In an exclusive interview with Valuebound’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Piyush Sharma, Content Manager Akanksha Mishra, discussed topics ranging from his views and approach towards building growth oriented teams, developing technical capabilities and technology leadership. He also shared his personal journey, hobbies and interests, which would inspire the youngsters looking to be CTO in future.

Hi Piyush, Glad to have you join us as CTO, Valuebound. Could you share something about yourself? What defines you? What is something you have been passionate about throughout your career?

It’s wonderful to join a growth-oriented company that is looking to solve the tech problems of clients through its high-performance team. Recognized as a people person, I love to lead from the front with accountability & ownership. Result orientation and empathy are something that I try to bring into my team’s approach towards work, be it personal or professional, and this has always helped me in building a sustainable and agile team. A perpetual learner, would not shy away from learning from anyone and everyone. I enjoy reading management strategies, business success stories & failures, and philosophy of life. I’m a poet and flutist myself.

Everyone has their idea of success. What is your measure of accomplishment as a technology leader? Can you share some incidents/examples about the same?

I’ve been associated with the successful delivery of multiple critical products on the server and client-side, desktop CPU space, delivery of Internet Banking systems, and various software projects around eCommerce, digital space, and client-server applications across multiple market segments. I’ve been recognized as a Star Manager at Intel. I also believe that my accomplishments include being instrumental in building the entire team from scratch at startups like Zigy, and AyurUniverse. 

My measure of success as a technology leader would be to:

• Build and retain a smart team - which is well-versed in the current technology, focused, disciplined, committed, works with high integrity, and stays together
• Quality technology deliveries to customers - Define and execute a planned, robust, self-learning model which delivers.
• Create a learning ecosystem - which will enable people to cross-train and master emerging technologies required for the business. Have a career growth plan for every individual in the organization.

What is your management style?

With transformational management and a collaborative leadership style, I would strive for the organization to the best of its potential by bringing in changes that align with the present ecosystem and market dynamics. Also with my inclusive management style, I will work towards a cohesive, cooperative environment within the team.

What are the first few things that you came across when taking a walk-through of Valuebound’s service delivery, value proposition, and existing client success?

I see Valuebound as an organization, which has grown consistently and has created its own niche in the Digital Transformation space. With its deep-rooted capability in the Content Management Systems space, Valuebound has proven itself to be one of the preferred partners for the customers. The long-term relationships with the customers, timely delivery, and cost-effective quality solutions are some of the critical metrics that reflect the customers’ confidence and trust in Valuebound very loud and clear.

Valuebound has a strong technology backbone, and a committed & motivated workforce. I believe we have the right team with strong technical capabilities and the right attitude to craft the brand of Valuebound as customers’ choice. The organization with its focused attention on employee development and stakeholders’ satisfaction is rightly positioned for a steep growth harnessing the huge market potential going forward.

What are your views on the current IT services industry, considering the high growth trajectory at the moment?

The IT industry is waking up from the lull of the last two years of the pandemic. The business had been in the maintenance mode with a keep-the-lights-on kind of attitude and rare high-value investments.

Gradually we see growth in demands, and investments rising with tech budgets, which allows us to identify, and fill the missing skills in technology. The industry will be looking towards more innovations, diving into emerging technologies or digital transformation and new business models to support these. And, we must plug ourselves well enough to partake advantage by grabbing our slice of the opportunities.

What kinds of current technologies and solutions are we going to focus on delivering at Valuebound?

While we continue to focus on our existing capabilities around Drupal and other digital technologies, we shall be looking at building Cloud Computing, and DevOps capabilities in the mid-to-long term, like AWS for sharing storage and computing resources, Big-data for data-handling/analytics, etc.

Also, we see the trend towards low-code or no-code. So Spring and Angular will also be crucial. Machine learning / Artificial Intelligence is becoming much in vogue. Right now not very clear on how we can venture into this, but it will be on our radar for sure.

Where would you choose to invest your time more- ensuring that all current systems are running efficiently, or researching innovative and new technologies?

While we stay focused on our current delivery streams, we would invest our energy and resources towards creating new avenues in terms of technologies and product engineering beyond our regular Software Services and Delivery space. Process improvements and strengthening the technology organization in terms of skill development, career-focus, result orientation, and customer-oriented approach would continue to be our keen attention areas.

We would continue to be agile and vigilant to the changing dynamics of the market and customer requirements to align ourselves suitably as and when needed. Forming Valuebound Labs to trigger the creative side of the capable brains that we have and foster innovations would be an integrated and important part of our customer & market-centric growth strategy. Having the right business acumen, i.e. understanding the business impact of what each of us does, at different levels of the organization, is something that we would also focus on as needed.

What are your recommendations for professionals aspiring to be CTO?

As with any senior leadership role, technology leaders also have multi-dimensional activities. Senior leaders are best nurtured and developed over time. My sincere recommendations for young professionals out there would be so- 

• Visualize with a 360-degree approach - The aspirant should have a holistic focus on the current market scenario, present organization’s placement, emerging opportunities, understanding of the pitfalls, emerging market technology trends, how an organization can have its share, what we need to be there, and how do we align with the future market.
• Be good with communication - Self-driven, disciplined, and very organized concerning stakeholders’ communications, to get buy-in, resolve conflicts, to inspire and encourage people would be a plus for any professional aspiring to be a CTO.
• Be able to draw a line between taking calculated risks versus taking bold and novel approaches.
• Translate strategy to execution, and a product, & create a cutting-edge ecosystem hierarchy- (S)he should be able to build innovation in the organization’s DNA, which is instrumental in formulating policies, conflict resolution, etc.

