Being a preferred multi-industry IoT services platform, GCR’s operations cover 6 countries and offers 1000+ solutions to diverse enterprises. GCR (Global Channel Resources) is a digital transformation enabler and provides value to an enterprise by bringing together technology providers and implementation partners to deliver solutions that build an impact on an enterprise’s business. By offering digital IT solutions for the businesses, Tony, the founder of the company explains us how the company helps businesses to connect with the customers to offer them the right products at the right time and place.

In Conversation With Tony Tsao, Founder, Chairman & CEO, Global Channel Resources

Corona Virus (Covid-19) has almost impacted every industry, causing steep inroads into the global economy. Please tell us what role your organization is playing in countering this pandemic and also what's your personal initiative?
When COVID was announced as a global pandemic, we were quick enough to understand the gravity of the situation and encouraged all our employees to work from home putting employee safety on the top of priorities. However, to ensure that it was business as usual, our employees have been banking on various digital solutions to stay connected and maintain business continuity. We are currently leveraging on our Workforce Collaboration Suite which is a simple easy-to-use app that helps to connect and collaborate with our co-workers more efficiently and effectively. We have been using Microlearning solutions for delivering bite-sized knowledge transfer sessions to our employees and more.

Further, at GCR, we have launched the New Normal and Work-from-Home Suite of digital solutions for our customers in these uncertain times. Some of these include the Virtual Learning solutions for educational institutes, Employee

Productivity and Collaboration tools to stay connected with employees and ensure business continuity for enterprises. Apart from this, once the lockdowns and restrictions are lifted, we are also looking at incorporating Facial Recognition-based Attendance, Touchless Visitor Management and other contactless IoT enabled solutions for encouraging social distancing practices for our employees and customers.

How would you say that Global Channel Resources’ business transformation solutions that are offered as SaaS/IaaS/ PaaS connected IoT solutions over cloud, are the best fit for businesses in this testing times?
Our solutions are SaaS based and are OPEX friendly. The nature of the pandemic is such that many customers are a little reluctant to bring about changes in their current infrastructure which would involve a hardware investment. Also, for those who have made hardware investments have had to keep their projects on hold due to a delay in shipment, lack of manpower to implement etc. Many managers who wish to bring about a change through technology are resorting to simple, easy to implement SaaS solutions. As a pioneer in digital transformation, we understand the magnitude of the challenges faced by businesses in different verticals and we have simple SaaS solutions that help to address the pain-points in each of these verticals at a very low investment. Also, as the SaaS solutions are built over the cloud infrastructure, they don’t require long-term contracts and one could deactivate the services at any point in time. Our range of 1000+ SaaS solutions are industry specific, robust and cost effective. We are also actively involved in conducting remote PoC and demos for most of our SaaS solutions. However, in case of projects that require Hardware support, we have a dedicated team that is working round the clock to support our customers in such uncertain times. We are doing our best to ensure that all the business needs of our customers are fully taken care of!

How do you see the Indian Manufacturing sector re-covering post the COVID19 crisis? How do you plan to assist the manufacturing units and factories?
The crisis has exposed some major gaps when it comes to the Indian Manufacturing segment. With the way events had unfolded with the pandemic, many managers will agree to the fact that one of the major challenges that they are facing is having real time visibility on their products, processes and people. It is the lack of real-time visibility that has rendered the decision-

making capability of managers as untimely and ineffective. It is here where our Industry 4.0 solutions for the manufacturing segments will play a very important role.

Our products align with our strategy of creating value for clients. With right information at the right time, we believe that many benefits can be achieved. These benefits include near real time visibility of line and machine status, line speed, process parameters, losses per hour. It has also improved up time of equipment through prescriptive and predictive maintenance, quality of products by achieving zero defect along with productivity and efficiency. Built on robust technologies, the platform is sustainable, scalable and secure.

Tell us about one of your client ventures where GCR successfully offered its services that left a significant positive business impact.
One of the leading manufacturers of electrical ceramics had leveraged on our Industry 4.0 solutions to improve productivity, performance and uptime. We kick started this assignment with our group of technical stalwarts who went about understanding their whole operation process. Upon investigation, they observed a lot of loopholes in the form of lack of sensors or controllers to capture process data. After having detailed discussions with the senior management team, we took them through customised Industry 4.0 solutions that could help provide end-to-end visibility on their processes, products and people. Our range of solutions including shop floor automation, digital maintenance solutions helped them to have a 360 degree of their operations, increased operator performance, automated scheduled/ on-demand reports and helped decreased downtime.

What does the future of GCR propose to its clients?
At GCR, we are developing strong lasting relationships with channel partners and that is why we have created the ‘Channel Partner Services Platform (CPSP)’. Our newly ramped up platform aims to support our partners through ongoing marketing and training support, incentives and more. Further, we will continue to put more resources to expand our total offerings for solutions from all over the world. We will also expand our market reach in different regions in the coming years, working with different industry segment integration partners to create end-to-end offerings and an integrated eco-system. Our Franchise model has also taken off and offers System Integrators and Distribution entities to leverage our platform to grow their business. We expect to see more on that front.