Sateesh Seetharamiah - Redefining growth with a platform-centric digital strategy

Tim Butara: Hello, everyone. Thanks for tuning in. Our guest today is Sateesh Seetharamiah, CEO of EdgeVerve, an Infosys company that's leading in the development of digital platforms. Today, Sateesh and I will be talking about platform centric digital strategies and how a platform centric strategy can help businesses redefine growth and unlock innovation.

Welcome to the podcast, Sateesh. We're very, very happy to have you with us today as our guest. Anything you'd like to add before we dive into the conversation?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Hi, Tim. Great to be joining this conversation. I look forward to it. And let's just quick introduction of EdgeVerve. You know, we're a wholly owned subsidiary of Infosys, one of the largest IT services and consulting firm in the world.

And EdgeVerve is in the business of creating and commercializing world class digital platforms. And we have digital platforms in the banking space, which is called a Cynical. We have a platform in the AI AI Next. We've got a platform in the supply chain space, which is called Trade Edge. So that's what we do for business.

We have a global clientele. Of, you know, top 400, 500 companies global 2000 firms across all geographies and across different industries. So interesting times, Tim, let's get started.

Tim Butara: Yeah. Thank you for this extended intro. So, so based on, you know, to, to kind of set the stage and, and you, obviously this is a good starting point to, to start a conversation.

a platform centric digital strategy. How is it different from, you know, other, other kinds of digital strategy, other approaches?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Yeah, so well, very basic. And we've all used to be seeing products, leveraging products, software products for many, many decades and years. But truly, you know, with the advent of internet, And so many, you know, auxiliary technologies around the internet, the possibility of platforms emerge, right?

And a platform where a multiple set of technologies come together to solve complex problems, right? And if you were to look at Amazon as a company, it leverages one of the highly scalable, Cost effective platform to drive their business. It's not necessarily a product. It's actually a true platform.

If you were to look at the same thing for Airbnb, or if you look at Uber, or any one of these, they're all pure platform, digital platform driven companies. I'm using the word digital in the sense because it is software, you can have other outside of software platforms as well. So this is purely dedicated from a it's coming value creation happens from software.

So platforms are You know fundamentally transformative in nature. They can bring ecosystems together to create higher order of value proposition. These platforms, once scaled, can operate at a much lower cost than traditional software products that we are used to. The integration technologies and et cetera, et cetera, are far more simple in, in a platform centric approach.

So anyway, Tim, that's simple one on one my view on what the digital platform would kind of look like.

Tim Butara: And when we're talking platforms, are we talking about like a unified platform or different platforms for different use cases, such as, you know, customer data platform in combination with with other technologies?

Or does it really depend case by case?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: It's generally unified from a technology perspective, which actually is one of the reasons why platforms become interesting and platforms will become necessary for future, if you will, innovation to most of the enterprises. Look, historically, there has been an era of ERP systems, which have dominated The industry and delivered in a certain level of success and uplift from a business perspective, standardized processes, et cetera, et cetera, brought best practices from various different companies.

Those are all value that these ERP systems have delivered. incredibly well. At the same time, you know, there are many cons that the ERP systems also had inherently brought in certain level of silos in terms of data or functional silos, digital silos, if you will. And while standardization was the norm, it also, you know, kind of hampered agility and innovation in many ways, right.

And so that's one. And second is, you know, there have been a whole host of technologies that have been introduced. Into the enterprise software landscape over the last 10 years, you know, it may be automation related. It may be experience related technologies. You know, it could be now the recent ones is around the AI, which has come in and so on and so forth.

So there's so many different technologies that has come into the landscape of all these enterprises. The, the question really is how will enterprise respond to the velocity at which innovation needs to be delivered to keep up with competition and the market needs and the highly demand demanding customer needs.

With all these disparate technologies coming together to have to integrate, so this is exactly where in the context of an enterprise, a platform comes into play, you know, where a platform will inherently by you know, come integrated pre integrated with all these technologies, you know, all the way from data to A.

I. To automation capabilities, to experience capabilities, all in a stack, which is purpose driven to solve a problem, right? And as you mentioned, customer engagement, customer experience is one such space. But if you were to look at the under the hood of what really takes to deliver, you know, improve net promoter value, or, you know, improve customer satisfaction, etc.

And the kind of platform that you need in technology, you will need all of the things that I just mentioned. But what if all of this is delivered as a packaged offering? And that's how you know, it speeds up and accelerates one's ability to drive innovation. And also what has happened is now AI, if any introduction of AI.

Has made this even more important, right? And because AI sits, if you will, on top of many of these very different technologies. And as I mentioned earlier, if there are so many data silos and functional silos, and the AI actually has to ride on top of it, you need a unifying platform to bring all of this together to enable AI led value propositions.

So that's how I would kind of phrase my answer to your question.

Tim Butara: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense because, you know, we talked about how, how initially these platforms could introduce a lot of silos, data silos, and, you know, good data usage and good data management is the prerequisite for effective AI implementation.