61% of respondents find technology as a competitive edge in supply chain, and many of them find emerging technologies as key areas of investments, a Gartner survey underscores. Emerging, evolving and maturing digital technologies are key factors that provide competitive advantage to supply chain companies. 20% of the respondents are keen towards investing in one such technology of robotics.

Key areas of focus in supply chain management are the technologies which can easily manage assets, and help with human decision-making. Andrew Underwood, Partner, Supply Chain Operations at KPMG (UK) says, “The future of supply chain is going to be enabled through technology, ecosystem, people, and capabilities, only we can dream of at the moment.”

In our previous blog, we discussed how a supply chain company must define its vision into technical capabilities. In this blog, we aim at providing a roadmap on how leaders can digitize its operations across the supply chain.

Creating a robust vision

Creating a vision for transforming supply chain management largely depends upon a key step- assessing your supply chain business, and knowing where the technical capabilities presently stand. Therefore, the companies must gather data by anchoring them on following base points:

• Decision-Making: Technologies like Machine learning can update legacy systems, and support human decision making, which is a key focus area of supply chain management. 
• Automation & Innovation: Gartner predicts that data science, advanced analytics, and artificial artificial intelligence will become a key offering amongst supply chain management application vendors in the next 4 years.
• Data: Are you collecting and generating the entire data required for your vision? And is it rightfully stored for you to access it easily?
• Software & Hardware: Do the business systems enable analytical capabilities which are needed by the company?
• Talent: Does your business have digitally-sound talent that can operate and transform the supply chain in future? Does your business culture encourage innovation, continuous improvement, and willingness to experiment?

Today, analytics depends on off-the-shelf applications, which can help in extracting transactional data and insights, which will be more worthy rather than insights collected through traditional sampling and survey methods. 50% of the supply chain organizations are investing resources in AI and advanced analytics capabilities through 2024, Gartner suggests (Fig. 1)

Developing a Roadmap for Supply Chain Digitization

The teams must identify scope for operational improvements, and thus build digital solutions, which will support capabilities that are already present. With the help of root-cause analysis, shortfalls come into forefront, and this helps in charting digital journeys for potential changes.

No-regret changes, as defined by McKinsey, can yield high value, and fewer implementation barriers. Depending upon the levels of urgency, each company can segregate their digitization efforts into different categories (Fig.2)

But what are “no-regret” changes? These are the changes which are implemented on the contemporary models, and are easily quantified in respect with cost, capital, service, and agility. For instance, by deploying a tool that assists with inventory tracking and optimization, a supply chain company will enhance its awareness regarding the levels of inventory throughout the supply chain. This brings direct financial and operational benefit, and adds great value to the business.

Clarity in strategy will help you in implementing suggestions, such as these:

• Implementing SCMS: Digitizing supply chain needs software that can support your vision. Supply-chain-management software and digital logistics solutions, for example, can help in streamlining processes, overseeing transactions, and managing relationships with your suppliers. The software must be scalable across your long-term, multi-year digital strategy though.
• Implementing RFID: Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) will help your business in creating coherence and improving connectivity throughout the supply chain. This will make the process more efficient, data-driven and transparent across production, distribution, and retail. This will help businesses in increasing the return on investment. How capable is an organization in converting RFID data into its business intelligence also defines the kind of ROI you will achieve. Research suggests that the average time across industry for recovering RFID investment is around 30 months and falling.
• Implementing GPS: Global Positioning System implementation brings in the benefits of increased transparency, security, and accountability. Also, it provides insights around cost analysis. GPS helps in contributing towards interconnected digital supply chains by way of transparency and tracking.
• Implementing robotics and automation: Improvement and efficiency around omnichannel retail sales, inventory updates, email automation, tracking information, and payments is a direct benefit of automating processes across the supply chain.   Likewise, robotics implementation, especially in the packaging supply chain. Some of the key developments revolve around artificial intelligence, machine learning, navigation, response and sensor capabilities, and public policy and regulatory reforms.

Recap

By prioritizing changes, the companies can organize action plans into a multi-year roadmap. Meanwhile, side processes like making changes in organizational and operational processes, and across talents, can help in setting up a stage for successful digital revamping.

One example of successful implementation of machine learning in planning and forecasting demand is Mahindra & Mahindra. Aniruddh Srivastava, Head of Demand & Supply Planning at the company, in a recent conference said that Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence are the cornerstones of their digital strategy. Mahindra & Mahindra increased its forecast accuracy by 10%, which in turn also improved its service levels by 10%, and reduced inventory investment by 20%.

Disciplined assessment, and long-term roadmap for transformation are two key ingredients that can help companies in reaping benefits. Companies that can employ operational and technological transformation have a better chance for using digital transformation to its full potential. Talk to us about deploying the latest digital technologies for improved supply chain performance at a modest cost.

“Given today’s volatile and disruptive environment, supply chain organizations must become more flexible, and the solution is digitalization,'' says Dwight Klappich, VP Analyst at Gartner. A recent study underscores that 2 percent of supply chain executives suggested that digitalization is in the prioritization segment. Companies devote a great deal of effort in digitizing their supply chains, yet the business outcomes remain dormant. ​​While a McKinsey study says that with digitization in supply chain management, companies can increase annual revenue growth by up to 2.3 percent, but companies haven’t been as positive with their results.

This blog aims to discuss such questions which explains the gap between digitization efforts and actual gains, and elaborates on the technology vision with new digital tools available now.

Why is your digital strategy not materializing?

Two core reasons for digital strategy not materializing are- management choice, and technology gaps. Senior management of many companies have found seizing opportunities of digitalization surprisingly difficult. It becomes a problem when companies do not strategically align operations with improvements in complementary technology. Major hindrance is overlooking operational changes, which later do not allow businesses to employ digital technologies to their full potential.

