, these are the buzzwords. I think now the laptops have become a fashion statement or style icon for most of the young generation and they like to flaunt that, the way they do with mobile devices. So that’s the trend we see. Gone are the days when we used to carry those bulky laptops, but that’s the biggest transformation I see in the younger generation.” 

Sachin Gupta
Sr. Vice President & CIO, Havells

“As far as transformation is concerned, I think we are seeing it across businesses and verticals.  Within the businesses the transformation is a key goal. One of the things that we as IT leaders have to keep in mind is we are looking at the transformation across the value chain of the business.

The role of the CIO has changed, it was role of a provider and now it becomes more of a business partner. A CIO now sits with the senior management discussing visions, strategy of the business with everybody and also suggest how technology can help organisations achieves their goals and visions. From a technology perspective, it used to be very difficult to talk about technology to your business leader, today it has become very simplified as a marketing head or a CMO understands technology as much as I understand. 

Laptop today has now become a model it’s something which you had to have, and just like a phone it is becoming more of a fashion statement. So it is becoming more difficult to say this is the laptop you should have, it is more like this is the laptop we are getting in and you need to support it. Both have some positive and negative side and with that comes a big security question. So to achieve that balance with the security and privacy issues as a CIO we want to do and give the best of the tools or the sleekest of the models.”