Past Webinars

It has been a period of transition for the retail industry. Customer expectations have risen through the recent crisis. The way they shop has changed and the need to feel safe has made them gravitate towards no-contact, digital-first engagement.

From traditional in-store experiences to brick and click, these changes are here to stay, even as we tentatively shift towards pre-pandemic levels of activity. And with shoppers becoming increasingly more demanding, you can no longer afford to ignore their call for unified, omnichannel shopping experiences and instant answers.

Growing customer anxiety has also led them to value speed in service above all other factors. Limited by budgets and headcount, customer service teams are relying on the right technology to keep up.

This discussion will offer key insights on:

• Choosing agile and scalable customer service technology solutions to stay future-ready
• Building service efficiency to tackle staffing and budget constraints
• Facilitating a free flow of customer context for better service experiences

Sayantani Chanda
Head (General Manager) – CRM, Loyalty, Analytics & Customer Experience
Bata India Limited

Anuradha Singh
Chief Experience Design
Future Retail Limited

Vinod Chandramouli
Head of Sales, ASEAN
Freshworks

Bhupesh Chadha
Strategic Account Manager
AISPL

Jessie Paul
CEO
Paul Writer
Moderator

“Demand for technological, social and emotional, and higher cognitive skills will rise by 2030” and will impact all industries alike as highlighted by experts from Deloitte and McKinsey

OVERVIEW

The Indian services sector is the fastest growing in the world, accounting for 28% of employment and 56% of overall Gross Value Added in 2019-20.

As the lifeline for national socio-economic growth, the service sector includes prominent industries like IT, telecom, media and entertainment, health care, banking and financial services, retail, railways, environment, energy, education, and sports. These businesses rely heavily on customer engagement, which makes it imperative to evolve and adapt to the times. The COVID-19 pandemic has especially highlighted the need to inculcate self-reliance, sustainability, collaboration and resilience.

NEED OF THE HOUR

Within the Services sector, there is an increasing demand for people skills like flexibility, empathy, relatability and good judgement. Employees who possess these competencies make better impressions on clients, fostering lasting relationships and long-term profits. A highly skilled, resilient workforce trained in these competencies is the need of the hour.

SKILLING TRENDS

• A customer-centric approach calls for behavioral training, required to drive workforce productivity, engagement and growth, across leadership and functional levels.
• Based on our recent survey, the most in-demand skills for the Services sector are empathy, assertiveness, conflict resolution and listening skills.
• Skilling frontline workers—across levels—is essential for organizational growth.
• Cognitive skills like creativity and logical reasoning will be required across levels for advanced decision-making abilities.

CORE COMPETENCIES REQUIRED IN SERVICES SECTOR

The upcoming webinar “Skilling Trends and Planning for the Future in Services” will feature a panel of renowned HR leaders from the service sector to explore how companies can identify and build the right skills for their workforce.

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS

• How can upskilling enable a better understanding of customer demands and needs?
• The importance of active listening and understanding client needs to drive client satisfaction
• Building long-term customer relationships through communication and crisis management
• Behavioral training for self-development, managerial development and leadership development
• What skills does the Services sector need most in 2021?

Amla Awasthi
Vice President HR
Indiamart Intermesh Limited

Ashok Ramachandran
CEO & President
Schindler

Gautam Khanna
CEO
Hinduja Hospital

Prabhjot S Goomer
Group Head Human Resources
Eros Group

Rajagopalan Purushothaman
Head-Learning & Development
JioMart Digital

Rani Belliappa
Associate Partner Head Learning & Development & HR Business Partner
KPMG Global Services

Shreyasi Singh
Founder & CEO
Harappa

Sushmita Roy
SVP & Head HRBP – Digital, TV & Studio
Sony Pictures Networks

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In the drastically changing markets, businesses and organizations need to adapt and build strategies that allow them to explore new opportunities of expansion and meeting customer needs. These strategies are usually based on agility, flexibility and developing capacities to scale up or down to stay ahead of competitors. Having cloud computing service models in place can promote business growth because they encourage business agility due to advantages such as scalability and cost savings.

This session is going to apprise the audience of the possibilities of the challenging times and together discuss ways to provide leadership insights which lead to organizations building effective Cloud Strategies that deliver agility and cost optimization. The key topic of discussion at the roundtable will be as follows. We are also open to incorporate your suggestions to make the discussion interesting.