The reason for technology gaps are tailed off technologies. Even when supply chain management was among the first business areas to grab the opportunity of digital upgrades, tailed off technologies failed to produce expected results after initial innovation burst. Despite being valuable, prevalent supply chain technologies failed to perform sophisticated functions  because of their limited capabilities. For example, lack of combining and linking data across functions like schedules, shipments, and inventory. There was also a lack of advanced analytics performance, forecasting demand, finding out origins of problems, and more. In the absence of such capabilities, the businesses cannot precisely plan and speculate problems for preventing them.

For instance, a medical company digitized its ERP system and aimed at reversing decline in service levels of the supply chain. Yet, the service levels continued to decline, until the company overhauled processes like forecasting demand. When companies rapidly work towards improving their operations, they must also ensure penetration of technologies that support these new operations. Therefore, the best practice would be to match the revamped operational changes with suitable technologies.

Articulating planning and vision into business and technical capabilities

Leadership and Technology Assessment teams at the company must establish a forward-looking vision for understanding the current status of supply chain, and developing a road map for digitization of supply chain management. The companies must consider if technology and operations are streamlined and integrated, or not. Is there an organizational structure and talent strategy that will support continuous improvement, and favor innovation? The road map for digitization will also include compressed deadlines, given that scalability is a majorly sought-out feature of digitalization.

Once an organization has defined its vision they must articulate it into effective digital overhauling for supply chain management. These can include-

• Decision-Making: Machine learning can help managers in dealing with situations like scheduling responses for new customers, and changing material planning.
• Automation: Digital solutions configuration for processing real-time information without manual intervention, thus reducing human effort for data accumulation, scrubbing, and data entry.
• Customer engagement: End-to-end customer satisfaction by ensuring transparency with track-and-trace systems, sending regular updates, and giving more control to supply chain managers for delivering great customer experience.
• Innovation: Strengthening of business model is possible through digital supply chain which collaborates with customers, and suppliers. For example, S&OP decisions can be based on automated information from customers’ ERP.

Digital technologies to support supply chain management

In the present times, the technological ecosystem has evolved to offer such digital solutions which meet complex management needs. There are solutions which make great improvements in performance of the supply chain. The developers have created exclusive applications that help in reaping benefits of data generated by ERP systems. Most of such applications help in focused improvement across- supporting warehouse management operations, sharpening analysis, and end-to-end planning.

User-friendly tools for analysis, artificial intelligence based applications for tracing the root of problems, and even anticipating declines- it is all possible now. There are also solid recommendation engines that suggest correction measures. Systems which convey cross-functional adjustments, have allowed managers to put into action the major decisions. For instance, cross-functional adjustments can dribble down from sales and operations planning to other business areas. Likewise, technological evolution has helped cross-functional integration and decision making from executive to location managers and business units.

Considering the operations, at enterprise levels digitization means employing robotics, analytics, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, and other similar technologies which help in collecting and processing information- all through automation. Digital transformation in the supply chain, hence becomes all about a vision setting which defines how digital applications help in service improvement, and refining agility, cost, and levels of inventory. It is also about consistent implementation of processes and driving operational excellence by defining technologies for organizational changes.

Latest technologies are also easier to implement because of simpler set up as compared to the earlier technologies. For example, cloud-based digital technologies help in piloting changes readily, while ensuring rapid extension across all levels of organization. A lot of technologies now are also easier to integrate with present systems. Off-the-shelf software packages, for instance, are easy to connect with ERP systems through standard APIs or application programming interfaces.

Conclusion

Digital overhaul of the supply chain requires a roadmap that is spread over years. Articulation of planning and vision into a successful digital strategy needs technologies around real-time data, advanced analytics, software & hardware, and talent who can carry out the digitization of supply chain management. While this blog explains about why you’re not generating actual gains from your digital strategy, and how vision must be set; in our continuing blogs, we shall speak about the roadmap for digital transformation in supply chain management, and logistics. 
 

Global supply chains have remained buckled with delayed deliveries and increasing costs under the unprecedented demands and constricted logistics capabilities over the last few years. Since 2019, there has been a 300% increase in the global container shipping rates, according to McKinsey, and even higher in key logistics routes like Asia–North America and Asia-Europe. Other key challenges that logistics companies face are failure to incorporate best practices and lack of coordination between warehouses and transport functions, inefficient use of vehicles and space.

To solve these challenges, digital transformation in logistics is now a much sought-after practice to increase rapid cargo delivery capabilities, improve last mile service, distribution network, supply chain execution, and most importantly, customer experience. Gartner suggests that “38% of organizations are improving supply chain technology to support end-to-end processes,” With digital technologies like advanced analytics, automation, artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based data mining, Internet of Things (IoT) available with much improved implementations, logistics companies are ready to upgrade from status quo and be data-first enterprise.

60 percent of the respondents of Indian supply chain organizations said Industry 4.0 initiatives have now become more valuable, as per a McKinsey study. Industry 4.0 initiatives are defined as data and technology induced transformation of manufacturing and related industries.

Many early tech adopter companies are finding success in automating logistics already. Across e-commerce, the future of profitability lies in improved logistics. It is estimated that out of every $100 in e-commerce sales, e-tailers’ in-house logistics units are now collecting $12 to $20, which is a massive increase from the $3 to $5 spent on logistics in a typical brick-and-mortar-retail operation as per McKinsey.

Gartner suggests logistics firms need to adopt a three step process of Automation, Augmentation and Autonomy, leading to supply chain autonomy. Let us dive deeper to understand how. Chief supply chain officers (CSCOs) and heads of strategy at logistics organizations can prepare their organizations with this strategy.(Fig. 1).

Roadmap to digital transformation in logistics

Automation

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tools can assist businesses having shortage of workforce to improve  operations without needing further manpower. In fact, transportation-and-warehousing industry shows the third-highest potential for automation, says the McKinsey Global Institute.

