CxO Of The Week: Milind Kanvinde, Managing Director, Digibaapp

CxO Of The Week: Milind Kanvinde, Managing Director, Digibaapp, he has 20+ Yrs of experience in Information Technology, Service industry. 12+ Yrs Experience of project/team/resource/delivery and Program Management.

Your top priority while making decisions to improve tech infra in your organization?

Because security is always a top concern of corporate professionals, our top three priorities will be - endpoint security (40%), network-based security (38%) and buttoned-down email and encryption strategies (36%). Our 2nd Priority would be to invest in Automation so as to improve productivity. We are trying to implement a lot many AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools in the digital marketing arena.

Challenges you face in driving digital transformation?

To be able to achieve Digital Transformation goals, enterprises have to look at an effective digital strategy and transform various business functions.  The top challenges that we face convincing the clients in the Digital Transformation journey:

Legacy Infrastructure: For the longest time, IT has only played a support role, which is why many companies still shy away from upgrading their infrastructure. Adding to this, the maintenance of IT infra needs goes up to as much as 55% of the entire IT budget.

Moreover, with the introduction of social, mobile, analytics and Cloud, it becomes all the more difficult for businesses to cope with the legacy systems established years ago. The first and foremost step to overcome this challenge should be to invest in upgrading the infrastructure so that the system is able to effectively manage the changes required to bring in complete Digital Transformation.

Outdated Processes: Since businesses across the world are now well connected in the digital realm, it becomes all the more challenging to follow traditional processes and operate in silos. We live in an era where there is no place for manual processes and stringent work policies any longer. Owing to the effort that goes into embracing Digital Transformation, organizations around the world have started adopting Agile working principles and building modern new-age workplace models for their employees as an important step towards adopting modern working methods.

Traditional Company Culture: A big part of truly adopting Digital Transformation is for the company culture to also adopt the same. Digital Transformation should be deep-rooted and it should become a part of the company core values. Since traditional cultures can be slow to embrace change, the flag bearers of Digital Transformation would have to lead the change in the organization by taking steps to progress and earn a spot in the digitally transformed industry.

Lack of Automation: A prominent characteristic of digital businesses is the elimination of redundant tasks. On embracing Digital Transformation, an enterprise adopts automation and gets rid of manual tasks which mean faster go-to-market, rapid product updates, and improvements, seamless customer experience and a faster response time.

Keeping the complexity of Digital Transformation in mind, it is essential to build a solid foundation- a technology ecosystem to effectively drive change. You may also need to assign a few flag bearers of Digital Transformation to ensure that the changes are implemented effectively across the organization and various processes. Remember, Digital Transformation is not something you do once. It is a process of constant upgrades, continuous development, and improvement at regular intervals.

Do you feel that freshers in the industry come with only basic knowledge but don’t have the right skills to fulfill job requirements? If yes, your suggestion to students and colleges?

Yes, Fresher’s coming out colleges has just the theoretical knowledge pertaining to the books they read or projects they worked on. Below are some of the skills that are essential from an industry perspective that a fresher should incorporate.

• Leadership
• Digital Literacy
• Communication
• Emotional Intelligence
• Entrepreneurship
• Global Citizenship
• Problem-solving and Team-working

What’s your mantra to become successful in life?

SELF EVALUATION: This is the precise first step to take if you want to learn how to get success in life. Before you take steps to become more successful and effective, you need to evaluate your current capacity and situation. Then, you need to compare that state to the goals you want to achieve.

DAY PLANNING: The goal of efficiency doesn’t leave you with the luxury of lost time. You need to plan your day in advance and take all the steps you need to take to achieve a goal on time. Write the To-Do list. You need a reminder of the things you plan, so you won’t be comfortable about leaving a particular task out of the list.

DELEGATION: It doesn’t matter how well you organize your time; sometimes you won’t be able to take the entire workload on your own. When you want to be more efficient, you have to perform perfectly on each task you have.

TIME MANAGEMENT: Wasting your energy on multiple tasks is not the perfect way of becoming more effective. The focus is the key to success. Make sure to know your priorities and arrange your acts in accordance.

LEARNING TO SAY NO: People have a deep need to be liked by others. So they go out of their way and do things to make others like them. An egoism is often the cause of such tendency. You care about the way people perceive you, so you accept more work than you’re capable of. You do that because you don’t want to ruin your already established impression of helpfulness.

DOING IT DIFFERENT: You can surely achieve notable success if you stick with a well-established routine. However, the routine has its way of undermining your efficiency. If you don’t do anything different, you’ll soon get bored of your daily activities; no matter how committed you are to the goals you’ve set.

Finally, 4 steps that you would want to take to target your goals: Evaluate, Plan, Delegate, Achieve. That’s Your Way to Great Success.

What would you like to give back to the society?

It’s every person’s duty to give back to society as much as they can—in fact, it’s a joy. You don’t have to have a lot of money to make charitable donations; any effort makes a huge difference to someone who’s in need. If you want to give back to society in the biggest way possible, sometimes the smallest acts are the kindest and richest.

3 ways I would like to contribute back to the society

1) Provide food and shelter to those in need

2) Use my skills to teach and help

3) Volunteer with a local organization

Your favorite book and what are you reading now?

Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - if you are looking for a motivation, scared to pursue your dreams, this is the book one should read. Your zeal to work shoots up. It’s been a life-changing book for me.

Rich Dad, Poor Dad: Robert T. Kiyosaki had differentiated between Assets and Liabilities and explained what to own and what not.

Next book to read in my list is Wise & Otherwise by Sudha Murthy ma’am.

What do you enjoy doing in your spare time?

Reading Listening to Music and watching English Action movies

Experience

20+ Yrs of experience in Information Technology, Service industry. 12+ Yrs Experience of project/team/resource/delivery and Program Management.

First job - Patni Computer systems.

Education - BE Electronics from Mumbai University. SIX Sigma Green Belt Certified

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