CIOInsider India Magazine
Your Top Priority While Making Decisions To Improve Tech Infra In Your Organization
Vivek Tiwari, MD & CEO at Satya MicroCapital Limited has nearly 15 years of experience in the microfinance sector, he has helped facilitate the financial inclusion of a large number of people across both urban and rural regions of the country, through impact investments into socially-beneficial entrepreneurial ventures. As Managing Director and CEO at Satya MicroCapital, He is responsible for heading the company’s business strategy and implementation, along with driving its geographic and revenue expansion.
Understand business objectives and strategy
Achieving business objectives almost always either directly or indirectly involves IT. Business objectives are the measurable accomplishments the business is trying to achieve. To achieve them, the business must undertake business imperatives or projects. IT priorities and projects should stem directly from the prioritized business objectives and imperatives. Understanding the prioritized business objectives and imperatives lead to understanding the implications for IT and setting and prioritizing IT imperatives.
Know your existing IT environment; assess its capabilities and map gaps
To determine IT implications and imperatives, you need to understand your current environment and compare that to the needed environment to support business projects. Doing this will define your IT gaps in a manner that maps them to the business imperatives and objectives.
Use a structured approach to develop an IT strategy that aligns investment and focuses on business priorities
Whether understanding business objectives and imperatives or assessing IT implications, use a structured methodology. Using structured methodologies can help ensure completeness and enable you to arrive at insights and conclusions
rapidly. They also provide a semi-scientific approach to reaching and defending conclusions that can be discussed with the business in business language and context.
Challenges you face in driving digital transformation
Post Supreme Court verdict, there are multiple ambiguities regarding Aadhar. This has prevented streamlined Aadhar architecture for cashless collections and E-KYC verifications, therefore, as a result, the percentage of the cashless collection has decreased.
This has further resulted in an increase in the cash risk in the field. Still, we are in the process of improving cashless collection through multiple arrangements like cash drop facility, appointment of customer service points and Business Correspondent partnership.
It’ll be supportive if SRO along with various colleges teaching microfinance to undertake a central reservoir activity wherein there is some scope of retrieval of micro-finance experience relevant candidates with a consistent track record. In the absence of such a reservoir, getting the right talent matched with the right skill and right expertise is time-consuming.
Some suggestions for students/ freshers:
– Working in a Team: Being a team player is one of the most important skills employers want in freshers. Those starting a new job must be comfortable working with different personalities and taking responsibilities.
It priorities and projects should stem directly from the prioritized business objectives and imperatives
– Effective Communication: Having strong communication skills means being good at both, verbal and written communication at the same time having impeccable listening skills.
– Time Management: Managing time is very important in professional life and you cannot afford to make mistakes while juggling multiple work assignments and projects. They need to be trained on adaptability of early office timings as it is essential for them to reach the field on time and do collection and disbursement as per our client’s availability hours.
– Ability to Adapt: Flexibility is another key skill employers look for in freshers as not everybody has such skills. You may have to visit various places which may not be to your liking/suitability, so you need to be able to adjust to any situation thereby showcasing your flexibility and maturity in dealing with a variety of work-related situations.
– Rural Exposure: To understand the client base of the microfinance industry, it is extremely important for the students/ new employees to get Rural exposure. This will help them understand the reality at the grassroots level and better visualize constraints and address them.