As AI overtakes a lot of repetitive activities that logistics perform, we speculate that automation could be a solution across several operations by 2025. Some key examples of the use of automation in logistics include autonomous vehicles which can navigate the aisles, automated high-rack warehouses, managers using AR goggles (augmented intelligence technology) to oversee the entire operations, and coordinating with robots and humans.

Wider use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in logistics companies can help them with self-monitoring of transportation fleets. Enhancing fleets with interactive navigation systems, adaptive cruise control, and autonomous vehicles can ensure accuracy and consistency in service, while enabling standardization.

Some of the logistics technology developments which are visible in the industry are reflected in the use of VR-AR applications, Advanced Resource-Scheduling System, and Advanced robotics. (Fig.2).

 
Augmentation

During this phase, the professionals should launch aggressive and more holistic initiatives which are also tightly packed with operations and business objectives. Cloud-based data mining, analytics systems, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are key digital solutions for improving customer experience, supply chain execution, and last mile service.

• Cloud-based solutions and advanced analytics tools can harvest real-time data, and convert it into business insights for supporting decision-making, and performance evaluation.
• AI algorithms can be used in logistics to consume geospatial, supply-chain, customer, and third-party data for taking decisions on next action, whether for customer interaction, yard management, or supply chain planning.
• Blockchain solutions in logistics can help in streamlining data. It helps in increasing visibility for shipments. 

This kind of digital ecosystem in logistics helps calibrate accountability, and ensures data security. Logistics companies also derive benefits of data latency elimination, and cost rationalization.

Autonomy

At this stage, Leaders should implement human augmentation strategies to digitize logistics and add key value from the perspective of logistics-technology (LogTech). Such gains will erupt from two sources-

1. From optimized efficiency due to improved operations, and
2. Better quality of data, which would create monetization opportunities

Algorithms would allow logistics companies to optimize pricing and current rates, which will especially help with active spot-market prices. Use of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions will enhance customer experience due to improved supply chain visibility and better forecasting of customer behavior. While the algorithms create opportunities for improvements, logistics professionals can handle exceptions easily.

Recommendations

In spite of current disruptions logistics companies face, they can take well-informed futuristic technology decisions like below to improve profitability:

• Use a strong process for identification, evaluation, selection and deployment of innovative technologies
• Select technologies which align with your business objectives, operations, and which can positively impact your business performance
• Include factors like risk tolerance and maturity in your assessment
• Recognize bundled or sequenced technologies, which can work together to deliver results.

We hope our blog provided  clarity on the global logistics situation, and offered a useful perspective to the logistics executives on the digital transformation. Please get in touch with us to learn more on how we have helped companies in their digital transformation journey.

74% pharma companies reported paced up digital efforts in response to the pandemic, suggests a study, which means the spend on digital transformation in pharma could touch the $4.5 billion mark by 2030. On data analytics itself, pharmaceutical manufacturers would spend a whopping $1.2 billion in the next 7 years, ABI Research suggests. Even though pharma executives have already explored or planned to get the potential of digitalization in the sector, still a lot of them find it arduous to determine which initiatives they must adopt, and how.

Pharma digitization challenges fall under four main categories-

• Cash: like limited resources
• Competency: increased customer expectations, external competition, counterfeit medicines market etc.
• Capacity: data silos, and disparate systems
• Control: protecting critical and sensitive R&D data

Success of a digital strategy depends upon setting clear goals and strategy, followed by robust execution. In this blog, we discuss the challenges in selecting the right digital tools, define objectives and provide a roadmap for successful digitization of pharmaceuticals.

What does digitization mean for pharma?

Digitalization of the pharmaceutical sector includes implementation of digital technologies that can improvise products and services associated with healthcare like:

• Drug development
• Better R&D in drugs 
• Achieving better patient care and interaction
• Improved pharmaceutical distribution
• Achieving transparency in supply chain
• Reduced carbon impact, etc.

How to digitize pharma?

Enterprise digital transformations for pharma companies should ensure end-to-end tech capabilities across processes, experiences, and brand. Consolidated digitization spans across business units, value chain, therapeutic area, technology infrastructure, innovation, data, and strategic focus, which includes therapy, patient, and leadership.

By adopting such a holistic approach, Sanofi had “risen in digital maturity from below average in mid-2019 to among the top 10 percent of pharma companies globally, by 2021,” says Dr. Pius S. Hornstein, presiding over Sanofi's China business.

Setting digital strategy objectives

Deloitte suggests setting digital strategy objectives across six critical areas:

• Customer-focused models- Driving operations and strategies from patient and healthcare professionals perspectives.
• Agile model approach- Rapid response to predictable and unpredictable circumstances.
• End-to-End connected model- Getting enterprise insights through connected business and democratized data.
• Intelligent optimization- Continuous optimization of processes enabled through extensive data and tech tools like IoT, Blockchain, and intelligent workflow.
• Predictive and holistic insights- Helping with accelerated decision making.
• Virtual, flexible, and unbounded workforce and organization.

Four Pillars of Digital transformation Strategy

Partnership with organizations including tech experts

To thrive in an ecosystem with complex collaborations, it is essential to partner with tech vendors, and integration partners who can help with back-end data sources through IT solutions. Data integration is essential for business functions like financial reporting, product marketing. Tech vendors help pharma companies with new app launches, testing beta versions of digital products, and successful integrations.

Getting digital tools to significantly improve patient experience

Digital apps like disease management solutions working alongside medication significantly improve patient experience and value of treatment. Companies planning to scale commercially should begin their digital journey like a start-up, suggests Forbes. A key approach here could be to demonstrate value proposition by testing first, and then innovating on digital products based on patient feedback, and data.