• How to Migrate and free-up resources
• Adopt modern application development practices
• Gain faster, deeper insights across your business
• Ensure security, compliance, and resiliency
• Tips to Organize for speed and agility
• Insights on Bridging skills and experience gaps

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As businesses continue along their digital transformation journeys, Hybrid-Cloud strategies provide flexibility and agility, allowing communication across both public and private cloud. But this flexibility, combined with rapid data growth, challenges many organizations ability to maintain SLA’s and manage their critical applications and data.

A comprehensive cloud data management strategy is key to remaining agile in the hybrid cloud reality. This means having solutions and policies in place that help you manage your critical assets, no matter where they are hosted.

The combination of AWS and Veeam® enables customers to ensure availability for any application and any data. Our solutions help move, manage, protect and recover critical data. This includes backing up data to, from and within AWS. Regardless of what you are doing with the AWS platform, Veeam has you covered.

Join the ET Live Webinar Session on Rules of Modern Cloud Data Management in the New World”, powered by Veeam and Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd. to learn how to.

• Reduce your Data Management Costs
• Centralize your organization’s Cloud Data
• Scale your data management resources based on current needs
• Effectively address any failure scenario through 3-2-1 backup rule

Prasanna Keshava
Senior Systems Engineer
Veeam Software

Kumar Nachiketa
Storage Partner Solutions Architect – APJ
Amazon Internet Services Pvt Ltd

Chief finance officers are an integral part of an organization and with their wide range of expertise, they have the ability to drive company’s growth. They make sure that company is performing operationally well, and all cooperate functions are working in line with the vision of the company. In the last few months the world has seen unpredictable changes because of the pandemic, this has made the role of a CFO some what more challenging. Making sure the continuity of the business in these volatile conditions is something a CFO must handle. With help of technologies, the CFOs today are focusing on future proofing their businesses from shocks. Reducing the risk factors with the help of new age technologies & implementing them into businesses with out affecting other functions is something organizations must strategize.

The Economic Times brings to you a closed-door roundtable discussion on future proofing businesses with technologies: a CFO’s story, in order to discuss critical steps that a finance leader can take across all financial horizons with the help of data, analytics, AI, RPA, &cloud. Further we will be deep diving into:

• Reducing costs and maximize returns at the same time
• Planning a roadmap for digital transformation
• Planning for return on investment
• Focus on cash preservation and cost control measures
• Utilizing technologies like cloud for better productivity

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“Demand for technological, social and emotional, and higher cognitive skills will rise by 2030” and will impact all industries alike as highlighted by experts from Deloitte and McKinsey”

OVERVIEW

The manufacturing industry continues to play a significant role in overall productivity growth rates and innovation for the Indian economy. India’s manufacturing sector has the potential to reach US$ 1 trillion by 2025. (IBEF).

The Government of India launched the ‘Make in india’ movement to put us on the map as a manufacturing hub, giving the country global recognition. Fighting and mitigating the pandemic, with the aim to survive, the manufacturing industry has also accelerated the arrival of Industrial Revolution 4.0. In addition to rapid adoption of technology and automation, there will be a parallel transition in skill requirements in the industry.

KEY INSIGHTS

NEED OF THE HOUR

Manufacturing is battling the challenge of growing skill gaps. For all of the sector’s mechanical complexities, it is also heavily dependent on human wisdom in planning, manufacturing, marketing, selling, operations and more.

However, the industry is also facing a shortage of skilled labour. Lack of foundational skills cause some of the biggest problems in manufacturing, and there is a need for a flexible, motivated workforce,with skilled professionals at all levels, from technical professionals and managers, to shop floor personnel.

SKILLING TRENDS

• Behavioral training with a customer-centric approach, across leadership and functional levels can drive workforce productivity, engagement and growth.
• Based on our recent survey, the most in-demand skills for the Manufacturing sector are:
  • Crisis management and resilience
  • Interpersonal communication
  • Quick decision making
• Continuous training sessions for mid-level and executive professionals has shown great ROI with increased productivity and growth.
• Mitigating performance gaps, aligning workforce to organizational goals, and motivating teams will be key to building valuable human capital.
• Cognitive skills like creativity and logical reasoning will be required across levels for improved decision-making and problem solving.

CORE COMPETENCIES REQUIRED IN MANUFACTURING SECTOR

The upcoming webinar “Skilling Trends and Planning for the Future in Manufacturing” will feature a panel of renowned HR leaders from the manufacturing industry to explore how companies can identify and build the right skills for their workforce.

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS

• How can upskilling enable better understanding of customer demands and needs?
• The importance of active listening and understanding client needs to drive client satisfaction
• Building long-term customer relationships through communication and crisis management
• Behavioral training for self-development, managerial development and leadership development
• What skills do manufacturers need most in 2021?

