Gartner’s bi-modal IT structure recommends companies to establish a smaller, innovation-centered group to drive new ways to meet and exceed business outcomes. Research has shown that high-performing companies are 10-11X more likely to report high levels of innovation. As CEOs look at IT to become a revenue driver, CIO organizations must re-invent to align as a P&L unit instead of a cost center and enable new business models with technology.
Recognizing this strategic shift, Wipro’s Business Enablement Lab is a combination of new (yet stable) technologies and business outcomes. The Business Enablement Lab (BEL) comprises of a small team to drive 10X-20X in business outcomes across four dimensions (CROP - Customers, Revenue, Operational Efficiency and People and Partners). The lab, comprised of a mix of business strategists and AI/Data Science SMEs, will enable significant business outcomes, leveraging our well-established “ideation to prototype to production” methodology.

What will BEL focus on??

The lab will leverage our CROP framework to drive business outcomes across four dimensions using the latest thinking in Digital (AI, ML, Advanced analytics, cognitive automation and other digital technologies).

1. Customer experience
   • UI/UX from Proof of Value to deployment
   • Journey mapping using service design to identify lows and improve CX (Customer Experience)
2. Revenue
   • New Revenue Streams – Connected digital offerings for XaaS (Anything as a Service)  type revenue streams
   • Preventing Revenue Leakage –
     • Unlock revenue potential using ML (Machine Learning) and advanced analytics to improve upsell revenue, renewal rates
     • Recommendation engines for offerings/next best actions
     • Pricing analytics for recommended pricing and margin analytics across licensing/cloud/Professional Services(PS)/hosting/Multi-element revenue streams
     • Optimization for discount programs and contra-revenue
3. Operational efficiency
   • Intelligent Automation (RPA+) heat-maps and cognitive automation (across front-office, middle office and back-office Ops) covering
     • Efficiency (hours saved, speed of processing),
     • Compliance (Auditing process, reporting accuracy),
     • Productivity (Freed-up capacity, new work undertaken) &
     • Cost reduction (Labor arbitrage & work re-allocation)
   • Cost take-outs leveraging advanced insights based on process mining
   • Outsourcing for non-core and legacy processes & products/offerings
4. People & Partner Experience
   • People (Employee) Experience
     • From employee onboarding to systems of engagement to smart workforce analytics
   • Partner (Partners/Developers/Suppliers) Experience
     • Partner onboarding to partner engagement to improving Go-To-Market (GTM) and revenue management.

How will this be operationalized?

Wipro will setup a co-creation Business Enablement Lab that will work with business stakeholders to identify “opportunity spaces” which can then be prioritized based on key business outcomes and implemented with latest technologies (AI/ Block chain / Analytics) in a rapid agile fashion.

The following demonstrates the ideation to prototype journey:

Once, an idea is selected from the opportunity space, the disposition status can be between “discard since value not met” to “hand over to delivery team in current fiscal” or “put on roadmap for subsequent fiscal”.

How will we transition to delivery teams?

Based on our experience, hand-offs must be gradual – deliberate ownership transfer is better than throwing off an idea over the fence. The hand-off is based on the following tenets:

Prior to the ideation phase:

1. Define who, when and how the hand-off will happen
2. Align innovation teams with portfolios
3. Assess impact on BAU (Business as Usual)

During the hand-off:

1. Use agile, DevOps to reduce the number of hand-offs

After the hand-off:

1. Swap resources gradually

Who will be part of this team?

The BEL is a multi-disciplinary team comprising of 4-6 people, including digital architects, business solution strategists (across geos), experience design leads and AI architects. The underlying idea is to have on demand access to a wide range of specialist talent leveraging our crowd-sourced platform (Topcoder) for rapid delivery of POCs & prototypes.

In addition, the Engineering Acceleration Cell should consist of data scientists, AI practitioners and deep learning experts who will help build rapid POCs

The lab owns the creation of insights, strategy, use cases and POCs (Point of Concepts). Teams work with the necessary autonomy to facilitate speed, continually validating progress with user research and performance data. Governance gateways are introduced at assessment milestones, ensuring cost and risk is controlled in a safe-to-fail environment.  

Arun Trivedi

Digital Partner – Technology BU, Wipro Ltd

Arun specializes in defining IT-enabled business transformation roadmaps, service monetization, quote-to-cash business processes, and revenue recognition for clients. He has been involved in helping clients, from defining their business challenges to leveraging technologies to resolve business problems and enable benefits realization.