Data integration, data analytics and insights plays a significant digital solution, because it helps in identifying market trends, forecasting shortage of resources, and identifying operational efficiencies. Developing and implementing CTMS or clinical trial management systems is another key aspect. CTMS enables streamlining data transfer, improving research documentation, adding transparency, and solving challenges of competency and capacity.

Scalability through automation

Mechanizing data exchange and automation creates cost saving and incremental revenue, thus driving a significant value proposition. Digital platforms and APIs help in real-time collaboration across channels, and stakeholders, and help in connecting different technologies at multiple locations, thus providing real-time visibility.

Applications that are designed to automate data exchange between electronic data capture (EDC) and electronic health record (EHR) can remedy the challenge of interoperability. For example, a SaaS based digital solution can remotely access a patient’s information, and provide automated, verified, accurate, and traceable data.

Journal Biostatistics suggests that AI and ML technologies can help pharma companies in selecting the most promising compounds among thousands of them for a drug role. This can narrow down the time span of drug discovery from 4-5 years to a few months, which reduces cost and speeds up chances of regulatory approvals.

Digitizing core processes of business

With virtual audits during pandemic, live-saving drug development could be kept on track. This method allowed pharma companies to meet virtually with regulatory authorities, global teams, suppliers, and customers. Automation and integration of the operational core helps in delivering intelligent operations, enterprise connectivity, and efficient management. For many pharma companies today, digitizing core processes like HR, training, and finance is a part of holistic strategy.

Key technologies enabling digitization in pharma sector

Some of the disruptive technologies in pharmaceutical sector include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data, APIs and Digital Platforms, Real World Evidence (RWE), Wearable Technology, Cloud Computing, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, and Robotics among others (Fig.1)

Internet of Things (IoT)  is a critical disruptive technology behind digitization of the supply chain, which particularly helps in overcoming the challenge of counterfeit medicines market. Use of sensors, mobile technology, blockchain, and cloud allows suppliers and customers to properly track physical drugs across the supply chain.

AI, Machine Learning, and Advanced Analytics assist in drug discovery and improving life-saving drugs production, disease diagnosis, predictive forecasting for analyzing large data for clinical trials, enabling drug trials, and getting real-time data for efficient risk management. For example, Harvard medical school collaborated with Novartis for exploring early drug reactions with the help of ML technology. Sanofi employed Advanced Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence for analyzing critical data, which led to higher productivity and efficiency.

Start with modern integration digital strategy with us

Pfizer addressed key challenges of data silos, limited resources, and disparate systems through building an integrated platform as part of its digital strategy. Through its API-led connectivity model, Pfizer accomplished 60% IT delivery cost reduction, omnichannel physical engagement, speed, agility, and secure data sharing.

If you’re looking for a holistics digital strategy, speak with us to learn how we leveraged APIs, and engineered digital apps for our pharma client in mapping complex processes.

You’re losing your leads and you don’t even realize it! That’s not what we’re saying. A recent MIT study suggests that “The odds of calling to contact a lead decrease by over 10 times in the first hour. The odds of qualifying a lead in 5 minutes versus 30 minutes drop 21 times. And from 5 minutes to 10 minutes the dial to qualify odds to decrease 4 times.”

The education industry is at an exponential growth trajectory in the present times, yet the ed-tech firms face multiple challenges in scaling their business. Some of the key business pain points can be listed as

• Lack of lead tracking
• Lack of effective communication
• Poor customer experience due to improper customer query management
• Arduous paperwork which creates accounting errors
• Lack of coordination between product and project teams

Correct tools can strengthen a business’s relationship with its end-users and clients, while also improving the overall customer experience. In this blog, we list 5 tools to manage your edtech business better and efficiently.

Customer Relationship Management

Lead conversion is an essential aspect of business success. Lead management is dependent on different moving parts across departments including accounts, sales, and marketing teams. If your business is dealing with too many leads at a time, there are high chances that critical conversions may be lost. 

A CRM or a Customer Relationship Management software is a tool that can rightly handle and aggregate leads from across different channels like websites, calls, and emails. Integration of CRM in the business can help you to track and take action for each lead. A strong tech solution with CRM can help you with-

• Auto distribution of leads across sales team members with no manual intervention
• Availability tracking so that leads do not get distributed to co-workers who aren’t available
• Collecting lead data from multiple sources in one place to eliminate duplication
• Efficiency in management of callbacks and keeping records

Some examples of good CRM include Pipedrive, Hubspot, and Salesforce.

Communication Software – For seamless connection with customers

For product optimization, the business team must acquire and retain its customers. For this reason you need communication software so that your edtech company can connect with its customers seamlessly.

Therefore you must choose software that helps you solve customer queries or approach them directly over the sales call. Communication software can help you with-

• Remote ability so that you can make calls from your laptop or mobile with a simple click from anywhere
• Ease of use by making call entries, notes of customers, and tagging leads
• Call analytics and monitoring for the team to keep track of, or listen to live calls in real-time without interference
• SMS Automation for sending out bulk SMSs to communicate with all clients and contacts efficiently
• Auto dialing feature which allows automatic and direct connection to the suitable recipient based on previous interactions

Helpdesk & Shared inbox – For addressing customer queries better

Reducing the rate of customer defection by 5% can shoot up your profitability by 25-125%. That is why handling customer queries is an essential part of customer service in the edtech market. The most compelling reason why catering to your customers is essential is because a 2% rise in customer retention causes the same effect as lowering the cost by 1%.