So I can't really see, you know, a use case where, where an enterprise wants to, wants to include AI. Into their strategy, but if their data is not on point, if there are silos, if there are discrepancies, if there's anything that's, that's not, that's not on point, then that implementation is bound to, you know, maybe not fail 100 percent of the cases, but it's, it's, it can be as successful as with an on point data strategy.

So I assume that a unified platform would kind of address and take care of, of these challenges.

Sateesh Seetharamiah: That's exactly right. And AI Next platform that EdgeVerve has recently launched is trying to address exactly this opportunity. Right. And we do expect him that with AI, obviously, it's a pretty disruptive technology.

There is absolutely no doubt about that. And, and we, you know, we believe that this also creates tremendous opportunities for enterprises. Mm hmm. in terms of how, you know, they will be able to serve their customers better, how they will be able to innovate products better, understand the world around far better, et cetera, et cetera.

And also make sure that the human resource that you have within your enterprises is focused on the most important innovative things, rather than doing things that systems anyway could do. So it really is moving towards A world where, you know, we're saying, how can you, you know, bring intelligence to workflow?

How can you bring intelligence into execution tasks, right? And bring intelligence, more software driven intelligence, right? And, and, and, and that's the, that's, that's the evolution that we're seeing. And in that context, a platform like the AI Next, Is something that we see as very, very useful for enterprises to really make their enterprises become AI first

Tim Butara: if you will.

So unlocking innovation is probably the main benefit of, of going with a platform centric digital strategy. But what are some other important benefits that, that such an approach will bring enterprises? And you know, maybe where else can they drive value from a platform centric strategy?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: So let's see if you go back to what I just said earlier where You know, there is a choice of having, you know, 20, 30 different technologies all integrated working with 20, 30 different vendors where enterprises traditionally have invested heavily in driving integration and delivering value on top of them.

There is a certain TCO, if you will, total cost of ownership that it takes to bring. Deliver value on this plethora of technology versus a platform centric approach where they're all completely pre integrated internally, essentially would mean there is going to be an X factor in terms of reduction in cost.

That is one. Second is, because of this pre integrated platform centric approach, you know, the time to value, we believe, will decrease dramatically. You know, that's the The second benefit that we see. The other thing is, you know, any software system, same as you would appreciate, takes support and maintenance, and there's so much that you do once you really put it in play.

And all of these becomes so much more simpler in a platform centric approach, right? And, and, and let's just, you know, but history, there's been so many examples. I mentioned Amazon earlier. If you were to look back at somewhere around 2000, 2001, and prior to that, Amazon enterprise was nothing but full of product.

And, and, and it was a conscious decision that was made at that time to pivot towards a platform strategy to actually realize the vision of Amazon and scale Amazon to become such a powerful delivery engine, right? Which gives not only scale, but but, but in, in, see, again, the combination of velocity, And variety, if you will, all these things come with exponential challenges, and the only way to do that is platform.

So if you look at Amazon's own trajectory on how they build their enterprise architecture, one will very clearly see that they made a conscious effort to move away from a productized silo technology implementation to true platform strategies where this is released. You know, to deliver different value for the business.

So, so I think this is, this is how, you know, we see value creation happening and, and this is pretty universal in, in, in the sense that it is not limited to any one function,

you

Sateesh Seetharamiah: know, there are companies we're working with him, which are using the same platforms to transform their entire financial processing.

You know, there's a more backend related. We're working with many telecommunication companies which are leveraging the same platform to transform their customer experience. There are many companies leveraging the same platform to transform their logistics and supply chain related operations. So, you know, this kind of an approach can be applied in any industry.

Of the environment in solving different kinds of business problems, but it's not specific to an area in an enterprise.

Tim Butara: Yeah, I think Amazon was a great example. Obviously, everybody knows that a lot of people probably, you know, rely on Amazon Web Services to some extent or another. But I also really liked the point about faster time to market and how that's unlocked through a platform centric strategy, because we talked before about unlocking innovation, but unlocking innovation only works if you're, if you're quick at, you know, It, rolling it out and it offering that innovation to the public.

You know, if you, if you innovate, but then you don't, don't push it to the market quickly enough and, you know, there's so much competition that just can't really do anything with that innovation if you're slow. So, so I, I would say that is speeding up. The time to market is, is very, very close in terms of the value it brings to the innovation that it unlocks.

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Absolutely. And that's what we're seeing actually happening in many of our customers, right? And they're in fact, one of the telecommunication companies that we are working with. You know, has taken customer service from a traditional operating structure into uberization of customers, right? And, and it's a very different way of thinking how to drive customer operations into the future.

So these technologies are not incremental in nature. They can, they fundamentally change the operating model of companies. Which were built on ERP systems in using these new age technologies into a very different operating structure. One, secondly is also, you know, the same technologies and the platform centric approach enables enterprise to collaborate with their value chain partners in a, in a very different way, allowing them to.

Reorganize value networks, right? So innovation is not only in the context of their enterprise. Innovation can also be in the context of their overall value chain, right? How do you really conceptualize your product from, from your upstream vendors to downstream distributors all the way to The end customer, right?

The entire value chain can be reorganized using these kind of disruptive technology. Then that's, that's what we see these kind of platform, digital platform centric approach has the power to power these kinds of disruptions and opportunities.

