TechGig's team Interacted with Syed Peerzade, CIO, Reliance Big Entertainment to explore the changing role of CIOs who are now transforming IT from a business enabler to a business enhancer.
Below are the excerpts from the interaction-:
Please tell us about your current responsibilities as a group CIO ? What will be your key focus areas in the coming years?
My responsibilities as a Group CIO are to align the group business vision to technology function. Reliance Entertainment is a diverse group, it consists of Movie, Television, and Digital business (OTT, Gaming etc). The challenge is to keep a tab on all developments across and get involved as a business board member rather than technology head.
Being Dynamic in nature, this business always needs you to be on your toes and bring necessary innovations in technology to bring more process automation.
I am working on improvements like better analytics for better data driven decision making, improving the cloud infrastructure, working on internal group synergy like where and how we can use the products developed and working on more business automation using ERP.
There are also couple of new digital product development life cycles for new business launches which you will hear very soon. Our focus is to provide better end user experience on our products which will definitely strengthen the business. This is a never ending task and we always keep on thinking and improving the business technology.
Please tell us about some of the tech implementations under your
As mentioned above I have brought major changes in business by bringing huge digital initiatives. Some of these initiatives turned around the business in terms of costs and revenues. Many of them also include moving to Cloud & Bringing analytics to Digital business part of the group and extending the same to other business verticals.
I have adapted the cloud and migrated entire business to it when the Industry is just talking and discussing about this new technology. Thus, I presented a successful case study to the industry to follow suit. Cloud has saved huge costs to business and has also enhanced time to market our products. I have also brought huge automation to the business using ERP SAP.
Which of these implementations have been a real growth driver for your organisation ?
All of the above stated initiatives are real growth drivers. I closely work with business leadership and always design the initiatives keeping in mind either business process enhancement or real business growth. Let's start from Cloud transformation. This was conceptualised when we realised there is a need of consolidation.
We observed we are spending huge amount of money on traditional DC and there is real need to market our products faster. Now we are saving 70% of operational costs on a monthly basis.
How big is your technology team ? As a Group CIO, what are the qualities that you prefer to have in your team members ?
My core team is of 12 people spread across the globe. The core domain resources which I have are Systems, Database, Development and Security. We have a majority of technology operations outsourced. I have wonderful team, which always stood by me and implemented the vague ideas I introduced to them. The qualities which I need in my team is, self-learning capability and the enthusiasm to work on new technologies.
Always align to business and think as businessmen rather than pure technologists. This is what I inculcated in my team and that's how I mentor them.
How closely do you work with the company's cyber security team while implementing a project ?
Info security is an integral part of IT ecosystem and my IT team. This is not looked as separate division and should not be. With more digital footprints, cyber security should be part of design of the project rather than bringing the changes post implementation.
All my initiatives and designs include info security aspects as project flowchart and I also have a few core team members who are specialized in the same. That team always keep a tab on any new threats and works on mitigating them. We have outsourced some of the initiatives like WAF so that 24X7 monitoring is available for our business.
What is your message to the young engineers dreaming to becoming a CIO ? What are the core competencies they should work on?
Any technocrat wants to move ahead in his/her career, one thing they need to adapt is change of thinking. As mentioned in some of the answers above, times are changed and there is change in tech adaptations also. IT is no longer a service function, IT is a part of business, specially after digital wave and it is a business enabler now.
Indeed, I have transformed my division to revenue making from cost center. Although this approach may differ from business to business. Like the approach of a manufacturing CIO is different from that of a BFSI CIO and same goes regarding the Media industry CIO.
However there is one thing which is common to career growth, CIOs have to lead the business transformation in this digital era. Same goes to junior level IT guys who want to grow and dream to become future CIO's. Keep updating yourself to new technologies, and think how you can adapt them to your respective business, to save costs, to ease business flow and increase revenues.
With most Technology companies resorting to regular layoffs in the last few months, how do you see the future of tech professionals in India ?
I see them as business corrections and this is not new. I have witnessed them many times before. One needs to stick to the habit of self-learning and update skills to exist in ecosystem, otherwise people will become obsolete and end up losing their job.There is nothing to panic as the IT industry is going to grow with more and more fintech coming into picture.