CIOs will need to use the power of digital to further vaccinate the business from any more shocks while creating competitive business differentiators.
One of the most common words used in the year gone by was “vaccine.” The dictionary meaning of vaccine is “a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases.” In my view Covid-19 has become the vaccine for many businesses across the world when it comes to digitization of business operations.
For long, businesses were plagued by slow or non-existent digitalization efforts, and the COVID 19 vaccine has injected a new mindset to take on the challenges of a VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity) world. Businesses which were uninitiated are now putting digital as a part of their core strategy. Business that were already on the path, are looking at getting more aggressive.
Asian Paints’ digital growth strategy for 2021
Asian Paints has always kept digital central to its ongoing transformation and the last nine months has only re-validated our belief in digital. As an organisation we were more ready during the crisis than most companies. While the analogue channels of most companies were challenged, our past digital investments appeared to us like a submarine digging deep through the stormy sea to beat the storm.
Our priorities would remain to keep tapping the opportunities to digitally disrupt and create value multipliers for our businesses especially in customer facing areas, industrial IOT and internal shared services.
Our investments and efforts in the last 18 months on AI/ML/RPA have given us the confidence to go the whole hog and start making it an integral part of the process fabric. With consumer digital penetration being at all time high; crafting seamless, personalized and contextual journeys between physical and digital formats is our success enabler in terms of building brand loyalty. We see this as a strategic differentiator as we make inroads into our newer business areas of Home decor where we go about delivering end-to-end home design and home execution services.
Making quick/agile decisions using data analytics is crucial in such complex and ambiguous times. We will continue to invest in advanced data analytics to help businesses drive superior decisions.
With our workplace now becoming increasingly ubiquitous, collaborative computing and information security would attract a lot more of our mindshare.
The CIOs/CDOs in the pandemic of 2020 became heroes wherein they quickly got the IT infrastructure in place to run the business. 2021 is the year for them to become “superheroes”, wherein they need to use the power of digital to further vaccinate the business from any more shocks while creating competitive business differentiators.
I personally carry a sense of optimism for this year. We seem to have developed the antibodies to fight better, harder and swifter challenging times. As technocrats with business acumen, let us make this one count and go about making digital the unfailing lifeline of our businesses. Stay Immunized! Stay Secure!