Abhinav Shrivastava
Head of Human Resources
Head of Human Resources, CEAT Specialty Tyres Limited

Gautam Kumarx
Chief Human Resources Officer
SKF India

Manish Sinha
SVP & CHRO
M&M Auto Business

Pramath Raj Sinha
Founder & Chairman
Harappa

Raj Narayan
Executive Vice President & Chief Human Resources Officer
Titan Company Limited

Shashank Rai
National Head HR
Asian Paints PPG Pvt. Ltd.

Sudipto Mandal
Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer
Star Cement Ltd.

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Digital collaboration technologies have made WFH transition smooth to keep distributed work teams engaged and connected. The ongoing crisis has proved two things—people can work effectively from homes and investing in next-gen collaboration tools allows them to stay connected while enabling business continuity. The fabric of business innovation and success in maintaining collaborative relationships with co-workers, business partners and customers. Modern video meetings are game-changers, allowing remote workers and distributed teams to communicate face-to-face, share files and screens and ideas.

A distributed workforce needs best-in-class communications that take them as close as possible to being with co-workers in a physical office. Team chat, video and content collaboration have become pivotal to anytime, anywhere work. Change often presents new opportunities and spurs innovation in unexpected ways. Video and content collaboration has become the cornerstone for digital transformation today and disruptive video conferencing has made remote work and borderless office a reality. COVID-19 will always be remembered as a disruptive catalyst for the future of work, forever changing the way people live and work.

Join this webinar to learn from top Industry experts from Logitech & Microsoft to learn about:

1. The forces reshaping the future of work and their impact on offices, employees and technology
2. Key priorities for enabling efficient and effective remote work
3. Critical success factors to effective collaboration and connection with co-workers, partners and customers
4. The latest Video Conferencing innovations from Logitech & Microsoft Teams

Pratik Chanda
Commercial Sales Lead – Intelligent Edge
Southeast Asia, Korea and India
Microsoft

Anand Lakshmanan
Country Manager – Video Collaboration
India & South West Asia
Logitech

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Cloud computing has been assisting numerous industries in meeting sector-specific challenges and reaping its benefits.

To remain competitive, the Media and Entertainment industry is under pressure to produce and publish original material on a regular and timely basis. It will be almost impossible to process, handle, and distribute these massive amounts of digital information in an adaptive, dynamic, and cost-effective way without the cloud.

There has been a huge rise in the amount of content being submitted for users with the emergence of many OTT platforms. According to a report by EY, 28 million Indians (up from 10.5 million in 2019) paid for 53 million OTT subscriptions in 2020 leading to a 49% growth in digital subscription revenues.

The sector has started to adopt cloud computing as its preferred technology. Reduced IT maintenance costs and the ability to access high-quality services at any time and from any location would quickly drive widespread use of cloud technologies in the media and entertainment industry.

Knowing what the customer wants before they ask for it allows you to change the way you deliver content and create custom experiences. In order to capture market share and meet today’s consumer needs, it is important to infuse the latest technologies, such as AI, cloud, and predictive analytics, into the media and entertainment sector.

The cloud service providers can enable media and entertainment companies to accelerate their content development, streamline asset management and distribution as well as modernize and migrate media workflows.

Join The Economic Times Live Webinar, Business Continuity in Uncertain Times using cloud services, powered by AISPL, for transforming your operations, and examining the opportunity presented by cloud-based technologies to streamline and enable the entire media production supply chain.

Key Takeaways:

• Accelerating content creating and storage
• Collaborate globally and create content efficiently
• Improve audience engagement through Data and AI
• Secure asset management and delivery
• Improve scalability with better architecture
• Protect content with multi-layered security

Kaushik Mamania
Sr. VP – Engineering
UFO Moviez.

Ashwani Kumar
Co-Founder & CEO
Acept One MediaWorks Pvt. Ltd

Harshad Satam
Head Business Development SMB
AISPL

“The customer’s perception is your reality.” – Kate Zabriskie, Business Training Works

For many segments, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly accelerated change in the way organisations interact with their customers. There is now an absolute necessity to adopt digital first customer engagement models and place digital transformation at the heart of organisational strategy, to ensure alignment with the future of customer & employee engagement and experience.

Today the need of the hour is aligning continuous changing behaviour of the customer. Pre- pandemic if a customer’s journey was 70% digital and 30% physical, it is safe to say that most consumers have moved to digital, almost completely. Consumers want today a flawless experience which is being provided by many e-commerce companies. Following this trend, other industries such as retail have started to pick up the pace of digital transformation for providing better customer experiences. As per the 2021 Gartner CIO Survey, nearly 63% of retailers expect to spend more on business intelligence/data analytics and 35% of retailers surveyed are planning to implement artificial intelligence.