Customer service is about learning and responding to customer queries in real-time, and increasing customer satisfaction. When customers send in queries, a tool like shared inbox can come in handy. It is popular among small, mid-sized, and big businesses alike. A shared inbox and helpdesk can help with-

• Promoting transparency among teammates to understand the best-dealt or failed query response
• Better e-mail management to filter out the priority mails, and comment or communicate efficiently with the queries raised
• Seamless integration by including several features of automation to increase productivity and reduce response time
• Solving query load through helpdesk by creating articles or answers around common queries and concerns

Some of the platforms that can help you with customer query addressing include Helpwise, Freshdesk, and Zendesk.

Accounting software – For efficient cash management

Accounting software for an edtech business can help the business owner assess whether the strategies are working towards profit generation or not. Good software in place will assist in making a correlation between cash flow and sales forecast. This is essential for business owners to strike a balance between raising revenues, releasing payrolls, and keeping track of expenses. Paperwork and spreadsheets in such a complex business model will make things clumsy. Having an accounting software will help you with-

• Invoicing with formal designing and tracking whether or not your client has viewed the bill
• Expense and bill management to improvise investments with analytical features
• Document management keeps a tab on customer sales and cash flow, while also monitoring customer journeys across schemes and promotions
• An informative dashboard allows you to track your business performance using charts and graphs; and also gives sales statistics to depict the performance of your company

Freshbooks, Quickbooks, and Xero are some good examples of accounting software.

Product Management Software – For overall management

At any edtech firm, there is a constant demand for developments to cater to the evolving market. With so many tasks and multiple developments going on simultaneously, there is also a need for overall product management. It is the role of a product manager to design a roadmap that the team navigates. Product management software can help a firm with-

• Task management to set weekly or daily targets, create a board for multiple tasks, set goals, due dates, and priority lists
• Team management to make the development process a waterfall model, and strategize the teams to make the process agile, and faster time-to-market
• Dynamic dashboards to bring in project flexibility and work visualization, monitoring the live progress, and real-time data

Some of the good product management software include Asana, Basecamp, and Microsoft Teams. 

In the active education industry, your business can make the customers and clients discover the benefits of digital learning with the rightly stacked tools. The tools mentioned above will help you in increasing business growth and team productivity. Let us know if you’re ready to get one or all of the tech stacks for improving your edtech business management.

The edtech sector is positioned for exponential growth as suggested by Forbes research. In the next 5-7 years, the edtech sector can reach $325 Billion by 2025 and a whopping $1 trillion by 2027. Building your e-learning platform can be an intricate process, sufficing the demands for more efficiency, security, flexibility, and scalability. Profit-making is the direct benefit of a platform that packs enriching features and addresses learners’ pain points.

Choosing the right tech stack for e-learning platform development is a decision that is taken before the development process is initiated. Before we dive into this topic, it is essential to focus on key factors to consider before choosing the best tech stack for developing an e-learning platform.

Factors to consider

Target User

Edtech is now not limited only to school education, even though it still forms the basis of the edtech landscape. Corporate e-learning is a fast booming segment with the market predicted to increase by $38.09 billion from a period of 2020-2024. Both of these segments and higher learning space have different and unique needs. Further, corporate platforms are different from formal education e-learning platforms. Therefore, before choosing the tech stack for an e-learning platform it becomes essential to know whether the end customer is a school student, learners from higher education, or a company employee.

Type of Platform Requirement

Should you be building an LMS (Learning Management System) or an MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform, or a customized platform? It depends upon your end user. Existing LMS systems traditionally offer restricted access with a limited number of end users, while MOOC is the kind of e-learning marketplace, which is open to any number of users. Choice of tech stack will largely depend upon the specific solutions for each kinds of platform.

Scalability

As mentioned earlier, it is also essential to understand the scalability of e-learning apps. This is done by estimating the demand for a product and speculating its future growth. Scalability at the corporate level may mean reaching various departments across locations deployed for different use cases. While MOOC platforms like Udemy, Coursera need to be scalable across geography for diverse types of course material.

Extensibility

Upgrading the launched app is critical to match the ever-changing requirements of your end-users. Choosing the tech stack also depends upon extensibility because you would want to use the technologies that are scaled up easily to match learners’ demands.

MVP

MVP or Minimum Viable Product is a product idea with core features that an e-learning platform offers. MVP allows developers to analyze and draft technical opportunities and budgets, which is one of the critical aspects of developing an e-learning platform.

Budget

The cost of your project will directly influence the choice of tech stack. Suitable options for e-learning project development include free and paid frameworks.

Choosing the best tech stack

• Front-end technologies: This is the part that is visible to the users. A plethora of new technologies keep coming up, so the challenge before the Technology leader lies in having the platform currently popular, robust, and also easy for the development and maintenance team. Some of the popular frontend technology stacks for building e-learning apps are Angular JS, CSS, JavaScript, and HTML5. JavaScript is a flexible technology that performs well with different kinds of frameworks.
• Back-end technologies: Known as server-side development, this part is not visible to your users, but it helps in handling thousands of registered users, and courses offered. Popular backend technologies for building e-learning platforms include PHP, Ruby, Python, and Node.js. Python’s growing popularity as a backend technology comes from its great performance.
• Mobile: Even though most of the users take online courses and classes through the desktop version of the e-learning platform, it must also be optimized for mobile devices. The fastest way of creating a mobile app is by deciding on creating a cross-platform mobile development solution. Popular technologies used for developing this solution include frameworks like Flutter or React Native. These frameworks give a native feel and look. Their biggest advantage is that they require creating just one codebase for both operating systems- iOS and Android. This speeds up the development process and also makes it budget-friendly.

Turning your idea into full-fledged project

Building a valuable e-learning platform requires a team of experienced and talented people. It would be time-consuming and expensive to hire an in-house team to do this job within the tight time frame, which is likely to slow down the process of development while reducing the time-to-market. A talented pool of product engineers stands behind the success of any digital product. Therefore the role of project managers, product engineers, and product designers cannot be understated. That is why it is essential to entrust your project to an IT partner with proven digital expertise.