Tim Butara: And did I catch that right? Did you say Uberization of customer service?

Can you explain, I mean, I, I have, I have an idea of what that might mean, but can you can explain it so that, so that we're all on the same page?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Yeah, it is really about, you know, you have, you know, it's just the same concept of, can you engage Gen X people, Gen Z people for a few hours to do what you want them to

do?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Can you engage moms in the house who are sitting, who can dedicate four hours in a week to do something meaningful to you? How do you harness the power of people who have limited time to deliver a consistent Output for a purpose driven company, right? So this is really uberization is about engaging an ecosystem of human resource on a need be basis in a consistent manner to deliver output, right?

So that's essentially uberization. It is, it gives you the ability to manage spikes. It gives you the ability to really. You know, draw down on resources or draw, you know, or literally you have the flexibility, right? It's a flex model that comes to play and not only will it do that, but you have to do that without compromising on your customer service.

So that's what it is.

Tim Butara: Oh, I'm glad I asked the question. I think that this was very important. It's the first time that I'm hearing this phrase, but it makes a lot of sense. And I think that it's applicable in, in a lot of situations. Related to to the digital and digital information and digital strategy.

So, so it's definitely one one that I'll keep in mind and I'll use more often going forward. Thank you for sharing this with us.

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Well, this is actually, this is, this is credit to our customer and credit to their innovation. And I'm just saying that this is how they see their customers. overization of customer service.

Tim Butara: Oh, that's, that's really cool. I was actually going to ask you if you can share some, some interesting stories or lessons learned from your work with customers and you already read my mind and already anticipated it and already answered it. So perfect. I'm, I'm also interested in maybe, maybe if you have some top tips or some, some key considerations that, that enterprises should keep in mind where, if they want to develop a successful, effective platform centric digital strategy.

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Yeah, one is, I think, I think it's first acknowledging that working with multiple technologies and integrating them creates certain level of inertia, your ability to move fast, your ability to keep up with change, and manage change, technology changes, etc. does inherently bring certain level of inertia, which is inherently bring certain level of inertia, which is Essentially limit your ability to serve the needs of the business and your customers.

So hence, you know, the, the platform centric strategy, what's also important is to make sure that we, whatever platform that one embraces it, it's set for scale. You know, because the, when you look at AI or any of these, you know, technologies that have come to bearing in the last 10 years or maybe 15 years.

A lot of them have been POCs and point implementations, etc. Very few have literally been scaled across enterprise, mass adoption, democratization of it, citizen developer centric, you know, approach, etc, etc. All these things are still huge opportunities, and that's because it's, it's, it's one is to enable a platform centric approach.

Second is to scale this. So second is, it's important to keep in mind that you to, that you take a an approach that will allow you to really scale this across your enterprise, across your functions across various organizations, et cetera. The, the other is really around the, the value that I mentioned.

It's important to start from where. In one of the functions the best way to do that is to pick the function that you believe it has the highest complication in terms of technologies. And where a platform centric approach will simplify and, and take that as, as a starting point and embrace that and implemented in one place.

And then, and from there you can really spawn off. The other is around data. You know, we spoke about data in the platform centric approach. It's very important to understand as much as structured data has quite evolved and Yeah. That whole area is pretty mature, thanks to even the ERP systems, the whole, you know, and so on.

We got quite a bit of structured data, but we also know, Tim, that a huge amount of unstructured data exists in enterprises

and in

Sateesh Seetharamiah: the ecosystem that they deal with. So to make the platform centric strategy really successful, it's important to understand that That you have a game plan to handle your unstructured data and manage unstructured data and bring all of them together because the combination of unstructured data and the structured data that maybe exists in your enterprise is the combination of that is what's going to really power your AI is really going to enable contextual AI building, right?

So, so one is around data, the other is around scale, and then thirdly is to pick one area where that's probably you see as the highest complexity of technology and, you know, go with a platform centric approach.

Tim Butara: Those are some really great tips, I think, very valuable, very practical, especially, especially the last one, right?

Because often, if you identify two things that are important, you might, you might you know, lose momentum. And maybe you waste a lot of resources trying to pursue both goals, but this last step was very on point about, you know, deciding which one is more important for your particular case and investing more in that one.

I think that that that's, you know, one thing that people really need to hear sometimes. So, yeah, thank you so much Sateesh for The great insights, the great tips, a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. Just before we start wrapping it up, if anybody listening right now would like to learn more about you, learn more about EdgeVerve or want to connect with you, what's the best way to do all that?

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Well, it was wonderful talking to you and yeah, so edgeverve.com is our company website. AI Next is the platform that I mentioned, which is really the platform that we're offering to large enterprises to really scale and engage in the AI journey. And you know, hopefully it was very interesting and hopefully some tips to some of your listeners.

Thank you very much for inviting me.

Tim Butara: Yeah, make sure to add everything in the show notes for easy access for listeners. And yes, Sateesh, I also really enjoyed it. It was really great having you as our guest. Thank you for joining us.

Sateesh Seetharamiah: Thank you.

Tim Butara: And to our listeners, that's all for this episode. Have a great day everyone, and stay safe.

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