A digital-first model requires digital to be at the heart of the transformation to ensure we have truly aligned ourselves to the future of Customer & Employee Experience. For industries such as banking and automotive, customer experience is even more important. The key processes to keep in mind are customer onboarding and maintaining relationships. It is important to understand that consumers today have many options if they feel the current company is not able to provide them with the best. Other proven benefits of digitization include higher retention rates and reduced acquisition costs.

The data shown by IBEF says that the Indian automotive industry (including component manufacturing) is expected to reach Rs. 16.16-18.18 trillion (US$ 251.4-282.8 billion) by 2026. The growing auto sector indicates that sales will be going up and more consumers will be buying vehicles. To make their buying experience better many auto companies have started to roll out virtual showrooms to provide satisfaction.

In this ET Unwired Panel Session we will focus on the types of processes that are impacted. We address how to identify and define digital customer and employee engagement and interaction. We also discuss how to implement change ensuring optimum employee productivity and enhanced customer experience

Join the Session and learn how to:

• Create secure & simplified experiences for customers
• Universal Customer Engagement Mechanism
• Ensure Employee Productivity

Peter Quinlan
Vice President, UCC Product Management
Tata Communications

Manish Gaur
Head IT
Patanjali

Anurag Jain
Chief – Information Technology (CIO & CTO)
Bajaj Housing Finance

Amit Saxena
Deputy Chief Technology Officer Digital Banking
State Bank of India, Global I.T. Centre

Sauvik Banerjjee
CTO
Tata Digital

Rajnish Kumar
Head Digital and Direct to Consumer
ITC Limited

Somick Goswami
Partner – PwC India Consulting
PWC
Moderator

OVERVIEW

India is said to be the land of innovative entrepreneurs and now one of the biggest IT centers of the modern world. In the face of global economic disruption, the Indian IT/ITeS industry has shown remarkable resilience. As one of the biggest IT capitals in the world, India has built a reputation for driving business innovation through IT-enabled services including customer relationship management, business process outsourcing, database updation and software development.

NEED OF THE HOUR

In the increasingly competitive global market, digital skill development is a key business priority for India’s information technology (IT) and IT-enabled services (IT-ITeS). A recent KPMG survey corroborates this with nearly 72% of respondents stating that reskilling is one of the most important paths to shaping the workforce.
Source: National Skill Development Corporation

SKILLING TRENDS

• Organizations are increasingly focusing on developing skills like agility and flexibility among employees, as they re-imagine business models and work patterns to maintain continuity.
• According to our recent survey of the ITeS sector, the most important skills according to talent leaders are:
  • Communication & presentation skills
  • Innovation and creativity
  • Commercial acumen and structuring solutions
• Continued training sessions for mid-level and leadership professionals in the ITeS segment has resulted in better productivity, growth, and return on investments
• Hiring skilled employees and upskilling is highly conducive for organizational growth
• An increased focus on hands-on training along with behavioral, cognitive, and social skills development has been proven to drive organizational excellence

CORE COMPETENCIES REQUIRED IN ITeS SECTOR

Organizations today are prioritizing digital skilling as a key part of their overall business strategy. The Economic Times-Harappa Transformation Series is a step towards highlighting these skills and will discuss – Skilling Trends and Planning for the future in ITeS. The webinar will be conducted on 4th June and will be enriched by noted HR leaders from the ITeS industry, to showcase a roadmap for how companies can identify and enable necessary workplace skills.

KEY DISCUSSION POINTS

• Building composite skills – technical, analytical, professional and domain knowledge
• Creating a learning ecosystem – collaborating with trainers, academia, enterprises, and the government for upskilling
• Building long term relationships with skills like communication, crisis management
• Behavioral training for self-development, managerial development and leadership development.
• The most in-demand skills for 2021

Anupal Banerjee
Chief Human Resources Officer
Tata Technologies

Balaji Viswanathan
Managing Director & CEO
Expleo Solutions Limited

Harshvendra Soin
Global Chief People Officer and Head Marketing
Tech Mahindra

Lakshmanan M.
Chief Human Resources Officer
L&T Technology Services Limited

Pramath Raj Sinha
Founder & Chairman
Harappa

Santosh T K
Human Resources Director
Dell Technologies

Saransh Agrawal
AVP
Cognizant

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