If you have a project idea and need an IT partner that comes with years of experience in e-learning solutions, explore why you should consider Valuebound. Call us or drop a hello to discuss your project details.

The Edtech space in India has gained much momentum, thanks to the increased remote learning environment since 2020. Some of the start-ups  catching up in the edtech space are Whitehat Education, Mindlogicx, Meritnation, Masai School, Practically, Skillmatics, Testbook, and Culturealley among others. In previous blog, we talked about top edtech companies that became unicorns for their unique platform and tech solutions. This blog talks about promising edtech startups soon to enter unicorn club.

Quizziz

Quizziz is a platform that is now being used in group assignments, pre-test reviews, classes, pop quizzes, and formative assessments and is known for creating and selling gamified student engagement programs. The edtech platform is customizable, available for all age groups, and accessible across any device and platform, with more than 10 million users, this edtech start-up is forecasted to soon make its entry into the unicorn club of India. While technology-based learning is only recent in India, Quizziz is also now integrating regional languages for wider adoption here.

What makes Quizziz unique and different from other edtech start-ups is that they do not pitch their product as a “supplementary education” beyond the schools. The USP technology of Quizziz is gamification and analytics. Speaking of the tech stacks, this engaging learning platform makes use of over 15 technologies, including Moment.js, jQuery, Node.js, Express, Google Workspace, Amazon Cloudfront, Amazon Web Services, and MoEngage, among others.

Cuemath

Focussing primarily on one subject, Bangalore-based Cuemath has over 3,000 centers in the country. Cuemath focuses on improving mathematical concepts. This edtech start-up was founded in 2013. What’s unique about Cuemath is its platform called LEAP which customizes each worksheet and class according to the student. The company claims that its students can complete courses 20% faster than other competitors.

Addressing the pain point of students, i.e. weak foundation in Mathematics concepts, Cuemath is now recognized for its unique math learning system. The company offers online after-school math classes, and also focuses on coding lessons. Cuemath has an AI-powered platform that helps students in moving at their own pace. Cuemath makes use of over 18 technology services and products and 50+ technologies on the website. Some of these include jQuery, Google Font API, Viewport Meta, and Google Analytics, among others.

Toppr

Mumbai-based Toppr helps K-12 students with online examination preparation and aiding students in classrooms. Toppr’s structured courses are powered through interactive video lectures, doubt-clearing sessions, practice question sets, and test series. Conceptual learning, application, practice, and comparison are four steps in which classroom teaching is done at Toppr. It also focuses on adaptive question practice and goal-based learning.

Toppr offers technology solutions by recognizing the problem of need-gap. Toppr Doubt is the solution for helping students clear their doubts at any time, in real-time through experts. Toppr is using its investments in developing an AI-based Toppr School Operating System, in an attempt to unify in-school and after-school learning.

The digital tools or technologies used by Toppr include artificial intelligence, machine learning, and big data, for understanding students’ behavior.

Classplus

Founded in 2018, Classplus aims at digitizing the tuition/ coaching system through its coaching institute management software. The SaaS-based platform addressed a major pain point of teachers by helping them create their individual apps to provide coaching and course content to their students. Classplus platforms are mobile-first and offer unlimited cloud storage and data security features. Content of teachers may include video lectures, shared messages, online tests, and homework. Classplus offers ease of tutoring and digital payments. This edtech firm has over 200k users on its platform. In its tech stack are some of the popular technologies like React, Ubuntu, Amazon Web Services, CleverTap, OWL Carousel, jQuery, and Bootstrap among others.

If you are brainstorming a new edtech start-up project, catch up with our tech team to make a product that’s pitched for long-term success.

The EdTech or education technology sector was among the least funded sectors in India till 2019, but with the rise in remote learning, the ed-tech sector saw more start-ups and investors’ money flowing in. Over the last two years, there has been an exponentially rising interest among investors in edtech companies. So, what makes an edtech start-up a success story?

The success of an edtech start-up depends on how satisfied a customer feels with the product and does this product has a long-term vision. Long-term vision can be defined well when a company identifies the pressing pain points of end-users and addresses them with the right digital solution, such as AI, machine learning, and big data, and combines it with the tech stack. In this blog, we list out the fastest growing edtech start-ups in India that address the unique challenges of their end-users through their tech solution.

Byju’s

Byju’s, one of the highest valued edtech start-ups in the world currently, provides personalized learning programs through advanced technologies like interactive 3D learning classes. Byju’s has leveraged its content by reinventing personalized curricula to suit individual students’ requirements. BYJU’s focus has been on delivering quality education with accessibility, use of technology, visualization, and creativity. To create unique solutions, BYJU’s cross-functional team brainstorms together to develop course content that is not yet available around the globe. BYJU’s attains its competitive advantage by building synergy between different global acquisitions, thus creating unique learning platforms.

On the tech side, Amazon Web Services is the cloud platform for its mobile and website app. For gaining a deeper insight into student behavior, BYJU’s uses Amazon Redshift for its data warehouse management.

UpGrad 

UpGrad enables students to achieve career goals by letting them learn higher education programs through top global institutes like IITs, the University of Arizona, and more. UpGrad had a learner base of over 2 million as of August 2021, which doubled in just 8 months, thus making it the largest platform offering higher education.

One of the biggest challenges for UpGrad was to overcome the stigma around the credibility of online courses for recruiters and students. The company invests in three core competencies- new programs, product and learning experience, and greater awareness. What sets UpGrad apart from its competitors is a hand-holding technique for each learner, which it bills as ‘student mentorship’. Upgrad makes its website more dynamic and enhances operability due to frameworks like Nuxt.js, in-house editors, and CMS.

