Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon hosts series of high profile management conclaves – SAPIENCE 2017

·       Sapience 2017 had 4 conclaves – Marketing, HR, SMAC and Financial Services

·       5 distinguished Keynote Speakers from both private and public sectors

·       30 Industry Experts as panelists

October 26, 2017: Great Lakes Institute of Management, Gurgaon, a premier B-school in the country, recently hosted its flagship Annual Management Event consisting of 4 conclaves – SMAC (Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud), Financial Services, HR, & Marketing at its Manesar campus. The themes of the conclaves focused on the disruption and transformation that new age technologies are bringing in the businesses.

SMAC Conclave – SMAC and the Democratization of Technology Adoption

The keynote speaker, Mr. Amarjit Singh Batra, CEO, OLX India shared, “Internet business largely depends on three principles – (1) the Network effect, which is a very powerful mechanism. Once the large number of people become part of something, the value of the product manifolds (2) the internet business do not require large number of workforce as the core business transaction happens online (3) the scalability of internet business is huge vis- `a - vis offline business, in fact there is no limit to the space where you can expand.”

Panelists - Mr. Amit Singh, Co-founder, Shuttl and Staple Media Labs, Mr. Bharanidharan Viswanathan, CEO & Founder, 91 Mobiles, Mr. Ramakrishna, Co-Founder, Intello Labs, Mr. Kashyap Deorah, Serial Entrepreneur and author of The Golden Tap, Mr. Apurva Chamaria, V P & Head of Corporate Marketing, HCL Technologies, Mr. Anupam Mishra, Director, Sales, Cloud Platform, Oracle India, Mr. Titir Pal, VP, Head of Products and Solutions, Absolutdata Analytics & Mr. Chandrasekhar Venugopal, VP- Restaurant Operations, Foodpanda

The panel concluded that Cloud is the foundation of Digital Transformation and it is inevitable that all companies will have to move from on premises to cloud just to stay competitive.  Startups in India have already adopted Cloud and have a heavy reliance on Cloud based services rather than on premise solutions that older organizations invested in earlier. Speaking about Data Analytics, the panel said that analytics will give actionable insights which will help organizations make solid business decisions. The panel also discussed the issue of how entrepreneurs are balancing between profitability and growth to reach sustainability, the panelists were of the view that Indian startup scenario has changed and it is no more about raising money and burning in a race to become a unicorn. Today, the businesses should be built on the cockroach theory, first become robust to survive all hurdles, adapt to changes and then gradually grow to become a unicorn.

Financial Services Conclave – Digitization as the way forward for Banking and Financial Services

Delivering the keynote address, Dr. C S Mohapatra, Addl. Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Govt of India, said, “Digitization has offered huge benefits to the financial sectors such as cost reduction, greater efficiency and financial inclusion. At the same time, it also has a drawback – cyber threat. However, to tackle this problem we have set up bodies such as CERT-FIN (Computer Emergency Response Team in Financial Sector), which will work closely with all financial sector regulators and stakeholders on issues of cyber security and FSLRC (Financial Sector Legislative Reforms Commission) which works on improving financial sector and technology implementation, ensuring more transparency focusing on consumer protection.

Panelists - Mr. SSK Pradhan, GM, RBI, Mr. Rahul Sinha, DGM, RBI, Dr. Sanjay Bahl, DG, (CERT), GOI, Mr. Gagan Sardana, Sr V P, HDFC Bank, Mr. N Chakravarthy, GM, Axis Bank, Mr. Naveen Uppal, Head Risk, India Bulls, Mr. Subhash Kwatra, G M, Punjab & Sind Bank, Mr. Mukesh Garg CFO, India Bulls, Mr. Nalin Bansal, VP & Head, Rupay EMV/Contactless, NPCI, Mr. Biswanath Sengupta, Consultant, Former Sr. V P and Programme Director, UIDAI, MSP.  Mr. Abhijit Roy, Former DGM, SBI

Givng the overview of financial technology sector, the panel felt that with over 750+ Fintech companies in India and given that India was ranked in the top 10 countries in Fintech, this sector has immense potential of growth. The sector also has huge job creation prospects as in 2016 there was a funding of 217 million dollar in this sector alone and there are a lot of startups coming up in this field. The panel also added that technology today is changing everything and it is also playing a pivotal role in transforming the banking sector. Banks offer multiple services and financial technology enables banks to distribute these services efficiently to the masses.  The panel concluded that in future, there will be two types of fintech companies. One type will provide financial services and the other will be in infrastructure and platform which will be used by other financial services firms. The second type of fintech companies will lead the growth because they will provide the technology which is required by the financial service providers making it a highly specialized sector. Thus, financial Services and technology are going to enable each other and banks and other financial institutes must adapt to innovative technologies to stay competent and relevant.

HR Conclave - The future of work in the fourth industrial revolution

The Key note speaker, Mr. Pramod Sadarjoshi, Senior- Director – HCM & Transformation, Asia – Pacific, ORACLE shared, “We live in a time where technology has become an important part of our lives and the leaders today have to be tech-savvy. For instance, the need of the hour is to be able to use Data analytics for predicting the future trends and act accordingly”

Panelists-  Mr. Puneet Kalra, M D, Russel Reynolds Associates, Mr. Subhankar Ghose, Chief People Officer, Zoom Insurance Brokers Pvt Ltd, Mr. Srinivas S, Partner and Leader, Mercer , Mr. Mayank Arora, V P Sales HR, Mrs. Bector’s Cremica, Mr. Kunal Krishna, VP & Head HR, Lava International, Dr. Murli Padmanabhan, Sr. VP & Head Talent Management  - Virtusa Polaris & Mr. Alvin David, GM HR, Newgen software.

The panel opined that, the HR professionals today can gain from analytics largely and create strategies using sophisticated tools to optimize organizational performance - Use Predictive Analysis for recruitment and attrition, Cognitive Analysis for talent engagement and employment & Prescriptive Analysis for learning and development. However, there are challenges in  implementing HR Analytics : (1) Digital footprint - there is so much information available on social media that accurate interpretation of data is the biggest challenge (2) Investment - huge investment in market research and analytics is required and it is difficult to show ROI (3) Dimension Predictability – it is difficult to judge from the data and predict the potential of the candidate and (4) Cleansing of data – it is essential to change the raw data to usable form to carry out analysis.

Marketing Conclave –  Marketing Communications in the Digital Age

The key note speaker, Mr. Anirban Chaudhari, Senior VP & Executive Planning Director, J.W. Thompson, shared, “The unprecedented penetration of internet, wide reach of social media and data analysis together have facilitated lots of opportunities for a marketer. Today, marketers are using programmatic marketing, motion sensors, augmented reality and artificial intelligence in the promotional ads”.

Panelists  – Ms Mausumi Kar, Managing Partner, Group M,Mr Vivek Nanda, Business Head, Sharp Business Machines & Mr Anil Gupta, Head, Clients Engagement, ArthImpact & Mr Rafi Q Khan, Executive V P, Weber Shandwick,

Discussing the theme, the panel shared, that digital media gives an opportunity of customization, where marketer can create and deliver the right message to the right person by choosing the right channel of distribution. The panel also shared that though social media is a powerful tool, it comes with some challenges : (1) to create engaging content and for that you have to understand your audience correctly (2) to choose the platform for communication and create the content as per the platform, the content for facebook and linkedin cannot be same(3) technology is  changing rapidly and we need to be quick in adapting to it.