Vedantu

Bangalore-based edtech start-up pioneered live online tutoring in 2014 to students aged between 3 to 18 years, with an aim of augmenting lessons from schools. Vedantu also helps students prepare for competitive examinations, primarily medical and engineering exam. Vedantu enables learners to access free recorded lessons through satellite TV, YouTube, and its app. Customized teaching patterns, interactive LIVE classrooms, and doubt clearing sessions are some of its key highlights.

Vedantu worked on the pain point by understanding that classrooms are never fully equipped to solve each query, or match an individual's ability and pace. Vedantu was thus launched to solve the challenge of offline learning model through its next-gen, instinctive platform WAVE (Whiteboard Audio Video Environment). WAVE is the AI-enabled platform, which uses more than 70 parameters to make classes more interactive.

Unacademy

Unacademy helps students prepare for the country's major entrance examinations. Unacademy’s uniqueness emerges from its LIVE classroom sessions through talented educators. All these class sessions are also available offline, which makes it simpler for learners to access videos at their preferred timing from the comfort of their homes. As of February 2022, Unacademy had over 750,000 active paid subscribers.

The company worked on the greatest challenge of democratizing education in India and making education accessible to all. At present, around 70% of the company’s active learners are from Tier-III cities where there is an absence of top educators. Unacademy is now focusing on adding more exams, teachers, and languages into its mixture. Popular tech stacks used by Unacademy include Google Fonts, Google Analytics, HTML 5, iPhone / Mobile Compatible, SPF, and Viewport Meta.

LEAD

Founded in 2012, LEAD acts as an enabler for schools where they can combine pedagogy, curriculum, and technology into their learning and teaching systems. The company claims to have over 5,000 schools, serving over 2 million students across 500 cities in the country. LEAD invests its resources in building integrated and exceptional learning environments.

Digitizing and transforming inexpensive private schools to cater to the students from moderate and low-income households is the challenge addressed by LEAD schools by creating an integrated system. LEAD schools’ business success comes from running school management software applications. It is the full-stack retraining, assessment, and education solution for the small towns. The unique characteristics of the software include course content delivery, teacher’s training, instructor performance management, and student learning surveillance.
 

In our previous blog, we talked about how adaptive learning and badging in gamification can have a critical impact on higher education. The rising demand for these digital tools amongst institutions has prompted edtech companies to focus on technologies that empower education. In this blog, we list our three core digital tools that can greatly impact and transform higher education.

Blended Learning

Also known as hybrid learning, it combines the best of online and offline worlds to deliver lessons to students. Blended Learning comes with a range of benefits including better opportunities for experiential learning, enhanced teacher and student interaction, a more flexible teaching, and learning environment, and time management and flexibility among others. About 53% of the students are willing to adopt the idea of online courses offered on a blended or university-owned platform, suggests a report by Pwc.

Popular models of blended learning are:

• Flipped model that enables educators to share education content before the class session. The instructors can share this content on LMS, or through e-mails.
• Face-to-Face Driver Model uses webinars or Zoom meetings to deliver a learning session. While the learning takes place online, assignments can be set later and shared using LMS.
• Enriched Virtual model of blended learning enables students to complete their coursework online, while also attending webinars. Here, the attendance is ad hoc and enables learners to grasp concepts at their own pace.

Apps supporting hybrid learning

• Edmodo app integrates with Google Apps and Microsoft Online and serves as a collaborative platform for teachers, students, and parents.
• Lesson Paths enables flexible and individualized learning and works on a playlist model. One can assign a playlist that already exists on the platform or can create a new playlist. Students are eligible to have their playlist as well.
• Voicethread enables the articulation of students’ thoughts, along with collaborative participation. The platform enables the uploading of over 50 different kinds of files. Students can comment through different means like a phone call, text, video, and chat.

Enhanced Classroom Technologies

The adoption of classroom technologies in higher education space is revolving around “Learning ready classrooms”, a word coined by Dr. Maggie Beers from San Francisco State University. The current focus is on designing and scaling equitable and inclusive learning spaces with tools for active learning like writable surfaces and wheeled furniture.

Apps for smart classrooms

• SCALE-UP rooms have circular tables along with displays. This allows students to work on their assignments, plug in their laptops, and simultaneously share screens. 
• Too Noisy is the app which monitors and controls the level of noise in a classroom.
• Class Dojo is a behavior tracking app where teachers can monitor students’ behavior.
• Teacher Kit is a class management app that puts multiple tools into use and organizes class data. It also keeps track of the students’ performance.

Learning Analytics

This digital technology is used with online learning services, where its application involves the implementation of new structures and methods that are dependent upon predictive modeling. Learning Analytics implementation in higher education brings in key strengths, such as the availability of multiple visualizations for staff and students, the ability to use powerful, pre-existing algorithms, large volumes of available educational data, precise models for adaptation and personalization of learning, and growing insight into learning strategies and behaviors.

Apps supporting learning analytics

• OnTask, an analytics solution, integrates data from learning management systems or other online learning tools and enables instructors to define progress indicators. The dashboard allows instructors to check students’ progress, both individual, as well as aggregated.
• The Threadz, a tool for developing network visualizations, makes use of learning analytics by giving instructors manipulable visualizations of students’ interaction and communication within forums. It uses reliable metrics which indicate students’ degree of engagement.
• Simple Reports, a platform that draws historic data of course registration from the past, and matches it with the current one, gives a clear understanding of students' data. This gives a clear demographic understanding of students to understand likely future choices in which a student is to major.

Investing in digital tools for transforming higher education can help institutes reap tangible benefits on operational and strategic goals. Digital tools mentioned above can improve the performance of institutions by redesigning the campus experience. In our coming insights, we shall focus on how the institutions can plan a successful roadmap around mounting revenues and operational and pedagogical challenges.